Man on Edge

by Humphrey Hawksley

  Lucas had arranged a plane and passports for them and Carrie, ten hours to Helsinki and from there a commercial flight to St Petersburg by noon. Carrie’s train, if on time, arrived around 11.00. She would have a vulnerable hour on the streets, but by then they could guide her.

  ‘Why can’t she go to the consulate?’ Whyte asked again.

  ‘She wouldn’t trust it,’ said Rake.

  ‘We let her down,’ corroborated Lucas. ‘The Brits let her down. If I were her, I would feel safer outside of our protection.’

  ‘Why Ozenna?’ insisted Whyte as if Rake wasn’t there.

  Rake let Lucas continue. ‘Dr Walker knows him. She sent Ozenna the message. No one else. Once she gets a visual sighting of Ozenna, she will trust his lead.’

  Lucas had secured a plane to leave from Andrews Air Force Base within the hour. It would take Rake and Mikki to Helsinki, then drop Whyte at the Bodø Air Station, Norway’s joint armed forces command center, eight hundred miles north of Oslo, also command center for the Dynamic Freedom exercise. Lucas had argued that Whyte should go because he had become involved randomly, by being on Rake’s panel, no previous skin in the game. Whyte hadn’t needed persuading. With all that was going down, Dynamic Freedom would be good for anyone’s CV. Lucas would stay in Washington, DC.

  A Gulfstream G550 was fueled up, waiting, blue and white, a US Air Force plane, too big for the three of them, but one that was available, pilots in the cockpit checking flight plans, plenty of range, seven thousand miles, meaning they could turn back to Andrews at any time. An air force sergeant, rugged up in a black windbreaker, met them and gave Lucas three passports with matching driver’s licenses. He flipped through and handed them to Rake. They were high quality, even had Finnish entry stamps for him and Mikki. Rake was John William Gray; Mikki, Vincent Douglas Joseph; Carrie, Hilary Elizabeth Lawrence with her real photo and year of birth. Hers had a Russian entry stamp and a visa that ran for another two weeks. They were all US citizens.

  Mikki and Whyte climbed the steps to board. Lucas ushered Rake under the aircraft’s wing out of the windchill. ‘You asked why Carrie is in Moscow.’ Lucas’ face was creased and not against the weather. ‘Semenov called her. Carrie called Ambassador Lucas, who brought me in. Carrie spoke to Semenov three times. We didn’t know what he had, how many lives it might save, whether it was gold dust or bullshit. Semenov wanted his sister, Carrie’s mother, to be with him. That was when Carrie insisted that she go.’

  ‘But you made it happen.’ Rake brushed rain off his face, trying to work out how straight Lucas was being with him.

  ‘She had the bit between her teeth. She knows Moscow. She speaks Russian. She has good track in dealing with difficult situations. I had no idea it would be so dangerous.’

  ‘When did you know?’ Rake lifted his arm against a ferocious gust of wind. His sleeve slid back, ice drizzle on his skin.

  ‘First, when you found the human ear. It turns out the Defense Intelligence Agency was running the operation that brought you to northern Norway. It was expecting classified Russian naval information. Instead it got the severed ear of the man tasked to get it across the border. His body has been found near Murmansk. He is British and the Russians cremated him without formalities. DIA didn’t loop in any other agency. From facial recognition, we know more things are piecing together. The attack on you has a direct connection to Yumatov and the Diomede crisis. Carrie’s uncle must be connected to the DIA border operation. The timing, too, is significant, right before Dynamic Freedom.’

  Rake pushed the toe of his boot through a rivulet running across a kink in the tarmac. He understood more, but not enough. He looked across to Lucas, taking a squall of rain on his face. ‘Who’s authorizing you?’

  Lucas met Rake’s drizzle-swept gaze. ‘When Ambassador Lucas called, I reached out into government at a high level and was warned that this could not go higher. President Merrow is deaf to hearing anything bad about Russia. He is obsessed with using it to contain China. Even so, the intelligence community needs to know what Semenov had. I was authorized to set up a standalone operation, and that’s what this is.’

  Rake didn’t like the shape it was taking, nor that Carrie was the target. Lucas was running something outside government because when it turned to shit it would be deniable. A steward with an umbrella stood at the top of the airplane steps. Lucas raised his voice against another gust of wind.

