Odesa at Dawn E-Book

Sally McGrane

• Herausgeber: V&Q Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 441

Beschreibung

Ex-CIA man Max Rushmore travels to a still-peaceful Odesa on routine assignment. But things veer off course when the severed hand of the local governor shows up in a vat of sunflower oil. Max stumbles across a solitary toe, with the same tell-tale markings. The downsized professional can't help himself – he has to investigate. With the Russian threat in the background, Max's quest takes him down to the crumbling underbelly of the beautiful Black Sea port city, once the Russian Empire's glittering third capital. It leads him to dubious businessmen, corrupt officials, catacomb dwellers, scientists, pastry-chefs, poets, archivists, cops – and killers. As global political tensions rise, Max begins to untangle the threads of the case. But he is also being tracked – and not just by Odesa's network of mafia-minded stray cats, who may be the only ones who really know what's going on. In this surreal contemporary spin on the classic spy thriller, Sally McGrane pays tribute to one-time Odesa residents like Babel, Gogol, Pushkin and Chekhov, and to the city itself, creating a darkly witty, beguiling and bizarre work of fiction like nothing before. Tokarczuk meets Bulgakov meets Le Carré, in this affectionate portrait of a complex and fascinating city.

Leseprobe

Sally McGrane is a Berlin-based writer and freelance journalist for The New York Times, The New Yorker magazine, and others. Originally from San Francisco, she has worked as a journalist in Russia and Ukraine. She wrote Odesa at Dawn, her second spy novel, in Odesa.

Odesa at Dawn

Sally McGrane

V&Q Books, Berlin 2022

An imprint of Verlag Voland & Quist GmbH

Copyright © Sally McGrane

Editing: Katy Derbyshire

Copy editing: Angela Hirons

Author photo: © Gordon Welters

Cover photo: Unsplash

Cover design: pingundpong

Typesetting: Fred Uhde

Printing and binding: PBtisk, Příbram, Czech Republic

ISBN: 978-3-86391-338-0

eISBN: 978-3-86391-360-1

www.vq-books.eu

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Part One

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Part 2

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Part 3

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Part 4

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Part 5

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Part 6

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Epilogue

Chapter 73

Prologue

‘Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,’ thought Alice;

‘but a grin without a cat!

It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!’

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

1

Mr Smiley was a fat, dirty cat, with ragged mouse-coloured fur, mottled with a darker shade of rat. His distinguishing mark, and the reason for his (wholly inappropriate) name was an ancient, jagged scar that ran from his left eye to his right jaw. His apparent indolence was, in fact, a highly-developed gift for intuition: Mr Smiley knew what was coming before it arrived, and made sure to be out of the way – or in the right place.

This talent was, in Mr Smiley’s opinion, the key to his success. Of course, there were other important qualities as well. Brutality, the ability to walk away, a gift for the double cross, a keen understanding of the enemy, a keener understanding of your friends. The scar didn’t hurt, either. As he said: ‘You should have seen the other guy.’ Followed by a long, low, rumbling purr.

Naturally, Mr Smiley understood, thanks to various insipid conversations he had overheard in his long life, that there was a general belief among the human set that cats could not speak. Pure stupidity! But then Mr Smiley had a generally low opinion of humans. There was a saying among cats: ‘The bigger the brain, the less interesting it is to eat.’ In all of Odesa, in fact, Mr Smiley knew of only one man, a poet, who truly understood that cats could talk.

This poet – his name was Fishman, what a delicious idea – lived in a small dacha at the edge of town and was, according to his nameplate, also some kind of doctor. Every afternoon, patients came to see him. Once inside, they immediately lay down on a red velvet sofa. There, under the dusky eyes of the icons peeping down from the walls of the poet’s office – now and then, the odd ray of sun induced a quick gold wink – these humans behaved in a most astounding manner. Instead of curling up for an afternoon catnap, they lay rigid, arms at their sides, and affixed their eyes to the ceiling. And talked. They talked and talked and talked. The poet folded his hands across his stomach, tucked his chin to his chest, and listened. After fifty minutes, these humans stood up again. Then, smiling or weeping, they left.

Afterwards, the poet – a large calm man with a head of white hair, a white beard, very intelligent, with the exception of an inexplicable inclination to feed the trio of wild hedgehogs who waddled into his garden each evening – sat at his computer. There, he typed up a kind of diary, which was – Mr Smiley’s spies assured him – read all over the city. The cats weren’t certain how the diary was distributed. Not via paper and ink, like in the old days. Some sort of scent, was Mr Smiley’s guess. Mysteriously out of the range of feline olfactory detection, emitted when the poet pressed the button on the right side of his keyboard.

Sometimes Mr Smiley read over the poet’s shoulder as he typed. The diary described the goings-on in the city: boring (in Mr Smiley’s opinion) fights over language; can a Ukrainian writer write in Russian? – pah! Let’s see him write in Cat! – altercations at the Worldwide Club of the Odesites; the question of Ukrainian nationhood; ghostly visitations; what he ate for dinner. In this densely populated literary landscape, the only sane creature was the poet’s own black puss, the desultory Miss Kitty, who ruled the dacha garden with an iron paw (when she could be bothered), and whose crackling, well-placed bon mots made even a scarred, old battle cat like Mr Smiley chuckle. Of course, there were plenty of human women who talked to cats – in every city, women talked to cats – but the poet did more than talk. He listened. And he understood.

*

It was a hot night, late summer, anxious. A thick darkness had descended to just above the streetlights, which were bright in a patchy way – how had Grisha, the new governor, put it? – ‘Like downtown Tbilisi in 1995.’ Of course, cats like shadows. Still, Mr Smiley agreed the city could use some serious spiffing up.

