I DON’T KNOW what time it was–sometime after midnight certainly–when I was woken by the sound of hammering on the door of the dacha. It blended with a dream until I was awake and realised it was real. I put on a dressing gown and came out of my room. In the dark I could make out Nana already standing in the living room. No lights were on. She seemed frozen, in the middle of the room, stiff as if at some memory of other night-time awakenings in her distant past.
‘What is it? Nana what is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. Then she turned towards me. ‘Anna, darling,’ she said. ‘Come here.’
We embraced and held each other for a minute perhaps. But the knocking on the door resumed louder than before.
‘Goodbye, darling Anna,’ she said, and squeezed me as hard as her old arms were able.
I broke away from her finally and switched on a table light and we embraced briefly again. I felt tears coming to my eyes, but
hers were clear. She just watched me, watched every movement I made. ‘Get dressed,’ she said, and moved towards the door. ‘I’ll let them in.’
As I dressed quickly, I heard from my room the door open and the voice of Vladimir.
He was standing in the centre of the living room when I came out. Nana was fetching something from the kitchen.
‘I’m sorry for the time,’ he said calmly. ‘Please. Don’t be too alarmed. I expect they’re being deliberately antisocial, that’s all.’
But I didn’t believe him.
‘Where are we going?’
‘The Lubyanka. But first we’ll stop at my place.’
Nana emerged from the kitchen carrying something wrapped in a cloth.
‘Take this for breakfast,’ she said, and glared at Vladimir.
‘I’ll wait in the car,’ he said sheepishly.
Nana and I held each other.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I haven’t told you before, darling Anna, but I haven’t got long to go. It’s good. I’m glad. It’s time.’
I cried openly.
From the pocket of her dressing gown she took a silver amulet that I saw was very old.
‘It’s a Tartar charm,’ she said. ‘Made five centuries ago. It will keep you safe.’
With tears in my eyes, I left the dacha and saw her standing in the hot night against the light of the door.
Vladimir drove out of the forest and on to the motorway towards Moscow. We didn’t talk. I sat numbly in the seat beside him and slowly gathered my thoughts. And as I did so, I began to regain some calm. This was routine, I told myself, at least in the perverse world in which my employers operated. If I were being arrested, it would not be Vladimir. They’d have sent their own militia.
We crossed the Moskva River and drove to Vladimir’s apartment near the botanical gardens. He pulled the car into the kerb and put his hand on my knee.
‘Let’s have a coffee before we go,’ he said. ‘And maybe something stronger.’
Upstairs in the apartment on the seventh floor, he made coffee and put a half-empty bottle of vodka on the table in the kitchen. I sat and watched him.
‘I think it’s OK,’ he said. ‘I think they’re just trying to put you on the wrong foot. But you might as well be fortified.’
He smiled at me, poured two shots of vodka, and I drained mine at once. Once more, against my better judgement, I was grateful for his courtesy and care.
And then all I felt was him catch me as I swayed and slipped from the hard wooden kitchen chair.
All I was aware of at first was noise, but I couldn’t place the noise, its origin or its identity. It hummed and throbbed and ground in my ears as I tipped from consciousness and back into unconsciousness. Slowly I realised why my only sensation was the noise. I felt the blindfold across my eyes first, before I realised I couldn’t see. Then I felt the hardness of the place where I was confined, the bruising pain as my body thumped against its surface. And then I felt the bonds around my hands and feet and legs.
I tried to lift the top half of my body but my head immediately came into contact with a hard surface. I was in a box, a metal box that thrashed around as if it were being thrown down a river. My hearing came and went, so that now from time to time I could hear something more distinct, not just amorphous noise beating in my ears. And then I smelled rubber and, after that, the faint fumes of a car’s exhaust. Then I knew I was being taken in the boot of a car.
I tried to move my legs, but they were bound too tightly and finally I lay still as every movement I made caused me pain as I was thrown around the small space. With my fingers I felt a small handle that I could get two fingers into. Perhaps it was something that would have held the spare tyre if there’d been one, and I held on as best I could to stop myself from being shaken. Then I felt the bumpiness of a rutted road turn into the tipping wave motion of an unmade track and finally the car stopped with a jerk that threw me against the back of the seats.
I listened in the silence. A door opened, but there were no voices. I heard the door slam again. And then I heard the latch pop on something near my head and the whining of an unoiled hinge and I felt the cool air on my face.
Hands untied my blindfold. I was staring straight into the sun and could see nothing. I turned away and shut my eyes in pain and then I heard Vladimir’s voice.
‘Easy,’ he said.
He lifted me up and out of the boot of the car and when my eyes had finally adjusted from the darkness of the boot to the brightness of the sun, I saw we were in a forest of pine trees. He untied my hands first. Why untie my hands to shoot me, I thought? Why show me my executioner at all? But then he untied my feet, knowing, I guess, that long confinement would have made my limbs too cramped to run or put up a struggle. He gave me a bottle of water.
‘Drink this,’ he said.
I drank thirstily while he spoke with matter-of-fact urgency.
‘You’re in Finland,’ he said. ‘We’re eight miles or so across the border. We were just in time.’
‘Why…?’ I said feebly. My head throbbed from the drug he’d given me, and from the journey.
‘It doesn’t matter. You’re out, that’s all that matters. There’s money, a passport, and other things in this bag. There’s some food, more water too.’
I struggled to stand up, but he gently restrained me.
‘Why did you drug me?’ I asked him.
‘Because I knew you wouldn’t believe me,’ he said. ‘I knew if I told you that I had to get you out, you’d think it was a trap.’
Then he helped me to a tree and I sat leaning against it, sipping from the water bottle. I suddenly felt euphoric, from the drug perhaps, or from a reprieve from the fate I was sure awaited me.
‘They would have arrested you this morning,’ he said. Then he pointed. ‘Five miles in that direction is a village. There you can take a ride and get a train to Helsinki.’
‘And you?’ I said at last.
‘Goodbye, Anna.’
He turned and stepped into the car. It reversed over the rough ground and the dry twigs snapped under the wheels. Then I watched as he turned back towards the Russian border.
‘Goodbye,’ I said. But he had gone.