Morgan Stone - The Russian Factor

“Why did you leave it at the apartment? That is crazy!”

“Because getting caught with it would get me killed.”

“But Jess, you know they are going to find the apartment, probably the film.”

“Right, but they won’t know it was me that took the pictures.” I had a chilling insight. “Actually, my dear, you’re the only one from the apartment they will have identified.”

“So, we have to go back there to get it? The film?” Anna asked.

“You don’t need to come.”

“But I want to come. I need to be with you and I want to know what’s happening. You are all I have got now. I got you into this nightmare and I’m sure not getting out of it without you.”

“I thought it was all my fault for inviting you to Kiev in the first place.”

Silence.

“Anna, maybe you don’t realize this, but I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“That’s not true. You got away from Sergei, not once, but twice and he really does know what he is doing. He was in Chechnya.”

“I don’t doubt it, and great, Chechnya is a badge of honor for guys like Sergei.” Recalling how I got away from him, I said, “Actually, the first time it was you who saved me from Sergei! The second time, the cops…”

“But you got his gun…”

I cut her off with a raised hand. “And I bribed them, the cops, that is. I purchased our freedom. Guess I was the highest bidder. Spies aren’t soldiers, and hell, I’m not even a spy, whatever that is, I’m a contractor, and guess what.”

“What am I to guess?”

“I’m not even a contractor anymore!” Saying it out loud made it way too real. My stomach tightened. “Geeze, Anna, I really have to get into that apartment.”

“Don’t you think they’ll be there waiting for us?”

“I don’t think so.” I stared outside into the swirling snow. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll keep a sharp lookout and I need that film to get paid. I have a feeling we’re really going to need the money.”

“I’m not sure I want either one of us to die for that film, even if it means you get paid.” Anna said.

“I agree, but you really don’t need to come. I, on the other hand, have no choice in the matter. We’re going to need the money. ” I stood up. Cinching my coat, I dug in my pockets for change.

Anna didn’t move. “Hold on, let me just think here for a second.”

I threw some coins on the table. “It’s not your job. You don’t have to go. I’ll meet you back here. Play with the laptop. This cafe is open longer than it’s going to take me to get back.” I turned for the door.

“Wait. If you are really going to do it, I am going with you. I don’t have a choice either. I’m not going to sit here thinking you’ve been killed.” Anna hefted the Roots pack. “Can’t you see it, Jess? You’re not in this alone.”

Déjà vu hit me hard as the subway decelerated into the Pecherska station. Less than twenty-four hours before, we’d been on our way out of there, heading downtown with nowhere to go. Returning, nothing was unusual. Just like always, riders getting off piled against the doors as the train slowed. On the platform, those waiting to get on, had assembled opposing forces. The train stopped. The doors opened like chutes at the Calgary Stampede unleashing a ton of riled bull, and the commuters commenced battle. It’s a relentless shoving match repeated every couple of minutes throughout rush-hour at every station at every egress point. The daily commute honed to an extreme sport.

The Kiev Metro authority, in an attempt to calm the crowd surging to and from the semi-functional escalators, pipes in the soothing strains of Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude on a continuous loop. The hypnotic Prelude was nearing the end of its second repetition by the time we neared the top of the escalators.

“Devil!” Anna pointed down the escalator. “There is Sergei.”

We shoved our way up the last dozen steps.

The Central Election Commission’s square was deserted, a barren expanse of blowing snow. “A bloody turkey-shoot if we don’t high-tail it.” I grabbed Anna and pulled her toward the last of the crowd crossing Kutuzova Boulevard.

Tires spun on gravelly ice. I snapped my head around. A white Lada sedan was headed right for us. Its overtaxed engine roared painfully as the car fishtailed through the red light. I shoved Anna toward the panicking pedestrians a split second before it struck me from behind. My knees buckled and my rear-end caved in the tin-can hood. Sliding off the passenger side of the car, my back hit the road first. The shockwave drove my knees up into my chest.

In photographic detail, I watched the passenger door leave its frame as the skinhead inside shouldered it open. I pivoted off my shoulders, arching my back, driving my legs toward the car. My heavy boots accelerated past my face, past my raised hips, and squarely into the door. It caved in, catching the guy’s fingers, giving me seconds to get on my feet and scramble to the opposite curb.

I grabbed Anna by the straps of my Roots backpack — good thing she’d been wearing it or the laptop would have been toast — and yanked her into motion. “You shouldn’t be here! Run!”

“ We shouldn’t be here!” Anna yelled, breaking into a sprint.

Running down Lesi Ukrainky, I heard the Lada’s engine-RPM red-line. It mounted the sidewalk in hot pursuit. We were hemmed in on our right by a palisade of apartment buildings and by the boulevard to our left. An opening into a courtyard lay dead ahead. I grabbed Anna’s hand and yanked her in behind me. The Lada bounced off the curb and skidded by.

I knew from previous shortcuts that the courtyard was a typical Soviet inspired vertical sided crater formed by several apartment blocks enclosing a common area. The buildings, like the apartment we’d abandoned twenty four hours earlier, were accessed by stairwells and shafts. There was only one opening at the bottom of each shaft and no connecting corridors. Only one way in and only one way out, through heavy steel self-locking doors at the bottom of each shaft. I scanned light sources for one that reached all the way to the ground, desperate for a stairwell door left ajar.

When I’d lateraled right, into the courtyard with Anna, I’d heard the Lada’s doors slam. Now it was hollered threats accompanied by jack-booted feet pumping pavement, crushing ice. It was like the thugs were right on us when I saw a sliver of light. One of those steel doors, left ajar. I whirled, colliding with Anna. Begging the door not to shut, I jammed my hand into the crack and hauled it open. We flew through into the stairwell, pulling the handle hard behind us. The door slammed locked just before the skinheads piled into it.

“Go, go, go!” I yelled, pointing up the stairwell. Anna scrambled for the stairs and I punched the top floor button in the elevator and jumping out before its doors closed.

We climbed five or six floors up through the crumbling cement stairwell. The skinheads’ pounding on the entrance below went silent. Like hikers treed by a grizzly, we waited and listened.

Anna sat on the sixth floor landing. The upper floors might have been abandoned. There was no light other than an eerie mercury vapor glow oozing in through filthy stairwell windows. “Well, what now?” Her feet rested on the top stair, she hugged her knees.

“I have no idea.” I eased myself down beside her. It invoked an interesting symphony of pain.

Anna might have sensed it. She put her arm around me and my layers of insulation, sighed and lowered her chin to my shoulder. “I guess we wait.”

Eventually we descended. I cracked the door to the courtyard, half expecting the business end of a handgun to poke through. Nothing… we were okay, so far. “I knew this wasn’t a good idea.”