“You must be Russian,” he said.
“Polish,” she said.
“From Riga, I suppose.”
Katherine nodded.
“Me, too. Whereabouts?”
Katherine pictured the map in the back of the book. She saw the main street.
“Rainis Boulevard,” she said.
“The historic district?” He frowned. “How is that possible?”
She pointed at the glass. “It’s hard to hear you through this. Rainis Boulevard is where I work.”
“Really? Where?”
“Café Luna.”
According toSoviet Latvia , Café Luna was a “must stop” for the Riga tourist.
“Marvelous! How did you get that job?”
“It wasn’t hard,” she shrugged and hoped he didn’t notice the sweat forming on her brow.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “You must have some great connections.”
She took a breath. This was agony. Any minute she would get tripped up on one of her lies. The line was backing up behind her, and she could feel people’s impatience. She had already been at the booth twice as long as either of the other two people before her. The officer was oblivious to it.
“My father is a manager at the television factory,” she said, remembering what she had read.
“The Ruben factory?”
She nodded.
“Why are you going to Helsinki?”
“Shopping. Stockmann Department Store.”
“Naturally.” He seemed satisfied and went back to his desk work. Katherine watched him, her pulse pounding in her ears. She waited for the thunder clap of stamps that signaled approval. But it didn’t come.
He looked up at her, and his face was troubled. “Come with me, please,” he said.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
He got off his invisible stool, and came around the back side of his booth. He took her arm.
“Just come with me,” he said.
Katherine allowed herself to be led away. Her feet glided over the floor without touching.
He took her into a small room with cushioned walls. Two rows of fluorescent lights buzzed like flies. He closed the door and turned to her.
“Excuse me for asking,” he said. “But if I gave you some money, do you think you could pick up a pair of blue jeans for my girlfriend?”
Katherine’s throat constricted, and she almost choked. “Why, yes,” she stammered. “I could do that.”
The deal was done, and Katherine left the room a minute later with fifty dollars of the boy’s money and a scrap of paper with the words:Levi’s — Size “S.”
They went back to the gate. He stamped her visa and passport. He gave back her documents and nodded to her. The gate gave off a littleclick , and she pushed it open. She was through. She walked outside onto the wharf, and towering six stories above her was theEstonia. She spotted the gangplank and started up toward the ship. At the top, she stepped through a port door onto the carpeted deck of theEstonia.
A steward smiled broadly and said, “Welcome aboard theEstonia. ”
At exactly two o’clock, the ship’s mighty horn blew, and the deck began to vibrate beneath her feet as the giant engines stirred. The water around the ship began to boil. From the railing, Katherine waved at Sergei, who stood behind a railing on the observation deck. She kept waving as theEstonia backed out of Tallinn harbor, and she was still waving as it turned north toward Helsinki.
The other passengers went inside, but Katherine stayed on the deck, her arms folded on the railing. She breathed the cool, salt air and watched the foam move south past the steel hull.
An hour later, she was still on the deck when the coast of the Soviet Union sank like a wounded ship into the slate sea.
38
In a small apartment near the American embassy in Moscow, a buzzer erupted.
A man leaped to his feet from the sofa and sprinted to a recording machine. He hit RECORD and two large spools began to turn. He pressed one side of a headset to his ear.
A voice in English said, “Hello?”
The man knew this voice. It was the diplomat, Cameron Abbott.
“Are you Cameron Abbott?” the second voice asked in Russian. This new voice was unknown to the surveillance man. He slipped the headset over both ears and sat down.
“Who is this?” asked Cameron, switching to Russian.
“I’m calling for Katherine Sears.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. Listen carefully. She is at present on a ferry out of Tallinn. It’s called theEstonia. She will arrive — ”
“Is this some kind of a joke?”
“No joke. Listen. She is arriving in Helsinki at 18:15 hours today. She has counterfeit Soviet documents under the name Yekatarina Yurgina. She has no Finnish entry visa.”
“My god,” Cameron breathed.
“She asks that you have someone from the American consulate meet her at the port before the Finns can — ”
“I understand,” said Cameron. “Consider it done. We’ll be there. Absolutely.” He chuckled. “How did she manage it?”
“That is all.”
The line went dead.
In the KGB apartment, the man pushed REWIND and stripped off his headset. He dialed the telephone beside the machine as the big reels wound backward. The line began to ring.
“General Belov. What is it?”
“Eduard here. Katherine Sears is on a ferry out of Tallinn.”
“Tallinn!” Belov exclaimed. “She couldn’t have made it that far!”
Eduard played back the tape of the phone call.
Belov listened and then snapped his finger on the phone cradle. He released the button and spoke to his secretary. “Get me our station director in Tallinn. It’s an emergency.”
He consulted the Aeroflot flight schedule. A few seconds later, Belov was speaking to the head of the Tallinn branch of the KGB.
“You have a ferry currently on its way to Helsinki?” said Belov.
“Yes,” the man said. “TheEstonia. ”
“I want you to turn that ship around.”
“Excuse me?”