  ‘We won’t know exactly what the stakes are until we retrieve the flash drive, which is what you need to get. You have a personal relationship with Carrie Walker, and she trusts you. But listen hard, Ozenna. Your task is to retrieve that drive whatever the cost.’

  Rake understood, and anger rose within him. He loved Carrie; could never shake that off even though they had become strangers to each other. A howl of wind tore round the fuselage, trembling the end of the wing. ‘Off the books!’ he shouted. ‘With an air force plane, access to every intelligence database. Off the books. Bullshit.’

  ‘Off the books from the White House,’ Lucas conceded. ‘That’s how things are nowadays.’

  Rake didn’t give a damn about government squabbles. He cared about Carrie. ‘While we’re in the air you need to do something.’ Rake delivered it as a condition. A flashlight shone down from the aircraft steps. It was time to go. Lucas kept his attention on Rake, both faces lashed with rain. ‘By the time I’m in Helsinki, we need to know how in the hell Yumatov is involved in this,’ said Rake. ‘You want a link. He’s the link. We want to beat this, he’s the one to beat. The head of the snake.’

  Lucas’ expression didn’t change. He ignored the rain, ignored the flashlight beam. He didn’t show if he agreed with Rake, if he thought Rake was overreacting. ‘If I had known, I would never have let Carrie go to Moscow,’ he said. ‘But we are where we are, Ozenna, and I need to trust you on this. I am truly sorry it is Carrie.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Moscow

  The Western Union office for Moscow’s Leningradsky rail station doubled up as an electronics store, selling phones and local cards, a clothes stall with hats, scarves, gloves, and T-shirts, and a souvenir shop with Russian dolls and Moscow ornaments. It was flanked by competing stores on the edge of the station in Komsomolskaya Square, a vast area, where three rail stations served different areas of Russia, busy even at this time of night, bursting with Christmas lights. Kazansky station dealt with the east and south-east; Yaroslavsky station handled the Trans-Siberian; and Leningradsky, where Carrie was heading, sent trains west to St Petersburg and Europe.

  Carrie walked past the Western Union store twice, wheeling her hand-carry, watching for threats within a regular hum of life, the elegant, grand curves, the spires, columns, clock towers, colors, taxi lines, the flow of people, a direct opposite to Moscow and the corpses and shot-up van she had passed just over a mile away near her hotel.

  On her phone were scrolls of messages from Sofia Gagnon’s friends and families, asking her to be safe, telling her they envied her travels, missing her, recommending the Café Pushkin in Tverskor Boulevard, ‘not as posh as it looks,’ and was she going to Peredelkino, the village outside Moscow where Boris Pasternak had lived. Amid them was Rake’s message, short, coded in a way that she knew it was him – O-neg.

  She allowed herself an inner smile. It was intimate and clever. The message had been routed through a Montreal server, which meant he had resources to do that kind of technical thing and that gave her confidence.

  Carrie waited in line at the Western Union counter. Two customers ahead of her moved quickly along. She showed the Canadian passport, kept hold of it, and said in broken English with a French accent. ‘I have money to collect.’

  The wire-thin young man behind the counter in a black woolen hat and black leather jacket with a crucifix earing hanging from his right ear was fast and alert. He punched in the name, looked back at the exchange rates listed on a screen, and said. ‘Two questions, Miss Sofia Gagnon. Favorite Italian restaurant and f
avorite color?’

  Rake again, bringing them together, making sure she knew it was him.

  ‘Boccaccio,’ she said, ‘and yellow.’

  He looked down, punched more buttons, shook his head. ‘No, sorry, Sofia. That’s not correct. No money.’ He worked on the keyboard beneath the counter.

  Carrie broke into Russian, not fluent, traveling podcast level. ‘Say the questions again.’

  ‘This is not a guessing game, Sofia. Please, respect the regulations of Western Union.’ His expression was stern. Carrie ran through options. She could risk the credit card and get picked up immediately. She could—

  ‘Only kidding, Sofia.’ Laughter pealed from behind the counter. ‘You see, because your favorite Italian restaurant should be Grabli, do you know it, in Arbat Street. My uncle owns it. I can take you there.’ He waved at the line behind. ‘One moment. One moment.’ He pushed an envelope of rubles across to her. ‘You can count, but it is right. I have never got it wrong. 48,933 rubles. I give you 48,000 and with the 933, you can take a beautiful new hat and scarf and a souvenir for your loved one.’

