45
DIMITROVGRAD, MARCH 2013
Katrina was in heaven. A soft mattress, clean, crisp sheets, a thick comforter. A gentle hand caressing her forehead. “Sleep, dear, sleep,” said the soothing voice of an old woman. The hand caressing her was the woman’s hand. The caressing hand was now tightening the blanket around her body. Soft footsteps moved away. The light in the room went out. She drifted again in and out of a light sleep, rocking gently among the waves of slumber.
“How’s she feeling today?” Arkady Semionov asked his mother in a whisper.
“She’ll be okay, she’s a strong woman. We went through far worse during the Great Patriotic War.”
Arkady took a deep breath. “I want you to nurse her until she’s back on her feet,” he said. “And then I’ll take her.”
“I hope you’re not doing anything foolish, Arkady.”
“I’m doing only what you taught me. Don’t worry.”
“I’m an old woman, but you?”
“Mother, who’s the FSB commander in Dimitrovgrad?”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. You’re riding a white horse and telling yourself that you’re noble-hearted, a knight in shining armor. Arkady, Arkady, very little has changed in our country. Don’t fool yourself. You may rule the roost here in your small, remote kingdom, but don’t underestimate those who wield the true power. They’ll crush you like a bug. Without a second thought.”
“And yet, Mother, you are still helping me.”
“I told you. I’m old. There’s very little left to take from me. And I’m tougher than you. Don’t be mistaken.”
“You’re right. I’ll be careful. But I couldn’t just leave her like that. And I don’t shoot people in the back of the head. As far as I’m concerned, those days are over. I won’t allow them to force us back to places we should never have been in to begin with. We can be humans, too. I don’t think that’s asking too much.”
Arkady’s mother clucked her tongue and went to the kitchen to get Katrina another cup of tea. She was proud of her only son and concerned for him. She hoped that the tortured woman lying in the bed in the small guest room would recover quickly and disappear elsewhere, somewhere better. Later, she approached her again, caressed her forehead and face, saw her eyes open, and brought the cup of tea to her lips. “Be careful, dear, it’s hot.”
Arkady was sitting in the large armchair in the deliberately darkened room, his eyes closed. He could hear his mother’s soft mutterings and felt that he and Katrina Geifman were in good hands. Good, safe, and brave. He had returned to his mother like a young boy with a broken toy that needed mending. He didn’t have a plan of action. He didn’t know what he’d do with Katrina once she was on her feet again. The instructions had been clear: Katrina Geifman must die. He didn’t know how he was going to hide the fact that instead of resting in an unmarked grave in the forest, Katrina was at his mother’s house. He’d been given a direct order from the deputy commander of the FSB and he had defied it without a second thought. “Put her out of her misery,” he’d been told, and it would be impossible to argue in any way or form that his actions had complied with the intentions of the senior commander from Moscow. Arkady could picture her broken fingers, her swollen face, her one eye closed, bruised purple and yellow. He could still hear her groans of pain, the quiet sobbing that had shaken her thin frame. He could still see the bloodstains on the thin mattress upon which she had lain, long, wet strands of saliva and bloody phlegm dribbling from her lips. What else could he have done?
Late in the frozen night he dragged her unconscious body into the backseat of his car. He removed his coat and draped it over her gently. He opened the trunk and threw a spade inside. His car was covered in mud when he returned to his office the following morning. Pine needles were stuck to its tires. The magazine of his personal weapon was two cartridges short. He instructed his aide to get the car washed and to clean the pistol. He didn’t offer any explanations and didn’t say where he had spent the night and why he appeared to have returned tired and battle-weary. He then instructed the maintenance officer in person to clean the detention cell in which Katrina Geifman had been held and to make it look as if no one had been in there for a very long time. Once again he offered no explanations, issuing his order with a tired and emotionless look in his eyes. In the early afternoon he informed his secretary that he hadn’t been sleeping well at night and was going home to rest. And thus Katrina Geifman disappeared from the FSB’s regional headquarters, as if she had never been there at all. No one documented her arrival. No one made note of the particulars of the officers who came all the way from Moscow just for her, no one filled out a release form or a death notice. There was no paper trail. Anyone who might have seen something had forgotten. Anyone who might have heard cries of pain and sobs of defeat hadn’t actually heard a thing.
The furnace was ablaze in the home of Arkady’s mother. Katrina was asleep under the thick blanket, breathing easily. The elderly mother was sitting in a chair by her side, her head drooping now and then in fits of sleep. The fire died down around midnight. The house fell quiet.
46
ZURICH, HOTEL BAUR AU LAC, MARCH 2013
Alon spotted Brian from afar. Following security procedures came to him automatically by now. He’d been meeting with his handler once or twice a year for decades. Sometimes in Zurich, sometimes in Paris. He never felt compelled to account to anyone for his trips, but he always took the trouble to offer an explanation to those around him. Sometimes it was a trip for work purposes that he’d extend for a day or two. “Once I’m abroad, I may as well enjoy the weekend, too. I deserve it, don’t I?” he’d say. And sometimes it was a vacation with his wife during which he’d disappear for brief periods of time. “This job is impossible,” he’d sigh, and explain how he’d been instructed to deal with some crisis. His wife didn’t ask questions. She had long since grown accustomed to the fact that his work was in the habit of invading their private lives without explanation or hesitation. And she also enjoyed the moments of quiet and sudden sense of freedom afforded her by his absences. Each city required him to operate in keeping with precise instructions—when to arrive, the rendezvous point, which taxi to hail, and when to switch to a different one, which route to take on the subway, where to wait, and where to make the necessary time adjustments and keep himself busy for the exact amount of time set aside to allow his undercover counter-surveillance team to regroup. Once—it was hard for him to believe that so much time had passed since then, almost thirty years—once it was all new to him. The thrill, the anticipation, the meticulous carrying out of the instructions to the letter. His handlers were strict and unwavering, unwilling to cut any corners. He had gone through the same ritual many times, even on cold winter days, even if it was snowing, and he was used to it by now. Alon had grown accustomed to many things. To these meetings, to the excitement that washed through him nevertheless, to the constant fear of being exposed that never left him. When he wasn’t able to sleep he’d imagine fists banging on the door of his home in the middle of the night, and him being led out in shackles, handcuffs around his wrists, two burly plainclothes policemen dragging him from his home, neighbors who had woken up peering through half-drawn curtains; his son, who still lived at home, waking up in fear; his wife, her hair disheveled, the rude awakening of the night exposing her vulnerability, mumbling, “Alon, Alon, what’s happening?”