Irina smiled for the camera. ‘That’s easy. I’ll meet him for you.’
Anna hesitated before pressing the button. She looked at me.
‘Too dangerous. He’s got a weapon.’
Irina walked back to the desk. ‘Where do you think you are, Nick?’ She dug around in her small black leather handbag and pulled out a .38 revolver. ‘Meet this country’s only reliable policeman.’
Then Lena pulled aside her grey cardigan to reveal a shoulder holster. I didn’t recognize the weapon from the grip but I knew it would still go bang and kill people. ‘In our business you need these things. If Irina wants to go, let her. She knows what to do.’
Irina was back in pose mode, still waiting for Anna to do her David Bailey number.
I pointed at her bag. ‘Have you used that thing?’
‘Three times. And if I ever see the friend who sold me, it will be four.’
13
19.55 hrs
The border crossing into Transnistria was at a place called Bender. It would get us into Tiraspol, the capital of this breakaway state, just thirty minutes later. As Viku said when he replied to Anna, he was chilling out at home for a while. Why didn’t Anna come and spend some time with him, see some sights?
That was exactly what a much younger Anna was going to do tonight. Irina had taken over the communication on Anna’s iPhone. She said she was new at the university. She was coming in from Moscow and was suddenly getting cold feet because she had no friends in Chisinau. She’d come across him on Facebook and wondered if he’d help her out. He looked a fun kind of guy.
Anna had been at the wheel of Lena’s Skoda estate for the best part of an hour.
Irina bounced around on the back seat. The roads were unsigned, potholed and totally unlit. We’d had close shaves with tractors, pedestrians and livestock. Anna’s eyes were glued to the small pool of light in front of us as yet another minibus taxi overtook us on a blind corner, packed to capacity with people and suitcases.
‘You have the presents?’
I patted the four hundred US dollars’ worth of lei in my jeans, two hundred in each pocket. Irina had changed some for us both. She’d lost ten per cent on the deal because her USD bills weren’t in absolutely pristine condition.
The headlights picked out a sign that said we were coming to the border. Anna slowed. A pool of light bathed the rutted tarmac about two hundred metres ahead.
‘Look bored, Nick. Who knows? They might just let us through. Irina, be asleep.’
Six or seven guys were sitting in the middle of the road on fold-up chairs. One got slowly to his feet as we came into view. He indicated for us to park up behind them.
‘Shit.’ Anna wasn’t impressed. ‘We’re visiting a friend in a bar, remember. Use his real name, Irina.’
I nodded. I’d leave it to her to explain why her boyfriend was British and didn’t speak a word of her language.
Two older guys stepped forward. They had parkas with the hoods up, and orange armbands to show they were official. One of them came round to her side of the vehicle. Anna powered down the window and tried being short, sharp and aggressive.
They didn’t buy it.
Irina produced an ID card. Anna pulled her passport out and I followed suit. My guy had a grey beard but I couldn’t see much else of his face. With his hood up, he looked like something out of South Park. I smiled as he took it away. I couldn’t tell if he’d smiled back. I doubted it.
He walked round to the front of the wagon. I hated this. I hated losing control of a passport, even for a few minutes.
We were held as a couple of people-carrier buses screamed straight through. The bearded one was joined by his mate. They had a chat about the passports. He came back and gobbed off in Russian at Anna. He handed Irina back her ID card, but he pointed at me. Then he pointed at the bonnet.
‘Give me two hundred, Nick.’
I passed over the two notes from my right pocket and the passports were slipped back through the window. Transaction complete. Simple as that.
Up went the windows and we moved off.
‘All that nonsense just for a bung?’
Anna manoeuvred between two trucks. ‘They said it was a car tax to cross the border. That’s a new one on me. Normally it’s a fine for some kind of driving offence.’
‘Why do they sit in the middle of the road? They got a death wish or something?’
Irina’s head appeared between us. ‘Moldova refuses to build an official checkpoint because it considers Transnistria a break-away province. But at the same time they’re not too thrilled about having their eastern border wide open. So …’
No sooner had Anna accelerated than she had to slow down again. We entered a massive concrete anti-tank chicane.
Irina stayed in tour-guide mode. ‘These were put here by Transnistria in case the Moldovans came across again. It gives the one thousand Russian “peacekeepers” time to get to the border to help.’
Anna prepared her passport for another outing. We emerged from the chicane to see two uniformed Russians in camouflage parkas and furry hats, AK47s slung across their chests. They looked severely pissed off at being on stag at this time of night.
‘They’re part of the Fourteenth Army, the so-called “secret Russians”. You can’t move for them over here.’
Ahead of us, on a straight bit of tarmac, there was another pool of light. More lads sat outside on chairs, but this time there was a Portakabin close by.
‘This one’s trickier. Same story. Visiting a bar.’
More Russian soldiers milled about. They’d pulled in a few of the newer-looking wagons but the rest screamed through. The Transnistria flag, ripped and tattered, flew above the door. It was just the old Soviet red duster with the hammer and sickle in the top left-hand corner and a green stripe across its centre.
We joined a queue. Three Russian soldiers took our passports and Irina’s ID. Their condensed breath hung in the air. They ordered us out and pointed to the Portakabin. Vehicles honked their horns and the smell of diesel fumes filled the cold air.
A trestle table groaned under a pile of brown-paper forms. Anna picked up a pencil. ‘I’ll do it.’
My passport was causing quite a stir. Maybe they’d never seen a British one. They were probably working out how much they could get for it on eBayski. Word had got around. The commander made a special guest appearance, a high-peaked hat cocked on the back of his head and a cigarette clamped between his lips.
He beckoned Anna over. The two of them exchanged pleasantries, and then they got down to business. Whatever it was he’d asked for, she wasn’t going to give up without a fight. Finally they seemed to agree.
I dipped into my left pocket. She held up her hand. ‘He wants four hundred. He’s going to let us stay until two a.m.’
‘It’s by the hour?’
‘Welcome to Dodge.’
I handed over the money, and fished another two notes from my wallet. He accepted the cash before getting one of his underlings to stamp the form about six times.
Anna took it and we got back into the car. None of us said a word as we left the checkpoint and almost immediately crossed the three-hundred-metre-wide Dniester River into Transnistria. I expected to see Checkpoint Charlie at any minute.
The roads here were even worse than Moldova’s - stretches of concrete and tarmac that looked like they’d been carpet-bombed. Maybe they had. We passed the burnt-out shell of a building, crumbling walls stained brown where its rusting iron skeleton poked through.
