Morgan Stone - The Russian Factor

Then the detective pulled out a photo I hadn’t sent Anna. My blood ran cold. I knew that photo. It had been taken in another time and another place by Vladimir’s wife. In it Vladimir and I grinned at the camera with a chess table between us. It confirmed that Vladimir knew I was involved and probably thought Anna was working for me. “Oh, shit. Where did you get this?”

“Maybe now you see this is not a joke. Spies are rats and in Ukraine we kill rats, especially arrogant rats like you.” He grinned at me. “But maybe I can help. Maybe today you can be a lucky rat and not get arrested.”

“Thank you.”

“ Thank you will not butter my bread.” The detective rattled off the Russian saying with well-practiced ease.

I wanted to kick his filthy brown teeth down his throat. This was all a shakedown for a bribe? To him, I was a rich westerner, an easy target. With forced calm, I explained that Anna had been kidnapped because she caught her mother in an act of corruption in front of the Prokuratura. The detective was unmoved. He’d seen it all, and buying off the Prokuratura was nothing new to a Ukrainian cop.

“Mother and daughter are waiting for Papa and a train back to Russia. They are safe from you.”

“They aren’t safe, and what papa? That man, Vladimir Ambalov? He will kill them.” I said.

“Mr. Ambalov is a respectable businessman.”

“Right…” I exhaled, folded my hands on his desk beside the overflowing ashtray and asked in as businesslike a manner as I could muster, “Fine, there’s no time to argue. How much? Twenty dollars?”

He laughed. “Flowers and chocolates for my girlfriend. That is nothing to you.”

“A hundred?” I asked.

“Let’s see it.”

Going for my pack got me to the grimy office window. Three blacked out Lexus sedans were pulling into the police compound. “Holy shit, we’re fucked!”

The detective recognized the expletives and gaped at the window. “Give me the hundred and get out of here.”

Vladimir stepped from the middle Lexus and adjusted his coat.

“He’s going to kill them!” I saw bodies in a ditch. A fire hose cleanup and never mind a few more craters in the concrete floor. “A thousand dollars for the girl and her mother, and get us out of here now! You know what we’re dealing with.”

The ashtray flew from his desk as the detective a snatched a ring of keys. One story below us, Vladimir and his henchmen headed for the detachment doors. “Come, fast. You have the money?”

“Yes! Get us out and it’s all yours, just go!” I followed the detective scrambling into the stairwell. Jumping two or three stairs at a time, I dug in my pack for the rest of the fifties.

Anna cried out as the detective and I clattered to a stop on loose floor tiles.

He fumbled with the keys. Loud voices and guffaws echoed down the hallway from somewhere up front.

“We’re getting out of here right now.” I had the wad of fifties crushed in my fist. “Vladimir is in the building. We’re going to get killed.”

The cell door swung open. The detective snatched the cash and, pointing at the side exit, rasped, “Out! Go! Never come back. Never come near me or this detachment again!”

The Skater, blathering accusations and threats, backed into the cell yanking Anna with her.

“Look here! I’m not your enemy. I know your boss. You’re both dead for fucking up.” I hauled Anna from the cell.

“Go now!” The detective pleaded. Leaving the keys dangling from the cell, he bolted for the stairwell.

“Nyet! You come home with me now or go to the Devil!” Anna’s mother growled at her.

“Mama, please. Don’t do this. Come away from here with us.” Anna begged.

“Go to hell!”

We were already clattering over loose floor tiles, sprinting for the side exit. Crashing through the door to the courtyard, the last thing we saw, looking back inside, was Yana heading the other way, toward Vladimir and his henchmen. “Anna, she’s going to bargain. Can you bloody believe it?” I whispered outside in the snow.

“I can not believe anything now. Not a single thing!”

I grabbed her hand and we rushed through the swirling snow for the iron gate. Vladimir’s drivers huddled by their cars, disinterestedly smoking.

“Jess, he will not let us through.” Anna slowed.

The gate guard stepped from his shack, blocking our way.

“Want to bet on that?” I pressed my last twenty into his hand.

He snorted, spat, then shoved the gate aside with the butt of his rifle.

We squeezed through and broke into a staggering run. The wind howled insanely through the overhead wires. Still, we heard the huge iron gate clanging shut behind us.

Bad breath and body odors permeating winter layers had the air in the packed subway nearly unbreathable. At the time, it smelled great — the stench of ordinary. Anna clung to a strap, swaying beside me. A delayed reaction to the narrow escape at the police station was playing catch-up and I was trying to outrun it. Regardless, riding the subway with Anna at my side, struck me as some kind of wonderful.

Desperately ill-conceived ideas I had of getting Anna started on a new life in Ukraine had been quashed by the reemergence of my old acquaintance, Vladimir, the Dnipro Don. Knowing him, he’d be convinced Anna was working for me — or for whoever signed my paltry paycheck. Regardless, we were squarely in his sights. I had to get out of Ukraine and, unless I wanted another black-and-white memento of someone else I’d let down, Anna was coming with me.

In this part of the world the fuzzy line between cops and criminals is nearly imperceptible. We made a beeline for the consular division of the Canadian Embassy. It was high time to get an official take on how fast and how far the local police could reach. What my country could do for me, and the shell shocked Russian I had in tow, was another matter.

The Canadian Embassy in Kiev is like a miniature of Canada with its lawns, multilingual signs, and the proud red and white maple leaf flying out front. The transition from frantic, brash Kiev to self-effacing Canadian earnestness is jarring. The man at the security desk greeted us politely in both French and English. I asked to speak to someone in the consular division, and without blowing up, pulling a gun, demanding a bribe or becoming abusive, he asked to see our identification.

“My passport, it is gone!” Anna rifled through her bag.

I was confused. She held what looked to me like a passport. Anna handed it to the man at the desk. “She may be correct,” he said, examining the document. “This is an internal passport. It is an identity document for use inside Russia. It is not a passport or an internationally recognized travel document.”

“I do not understand how I could lose it. I always keep it with my internal passport in this zippered pocket.” Anna held it open to demonstrate. “I checked this morning when we left the hotel. I definitely had it.”

“It’s okay, miss Keitel, this will do for now.” The clerk reached for the phone. “I’ll call the vice consul right away.”

“You know, Jess, when they were dragging me to McDonald’s, mother kept asking me if I had my documents. They ‘set me up’ — like you say. She was alone with my bag. She had a chance to steal it.”

“Ladies, please take a seat.” The clerk indicated a bright orange sofa. “It will be just a moment.”

At the time, the possibility of Anna’s mother stealing her daughter’s passport, hadn’t crossed my mind. It had, however, just crossed Anna’s.

The Vice Consul saw us right away. He escorted us from the lobby, through the consular inner sanctum, then to his office on the second floor. I gave him the run-down on the mess I’d gotten into with Anna and he told me what I already knew: that I had a Canadian passport and was therefore free to travel. He warned me, as if I didn’t already know, about the possibility of corruption and official or police payoffs that could, at any time, render travel very dangerous. He then offered me an escort to the airport where I could get a ticket on the first available flight out of the country — obviously, without Anna.