Man on Edge

by Humphrey Hawksley

  ‘You might not be making an issue,’ said Stephanie, ‘but you’re allowing the networks do the job for you.’

  ‘The news cycle will naturally fade,’ said Grizlov.

  ‘We have no control over the networks,’ said Yumatov.

  Stephanie ignored the blatant untruth. She reached into her bag and pulled out the sheaf of printouts, shuffling through, discarding those from the memorial and keeping three, the blurry figure in the Four Seasons’ forecourt, facial recognition of Yumatov, and electronic intelligence confirming he had used his cellphone to initiate Carrie Walker’s kidnap. She laid them out, facing Yumatov. She sipped her coffee, cutting and harsh, tingling her lips, keeping her thinking clear.

  Yumatov looked without curiosity. ‘You’re about to ask me why I was waiting in the forecourt of the Four Seasons Hotel when you were meeting Minister Grizlov.’ He reached forward and turned them around, so they faced Stephanie. ‘And why I triggered the abduction of Sarah Mayer from your vehicle.’ He took a transparent plastic bag from his pocket and held it up to the light. ‘Because of this, Madam Ambassador.’

  Stephanie recognized a flash drive. She had to assume the meeting was being filmed and what unfolded next could be released to the world. Grizlov and Yumatov had been ahead of her ever since she had stepped into the over-heated room.

  They were prepared for the Khabarovsk memorial, for the Four Seasons imagery, for Stephanie piecing together strands that led to Yumatov and Grizlov. The only flaw so far was Yumatov referring to Carrie as Sarah Mayer, and that might be deliberate.

  ‘This was found on Vice-Admiral Artyom Semenov after he was shot dead at the back of your embassy.’ Yumatov laid the bag on the table. ‘It contains the same information that Gerald Cooper was to have sent across to Norway.’

  Stephanie glanced at Grizlov. Until now Cooper had not been mentioned. ‘We want you to understand,’ said Grizlov. ‘Cooper and Semenov were going to hand over an olive branch from modern Russia to NATO, technical maritime weapons data to show that we want to work with you and not against you. Now, we’re giving it to you, Steph, in the hope that you can deliver it to its new home.’

  Yumatov swiped his finger across the tablet to bring up the file.

  A technical diagram appeared. There was no headline or title page. Stephanie read from the Cyrillic script that this was air-independent propulsion technology that quietened a submarine, making it more difficult to detect and therefore more dangerous. Yumatov switched to a profile of a submarine showing tanks and pipes in different colors. Then the back of a submarine, propeller and colored boxes, diesel engine, generator, motor batteries. He only gave each one a few seconds, letting Stephanie glimpse, but no time to take it in.

  He stayed a few seconds longer on a slide headlined in Russian Underwater Drone with a diagram resembling a torpedo, only to move quickly to another entitled Project 09852 (NATO). There was more, sketches, three-dimensional diagrams, photographs of naval vessels and shipyards. Some carried stamps, особое значение, Of Special Importance, the highest form of Russian intelligence classification.

  Yumatov worked in silence, which became a weapon itself, stretching into a suffocating unease between them. Stephanie didn’t plan to break it. Grizlov watched in a way that looked as if he might not have seen the file before. Yumatov worked with the impatience of a man too busy to be here, the corner of his mouth curled, his eyes hard and indifferent. He had seen these images too many times.

  Yumatov finished. Stephanie counted fifty-two separate images. She had not noticed sloppiness or mistakes deliberately planted. She felt as if Grizlov and Yumatov were trying to draw her into a vortex of technology and facts that were impossible to verify. She placed her coffee mug on the table, sat back, and steepled her hands across her stomach, relaxed as if she had all the time in the world. Their play.

  Grizlov leaned forward, elbows on knees, eyes on Stephanie. ‘We’re showing you this because we need someone who understands Russia, who can prevent the situation running out of control.’

  Stephanie stayed quiet. She let her curiosity show through a crease of the brow.