With a swish, Mr Smiley curled his tail. Pressed his body to a tattered brick façade. Listened. Felt. Became part of. The city had a single consciousness tonight. As if every building and every being breathed the violence in the air. Tourists in hot pants were jumpy. From car windows, the tinny beats were lower and louder than usual; from every corner came the sound of tyres screeching. The scent of burnt rubber. Soviet-made brakes wailing, heartbroken by their own demise. Boys were sensitive; of all the humans, they felt the energy first, and strongest. They revved their engines, sped through the cobblestone intersections, faster, more dangerous than usual.

Mr Smiley was among the few who knew exactly where the explosion the whole city felt coming was going to take place. Humans – the mafia, in particular – thought they knew everything. But who could know more, in this city, than the cats? The pretty orange ones who ingratiated themselves in exchange for fish; the louche white ones, sleeping all day on the sidewalks, the dark, ragged night-time spies who gathered in groups of six or seven, here on Gogol Street, eyes matted with gunk and bugs, awaiting instructions. The cats were everywhere, on every corner, under every café table, beside every terrace. No one knew more than the cats, and none of the cats knew more than Mr Smiley. For one simple reason: he was their boss.

Of course, he should have given this assignment to an underling, someone he could trust – like the muscular Tabby-kitty, or the clever, vicious Boots. But while all cats could talk, not all cats could make themselves understood to the average human. And this wasn’t an average human! No, this was Sima.

Even her name! Ser-a-phi-ma. The fiery angel. Sima to her friends. Simochka to him. How long had he loved her? How could an old alley cat like him even think of love? But since the day Mr Smiley had first caught a glimpse of her long legs, her marmalade tresses, her innocent, yet not entirely innocent smile, Sima had been the one for him. If he were a man! Or she were a cat! She would live like a queen among felines with that golden fur, those shapely limbs. He would make sure of that – if she were his concubine.

He had often thought of just what he would do with – and to – her, but it was no use. As it was, Mr Smiley wasn’t sure how she felt about him. Sometimes, it was true, Sima chucked him under the chin and gave him an anchovy if she saw him outside the restaurant. But a lot of women did that. And of course, she had no way of knowing how important he was. How many felines would be thrilled if he showed a tenth – a thousandth – of this interest in them! How they threw themselves, quite literally, at his feet, splayed their hindquarters. But, no. No, he was no fool. Mr Smiley understood that when Sima looked at him, there was no hint of desire – no, for her, he was just another grubby if somewhat endearing stray. Not even good enough to be a pet.

Mr Smiley buried his anger. It wasn’t Sima’s fault. None of it was. And he knew what was going to happen here, at her mother’s restaurant. ‘Angelina’s.’ Quite a cook, that Angelina! She made a wonderful forshmak, a perfect combination of herring filet and apples, sugar, vinegar and eggs, mushed to a pasty consistency, ideally spreadable by knife, or tongue of cat – and she wasn’t stingy with the leftovers, either. A generous woman with the elegant proportions of old age – as wide as she was tall – oh, Angelina would have made a wonderful mother-in-law for an outlaw like Mr Smiley, who needed the comforts of family life all the more, given the blood he was obliged to spill … He swished his tail in anger. Pipe dreams, again! It didn’t matter. What mattered – what really mattered – was Sima.

Sima was in danger, and Mr Smiley was going to save her.

When it was time, he jumped up with surprising grace, and ran to the restaurant’s back door. It was open. He poked his scarred head inside.

He was rewarded with a sight of Sima, her marmalade hair pulled back, her skirt hiked up as she knelt to scrub the floor of the restaurant’s dining room. What thighs! thought Mr Smiley, licking his lips. She turned her head, and in the darkness Mr Smiley saw the birthmark, shaped like a heart, just under her left eye – a marking that, in a cat, would indicate pure blue blood.

The plate-glass window reflected the night like a mirror. ‘ASSHOLE!’ A loud squawk caught the cat off-guard for an instant. ‘ASSHOLE!’

Where was that horrible bird? That would be a silver lining! If Jacques the grey parrot, that large handsome creature, spoiled, taunting, sleek, healthy, his feathers shining like polished stone, happened to die – but the cage wasn’t in the window where it usually was. The parrot’s cry pierced the night again. ‘ASSHOLE!’ No time for settling old scores, thought Mr Smiley. The cat looked hard at Sima. And concentrated.

2

‘ASSHOLE!’

Sima stood. Took off her plastic gloves, rested her hands on her hips. What had she just been thinking of?

‘ASSHOLE!’

‘Pretty bird,’ she called softly, surveying the small, darkened dining room absent-mindedly. It was a hot night, very late – much later than she’d planned. She had turned off all the lights – her mother said she was crazy, but to Sima it always felt cooler that way. Looking around, Sima could make out the grey outlines of tables, with chairs stacked on top of them. For the ‘Big Clean’ – the first since they’d opened the restaurant a month ago. The heavy zinc bar glinted in a splash of light reflected from the plate-glass picture window. ‘You’re a pretty bird, Jacques.’

By now, of course, Sima could have found her way around the little dining room – only seven tables! – blindfolded. Sima lifted her arms above her head, up towards the restaurant’s soaring ceiling, and stretched. She yawned, a long deep yawn, and dropped her arms. She was tired. In the best possible way, after a day of hard work: up at dawn to meet the fishmonger; pressing a delivery of farmers’ tomatoes for homemade juice, dark red and thick like blood; chopping sorrel for the week’s green borscht. She lifted her long fingers. They were stained just a little still. Dark green. A fresh, verdant smell. Sharp. Like Mother Nature rapping you on the knuckles. Telling you not to give up just yet.

She pushed her green fingertips through her long strawberry blonde hair. With one finger, she touched the black birthmark, shaped like a heart, beneath her left eye. It was one of her habits when she was deep in thought. She wondered if Grisha, the new governor, was really going to come for dinner one of these nights. That was the rumour. She’d heard it several times now.

‘ASSHOLE!’

