Moscow—later
For hours, Tolevi drifted between sleep and wakefulness. Every time he started to slip off, his mind threw up something that spiked his attention just enough to keep him from drifting off: possible problems at the border, possible trouble getting into Donetsk, how to get out of the country if the airport was suddenly closed.
And the identity of the people who had stopped him in the restroom. Clearly they were Russian, aiming to help the rebels even though they’d tried to provoke him with the clumsy reference.
SVR, then. He had contacts, he could check.
Not wise.
He tried moving his mind away from those thoughts, but nothing was safe: thinking of home, he began fretting about Borya, worrying how she was getting on with the babysitter. Nothing was safe: he thought of a baseball game between the Red Sox and the hated Yankees he’d been to recently . . .
For some reason it triggered a memory of the goons who had trapped him in the restroom.
Yankees fans, no doubt.
Around 3:00 a.m. he heard a noise at the door. He rolled out of bed, grabbing for the piece of iron he’d put on the nightstand to use as a weapon. Twenty-four inches long, the flat bar was part of his suitcase frame, specially installed to be used as a last-resort weapon in places like Moscow, where obtaining a real weapon was either not worth the effort or too dangerous. It was solid and heavy, more than enough to disable someone temporarily, if not break their neck—something he had done some years before in Brazil, of all places.
Bar in hand, he slipped to the side of the wall and waited, expecting someone to come in. Within moments he realized that wasn’t going to be the case; a clerk had only walked by and slipped in the bill.
And another envelope, just as the goons had promised.
Tolevi stood by the door, listening. The only thing he could hear was his own breathing. Finally he bent and took the envelopes, then tiptoed back to his bed. He used the small light on his keychain to open the envelope. His import papers had been perfectly duplicated, with two exceptions—the stamp now indicated that the import had been approved, and two zeroes had been added to the number of tractor trailers he was authorized to import.
Two hundred containers’ worth of aspirin and cough medicine? The profits would be considerable—but so was the up-front cost. And that was if he could make the necessary arrangements, both to buy and to sell.
But his new “partners” had probably taken care of at least one half of that equation. The question was how to avoid getting stuck with the bill, since a shipment this size would require hefty deposits.
Opening the other envelope, he saw that his bill had been paid, undoubtedly by his new “partners.” There was a note attached with a Post-it.
G sends his regards.
One of his SVR contacts. So at least he was sure about whom he was dealing with.
Despite the fact that Russia and the Ukraine were fighting a war in all but name, trains and airplanes still traveled regularly between Moscow and Kiev. Getting to Donetsk was a little more complicated—all airplane flights were officially canceled, though it was still possible to charter something if you had the right connections. The train took some twenty-one hours and traveled across three borders, if one counted the rebel area; while Tolevi had the requisite papers, driving was far faster and at least arguably more reliable.
This was not without its own complications. Tolevi left the hotel at five for Moscow airport; he boarded a plane three hours later for Rostov-on-Don in the south. There he had arranged to meet a driver he trusted because of prior arrangements. But when he got to the bus station where they’d agreed to meet, neither the driver nor the car was there. Though this was uncharacteristic, Russians in general were not exactly known as paragons of timeliness. Tolevi stood near the curb at the corner of the building, not far from the closed ticket window, waiting in the cold. After half an hour, he concluded that his driver was not going to show. He was just walking toward the terminal door, intending to call a taxi so he could get to a rental car, when a Mercedes C class sedan drove up alongside him.
“Mr. T?” asked the driver as the window rolled down. He spoke in broken English. “So sorry late. Needed petrol.”
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.
Reasonably sure that he wasn’t followed into the café, Tolevi left and continued walking, heading toward a small park a few blocks from the hotel. He found a bench near some children playing on a swing, and once again scanned the area for a tail. Still not seeing one, he walked a few more blocks to a store that sold prepaid telephones. He bought one, then summoned a taxi.
Twenty minutes later, Tolevi arrived at an early-Soviet-era apartment building. After the cab turned the corner, he walked around the block, turned left, and went into a gray four-story building that smelled of simmering cabbage. He walked up a flight, paused one last time to make sure he wasn’t being followed, then went up to the top floor and knocked on the door of an apartment at the far end of the hall.
The man who answered the door nearly dropped the cigarette from his mouth when he saw Tolevi. He grabbed it, then spread his arms wide to embrace him.
“What? What are you doing here?” asked the man, ushering him inside.
“Business, Grandpa. Business.”
Denyx Fodor was not Tolevi’s real grandfather, but he had known Tolevi as a baby, and the families had once been close enough to earn that sort of endearment. They had not seen each other since Tolevi’s last visit to Donetsk, and Fodor cataloged the changes with some relish over a bottle of French wine. The old man still had a store of bottles left over from the days when he imported it; that business had crashed during Ukraine’s depression, which had preceded the revolution and then been deepened by it. Now he was semiretired, with small interests in two shops in town; the proceeds paid his rent but not much more.
Tolevi waited patiently through Fodor’s stories, mostly of rebel and Russian outrages, then explained the outlines of the deal he had come to make, carefully leaving out the business in the restroom, as well as the CIA mission.
“We can get medicine at the pharmacies,” said Fodor. “But not reliably. And the quality—I think it is Chinese.”
“This will be from the West,” said Tolevi.
“You can get past the embargo?”
Tolevi shrugged. “There are ways.”
“And what do you need of me?”
A ride to a place where using the cell phone would not be a problem either for Fodor or anyone else, and a set of eyes to watch for anyone following. Fodor was more than game.
They finished the wine while waiting for the sun to go down, then went out to Fodor’s car, a ten-year-old Lexus. A half hour later they stopped near a railroad siding that had not been used since before the civil war.
Tolevi walked down the tracks for five minutes before making the call to the number Johansen had given him. There was no answer.
He was walking back, considering what to do, when a text arrived with an address and the words “butcher shop” in Ukrainian.
Right. Pick up some meat. Ironic and yet fitting at the same time.
“I need another stop, please,” he told Fodor when he got back to the car. “And go over the river so I can throw the phone away.”