When she was finished with those initial tasks, Klara decided it was time for a break and walked to St. Hans Café, situated next to the St. Hans church ruin that she frequently visited, especially during the warmer months, when the café had outdoor seating set up in the ruins itself. It made for a great ambience when meeting with academic liaisons or hosting “sustainability fellows.”
“By yourself today, Klara?” asked the manager, a woman named Annika Bragefeldt.
“Yes,” Klara responded with a smile. “I just finished some major tasks for BRRI, and I thought I should celebrate.”
“Ah, well, we are happy to have you on this dreary January morning,” Annika replied. “Do you want the usual?”
“Yes, please,” answered Klara.
“One St. Hans Blend with Gotländsk Saffranspannkaka, coming up,” said Annika.
Soon, Klara had her hands around a mug of warm tea and a beloved Gotland specialty — a saffron pancake served warm, made from rice pudding, cream, saffron, and egg, topped with local dewberry jam. It was very traditional — a cultural heritage dish that balanced austerity with indulgence, like the island itself.
Annika was a retired teacher turned café manager, and a bit of a busybody. Always suspicious of outsiders, she kept meticulous records and had her eye on everything. Klara had managed to get on her good side by being extremely predictable and showing her true love of all things Gotland. Later, she would talk Annika into sharing all the new local gossip with her.
Klara smiled. It’s all paying off, she realized. All these years of habits, of tiny rituals, had allowed her to hide in plain sight… and now she was ready to spring her trap.
The breakout room smelled faintly of wet coats, cheap coffee, and ambition. Klara Hedevig sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor, the required six feet away from a UN volunteer from Estonia and a “rewilding specialist” from Kyrgyzstan who kept quoting Žižek between sips of birch sap tonic. His mask hung from one ear whenever he drank, and he promptly put it back on after each sip. Around her, twenty young, masked climate delegates debated decarbonization equity frameworks in the Baltic — Black Sea corridor.
But Klara wasn’t listening anymore. Her gaze was fixed on the man near the bookshelf, in the gray wool blazer with the pale pink tie: Dr. Sergei Anatolyev, introduced earlier as a visiting lecturer from the Saint Petersburg Institute of Eco-Geopolitics.
He had asked only one question during the last session — but it sliced through the fluff like a hawk through mist.
“If EU green transition funds are being used to build LNG terminals in Klaipėda and Świnoujście, are we really discussing energy resilience — or just NATO logistics in disguise?” he’d probed.
That was when Klara had first looked up.
Now, as the group dispersed for lunch, he crossed the room toward her.
“You’re the student from Lund, yes? The LUMES program?” he asked, voice low, warm. He spoke precise English, but with a slight Russian accent.
“Yes,” Klara replied, cautious but curious. “Klara Hedevig.”
He nodded. “You spoke earlier about Gotland’s offshore wind potential. Your passion was clear.”
“Not that it matters,” she said, a little sharper than she meant to. “Sweden just approved a military expansion zone over the best wind corridor. NATO takes priority.”
Dr. Anatolyev chuckled quietly. “Spoken like someone who still believes the system should live up to its promises.”
She wasn’t sure if he was mocking her — but she didn’t recoil.
“I read your name in the delegate list,” he continued, producing a slim pamphlet from his satchel. It was a Russian-language academic quarterly titled Geopolitika i Ekosfera. He opened it to a page he had dog-eared.
“This piece,” he said, tapping a paragraph. “It made me think of your thesis abstract. Disrupted migration routes, pipeline conflict zones, the NATO-fossil linkage. You might find it… clarifying.”
Klara flipped the page. The article was titled “Green Empires and Gray Militaries: Western Ecology as Strategic Hegemony.”
Her eyes scanned the first few lines — references to Lithuanian radar emissions, Polish shale gas corridors, avian behavioral shifts across NATO air bases…
She looked up at him. “You’ve read my abstract?”
“I make it a point to study promising minds,” he said simply. “Especially those that haven’t yet been dulled by institutional compromise.”
He smiled again, almost fatherly.
“There’s a reception tonight,” he added. “Nothing official. Just a few of us — independent researchers. Eurasian, Central European, postcolonial climate voices. You might enjoy it more than the recycled net-zero slogans in the plenary hall.”
Klara hesitated.
“Where?” she finally asked.
He passed her a folded slip of paper. Just an address and a time.
“No pressure,” he said. “But I suspect you’ll find the conversation… more honest.”
And with that, he left her standing in the corner of a Baltic conference room, holding a Russian ecology journal in one hand and a handwritten invitation in the other — her first breadcrumb down a path she didn’t yet know she’d follow.
But she would.
The building wasn’t marked. All she found was a lacquered green door beside a closed flower shop on Ģertrūdes Street, a few blocks from the city center. There was no banner, no NGO flag — just a small sticker on the door that read “Common Ground Baltic.”
Inside, she found warm lighting, quiet jazz, and the low hum of conversation in at least four languages.
Klara paused just inside the doorway, suddenly aware of how Scandinavian she looked — tall, windblown, carrying a canvas bag filled with summit notes and a copy of Doughnut Economics.
Then someone approached — a woman in her late thirties, dark hair tied back, black mask, no visible makeup around her eyes, Baltic-knit sweater and felted wool skirt.
“You must be Klara,” she said.
Her accent was hard to place. Is she Latvian? Klara wondered. Russian? But neither quite fit.
“I’m Irina,” said the woman. “Sergei mentioned you might come.”
Klara smiled cautiously beneath her mask. “I wasn’t sure if I’d be welcome.”
Irina’s eyes sparkled. “You are exactly the kind of person we welcome.”
She gestured toward the gathering. There were maybe thirty people scattered between couches and standing tables, sipping tea or Georgian wine. No one wore a lanyard. A small projector flickered slides on the back wall — photographs of steppe fires, flooded grain fields, and black oil lines slicing through bird migration maps.
One slide read, “Kazakhstan: Migratory Disruption in the Trans-Caspian Axis.”
Klara blinked.
“That’s my thesis topic,” she said aloud.
Irina tilted her head. “Then perhaps you’re already one of us.”
They sat together on a small settee beneath a bookshelf lined with Russian-language climate theory and old Worldwatch Institute reports. Klara noticed a sticker on one of the mugs that read, “There is no neutrality in ecological collapse.”
“Tell me,” Irina said, pouring herbal tea into mismatched ceramic cups, “do you believe your government is serious about saving the climate?”