ANNA AND BALTHASAR SAT on a high rock above the canyon camp. The dawn was rising from across the Kerch Straits and Russia and, below them, the derricks lining Sevastopol’s dockyards and harbours and the superstructures of warships were catching the first light in the city. For a long while they sat in silence and watched the coastline revealed on another clear blue day.
On their exit from the city into the mountains neither spoke, but both were thinking of the implications of the dead men buried below them. There would be a massive manhunt if the Russians persuaded their Ukrainian allies in government that it was necessary.
But most of all, it was the intelligence that Balthasar had brought back with him from the bar that preoccupied their minds, the sonar in the harbours and their approaches being cut off in two days’ time and the standing down of special forces frogmen. At last, Balthasar broke the silence.
“Miller is right,” he said. “The fake attack is going to happen down there on the first of May. The payment on the second is to be the supposed reward for the attack.”
Anna looked at the hulks of warships dotting the bays. Then she paused at the aircraft carrier Moskva and the other relatively new ship and the submarines.
“They won’t want to damage anything that’s worth something to them,” she said. “They’ll stage this attack on one of the ships that’s past its usefulness. And that will be the cause for Russian anger, their casus belli. The destruction of a useless ship.”
“Provocation followed by its reaction,” Balthasar said. “They set up the attack themselves, then say they are under attack. It’s the way things are done. Our terror experts know exactly how to make it work and how to make it look.”
“And then?” Anna said.
“Then the Kremlin will demand that Crimea become Russian again. In order to protect its own interests. After that? I give Ukraine itself a few more years at most of independence. Putin is binding the country ever closer to Russia with economic ties. It’s the end of Western ambitions for Ukraine to join Western Europe. It’s the end of Ukrainian nationalism and independence from Moscow.”
She turned to look at him. “You must get out now,” she said. “You’re the only witness.”
“And you?” he said, returning her gaze with sightless eyes.
“I have to finish things here,” she replied. “I’ve made a deal with Taras.”
He didn’t ask her what it was, the deal. He merely looked back towards the sea and felt the sun’s first warmth on the side of his face. “Then I’ll stay, too,” he said. “Until it’s finished. We’ll take our chances together.”
She studied his face. It was a new experience, to feel a man looking at her when he couldn’t see her with his eyes. She felt the novelty of being next to a man who didn’t see how she looked but only felt her as a woman through some power that was inexplicable to her. The feeling was good and it made her strong. Her usual distrust of a man’s motives in her presence was entirely absent. It was as if the twenty-odd years since their last meeting at an orphanage in Damascus had never existed. A feeling of comfort, simplicity, inevitability even, invaded her mind and she didn’t resist it. There was nothing about Balthasar that aroused her suspicions or defensiveness. It was the most natural feeling she ever remembered happening, more so even than with Finn, whose early relationship with her had been one of recklessness. There was no recklessness about sitting beside this man. She felt that they had been destined to meet again.
“Why, Balthasar?” she asked him. “Why now? After doing so much destruction to Russia’s enemies, why did you decide to come over now?”
He didn’t speak for a moment. Then he said, “The necessities of acting for oneself develop only over time. At first, events and other people dominate our lives. It was the same with you, I believe. We do a job—it doesn’t matter what the job is, even. It’s a life moulded to other people’s rules. And, like you, I was good, very good, at my job. That made me question it less. And I didn’t stop to ask whether I believed in what I was doing. The job was too exciting,” he admitted. He bent his head. “That perhaps is the most shameful excuse, the compulsion of excitement. But when you’ve done the same thing for many years, it suddenly loses the compulsion. You become a machine. If you’re lucky or merely not entirely stupid, you begin to question the machinelike qualities of who you’ve become. Suddenly, it’s as if the child in you returns, the voice that speaks for itself and not for others. You want that again and not the machine.” He turned towards her. “And then treason is easy,” he said. “People become traitors to their country for many reasons; excitement plays a part in that, too. But with me it was the futility, the futility of doing something I didn’t want to do and had never really wanted to do. I will do this one thing for the West, be a witness to what is happening here. But I’m not changing sides, just being on my own side.”
He stopped and by now the sun had broken over the bays below them.
“You have a plan, Anna. I know it,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Are you going to tell me what it is or do I have to tell you?”
She laughed. “I’m sure you have a very good idea, Balthasar.”
“You’re right.”
“If the Russians are planning to blow up one of their own ships, why don’t we do it, too?” she said. “But with a ship that really matters to them.” She stood up. “It’s time to get some sleep. We only have a few hours now. Then we’ll explain to Larry and the others. After that I have to make everything right with Taras. I need his help.”
They descended into the canyon along a pathless scree slope that finally brought them up above the camp and then followed the stream until they saw tents. But it was Larry who saw them first and who looked with alarm at the presence of Balthasar.
“It’s okay, Larry,” she said. “We’ll all work together until we get out of here. Where’s the Cougar?”
“It’s to the west of the Crimea. About sixty miles away. Along this coast between here and Odessa.”
“Good. Wake me in a couple of hours.” She looked at Balthasar. “You can sleep where you wish,” she said.
The invitation wasn’t lost on him or on Larry, who turned away in confusion and perhaps frustration.
“I know,” Balthasar stated.
Anna laughed. “Of course. Of course you know,” she said.
Balthasar followed her into her tent.
After two hours, Larry called through the flap of the tent and she emerged first. Balthasar followed a while later. Lucy and Adam were making breakfast over a charcoal fire, reduced to ashes in order to limit the smoke. They ate in silence and then Anna laid out the plan.
“This depends on Taras?” Larry said and failed to conceal his deep scepticism.
“It does,” she replied impassively.
“You trust him that much?”
“I believe what he says about this, yes.”
“Why?”
“His interests coincide with ours. If he helps us, we help him. Don’t forget, he has to believe what I told him, too. There’s a mutual gain.”
“Well, okay,” Larry said. “We don’t have nearly enough ammunition. Not for what you’re planning.”
“I think plenty will become available,” she replied.