“Turn it around. There’s a fugitive on board. Under no circumstances is she to leave the Soviet Union.”
“The shipis Soviet territory. She hasn’t gone anywhere.”
“I intend to keep it that way.”
The man thought a moment. “Let me radio the captain. We’ll put your fugitive under arrest. He’ll be back in Tallinn with the ship the day after tomorrow.”
Belov paused. He looked at the Aeroflot schedule again and nodded. “That’s acceptable. Listen carefully. No one is to talk to her, not one word. This is critical.”
“Understood. I’ll need a description of the fugitive.”
Belov gave it to him from memory, and added, “Under no circumstances is she to be allowed off that ship until I arrive to take her off.”
“You’re coming to Tallinn?”
“No. Helsinki. There’s a flight leaving in ninety minutes.”
“I see. If that’s the case, you should arrive ahead of theEstonia by at least an hour. I just want to add that — ”
Belov hung up and dialed his secretary. “Call the flight schedule director at Vnukovo-1 Airport. There’s a plane to Helsinki in . . .” he looked at his watch “. . . eighty-seven minutes. Make sure I get a VIP seat. Then call the embassy in Helsinki. Tell them to have a man at the airport with an entry visa for me and a car to take me directly to the port. And then tell my driver to be ready to go in five minutes. Tell him he had better have fuel in the car this time or I’ll have him assigned to driving dog sleds in Siberia.”
“Right.”
“And get comrade secretary Podolok on the line.”
The line rang twice, and then a voice barked, “Da, General.”
“Thought you’d want to know. We got her.”
At that very moment, a white Chevrolet Blazer leaped through the front
gate of the American embassy and turned south on the Garden Ring Road. Inside the vehicle, Cameron Abbott was shouting instructions to the driver.
“I’ve got to make that flight.”
“Vnukovo-1 is forty minutes even without all the stoplights.”
“Stoplight?” Cameron cried. “No stoplights. No speed limits. We’ve got diplomatic immunity, now’s the time to use it.” He looked at his watch. “Damn, it’s going to be close. Go!”
39
Finland rose in the north, a delicate bluish band barely distinguishable from the sea. As the ship drew nearer, the band grew and hardened into a coastline of white granite cliffs that held off the angry water like the walls of a cell.
Katherine watched from the deck. After the Soviet coast had faded from sight, she switched to the port side of the ship, climbing to a small deck, six stories above the sea. As the cliffs of the Finnish coast took shape, so, too, did her thoughts. They turned to the coming ordeal over her missing entry visa. It hung over her head like a lie about to be exposed. By now, Sergei would have talked to Cameron. The KGB might or might not have recorded the conversation. It was out of her hands now. It was up to the Americans to convince the Finns that Yekatarina Yurgina should be allowed off the ship.
She looked at the cliffs and wondered — was she really any closer to freedom? If she was not allowed off the ship then she was still technically in the U.S.S.R. The Finns wouldn’t be involved at all. That made her status a U.S.-Soviet affair, as it had always been. In a way, though she had come far, Katherine was no closer to freedom than she had been in Ivanovka.
A small fishing trawler, its nets rolled onto gigantic spools after a day of fishing, motored off the port bow about a hundred yards from Katherine. An old man and a young boy busied themselves on the deck. She watched them for a long time. Seagulls hovered over the trawler’s stern, cawing and diving. After about ten minutes, the boy noticed Katherine alone on the deck and waved. She waved back.
The voice came from behind her.
“Yekatarina Yurgina?”
She turned. Two men in the blue uniforms of the crew looked at her.
“Yes?”
“We’ve been looking all over the ship for you.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Come with us, please.”
They each took an arm and started to lead her away. She resisted, but their grip only tightened. “Ow! You’re hurting me.”
“Then don’t give us any trouble.”
“What’s going on?”
“You are under arrest.”
They yanked her from the railing and part-led, part-carried her across the deck toward a small door. The door, a portal, was closed and marked “Staff Only” in Russian. Katherine had reached the deck by metal stairs at the opposite end. For passengers, it was the only way onto the deck. No wonder the men had trouble locating her.
They reached the portal and pulled open the door. The man on her right started through.
In that moment, an overpowering fury rose within Katherine. It boiled with the desperation of her long months in hiding; the Embassy’s inability to help her; her own failure to contact Victor about Yevgenia; the horror of the rape attempt.
Was this how it ended? With freedom in sight?
She thought of Sergei, of the risks he had taken for her. She pictured Victor, going from asylum to asylum, giving up his beloved science in his courageous quest to save his brother.
It was so unfair! To be so close, and now have it all slip away — it was more than she could bear.
Katherine’s breathing grew shallow, and she began to hyperventilate, her upper lip being drawn in and out with every breath. The man in front of her turned to see what was wrong, but he was too late.
“NO!” she screamed and threw her weight onto his back.
He fell forward. His foot caught the bottom lip of the portal door, and he went down. His grip on her arm did not relax, however, and he pulled her down with him.
