Dale Brown - Puppet Master

Tolevi didn’t recognize the man — or the car, for that matter.

“Who are you?” he asked in Russian.

“Boris send me.” The man stuck to English. “His wife have baby.”

Boris was not a young man, sixty at least, and Tolevi couldn’t imagine him being married to someone young enough to still be fertile.

“I don’t need a driver, thanks,” said Tolevi.

“Boris told me you go over border, need guide,” added the man. “I know how to get around.”

“Yeah?”

“Вам потрібен гід,” said the man, suddenly speaking Ukrainian. “Vam potriben hid.”

It meant “You need a guide.”

“Mozhlyvo,” replied Tolevi. “Perhaps.”

“Call me Dan.” This in English.

“Where do you come from, Dan?”

“Do you wish to know too much?” asked the man rhetorically.

“You have papers?”

“I can get wherever you need to go. Your Ukrainian is not bad,” Dan added. “But you will immediately be spotted as a foreigner. Maybe Russian, maybe not.”

“What’s Boris’s wife’s name?” asked Tolevi.

“Anas, after Anastasia, and she is young enough to be his granddaughter, I think. How the old devil does it, I don’t know. You are to pay me half in advance.”

“Good,” said Tolevi, opening the car door.

In Tolevi’s experience, there were two kinds of drivers — ones who said absolutely nothing as they drove, and ones who said far too much.

Dan was one of the latter. Despite his earlier hints about Tolevi not knowing too much, he told his entire life story within their first half hour. He was a native of Temyruk, a tiny town not far from Donetsk; like many in the region, he was of Russian extraction and had been visiting friends in Rostov when the civil war began. Twenty-eight years old and a trained architect who had never worked as an architect, he was at least nominally on the side of the rebels who now controlled Donetsk, though Tolevi suspected what he said about the rebellion was more calculated to win his trust than to express his true opinions.

Whatever. Dan had clearly found a way to make the rebellion profitable; he was practiced at going back and forth across the border, something that became clear as they approached it. Rather than going through Vyselky, the town that sat on the highway they were taking, he detoured two miles east, driving across a succession of dirt farm roads in a crazy pattern of Zs. After about a half hour of this, they emerged on a paved road, driving north for another fifteen minutes before seeing even a single rooftop in the distance.

“We have about an hour to go,” Dan announced. “We can stop in Amvrosiivka for something to eat if you are hungry.”

Tolevi took that as a hint. Dan drove to a small café a few blocks off the highway; the recommended pirozhki —meat pastries — were excellent.

“How long will you need me for in Donetsk?” asked Dan as they finished.

“I don’t need you there,” Tolevi told him. “You can go after you drop me off.”

“Boris thought you would need a guide. I can stay for two days.”

“And did Boris tell you what I was doing there?”

“Only that you have business. I assume you bring items into the country.”

“Something like that.”

Tolevi nursed his beer. He didn’t trust Dan, of course, and was more than half convinced he was in the employ of the men he’d met in Moscow. But if that was the case, he might be useful, and in any event wouldn’t be so easy to get rid of. Tolevi decided to keep him where he could see him.

“I might find having a car and driver useful,” he told him. “If the price is right.”

“Another ten thousand euros would cover it. And my expenses.”

It was far too much, but the response was reassuring — it made it more likely he was on his own. Tolevi bargained him down to five, with expenses and gas. He might have gone further, but Dan was still smiling; Tolevi had learned long ago better to leave everyone happy than to scrape shins fighting over a few dollars.

Donetsk was a strange mixture of calm and violent destruction. Though it was close to the front line held by regular Ukrainian troops, a cease-fire had been in place for several months. This meant that residents could go about their business with some degree of normality, except for the periods when both sides exchanged artillery or rocket fire. These exchanges took place on almost a daily basis and followed a predictable pattern: one side would fire first, then the other would answer. The exchanges would last no more than five minutes; always the side that initiated the gunfire would stop first.

There were two unpredictable things: one, when the gunfire would begin, and two, where the shells would land. Damage was neither limited to military areas nor reliably repaired. An otherwise normal-looking city block was punctuated by blackened, burned-out façades; another featured row after row of bricks so neatly piled up that they looked as if they were for a new construction project, rather than salvaged from the buildings that had once occupied the craters behind them.

More than a year before, a railroad bridge over one of the main highways into town had been destroyed, temporarily blocking passage on the road. The rail cars had been removed, and much of the track and its overpass torn down, but the ends of the tracks on either side were still there, jutting above the road like fingers trying to close. Debris — ironwork, mostly, along with large chunks of concrete — sat scattered at the sides of the road. Tolevi couldn’t help but think they would make the perfect cover for an ambush as they passed.

The city was much as he remembered it, though there were noticeable gaps and plenty of burned-out buildings. The Donbass Hotel, one of the grandes dames of Ukrainian hospitality, stood untouched at the corner of Artyoma Street. Tolevi hadn’t bothered to make a reservation; he had guessed, correctly, that there would be no problem getting a room.

The hotel, which only a few years before was regularly filled with tourists and businessmen, was now mostly empty, operating out of sheer will. Only a single car, marked with prominent UN signs on the sides, hood, and trunk, sat out front.

A mustachioed clerk snapped to attention as Tolevi and Dan came in. Rooms were quickly found — fourth floor, back side; you didn’t want to face the street if you didn’t have to. Tolevi gave Dan a hundred-euro down payment and told him to take the rest of the night off.

“Won’t you need a guide?” asked the young man.

“I can get around for a while. We’ll meet for breakfast. Seven a.m.”

“That early?”

“Arrange a wake-up call.”

Tolevi checked the room. He assumed that he was being watched by the local intelligence network, whatever that might be; while he couldn’t be sure there was a direct connection between the rebels who were now in charge and the SVR, he had to assume that there was. Nonetheless, it didn’t look as if he was being followed when he left the hotel for a stroll.

Despite the presence of Ukrainian troops to the west and north, the city appeared calm, and there were no signs of rebel fighters, or Russians for that matter, in the area near the hotel. Tolevi walked several blocks without seeing so much as a policeman, let alone a military vehicle. Cars and trucks, mostly Western, passed; there was less traffic than he remembered since his last visit, but more than two years before. People passed with shopping bags slung from their shoulders; the handful of luxury shops near the hotel all looked open for business.

Tolevi found a café and went in, ordering a coffee; if anyone thought he was out of place, they didn’t stare or make any overt sign. He paid with Russian rubles — it had been declared the official currency a year before — but the waiter didn’t seem to care, nor did he say anything to the woman who paid in hryvnia, the official Ukrainian currency.