A lot of her friends were really excited about Grisha. Grisha (everyone called him Grisha) was young – not yet fifty – American-educated, forward-thinking. Not to mention the fact that in his native Georgia, he’d been president – twice! And Georgia and Ukraine, they weren’t so very far apart. Kind of like first cousins, in the post-Soviet world. Anyway, from what you heard, his reforms had really succeeded back in his country. The traffic police stopped taking bribes, for example. Then he was ousted. And now he was here, in Odesa.

Grisha was a charmer, that was for sure. No Soviet-style politician, locked away in his office. On the contrary, Grisha was always on the go, a real man of the people with his boyish smile, his bowlcut hair, his post-presidential pot-belly – the kind of man who would order third and fourth helpings of forshmak and pay for it too. He didn’t go anywhere without a camera crew: On TV, he was always shaking hands with everyone he met – babushkas, beachgoers. A month into his tenure, Sima had the feeling that she knew Grisha’s famous birthmark – a wine-coloured stain in the shape of the state of Florida that stretched from wrist to knuckles of the governor’s right hand – as well as if it were her own.

Should she take the chairs down now? Sima inhaled. The lemon scent of cleaning fluid. Still wet. First thing in the morning, then.

‘ASSHOLE!’

The strangest feeling had come over her. Like she’d forgotten something. She shook her head. It would be great publicity if Grisha really did come to dinner with his camera crews.

His political plans sounded good too. Rout out corruption! Bring in transparency! But Odesa wasn’t Georgia. There, Grisha had been president of the whole country. Here, he was just the governor of a single region. And right here, in Odesa, the region’s capital, he was up against powerful forces. Mephisto, for example. The city’s mayor had already declared all-out war on the new governor. Sima shook her head in disgust. Mephisto! He’d earned his nickname, that was for sure. A former gunrunner and current Thai boxing champion, with a Russian passport and direct ties to the Kremlin – as Sima knew all too well, short, squat, bald Mephisto could make your life hell.

She sighed. The best approach was to wait and see. Not get your hopes up.

‘ASSHOLE!’

Sima looked around again at the friendly grey shapes. What a strange feeling. What could she possibly be forgetting? After all, she’d worked at her mother’s beach restaurant since she was six. Twenty years. A wonderful restaurant, everyone said so. Sometimes, they added: ‘Why don’t we take it off your hands?’ Sima and her mother just smiled politely. Nothing ever happened. No one ‘took it off their hands’. Until, one night, they did. A year ago, now. A warm summer night, dark and humid. Like tonight, actually.

A policeman had pulled up in a black BMW. Not a regular policeman – a regular policeman could never afford a car like that in his whole life. A crooked policeman, who sauntered over to the kitchen after closing time. He’d said the restaurant didn’t belong to them. That they had to get out. Angelina stood in the door., blocking it with her broad frame. ‘No,’ she’d said. The fire came a few days later. They lost everything. All of it. Burnt to a crisp. Cooks understand: when that happens, you just have to start over again.

‘ASSHOLE!’

For six months Sima didn’t work. For six months, she got up in the morning and had nothing to do. She’d never experienced anything like it before. As if life was passing through her – she reached out, but she couldn’t grasp it.

Finally, to have something to do, Sima signed up for a French pastry course online. She was a natural when it came to sugar sculpting; so good that she won a prize. Children’s zombie parties were all the rage in Odesa. So Sima baked a cake in the shape of the undead. She invented an entirely new method to make the eyeballs – butter cream and a hard sugar glaze. The results were eerily lifelike – even the French said so. The judges had never seen anything like it, and Sima came away with a silver medal.

But baking wasn’t enough to keep Sima and her mother going. When this space opened up in the city centre, they’d hesitated at first. What they knew was thirty tables, at the beach. But the city centre was an opportunity. So, they sold their family apartment in the centre, the one they’d had for generations.

They had just signed the new lease when Mephisto called. The mayor wanted to invest. Of course, Sima and her mother had known Mephisto – he got his name in a Soviet prison – for years. He had come to the beach restaurant, like everybody else. Sat in the corner with his thick neck and dull eyes.

Sure, they knew it was a risk to go into business with Mephisto. But they thought they could handle it. Until Mephisto stopped by. Sima offered him coffee. He didn’t respond. Instead, the mayor of Odesa strode to the centre of her new restaurant. Held up a meaty fist. She’d never noticed just how thick Mephisto’s neck was. How the veins bulged whenever he wanted to emphasise a point.

‘If you or your mother STEAL…’ he was saying, in a deep, angry voice. Sima was so surprised, it didn’t even occur to her to be scared. ‘…ONE’ (bulge) ‘HYRVNIA…’ (bulge). Sima shook herself, tried to pay attention to what he was saying. Something along the lines of, then he, Mephisto, was going to… (bulge) ‘…TAKE A SAUSAGE’ (bulge, bulge) and ‘STICK IT…’ Here, Mephisto paused. Seemed to decide that further emphasis, in the form of pantomime, would be helpful. He clutched his meaty fist around an imaginary kielbasa, then brought it with some violence towards his shaved skull – ‘… in ONE EAR’ (he paused and raised his other fist) ‘UNTIL IT COMES OUT’ (he clutched what appeared to be the other end of the invisible sausage) ‘YOUR OTHER EAR!!!’ Then he turned and walked out.

After that, Sima and her mother decided to give Mephisto his money back. If they were frightened, it was of what would happen if they kept working with him. So now they had no advertising budget. None at all.

A small price to pay, as it turned out. Word of mouth was enough, so far. And now? They were working again. People were coming. The new restaurant was different. But it was good. Sima smiled.

‘ASSHOLE!’

Jacques the parrot, for one, loved the new location. The parrot always wanted to be at the centre of things. In the old restaurant on the beach, Jacques had lived in the busy throughway next to the big kitchen, surrounded by busboys. A rough, fearless bunch. Pretty free with the word ‘asshole’. When the restaurant burned, one of them went back for Jacques. Brave, or foolhardy. Certainly, kind.

