Alexei seems as disinclined to talk about himself as I am. Instead, we listen to music, about which he appears to know a great deal. As each piece starts, he gives me a thumbnail sketch of the work in question. His favorite composer, he tells me, is Rachmaninoff, who saved his sanity in the days and nights following the Dubrovka Theatre siege, his first experience of action, in which a hundred and thirty hostages died.
Alexei points to the passenger-side glove compartment, where among the crumpled cigarette packets and spare Glock magazines I find a cracked plastic case housing a CD of Rachmaninoff’s first piano concerto. As the music plays Alexei glances at me, as if to check that it’s having the appropriate effect. Perhaps it is, because while I find it complex, and its themes difficult to follow, the act of listening to it occupies me to the exclusion of everything else. It doesn’t anesthetize my grief, but it acknowledges and orders it. It gives it a place.
Evening comes early, bringing with it a sharp wind that scours the snowfields and sends crystalline trails flying through our headlight beams. We stop for the night at a featureless town in the Svechinsky district. Our hostel is a single-story cinder-block building attached to a motorway service station. The rooms are unprepossessing, but Alexei tells me that the food in the all-night café is good. I try to eat, but I can’t swallow. Tears run down my nose and drip onto the plate.
Alexei puts down his fork, passes me a paper napkin and tells me about his home life. He’s divorced, and met Vika a year ago at a fellow-officer’s birthday drinks. Vika works in the Moscow State University library. She’s also divorced, with a football-crazy young son who Alexei says “has been running wild too long.” They live in a block near Lubyanka Square exclusively occupied by FSB officers and their families. A neighbor takes Archie for walks during the day.
I half listen, grateful not to have to talk, and walk to my room with the Glock weighing down my coat pocket. In the washbag I find a box of sleeping pills. I take one, climb into bed and listen to the rumble of the trucks outside. Sleep comes blessedly fast.
In the morning we start early, and drive for a further nine hours. Today the sky is clearer, and sunlight pushes through the cloud cover, illuminating the frozen fields and the ice-silvered lakes. The terrain begins to change as we approach the Perm Krai. This is deep Russia, and as the snow’s glitter fades the rivers and forests are briefly suffused in soft, glowing pink.
The Azov Hotel is a tiny, one-star place in a side street off Ulitsa Pushkina in central Perm. Alexei pulls up outside shortly after 10 p.m., walks me inside, stamps the snow from his boots, and has an inaudible conversation with the elderly man behind the reception desk.
My room has been paid for, Alexei tells me, and I will be contacted there at some point over the next few days. Reaching into his coat pocket, he hands me a wallet containing a wad of banknotes and a Gazprombank debit card. I probably look as lost as I feel, for Alexei gives me a quick, soldierly hug, squeezes my hand, and wishes me courage. Then he climbs back into the Lada, backs out onto the street, and drives away.
My room is small, with a liver-colored carpet and a single window overlooking the street. Drawn net curtains admit a thin, diffuse light. There’s a divan bed covered by a crocheted blanket, a wooden chest of drawers, and a miniature fridge that throbs so loudly that I turn it off within ten minutes of moving in.
On the windowsill, behind the curtains, I discover a pack of tarot cards. Left behind, I assume, by a previous tenant. I have no idea of the supposed meaning of the cards, but I spend hours sitting on the bed, turning them over one by one, and gazing at the strange, enigmatic images. The angel on the judgment card looks like Oxana. I am the ten of swords, pierced through and through.
This room, and the snowbound streets around the hotel, become my world. I sleep late, eat my lunch at the café over the road, and walk until it gets dark. On my first day I make my way up Komsomolsky Prospekt. I’m glad of the light and warmth of the department stores, but something about the family groups in their coats and headscarves and snow boots upsets me. I feel that I no longer belong among them, and seek out quieter routes in the neighboring park and along the River Kama.
The Café Skazka is dim and steamy, and the middle-aged couple that run it are friendly, acknowledging me with a smile and a raised hand when I come in, and leaving me to linger over my tea. On the fifth morning their daughter, who works in the café at weekends, refills my cup and offers me a day-old copy of Pravda.
