Julia Gousseva - Gray Shadows - Russian Historical Thriller

Nikolai led Andrei around the perimeter of the fence, past the security building, past all the office buildings, and to the area where he and Vanya had discovered the tunnel. The two lamp posts had new lights in them now, and they were shining down on the stack of metal roof panels and the fence beyond them.

“See these roof panels?” Nikolai said. “There’s a tunnel under them.”

“A tunnel? In this freezing ground? Any idea how long it’s been here?”

“I couldn’t tell by looking at it, but the panels here are recent, so I’d venture to say that the tunnel hasn’t been here for too long. I bet it’s a gift for the board meeting.”

“Anything inside there?” Andrei asked and came closer.

“Nothing.”

Nikolai shone his flashlight around the panels but could not spot any signs of recent activity, then came up to the fence and peered at the other side. In the permanent darkness that was Upper Luzinsk’s Arctic winter, it was hard to discern much. The three trees that he noticed before were still there and still as straight as before, and there were no discernible footprints or tire tracks in the snow. Of course, even if somebody had been there, on foot or in a vehicle, all the traces would have been erased by the previous night’s snowfall.

“As far as I can tell, everything is the way Vanya and I had left it, so I don’t think anybody has been here,” Nikolai said. “Of course, they don’t need to come here now. It’s a getaway route, and there’s nothing to get away from yet. So, that’s what I wanted to show you. Shall we head back?.”

“And who are they, these people who made the tunnel? You don’t have any leads, do you?” Andrei said.

“None,” Nikolai said. “Hired help, as Anatoly calls them. Contract killers.”

“I figured that much,” Andrei said.

They stepped away from the fence and started walking back.

“What’s going on here?” they heard Natalya’s voice. “We’re all preparing for this big meeting, and you’re going for walks? Nothing better to do?”

She was walking towards them, a big white scarf wrapped around her, her long fur coat almost touching the snow. Her hands, thick mittens on them, were swinging freely, adding to a glamorous and carefree look. To Nikolai, she looked out of place in this not-so-glamorous town and in stark contrast to his and Andrei’s serious mood.

“We were just checking on these roof panels,” Nikolai said. “Vanya thought somebody was trying to steal them the other night. The real question is what are you doing here, Natalya? And how did you know we were here?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t know. I was bored, so I just followed you guys here.”

“Doesn’t Pyotr Alekseevich need your help?” Nikolai said.

“Not now. He’s meeting with some regional bosses, and they all speak Russian.”

“All right. Please don’t follow us again. It could be dangerous. But since you’re here, let me introduce you to your new bodyguard, Andrei.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Andrei said.

Natalya smiled. “You look like you’ve been in this job for a while,” she said to Andrei as the three of them headed back to Pyotr Alekseevich’s office. “You don’t seem as uptight as Nikolai here.”

“Appearances can be deceptive,” Andrei said.

“Maybe so,” Natalya said. “So tell me, how did you get into this job?”

“First you tell me how you got a job here. Isn’t this a boring place for a young pretty woman? All darkness and snow, and not even a movie theater for entertainment?” Andrei said.

“A job is a job, and this one pays well. Many times more than a similar job in Moscow if I could even get one there. Not many people want to come all the way here, you know.”

“Like you really need the money,” Nikolai said.

“I don’t want to take my dad’s money anymore. I want to make my own and spend it the way I want to,” Natalya said. “After this job is done, I’m going to Cyprus. Warm water, sunny days, the beach. I want to learn scuba-diving.”

“Sounds nice,” Andrei said. “How long are you staying here?”

“As long as I need,” Natalya said. “Now tell me about yourself, Andrei. How did you become a bodyguard?”

“Do you really want to know or are you just making conversation?” Andrei asked.

“I really want to know. I’ve never met any bodyguards before, besides you and Nikolai, and I’m curious.”

“All right, I’ll tell you,” Andrei said. “I was planning to go to college to study engineering but didn’t get enough points to get in, so, like all other young guys, I was drafted into the military. While serving my two years, I kept reading engineering and math books in the little free time that I had. I was really determined to get into an engineering school. But then something changed, and I lost interest in all that.”

“Why?” Natalya asked. “What happened?”

“The 1991 August coup happened and it changed everything. The division I served in was sent to the Russian Parliament building where President Yeltsin was working on a plan to resist the coup. At first, when our division got called to the building, I thought we were supposed to support Yeltsin, bring democracy back, and all those lofty kinds of things. I was proud to be there even though the orders were not clear: they told us to surround the building and just maintain order. Still, that made sense to me: thousands of Yeltsin supporters gathered in front of the building, everyone was agitated, and when nerves are on edge in a big crowd, all kinds of dangerous things can happen. So, I completely understood and accepted the assignment. But as the day progressed, I saw the conflict between the coup leaders and Yeltsin get more and more serious. And I also realized that the orders we got were from the coup leaders, not from Yeltsin’s group. By the evening, there was talk of storming the building. And do you know what that meant?”

“What?” Natalya asked.

“It meant that we, the soldiers, would have to shoot our own people, Muscovites like us. There was no way I was going to do it. The military is supposed to protect its people from external enemies, not shoot them. And, of course, you know what happened next, right?”

“Sure,” Natalya said. “I was little but I remember how happy my parents were when the soldiers and all the tanks sent to the Parliament disobeyed their military orders from the coup leaders and joined Yeltsin’s defenders.”

Andrei nodded. “Yes, and that’s exactly what we did, with all our tanks.”

“When we heard the news, we were all cheering and eating ice-cream. My mom always told me that the support of the military was the deciding factor in the outcome of the coup. If you guys weren’t that brave, who knows where we would be now.”

“In Siberia, probably, in some labor camp,” Andrei said. “Working all day for a bowl of soup.”

Nikolai chuckled. “And now we’re even farther than Siberia, but at least we are working for money.”

“But I still don’t understand how that coup made you want to become a bodyguard, Andrei,” Natalya said.

“I’ve always thought of myself as a patriot, but I only realized what that really meant during those days and nights of the August coup. Before, I was thinking about myself, my engineering studies, my future. I was limited to my own world and did not even know it. And when I was at the Parliament building, with all those people around me who came there out of their own free will because they wanted to see a better future for our country, I felt that I needed to protect them, to defend them. I was ready to die for them because of the ideals they had and of the hopes they were trying to fulfill. Not their own little individual hopes, but hopes of the whole country. It was at that moment that I realized that protecting each person or even just one person is the highest form of patriotism. To be a patriot, you need to believe in what you’re defending and know what or who you’re defending. The job of a bodyguard, protecting one specific client from harm, felt like the ultimate form of patriotism to me.”