Black Wolf - G.D. Abson

October 2017

A group of old women – all headscarves, furs and sunglasses – shuffled past Elizaveta and into the Charlie Chaplin-themed restaurant on her left. She tucked her hands under her armpits. It wasn’t a cold day, but after standing still for an hour she was freezing. She checked the time on her phone: 11.48.

From her vantage point, she watched the four Decembrists on the pavement where the Sampsonievsky Bridge rose to cross the grey Neva. A stream of traffic disappeared below their feet into an underpass along the embankment. Max and a beautiful girl with dark hair joined the four. He was wearing his yellow Puffa jacket that was reversible to black. He’d bragged to her about the time he avoided a stupid policeman by turning the jacket inside-out seconds before the musor chasing him ran right past.

He pulled a turquoise balaclava over his face, before folding up the bottom half so it resembled a woollen hat.

Liza let out a slow breath.

She tried to distract herself by imagining being in bed with Max. Without a doubt, he would be an improvement on the last time – a drunken fuck six months ago while her mother snored next door. Max had never flirted with her, but she was sure they were compatible. He was only a little older, and unlike those waif-like students who worshipped every word he spoke, he seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say.

She stamped her feet to stop the creeping numbness. A waiter was eyeing her from the Chaplin Hall. She couldn’t tell if he was enticing her to go inside the restaurant or curious to know why she had been loitering. She jerked in surprise as her mobile rang. The waiter laughed at her embarrassment. She turned away from him and took off her gloves.

Liza looked towards the group above the underpass. Max had a phone pressed to his ear.

‘I can barely hear you,’ she shouted.

‘They’ll be here in two minutes.’

He hung up.

She started walking, turning up the collar of her wool coat. Max was making another call. She saw him raise a hand to Tima in his parked van on the other side of FinlyandskyProspekt. Seconds later, the van pulled out.

She supposed Tima, the grumpy mudak, had been accepted because of his van. In her case, it was her profession. She told Adelina – the woman on the phone – that she was a buildings surveyor, and before that she had studied physics. Adelina put her in charge of logistics for this operation. She took the job seriously, counting the seconds it would take to empty the barrel, calculating the time for the Mercedes to cover the underpass at different speeds. One night she even dropped pebbles from the pavement and measured the intervals before they hit the tarmac below.

For a while she’d had an ominous feeling that everything would go wrong. Before contacting the Decembrists, the worst she’d imagined was a humiliating arrest in front of Artem, and her career ruined by an invisible mark. Now she knew there was far more at stake. She had every reason to be terrified – and yet she wasn’t. Her heart was pounding, but her nerves had vanished.

Liza steadied her steps, following the pavement as it rose to meet Sampsonievsky Bridge. By the time she reached the other activists, Tima had blocked one of the lanes with his van. She was close enough to see the black tape fixed to his number plate: it was crudely done, and she doubted it would fool the police. Disgruntled drivers manoeuvred around the van. She heard a creak as the back doors were flung open. Two men wearing surgical masks climbed inside and untied the ropes holding the drum in place.

She caught up with Tima in the driver’s seat. He wore a balaclava: an enormous red beanie hat out of which he had cut rough eye and mouth holes.

‘What the hell are you doing? You need to be on the other side,’ he said, all facial expression hidden.

Liza turned away from him. The adrenaline overriding her fear was making her careless. Max pulled down his turquoise balaclava to hide his face. He was an arm’s length from her, with his back to a low concrete wall. Above the noise of the traffic she heard him making a speech into a phone held by one of his students – a young woman with a purple scarf. The remaining two women were wearing colourful balaclavas. They held up a banner with just two words, one above the other:

Retirement

Present

Max’s voice was solemn: a priest delivering a sermon.

‘Mr Putin, today you will be sixty-five,’ he said, ‘but instead of retiring, you will cheat your way to the presidency again. We urge you, for the sake of Mother Russia, go now.’

Behind the balaclava, she could sense Max smile. ‘I hope your secret police lapdogs in the FSB pass on our present to you.’

A tipper truck went past, drowning out his voice and belching diesel fumes. Liza was distracted by the twinkling of an object above the river – it was the camera drone hovering over the Bolshaya Neva like an oversized insect. She looked for Gregor and found him working its controls from the bridge, a safe distance from the action.

