the fields towards where she was hidden.
From the edge of the copse nearest the barn, she watched their slow progress from four hundred yards. As she was about to make her retreat, there was suddenly the sound of another military vehicle and she looked down towards the end of the track from the barn where it reached the road. Two military jeeps were racing up the track and a truck swung in after them and stopped. It turned square onto the track and blocked the exit to the road. The jeeps raced on, lashing their gears until they slid to a violent halt next to the first truck beside the barn. Eight soldiers jumped out of the jeeps, weapons drawn. There was shouting and she heard the sound of small machine guns being armed. The new arrivals were levelling their weapons at the Russians outside the barn—two officers, she guessed; they were
The line of soldiers halted their advance, then turned raggedly, the torches swinging around in the darkness. Anna watched the men from the jeeps. They wore green-grey uniforms with Ukrainian insignia and shoulder patches. There was evidently a disagreement. The Ukrainian officer in charge was shouting at his Russian counterpart. “Illegal, illegal”—she picked out the single word, repeated. Russians making covert operations on Ukrainian territory, that was what he meant. It wasn’t the first time. Tensions were high outside the barn, but they were high wherever Russian troops and naval personnel were situated on Ukrainian soil. This looked like an illegal Russian intelligence operation. And the Ukrainian officer was making threats of arrest, despite being outnumbered six to one.
Anna ran through the low scrub trees until she’d reached the far end of the copse. Returning to the road was out of the question. Now both sides would have it covered. She would have to head higher up, away from the town. She remembered roughly where the courier’s route had been on this side of the copse and thought she would follow it before the soldiers found it, if they returned. There was still a chance of completing the pickup. If the courier had followed the rules, she would have left the drop hidden somewhere while she reconnoitred the barn. Unless her arrest was, in fact, her second visit to the barn. But now, did she even have time to save herself, Anna wondered, let alone look for a small bag hidden in the darkness?
The land was soaked with rain on the far side of the copse. Her feet sank into it; it was almost marshy here. Her footsteps would be found, but she could also find the courier’s steps, too. With no light, she crept low over the grass until she found the indentation she was looking for, a footstep that led up the hill. She followed, placing her feet as well as she could in the courier’s steps. She went in a wide circle, at an angle to the hill, until the steps turned straight upwards, then back around above the barn.
She stopped and watched the soldiers’ lights. They’d returned to the barn and there seemed to be a standoff between the Ukrainians and the Russians. She watched through the binoculars as the Ukrainian commanding officer spoke into a radio. Calling for backup, she supposed. But they were all below her now. And there were no dogs that she could hear.
She reached a sandy part of the hill where there were low, scratchy bushes. The footsteps were going in all directions. Had the courier stopped here? To find a place to stash the fertiliser bag while she made a reconnoitre, perhaps? But she saw nothing in the scrub, feeling with her hands in the darkness. The bag of fertiliser wasn’t there. Had the courier already taken it with her to the barn? She looked down the hill again. The soldiers were still facing each other. And then she saw other vehicles arrive at the foot of the track—more Ukrainian jeeps, she guessed. Internal security. The truck that blocked the track pulled back and let them through, then blocked the track again.
They were too busy with each other to find her footmarks soon, or the courier’s tracks she had followed. Maybe the Ukrainians would order dogs to be brought up, once the dispute was resolved. She had a little time, and a little space to manoeuvre. There was no cover for the courier to hide anything, except a tree she saw in the distance, maybe a hundred yards away, at the level of the hill she was on. She felt a great urge to get away. But first she went towards the tree and found the courier’s footsteps again. It wasn’t the direction the courier would have taken to the barn. Up in the crook was a plastic sack that looked grey in the darkness. Standing on a knot in the tree, she snatched it and ran now, up the hill until, higher up, she could find rocks to obscure her tracks.
As she fled through the rocks, she knew that if the courier hadn’t been late, it would have been her the Russians caught in their lights.
