Red to Black

by Alex Dryden

  ‘Let’s have a coffee before we go,’ he said. ‘And maybe something stronger.’

  Upstairs in the apartment on the seventh floor, he made coffee and put a half-empty bottle of vodka on the table in the kitchen. I sat and watched him.

  ‘I think it’s OK,’ he said. ‘I think they’re just trying to put you on the wrong foot. But you might as well be fortified.’

  He smiled at me, poured two shots of vodka, and I drained mine at once. Once more, against my better judgement, I was grateful for his courtesy and care.

  And then all I felt was him catch me as I swayed and slipped from the hard wooden kitchen chair.

  All I was aware of at first was noise, but I couldn’t place the noise, its origin or its identity. It hummed and throbbed and ground in my ears as I tipped from consciousness and back into unconsciousness. Slowly I realised why my only sensation was the noise. I felt the blindfold across my eyes first, before I realised I couldn’t see. Then I felt the hardness of the place where I was confined, the bruising pain as my body thumped against its surface. And then I felt the bonds around my hands and feet and legs.

  I tried to lift the top half of my body but my head immediately came into contact with a hard surface. I was in a box, a metal box that thrashed around as if it were being thrown down a river. My hearing came and went, so that now from time to time I could hear something more distinct, not just amorphous noise beating in my ears. And then I smelled rubber and, after that, the faint fumes of a car’s exhaust. Then I knew I was being taken in the boot of a car.

  I tried to move my legs, but they were bound too tightly and finally I lay still as every movement I made caused me pain as I was thrown around the small space. With my fingers I felt a small handle that I could get two fingers into. Perhaps it was something that would have held the spare tyre if there’d been one, and I held on as best I could to stop myself from being shaken. Then I felt the bumpiness of a rutted road turn into the tipping wave motion of an unmade track and finally the car stopped with a jerk that threw me against the back of the seats.

  I listened in the silence. A door opened, but there were no voices. I heard the door slam again. And then I heard the latch pop on something near my head and the whining of an unoiled hinge and I felt the cool air on my face.

  Hands untied my blindfold. I was staring straight into the sun and could see nothing. I turned away and shut my eyes in pain and then I heard Vladimir’s voice.

  ‘Easy,’ he said.

  He lifted me up and out of the boot of the car and when my eyes had finally adjusted from the darkness of the boot to the brightness of the sun, I saw we were in a forest of pine trees. He untied my hands first. Why untie my hands to shoot me, I thought? Why show me my executioner at all? But then he untied my feet, knowing, I guess, that long confinement would have made my limbs too cramped to run or put up a struggle. He gave me a bottle of water.

  ‘Drink this,’ he said.

  I drank thirstily while he spoke with matter-of-fact urgency.

  ‘You’re in Finland,’ he said. ‘We’re eight miles or so across the border. We were just in time.’

  ‘Why…?’ I said feebly. My head throbbed from the drug he’d given me, and from the journey.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You’re out, that’s all that matters. There’s money, a passport, and other things in this bag. There’s some food, more water too.’

  I struggled to stand up, but he gently restrained me.

  ‘Why did you drug me?’ I asked him.

  ‘Because I knew you wouldn’t believe me,’ he said. ‘I knew if I told you that I had to get you out, you’d think it was a trap.’

  Then he helped me to a tree and I sat leaning against it, sipping from the water bottle. I suddenly felt euphoric, from the drug perhaps, or from a reprieve from the fate I was sure awaited me.

  ‘They would have arrested you this morning,’ he said. Then he pointed. ‘Five miles in that direction is a village. There you can take a ride and get a train to Helsinki.’

  ‘And you?’ I said at last.

  ‘Goodbye, Anna.’

  He turned and stepped into the car. It reversed over the rough ground and the dry twigs snapped under the wheels. Then I watched as he turned back towards the Russian border.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I said. But he had gone.

  31

  FINN CAUGHT THE TRAIN to Frankfurt, with or without the blonde Karin, on the night I left Switzerland for Moscow. He arrived around midnight and checked into a seedy hotel in one of the few remaining old parts of the city that hadn’t been destroyed in the war.

