Garry Abson: Motherland: A Gripping Crime Thriller Set in the Dark Heart of Putin's Russia

‘I want go home,’ Ksenia wailed.

He tried the key in the lock; it opened, and he leant across the seats to open her door from the inside. She cradled Ksenia as she climbed in, then picked up the bag from the pavement. Ksenia’s crying tailed off as she became aware of the man sitting next to her and squirmed to see what was happening.

He started the engine. ‘Shit, I forgot to bring a child seat.’

‘Don’t worry, just go.’

Ksenia whimpered, cradled in her arms and cocooned in the blankets. Soon, her soft snores were drowned out by the noise of the engine.

The Alexander Nevsky Bridge was blocked by traffic when they reached it.

‘Christ, look at this.’ He ran a hand through his hair and stared at three lanes of brake lights. ‘When will they come?’

It took her a moment to realise he was talking about Sasha and Vova. ‘They’ll know by now.’

‘What are we going to do?’

Two fireworks launched prematurely from a barge on the Neva, their brilliant tips burning like phosphorous flares, illuminating the people in the queueing cars. She squirmed in her seat – they were barely two hundred metres from her apartment on the most obvious route out of the city.

‘Hope and pray.’

Red lights winked as the traffic edged forward and she tried to focus on Ksenia’s easy breaths.

The spell was broken by his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. ‘We could go to the police?’

She snorted in disbelief. ‘You want the militia to help you run away with a married woman? They’ll take me home and steal your money.’

‘Will he come after you?’

‘Yuri? He’ll never stop… I told him I was leaving.’

‘You did what?’

‘Relax – I wrote to him in Krasnodar.’

She enjoyed seeing the shock on his face. ‘Don’t worry, the mail system is shit. We could be anywhere in the world by the time he reads it.’

‘What did you say?’

‘“Hey husband, you evil bastard. We’ve gone. Don’t bother looking, you’ll never find us.”’ She smiled at him. ‘It’s not Tolstoy.’

Two hours had gone by since they’d left the city behind. The heater was on full but still she shivered. Out here, away from the water and heading north to Finland, forests threatened the road and the temperature dropped to minus thirty in winter. Ksenia stirred with the noise of the engine and Kristina shifted position, bringing circulation to her numb right arm. The silence was oppressive in the Zhiguli and he broke it by turning on the radio; there was nothing except static and he switched to long-wave. She heard the President’s voice and was stunned.

There had been the horror of Chechnya, then everyone’s savings had been wiped out when the rouble crashed. And still Yeltsin survived, propped up by Berezovksy and the other oligarchs. He’d gone to America and been discovered drunk outside the White House in his underwear. On the TV puppet show, Kukly , she had cringed as he was humiliated again and again.

‘He’s leaving,’ she said in shock. ‘Boris Yeltsin is resigning.’

She twisted the volume control to hear it over the Zhiguli’s engine and caught phrases:

“I want to ask for your forgiveness because many of our dreams didn’t come true… the pain of every one of you, I feel in myself, in my heart… in saying goodbye, I want to say to every one of you: be happy. You deserve happiness. You deserve happiness, and peace.”

The old buffoon had made her cry. She dipped her head forwards to dab her tears on the arm of her jacket.

Now the Acting President, a KGB goon called Putin, was promising freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. She wondered if he was smirking while he spoke. At least he didn’t drink, maybe he was what the country needed now: someone serious and sober.

They were travelling faster, a hundred kilometres an hour on the empty carriageway; the Zhiguli’s lights illuminating cones of snowflakes. She wanted to tell him to slow down but she was just as impatient to get away. The radio announcer cut to a live broadcast outside the Kremlin and they sat in silence as the bells of Spasskaya Tower clock chimed.

‘Happy New Year, darling.’ She reached across to squeeze his hand. ‘To our happiness and peace.’

‘I love you,’ he said.

‘I love you too.’ She offered a smile to cover up the white lie.

He yanked his hand from hers.

She looked at him, confused, and saw him gripping the steering wheel; his mouth had fallen open.

The Zhiguli slid silently along the iced road. He stamped on the brake pedal; the car jerked to the left. She held Ksenia tightly against her chest. The Zhiguli cut across the opposite carriageway and there was a smashing of steel that thrust her forwards. She floated in clear air and screamed all the way down.

Zena Dahl tried to focus on her bottle of Nevskoe Pale but it was no good, the damned thing had a life of its own. Beyond it, plates with the remains of pickled herring, salmon in dill, and beetroot salad performed a Day-Glo dance before her eyes. She squinted at her blurred reflection on the metal napkin holder, seeing how her thick blonde hair had curled from the humidity in the bar.

‘You shouldn’t say that, Zena.’

She looked up. Yulia’s face was sliding, presenting multiple images of straightened brown hair and coral lips. Zena screwed up her eyes and a single version of Yulia appeared; it scowled at her then sucked on an e-cigarette, tilted its head back, and blew the steam upwards.

Oh, crap. The conversation came back to her. She’d been talking loudly about corruption – one of her father’s stupid arguments.

‘Sorry, I can’t drink like this.’ She puffed her cheeks and blew.

Yulia tucked the e-cigarette into her knock-off Gucci handbag before picking up her bottle of Budweiser Light. ‘You’re right by the way.’

Zena smiled and clinked her bottle against Yulia’s Bud.

‘Zdorovye.’ The word stumbled from her mouth.

Yulia drained her beer, then looked around. ‘Let’s get out of here, this place is dull.’

Outside, the heat of the day still lingered and a light breeze brushed against her bare arms without raising goose pimples. The pale light of the sun made Zena check her watch for reference: it was a little after 11 p.m. The street was full of tourists and she sucked in a few deep breaths to try and sober up. Yulia was already ahead, working her way through a small crowd that had slowed to watch a fire-eater. Zena followed her, taking a left onto the main road where a row of SUVs were parked. A group of drivers stood nearby, smoking. A queue stretched along the pavement, the length of six of the enormous cars.

Yulia turned to her. ‘This one’s new. I’ve heard good things about it.’ Then she added softly, ‘You do the talking.’

Zena understood; they had done this before. Foreigners were always in the news: Kazakhs and Uzbeks were stealing jobs, the Chinese were taking over Siberia by stealth, and NATO, as always, was out to destroy Russia; yet being foreign was still an advantage when it came to getting into the city’s bars and clubs.

She watched the doorman approach. He had no right to look as relaxed as he did in a pair of navy jodhpurs, a brown shirt with red flashes on the collar, and a red peaked cap. The effect of the vintage uniform was spoiled by a coiled earpiece wire trailing along his neck and disappearing behind his collar. She looked for the name of the bar and saw Cheka in the Latin alphabet.

‘Hey, you must be the secret police,’ she said in English, trying to sound friendly, or at least not as drunk as she was feeling.