I haven’t read a newspaper since arriving in Perm, and I’ve hurried past the shops and bars that have TVs playing, because they always seem to be showing images of the murdered presidents. I’m not ready to learn about it, or to read about Oxana dying, although God knows I’ve thought about little else. I accept the offer of the paper, nevertheless, touched by the kindly meant gesture, and once I start reading I can’t stop.
The lead story, in effect the only story, offers new revelations from “government sources” concerning “the crime of the century.” It tells how a transnational anarchist organization planned the assassination of the American and Russian presidents, and how the Russian security services eliminated the killers in two fierce firefights. There are graphic images of the dead conspirators. Oxana Vorontsova, “a notorious contract killer known as Villanelle,” is described as the leader of the cell, and pictured lying on her back in the snow in front of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, her face and chest dark with blood, surrounded by armed members of the FSB’s Alpha counterterrorist group. An automatic pistol is clearly visible in her right hand. A photograph captioned “Larissa Farmanyants, the second assassin,” shows Charlie’s body, torn apart by submachine gun fire, lying next to their sniper’s rifle at the window of the Nikolskaya tower on the Kremlin wall, “to which she had illegally gained access.”
On an inside page, where the story continues, there’s a TASS news agency photograph, dated seven years earlier, of athletes on the medalists’ podium after a pistol-shooting event at the University Games at Ekaterinburg. Farmanyants, looking wistful, has taken the bronze medal, and Vorontsova, half-smiling, the gold. Both look very young.
According to official government sources, the assassination of the two presidents was very nearly prevented by an undercover operative of the British Secret Intelligence Service, working in collaboration with the Russian security services. The unnamed female officer had penetrated the group, but tragically had been unable to relay the details of the plot to her FSB handlers in time to prevent the assassination. No details are known about this individual’s identity or present whereabouts.
The article affirms that the FSB, under the leadership of General Vadim Tikhomirov, has been waging a long, covert war against terrorism and anarchy. “With such people, there can be no compromise, and no negotiation,” Tikhomirov is quoted as saying. “Our priority is, and always will be, the security of the Russian people.” In the accompanying photograph he looks sage and reassuring. A little like the actor George Clooney, but steelier around the eyes.
On the sixth day, at eleven-thirty in the morning, I’m sitting cross-legged on the unmade bed, still undressed, turning over the tarot cards, when there’s a knock on my door. I assume it’s the cleaner, a haunted-looking teenager named Irma who slips fearfully around the hotel with an ancient vacuum cleaner, and I call out to her to give me a minute. When the knock is repeated, I sweep up the cards, wrap the crocheted blanket around me, and open the door an inch.
It’s not Irma, but the hotel proprietor, Mr. Gribin. “You have a visitor,” he informs me.
I splash my face with water, dress and walk warily downstairs. Standing in the lobby, facing away from me toward the street, is a woman in a dark coat, with a beret pulled over her hair. Hearing me descend the stairs she turns. She’s about forty, with soft, tired eyes. There’s a faint smell of cigarettes about her.
“Good morning,” she says, extending a hand toward me. “I’m Anna Leonova.”
I stare at her.
“I was
Oxana’s French teacher,” she says. She glances at Gribin, still hovering lugubriously.
I belatedly extend my hand. “Yes, I know who you are.”
“I wondered, perhaps, whether we might go somewhere and talk.”
“I’d like that.”
We walk to the Café Skazka and order tea. I tell Anna that Oxana spoke of her affectionately, but sadly.
“She was probably the most gifted pupil I ever had,” Anna says. “Language flowed through her. She had an instinctive feel for it. But she was broken inside. Terribly broken. In the end she did something so terrible that I had to let her go.”
“She told me.”
Anna looks away, her eyes distant. “I was fond of her, more than fond of her, but I can’t pretend I was surprised by what happened. By what she… became.”
“Why am I here, Anna? And how do you know who I am?”
The café owner’s daughter places a cup of tea in front of each of us. My question is ignored.
“Were you never afraid of her, Eve? Truthfully?”
