WE GET WAVED DOWN BY A MAN WITH A FLASHLIGHT – SOMEBODY from the private security company hired by the local authorities to keep kids and crack-heads off the site pending its redevelopment into Nizhny’s new terminal. A glimpse of Sergeyev’s ID and we’re through, navigating the weed-ridden roadways and former barrack blocks.
Vasiliy drives slowly. The road opens onto the airfield. We stop and get out. Night turns into day as the guard brings up the flare path.
I hear engines in the distance, above the wind.
To the north, lights blink below the cloud base and then rock as the jet is buffeted by crosswinds on its final approach. Moments later it barrels past us, then veers onto a taxiway and comes to a halt twenty meters from where we’re parked.
Airstairs drop beneath the tail and a guy with stubble-length blond hair and a white, short-sleeve shirt with two bars on his epaulettes bounds down them.
He speaks to Sergeyev then turns and shakes my hand.
Sergeyev tells me Vadim is ex-Air Force, now a major in the GRU. A man I can trust. I’m about to make my way toward the steps when he puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘How do I contact you?’
‘I imagine that you and Christy already have some pretty secure protocols.’
He grins, exposing his gold incisor. ‘As secure as can be.’
‘I hope that she will now have been alerted to the fact that I’ve spent two days in Russia. Tell her as much as you need to. Whatever else you need to say to me, route it through her too.’
He gives me a bear hug and I follow Vadim.
‘I meant to ask,’ Sergeyev yells over the whine of the spooling engines. ‘In the monastery, who told you about the photograph?’
‘A very helpful nun,’ I yell back.
Two minutes later, we pull into the clouds and bank hard toward the south.