  On the following morning, he walked down Berndtstrasse to a workman’s café, buying several German newspapers on the way. As I’d seen it at the Savoy Hotel, he sees the Naider story on the front page of a German paper, also with the addition of the name ‘Robinson’ that the police had released.

  He read through the stories and came to the same conclusions that I had: the Forest was trying to frame him for the murder. Despite his care, there was a possibility that he, as Robinson, existed somewhere on the bank’s or hotel’s CCTV film, but it was unlikely. He knew better than to show his face to a camera.

  Finn drank two black coffees and ate a stale cheese sandwich that looked as if it had been on sale from the day before. He was ordering a third coffee when the little bell that hung on the café door tinkled loudly and a short man entered.

  He was dressed in a black donkey jacket, like a workman, but incongruously wore a green felt hat that was too large for him, so that it came down over his ears. Finn couldn’t see the man’s face completely. He wore cream-coloured loafers. The man walked slowly until he was next to Finn at the counter and, in German that was as poor as Finn’s, addressed the Turkish woman who was spooning coffee granules into a mug from an unlabelled tin.

  ‘I’ll have a large black coffee too,’ he said.

  Finn recognised the voice and turned. He saw the neat moustache visible beneath the low hat brim.

  ‘What on earth are you doing in that silly hat?’ he said.

  ‘It seems I have a small head,’ the man said in heavily accented English. ‘At least by German standards,’ he added in the morose tone Finn knew.

  ‘Don’t they sell hats in Israel? You look like you’ve just arrived.’

  ‘Just off the flight from Tel Aviv,’ the man replied.

  Finn paid for their coffees and returned to his table by the window, where a thin June light filtered in and he could see the newspapers better.

  ‘How did you know to find me here, Lev? Your people, the Russians, who else is following me around? Maybe you should all divvy up the cost and hire a bus.’

  ‘We’re better than the Russians, Finn. Luckily for you.’

  They sat down at a table by the window.

  ‘What are you doing here, Lev? I’m not in Mossad’s bad books too, am I?’

  ‘Let me drink this first, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘What does it matter, Finn? I’m here. And I have a message for you. From our side.’

  ‘Your side? Is that the same side as my side?’

  ‘The sooner I can be out of this damn place, the better,’ Lev said, ignoring the question.

  ‘Twenty years in Israel and you’ve forgotten the charms of a north German summer,’ Finn said.

  Lev put his hands around the hot mug of coffee and warmed them.

  ‘I could do with your help, Lev.’

  ‘First of all, there’s nothing I can do to help you. In Tel Aviv we know all about what you’re up to. Adrian, as far as I know, doesn’t know. Yet.’

  ‘Long may it stay that way,’ Finn said.

  ‘We think the same way as you about Putin,’ Lev said. ‘We’re following the same trail. That’s why we’ve been keeping in step with you. In a few years’ time one-sixth of our population will be of Russian origin, so Russia and the Russians who come to our country are of national interest.’
<
br />   ‘You were Russian once, Lev.’

  ‘That was a long time ago. These are the new Russians,’ Lev replied. ‘They’re different from us thirty years ago.’

  ‘So. Why? What have you got for me?’

  ‘I’ve come to this damn country to give you a message, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you with me or against me?’

  ‘Could be either. It depends. I don’t know. That’s up to you, I guess. All I can say is that we’re interested in what you’re doing.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Someone–not us- wants you to stop your inquiries. They say they’ve gone far enough. Time to back off.’

  Finn leaned back on the plastic bench and lifted the coffee to his lips.

  ‘I wonder who that could be,’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘You’re being offered ten million dollars to go away,’ Lev said.

  Finn slowly put the mug down on the table. He looked in blank astonishment at his old friend. Lev was now casually engaged in stirring another spoon of sugar into his coffee. He still hadn’t removed his hat.

  ‘You’re kidding, Lev,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Like I said, it could be very helpful to you, I’d have thought,’ he said drily.

