One morning in early April I stood outside our flat — a line of boxes stretched down the pavement, filled with tinned food and spices, books, clothes, posters and other items to make the place that I would rent in Kiev feel more like home. I tried to load the boxes in the car, pushed and squeezed, admitted defeat, removed a few, put them back in the flat and then finally slammed the back door shut for good, afraid to open it again in case the contents tumbled out.
Once I had cleared space around the driver’s seat, I turned the ignition, slid into first gear and felt the most enormous sense of freedom. I was on my way again.
I drove south toward the Dover ferry port. On board, I watched England recede, then disappear, as the ferry churned its way across the channel. I soon forgot London and looked forward to returning to Kiev with excitement, sped through France, Germany and Austria, and felt a surge of emotion at the Hungarian border, surprised by my attachment to a country where I had no family and no real roots. I reached Moskva tér in the centre of Budapest and parked my car outside Anna and Gyula’s building. I walked into the courtyard, which was unchanged. I had crossed it so many times before seven years ago, always holding the morning papers. I crossed it again now and reached Anna and Gyula’s apartment. I rang the bell. Gyula opened the door. “Zsuzsi! Szia!” he said with a warm grin and gave me a big hug. This was my home away from home. I had opted for the longer drive across Europe just for a moment like this.
Anna stood in the kitchen, unchanged, with that smile I remembered so well. She put my bags in the small room behind the kitchen, where I would sleep. Then we settled into the living room chairs, where we had sat so often before. Anna and Gyula discussed political developments in Hungary. Fidesz, the party that I so admired when I lived here, was now ruled by a man with a nationalist agenda. I felt alienated by this development. The economy had been generous to both Anna and Gyula, who were well employed. Their life looked good. I felt happy just to sit with them as dusk fell on Budapest.
The next day we briefly toured the city. Shop windows brimmed with goods once considered luxury items. This more prosperous Budapest still had its old charm intact. In the afternoon we returned to Anna and Gyula’s apartment. I packed my small bag and said goodbye. They stood on the sidewalk as I once more slid into the driver’s seat of my Lada, cleared a wide enough tunnel through boxes for a rear-mirror view, waved and then sped out along the highway northeast toward Záhony. I became increasingly apprehensive as the hours passed and I approached the border crossing into Ukraine. I reached it at 9 p.m., the last in a small line of about six cars.
“The Foreign Ministry sent advance notice,” the border guard said as he inspected my passport. I nearly melted with relief. He waved me through with barely a glance at the boxes stuffed in the back. My confidence soared. I spent so little time at the border that my ambition grew. Instead of stopping for the night close by at Uzhorod, I pressed on over the Carpathian Mountains toward Lviv, certain I could reach the city in less than three hours.
By 2 a.m. I realized my mistake. The car crawled up pitch-dark mountain roads pitted with trench-like potholes. I had forgotten the reality of road travel over here. By 3 a.m. I gave up and pulled over, the car so full I could not stretch out. I slumped over the steering wheel, threw a quilt over my head and woke four hours later when the sun peeped in through a crack in the cover. Two men stood in front of the car. There was no one else in sight on this deserted stretch of road. The men smoked and looked relaxed. If they wanted to kill me, I thought they already would have smashed a window and done the deed, so I opened the door, got out and said hello.
“Not Polish,” one said disappointedly when he heard my accent. They thought I was a trader who might sell them goods from my laden car. As we said goodbye that man muttered, “You have a problem,” and pointed at a green trickle of fluid that leaked out from beneath my car. Every man here was an amateur mechanic, so I popped the hood and let him jiggle a pipe. The other man returned from a nearby stream with a jar of water that he poured into the radiator. “Don’t stop again until you reach Kiev,” he said. Skeptical, but grateful, I did as instructed and arrived there with no further mishap.
In the city centre, traffic jammed Khreshchatyk — a big change from 1990 when the roads had been nearly deserted. I reached my old street, turned onto it and drove up a hill, around a bend and along a route so filled with memories that nostalgia welled up in me. I belonged here. My new apartment stood across the street from the Foreign Ministry press office, where I first applied for accreditation, close by to many friends.
I met several for dinner that evening. We chatted about politics. Recent parliamentary elections, the first since independence, had proceeded well; a presidential election would follow in two months. The state seemed stable despite tensions that still simmered between Ukraine and Russia over the Black Sea fleet. I was back at work already. I relished my escape from a nine-to-five desk job, though I did not have quite the same freedom as I had when I last lived in Kiev.
I still had to go to an office for work. We had a studio in the centre. In this twenty-four-hour news operation the work day never ended. Some stories broke in the middle of the night. I would get up, check facts and report. The news machine must be fed.
I shared an office with Mykola, the journalist who gave me dating advice. I benefited from his knowledge and insight about politics in Ukraine, and enjoyed our friendship. Soon we hired younger reporters to help. They attended the news conferences. I began to spend more time in the studio than I wanted to and less time at events than before. I was in the office one June day, at my computer, when my boss, Zoya, called from London.
“I’ll be in Kiev next week for a few days. Let’s meet for dinner,” she suggested.
I looked forward to her visit.
On the evening of Zoya’s arrival we went out to a restaurant. Once we had ordered food, we exchanged news. I spoke of gossip related to the presidential election, a successful transition to a new leader and yet more proof of a stable state. She listened, interested, then asked. “Do you know about Alison?”
“No. What happened? Last I heard she’d moved in with her sister.”
Zoya said that Alison and Karen lived in a town in Surrey, near London. Most of their neighbours worked for banks or security companies. She explained that Alison had returned to work and that her office routine remained unchanged. Colleagues respected her need for privacy. Sometimes she worked day shifts; other times, like everyone else, she worked nights.
Then Zoya said that one day police officers who were on patrol in Alison’s town followed a driver in a red car who was behaving suspiciously. He circled around roads on the housing estate where Alison and Karen lived. The officers decided to stop the car. Zoya did not know the details, but we guessed the police flashed their lights or sounded a siren. Panic-stricken, perhaps, the driver rammed his car into a curb. Then he got out of the car and ran. He escaped from the police on foot.
The driver left items behind in the car, the two most significant being a gun and a map. The bullets in the gun had been hollowed out and filled with a mercury explosive, tipped with wax — a professional hit man, the police concluded.