‘ASSHOLE!’

In the new place, Sima hung Jacques’ cage in the big picture window. From there, the parrot could keep an eye on everything that went on in the dining room. But he could also watch over the street – a responsibility he shared with no less a personage than Gogol, who, from a bronze plaque just across the way, looked out over passers-by with a mysterious half-smile.

‘ASSHOLE!’

For the ‘Big Clean’, Sima moved the parrot’s cage to the back. Of course, Jacques didn’t like that.

‘ASSHOLE!’

‘Sausage in your ear,’ Sima whispered, shaking her head. At least Jacques hadn’t picked up on that. Thank goodness for small blessings.

‘SQWAWK!’

Sima was tired, all of a sudden. So, so, tired. ‘I’ll put you back in the window tomorrow, Jacques,’ she said. Something tugged at her. A thought, or a memory. ‘Promise, pretty bird.’

‘SQWAWK!’

Sima paused. She had a feeling it was behind the old zinc bar, whatever it was she’d forgotten. What on earth could it be? Had she dropped something? What was it?

*

Ten. Nine. Eight. From the doorway, Mr Smiley’s lips curved back over his incisors. ‘Get down!’ he said. ‘Get down!’

Seven, six.

Only when he saw Sima bend to the floor behind the bar, in safety, did the cat run out the back way, as fast as his paws would take him.

Five, four.

In the distance, the caged parrot cried out faintly. ‘Asshole!’

Three, two, one…

3

‘With due respect, may I present my report on the bombing of ‘Angelina’s’ restaurant?’

Inspector Krook sat at his desk on the second floor of Odesa’s police headquarters. Studied the deep crack that ran like a miniature canyon through the dark brown veneer of his standard-issue desk.

‘With due respect, just a few hours ago, “Angelina’s” restaurant was bombed.’

With a deep sigh, Krook raised his eyes. Gazed not at the speaker waiting eagerly in front of him, but out the window. There, in the dusty courtyard below, an old striped, grey cat emerged from the shade of the grapevines. Turned his scarred face to the sun. The very image of peace and calm. But Krook knew better: just last week, a moneylender was shot to death right there. Beneath the grapevines. In broad daylight. Krook frowned. That was embarrassing, of course. Made the police look bad.

‘Sir, I think with all due, due respect, we should really hurry …’

With some effort, the policeman lifted his heavy lids. Took in the fresh-faced youngster with dark hair, pink lips, and dimples – dimples! – in the crisp, new black uniform. One of these ‘New Ukrainians’. A degree in ‘Business English’, a co-dependent relationship with his new-fangled telephone, idealism out the wazoo. In short: someone with no business being a policeman. Why was Inspector Krook stuck with him? Simple! Grisha, the interloper from Georgia! As governor of Odesa, Grisha had first inspired and then hired this moron.

Not that the problem was that Grisha was from Georgia, Krook reflected. Odesa had always been a multicultural city. Its founding fathers had been French, Italian, Russian. Today, the Odesa region was home to no fewer than 136 ethnicities! No, the problem was that this Grisha was a grandstanding idiot who pretended that opening a Las Vegas-style drive-through wedding chapel in front of the Regional Administration Office was a piece of meaningful reform. Meanwhile, as everyone knew, whenever there was a threat that corruption was going to be curtailed, it set off a flurry of larceny as everyone tried to get what he could. Who had to deal with that? With the missing guns and the sudden inexplicable lack of staples? Inspector Krook, of course.

Then there were the morons like Dimples. Instead of getting a job in advertising, the kid saw Grisha on TV and joined the police. Great! Now he was standing there in his uniform, demanding Inspector Krook’s at least semi-valuable attention.

The uniform! It made Inspector Krook angry all over again. The snappy, black, collared shirt just like the one the California Highway Patrol wore. Like a goddamned TV show. With costuming! Already, Odesites were calling them ‘the Instagram Police’. Apparently, this Dimples had even gone to the United States for two weeks, for training. Let’s see how long you last, thought Krook. With your ‘training’.

Krook sighed. He was no longer a young man, and just now, his belly was threatening to dislodge his own snappy new shirttails.

Sensing he had his superior’s attention, the young man launched into his report with renewed vigour. ‘Another bombing, with due respect,’ said Dimples, who had accepted his colleagues’ nickname and tried to make the best of it. ‘Sima – Angelina’s daughter – got a real scare. I was just there! I interviewed her. She had …’ Dimples checked his iPhone, scrolling through his notes. ‘… extra clean-up to do. The bomb came right through the plate-glass and went off two feet away from her. Luckily, she was looking for something behind the bar. That was, with due respect, a real stroke of luck!’

Krook stared silently at Dimples. Then he let his gaze fall. It settled on the cracked brown desk, as his mind wandered. Did Krook take the occasional gift? Sure he did. How else would his daughter get a doctor’s appointment for her diabetes? How was his granddaughter going to get a spot at a kindergarten? The new governor could talk about reforms all he wanted to. Where was the reform that was going to undo the routine hospital visit that had given Krook’s no-good son-in-law hepatitis C?

Something was irritating Krook. He realised it was Dimples’ voice.

‘They’d just installed an old bar. Zinc, super solid. Parisian-made, 19th century. Saved her life! Sima’s husband salvaged it from the old Mason’s house – you know, the one that just collapsed into itself from neglect last week? What a shame, actually. The architectural heritage that’s lost every time something like that happens. With due respect, I’ll make a note to talk to Grisha about it when he holds his next “Town Hall Meeting” – you know it’s an American thing, all televised! And citizens really get a chance to speak up, at these …’

‘Maybe you oughta work at UNESCO,’ barked Krook.

Dimples looked up at him. Pleading.

‘Go ahead,’ said Krook.

