Alex Dryden - Red to Black

And then all I felt was him catch me as I swayed and slipped from the hard wooden kitchen chair.

All I was aware of at first was noise, but I couldn’t place the noise, its origin or its identity. It hummed and throbbed and ground in my ears as I tipped from consciousness and back into unconsciousness. Slowly I realised why my only sensation was the noise. I felt the blindfold across my eyes first, before I realised I couldn’t see. Then I felt the hardness of the place where I was confined, the bruising pain as my body thumped against its surface. And then I felt the bonds around my hands and feet and legs.

I tried to lift the top half of my body but my head immediately came into contact with a hard surface. I was in a box, a metal box that thrashed around as if it were being thrown down a river. My hearing came and went, so that now from time to time I could hear something more distinct, not just amorphous noise beating in my ears. And then I smelled rubber and, after that, the faint fumes of a car’s exhaust. Then I knew I was being taken in the boot of a car.

I tried to move my legs, but they were bound too tightly and finally I lay still as every movement I made caused me pain as I was thrown around the small space. With my fingers I felt a small handle that I could get two fingers into. Perhaps it was something that would have held the spare tyre if there’d been one, and I held on as best I could to stop myself from being shaken. Then I felt the bumpiness of a rutted road turn into the tipping wave motion of an unmade track and finally the car stopped with a jerk that threw me against the back of the seats.

I listened in the silence. A door opened, but there were no voices. I heard the door slam again. And then I heard the latch pop on something near my head and the whining of an unoiled hinge and I felt the cool air on my face.

Hands untied my blindfold. I was staring straight into the sun and could see nothing. I turned away and shut my eyes in pain and then I heard Vladimir’s voice.

‘Easy,’ he said.

He lifted me up and out of the boot of the car and when my eyes had finally adjusted from the darkness of the boot to the brightness of the sun, I saw we were in a forest of pine trees. He untied my hands first. Why untie my hands to shoot me, I thought? Why show me my executioner at all? But then he untied my feet, knowing, I guess, that long confinement would have made my limbs too cramped to run or put up a struggle. He gave me a bottle of water.

‘Drink this,’ he said.

I drank thirstily while he spoke with matter-of-fact urgency.

‘You’re in Finland,’ he said. ‘We’re eight miles or so across the border. We were just in time.’

‘Why…?’ I said feebly. My head throbbed from the drug he’d given me, and from the journey.

‘It doesn’t matter. You’re out, that’s all that matters. There’s money, a passport, and other things in this bag. There’s some food, more water too.’

I struggled to stand up, but he gently restrained me.

‘Why did you drug me?’ I asked him.

‘Because I knew you wouldn’t believe me,’ he said. ‘I knew if I told you that I had to get you out, you’d think it was a trap.’

Then he helped me to a tree and I sat leaning against it, sipping from the water bottle. I suddenly felt euphoric, from the drug perhaps, or from a reprieve from the fate I was sure awaited me.

‘They would have arrested you this morning,’ he said. Then he pointed. ‘Five miles in that direction is a village. There you can take a ride and get a train to Helsinki.’

‘And you?’ I said at last.

‘Goodbye, Anna.’

He turned and stepped into the car. It reversed over the rough ground and the dry twigs snapped under the wheels. Then I watched as he turned back towards the Russian border.

‘Goodbye,’ I said. But he had gone.

FINN CAUGHT THE TRAINto Frankfurt, with or without the blonde Karin, on the night I left Switzerland for Moscow. He arrived around midnight and checked into a seedy hotel in one of the few remaining old parts of the city that hadn’t been destroyed in the war.

On the following morning, he walked down Berndtstrasse to a workman’s café, buying several German newspapers on the way. As I’d seen it at the Savoy Hotel, he sees the Naider story on the front page of a German paper, also with the addition of the name ‘Robinson’ that the police had released.

He read through the stories and came to the same conclusions that I had: the Forest was trying to frame him for the murder. Despite his care, there was a possibility that he, as Robinson, existed somewhere on the bank’s or hotel’s CCTV film, but it was unlikely. He knew better than to show his face to a camera.

Finn drank two black coffees and ate a stale cheese sandwich that looked as if it had been on sale from the day before. He was ordering a third coffee when the little bell that hung on the café door tinkled loudly and a short man entered.

He was dressed in a black donkey jacket, like a workman, but incongruously wore a green felt hat that was too large for him, so that it came down over his ears. Finn couldn’t see the man’s face completely. He wore cream-coloured loafers. The man walked slowly until he was next to Finn at the counter and, in German that was as poor as Finn’s, addressed the Turkish woman who was spooning coffee granules into a mug from an unlabelled tin.

‘I’ll have a large black coffee too,’ he said.

Finn recognised the voice and turned. He saw the neat moustache visible beneath the low hat brim.

‘What on earth are you doing in that silly hat?’ he said.

‘It seems I have a small head,’ the man said in heavily accented English. ‘At least by German standards,’ he added in the morose tone Finn knew.

‘Don’t they sell hats in Israel? You look like you’ve just arrived.’

‘Just off the flight from Tel Aviv,’ the man replied.

Finn paid for their coffees and returned to his table by the window, where a thin June light filtered in and he could see the newspapers better.

‘How did you know to find me here, Lev? Your people, the Russians, who else is following me around? Maybe you should all divvy up the cost and hire a bus.’

‘We’re better than the Russians, Finn. Luckily for you.’

They sat down at a table by the window.

‘What are you doing here, Lev? I’m not in Mossad’s bad books too, am I?’

‘Let me drink this first, for Christ’s sake.’

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘What does it matter, Finn? I’m here. And I have a message for you. From our side.’

‘Your side? Is that the same side as my side?’

‘The sooner I can be out of this damn place, the better,’ Lev said, ignoring the question.

‘Twenty years in Israel and you’ve forgotten the charms of a north German summer,’ Finn said.

Lev put his hands around the hot mug of coffee and warmed them.

‘I could do with your help, Lev.’

‘First of all, there’s nothing I can do to help you. In Tel Aviv we know all about what you’re up to. Adrian, as far as I know, doesn’t know. Yet.’

‘Long may it stay that way,’ Finn said.

‘We think the same way as you about Putin,’ Lev said. ‘We’re following the same trail. That’s why we’ve been keeping in step with you. In a few years’ time one-sixth of our population will be of Russian origin, so Russia and the Russians who come to our country are of national interest.’

‘You were Russian once, Lev.’

‘That was a long time ago. These are the new Russians,’ Lev replied. ‘They’re different from us thirty years ago.’

‘So. Why? What have you got for me?’

‘I’ve come to this damn country to give you a message, that’s all.’