Tima was out of the car now. ‘Liza, you can’t be here with us. They’ll see your face.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m going.’

She crossed the bridge, her feet seeming to float above it. Her heart was pounding. Nothing was real. She barely noticed the traffic. Between the four lanes was a dangerous no-man’s land for the trams that the cars used as a chicken lane. She stopped there to watch the two men in their surgical masks grappling with the barrel. It slipped from their grasp and fell to the ground. They manoeuvred it into position and removed the metal strip securing its lid. Red liquid slopped out onto the pavement.

By now, drivers were slowing to gawp. She weaved between the crawling traffic, passing a man recording them on his mobile with his elbow extended from his lowered window. She was close enough to rip the phone from his hand but passed his bonnet unnoticed. If the FSB agents in the convoy looked up and saw a masked face, they would react. As it was, they would see her and do nothing.

Gregor sent the drone under the bridge to capture the convoy emerging from the underpass. She feigned interest in the Cruiser Aurora on the far bank of the Bolshaya Neva, holding up her phone to take a picture of the ship that launched the revolution. The blue lights of the motorcade grew brighter. The first of the cars approached, a bulky black jeep bristling with aerials. Behind it was the black Mercedes.

Motorcycle outriders had cleared the way and the convoy was travelling faster than she had expected. For all her efforts, it had come down to guesswork. When the jeep was twenty metres from the entrance, she turned abruptly. At her signal, the two with surgical masks tipped the barrel. Forty litres of fake blood – glycerine, oil, red dye, and God only knows what else – slopped onto the underpass below.

She caught a cheer and saw them lower the barrel to the pavement. Max raised a thumb to her: a direct hit. Below her feet, a reversing engine whined, and she heard a crunch of metal and glass as one car crashed into another.

Everything was still for half a minute. She heard men in the underpass. The plan had been for the Decembrists to disperse, but they were drawn by the new, unexpected drama. She looked to Max, who raised his hands, palms up – he was as unsure as the rest of them. Only Gregor, with his hypersensitivity to risk, was moving. He was walking away from the action, crossing the bridge to Petrogradsky Island. The drone, an exotic pet, trailed after him across the water.

Four FSB bodyguards emerged from the entrance to the underpass. They were crouching low, using the high walls and shadows for cover, each with a pistol in a two-handed grip. They sealed off one side of the bridge. The barrel was smeared in fake blood; it slipped between the hands of the two in surgical masks. On the second attempt they thrust it into the back of the van. Tima wasn’t waiting. He drove off before the doors were shut. As he accelerated away, the doors flew open and the barrel bounced on the road, rolling down the slope towards FinlyandskyProspekt.

Like the old Decembrists, she watched them escaping across the Bolshaya Neva. This time there was a bridge, but it was over two hundred metres long. Panic broke out. Most started running, some yanking off their masks and balaclavas to blend in; others kept them on, fearing identification by the bridge cameras. She spotted Max; he had reversed his Puffa jacket and was jogging purposefully across the bridge, his turquoise balaclava replaced by a baseball cap. Soon they were all out of sight.

One of the FSB bodyguards jogged past her, then stopped and turned. He wasn’t any older than her, but he had the swagger that came with power.

‘Ksiva.’

His voice hadn’t been as harsh as she’d expected. If he’d shouted, it might have snapped her out of her fear. She didn’t speak. She couldn’t take her eyes off his gun. Her ksiva – her internal passport – was in her purse and once it was out, the world would stop. He would know she had a child and had never been married. More importantly, it would give him her name, and the address of her mother’s apartment.

She had to get away, but it was too late. Her fingers were trembling as she reached into her coat pocket for her purse.

He snatched it out of her hand and drew out her passport, turning to the page with her photograph and name.

‘I saw you watching us, ElizavetaDmitrievnaKalinina.’

She shook her head feebly, unable to put her voice to a lie.

Her non-answer was enough. He grabbed her coat collar and kicked her feet from beneath her, dropping her to the ground. She cried out as her knees caught the pavement. The bodyguard squatted over her, pressing her cheek to the rough concrete with a hand. Across the street, she saw the barrel gathering momentum, leaving a thin red streak behind.