Dimples went back to scrolling with his forefinger.

‘“This is Odesa’s thirteenth victimless bombing,”’ read Dimples. ‘“All of the bombings have targeted pro-Ukrainian groups – people actively working to keep Odesa part of Ukraine, instead of breaking away to rejoin Russia.”’

Krook rolled his eyes. Talk about stating the obvious! But Dimples was still staring at his telephone. ‘“… The private apartment of internationally acclaimed Odesa poet Yefim Fishman, who is also a practicing psychiatrist … the Ukrainian secret service’s Odesa headquarters …”’ The boy looked up. ‘With due respect, last night’s bombing fits the pattern – after all, it’s well known that Angelina was taking borscht to the hospital to feed Ukrainian soldiers wounded fighting the Russians in the east. I suggest we investigate the possibility that the Russian secret services – the FSB …’

‘I know what they’re called,’ growled Krook.

Dimples paused. Then, breathless, said: ‘So, sir, can I investigate the FSB? To see if they’re behind this? With due …’

Dimples broke off. Krook had buried his chin in his chest. The answer, of course, was no: political cases got bumped upstairs to the highest level. No plain Ukrainian copper was going to investigate the Russian secret services. What did they teach that little idiot in San Diego?

Just then, one of Krook’s long-time colleagues wandered in. Paused to re-tuck his snappy new shirt into a waistband as generous as Krook’s own. He looked at Dimples, then at Krook. His glance was withering. Krook grinned. At least someone understood him!

‘Why doesn’t Angelina just pay the protection money?’ mused the colleague.

Krook shrugged. ‘She still thinks her old friends will keep her safe.’

The colleague shook his head. ‘Only a cretin could bomb “Angelina’s”, after they’d tasted her forshmak.’

‘A good restaurant is a little gift from God,’ agreed Krook.

The colleague raised his eyebrows philosophically. ‘At least no one was hurt.’

‘Oh!’ said Dimples, looking up. ‘With due respect – that – that’s not quite true. Let me see …’ He looked down, scrolled. Paused, fingertip hovering. ‘You know they have a parrot – an African grey. Ah, yes! Here it is: “Since the explosion, Jacques the parrot has been afflicted … with a stutter.”’

Part One

I have not felt so much at home for a long time as I did when I

‘raised the hill’ and stood in Odessa for the first time.

It looked just like an American city; fine, broad streets,

and straight as well …

Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

4

Max Rushmore flew LOT from Warsaw. Like the train station, the new Polish airport was a kind of wonder of modernity. A dream in steel and electronics and granite; spacious, well-designed, fast, easy to navigate – from the city centre it was an entirely smooth, seamless ride, and you were checking in at your squeaky-clean gate practically before you knew it.

Certainly, given the country’s tack towards authoritarianism, its refusal to take any of the EU’s Syrian War refugees, and its generally retrograde politics, the slick lime green posters dangling from the aviary-esque boughs of the new airport’s ceilings struck Max as a little ironic. ‘POLAND: OPEN TO THE WORLD.’ Yeah, right.

Still, security was a breeze – well organised, uncrowded. And the Nordic countries had nothing on the understated decency of the Poles’ duty-free zone. Stocked with all the global musts: stale Swiss chocolate, bottled French water, bottled local water, soccer championship-themed key chains.

The clientele wasn’t quite what you’d find in Copenhagen though, thought Max, as a desiccated man in a suit like a time warp – brown polyester, thin silky shirt, brown narrow-brimmed hat – picked up an ‘I Heart Warsaw’ coffee mug. Max stopped in front of the key chains. The man stooped a little. His skin was drawn taut over his face and hands. As if he had been living in the desert for a long time and wasn’t suited to it. Max turned a key chain over. Felt the sharp ridges and laminated valleys with his fingertips. Glanced down. Black. White. A soccer ball.

With a sudden surprising grace, the desiccated man held the mug up to the light. Studied it. Or rather, affected to: as Max watched, the man’s free hand darted out. Fast, like the flash of a lizard’s tongue. In a single smooth motion, he pocketed a tin of British breath mints. Impressive, thought Max. For such a casual act of malfeasance. Over the loudspeakers, a woman’s voice announced that the flight to Odesa was boarding. The man turned, listened. His right eye was covered in a leather patch. ‘Final call for boarding,’ echoed the voice. ‘Please proceed …’ The man with the eye patch lost interest in the Warsaw mug, and Max lost interest in the man with the eye patch. Both men hurried towards the gate.

The national airline had come a long way too, thought Max as they boarded. He was too young to have flown LOT in the days when it was known to the Berliners as ‘Landet Och Tempelhof’, or, in the Berlin dialect, ‘Sometimes Lands at Tempelhof’, due to the frequency with which Polish planes were highjacked by passengers desperate to flee the constraints of the Iron Curtain. Still, the LOT of the 90s, with its peeling cabin wallpaper, homemade pastries and unsettling mechanical groans, couldn’t have been much of an upgrade. Those planes had nothing in common with this slick new one, small but steady, blue upholstered, purring.

Now that Moscow had cut off flights to Ukraine, you had to go through Kyiv, Munich, Vienna. Minsk. Max chose Warsaw because LOT was having some sort of super sale – 1 euro for a flight to Odesa. In the old days, of course, a secretary named Kenneth had taken care of conference flights. These days, it was up to the conference attendees. Paid out-of-pocket, with expenses reimbursed on presentation of receipts. ‘Under the new policy, expenses will be paid once the report is filed and okayed at all levels,’ said a temporary secretary, when Max asked when he could turn in his receipts.

‘But that can take a year,’ said Max. The decision, she replied, came from the very top.

Ah, well, thought Max, as an entirely sober-sounding pilot announced they were beginning their descent to Odesa, and thanked them for choosing LOT. The only constant is change. The landing would probably be smooth, and none of the passengers would applaud. He was right, on both counts.