  Yumatov said, ‘The Foreign Minister and I are convinced that Russia’s future lies in an alliance with West and that Vladimir Putin was wrong to cause hostility with the aim of recreating some greatness of the past.’ Yumatov’s gaze drilled into her, unwavering. ‘This file is our gift to the West. Twice we have tried to deliver it. Once on the border through Gerald Cooper. Then with Vice-Admiral Semenov to your embassy. Those trying to stop us work out of Vladivostok, a network run by Russian, Chinese, and Japanese criminals. They do not want a Russian–NATO alliance. They want a weak Russia, a weak West, and a strong Asia. The motive is financial. The weaker the governments, the richer they can become.’

  Grizlov said, ‘If I succeed Lagutov to the Kremlin, I will reach out to NATO and we could put a stop to these Asian ambitions. But first, I have to win the presidency and that won’t happen if NATO’s Dynamic Freedom exercise encroaches so far into our backyard. The result will be increased nationalism. Either NATO accepts or it will feel the wrath of Russia that will last for another generation.’

  ‘And what exactly is it you are revealing with these diagrams?’ Stephanie pointed to Yumatov’s tablet.

  ‘The most lethal weapon of modern warfare is the quiet submarine,’ said Yumatov. ‘If you’re noisier than us, you will die first. Russia has submarine acoustic superiority over NATO forces. These files reveal selected technology. Air-independent propulsion allows us to operate without access to outside air. We can use laser instead of sonar detection. And so on. NATO technicians will understand immediately what we have.’

  ‘Take me back to the beginning, Colonel,’ said Stephanie.

  Yumatov flipped back to the slide on air-independent propulsion. She saw immediately what she needed to know. ‘I’ll deliver it.’ She stood up to leave. ‘I’ll relay your case.’

  ‘It’s all on here.’ Yumatov held up a flash drive and handed it to Stephanie.

  ‘I’m giving you full protection back to the embassy,’ said Grizlov.

  Stephanie smiled, an ambassador’s smile. Yumatov fetched Stephanie’s jacket. She slipped her arms through the sleeves, pulled on her gloves, knotted her scarf and zipped the flash drive into her side pocket.

  ‘Thank you, and for the coffee,’ she said.

  ‘Look after yourself, Steph. Catch up soon,’ said Grizlov as if they had just finished an evening cocktail. He kissed her lightly on each cheek.

  ‘Who would have ever thought it?’ she said. ‘You and I doing this.’

  In the vehicle driving back, escorted by FSB vehicles with flashing lights, Stephanie sifted through the discrepancies in Yumatov’s presentation. Two stood out. The first, he had referred to Carrie as Sarah Mayer. Either he didn’t know, or he was testing her. And the second, none of the images matched those Carrie had sent to Rake Ozenna. Stephanie felt the small drive inside her jacket pocket. Files are files. Copy them and they come out the same. That was how digital technology worked. She plugged the drive into her tablet and checked its size, 65.3 megabytes. Tiny. A vice-admiral with Semenov’s access could have found a way to send this level of data electronically. What then was on the file Carrie now had that was so lethally different to the one retrieved from Semenov’s body?

  THIRTY-TWO

  Train to St Petersburg

  ‘I overheard the guards talking as I was getting hot water.’ Hektor Tolstoye’s voice was so low that Carrie could hardly hear him. Lying on her bunk, woken by a soldier who had lost an arm in Syria, Carrie stayed quiet and gauged risks around her, the bunks, the corridor where people moved back and forth, the old man, the uncle and boy, all staring at her. Streaks of hazy light wormed across the windows, snow, trees, emptiness, darkness, the rock and tumble of the train. Stale air was laced with smells of beef and sweat. The boy dropped down from his upper bunk and stood next to his grandfather, who held his hand. She remembered h
is name was Rufus. He had a slight fever and was traveling to his mother’s wedding. His uncle, Hektor Tolstoye, had woken her with the question: ‘Are you really Israeli? Is your real name Sarah Mayer?’

  Hektor studied Carrie as if he were trying to find a way out for both of them. ‘They have been instructed to check the train for an Israeli doctor, Sarah Mayer, and watch her until St Petersburg. They were arguing. The older one who scanned our tickets said it was wrong, like Soviet times. The younger one said it was their duty to protect Russia against foreign spies.’

  ‘You must listen to Hektor.’ Oleg’s frail hand reached across toward Carrie, hovering midair to ensure he had her attention.