  ‘Who’s offering me that kind of money?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on! For Christ’s sake, Lev.’

  ‘I tell you, I don’t know. That’s the truth, Finn. I’m just the messenger. Presumably someone up high in Tel Aviv knows, General this or that, I don’t know. The message was parlayed to Tel Aviv from God knows who and I just have the job of passing it on, that’s all.’

  ‘Ten million dollars.’

  ‘I don’t know what the exchange rate is, but it seems generous, yes. Unusually generous. Whatever you’re up to from now on, I’d drop it. Take the money. Marry your Russian.’

  ‘The Russians really are entering the modern world,’ Finn said.

  ‘It looks like they’re treading carefully, I’d say,’ Lev said. ‘If it is the Russians. But whoever is offering you this kind of money is making you a decent offer. On the one hand you have this little incident in Geneva the Russians are trying to hang around your neck. On the other, you have ten million dollars. It looks like an easy choice to me. I know which one I’d take.’

  ‘You think so?’ Finn said. ‘If they’re offering me ten million bucks, it looks to me like they’re worried they can’t frame me for Naider’s murder.’

  ‘I wouldn’t risk it,’ Lev said. ‘Here’s a number where you can get me.’ He handed a card across the table with a name Finn had never heard of printed on it, and a company title underneath. ‘Don’t take too much time deciding,’ Lev says. ‘Apparently they want to know soon.’

  ‘The Russians?’

  ‘I repeat, I don’t know. My bosses in Tel Aviv tell me “they”, that’s all. Presumably you know who “they” are. If you know what you’re doing that is,’ Lev added.

  ‘More coffee?’ Finn said.

  ‘Yes, why not. It’s delicious,’ Lev replied facetiously, now apparently sunk into a permanently disenchanted alternative world where words had become the opposite of their meaning.

  Finn got up and went to the counter and got himself a glass of water and a coffee for Lev. When he returned to the table, Lev leaned across to him.

  ‘The Russians who’re coming to Israel now,’ he said, ‘they’re buying everything. Some of them are on the run from Putin. Others, it’s hard to say. The ones we’re really interested in are those who we’re sure are just an extension of his siloviki rule. We don’t mind Russians buying things, we just don’t want Russia buying them.’

  ‘Is that the Kremlin’s policy?’

  ‘Could be. They have the money now.’

  ‘Tell me what you know. Tell me about Exodi.’

  ‘I can’t do that. We’re interested in what you’re doing, that’s all. Take the money, Finn.’

  Finn knew he wouldn’t get anything more from Lev.

  ‘How’s the family?’ he said after leaving Lev’s offer hanging in the air.

  ‘All fine, thank you. The boys are going to college in America. I’m guessing they probably won’t come back.’

  ‘You happy about that?’

  ‘It’s best for them there,’ Lev said.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I will stay in Israel. I don’t know why. Like I say, this new wave of Russians who’ve arrived since Putin came to power are a different bunch compared to us. We came with nothing. They bring billions. Billions. Some of them are making big donations, you wouldn’t believe. Not just to the usual charities. To us, to Mossad.’

  Finn laughed. ‘You guys will take money from anyone,’ he said.

  ‘And you? Will you take the money?’

  ‘I’ll let you know, Lev.’

  Finn takes the train from Frankfurt to Saarbrucken. The flat north German countryside changes to rolling hills of wheat and pasture, tree coppices dotting the tops of the hills with new season’s green.

  His mood on this journey takes him to the depths of the sadness that lives inside him, no matter what his outward enthusiasm suggests.

  But his sadness comes from the knowledge that it is not beyond his control to stop and to walk away. He has a choice.

  I’ve seen him sometimes in the early mornings, when he wakes and hasn’t had time to prepare his mask for the world. I’ve seen the sadness in his eyes, which disappears as soon as he knows he’s being watched. Finn never accepted that this sadness existed, and never addressed its causes. He could not or would not change.

  Finn meets Dieter in the same Chinese restaurant where they had met four years before. They order the same inflation-proof twelve-euro menu and two Tiger beers.