*

The aeroplane’s rounded door opened onto a hazy, brown sky. Tacked like a paperboard over the shimmering grey tarmac. When Max’s turn came, he nodded at the stewardesses, then averted his eyes. He made it a rule not to flirt in English – out of respect for Rose, his wife – and only a fool would try to seduce a Polish woman in Russian. As he stepped across the threshold, the stewardesses smiled through their pink lipstick and sibilant Polish farewells. As if they appreciated his sensitivity.

In the noonday glare of the Black Sea sun, Max blinked. The heat hit like a body – heavy, encompassing. Thick. He shrugged his shoulders under his light wool suit – bought, in keeping with the straightened circumstances of his semi-employment, off the rack. A ‘Big and Tall’ store, with plastic tags scattered on the floor. In an act of solidarity, Rose had driven over with him. Waited on a plastic bench outside the dim dressing room. Smiled, her rosy cheeks dimpling, when he emerged. Pronounced it ‘not bad at all’. The cheap suit pulled a little, in the wrong places. Belly, elbows. Max began to sweat.

A grandmotherly type in a synthetic leopard-print shift wobbled. Max reached out and steadied her. She turned around, nodded gratefully. Ahead of her, a line of passengers filed sluggishly down the steep steel steps. Limped across the tarmac. An accordion-style bus idled, distorted by plane exhaust, in the distance.

You’d never know it from here, thought Max. But somewhere beyond the broken-down Tupolevs, the thirsty grove of trees and the pale crowns of the suburbs, lay Odesa. ‘Ah-dee-YES-a!’ as the Russians said, eyes brightening. ‘Ah-dee-YES-a!’ – as if those four syllables held within them all the promise of summer, sunshine and the sea. ‘Ah-dee-YES-a!’ The wedding-cake opera house. The baroque facades. Built, all of it, according to the ‘Golden Rule’ – in this free city, went the idea, even the streets should give you room to breathe. ‘Ah-dee-YES-a!’ With its priests and flaneurs; striped-shirted sailors and tanned girls in short skirts. Everyone, all of them, ready for a holiday in the ruins of what was, once upon a time, the Russian Empire’s glittering, glamorous third capital.

Max felt a tug on his elbow. He looked down. A pair of large green eyes were staring at him. A little girl. She was four, maybe five. But small. Elfin. Beneath the large green bow tied in her curly hair, she wore a deeply serious expression. ‘Will you carry me?’ she said in the sweet, slightly nasal sing-song of Odesan Russian. She looked down at her legs. They were too short for the steel stairway.

In the doorway, the girl’s mother was struggling with an infant and a baby stroller. The girl followed Max’s glance, then said, ‘Mama, can the man carry me?’

‘Alright!’ she said.

Max bent and picked the little girl up. ‘Thank you,’ she said, now that they were face to face. ‘My name is Cassie,’ she said. ‘My papa left us.’

‘Oh,’ said Max. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Cassie.’

She shrugged. ‘I told her …’ – she nodded towards her mother – ‘… that he would.’

What a strange little girl, he thought.

‘I can see things,’ she said, as Max hauled her up. ‘My mama says I shouldn’t tell people. She says they won’t like me.’

‘Is that right?’ said Max. She nodded, seriously, with those green eyes. Then she lay her head against his shoulder in the warm, sticky way of small children.

Max leaned against the steel railing as the little girl’s weight sunk into his left side. His shoulder began to ache. Just a little. He had long ago accepted that whatever magnetism it was that drew women to him also attracted children and dogs. Well, he thought. Everything has its price.

The little girl was wide awake again. Her little body alert in his arms. Those green eyes bored into him. ‘Why are you here?’ she said.

‘Uh,’ said Max. He was about to say he was there for work. But the little girl had relaxed again. She seemed to have fallen asleep. The line had not moved. The sun beat down. Max closed his eyes. Turned her question over in his mind. What was he doing here?

*

Like most disasters, it was simple. It had taken him a full eight months to tell his wife, Rose, that he had lost his job at the Agency and was now working, part-time, with no benefits, for a private contractor called Nightshade.

When Max did finally come clean, Rose reacted far better than he’d expected. She was more supportive than livid, when she learned just how long he had hidden his semi-unemployment from her. She hadn’t even lost her temper when it became clear that Max’s confession came about not due to a sense on Max’s part that he should be honest with his wife, but rather because he couldn’t afford to keep paying the rent on his Bethesda pied-à-terre, where he had been hiding out during the week while he pretended to go to the office.

No, Rose wasn’t angry. In fact, to Max’s surprise and relief, the news of his total career failure and the resultant end of their joint economic stability had, if anything, invigorated her.

In the weeks following his confession, however, Rose had begun to take active notice of his underemployment. This, Max had thought at the time, was bound to lead to no good.

He was correct. It was not long before Rose hit on an idea that was, ironically, not so unlike the one proposed by Nightshade’s HR man, known affectionately as the HR-Prick. Like Max, the HR-Prick had been downsized by their former mutual employer, the CIA. Like Max, the HR-Prick (who had earned this nickname after leading a particularly painful, government-mandated three-day Agency seminar on sexual harassment) had been almost immediately reanimated, if only in a kind of sad, twilit way, by a new gig in his old capacity at the private contractor Nightshade. Like Max, the HR-Prick had jumped at the private contractor’s offer, despite the not-insignificant drawbacks of less pay, minimal stability and no health insurance. ‘Better than nothing,’ could have been Nightshade’s employee motto.

Anyway, this very same HR-Prick, calling on behalf of Nightshade, had once urged Max to ‘opportunise’ his unemployment in order to ‘leverage his liquidity’. Which to Max sounded like an activity better suited to a hydraulic pump than a human being, but whatever. Rose’s idea was similar. Similar, but more concrete.

