Anna's ride sat near the flight tower. The remodeled Kamov helicopter, called a Helix in the West, resembled a giant wheeled fish. Above the fuselage, two rows of silent rotors-both upper and lower-shuddered in the desolate wind.
Anna's ice-blue eyes continued to impatiently rake the weak white sky.
To the west was Poland. Northeast was Moscow. And farther east well away from Russia and its former client states-was the place where Anna Chutesov should be.
"Men," she muttered to herself.
The moment she said the word, her ears tickled with the distant hum of a plane engine. With darting eyes she found the aircraft. The Ilyushin was a tiny speck in the sky.
Anna crossed her arms tightly. "It is about time." It took an agonizing few minutes for the big aircraft to land. The Ilyushin bounced across the ruts and holes in the runway, finally rolling to a stop near the tower. The pilot didn't cut the engines.
Anna ran across the tarmac to the waiting plane. Sergei and the other men ran with her, cold, silent shadows.
The Russian presidential plane was nothing like America's Air Force One. The poor Ilyushin looked to be on its last legs. The fuselage was dull and grimy. The tires were nearly bald. A thin, almost invisible stream of white smoke slipped from the starboard nacelle. The pilot had been assuring Russia's worried president for weeks that white smoke wasn't anything to worry about. They could go all the way through the various shades of beige to black before it became necessary to take the plane in for expensive servicing. Fuel drizzled to the tarmac from a pinhole leak.
As soon as Anna reached the plane, a door popped open behind the left wing and a retractable ladder extended. She kicked the bottom rung so that the metal ladder locked in place and scurried up. At the top a hand reached out and helped her inside.
The man's copilot uniform was faded and worn. Ragged threads hung from the cuffs. Since he hadn't been paid in three months, he had recently been forced to sell his insignia to some visiting American teenagers to buy food.
"That way," the copilot said, pointing.
Anna had already pushed past him. Even as her entourage of six began boarding the plane, she was hurrying down the aisle to the lounge.
The engine sounds were muted inside. Wind buffeted the plane, rocking it from side to side.
She found the president of Russia sitting in a tatty seat. The seat belts had apparently been stolen from the presidential plane. Cords of nylon clothesline hung in their place.
There was very little that ever surprised Anna Chutesov. But when she saw the two men sitting with the current Russian president, she felt her brow sink.
One was a big man. Tall, with no neck and a large belly that seemed to go from pelvis to chin without taking the time to form a chest. In comparison, the other man was small, although his wide cherub's face and rounded body gave him the appearance of a teddy bear come to life.
Both men had led Russia at different times. The smaller one had accidentally taken the country away from the Communists. The larger one had-through corruption and mismanagement-turned it over to criminals.
The latter man had escaped the presidency when no one was looking on New Year's Eve of the new millennium with a presidential pardon and a pair of suitcases crammed to overflowing with American foreign aid. His looted wealth had done nothing to remove him from his path of personal destruction. His skin was waxy, and his crown of white hair crashed in great uneven waves across the top of his big head. Around his ankles three empty vodka bottles rolled with the jostling movements of the wind-tossed plane.
The two former leaders along with Russia's latest president looked up as Anna entered the lounge. The current president quickly got to his feet. "Forgive us for being late," the little man said. "It is not easy to get away these days. I do not believe introductions are necessary." He held a small hand out to the other two men.
The bigger one wasn't even paying attention. He was rooting around with one paw under his frayed seat for a fresh bottle. This apparently required all his concentration. He bit down on his jutting tongue.
The other ex-president answered for both of them. "We know Anna Chutesov well," he said soberly. The man scratched his forehead. Even though it was warm enough on the plane, he still wore a hat, pulled down low. Just the bottom of his world-famous winestain birthmark could be seen peeking out from under the wool. The part that Anna could see looked as if it had mutated somehow.
"I decided to check with my predecessors after our last meeting," the current president explained to Anna. "They convinced me that the danger might be greater than I originally feared. For all of us. I have extended presidential protection to them both, for Russia cannot run the risk of appearing weak. If something were to happen to them, it could open us up to even more dire security threats."
Anna didn't bother to tell him that, short of a full-scale nuclear war or a comet flattening Moscow, they were already facing the greatest threat imaginable.
"Presidential protection is an empty phrase," she said. "What we need goes beyond mere words." As she spoke, the first of her entourage began filing into the lounge. The men were so silent Anna had not heard them. She knew they were there only by the look of relief that bloomed on the face of the hatwearing former president.
The current president raised an eyebrow, as if he had expected more.
"Are they good?" he asked.
"They are trained," Anna replied.
"They had better be," the ex-president with the hat said. "It is bad enough when vandals can break into your house in the dead of night and permanently disfigure you. Now I find out my life might be in danger." His pudgy fingers scratched once more at his birthmark.
When his hat shifted, Anna could see that the mark now resembled the number one.
"Forgive me, Mr. President," Anna said frostily, "but I would remind you that it is you who started us down this road more than ten years ago. Pandora's box has been opened now, but you are the one who made certain it was full."
The former president bristled. "Do not forget your contribution in all this," he growled.
Anna's spine stiffened. "I won't," she said. "Nor could I if I tried."
The current president wasn't interested in squabbling. "These men will accompany us back to Moscow," he said, indicating Sergei and the other five. "Four will guard me. I will assign one each to the two of you."
The big bear of a man was oblivious. He was draining dry a half-filled vodka bottle. A shaking hand tapped the last drops onto his eager, bloated tongue.
When the hat-wearing president objected to the inequitable division of guards, Russia's current leader shook his head angrily.
"It is your fault we are even in this predicament," the latest president snapped. "You started us down this road to insanity."
"What I did was for the sake of national security," the ex-president argued.
Anna had heard enough. "Every stupid thing that has ever been done in Russia has been done in the name of national security," she said impatiently. "And I do not have time for this. These are the men you requested. Do whatever you want with them. I am leaving."
Only Anna Chutesov could get away with speaking in such a way to one-let alone three-Russian heads of state.
She turned from the three politicians.
"Be careful," she advised Sergei and the others, knowing the foolishness of the wasted words even as she spoke them.
She hurried through the men and down the side aisle of the plane. At the still open door, her foot sought the ladder. When she turned to climb down, she found that the president had hurried out behind her.
"You still have some new recruits, do you not?" Russia's diminutive leader asked. "You should bring them with you."