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ON THE FIFTH MORNING, the old woman wandered away from the metro, pushing her pram filled with trash ahead of her. A mile or more from the bus station, she spotted her objective—a thrift store.
She turned down the nearest alley. There, she rid herself of coat, scarf, and gloves, dumping the filthy clothing into a bin.
She took off the padded stockings and tossed them, too, but put the shoes back on. From her purse with the long shoulder strap, she withdrew a broken comb she had found in a gutter and ran it through her tangled hair, braiding it down the back and tying a strip of cloth at the braid’s end.
Dealing with her face was more difficult and time-consuming. She had added daily to the gel that had, as it dried, reddened her complexion and created a parchment of creases and wrinkles all over her face—even under her eyes and on her eyelids. She used half a bottle of water and a scrap of fabric torn from the lining of her coat, but the dried gel clung to her skin with fierce tenacity. After long, precious minutes, she had peeled off or scrubbed away most of the dried layers.
Lastly, she removed the HK from her bra and hid it in the padded compartment of her customized Italian handbag. She tucked the handbag into the pram and pushed the pram behind the rubbish bin.
I will come back for you soon, she promised the gun.
She pulled a cloth bag from her purse and counted out enough Russian currency for her next move, then slipped the purse’s strap crosswise over her shoulders and walked to the end of the alley. Around the corner, she examined herself in a restaurant window. She appeared thirty years younger than the old peasant woman although older than her actual age. She still wore the babushka’s disheveled house dress and the heavy padding about her waist, but she was infinitely more presentable.
She turned her head to one side and sniffed.
Oy, how I reek!
But first things first.
She made her way to the thrift store, feeling weightless and exposed after having been covered head to toe for the larger part of a week. She stopped just inside the shop’s door, knowing the clerks would regard her appearance—and smell—with disfavor.
She was right—a female clerk glanced up, took in her appearance, and hustled toward her. “I am afraid we cannot serve you, madam—oh, my word! What is that stench?”
“I apologize. I know I need a bath. But I need some clean clothes, first.” She added quickly, “I have money. Let me buy a few things, and I will be on my way.”
The clerk studied her. “What is wrong with your face?”
“I-I have a skin problem. Not communicable. An allergic rash. Allow me to buy some clean clothes, and I will leave.”
The clerk said nothing for a moment, then, “Show me that you have money.”
She opened her purse and withdrew the folded notes.
The clerk’s shrewd eyes narrowed. “All right. I will let you buy some things, but since you are stinking up the place, you will pay a twenty percent markup—and you may not use the changing rooms. I will not let you foul them with your stench.”
She nodded her agreement to the clerk’s extortion and mumbled, “I need everything—underwear, shoes, socks, a dress, a scarf. I know my sizes. Give me ten minutes.”
The clerk scowled at her. “I give you five. If another customer comes in while you are here? My store’s reputation will be ruined.”
She nodded to the clerk, grabbed a basket, and hurried through the bins, sorting, selecting, and tossing two pairs of shoes into the basket, moving on to the clothing racks. She placed her filled basket on the counter along with a beat-up suitcase.
The clerk, with a sniff, bagged the purchases, then produced a total that included the hefty twenty percent tariff she’d threatened to add.
She paid without comment, took the sacks, and left. Her next stop was a public bath house. She paid fifty kopeks to scrub herself all over with soap and fresh, curling, feather-soft wood shavings at a round, communal sink, wet her hair and soap it, then rinse for five minutes in a warm shower. She toweled off, changed into the used clothing, and braided her damp hair down her back.
It would dry soon enough in the heat outside. Wrapping her filthy clothes around the padded bodysuit that had added thirty pounds to her belly, she ditched the bundle in the garbage bin.
Afterward, she returned to the rubbish bin where she’d stashed the pram. There she retrieved her gun, handbag, and the items she wished to keep and transferred them to her suitcase. She then found a general store where she purchased fruit, cheese, and sliced salami that she wrapped in brown paper and stuffed into a bag for later.
When evening came, she ate a hearty dinner in a small café. She would not spend the night in a hotel where management was required to record her ID. Instead, she scoped out a used furniture store and noted its hours. She returned to the store after it closed, jimmied the backdoor lock, and curled up on a sofa away from the display windows.
Early the following morning, a well-used suitcase and a lunch of fruit and cold cuts in hand, she was back on the train, this time heading north to the Russia–Finland border—but not without a plan . . . a plan that required making the right acquaintances and using them for cover.