  Dieter has aged, Finn thinks. The short span in time has added a decade to Dieter’s face and he looks like an old man suddenly. But his eyes are still alert, still searching, calculating.

  ‘Who are the five individuals, Dieter?’ he asks, referring to the Dresden file. ‘Why them? Why are they being paid? What connects them to Exodi?’

  ‘I’ll do what I can, Finn. We are near the truth, just as I was fifeen years ago.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll get a different result this time,’ Finn says.

  ‘I have something for you too,’ Dieter tells him and leans in across the narrow table. ‘I may have turned up one of the brothers. One of Otto Roth’s long-lost brothers.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Not at Jensbank, but it may be something more interesting than that. This man is said to be the owner of one of Germany’s biggest trucking firms.’

  Finn thinks for a moment and shakes his head.

  ‘What’s interesting about one of Germany’s biggest trucking firms?’ he asks.

  But Finn knows the significance of one of Roth’s brothers owning a company that transports goods across borders.

  ‘The trucking company was set up in the mid-sixties,’ Dieter continues. ‘It was founded by this man, this brother as I believe. He is a prominent ex-Nazi, and today the company he set up is one of Europe’s largest. It’s a world leader in transportation, in fact, and was originally run by ex-Nazis. Roth’s brother–if it is him–is using a different name now, of course, one unconnected to those times, to the Nazis.

  ‘In the sixties, when Schmidtke appeared on the scene, this trucking company was helped along the way, shall we say, by the Stasi and the KGB. Otto Roth sorted out the financing and the money movements from East to West, and this brother of Roth’s headed the company. The story is, they began to bring all kinds of contraband across the borders. A great German success story, built on a foundation of Soviet trade.’

  ‘Are they trading with Russia now?’ Finn asks.

  ‘It’s not as straightforward as that. In fact, the odd thing is that such a big firm doesn’t go to Russia at all. Some of the fleet make frequent trips to Moldova. But they don’t go to Moldova itself. They continue into the Russian enclav
e of Transdnestr, inside Moldova, which the Russian 13th Army has refused to leave. They also run trucks in and out of Abkhazia on the Black Sea. Since the civil war there a few years back, Russia’s left troops behind there too. Just like Transdnestr, Abkhazia offers the Kremlin another safe haven for its criminal dealings. This trucking fleet doesn’t go to Russia, but it goes to places where Russia exerts its influence.’

  ‘How do you know this and not know any names involved?’ Finn says.

  ‘It’s an underground rumour,’ Dieter replies.

  ‘With the details conveniently absent.’

  ‘Well, OK…’ Dieter is suddenly angry, either at Finn’s response or his own inadequate information, or both.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dieter,’ Finn says. ‘You think you can get any further into this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘So this firm transports goods to and from Russia’s favourite offshore illegal trading havens,’ Finn says. ‘What do your sources say they’re bringing over?’

  ‘The routes are disguised, they say,’ Dieter replies. ‘The logs are rewritten. But my sources believe they are bringing cash. Black money. Millions, maybe billions. This is the operation that physically brings the laundered cash from General Baseer’s drug sales and no doubt other illegal sources across Russian borders and into the West.’

  ‘To Exodi?’

  ‘Maybe yes. If we can provide evidence of what this company is doing the German government may be forced to unravel it all at last. They will not be able to hide behind the veil they have drawn over this. The BND would have to reopen investigations, Schmidtke or no Schmidtke, to threaten them.’

  ‘If one of the trucks were stopped and taken apart at the German border…’ Finn says.

  ‘That would be necessary to nail it properly, yes. It would be a huge scandal. It would be proof of KGB involvement at the highest level, with German politicians and businessmen playing their part over many years. The head of the trucking firm, who I believe is Roth’s brother, has very high connections in our government.’

  They leave the restaurant and walk along the banks of the Saar River with its concrete embankments and cracked paths. The occasional cyclist or jogger passes along the narrow pathway and a mother wheels her children in a twin buggy ahead of them and stops in the shade of a tree.