In the relentless heat of the Black Sea sun, the line moved. One step down. Two. Balancing the green-eyed girl on one arm and wiping his brow with his free hand, Max slowly descended.

*

A Tuesday. Oh, about a month ago. Over coffee in the late morning sun, on the terrace of the split-level ranch house an hour outside of DC that they could no longer afford. Rose had looked up. Turned her full-wattage smile on him.

Her suggestion was delivered with a lowering of her eyelashes. Shyly. If Max were to take his name off the Nightshade go-to list, she began. Max felt himself brace. Well, she continued – then, he’d be free. Freer, anyway. He could even come to work – full-time, could he picture that? In the wonderful world of real estate. A wonderful world in which she was respected and well-established – or, on her way to being pretty well-established, you know.

Rose’s pale blue satin robe slid open, just a little, as she leaned forward over the artificially distressed patio table. The glimpse of his wife’s cream-coloured décolleté distracted Max for a brief, dizzying moment. ‘Marty and Mike are doing it,’ Rose was saying when he tuned back in. Max looked at her, astonished. He hadn’t seen her so enthusiastic about anything since the doctor delivered the news that they weren’t going to be able to have children.

‘You know the Andersons?’ Rose continued. ‘Marty was just telling me about it at book club. Anyway, Marty says she knows several couples who are doing it. As a second career. Like us! Marty and her husband call themselves “Team Anderson”. And it makes sense, you know? After all, a couple – a couple really knows how to work together, how to problem solve. You take advantage of all this “emotional capital” – that’s the term Marty used, I know, it sounds a little cheesy, but I mean, it makes sense, “emotional capital” – that you’ve accumulated. And of course, you’re in it together. You’re not exactly going to cheat your spouse out of a commission!’

Max had been so glad to see her looking more like her old self, to see a sparkle in those blue eyes – even her loose blonde curls seeming to bounce a little more brightly when she talked about ‘accumulating emotional capital’ – that he had in all seriousness promised to ‘seriously, seriously’ consider the idea of taking his name off the Nightshade go-to list. At which point, yes, of course, he would be free to put his various foreign languages to use instead; peddling high-end greater Washington DC-area residences to well-heeled Russian and German and Chinese buyers, and maybe the odd francophone dictator in exile, as part of the duties naturally incumbent on fifty percent of ‘Team Rushmore’.

Nightshade’s call came the very next day. As far as Max was concerned, the timing couldn’t have been better. One day! One day couldn’t possibly be considered enough time to have given such a radical career shift adequate thought. One day! Max was free to agree to anything he wanted to. And indeed, the sound of the HR-Prick’s squeaky voice on the line brought a stab of brief unadulterated joy to Max’s slightly fatty heart. (In the last medical paid for by his Agency health coverage, he tested positive for cat hair allergies and, more troublingly, learned his cholesterol levels were sky high. When he finally came clean to Rose, he told her about that, too. A show of good faith. She immediately put him on a new diet that involved subsisting almost entirely on Greek yogurt).

‘Hello, Max? Ahm – Max?’ The HR Prick’s slightly nasal voice sounded wonderfully familiar as it squeaked into a whine. ‘Oh – ahm – good. I was afraid we might have an outdated phone number on file. Let’s get down to – ahm – brass tacks, shall we?’ The HR-Prick paused. Seemed to be shuffling papers.

Max waited, standing with the phone to his ear in the ruins of what had once been the kitchen – the tardy news of Max’s unemployment had put an end to Rose’s endless renovations, leaving the heart of the house in media res for the time being, with the halftorn-out kitchen island covered in plastic, and Ikea hook-rugs spread across the unfinished concrete floor. Max and Rose had both grown accustomed to regular minor bodily damage resulting from various stray nails, sharp corners and splinters.

‘Verrrrry, ahm, good,’ came the voice, finally. ‘We’d like to know if you still feel comfortable with your Russian language skills, ahm, not too rusty, you know. We have a couple of leads, ahm, related to the region that the regular, ahm, staff can’t handle right now.’

‘Sure,’ said Max, trying to make it sound as if it didn’t matter much to him either way. He shifted his weight against the plywood breakfast bar, and a shot of pain ran up his thigh. Max swallowed a curse.

‘Ahm – pardon?’ said the HR-Prick.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ said Max, spotting the culprit: a rogue metal staple jutting out. ‘Go ahead. Shoot.’

*

The next day, Max made his way to a drab, deeply familiar conference room. Located not just in his old building – a 1950s confection known to Agency hands as ‘the Flying Saucer’ – but on his old floor. In fact, to reach this conference room, Max had to pass the door of his old office. As he made his way down the fluorescent-lit corridor with its linoleum floors, worn thin in patches, Max resisted the urge to pop his head in and see what they’d done to the room where he’d spent the last fifteen years of his life. Instead, Max straightened his shoulders, walked past his old door, and plunged into the meeting space.

Only one of the room’s two overhead lights were on, which gave the windowless room the feeling of a cave. The brown office chairs still tilted at slightly odd angles. The blonde wood table was still scratched. Across the table, two men in grey suits rose to shake hands.

One had shaggy, very masculine-looking black eyebrows and high sculpted cheekbones. The other was overwhelmingly pale. His buzz cut caught the light from the single working bulb overhead. Both men wore their suits very narrow – chic – and shared that glossy look that comes from growing up in a country with a highly functional social welfare system. ‘Emissaries from across the pond?’ Max said as he leaned in. The dark-haired one smiled, showing slightly crooked front teeth that would signal strained circumstances in an American.