I pick up my cup, touch my mouth to the scalding tea and put it down again. “Never. I loved her.”
“Knowing what she was capable of, you loved her?”
“Yes.”
“Knowing that she could never love you back.”
“She loved me, in her way. I don’t expect you or anyone else to understand that, but it’s true.”
Anna regards me thoughtfully. “Did you see the article in Pravda, two days ago?”
“I did. And I saw Oxana die. She wasn’t holding a pistol. She was unarmed, and they shot her in the back. Not in the chest as the photograph suggests.”
Anna shrugs. “I believe you. Photographs lie. Even the illusions are illusions.” She interlaces her fingers on the table in front of her. “I was contacted about you. Told your story. Asked if I could help you make a future for yourself.”
“By whom?”
“I wish I could say, but I can’t. This is Russia.”
“Yes, I noticed that.” I try the tea again. It’s still too hot.
“I know how unhappy you are, Eve, but will you do something for me?”
I look at her, surprised. Her gaze is soft and unblinking.
“Come with me this evening to the Tchaikovsky Theatre. There’s an opera playing. Manon Lescaut. It’s one of my favorites. I’m sure you’d enjoy it.”
“I… Yes, I’d love to. Thank you.”
“Shall we meet there? Seven o’clock?”
“I’ll look forward to that very much.”
We sip our tea in silence. It’s approaching lunchtime, and a steady stream of customers comes into the café. “Are you going to have something to eat?” I ask her.
“No, I have to go. But before I do, I have something for you.” From her bag, she takes an envelope and hands it to me. Inside is a small photograph of several girls in school uniform, among them Oxana. She looks about sixteen, and the photographer has caught her off guard. She’s half-turning, open-mouthed and laughing. There’s something lank-haired and feral about her, but also a childish joy.
“Oh my goodness,” I say, feeling the tears welling. “That’s so precious.”
“Yes. I can remember exactly when it was taken. There had just been an announcement that the whole class had passed the term exam, and that a girl called Mariam Gelashvili, who had slipped on the ice that morning, had fractured her ankle.”
“Why did you tell me that?”
“Now that I have, is it still precious?”
I slip the photograph back into the envelope. “She’s gone, Anna. It’s all precious.”
It’s snowing heavily by the evening, and as I step into the sudden warmth of the theater foyer I’m surrounded by people elated to find themselves in such grand, old-world surroundings. I find a corner to wait for Anna, beside a couple with two daughters. The little girls have been elaborately prepared for the occasion, with giant organza bows in their hair.
Anna catches my attention with a wave. She’s wearing a black coat with a fur-trimmed collar that must be decades old, and her mouse-brown hair is pinned up in a French roll. She leads me up the staircase, slipping through the crowds with practiced ease. The tea room is splendid, with walls of duck-egg green and russet velvet curtains. Twin chandeliers dispense a soft, yellowish light. We find a corner table, and Anna makes her way to the counter, returning not with cups of tea but two vodka martinis.
“This is all very generous of you,” I tell her. “I’m still not sure why you’re going to all this trouble for me.”
She smiles over her glass. “Perhaps we’re not so different. We’ve both lost people.”
I follow her up to the balcony, the martini racing icily through my bloodstream. Our seats are in the back row. “Not so expensive,” Anna whispers. “But the best acoustics. They know me in the box office. I always sit here.”
The lights fall, the curtain rises. The opera is sung in Italian, and I don’t try to follow the plot. There are frock coats and cloaks, libidinous men and fallen women. The music washes through me, sweetly sorrowful. I’m carried on a flood tide of vodka and Puccini.
At the interval Anna excuses herself, saying that she has to make a call, so I remain in my seat and gaze out over the crimson and gilt auditorium. Twenty minutes pass and she hasn’t returned. Around me, people are returning to their seats, murmuring, consulting programs. As the house lights go down the buzz of conversation dies. There’s a burst of applause as the conductor takes the podium, then the curtain rises to the tremulous sound of a flute. In the near-darkness I register a brief glow of light as the balcony door opens and closes, then see Anna moving along the row toward her seat.
