“Wait, what you want me to do with your stuff?”
“Oh, I don’t know, pile it in my living room. How much stuff can there be? You’ve got a truck. Get Sandy to help you, then wine and dine her for her efforts. It won’t take much convincing, believe me, little brother.”
“Hey, yeah. I’ll ask her. Okay, go back to sleep.”
I killed the desk lamp. When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I looked over at Anna. The slope of her shoulder was silhouetted under the blanket. Tufts of her mangled, chemically damaged hair stuck out crazily, catching mercury vapor light from the courtyard. She sighed like a child, completely content. I envied the way she felt safe enough to sleep like that.
“Moscow’s an hour ahead, right?”
Anna cocked her head to give it a think. “I had to put my watch back an hour coming to you in Kiev and I have not changed it since, so yes.”
“Good, let’s hope it’s not too early.” I tried the number I got from Gavin that morning at three. Profoundly surprised, Timo spat out a new number and told me to call him back on it. He hung up. I called back and told him about the passport incident at the Russian consulate in Odessa.
He might as well have been chit-chatting about the weather. “Jah, twenty thousand is about right,” he concurred with the Russian consular official in my story. “It is not so much. You want British passport, is over a hundred thousand.” Timo insisted on speaking English. Maybe it provided a tiny extra layer of encryption. If anything, it took a few minutes to find a translator.
“You can’t bribe a British official, and this woman has a passport. She just needs it replaced.”
“It mostly same thing. New passport must be made, documents authorized and database entries for many ministries. Takes time. Two weeks is fast and I cannot do better.” Timo explained.
“But the passport already exists.”
“Why to replace it then?”
“Her mother stole it.”
“Her mother!” Timo said. “And you are asking officials for replacement? Why not ask mother? Is much cheaper.”
I explained the situation along the lines of blowing cover and running with collateral — in other words Anna.
“Jessie, such trouble you make for yourself. Why not maybe steal money or cars from mafia? Easier than taking kid. You have death wish?”
“She’s not a kid. She’s twenty-seven and she ran with me. She wouldn’t let me leave her behind.”
Timo laughed. “Twenty-seven, she is kid and you can not leave her? She big strong kid, ties you with rope, makes you take her away from Kiev? Jessica, Jessie, Jessitchka.” Putting, “…itchka,” on any name in Russian turns it horribly sweet, endearing, cute — patronizing.
“Enough, ‘Jessitchka,’ already.” I took a long slow breath. “Timo, I like her. I’d rather die myself than let this kid down.”
Timo was silent for several excruciating seconds then, “She really confront mama in payoff?”
“Yeah, she really did.”
“Jah, okay, give me some minutes. I see what can I do and phone back to you.” He hung up on himself in the midst of, “Jessica, Jessitchka, Jess…” Click.
A minute later I got the inevitable text message reminding me that I was roaming, but to keep on talking. I groaned.
While Anna and I hovered over the breakfast buffet, my cell phone rang back at our table: Timo calling back. I ran for it, swapped my half filled plate for the phone, moved to the courtyard, and answered.
“You take long enough. You still in bed?”
“No, I’m down getting breakfast. So, what’s it going to take to get Anna’s passport replaced?”
“I don’t know. Too much. Forget replace, just get old passport back from the mother. She is called, ‘The Skater,’ no?”
“Whoa, how much do you know, Timo?”
“Too much… not enough, but Skater, she needs to give back passport. I remember Saratov was not so long ago, and I am feeling like making drive in the countryside.”
I remembered Saratov too, a dark and depressed Russian city on the Volga in the dead of winter. Timo had shown up in the nick of time with a bundle of passports that probably saved the lives of a group of nuclear scientists.
“Nizhny Novgorod is not far and right there is passport for Anna. Real one. No forgery, no monkey business, like you say. I will have talk with Yana Keitel, Skater, and she will give passport. Is only reasonable way.”
“Why would you do this? You’re not involved.” I said.
“I am now, my friend. I not forget what you do in Saratov.” Timo paused. I didn’t know what to say. A couple of raucous magpies hopped around tossing dry leaves from an empty fountain out in the courtyard. “Sit tight. Take walk. Enjoy good weather in Odessa. Moscow very cold. No sun. I phone you tonight.” He hung up before I could say goodbye — or thanks.
“Sit tight…” Who was he kidding?
I left Anna at the Windsor Arms, skulked to the Athena mall, and pulled my daily limit of American dollars from an automatic teller machine. I’d been doing that every day for a while, amassing a small fortune in US cash. No idea when we’d have to make a run for it or I got severed from my bank account. Getting back with some wine and groceries I’d picked up in the basement of Athena, I called my bank in Vancouver and liquidated the last of my savings. Some things are best not given too much thought. But we were alive, together and not entirely out of options. At least, not yet.
We were doing what we could to battle the skyrocketing cost of living on the run. We’d long since forsaken eating out for in-room dining and were gobbling tinned sardines with toothpick utensils when Timo phoned, as promised. I snatched my cell phone with oily fingers and poked at the green receiver icon.
“I have got it — the passport of Anna Keitel. Mama, she give it back.” Timo didn’t waste time with a greeting.
I thought he was joking. “Really? She just gave it to you?”
“Keitel is reasonable. I meet her at office. I show identification, say it not good for Russian government to know she takes it away from daughter. She agree right away. Gave passport from handbag.” Timo chuckled. “Very humorous. She nervous. Not wanting coworkers to know I come for visit.”
“Timo, you’re FSB?” I asked, naming the current incarnation of the former KGB.
“We all work for someone now.” He sighed.
I didn’t push for more information. Timo was a rather imposing blonde Nordic giant, which in itself must have had some influence on the outcome of negotiations. “Well, however you did it, thank you. I’m buying the Finlandia when next we meet.”
“Tomorrow, but no time for vodka. I’m flying to Budapest. I shall go through Odessa to give to you passport. We meet at airport, just like old times.” Timo laughed.
Like old times, indeed. I thought back to a hilltop airfield outside of Saratov. It was well before 5:00 am, ice-fog and jet-fuel swirled behind a chartered Yak-42, its turbines whining. Then Timo, a grinning Wagnerian Siegfried, comes striding toward the jet, carrying a briefcase.
I heard honking in the background. “Are you on the road?”
“Jah, I drive and talk on phone, very bad. But not like Russian kids, drunk, driving like playing video game.” More honking and muttered swearing. “I get back to Moscow tonight… maybe.” Timo chuckled. “Then call with arrangements.” He never called, but my cell phone announced a text message an hour after I’d fallen asleep. His coding was hilarious, like something from a spy spoof. I answered in kind.
The art deco passenger terminal at the Odessa airport smacks of the golden dawn of commercial air travel. Then again, travel of any kind, let alone by air, was a luxury out of reach to the average Soviet. It’s part of the mystique that makes this icon of indulgence an oddity in a landscape of Stalinist architectural oppression. From the backseat of a hotel limo, I watched a tall familiar man in a scarf and sunglasses stride a dozen or so meters from the terminal before coming to a stop in the bright sunshine. He put down his briefcase and contemplated his cell phone. My own cell phone announced a new text message and, as arranged, my driver left the limo, met Timo and escorted him to the car. The driver held the back door open while Timo got in beside me.