Alex Dryden - Red to Black

‘OK. You’ll be here at five.’

‘They’ll be loading inside that warehouse over there. Wait for me to pull up the truck somewhere in this area.’

‘Is there a room where the drivers go?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Round the back of that office building. It’s a bare room with dirty calendars and dirtier coffee.’ He grinned.

Finn always said that if you want something, the best thing to do was simply to ask for it. He said it worked for him nine times out of ten. I hadn’t really ever believed in his straightforward method, but I was beginning to now.

There were four and half hours until Anatoly left. It was far too long. I took a clipboard from the inside of my overalls and begin to walk, head down, around the depot. There was no uniform working clothing here and I was relieved. I blended in well enough for a long-haired woman under a pair of baggy overalls.

I walked around to the back of the office block and saw the entrance to the driver’s room. On the way, I saw a truck parked with its doors open and up against the open doors of a smaller warehouse. It was a smaller truck than the rest. Its tarpaulins pulled aside for loading, but the metal sides were still up. ‘Reiter’ was engraved on the side and there, finally, was the outsized eagle.

When I entered the room there were three drivers sitting reading newspapers and sipping from polystyrene cups. They all looked up and didn’t return to their newspapers. Their expressions seemed to suggest I’d walked out of one of the pornographic calendars stuck on the walls.

I pulled my SVR identity card out of my pocket and flashed it long enough for them not to remember the name, only the message. Their attitude changed instantly from mild lechery to embarrassment.

‘Which of you is the driver of the Reiter vehicle?’ I said.

None of them wanted to reply, to draw attention. Eventually the man closest to me, whom I chose to fix with a stare, stumbled out the information that the driver I wanted was in the toilet.

‘Show me identities,’ I said. I wanted there to be some business for them all to do while I waited.

They each showed me their grubby identity cards and the Pribor pass. And then the sound of a toilet flushing announced the return of the man I was looking for. He appeared through a door at the rear of the room still doing up his flies. I could see he wasn’t cowed like the others, and he stood looking at my SVR card without any reaction at all.

‘Your papers,’ I said.

He hesitated and then, with deliberate slowness, took them from an inside pocket. I looked at them and saw he was German.

‘What do you want?’ he said rudely.

‘Show me your itinerary,’ I demanded, ignoring his manner.

‘That’s confidential,’ he said without moving.

‘I’m a colonel in the SVR,’ I reminded him.

‘And I’m the King of Sweden,’ he said.

I tried to imagine what Finn would have done in the same situation. I tried to conjure up the flip remark, the careless, throwaway line that helped people put their guard down, but I couldn’t be Finn and I couldn’t use the full force of my position. I was hamstrung by not wanting anyone outside this room to know I was in the depot.

‘Yes,’ I said, summoning as much of a threat as I could manage. ‘It’s confidential.’

‘My papers,’ he said.

‘You’ll get them back when I’m ready.’

He took a slight move towards me, just enough to show me some aggression, and I turned around until my back was to him. Then I simultaneously cracked my elbow back into his nose and kicked my left foot into his groin as his hands went up to his face. I turned back to watch the effect.

‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ I said in a quiet voice. ‘I don’t need help to break you in two, but I can call some up and we could really do a good job.’

He was sweating, blood poured from his nose and he could barely walk.

‘Get in that chair.’

I looked at the other three men in the room and they were wide-eyed with shock.

‘Find him some shithouse paper,’ I said. ‘And some water. Clean up that mess on his face.’

‘You bitch,’ the German muttered through his teeth as he sat bent over the table, clutching his balls with one hand and his face with the other.

‘If you want to get back home this year, you’d better listen this time,’ I said.

A look of fear crossed his face.

The other three arrived through the door at the rear carrying toilet paper and several cups of water.

‘Clean up,’ I said.

I took out a piece of paper and a pen and told the German to write out his itinerary. He did so, muttering at me and what he would do to me if he ever caught me in his own country. When he’d finished, I told him to get out separate papers from his pocket with the formal itinerary printed on them and then he began to look genuinely frightened. I could see he hadn’t written the truth.

‘Give me the printed sheet.’ I placed my hand gently on his shoulder and this, I think, frightened him more than anything.

He reached inside his jacket and gave it to me. I studied the route he was to take and gave him back the itinerary.

‘What’s your cargo?’

‘Spares.’

‘Weapons spares?’

‘How should I know?’

I watched him without speaking.

‘You going to let me go now?’ he said.

‘When your papers have been checked,’ I replied.

I told the others to give me their papers too.

‘Don’t leave until I return,’ I said. ‘Or your stay here will be indefinite.’

I took the only truck that wasn’t being loaded or unloaded and got into the cab. I drove it slowly around to the back of the depot, away from the main entrance and where there were fewer people working, and parked it next to the fence.

Using the truck as a blind, I climbed up the side of the cab and took a look around while I was still invisible. Two men in uniform were walking towards the truck talking to each other, but they turned when they were a hundred yards away and entered a building. I climbed the remaining few feet on to the roof of the truck and, visible for only a few seconds, I jumped over the fence.

It was a fifteen-foot drop to the other side and should have been easy, but in my hurry I landed badly. I began to walk fast away from the depot, across some wasteland, the truck shielding me for the first few yards and then, when I was in the open, I dropped down into a garbage dump for cover and came out on the other side into trees and then a road where there were cars and buildings. I walked fast into the centre of the town and stripped off the overalls in an alleyway, replacing them with my SVR uniform.

There was a very old Mercedes parked near the second-best hotel in the town centre, which had the word ‘Taxi’ written badly on a piece of card in the front window. The driver was sitting on the pavement smoking a cigarette. With my colonel’s uniform, it was a straightforward exercise to get him into the car to take me wherever I wanted to go. That’s the advantage of totalitarian societies. Certain people make everyone afraid, unquestioning. Their own system can be turned against them far more easily than in a free country.

We drove to the nearest gas station and I paid to fill the car. Then I told the driver to head for the capital Tiraspol, further into Transdnestr, and to the rendezvous we’d arranged. Bendery and the border would be filled first with troops if the alarm were raised.

As I sat in the front seat, nursing what I feared was a fracture, I wondered whether any of this had been worth it; we had an itinerary of one of Reiter’s trucks. But if the alarm were raised they would change it. I was relying on the German driver’s unwillingness to risk admitting a mistake.