Alex Shaw - Cold Blood

It had been another night of cheap beer and ex-pat posturing at his favourite bar, Eric’s Bierstube. There had been the usual faces: the TEFL teachers sitting in one corner, trying it on with their most promising or largest-breasted students, and the so-called ‘serious businessmen’ in the other, downing shots as toasts to clinch deals. The rest of the clientele had been made up of either ‘new Ukrainians’, trying to look casual in their Boss suits, or local university students sipping slowly.

Snow had sat in his usual corner, his back against the exposed brickwork, and looked on with Mitch Turney and Michael Jones, who played their game of ‘guess the bra size’. As always, the Obolon beer had flowed freely. Michael had guessed at least one correct size before being called home by his wife, Ina. Mitch and Snow had then adjourned to the flat, where one last drink had taken three hours and resulted in five empty beer bottles and the end of the Desna. Mitch had fallen into a taxi and Snow had fallen on the floor.

He took one more deep breath and walked to the kitchen, collecting the empty bottles en route. His head swam. Never again. It was at times like this that being single was both a blessing and a curse. He had no one to tell him not to drink like a fool until all hours, but no one to come back to. So he drank and partied like, as Mitch put it, ‘a college student on midterm break in Tijuana’.

Snow padded around his functional kitchen and removed a carton of yogurt from the fridge, which contained the bachelor’s bare minimum: a block of cheese, milk, yogurt and a hunk of ham. The space usually taken up by beer had been liberated. He sipped the thick local strawberry yogurt straight from the milk-style carton and opened the kitchen window. July, and Kyiv showed no signs of cooling down.

He scratched the mosquito bite on his left buttock. The heat he liked, the heat he enjoyed, but the damn mozzies could be a pain in the arse! They seemed to hide during the day, only to break in and assault him at night if he forgot to plug in the repellent gizmo.

‘You’ve grown soft,’ he told himself. ‘How did you ever pass selection; a man who complains about a few bites?’ The former SAS soldier smiled to himself. ‘Perhaps I have, but it bloody itches.’ Snow pulled open a draw and took out a packet of pills. He popped two and chased them with yogurt. Never on an empty stomach, his mum said.

Saturday morning and in a couple of hours the streets of the capital would be teeming with people. The Kyivites shopping or promenading along the city’s main boulevard – Khreshatik Street – and the visitors from other regions come to sightsee. Kyiv – he loved her. She was graceful, cultured and beautiful, yet overlooked by the West. He hadn’t abandoned her for the holidays like his fellow teachers, but stayed to savour the hot Ukrainian summer.

This would be the start of his third year teaching at Podilsky School International and he felt at home. Kyiv had been the third-largest city of the mighty Soviet Union, but here in the centre, for all its grand buildings, it still retained a village-like atmosphere, with its inhabitants living just off the main shopping streets. Snow hated towns but Kyiv was different, with its vast number of trees – more than any other city in Europe (a local had told him) – several large parks and a river (again, according to the same source, the widest in Europe) running through the middle. It was both town and country in one. Snow was the only foreigner in his building and Kyiv wasn’t yet spoilt by tourism. It was rare to hear a foreign voice on the street, and those he did hear he usually recognised, by sight at least, as belonging to ex-pats or diplomats.

Just over one more month and school would start again. These drinking binges would have to stop, or at least be confined to the weekends. But not yet. He finished his yogurt and dressed in his running gear. Saturday or not, he wouldn’t allow himself to miss a run. It was a rule he had learnt in the SAS and one he wouldn’t forsake now he was a civilian.

Snow took the steps down to the ground floor to warm up his leg muscles before starting his ritual of stretches in the street outside. It was just after 8 a.m. – later than he normally ran, but, as it was a Saturday, there were fewer people up. Running was something that had become second nature to him; it helped clear his mind. He ran most mornings, although this was tough in the Ukrainian winter, with an average temperature of -10°C. It wasn’t the cold that made it difficult, but the ice. Walking up and down the city’s hills was treacherous and running became suicidal. Thus far, Snow had found the solution by running around one of the city’s central stadiums, either ‘Dynamo’, home to the famed football team, or ‘Respublikanski’, built and used for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The fact that both of these were open to the general public was another Soviet legacy he embraced.

Satisfied he’d stretched enough, he moved off at a steady pace. He ran down Pushkinskaya until he hit Maidan. Dodging the stallholders setting up their kiosks, he pumped his legs up the steep Kostyolna Street. Cresting the hill he entered Volodymyrska Hirka Park. The morning air hadn’t yet become dusty and a breeze blew in from the Dnipro River below. He was taking his weekend route, as he had nowhere to be in a hurry. Reaching the railings overlooking the river, he turned left, following the footpath. The park followed the river until it abruptly ended at the mammoth Ministry of Internal Affairs headquarters. As Snow ran past the building and towards the British Embassy in the adjoining street, he was once again taken by the sheer size of the place. Looking much like the Arc de Triomphe, but larger, he estimated, the Ukrainian government building wasn’t on any international tourist ‘must see’ lists, but he made a point of staring none the less. It was one of the many things that made him want to stay in Kyiv.

Snow had grown up with a love for the unusual. His father had been cultural attaché for the British Embassy, Moscow, in the mid to late Eighties. As such, Snow had been at the embassy school there for much of his formative adolescent years. The upshot of this was that Snow’s Moscow-accented Russian was all but flawless. Ignoring his parents’ protestations that he go to university, he had joined the army immediately after his A-levels. Turning down a chance at officer training, he’d completed the minimum three-year service requirement before successfully passing ‘Selection’ for the SAS. He’d wanted to be a ‘badged member’ ever since seeing the very public ‘Princes Gate’ hostage rescue (Operation Nimrod) at the Iranian Embassy as a nine-year-old in 1980. His parents had laughed it off and bought him a black balaclava and toy gun, but, as the years passed, Snow’s desire to join only increased. Then he was in. His boyhood dream fulfilled and, although begrudgingly, he knew his parents had been a bit proud. Then it all went wrong.

Snow slowed to a walk as he entered Andrivskyi Uzviz. The steep cobbled street, lined with souvenir stalls, art galleries and bars, was quite capable of inflicting a broken ankle on the unwary. He descended the hill. His right thigh had started to throb. The sensation always brought back memories of the accident in Poland, the unbearable pain he had felt, pinned to the backseat of the car, unable to move, unable to reach for a weapon to defend himself. The sound of flames and the vicious scent of petrol filling his lungs. Then that face, the serpentine eyes that had looked into his and pronounced sentence upon him.

Snow shivered in spite of the warm morning air. After the accident the doctors had said he would always walk with a limp; that the bone would be weakened and that the muscles might not knit back together. They advised that he be taken off active duty, given a desk or other duties. He ignored them and attempted to defy all medical opinion by pushing himself harder than he’d ever thought possible. He spent hours in rehabilitation, first with PT instructors and then, later, on his own. He was twenty-four years old and a member of the 22 ndSpecial Air Service Regiment; no one was going to tell him what he could or couldn’t do.