by Alex Dryden
But though she stared back at him, she barely noticed him. The danger was behind her, not from the guards at the post. They would be Russians behind her who were watching her, not Ukrainians, and they were under orders to follow her. Hers was now a purely animal reaction, tensed, ready for action. It was a sense that existed somewhere beyond her five regular senses, that bypassed unreliable mental processes and was hard-wired to certainty.
After much exaggerated raising of his eyebrows and rocking back in his seat, without a smile the border guard finally allowed her through and onto the territory of Ukraine.
She slung her backpack over her shoulders and looked ahead towards the town. Beyond the border post, there was a wide boulevard that ran perpendicularly along the whole length of the quay. On the far side of the boulevard, she saw a small cobbled lane that ran up a hill through the old port and into the town. She crossed the boulevard and entered the lane.
With the knowledge that she was being watched came a sort of calm. She now let her mind relax and her tensed muscles followed. She continued to walk purposefully up the short hill, leaving the boat and its passengers behind her. She looked neither right nor left nor behind her. She didn’t need to see the tail yet. She was thinking of only one thing at this moment, that it always made things more straightforward once a potential assassin—or maybe there was more than one out there in the city’s undergrowth—came to you.
Throughout the voyage from Istanbul she had remained mostly in her cabin, emerging only very early in the morning at the restaurant for breakfast or in the quiet hours after midnight belowdecks, behaving in a manner that any observer would, perhaps, have described as pacing or even prowling. Otherwise she’d had food and drink sent down to her first-class accommodation. A storm had lashed the Black Sea for the duration of the crossing—it had been an uncomfortable voyage—and, like her, many of the passengers had stayed out of sight. Her absence wasn’t noticeable. The upper deck, the sea deck, had anyway been put out of bounds by the captain due to the storm, and the regular partying and drinking that was a common feature on the crossing to Odessa was muted.
At the top of the short hill that led from the harbour she came to an intersection of the cobbled lane with a main thoroughfare and she crossed to the other side. Even bending her head and now covered with a long hooded jacket that came halfway to her knees, she was a commanding figure compared to the other pedestrians. On this crowded boulevard her height was distinctive. But it was the way she walked that drew attention as much as anything else. She walked with a smooth stride, as if on a long trek, and she seemed to insinuate herself along the pavement, as if her feet barely touched the ground. Hers was a catlike walk. Prowling was not a bad description.
Bare trees, their branches carefully pruned back to the trunks, lined this second boulevard on both sides. She looked curiously to left and right. She hadn’t been in Odessa for several years, from before the time she’d defected from the KGB. But Odessa was as she remembered it and had always been: a stylish city, its pride deriving from its past first as a Russian imperial naval base, then from its heroic Soviet resistance against the Nazis when much of the whole city had been destroyed. More recently, since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, this proud history had come to be mixed with modernising influences that sought to bring the city into the twenty-first century. A civic pride that actually derived from the city’s military standing bloomed here, publicly, on the streets, more than in most post-Soviet cities.
Despite her commanding presence, she lost herself head down in the crowds of pedestrians. The clean, swept streets were busy at this time of the morning. People were going to work. Like her they also walked head down in the rain, and those who passed her on the pavements were huddled in coats and hats. It had started to rain as she got off the boat and now it was coming down harder. She pulled the hood of her jacket farther over her forehead. She walked along the busy morning pavement quickly.
It was time to take matters into her own hands. Since they hadn’t stopped her at the border post, she was now completely certain that her observers were not from the SBU, the Ukrainian secret service, but that they were Russian. They would need to conceal their activities from the Ukrainian guards, on whose sovereign territory they were conducting their operation. She decided she would find a narrow, uncrowded space now. That way it would be easier to identify her tail.
As soon as she saw an alley that led off to the left between two nineteenth-century buildings—two of the few that had survived the Nazi onslaught in the Great Patriotic War—she turned into it and quickened her pace, feeling the eyes upon her. She walked fast, still not looking behind her, betraying no anticipation, let alone fear, until the alley doglegged to the right and she could stand out of sight from her pursuers behind a stone-porticoed entrance from where mildewed steps led down to a dank basement filled with bags of uncollected rubbish.
She carefully watched back up the length of the alley towards the boulevard from where she had turned off. She could just see the boulevard now, framed by the narrow entrance to the alley. And there in the frame she saw there were two men who had entered the alley and whom she could just see only from the edges of their flapping coats. They’d stopped, she saw. No doubt there would be others out there. Six or more, maybe up to twelve in a full-blown operation and, for the prize of having her, the KGB might just be throwing in everything.
She craned farther out from behind the pillar. The men were talking to each other, not facing down the alley towards her. One of the men wore a grey cap and a khaki coat and his black hair came out over the collar. The other had a longer, black raincoat and wore a fur hat. The men were talking urgently, one also into a mobile phone, and then the one with the fur hat finally turned down the alley in her direction. Anna descended the steps to the basement and waited.
