BACK    CONTENTS    ABOUT

Page 5.

The Ugolny airport complex lay across the bay on Chukotka Peninsula itself. In the distance to the south, across the estuary, seen from the northern shore, Anadyr looked like a miniature metropolis complete with tiny buildings set against a stark and barren wilderness. The two shores were several miles apart, and reachable by ferry during the summer months. When the water was frozen over, most of the rest of the year, the two population centers were connected by an air hop—with both chopper or fixed wing taxi service available.

Marianne, traveling west from Paris to the remotest peninsula in Far Eastern Russia, had crossed twelve time zones to reach Anadyr. She could have traveled less than 500 miles from Nome, Alaska heading east. The international boundary between the United States and Russia was barely 150 miles east of Anadyr, in mid-ocean. Regular flights now connected Nome in the United States with Anadyr in the Russian Federation.

The old military and cargo airport of Anadyr-Ugolny had been converted into a compact but sparkling modern transit point. When Marianne deplaned, she carried her one suitcase in her left hand, and a carryall with her toiletries and the urn in her right hand.

The terminal building looked new and smelled clean. It had a map of the world on its rubberized floor. The equipment all around was modern as well, and local personnel were very friendly and efficient. The new Russia was gearing up to take in billions of hard currency dollars Westerners were willing to spend—including those returning home from lives of exile abroad, and those laundering money in all the major cities from drugs, human trafficking, gun smuggling, and every other imaginable crime.

Although the politics and paranoia were gone, one was still expected to have a handler. This was not some dour spook on the KGB payroll—the KGB itself no longer existed, but was now a tenuous ghost of its former self, split into smaller rival agencies.

Marianne’s handler was a tall, thin man wearing a tan tweed suit, and carrying a raincoat slung over one arm.

He recognized her from a photograph, and introduced himself with a small bow as Nayden Marinov, an important official. “As arranged by your travel agency,” he added with a friendly little bow.

“I’m delighted,” Marianne said. She wondered how it happened that this man had been selected to be her guide. There was something too purposeful and knowing about him for her to feel entirely at ease.

Something about him…what is it?...she felt a deep pang of unease that grew, second by second, and then stuck in an unsettled twilight between wondering and not knowing.

A blue-suited Yupik red-cap, who might have passed for a native U.S. American, scooted skillfully in line. Samsonov gestured for the man to put Marianne’s two bags on his shiny steel cart.

“You must be very tired,” Marinov said to Marianne.

“I am,” Marianne said, drawing in a huge gasp of oxygen. The air was cold and brisk as they stepped into the Arctic landscape. She’d seen this scenario elsewhere—in Greenland, in Patagonia, in Finland, in Quebec—a biting, frigid sea washing up on rocky beaches where ice crackled over crystal puddles; forbidding bluish-gray cliffs topped off by a rolling landscape of barren hills and valleys. These places always seemed to be rimmed with distant mountain ranges of frigid gunmetal color, swimming in a haze of near-freezing vapor.

“You should stay at the airport hotel,” Marinov said. “It is modern and clean.”

“Yes, I already booked a room there,” Marianne said. “I have to spend some time across the bay in Anadyr, but my real business is here on the north side.”

“It can all be arranged, Madame.” His eyes had a way of not meeting her gaze, as much as possible.

“Call me Marianne.”

“Very nice, thank you. I’m Nayden.”

“Nayden,” she repeated. “Your English is very good.”

“Thank you. Nayden means ‘Found’ in English.”

“Found,” she said as they walked along the tarmac to the sheltering arms of the hotel. “As in lost and found?”

“It’s ironic,” he said. “You could well say that.”

“It’s certainly true about me,” she said. “How did you happen to be assigned to me, Nayden?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Your English is American, though your name is Russian.”

“I lived in Seattle, Washington for many years.”

“Were you a spy?”

He laughed. “No, I ran away from this crappy place and started a real life.”

“In the freedom of the United States.” As a Frenchwoman, she respected the idea, but couldn’t help placing an ironic twist on the cliché.

“Yes.”

“And now, Nayden, you live—?”

“—In Los Angeles. I get around. I’m in the sales business.”

“So you did what for how long in Seattle?” What was ‘sales business’? An American would have said “I’m in business” or “I’m in sales,” but never both. Maybe it was a strange Russian concept, lost in translation. She judged him to be about her age, not bad looking, with a slightly swarthy complexion and Mediterranean-like features. But he had blondish hair, and dark, slate-blue eyes the color of a cold sea. What was it about this guy? She felt a strange sort of bond with him, from somewhere deep in the soul. Must be the strange power of Russia in general, and Siberia in particular, like the musk of an animal or the bristling abundance of a bear’s fur. Like even the overripe woodsiness of the paper towels in the Ilyushin’s toilet. Russia not only made you aware of itself—it overwhelmed you. And she was tired. That must be what was going on deep inside her.

Nayden said: “I taught Russian, Geography, and History at a high school.”

“For how long?”

“Thirty years in all.”