Katherine got to her feet and darted for an inner door. The first officer swung his hand at her ankle and grabbed hold. She kicked backward and brought her heel down on his fingers. He cried out and let go. She sprinted for the door and jumped through.
“Get her!” cried the man on the floor. She slammed shut the heavy steel door and fumbled with the latch. But the men were too fast; they reached the door, throwing their bodies against it. She was propelled backward.
She screamed and sprinted across some kind of navigation room. A map lay on a long table, and a man was studying it. He looked up in amazement.
“Stop her!” they cried, but Katherine had already found a staircase and was heading down. She reached the bottom, just as the men appeared at the top. The first man put his feet on the edges of the ladder and slid down. She turned and ran on.
She was in the staff part of the ship, and nothing was marked. She fled wildly in a direction she believed to be toward the bow. She had an idea, but if it was to work, she would have to put some distance between herself and the men.
She reached a long corridor and ran on, squeezing past a wide-eyed sailor in his boxer shorts. She scampered down another ladder. At the bottom, she spied a swinging door with a small, head-high window. She pushed through.
She came into the ship’s main dining hall. About fifty passengers sat at tables covered with glasses of beer and plates of sausage. Happy chatter filled the room.
She wove through the tables toward the far door. The men burst through the swinging door. “There she is!”
Katherine glanced back, colliding with a table occupied by four diners. The table was bolted to the floor, and she doubled over the top, sending drinks and plates crashing. She rolled off the side of the table and fell at the feet of a wide-eyed woman whose blouse was now covered with mustard, beer and sauerkraut.
Katherine looked back. The men were nearly upon her. As she watched, a woman with a tray of food stepped into the men’s path. They collided, and the woman shot off the floor as though fired from a cannon. Beer and food filled the air. Both of the men went down.
“Devil!” one of them cried.
“Someone stop her!”
Katherine was back on her feet running for the door. She passed through the doorway and sprinted along another corridor, this one carpeted and heading back toward the stern. She passed a duty-free shop and then entered the casino. She kept on going past a short row of slot machines. A few gamblers looked strangely at her, but the rest didn’t seem to notice.
She spotted a door leading onto the deck. She pulled it open and dove outside.
The sun was still high, but the air had taken on a late-afternoon chill as she came onto the deck. The sound of the ship’s mighty engines was different now, less muffled, as the propellers churned up the water and sent the bow crashing through the waves. Seagulls screeched overhead, and the smell of the ocean filled Katherine’s nose.
She looked left and right to get her bearings. She was on the starboard side. Damn! She needed port.
She ran along the deck toward the bow. People sat in lounge chairs drinking beer and watching the Finnish coastline grow. As she passed a door on her left, one of the men lunged through. His hand raked down the back of her shirt. She screamed and ran on, his feet pounding in pursuit. She looped around the bow of the ship and started down the port side along the shoulder-high railing. The man was only a few steps behind her now. She could hear him panting.
A few feet ahead, a door opened and the other man jumped out in front of her, his arms open as he prepared to tackle her.
Trapped!
She slowed her pace and put one foot on the lowest rung of the railing at the edge of the deck. She swung herself over the side and threw her body out into nothingness.
She fell.
She hit the water feet-first, wind roaring in her ears. The sea felt like concrete and her feet and ankles exploded with pain. The sea closed over her.
She might have passed out but for the cold, whi
ch drove her to dig upward, lungs burning. It seemed to take forever, but at last her head broke the surface, and she sucked the salt air into her starved lungs. Her feet and ankles throbbed. Her ribs ached. She trod water and looked up. The giant stern of theEstonia was moving away. On deck, three stories up, her two pursuers hung over the railing shouting and pointing. She could tell by the wild gestures of their arms that they were giving directions to someone. A life preserver sailed over the side of the ship. It splashed a few yards away. She looked at it and then turned the other way.
From six stories up on the observation deck, the sea had looked peaceful. On the surface, it was menacing. Land had vanished. The horizon was a jagged waterscape of whitecaps. The sea, which had been blue, was now black. For a full minute, she trod water and squinted over the waves that lifted her and then dropped her, and still she couldn’t find what she sought.
Panic rose. The water was as cold as slush, and she recalled something she had once read about hypothermia — it could kill in seconds if the water was cold enough. She was injured; every breath brought new pain to her chest. She feared she had broken some ribs. How long could she last?
A wave lifted her and at last she saw it: the Finnish fishing trawler with the old man and the boy. Then it disappeared again below the jagged horizon.
She kicked off her shoes and began to swim in the direction of the trawler. It was hard going. The pain in her chest was excruciating. After several minutes, a wave lifted her, and she saw the boat again. It was moving away from her. Desperation seized her. She wouldn’t make it. She gave up swimming and trod water.
Just then, the great horn of theEstonia sounded, and a speaker cried out in Russian, “All hands! Man overboard! Port side! All hands!”
She turned back to the fishing trawler. The boy had climbed up on the gunnel of his trawler and was now scanning the surface of the water.
“Help!” she cried and waved her arm.
The Forbidden Zone Page 39