Less than a minute later she caught the sound of the man tailing her as his raincoat swished in the downpour that was now hitting the alleyway above her head. She heard his shoes slapping against the wet paving stones. She emerged from the cover of the basement onto the steps. From the back as he passed, she saw his coat flapping back over itself in the wind and the fur hat spotted with rain. He had passed her by.
One of these two men whom she’d seen on the street would be on the bus later, or maybe they would send a third man who hadn’t been exposed in the street. She decided now to lower the odds against her.
She left her pack in the basement and climbed back up. Emerging from the steps that led up from the dank basement, she walked behind the man, closing the distance rapidly. The alley ahead narrowed between two tall buildings so that it was only wide enough for one person. She looked behind her for the first time. There was no one else in sight. She saw the man hesitate where the alley narrowed, wondering perhaps whether to continue through the narrowed passage or to contact his colleague first. He came to a halt and, as he started to turn—perhaps sensing a presence behind him—she put her left hand around his eyes, digging her fingers into them, and her right forearm into the nape of his neck. Preoccupied with the agony in his eyes—and before he could struggle enough to dislodge her—in a swift, jerking motion she had bent his neck back over her forearm and snapped it with a dull sound like the breaking of a damp stick.
She quickly dragged the body into another basement, hauling it down more moss-covered and mildewed stone steps, and dumped it behind some ancient piles of building material leaning up in a corner, which were disgorging their contents of solidified plaster and cement. Then she rifled through the pockets of the man’s jacket beneath the black raincoat. There was an FSB identity card. They were Russian intelligence, as she’d assumed. She took the card and a gun that was loose in the inside jacket pocket and then carefully mounted the stairs. She was glad of the gun. The way she had come into the country through a legal border post meant that it had been impossible to be properly armed. She looked both ways up and down the alley. There was still nobody visible. She picked up her backpack from the f
irst basement and then she walked back up the alley from where she had come and back again onto the boulevard.
She knew she should abort the assignment now, save herself as best she could. That would have been what Burt ordered. He hadn’t wanted her to take the assignment in the first place. It was too dangerous, for her in particular—a former KGB colonel and a defector on the KGB’s most-wanted list—to go anywhere near the territory of Russia. But she’d insisted on it, threatening to resign and leave Cougar. Burt didn’t want to lose her and she’d banked on that. She knew Burt wouldn’t have dared risk her leaving Cougar. He didn’t want another agency—the CIA itself had courted her regularly—to gain her talents, and so he’d reluctantly acquiesced.
But, in any case, Burt wasn’t here, in Odessa. She calculated the risks. She accepted at once that either they would follow her to the bus, or they already knew she would be taking it. They’d known she would be on the boat, that was for sure. If they knew, too, that she was heading for the bus, then there was unmistakably a leak, and she faced greater danger than she was in already. But if they’d known she was on the boat, there was probably a leak anyway.
Suddenly she felt an unwelcome memory returning. It was the first time she had been this close to Russia since her defection four years before. A memory of why she had left back then began to surface in her mind—of her father, the retired general Resnikov, and her hatred of him; of the spies with whom she’d once worked and who had now once again taken control of the country she loved; of the evil nexus of the spies and their mafia allies who sought to subjugate the Russian people under their jackboot. And then she thought of her grandmother who had died two years before, and of her mother who had finally left her father and was working for the Sakharov Foundation. Women—it was usually women—seemed to be the good people. But then she repressed the memories that threatened to divert her from her task.
The bus station was situated at the side of the railway terminus where trains departed for Kiev, to the north. A few dilapidated buses stood with their engines running, rain pouring down the windscreens. The rain was now cascading in rivers along the sloping gutters and there was a huge pool where a drain must have been blocked. She watched the ticket office, cast her eyes across the expanse of concrete, looked for the destination signs, and then saw the bus that would take her to Sevastopol. For a second time, she questioned the wisdom of going through with her mission now. Her arrival was blown, but was the pickup in Sevastopol compromised also? Would she be able to evade her pursuers? Or did they know about the pickup, too? And then, decided, she walked across several lanes, past the waiting buses to the ticket office, and bought a return ticket.
The slow, ancient bus departed twenty minutes late for the twelve-hour journey and wound its way out of Odessa, to the east. Low grey clouds hung over the mountains until the country was closed in by their embrace. Beneath the clouds a fine spray of mist came in off the sea. There was no view either of the sea or the land. Everything existed at close quarters. Her mind similarly ratcheted down to the immediate: a field outside Sevastopol, with coordinates provided and memorised, just beyond the edge of the town; a stone barn that stored root vegetables and perhaps the odd piece of agricultural equipment; and a courier she would never see, the agent’s cutout who would make the drop.