  ‘People saw how you dressed my stump,’ said Hektor. ‘How you examined Rufus. They talked. The guards heard. They say you will get off at St Petersburg and catch a train to Helsinki. Do not do that. Stay on this train. We have found you somewhere safe. We got this in Moscow.’

  Hektor handed her a plastic light-green wallet with a transparent front and a strap to hang round a neck. Inside was a Russian identity card, mandatory for all adult citizens. The face of a young woman stared out from the left. She had full round cheeks, tied-back brown hair, a friendly smile. She was thirty-six years old. Her name was Katerina Tolstoye.

  ‘My daughter,’ growled Oleg. ‘The boy’s mother.’

  ‘If you are stopped. Use it. You get off at Olenegorsk. It is the stop one hundred kilometers south of Murmansk.’ Hektor punched a message into his phone. ‘I am asking a friend to drive you from Olenegorsk to Nikel. It is close to the border with Norway. It will take half a day. He will find someone to help you across.

  ‘If this were Soviet times, they would stop the train now, check everyone’s papers,’ said Oleg. ‘Today, they can’t do that.’

  ‘It is just as bad when they find you,’ added Hektor.

  ‘Worse,’ said Oleg. ‘The Soviet Union was founded on humanity. Now we have shit.’

  Hektor nodded at Rufus, who slid into the corridor and ran toward the end of the carriage. To protect themselves, the family needed her away from them. But they would not turn Carrie in. Hektor and Oleg bore the wounds of a rotten system. They couldn’t fight it. Nor would they join it. She had helped them. They would help her, up to a point.

  She had been right not to follow Yumatov’s instructions and get the Helsinki train. But that hadn’t made it safe anywhere else. Carrie’s brief but deep sleep had given her enough confidence to decide her next step. Uncle Artyom Semenov was family, her blood. Carrie hadn’t asked for it, but there was no way she would allow his death to be in vain.

  Hektor explained Carrie’s false identity. Katerina Tolstoye. Occupation secretary, traveling to Kola, just south of Murmansk. She had been in Moscow to get divorce papers so she could remarry. He gave her a dark red patterned scarf to cover her head. He handed her a brown envelope containing the stamped documents, canceled marriage certificate. Hektor asked for Carrie’s phone. She drew one from her jacket pocket, not the one she had used to message Rake. Hektor told her to keep it flat in her palm. Skillfully, holding his phone in his good left hand, he air-dropped phone history and contacts into it, giving texture to her cover. ‘You’ve done this before,’ said Carrie.

  ‘In Syria,’ he said. ‘A different kind of fighting.’

  Rufus returned, out of breath, excited.

  Oleg said, ‘Goodbye, Sofia, or whoever you are.’

  Rufus went ahead, tuning left, backwards down the train away from the restaurant car. It was just past seven thirty in the morning, an hour before they reached St Petersburg. Hektor stepped out. Carrie followed with her bag and medical kit.

  ‘Do you have a hundred dollars?’ said Hektor.

  Carrie turned sideways to let through a young couple, holding hands, smelling of tobacco. ‘I have rubles.’

  ‘Better. Give me six thousand.’ Hektor took the money from Carrie. ‘We are going to a part of the train controlled by the army. You should be safe there.’ They went through another restaurant car, the second-class sleeper, the first class, then another third-class carriage. They passed guards who barely noticed them. Hektor explained that the search for Sarah Mayer was running from the other end of the train. That was what Rufus had gone to check. She kept glimpsing Rufus, waiting for them, making eye contact, then heading off to keep vigil for the next carriage.

  It wasn’t yet light. Countryside sped by, snow, lamps by the track, occasional car headlights. The wheels rhythmically clunked metal on metal through the early morning. Shapes from the darkness splattered the windows like an abstract painting. They reached the end of the train. Hektor pushed down a handle with his elbow. A rush of freezing air came through. Snow hit Carrie in the face. Fresh crystals melted on her lips. She tasted polluted rain. The two railcars were hooked up but with no cover. A soldier in green camouflage fatigues and a matching hat with ear flaps came out of a door, shut it firmly behind him, and stood on the narrow ledge, holding a rail. Hektor stepped across, gave him Carrie’s money. He counted it. Hektor beckoned her to cross, too. There was open space. The train rocked. The two railcars moved against each other. Carried judged it and jumped. The soldier took her elbow while she got her balance.

