Alex Dryden - Red to Black

I left the taxi on the outskirts of Tiraspol. I gave the driver fifty dollars and told him there was another fifty in it for him if he went to a hotel in the city, stayed put in his room, and waited for me there for twenty-four hours. I didn’t want him on the road when checkpoints began to go up, if that was what was going to happen. I knew he’d do it for ten dollars, but fifty was more than he made in three weeks.

I then doubled back in the darkness the way we’d come and put the overalls and uniform into my backpack and wore what I had worn when I arrived across the river, ordinary clothes bought in Moldova.

Finn was waiting at the rendezvous in the main square, leaning against an old grey Subaru and I climbed into the car without speaking. We drove fast to the outskirts of the town and beyond, skirting in a wide arc that took us twenty miles to the south of Bendery. We left the car on a dirt track which had a few ramshackle houses scattered along it.

‘We should take the other route out,’ I said.

‘Fine,’ he said.

He didn’t ask me what had happened. He just held me for a few moments and then we walked towards the river.

There were barges plying the Dniester River down to the Black Sea. They stopped for refuelling by a wooden jetty on the bank. They carried grapes and other agricultural produce, scrap metal, plastic- anything that could get a better price in the Ukraine or further afield than here. Finn went and stood behind a wooden building that was boarded up.

I leaned on a fence and looked down at a man smoking on the deck outside the wheelhouse of a barge that looked as if it might make it the sixty or so miles to the Black Sea. He finally noticed me and made a lewd comment. I told him that for a couple of dollars I was his, whatever he liked. He didn’t think for long. I descended a walkway on to the deck and brought my knee into his solar plexus. I could smell the drink on him and he began to retch with the blow to his stomach.

I dragged him into the wheelhouse, tied him up to some pipes, gagged him, took his cap off his filthy head and put it on. Then I started the engine and climbed back up the walkway as Finn appeared. He cast off the two loose hawsers that secured the barge to the quay and pulled in the walkway. I took the wheel and we turned away into the current heading south towards the Black Sea.

It was getting dark and it would be as dark as it had been the night before when we had crossed the river. There was little river traffic at this hour, just the occasional barge pushing its way slowly up against the current in the opposite direction.

Finn took the wheel and we were making good way with the current in our favour. We had to be careful not to overshoot the target and become entangled with the guards who watched the bridge where the borders of Ukraine, Transdnestr and Moldova met.

I saw the pontoons first. They were over to the right-hand side of the river-to starboard, as Finn said–until I told him to talk in left and right. I realised how hard it was going to be to dock a 150-tonne barge against a pontoon with all the power of the current behind it.

Finn headed straight for the upright post at the far end of the pontoon and as we seemed to be about to hit it, he slammed the engine in full reverse and spun the wheel. The barge choked and struggled against the current coming up behind us and then slowly, its engine roaring, the barge hauled its stern towards the pontoon while the bow pressed against the post ahead.

I jumped on to the pontoon at the stern and Finn threw me a rope, which I secured, and then ran to the bow and did the same. The barge edged towards me, I hauled in the line and secured it again as we docked parallel to the pontoon.

Then I climbed back on to the barge and we picked up our packs.

As we stepped off on to the pontoon, we heard shouts from farther up the bank. I heard feet running along the pontoon from the shore and saw at least three men in uniform. We turned back, climbing on to the barge. Finn pointed into the fast-flowing black water and then we jumped.

The water was very cold, a start-of-summer temperature, and I gasped with shock. My leg hurt again where I’d fallen on it. I heard feet behind me on the wooden deck of the barge, then shouts. Finally there were gunshots ploughing wildly into the water. But we were travelling fast in the current and were soon fifty yards away, holding tight to each other, our packs gone.

Finn shouted at me to strike out for the shore. I saw, perhaps a mile ahead, twin searchlights that seemed to be coming from a bridge and which were shining their beams on to the river’s surface. It was the frontier with the Ukraine, below which was the Black Sea. The bank we were striking out for was Moldovan territory.

‘Don’t let go!’ Finn shouted, and we both struggled with one arm, inch by inch, working half with the current as we tried to cross it.

I felt nothing, no pain from my leg now, no fear, I was completely controlled by adrenalin. And I knew that this loss of all feeling would last me as long as it took to get to safety.

When we were nearly at the shore and the lights on the bridge ahead seemed dangerously close, a broken branch stretched its dead wood out from the bank and we both grabbed it and held on desperately, too exhausted to do anything else. Finally we pulled ourselves along the rotting wood until we touched the muddy bottom of the river. I hauled myself out, freezing in the cool night, and Finn followed. Without talking, we ran straight into the woods that lined the bank, hoping to avoid the patrols from the right where the pontoons were, and from the left where the bridge loomed now, close up and fully lit.

The woods ran all along the Moldovan side of the river and for several hundred yards inland. It was completely dark now. There were shouts from not far off, and dogs barking in the distance, the guards trespassing now on to the Moldovan side.

And then we suddenly came out of the trees and into a field. There was some spring-sown crop that was barely visible above the earth. We ran down the edge of this field and heard the dogs in the wood behind where our pursuers had now come far into Moldovan territory. I saw a vehicle coming down a road a few hundred yards ahead. We ran faster. We were well into Moldova now, but I knew that it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to our pursuers. I could still hear the dogs.

We ran on to the road before I realised in the darkness it was there. It must have curved sharply from where the vehicle was approaching and I fell with the shock of the drop in the ground. I heard a vehicle slamming on its brakes and then I must have passed out.

I WOKE UP IN BED.I didn’t know where I was or how long I’d been here. I could remember the race across the border, the truck, but then nothing. My head throbbed.

I saw Finn sitting at a laptop on the other side of the room. We were in a hotel bedroom, I saw. The sun was pouring through open windows and net curtains puffed in a warm breeze. Finn heard my grunt and looked around.

‘You’re awake, Rabbit.’

‘Mm.’ I leaned on one elbow and he grinned at me frowning. ‘It’s quite bright, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘It’s a beautiful day in Chisinau.’

‘Chisinau. So we made it.’

‘Of course we made it.’

‘You’re very full of yourself,’ I complained.

‘It’s nearly over,’ he said. ‘All this. We’re nearly at the end of the road.’

He brought a room-service menu over to me and kissed me.

‘There’s a doctor who can look at your leg, if you’d like. How’s your head?’

‘Hurting.’

‘Your leg’s not broken anyway.’

‘I’m fine. You choose something, will you?’ I said, handing him back the menu and sinking back on to the pillows.