Morgan Stone - The Russian Factor

A minute later the driver killed the engine. “Gasoline is expensive. Anytime you’re ready, let me know.”

Blink, blink, blink. I still had the shocked retinal after image, but no telltale jagged edges surrounded it. With luck I wasn’t getting a migraine. A genetic inheritance, or curse, that could incapacitate me with excruciating pain and loss of vision almost without warning. Something I’d lived with all my life. I popped the back door to get out.

“Jess, what are you doing?” It was Anna.

“Staying here. Just for a little while. I need to check on flights.”

Anna opened the front passenger door, stuck out a bright green Doc Marten clad foot.

“No, I want you to go back to the hotel with the driver. I won’t be long. I’ll take a taxi back.”

The driver started the engine obliterating Anna’s reply. I smiled and pressed my palm to the tinted window as the car pulled away.

Less-than-free countries’ propensity to decide on who can and who can’t leave, in conjunction with Anna’s passport being tagged, threw up serious roadblocks. I needed to scout the airport for a way of getting to the flight-side and onto a plane without going through Ukrainian passport control. In Saratov, chartering a passenger jet after befriending the airline’s chief pilot and loading the dazed passengers so early the previous night’s drunks still staggered on icy sidewalks, effectively eliminated the need for passport control. But in Odessa, I was on my own, facing commercial carriers with no contacts and no plan of action.

In the terminal, I watched passenger circulation, then used my credit card without incident to buy a one way ticket to Bucharest. So far, so good. The first real test came when the ticket agent examined my passport. A moment later she gave it back with a boarding pass allowing me to wait for departure on the other side of passport control.

Security was minimal. Ancient equipment, probably leaking enough x-ray radiation to cook a good size turkey, made for impressive optics. Bored looking personnel, decked out with assault weaponry, occupied various positions throughout the terminal. I thought they might be mannequins until one of them dug something out of his ear with a pinky finger. The crowd behaved, and things ran smoothly unless someone, convinced their suitcase wouldn’t survive without being mummified in layers of stretch wrap, was asked to open it.

The next step, passport control, was far more formidable than security. Personnel sat behind bullet proof glass, wearing Kevlar body armor. Their cubicles were equipped with modern workstations and scanning equipment. Of greatest interest to me were the thick fiber-optic network cables leading up into crudely hacked holes in the suspended ceiling. New toys for exceptionally well-equipped and officious agents. An officer, looking fresh out of boot-camp, took my passport and stared me down. I wondered what the chances were I’d be able to call the Canadian Vice Consul in Kiev if this went badly. He fed my passport to a scanner, stared at a screen I couldn’t see, and glared at me. I started to sweat.

“How you get here?” Kevlar man gave English his best shot.

“Through security. Here’s my boarding pass.” I answered in Russian.

“How did you get here , to Odessa? You arrived in Kiev. Why are you not leaving from Kiev?”

“Drove to Odessa with friends.”

He said nothing.

“In a car. I joined my friends in Kiev and we drove to Odessa in their car.”

Still nothing. I swear I could hear the air whistling in his nostrils.

“Nice drive?”

“What? Oh, the drive down. Yes, lovely. What a countryside.”

Then he asked me where I had stayed in Odessa and why I was going to Bucharest. I actually named the Windsor Arms before I could stop myself and suggested I’d do some hiking in Romania. I guess he was satisfied because he handed back my passport and boarding pass and waved me through.

In the vintage 1960’s lounge, I ordered some sort of cognac that tasted medicinal — they didn’t have decent whiskey — and planted myself by a glass wall overlooking the tarmac. Passengers deplaned into old trolley cars pulled by tractors. One of the smaller aircraft was being boarded by passengers walking the thirty meters or so from the terminal. As far as I could see, security was absent on the flight side, and ground crew in coveralls or jeans wandered around looking bored. I watched a blacked out sedan pull up to an isolated Airbus A320. The driver and an airline agent got out. The driver opened the back door for a bald man in a glossy business suit and long pointy shoes. Then the airline agent escorted the shiny suited man up the movable stairs and onto the plane. A few minutes later the car drove away and the hybrid tractor-trolley cars arrived at the jet with the regular passengers. At least I had gotten more than just cognac-fueled heartburn from my test run through the airport.

I triggered my cell phone to ring, pretended to answer, and staged a conversation that included, “I’ll be right back. No, I’m leaving right now. Forget the flight, I can go tomorrow.” I looked at the bartender, a man with a gravity-defying handlebar mustache, and asked how to get out of the airport from there. He took me past the passport control cubes to an airline desk where I explained there was a crisis in town and I wouldn’t be able to use my ticket. Surprisingly, the airline refunded my money. I made a show of hurrying from the terminal.

Once outside, I watched the sedan I’d seen deliver the shiny suited special passenger, leave the airfield through a manned vehicle gate. The car joined traffic and headed toward town. It struck me that getting VIPs onto planes like that was one way of avoiding the terminal and its passport control technology. I headed back inside and up to a second floor mezzanine where I’d spotted an office of the airline the A320 belonged to.

The airline official I’d seen on the flight side was unlocking the door as I approached. “The ticket office is downstairs.” He told me in richly accented Russian.

“Actually sir, I would like to inquire about arranging VIP boarding on one of your flights.” I spoke in English. “Is this the right place to ask?”

“It is, indeed,” the official beamed. “Please take a seat. Would you care for some tea?”

A dark skinned pre-teen entered the office from a side door, swinging a silver tray on chains. The tray was covered with tiny glass teacups, sugar cubes, little spoons, and sweets. She spoke to the airline official in a soft Arabic language and left. The official and I spoke English. “Now, what is the destination, how many people are traveling and what special, eh hem , services, will your passengers require?”

“Just one passenger requiring discrete boarding, and myself. Cairo or Istanbul as soon as tomorrow would be ideal.” I took an awkward sip of something that tasted like spicy apples from a tiny bulbous cup.

“Alright. As I’m sure you appreciate, we cannot expose the airline to any, shall we say, criminality… not that there is any, of course. Then there is the matter of payment.”

It occurred to me that I might soon be looking at figures that rivaled the Russian consulate’s twenty grand. At least this guy meant business, and I had, after exhausting all reasonable, and unreasonable, escape routes from the CIS, promised myself I’d get us out or die trying. “There’s no risk for the airline.” I said. “This passenger is free to travel, is not a criminal and is admissible to Egypt, but might have a problem leaving Ukraine owing to, shall we say, people , who want to stop her.”

“These people, they are perhaps the Ukrainian government? Perhaps the police?”

“No, this person’s passport was tagged by someone paying police in Nizhny Novgorod to ensure she would be stopped by passport control and returned to Russia.”