In the second compartment, she found what she was seeking. She took a seat and made friendly overtures toward a young Russian couple and their three children across the aisle. Speaking Russian like a native Muscovite, she took pains to endear herself to their toddler boy. Within the hour, the wife invited her to sit with them.
Dressed in nondescript clothes, a soft kerchief over her hair, the little boy on her lap, her face still rough and red, she appeared to be part of the family, an older aunt, perhaps. In any event, her papers were in order. She was presently Oksana Vladlena Sokolova, a Russian citizen from Moscow, on her way to visit a sister in Joensuu—a trip, her passport attested, she had made twice in the past three years.
At the border, Oksana insisted on helping the parents wrangle their belongings and children. She followed the parents through the security checkpoint, carrying the little boy on one hip and her suitcase in her free hand. The security guards, although they seemed on higher alert than usual, nevertheless screened them as a family unit. The parents, grateful for Oksana’s friendly help, mentioned nothing that might alter the guards’ assumption.
ZAKHAR WATCHED PETROFF prowl his apartment much like a wounded lion, his snarls and growls gaining momentum and volume. The man had been under daily pressure while the Security Council debated the present crisis. Each night when he returned to the apartment and found himself alone, his anger had increased.
“Zakhar!”
“Yes, Vassili Aleksandrovich?”
“Is there no word from Miss Olander?”
“You ordered me to call off the search, Vassili Aleksandrovich.”
Petroff rounded on him, cursing and shouting. “You should know me by now, you fool. I need her. I need her here, with me!”
Zakhar bowed. “I can tell you she has not returned to Sweden as she said she would.”
“What? How can you know that?”
“She was, when she left you that letter, in great distress, was she not? In order to ensure her safety, I set a watch upon crossings into her country and made inquiries around the province of Uppsala and the village in which she spent her late childhood.”
The next part would be tricky. “We know her father worked in America and that Linnéa was born there, but I have made an odd discovery, Vassili Aleksandrovich. I do not profess to know what it means, but . . . but I must not cover it up.”
Petroff rounded on him. “What discovery?”
Zakhar shook his head slowly. “I took the initiative to have your people talk with Uppsala residents. In the village they met an old, retired teacher.”
“Yes? Get on with it!”
“This teacher, Jorgensen, is more than eighty years old. He claimed that he could recall every student who attended the village school from the time he, himself, began to teach there at age twenty-three. He insisted that he had never heard of a Linnéa Olander.”
Petroff eyed Zakhar. “Go on.”
“We checked the school’s records and made copies of them. Miss Olander’s name first appears on the village school’s roster when she was nine years old, the year her widowed mother returned from America. Jorgensen was even listed as one of her teachers for the remainder of her Grundskola—comprehensive school. But when we showed him the roster, he declared it to be wrong. He knew every student on the list except Linnéa Olander. I had recent photographs of Miss Olander with me and showed them to him. He did not recognize her, nor did anyone who supposedly attended secondary school with her. No one in the village to whom we showed the photographs knew her.”
Petroff stood as stiff and unmoving as a boulder.
Zakhar was a patient man and had not gotten to where he was without great restraint. Petroff would be sorting through the implications of the news his faithful servant had delivered. Petroff would soon arrive at the same conclusions Zakhar had. And Zakhar anticipated with great, masked glee what would happen next.
So, Zakhar waited. He waited because he knew his patron—and because he was familiar with the culture and workings of Russian State politics.
In Russian political affairs, when a man attached himself to a rising star such as Petroff, that man’s fortune, security, and longevity depended upon his patron’s success and his continued good standing in the eyes of the State. Conversely, what tarred a political star, tarred all who were associated with him.
If this woman was a spy, as Zakhar suspected she was, Petroff would be ruined—disgraced, imprisoned, interrogated, tortured, and quietly executed. All his acquaintances and close associates would come under the same cloud of scrutiny. Even Petroff’s superiors and highly placed friends would be suspect.
In other words, if Petroff were ruined, Zakhar’s own demise would follow.
So, Zakhar bided his time. When Petroff’s orders came—as Zakhar was convinced they would—Zakhar would receive them with great satisfaction.
At last Petroff spoke. “Find her, Zakhar. Wherever she has hidden herself, find her. Bring her to me.”
“Da, Vassili Aleksandrovich. I will.”
Zakhar yearned to kill the woman himself, to steal her life inch by slow inch. He indulged himself with fantasies of his hands about her throat, choking her, relishing her panic and fear, reveling in her desperation as she pled and begged for her life. He managed to suppress this longing only by the sure knowledge that watching how Petroff slowly killed her would be equally satisfying.
