Jasha assessed, his mind a confusion of puzzles. The dog was on its sacking bed and lifted its head, faintly wagged its tail, was palpably traumatised but lived. The table was upturned and his bowl of wild berries and apples was shattered but the fruit remained. The cupboard where Jasha kept tins of food had been dragged open but the contents had not been touched. Every door was opened or broken; he searched but could not see that anything he valued had been taken. It was, Jasha thought, the calling card of a creature that simply wished to know more of him, to learn about him. Jasha understood.
He went outside, switched off the pick-up’s engine, killed the headlights and let the quiet and the stillness settle around him. He supposed himself privileged because the bear, Zhukov, tolerated him, and wondered if a madness gripped him, and tears ran fuller, faster… And more to confuse him was what he had seen in the city – the small car, three people crammed inside it, the same three who he had seen running across rough ground, subject to military permits of entry and coming from a frontier named as an enemy of his country. Mosquitoes cavorted in his face and he did not know if the bear watched him. It would have destroyed him to give up his home, but it was not asked of him.
He yelled towards the trees and into the rain clouds, “Thank you, friend. Thank you for sparing us.”
And he did not know if he was heard, but thought it likely. He nursed his confusions.
She was the amoral dealer. The troubled daughter of a man who had strangled himself with a rope. She hated a state that had tossed her into gaol. Natacha, smiling with what a priest would have described as ‘an angel’s sweetness’, intercepted an elderly woman struggling along a pavement, weighed down with her purchases. Done with gentleness, charm and sincerity. They walked together, and she cut her stride to extend the opportunity for conversation and gave no offence, no embarrassment. The woman’s answers, faced with rare kindness, flowed.
“Rude and difficult, and never a part of our community.’’
“Is that so? Not respectful of you?”
“No time of day for me. Military, believes that makes him a czar. No manners.”
“And you have worked hard all your life.”
“Of course. I was in the office of the Harbour-Master, outside in all weathers, and…”
“If he is so grand, so mighty, why is he in that block?”
“I heard it was an administrative error. He fought it, then tired of the complaint.”
“And now he is leaving?”
“Yes, on his way. I did not know about the removal team coming, but his men say he will be gone in the morning.”
She pouted, played the game well. “You’ll miss him? I expect you’ll be on the front step with flowers for him, and he’ll have chocolates for you.”
“Good riddance – not missed by me and not missed by anyone else on our staircase.”
“Gone before you have started on your work for the day. I doubt someone like yourself is ever free from work.”
“Just bits. Cleaning. Making my pension go further, what with the price increases, you have to work. Not that he would hear me complain. From the bastard Chekist group, a spy in his own country. Complain to him about anything, that he leaves mud on the staircase from his shoes, and he will denounce you. They are the secret police, the new power.”
“They are shit. Will he go early?”
“He goes at dawn. First flight of the day. He has two men with him and they take him to the airport. They fly later, and then they are finished with him. They told me.”
“Do not love him then?”
“No! They are Chekists, but juniors. They worked for his father and why his father believed he needed protection I do not know. We think that they are responsible for him, are paid even to wipe his arse…” She crumpled with laughter. “They carry guns, I have seen them. They despise him. He has no friends, no visitors. People from his work, they do not come. He lives like a hermit. No women come, not even whores. He may be important but he is alone.”
“Not moving to a different place in Murmansk?”
“Do you listen to me? I said the first flight in the morning. He goes to Moscow, his men told me. But…”
“Yes?”
“Why do you ask? What is your interest?”
“No interest, just conversation.”
“Do you look to denounce me? I talk too much? My husband, he said I talk too much. Do you trick me?”
“No, all I do is carry your bag, and help you. If you would rather I did not…”
Natacha passed the Fiat but was still short of the bus shelter. Awkwardly, she looked at her watch and her face lit with that surprise always shown when time has flown and suddenly she was late, and she put down the bag. Had done well, carrying it half the distance from the intercept to the apartment entrance, and the van was still in place. She assumed that the men talked with the guards so as to stretch out the job, make sure they had exhausted their evening shift other than the return to their depot. She saw that the elderly woman’s face was now wreathed in concern, her eyes flitting nervously.
Natacha turned and walked away. She expected that the old woman was now staring at her back and was fearful, the bravado of her criticism of her neighbour now regretted… Too fucking late, sweetheart – and Natacha gambolled back towards the car went to tell what she had learned.
She did it without drama, like it was a conversation and not a description of a crisis. Gaz had come to Natacha. She was by the Fiat and gave her account in a mixture of high school teachers’ English and colloquial Russian, which Timofey translated.
Natacha repeated, he assumed, the exact words of the old woman: important that he believed she kept to the script because that way the wriggle room was restricted. Not ‘going in the morning’ but ‘going on the first flight in the morning’. Precious few hours left. Also leaving first thing in the morning would be the trawler. The agreement was that he would not communicate with it by phone, not even in the code they had as basic back-up, because to do so would alert the city authorities. The major’s old crowd at FSB, the vast yellow building on Prospekt, would have a forest of aerials and dishes on high ground, there to suck in the scores of electronic messages being sent to and from the city. On the boat he was supposed to sit tight, and come into Kirkenes on the ebbing tide and they would be watching for him, waiting for him. He assumed one of the girls would have a pair of binoculars slung across her chest and when the boat rounded the outer headland and started the run into the harbour the lenses would be up and focused, and they’d be looking for his face – then his expression – and would read it and would know. He carried a mobile. It had never been used, it held no information other than Knacker’s number because he had been told it was only to be used in a matter of life and death. A plane was taking off in a few hours, first of the day, and a target would be on it. Lost. Not that it was Gaz’s business to know what was planned in the aftermath of his own mission. He was the man who observed, who reported, who went in fast and came out fast, who did the job and kept it all simple, and then – as the instructor would say, or the unit sergeant – ‘got the fuck clear’.
Time to make a call.
Night coming in an Arctic summer, and street lights self-activated and hardly needed, and the words bubbled in his mind. He needed to consider the words, not sound like a panicked kid.
“I need to walk, need to think, and then…”
Timofey, now bored, as if the light had been extinguished on the mission, said that Natacha would walk ahead of him, and he should follow her, and speak to no one. He would go back to his apartment and dump his father and get more of the drink down his throat.
Natacha pulled a face, straightened her hair, and started off down the hill. The Fiat accelerated past them. He turned once and saw the two goons by their car and saw an upper window where a ceiling bulb burned. He imagined the target with a camp bed, the echo of bare floors and perhaps a small TV as company for the evening… and remembered what he had seen, what was expected of him, what had been done at the village.