  She pressed a ten-thousand-ruble note into Hektor’s hand. He looked embarrassed and grateful. He wanted to refuse it. He needed it. He stepped back to the main train. Rufus gave her a hesitant little wave. The soldier opened the door. A stench caught the back of Carrie’s throat, so harsh and unforgiving that she coughed, then doubled over to suppress rising vomit.

  The soldier pushed Carrie inside, shut the door, and pulled across two bolts, one high and one up from the floor. She could see very little, except for a shoulder-high wall straight in front of her. The only light came from narrow slits of frosted glass on either side of the carriage shaking with the movement of the train. She heard a sharp, cracking thud from halfway down the carriage. The soldier didn’t react. Carrie fumbled in her pocket for a flashlight. The air tasted toxic and heavy, like something rotting in the tropics. She coughed. The soldier turned to the left and she saw that the wall was part of a container, several containers. She counted eight huge open boxes. She followed him, keeping her balance with her hands on the shuddering carriage wall, cold, damp grimy. Her eyes began to water. Another crack, this time against the container closest to her. A rumbling snort. A second smashing against the reinforced steel of the container. An exhalation of breath. A high-pitched bray. This was a carriage transporting horses, and Carrie knew enough about horses to know that kicking its hoof against the container meant an animal in distress. Hektor said the army controlled the railcar, which meant military horses and the sickening stench made sense. Some would be frightened, and fear made horses ill. Diarrhea was one of the symptoms. Carrie was breathing air filled with bacteria from decomposing horses’ urine and feces. Chemicals, too. The soldier would be disinfecting with ammonia. But he couldn’t clear away the shit. With the railcar exterior iced over, there was nowhere for it to go and horses shit a lot. Fifty pounds a day. Eight horses at least. Through the dark, she saw jumpy, pinpoint eyes of caged animals feeling insecure.

  ‘How long have they been here?’ she asked the soldier. He hadn’t said a word. He didn’t answer now. He pointed to a wooden three-legged stool for her to sit on. It was loose, not attached to anything in the carriage. On one side were bound bales of fresh hay stacked to the roof giving off a rich countryside smell, the horses’ food. From the other side, piled high inside dirty orange plastic netting, came the stink that had caused Carrie to retch, damp, soiled straw, spilling out onto the floor.

  Above the stool, a certificate was taped to the wall, carrying stamps and signatures. Carrie’s eyes had adjusted enough to read that it was an authorization to transport eight ceremonial military horses from Moscow to Severomorsk, the city where her uncle had lived. The horses would have been on the train for at least twelve hours. The soldier sat on a stool on the other side of the hay bales. He bro
ught out his phone, messaging or playing a game. He was around forty, a hard, narrow face, not a cruel one. He didn’t want anything to do with her. He needed the money. His protection of Carrie was as thin as a paper screen. It was an hour to St Petersburg, then another twenty-four hours to Olenegorsk.

  Using her hat as a backrest, she leant against the grimy carriage wall. She absorbed the pace of the railcar, snorts, neighs, and occasional thuds of kicking hoofs, the lumbering rhythm of the track, the sway, her throat and lungs accustomed to the bad air, light flickering from the soldier’s phone.

  She pulled out her phone. She should have checked earlier. Rake had messaged, short to avoid detection. ETA 11:05. That would be his flight into St Petersburg. Of all those involved in this mess, only Hektor and Rake had delivered. She had asked for money. He got it to her. Now he was coming to get her out. Except Rake couldn’t go to St Petersburg because his face had been all over Russian television. Surely, he would know this. Then, like peeling skin from a bad fruit, a black thought hit her. They had tried to kill Rake in Washington and failed. They now wanted him in Russia, and Carrie was the bait. If Rake tried to meet her in St Petersburg, that is how it would play out. They would take him, display him, and string him up. It was a swirling thought, and the more she played it the more she was sure she was right. If Yumatov could get her a near-perfect passport, he could have got her on a plane out. But he insisted on the train.