It isn’t Anna. The silhouette’s wrong.
“Pupsik.”
It’s her, and I can’t speak.
“Eve, lyubimaya.” She sits, pulls me to her, and presses my face into her shoulder. She can’t be here, and this can’t be happening, but I can smell her body and her hair, I can feel the strength in her arms, and her heart beating beneath my cheek. “I’m sorry, my love,” she whispers. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I pull back to look at her in the faint light from the stage. She’s thinner in the face, and looks tired. Her clothes are plain: a sweater, jeans, snow boots. A parka coat trails over the empty seat next to her.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I know, pupsik.”
I start to cry, and she looks anxious for a moment, then pulls a tissue from her sleeve and tentatively holds it out to me. It’s such an Oxana gesture that I finally know it’s her.
“I did tell you to trust me,” she says.
14
That was a year ago. Today the world is a different place. Tikhomirov is president of Russia, and in Europe a new cohort of nationalist leaders has arisen, an advance guard of the new world order, all of them bearing the mark of the Twelve. Oxana and I have new identities and live in one of the outer suburbs of St. Petersburg. Our apartment is quiet, with views over a park, which is pretty in summertime and beautiful, if melancholy, in winter. Oxana is at university in the city, studying for her linguistics degree. She is a few years older than the other students, and I suspect that they find her a little strange (on the single occasion that I met her there, two of the young men on the course looked actively scared of her), but she promises me that she is making friends. I divide my time between reading, walking and working for an online translation bureau. Next year, I hope to start a distance-learning course in psychology. There’s so much I want to understand.
In hindsight, I marvel at the subtlety and prescience with which Tikhomirov played his hand. I’ve often thought of that day on the motorway to Sheremetyevo, when he spoke of simulacra. What confused me for a long time was why, if he knew the details of the Bolshoi Theatre assassination plot in advance, as he must have done, he felt it necessary to go through the motions of using me to discover the same information. Why, if he knew what part Oxana was to play, and he
must have done to have mounted the operation to fake her death, did he pretend to fall for the diversion?
It was only when Tikhomirov was elected president that everything made sense. The death of his forerunner, Stechkin, was not something that he had been working to prevent, but to achieve. To this end he’d played a long game. Having discovered the Twelve’s assassination plan (probably through Richard Edwards, whose capacity for betrayal appears to be limitless), he’d done a deal with them. The Twelve would get their show killing and Tikhomirov, having heroically, but unsuccessfully, attempted to thwart them, would replace Stechkin as president. If Tikhomirov’s failure to prevent the assassinations was to be forgiven, following the inevitable investigations, it had to be made to appear that he’d had much less information to work on than was in fact the case. My role was to be his undercover agent, but also his backstop. That’s why he let Oxana live. To keep me silent. And if necessary, on message.
Should I have guessed this earlier? Should I have realized that no halfway professional sniper team would have included someone as inexperienced and as temperamentally unsuitable as myself? Probably, but I was so fixated on remaining close to Oxana that I missed it altogether. Perhaps, in the end, it’s just as well.
There’s much that I don’t know, and probably will never know. How did the Twelve find Oxana and me in St. Petersburg? Did Dasha betray us, and if not what was the basis of her arrangement with Tikhomirov? More generally, who has the whip hand now, Tikhomirov or the Twelve? Is he their instrument, or are they his? Inevitably, images of that grotesque tableau mort in the Bolshoi’s presidential anteroom quickly surfaced on the Internet. As a statement of the Twelve’s power and reach, and as a warning to other world leaders, it couldn’t have been more effective.
In return for the part that we played, knowingly or unknowingly, in the president’s rise to power, and for our continued silence and compliance, a monthly payment is made into the bank account that Oxana and I share. The sum is not large, but it meets most of our needs. I save the money I earn from translation for foreign trips. In September we went to Paris. We stayed in a small hotel in the fifth arrondissement, ate our breakfasts in the tiny courtyard and visited the shops around St. Sulpice, where Oxana made me try on clothes we couldn’t afford. We didn’t go anywhere near her former apartment.
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