thought Yeltsin’s face was essentially kind, not angry.
We are at Barvikha–me, Nana and Finn. It is the last day of the millennium. By this time in the evening the sky has darkened behind thick winter clouds. A wind ruffles the trees and the end of a hanging branch scratches back and forth on the wood-tiled roof of the dacha.
By now I have begun to know Finn personally, intimately. Of course I knew everything about him as a target of intelligence long before. I’ve read his KGB file many times while sitting in the sealed anteroom of General Kerchenko’s office. Kerchenko was the old KGB hardliner from Brezhnev’s day, who was my case officer on Finn. I would sit in this heavily disinfected room at the Forest–I never knew why so much disinfectant was necessary–and pore over the photographs of Finn on his own or with a string of women in Moscow’s nightclubs, many of whom were our own honey traps. I read the transcripts of his conversations and looked for hours into his strange eyes, trying to see the mind behind them. In these photographs, he seemed constantly amused, carefree, knowing. I’d got to know the muscles in his face and tried to fit the transcripts of his conversations to its changing expressions.
I got to know his mannerisms and his accent and his conversational tics, his habits, and his likes and dislikes. I knew his history, or that part of it we had been able to piece together in order, we hoped, to use it against him. I had been briefed endlessly on the subject of Finn, and I’d read his file a hundred times, so that when we finally met it was like meeting a character from a favourite book.
‘Dear friends, my dears,’ Yeltsin stumbles on–not at all like the Queen, Finn says–today I am wishing you New Year greetings for the last time. But that is not all. Today I am addressing you for the last time as Russian President. I have made a decision. I have contemplated this long and hard. Today, on the last day of the outgoing century, I am retiring.’
Finn puts his glass down on the small cherry-wood table next to the sofa and Nana stops her shoe shuffle. She and I look at the screen in shock. I can’t see Finn’s face from where I’m lying. I had no idea beforehand of the contents of Yeltsin’s speech but this was not what any of us had imagined.
‘Many times I have heard it said,’ the President continues, ‘“Yeltsin will try to hold on to power by any means, he won’t hand it over to anyone.” That is all lies. That is not the case. I have always said that I would not take a single step away from the constitution, that the Duma elections should take place within the constitutional timescale. This has happened.
‘And, likewise, I would have liked the presidential elections to have taken place on schedule in June 2000. That was very important for Russia-we were creating a vital precedent of a civilised, voluntary handover of power from one president of Russia to another, newly elected one.’
Not sure now what we’re watching, all three of us are suddenly enthralled. Even Finn is silenced. I see his hand stop stroking Genghiz and now it weighs down heavy and immobile on the cat’s stomach until Genghiz struggles free from it and walks off in a huff, shaking his flattened fur.
I lift my head from Finn’s lap and sit up and look at the screen at that electrifying moment. My long black hair is tousled where I’ve been lying on it and Nana distractedly untangles it from behind the sofa, as she’s always done since I was a little girl.
‘This is great,’ Finn says. ‘Yeltsin always knows how to grip an audience. It’s just like eight years ago, when he stood on the tank outside the White House.’
‘Turn it up a bit,’ Nana says, and Finn reaches for the remote control.
Yeltsin talks on, about the surprise of his decision, its unscheduled nature, and says that Russia should enter the new millennium with younger men at the helm. He says that he has done his job and that, now the worst is over, Russia will always be moving forward, never returning to the past.
‘The past is already here, that’s why,’ Finn says. ‘The past is dictating the present.’
Finn is right. The past that haunts Russia in all its terrible identities, and that haunts Russians, is standing behind Yeltsin’s veiled words like the shadow of Death.
‘Why hold on to power for another six months,’ Yeltsin continues, ‘when the country has a strong person, fit to be president, with whom practically all Russians link their hopes for the future today? Why should I stand in his way?’
‘Oh God,’ Finn murmurs. ‘Oh no.’ I look at him, but his face is fixed to the screen.
Yeltsin rambles now, about his desire to be forgiven for not fulfilling some of the hopes of the Russian people; of the huge difficulties he’d faced in taking the leap from a grey, stagnating, totalitarian past into a bright, rich and civilised future in one go.
‘Today it is important for me to tell you the following,’ he says. ‘I also experienced the pain which each of you experienced. I experienced it in my heart, with sleepless nights, agonising over what needed to be done to ensure that people lived more easily and better, if only a little.’
Dimly, from outside the dacha, the muffled sound of a car starting its engine filters through the falling snow and the forest’s trees. And then another follows, and another, one by one and slowly, like the staggered start to a long cross-country race.
‘Everyone now goes to Moscow,’ Nana remarks. ‘To pay homage to Yeltsin’s heir.’
Finn pours himself another brandy.
‘So,’ Finn says, ‘that’s it, then. A civilised, voluntary handover of power from one president of Russia to another,’ he echoes Yeltsin’s words. ‘In other words, Putin gets to be president if he gives Yeltsin immunity from prosecution.’
We look at the sick man on television like awestruck children.
‘I am leaving,’ Yeltsin continues. ‘I have done everything I can. I am not leaving because of my health, but because of all the problems taken together. A new generation is taking my place, a generation of those who can do more, and do it better. In accordance with the constitution, as I go into retirement, I have signed a decree entrusting the duties of President of Russia to Prime Minister Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
‘For the next three months, again in accordance with the constitution, he will be head of state. Presidential elections will be held in three months. I have always had confidence in the amazing wisdom of Russian citizens. Therefore, I have no doubt what choice you will make at the end of March 2000.’
This bitter flattery of Yeltsin’s to deceive the Russian people, this endorsement of the man who has, as Finn predicts, given him immunity from prosecution, is the real beginning of the new era when Yeltsin’s attempts to lead Russia to democracy are finally abandoned.
‘In saying farewell, I wish to say to each of you the following,’ Yeltsin continues. ‘Be happy. You deserve happiness. You deserve happiness and peace. Happy New Year, happy new century, my dear people.’
Before the national anthem has finished there is the sound of more official cars crunching across the snow towards the main road to Moscow.
And that is how, on New Year’s Eve in 2000, we Russians learned we had a new president. Vladimir Putin, only the second KGB boss after Yuri Andropov to achieve this, slips quietly into power. But this time, unlike back then, it takes place in our bright, new, democratic Russia.
7
FINN GETS UP, walks over to the window, stretches, and looks out.
‘So they’re all leaving for the city,’ he says. ‘I suppose I should hurry along to the embassy like a good boy too. They’ll want to code a special British welcome to the new chief.’
He pauses by the window and carries on looking out at the heavy snow falling in the pitch darkness and lit only by the porch light. The track from the dacha is always kept clear and the road out to the motorway into Moscow is open even in extreme conditions. I watch him watching the red tail-lights streaming towards the motorway.
‘Why would anyone want to leave a little wooden house in the forest, with a warm fire blazing inside, to go to the city on New Year’s Eve?’ Nana asks him. She approaches Finn to put a hand on his arm.
‘Typical bloody Russians,’ Finn says to her and forces a smile. ‘Why do you always choose our holidays to change the world? Why don’t you use your own bloody holidays?’
‘Telephone them at the embassy,’ Nana urges him. ‘Say you’re sick. Say you’ve been poisoned,’ she