She took a seat near the driver in order to be the first out, knowing that behind her was a watcher, and perhaps more than one. The bus’s heater wheezed, and pumped a mixture of engine oil and stifling air into the enclosed space. They wouldn’t make a move yet—her watchers—she knew that now. They would want to know why she was here in Ukraine. The real prize for them was her. The KGB had been obsessed with finding her for more than four years. But first they would want to discover who she was meeting and what she had come to find. She would have to lose them once the bus reached Sevastopol—unless she lost them before her destination. Above all she had to protect the courier, their link with the agent. But that was twelve hours away, over the long slow bus route to and then across the Crimea.
The seats were small and the bus full. She was squeezed on the window side next to a man in a thick padded jacket and workman’s boots. He fell asleep almost immediately. On the seats directly across the aisle were two plump women. She guessed from their rural appearance that they came from a village along the way. They talked purposefully to each other, never pausing. She didn’t look behind at anyone else seated on the bus. For a while she pretended to doze, but she remained alert for any movement in the aisle. Time stood still.
The bus climbed and descended the undulating land, stopping at a few villages and sometimes out in the middle of nowhere, until they reached Nikolayev. There was a stop for fifteen minutes and Anna watched the two women, but while one or two passengers boarded or got off the bus the two women stayed where they were, chatting endlessly. Then they set off again, across the Roskovsky Straits at Kherson. There was another stop there and then another stop and another leg to the bridge onto the Crimea at Krasnoperekopsk. As they entered the Crimea, they were about two-thirds of the way to Sevastopol.
After nearly two hours beyond the city of Krasnoperekopsk, and now well into the Crimea, the bus pulled into a service station at a remote crossroads that served as a stop. They would have the usual fifteen minutes, the driver said. There was a grim-looking café and a couple of pumps. The two women across the aisle from her picked up half a dozen heavy plastic bags and made for the door. It was their stop, she realised.
Anna put on her backpack and got off the bus quickly in order to catch up with the slow-moving women. They were now walking in a waddling motion from side to side with the weight of their bags. They were still talking without pause. A change of plan, Anna decided, a change of mind. That was a sign of intelligence, to be able to change your mind. When she drew level with the women, she smiled at them and offered to carry some of their bags. The women were struggling to keep hold of everything.
“I’ve come to visit my grandmother,” she said.
As she took three of the bags she still didn’t look behind her. She would leave them to guess whether or not she was aware of their presence.
Around the rear of the service station, there was an ancient pickup with peeling dark red paint, where the bare metal itself wasn’t showing through. It had its engine running for warmth. One of the two women indicated that the truck was where they were going. A man was sitting in the driver’s seat, Anna now saw—a brother, a husband, perhaps?
“Where are you going?” Anna asked.
“Voronki,” one of the women replied.
“I’m going to Vihogradovo,” Anna said.
“It’s not on our way, dear,” the second woman replied.
“Perhaps you could give me a ride to the Vihogradovo road?”
The women didn’t know.
The man in the driver’s seat didn’t get out or offer to help. The women opened the passenger door and put their bags in first, then one of them began to climb in ponderously over the high sill of the truck.
“I’m going to the Vihogradovo road,” Anna said to the driver.
He shrugged. “These women take up all the room.” They were squeezed onto a double seat next to the driver.
“I can sit in the truck bed.”
He stared at her.
“I’m here to visit my grandmother. She’s dying.”
“We’re all dying,” the man said.
“Not so quickly, I hope,” she replied.
He didn’t take his eyes from hers. “You want to sit in the rain?” he said as though he couldn’t care less. Then he shrugged again. “It’s up to you,” he said and looked away.
She threw her pack into the back of the truck before he could change his mind and climbed in using the wheel as a step. As the truck pulled away, she looked back for the first time. The second man she had seen in the alley near the boulevard was now talking into a mobile phone. She saw the grey leather cap and the black hair coming out at an angle over the k
haki collar. They had lost one man and now they had no backup on the bus but him. Perhaps there was a vehicle following the bus, but for now he was alone. Like her, they would have to improvise. The man didn’t look at her but she knew it was him.
As the truck pulled away from the main road and up into the hills, the thin mist turned to fog.
The road wound its way through villages and across moorland. The journey was slow, the old truck dropping to low gears for the slightest climb. Two vehicles passed them, though she couldn’t identify who was in them. And then after nearly an hour she saw a car, far enough behind them to be tailing the truck. The truck was so slow the car should have overtaken them, but it hung there, emerging then disappearing, as the fog rolled across the hills. An hour later the truck she was in came to a crossroads high up in the Crimean peninsula.
The red truck stopped. She glanced back at the car. It had pulled over, just visible where the fog was closing on the road. She looked around for an escape, but she could only see less than a few hundred yards. The land absorbed the colourlessness of winter, but the rain had eased, leaving a dampness that hung in the air. The truck was going straight ahead across the road. Anna had told the driver she was going along the road to the left, that was the way to Vihogradovo. She climbed down and the woman sitting nearest the window opened it.
“Thank you,” Anna said.