‘Why, yes!’ said the dark-haired man, with inexplicable delight. ‘I am Belgian! My colleague …’ He nodded at his companion, who registered the acknowledgement with stony silence, ‘… is a Dane. We are here …’

Overhead, the light flickered, beating like the wings of a moth. A bang sounded. Loud, like a shotgun. The Belgian jumped. Half an inch at least. Max grinned. Apologised and withdrew the flat of his palm from the wall. ‘Force of habit,’ Max said, glancing at the ceiling. Both bulbs had come back on. They hummed steadily, dousing the room in a restless yellow light. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you,’ Max added, giving the wall a gentle pat. ‘Needs rewiring.’ Max turned back to the Belgian. ‘So, what can I do you for?’

The Belgian frowned. Gathered his thoughts. Then he started over. He leaned in towards Max. ‘We are here,’ he said, drawing his shaggy eyebrows together, ‘on behalf of a group of concerned EU parliamentarians. An informal group. Brought together by a common threat –’

Russia, thought Max.

‘Russia,’ said the Belgian, drawing his impressive brows together. ‘It’s right on our doorstep!’

Max nodded, responding to this stunning geographic revelation with as much sympathy as he could muster. He had never been able to take the idea of Russia as a nefarious, all-powerful bogeyman seriously. The country was too disorganised, too chaotic, in too much existential pain. The Belgian was still talking. ‘… We simply cannot ignore the Russians.’

Trolls, thought Max. With a silent groan.

‘In St. Petersburg, entire “factories” of multilingual young people campaign against democratic, Western values,’ said the Belgian. ‘“Trolls”, they are called!’

In Max’s memory, there surfaced a wan, pale girl in a woollen cap with bunny-ears. He had met her in a makeshift café on Bolshoi Prospekt. St Petersburg. Winter – the last winter of his employment. The girl had travelled an hour with her little boy to see him. The boy was sick, and no matter how many times the girl wiped his nose, it was always running. Max bought them each a piece of cake decorated with a lurid kiwi slice. A big plate-glass window. Outside it was pitch black, and the temperature was in free fall. A digital sign flashed Roman numerals, in red. Minus 25. Minus 29. Minus 30. The girl with the bunny-ears had worked in a new office building on the edge of the city. Twelve-hour shifts. The pay was good, enough to support herself and her little boy. But she’d felt bad after a while about all the terrible things she had to post, about Ukrainians. ‘His father,’ she said, glancing at the boy, ‘he’s Ukrainian.’ So she went to the press. Now every journalist from New York to Taiwan had interviewed her. Max was supposed to see if there were any crumbs they had missed. There weren’t. She was out of a job and aside from the lurid kiwi cakes, Max had nothing to offer. He’d felt sorry for her.

The Belgian was still talking. ‘They wage Twitter wars. Yes! They are educated, and they write not only in Russian, but also in French, German, English, Italian and …’ The Belgian peeked at his silent colleague, ‘… even Danish.’

Max was about to comment that the Russian economy had recently shrunk from the size of Italy to the size of Spain. Instead he pinched himself. Whatever this job was, he wanted it. Max smiled more broadly, by stretching the left and right corners of his mouth towards his left and right ears. It seemed to work.

The Belgian was growing more impassioned, ‘… Today, the role played formerly by the Habsburg Empire – that is to say, a buffer between Europe and the East – is now being played, though it has gone largely unacknowledged, by Ukraine.’

Ukraine. The overhead light flickered once but decided to stay on. Ukraine caught Max’s attention. He hadn’t been there since the Maidan protests that had ousted the pro-Russian puppet president. A quick trip, just a couple of days. Max had caught a plane from Moscow to Kyiv. Winter. Cold. The central square – the Maidan – was at the height of its occupation; the smell of petrol hung in the air; a handful of students were decorating a Christmas tree at the square’s centre.

For the next twenty minutes, the impassioned Belgian delivered the standard ‘Ukraine for Dummies’ lecture. In the great tug of war between Russia and the West, Ukraine was the rope. The Russians were pulling hard in the industrially rich, largely Russian-speaking east, sending in unmarked soldiers and weapons, waging an unofficial but de facto war. They had local support too: in the east, plenty of Ukrainians wanted to break away from Kyiv and go back to being part of Russia. The Ukrainian-speaking western part of the country, on the other hand, yearned for Europe. The tension between ‘pro-Russians’ and ‘pro-Ukrainians’ threatened to tear the fledgling Ukrainian democracy in two.

Max grunted. The Belgian shot him a glance. ‘Fascinating,’ said Max.

But that wasn’t all! continued the Belgian. Part of the reason Russianspeaking Ukrainians wanted to break away from Kyiv was that Russia’s ubiquitous state-run media had been broadcasting an all-out smear campaign against Ukraine; Russian news clips showed, for example, reports that Ukrainians captured, cooked and ate little Russian children. ‘I have many friends in Ukraine,’ said the Belgian, with a weird chuckle. ‘And I can assure you, they do not cook and eat any children!’

‘Yes, yes,’ murmured Max. ‘Quite outrageous, this propaganda.’

The Belgian glared at him from beneath his shaggy brows.

Oh, right, thought Max. It’s not called propaganda any more. These days it’s called ‘Information Warfare’. Like regular war but sexier, and without such a preponderance of actual deaths. Waged not with guns and drones but through television, Facebook, Twitter. Much like its neologistic big sister, ‘Hybrid Warfare’, which called to mind an expensive environmentally-friendly car, ‘Information Warfare’ came across as young and fun. Easy to grasp, even for politicians. Easy to explain, even to journalists.

It was the kind of thing Max hated; the kind of coded talk he’d never been good at. If you wanted to talk about propaganda, why not call it propaganda? He just didn’t see the point of making up new terms, as if civilisation were evolving, as if history were linear, instead of repeating itself over and over – and that inability to sell himself and his work as something splashy and new, it had held him back. He knew that. With a quick movement, Max rubbed his eyes against the conference room’s non-flickering light.

The Dane was utterly still. The Belgian leaned in, so that his chin was almost touching the scratched blonde wood table. Max leaned in too. ‘Russia is waging an information war,’ the Belgian confided. He paused. ‘And we are losing.’