Anna smelled the sea before she saw it, and heard the persistent, low roaring noise the sea makes even in the calmest conditions. She guessed she was roughly a mile from the rendezvous, but then there was the cliff to descend before she could make the beach and she had no idea how long that would take. It was nearly twenty-four hours since she had escaped from Sevastopol and the time for the rendezvous was approaching. But if she didn’t make the time agreed on with Burt at their briefing, then Larry and the others would activate the plan to get her out, off the beach, the next day, or the one after that, and at the same time.
She looked down the long slope of a hill that fell away gently to some high, sharp cliffs that flanked a small cove. She was roughly halfway between Sevastopol and Yevratoriya. In the gathering darkness, the walls of the cliffs where they curved around and away from her were a shade lighter than the fields above them and the sea below, and she knew she was in the right place, even if the GPS hadn’t told her so. There was no road to this place, that was why they’d picked it. It was isolated from people. She’d walked through the night and all that day after the pickup. As the crow flies, it hadn’t been so bad. Tonight would be the first chance of rescue.
Overnight on the long walk away from the city, she had fished out the thick plastic envelope from the plastic bag of fertiliser, thrown the bag away, and stashed the envelope in her jacket. She had enough food for three days, maybe four if she eked it out. That was so she could go underground in the event of trouble, and there’d been nothing but trouble since she’d arrived at Odessa. There was more than one opportunity for a rescue and it could be days before they felt they could come in. She looked out to sea now. The fog had lifted, that was a pity. Maybe they would wait for more bad weather to arrive. Maybe they would wait until the sea cut up again, or maybe there wouldn’t be time for that. All she could do was to make the rendezvous, then her fate was in their hands.
When it was completely dark, she descended the hill slowly, watching all the time. If her arrival had been known, and the drop itself was known, would they also know the fall-back plan for her exfiltration from the country? It didn’t matter, either way there was no other chance now. She’d seen Ukrainian soldiers combing the outskirts of Sevastopol, and the ports and other exit points would be heavily guarded.
As she descended she thought about the standoff between the Russian and Ukrainian military at the barn and wondered what the Russians had told the Ukrainian government—an escaped prisoner from their naval base, perhaps? But there was only the woman—a girl, really, from what she’d seen. And the Russians were unlikely to be believed in the highly tense atmosphere that existed in Sevastopol. It depended on who had gained the upper hand at the barn. If it was the Ukrainians, then they would want to know the identity of the courier, once she was revealed to them, as much as the Russians did. The Russians would try to concoct a story that made the Ukrainians seek common cause with them, perhaps, or just curious enough to heed their requests for a search of the city and its environs. It depended on those few seconds at the barn—with diplomacy the Russians might have convinced the Ukrainian military to work with them. No doubt the spectre of terrorism would be invoked, the convenient lie for all unwelcome events.
She reached the top of the cliffs and now clearly heard the waves breaking two hundred feet below. There was an old path fit only for animals, she’d been told in the briefing. But nobody had actually seen it. It was said to have been there for more than two and a half thousand years, since the Greeks occupied the peninsula. Suddenly it sounded uncertain to her, unplanned. They hadn’t even known for sure where it began its descent from the top of the cliffs.
She decided to walk to the left along the cliff edge first. It was pitch-dark now, the sea blacker below except where the waves broke. She didn’t know if she’d see the path even if it was there, and she couldn’t risk using a light. So she walked carefully, stopping often to study a change in the shades of darkness that might reveal the existence of the path. After an hour, examining every possible opening and once almost falling over the cliff, she thought it couldn’t be on that side. She walked back to the centre of the cliffs where she’d started and began again, this time pacing slowly to the right. She was losing valuable time just finding the path—if it existed at all. But she was calm, as she always was in any extreme situation—calmer in those circumstances, if anything. Even the prospect of being left alone on foreign soil and with half an army out there looking for her wasn’t enough to drive fear into her thoughts. Everything—as long as you were free—had a solution.
After twenty minutes searching on the other side, to the right, she saw a break between two rocks. The ground was overgrown, but they’d said the path was unused. That was its advantage. Carefully, she dropped down