  Carrie fingered through the nine orange-brown 5,000 ruble notes and four blue 2,000 notes. ‘Can you break one of these down into thousands,’ she said.

  He slid over five crisp new notes. Carrie picked a red floral hat, matching scarf, two plain blue T-shirts, two burner phones and SIM cards, and two tiny flash drives almost identical to the one she carried in her pocket from her Uncle Artyom. As she glanced back, he reached across with a bag. ‘That much, Sofia?’ His lips pursed in a quizzical frown.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘Give me a thousand.’ He gave a grand gesture of his right hand, then said: ‘Forget it. You are beautiful. On the house, Sofia, on condition you have dinner with me at your favorite Italian restaurant when you come back.’

  ‘A deal,’ Carrie laughed. A real laugh.

  ‘Happy travels, Sofia. See you soon.’

  Carrie walked off, wishing she didn’t have to, wishing she could have dinner with the ear-ringed currency whiz-kid at his uncle’s Italian restaurant. To buy two tickets, Carrie used the gray and red ticket machines; Moscow to Murmansk leaving at 00.41 third-class open sleeper 7,500 rubles, using the Sofia Gagnon passport number. She fed in notes. On the other, same train, same open carriage lower-bunk sleeper, except only to St Petersburg, costing 3,000 rubles.

  She had forty minutes before that train left from platform five. The concourse was designed like a mall with three blue-green levels of shopping and brand names. She found a pharmacy where she bought the most expensive emergency medical kit for 7,000 rubles and over-the-counter medicines like antiseptic cream, painkillers, lubricant, cough syrup, vitamins, even a stethoscope. Many Russian pharmacists kept antibiotics and other prescription drugs for sale to anyone who claimed to be a doctor. This was one of those pharmacies.

  She bought a canvas I Love Russia bag for her medical purchases and felt much better with it. As she walked back to the concourse, she used the Huawei Android phone to call Ruslan Yumatov, who was pivotal to her next move. He had given her a warning that may have saved her life. He picked up on the second ring.

  ‘Where are you, Carrie?’

  ‘You know where I am.’

  ‘Yes. At Three Stations Square.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Carrie’s mother and locals called Komsomolskaya Square, Three Stations Square, pronouncing it just like Yumatov. Her mother argued with her father about how elegant and grand it was, the architecture of Stalin and the Tsar blended into one. Her father denigrated anything in Russia as a Soviet disaster. Three Stations Square was one of those lightning rods for all that was wrong with her parents’ marriage.

  Yumatov’s tracking was out by several hundred yards. Carrie wasn’t in Three Stations Square. She was inside Leningradsky Station.

  ‘You are booked on the 1-28 Allegro to Helsinki,’ said Yumatov. ‘Take your passport to the ticket office. They will issue you the ticket. You have a first-class sleeper.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Promise you do that, Carrie. I can get you through. The FSB will handle the Helsinki route. The other routes are domestic, controlled by the police, even the GRU, and you will be compromised. Once in Helsinki you will be safe.’

  She kept walking to see if Yumatov noticed her moving. ‘The men who held me in the van, are they dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you kill them?’

  ‘No. What happened was terrible.’

  ‘Did you order them to kidnap me?’

  ‘Yes. For your safety.’

  ‘I was going to the British Embassy. That would have been safe.’

  ‘You’re not meant to be in Russia, Carrie. This isn’t your fight.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘I want you safely out of Russia.’

  ‘Then get me through an airport. UA to Washington.’

  Yumatov’s voice hardened. ‘Don’t be stupid and stubborn. Do what I say and tomorrow morning you’ll be in Europe and safe. Don’t and you’ll end up shot like those in that van. I am telling you how things are about to go down. It’s much bigger than either you or me, Carrie, and you don’t want to be here for it.’

  ‘You have my promise.’ Carrie kept her tone flat.

  ‘1.28 Allegro to Helsinki. Ticket booked under Sarah Mayer. Use that passport. Your new Carrie Walker is still good as back up. Travel well, Carrie. I hope we can meet in Washington one day and share a coffee.’

