Morgan Stone - The Russian Factor

“Screw it!” I started toward the Opel.

“Jess?”

“Time to get the hell out of here. You coming?”

“You mean now? To Odessa, by car?”

“Don’t see an alternative. It’s too far to walk and we can’t take the train.” I knocked on the passenger window. The driver signaled us into the car. I eased myself onto the front passenger seat and Anna got in the back.

“Where to?” The curly blonde driver, thirtyish, conservatively dressed in a shirt and tie, and still focused on his paper, asked.

“Odessa.”

“Train station or airport?”

“Just downtown. Near the Odessa Opera House.” It would put us in the hotel district.

“All right, wherever. Are you going by train or plane?” He folded the paper, slapped it on the dash and glared at me.

“No, you misunderstand.” I said. “We need to get to Odessa and we would like to get there by car. Can you drive us, and if so, for how much?”

He put the car in gear and pulled around the corner. “Odessa is very far. A thousand kilometers, certainly. Very expensive to drive there.” He spoke to me in simple Russian, recognizing my foreign accent.

“It’s about six hundred kilometers. How about two hundred dollars, cash.” I said.

Anna, in the backseat, was silent.

“You crazy? That won’t buy gas! I need to drive back from Odessa and the car belongs to my brother-in-law.” He’d reverted to completely colloquial Russian.

“Fine, two fifty, cash, no names, and we go now.”

“ Blyad , you are on the run or you would take the train. Maybe you murdered someone. Maybe drugs. I don’t care, but I need something for my risk.”

I upped the offer. “Three hundred — take it or we get out and find another car.”

Anna popped the back door, stuck a leg out.

“Okay, okay, okay, three hundred in American dollars and I want to see it. We get pulled over and it is everyone for himself. All I know is you missed your tour bus or something.” He handed me a card. “My name is Dmitri.”

Anna got back in.

Keeping the cash concealed, I thumbed fifteen twenties from the wad in my pocket, pulled it out, showed it to him, and off we went. Our first stop was a couple hours south of Kiev: a seedy truck-stop with hookers trolling the idling rigs. A crumbling building, once a Soviet stalovaya — cafeteria — made up to look like a Swiss mountain chalet, was surrounded by rusting car and truck hulks. Dmitri needed a payphone. He claimed his cell phone didn’t work outside Kiev. Waiting, we leaned against the car, matching the suspicious stares of working girls, one for one.

“Jess, how can you know they are prostitutes?”

“Know anyone who isn’t that wears short-shorts, fishnets, spike heels and bares their midriff in winter?” Honestly, I was starting to wonder if Anna was actually Russian and just how sheltered an existence she had endured.

Dmitri swaggered toward us, hitching up his trousers. “Oye, I forgot, it’s a long trip. I need junk food and pop.” He stuck his hand out.

“What?”

“Money. I’m not driving all the way there hungry.”

I pulled some Ukrainian bills from my wallet.

“Dollars, give me dollars. They work better.” He snatched a twenty from my hand. “You ladies want something?”

“Can’t afford it. Just bring me the change and let’s get going.”

Laughing, he headed for the chalet.

On the road again, Dmitri sucked back can after can of some kind of highly caffeinated energy drink. Anna slept blissfully in the backseat while the Ukrainian steppe passed hypnotically by. An endlessly undulating prairie of snow and stubble accented occasionally with clumps of brush, rusting machinery, and lonely decaying buildings. I dozed off with my head wedged between the seat and the doorpost. Until I was jerked awake from the depths of a nightmare involving swerving, honking and revving engines, to find Dmitri in the heat of a caffeine fueled highway duel with a delivery van. I didn’t even know a delivery van could actually go 180 km/h! It took threatening to chuck his three hundred out the window to get him to finally break it off.

At first he’d come across as a decent enough guy. On the highway, however, he morphed into a total jerk. I was counting the kilometers to Odessa, when a police roadblock appeared over a rise. Of course, we were signaled over. I groaned, surreptitiously peeling a couple of twenties from the wad in my pocket. I slipped them to Dmitri.

“You’ve done this before.” He sneered, getting out to meet the officer walking toward us.

They chatted on the shoulder a couple of meters ahead of the car. I scanned the ditch and the frozen field beyond, running the odds Dmitri would kiss off the three hundred for a chance to sell us out. I noticed he’d taken the keys. Eventually, though, Dmitri and the officer shook hands, he got back in and I breathed a sigh of relief. “That forty does not come out of my three hundred,” Dmitri said, pulling away from the shoulder and waving genially to the officer.

The crumbling outskirts of Odessa were sliding past by early evening. The highway had widened into six or more lanes, an asphalt ribbon traversing an immense valley of unhealthy scrub forest interspersed with half collapsed warehouses, abandoned factories and fields of tangled metal. Attention grabbing billboards appeared randomly, extolling a better life with the products they touted. There was one of the smiling former prime-minister, Yuliya Tymoshenko, lovingly cradling a seedling. It was disturbingly out of place in the post apocalyptic landscape.

Dmitri, scheming for a way to continue the flow of American dollars, declared we would dine together in Odessa. Having a feeling it would be my treat, I suggested the food fair at a downtown mall I’d frequented before.

He insisted on a table in the deserted smoking section.

“We don’t smoke.”

“So what, there’s nobody here.” Dmitri plunked down his tray and pulled up a chair. “Blyad, I need a cigarette and some fresh air.” He shoved his chair back, got up and walked away.

Anna jabbed me with an elbow.

“Ouch, what?”

She pointed at the cigarettes and lighter Dmitri left on his food tray.

A few minutes later he was back, examining the cell phone he’d said only worked in Kiev. “We need to find a place to stay tonight. And I think you are going a lot further than Odessa. Out of the country, probably.”

“What do you mean, ‘ We need to find a place?’” I ignored the part about where we were going.

“Da, you do not expect me to drive all the way back to Kiev tonight. In the dark, all alone, so tired. It is one day each way. You buy me food. You rent me a room.”

“I do?”

“Da, and not out of the three hundred you owe me, understand?” He stabbed at a Tater Tot with a plastic fork. “Do not worry about it. I know an excellent cheap hotel near here. It will not cost many of your precious dollars.”

Long after we had finished eating, Dmitri was nursing his third or forth diet Coke, Anna was complaining, and I wanted to go, but Dmitri insisted on, “Just a few more minutes. After all I have done for you, you can’t let me finish my drink in peace?”

“Fine, whatever.”

Finally, a wiry old man in a leather cape and tall riding boots sauntered in. He was casting his gaze around the empty eating area as though it were occupied by a Roman legion on a dinner break. Until, that is, he spotted an empty seat. What luck, it just happened to be at the next table. He opened a notebook, stared at us and started taking notes. The strange man’s blatant eavesdropping annoyed the hell out of me. About to launch into him with some snide remark, I noticed that his notebook was full of navigational calculations. Beside him was a neatly folded maritime map of the port of Odessa.