• ‘Our new challenge’, states General Hosiah Webb, Commander of the US 4th Army in Afghanistan, ‘is to secure the energy corridor between the Caspian and the Balkans, those like Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan and Nabucco, supplying our allies in Western Europe’;
• Petro Poroshenko demands direct military intervention to save Jews from persecution in Russia;
• Wall Street financial houses redouble their efforts to undermine the rouble by hiking interest rates yet again;
• Firms trading in global equity markets start a frenzy of selling on what they deem to be contaminated funds on the instruction of the Zew Research Group based in Strasbourg, New York, and Tel Aviv;
• Food processing plants in Belarus are sabotaged by NATO special forces.
Tom’s eyes reluctantly welcomed the first rays of dawn light playing like pellucid fingers over the bedsheets. He lay still for a minute, his head on the soft pillow, his penis hard as rock. He had been dreaming of a woman walking through cornfields, tresses flowing from a crown of spring flowers, bearing an apple in open hands.
‘Where am I?’ he said to himself. ‘What have I done?’
He got up to use the toilet and saw the brown suitcase in the hall. Then he remembered everything. The League’s request for him to attend an emergency council. His promise. Her smiling through tears and Arkady’s threat. Could he stay and fight? Could he cut and run?
Tom fell heavily onto the toilet seat. His sweaty face reflected in the mirror between the chrome taps. He could already hear the sound of cracking bones and see his blood smeared on a wall. He was not going to die here like Yesenin. Poets die romantically, but political dissidents like him bleed painfully in shootouts with the police, like that young French duo in Arles. Neither did he care to end his days like that Trotsky acolyte John Reed, author of the book he had just cast into the wastepaper basket, squirming in agony on a hospital bed with spotted typhus.
He swallowed some aspirin and took a long swig from a bottle. His eyes were sore. He could not be sure if it was from the drink or the tears he remembered coming suddenly in the early hours.
His hand reached for the phone. ‘I need a taxi’, he heard himself say, and then in response to the voice on the other end, ‘To the airport.’ He got dressed, brushed his hair, and checked his wallet. Picking up his bags, he walked out the door without looking back. Behind him, the phone began to ring.
Downstairs, the lobby was full of cleaners pushing mops and empty-handed doormen looking for something to do. Life went on. One anaemic youngster with bad skin offered to take his luggage. Tom waved him away, then gestured to the girl at the desk, who in turn pointed to a black-suited driver walking towards him across the foamy floor.
‘Oh, excuse me, sir, but I have a letter for you’, the receptionist remembered, coming out from behind the counter to hand him a sealed envelope. Tom took it, but before he could peel it open, his driver was guiding his arm.
‘Your car, sir!’ Tom pushed the blue envelope into his coat pocket and followed the chauffeur out onto the street. A gypsy woman was passing, carrying a sprig of flowers.
‘Would you like to buy one for your sweetheart?’ she asked in broken English. Tom chose some, paid her, and tossed it onto the back seat. The driver slammed the trunk on his baggage.
‘Pulkovo, spasibo’, the Englishman said. The engine started and they pulled off into the square.
He looked up at St Isaacs as they circled, watching a young family walking their brown water spaniel under the sparse trees. Peter Janssen was strolling, bag in hand, towards the Astoria. Alyosha was at his side. A column of armed Vulcari trailed in their wake. They went over the Blue Bridge and up Voznesenkiy Prospect. Glass shop fronts winked with cracked smiles. They stopped only to cut right back across the Fontanka embankment to make Moskovskiy Prospekt, then went onwards past the Technology Institute and the Olympic Gardens. For a moment, his attention was drawn once again to the ubiquitous Lenin statue, this time pointing towards the airport. Iron railings rushed past. He could see the dusty towers of the Baltic railway station in the distance and endless rows of Stalinist housing blocks. Alex Tiuniaev’s heart-rending symphony I Knew Her played on the radio.
30 minutes and 5 checkpoints later, the car pulled up at Pulkovo. ‘Take the flowers to this address.’ He handed the driver a hastily scribbled note. ‘It is very important that you do not say where I am, horosho?’ Tom turned up his collar and walked across the tarmac between two Chosta self-propelled howitzers which were entering the departure terminal. Passing security, he set off a metal detector and had to empty his pockets, allowing the hands of a stripling security guard to run over his body. Two pin-sharp eyes stared him out. Tom returned the look with interest, regretting his insolence when he was pulled unceremoniously aside.
‘Papers, please?’ A flat, outstretched hand commanded an instant response. When he saw the British passport, the Slav’s face split open. ‘James Bond, right?’
‘Yeah, 007!’
The young man slapped his shoulder with genuine warmth, then continued, stumbling over his words, ‘Null, null sem, your mission is over, God save the Queen!’ Tom laughed, pocketing his passport and moving away, anxious not to draw any further attention to himself. His flight was still hours away, so he took the escalator up to the first floor. There were a few newsstands and gift shops still operating along the mezzanine. A husband and wife bought a map of London marked with Cyrillic script. The couple were pointing out Big Ben and the London Eye to their kids. It was obvious they were the first of many refugees anticipating Armageddon, pretending to leave for a short vacation, but in reality planning never to return. He recognised the words ‘Madame Tussauds’ and went off to buy a coffee.
Tom took an empty table and sat alone, wondering if flights would be cancelled or if he would be stopped from boarding. He was not taking the calls or texts that Grigori was sending every 10 minutes. The coffee tasted like river silt. He drank it anyway, grains and all. It was something to do. People moved around him, talking, shouting, smoking cigarettes. There was an endless babble of excitement and confusion about the unfolding situation. The travellers’ eyes were drawn to the black electronic screens with rolling green lettering, telling them when they could board their flights. Helsinki, Oslo, and Milan came up early. A hijack in Kaliningrad meant the outbound to London was delayed. His anxiety began to mount. He sat staring down the clock, willing time to disappear. Eventually, they announced his flight, and he moved through passport control, first heading for a bar where three Mediterranean-looking girls were parked uncomfortably on stools before using a hand basin in the restroom to freshen his face. The obligatory duty free shop was not especially inspiring. He hovered for a little while over the perfumes and lingerie, wondering who to buy them for. There was no one left. No one at home.
Around 17.00, he stepped onto the escalator to the departure gate, queueing for the final security check, shuffling off his shoes, getting frisked once again. His fellow passengers were already passing through the sliding doors to the West. For a moment, the Englishman hesitated, still pondering his options. A stewardess asked for his boarding card. Her eyes flitted over the incomprehensible markings. A red nail pointed him in the direction of the airplane.
Once aboard, he threw his jacket into the overhead compartment, and the blue envelope handed to him by the hotel receptionist floated down into the aisle. Picking it up, he took his seat by the window. Engines cranked into operation and roared as they powered the plane along the runway, lifting the undercarriage. Then there was that sudden, gut-churning moment when they left the ground. The plane banked to the west, flying out over the Gulf of Finland. From his seat, Tom watched as a cold winter Sun burst through the misty sky, shooting dirty clouds with rocket fire. To the east, frozen rain crystals sparkled like wet diamonds showering down over the city’s fading skyline. He could just make out St Isaac’s golden dome and the smoking factory towers shrinking as they climbed.