  Carrie took the Israeli passport from her pocket. She wheeled her hand-carry into the uncrowded ticket office and straight to an empty booth where she showed the passport. A few seconds later she had her ticket, just as Yumatov had described. All she had to do now was board the train and wake up in the morning in Finland. If the rest of the day was any marker, her chances of that happening were not good.

  The train was sleek and elegant, pastel gray, with emblems of red. A steward, a young good-looking blond man, showed her in her cabin, one up from the restaurant car, and how the bunk went up and down. When he left, Carrie shut the door. She lifted her bag onto the bed and sorted through clothes. She changed. She slid her bag onto the luggage rack with the Android Huawei phone inside. She left a scarf and a green woolen jersey on the bunk with the iPhone underneath. Both were switched on for clarity of signal.

  She put extra clothes, washroom stuff, and what she had bought from the Western Union store into a canvas carrier bag. She inserted SIM cards into her new burner phones, left one off and activated the other. She had 30,000 rubles, about $450 left, and another $750 to pick up in St Petersburg. She had three passports, two false, one authentic, various credit cards, enough of a change of clothes, three phones, none tracked by Yumatov, her uncle’s flash drive secured, and two empty drives that would be found in a search.

  Sitting on the bunk, she sent the same message to Rake twice, one from the Canadian phone and one from her new burner phone. A+Tks. Her blood group and gratitude.

  She opened the cabin door, hooked the carrier bag over one shoulder, the first-aid kit over the other, left the Moscow–Helsinki train and joined a flow of passengers onto platform five. The concourse was busier. Carrie looked different. She wore jeans, a white undervest, a blue denim shirt, and the same down jacket, but draped with a large red scarf, more of a shawl. She looked more Russian. The phone signals would locate her on the train and in the sleeper compartment. Two tracks along, at platform five, a burst of steam jetted up from the bright red snout of the 00.41 to St Petersburg and all stations from there to Murmansk.

  Carrie had her ticket scanned and there was a cursory passport check. She was traveling Plakstart, third-class, the cheapest and safest way. She would be in a fifty-four-bunk carriage, busy, protected in numbers, many of whom would have been screwed by the system, people wary of authority, loathing of uniforms, suspicious of each other, better to be with them than locked in a luxury cabin waiting for the knock
on the door. She found her bunk in an open compartment of four bright blue berths with a carpeted corridor for through traffic. There was no privacy. Three of the bunks were already taken.

  Opposite Carrie’s bunk lay an emaciated man, thin white hair, watery eyes, gray skin slack around his jaw and cheeks, gripping a walking stick so hard it made his knuckles white. He examined Carrie. She said good evening in native Russian, no podcast accent, this time. She didn’t smile. These were poor people living on the edge. Friendliness was a preserve of the rich.

  With his free hand shaking, he pointed upwards. One across to the empty bunk. On the top bunk was a man, about forty, with a long scar down the right of his face, sat legs dangling, failing to quieten a restless boy, around nine. He tried to put a brown corduroy jacket on the struggling boy, whose cheeks were blotted and nose running. The task was made more difficult because the man only had one arm. His right arm was amputated above the elbow. Carrie could tell by his awkward movements that he was right-handed.

  The man acknowledged her in an embarrassed way. He wasn’t doing well. The way his shoulder twitched, the way he turned, Carrie thought he must be imagining he still had the missing arm, only to keep being reminded it wasn’t there. His brain had yet to implement the neurological transfer to give his left hand better control. He was failing to work the jacket buttons.

  The boy sulked. ‘Papa, it’s hot. I don’t need a jacket.’

  ‘If you sleep, you’ll get cold and sicker. That’s what your mama would tell you.’

  ‘Mama is not here. What Mama says doesn’t count.’

  The old man said to Carrie: ‘His mama is my daughter. We are going to her wedding.’

  Carrie climbed up and sat on the empty bunk opposite them both. ‘Are you his dad?’ she asked the man.

  ‘His uncle. He calls me Papa because his father has gone.’ His face carried scarred dead skin of a burns wound. His left eye was lame. His right held Carrie’s gaze steady as if to say he was no one’s servant, no one’s victim. ‘I am Hektor Tolstoye. Like the famous writer but not.’