Morgan Stone - The Russian Factor

So secret, she told me, that she had been living a double life from the time her mother became suspicious of her contact with me months earlier. When she acted on my advice to come clean with the fiancé she didn’t like, he started blackmailing her. He couldn’t care less how she felt about him and used the threat of telling The Skater her daughter refused to marry him to secure Anna’s favors and attention. When Anna began to crumble emotionally under his blackmail, he upped the threat to accusing Anna publicly of being a lesbian if she didn’t perform. She knew that in Putin’s Russia, regardless of the veracity of the accusation, it was a very real and grave threat. She was desperate to get out of Russia. I was starting to fear for her life when she called me, out of breath and sobbing, “Jess, I come now! Will be from Moscow on airplane at Borispil on twenty hours and ten minutes. Must not talk…”

Unable to sit still after Anna’s call, and nervous as hell for her, I headed for the subway downtown. That’s when and where I’d come face to face with the dead man on the metro and the local indifference to a stranger’s death. It was hard to get used to.

On the way to the airport, Yevgeniy picked me up at the apartment, then Luda at her grandmother’s and, finally, after crossing the frozen Dniper River, Galina. She was shivering on a corner, waiting outside for us. We got to the Borispil International Airport an hour before Anna’s arrival in order to case-the-joint, so to speak, looking for people looking for us or whom we might recognize. Although we were operating on the belief The Skater didn’t know her daughter had left Nizhny Novgorod, we had confirmation that Anna’s mother and bodyguard were in Kiev at the time. We weren’t going to be taking any chances.

In my mind I was obsessively replaying communications with Anna, trying to convince myself she wasn’t a plant and this wasn’t a trap. Anna had texted from Moscow that she had to shake off her suspicious boyfriend by telling him she was visiting a family approved friend. He’d accompanied her to an intercity bus to make sure she was in her seat as the bus left the terminal. Safely out of sight of the bus depot, Anna asked the driver to let her off the bus. She then doubled back to the train station. She texted me after arriving at the last minute in Moscow’s Domodedevo airport. I’d felt some relief, but wondered if Anna knew her mother and Sergei were, in fact, in Kiev. Waiting for the flight to get in from Moscow, the ramifications of that particular thought didn’t sit well with me.

As usual, the flight was late. By the time people started emerging from customs I was a nervous wreck. I knew it was Anna when a lone woman, taller than I expected, strode through the double doors. She spotted me grinning like an idiot in the crowd of people waiting for their arriving parties. Her eyes locked on mine, she smiled from ear to ear and broke her gaze by rolling her eyes toward the ceiling and looking away. All I saw where she was looking was a blank wall.

She walked right by me, taking long strides in jeans and green Doc Martens. The small suitcase she pulled behind her sounded like a jet fighter on the polished floor. I was surprised she didn’t head right to me, she obviously saw me. I glanced toward Luda and saw her shrug her shoulders then shoot a puzzled look at Galina. Anna came to a stop in the expansive foyer near the exit doors and carefully scanned the area. Of course, she was checking for danger instead of plunging head first into the crowd. I started toward her, watching for signs of a trap. When I opened my arms, she ran toward me leaving the little suitcase behind. We embraced and buried our faces in each other’s necks.

“Jess, oh Jess, it is you. Truly it is you?” Her tears were wet on my cheek.

“Yes, it’s me.” I pulled back to look into her eyes. Her face was stained with ruined makeup and mascara. “It’s okay now, Anna. You made it. You’re safe now.”

She wasn’t ready to break the embrace, or maybe she didn’t want me to see her tears. She held me tight, head on my shoulder, sobbing. I stroked her over-permed, over-gelled hair. Over her shoulder I saw Galina approaching with Anna’s suitcase. I tried to signal her to leave us for a minute. Alerted by the not-so-stealth fighter jet roar of her suitcase and my change in body language, Anna whirled and faced Galina. “Who that is?” She snatched her suitcase. Her expression was pure panic. She started to back off.

I carefully took Galina’s hand. “This is my friend Galina. She can translate for us.” I said slowly in English for Anna’s comprehension. I hoped Galina caught my drift.

Galina gave me a look like I was nuts, but played along.

Anna was ready to bolt, but held her ground.

“My friends came to the airport with me. They will drive us back to Kiev.” I nodded toward Luda and Galina, and waved Yevgeniy over with a reassuring smile. “These are my friends. It is okay. We can trust them.”

Galina looked at me then started to translate. In Russian, she introduced herself then Luda and Yevgeniy.

Heading for the exit, Yevgeniy brought the language problem to a head by asking me, in Russian, whether or not Anna had any luggage and if he should bring the car. Without thinking, I answered him in my reasonably adequate Russian, realizing what I’d done when Anna said, “You speak Russian now?”

We stopped dead in our tracks.

“ Da, konyeshna — Yes, of course — I learned it on the plane.” I said it in Russian.

Everyone looked at Anna. We waited while she thought it through before continuing toward the exit. Without slowing down she said in Russian, “Good, we’ll speak Russian now. I was worried about how we would communicate.”

Out the doors, into the Arctic blast, across the ice locked parking lot, Anna kept looking over at me, stealing glances. Although she tried, she was losing the battle to conceal her Cheshire cat grin.

I was sandwiched between Luda and Anna in the backseat. Galina sat up front with Yevgeniy. The three Ukrainians chatted politely, in Russian, on the drive into town. Dark coniferous forest gave way to squalid urban sprawl which morphed into wide avenues between endless rows of Soviet apartment blocks. Anna was mostly silent. She gazed out the window, smiling, exhausted. Taking my hand in hers, she wound her fingers, with their painted nails, through mine and played with my wedding ring. Twisting it round and round absentmindedly. I’d never really thought of not wearing it, hadn’t really thought of it at all, until then.

Too late for protests, it was quiet when we pulled up in front of the Prokuratura. Luda insisted on carrying Anna’s suitcase and seeing us up to the apartment. Galina and Yevgeniy stayed with the car. Luda was the first one in, checking the apartment, something I found unnecessary and hard to explain. I didn’t need to. Anna and I stood on the stairwell landing getting the inevitable, “good flight?” nervous chit-chat out of the way.

Luda popped her perfectly coifed head out the door. “You can come in now. I have put on some tea.”

Anna looked around, pie-eyed, as though she was expecting a surprise.

I shrugged out of my huge suede coat and pried my feet from my boots.

“Anna, your room is through the living room, and is the first door to the right.” Luda helped Anna out of her down filled parka. “Your suitcase is at the foot of your bed, I have turned it down for you. Oh, and clean towels are on your dresser.”

“I have a room?” Anna asked. “And a bed?” She was kind of in shock.

“You do, indeed. You weren’t expecting to sleep on the floor I hope.”