FEARLESS FINN'S MURDEROUS ADVENTURE (32 page)

We’ll have to have clothes and cuddly toys with ‘made in Finland’ labels for Nakita Sylvina. I’ll get away with my clothes, which will include the warm fleece I’d
borrowed
and not returned to Erick, the Danish university student in Uppsala. A piece of Danish clothing on a man supposedly from Finland will raise no alarms.

I’ll need a photo of Nakita Sylvina and vital information from Nataliya Yelena. Will the child be prepared to leave behind everything she knows to go away – probably in the middle of the night – with total strangers? Will her grandmother hand her over to foreigners? Does she suffer from any illnesses that could prevent her from travelling? If so, can she travel with medication, and what medication would we need to bring with us? I can’t rely on second-hand information from Gerry in these matters; I have to speak to Nataliya Yelena directly.

I rang Gerry to arrange a meeting with Nataliya Yelena. He offered to travel to Hong Kong on Saturday and bring me back with him to Lantau Island on the Sea Ranch motor launch. “Not to worry Gerry. I’ll make my own way there,” I said.

Then I telephoned Roger at the Island Shangri-La. I asked him the best way to travel from Moscow to Hong Kong with a woman and a small girl – ideally without showing up on any lists.

“Off the top of my head, probably trains or ferry, or both. But I’ll look into it further Finn. Can you meet for a drink in Pomeroy’s later?” he asked.

“That’ll be grand. See you at eight.”

I met Roger in his regular watering hole, Pomeroy’s Wine Bar in Pacific Place. Always the consummate concierge, he brought along detailed information on rail and ferry journeys.

“You can take the Trans-Mongolian Railway from Moscow to Beijing, then onward to Kowloon Station, Hong Kong. Then again Finn, you could take the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Vladivostok, get a ferry from there to Fushiki, Japan, and then a cruise liner to Hong Kong,” he told me.

It all sounds straightforward enough the way he describes it.

———

I got a ferry from Central Pier to Peng Chau Island, a sampan to Nim Shue Wan on Lantau, and I walked over the hill to Sea Ranch. It took half a day to get there, but it’s a warm day, the humidity is low, and I need the exercise.

By the time I arrived at Gerry’s beach-side home Nataliya Yelena had already written letters in Russian to her mother and daughter explaining the situation. She stapled a photograph of herself and her daughter to the letter she wrote to Nakita Sylvina, and she gave me a photo to give Mac for Nakita Sylvina’s fake passport.

“Does Nakita take any medications I need to know about? Is she fit to travel?”

“No Finn, Nakita Sylvina suffers from no illnesses needing regular medication. She can travel.”

“And do you think your mam will go along with this?”

“You may discover that my mamma will find it hard to part with her only granddaughter. But I think you’ll agree, this is a natural reaction. Yes? In her heart she will be saying goodbye forever, and she will imagine that she will never see Nakita Sylvina again. I am her only daughter, and she can not expect another grandchild.”

I’m impressed by the clear-headed thinking and flawless English of this beautiful Russian girl. She retains the manner of a university student, not a hooker. It makes her rape story believable to me, not that it matters either way if I believe her or not. It’s not me planning to marry her.

As we walked down to the Sea Ranch pier Gerry explained the need to get Nakita Sylvina out of Moscow before the Macau Grand Prix.

“The Russian bastards want Nataliya on her back earning for them during the Grand Prix. I can’t let that happen Finn. You understand me…yeah…buddy?”

“Of course Gerry. That girl is no whore, and she shouldn’t have to work like one. I understand.”

“Thanks Finn…and just to tell you, Uncle Sui knows I plan to marry her. I haven’t exactly asked her yet, but, you know…it looks good.”

That lifts a weight off my mind. I don’t fancy going behind Uncle’s back, even if it is for a good cause. In any case, it crossed my mind that Uncle Sui might be able to help once we’re clear of the Soviet Union.

When Nataliya Yelena doesn’t return to hooking during the Grand Prix the Russians will look for her in Macau and Hong Kong, before going to grab her daughter in Moscow. But do we even have that long? Won’t they want to catch sight of her before the race, seeing as she’s been stashed at Sea Ranch for a while? At most, we have about eight weeks to get everything in place, travel to Moscow, get the child, and return to Hong Kong. I hope we have enough time. This whole thing has conjured up that early rush of adrenaline I like to feel before an operation….

———

I rang Mac from the phone kiosk on Tregunter Path. I told him we have a deadline to work to, November nineteenth – the first day of the annual Macau Grand Prix.

He confirmed that Anna will be with us. She asked if she’ll be helping the IRA, and she seemed disappointed when he said she’ll be ‘helping a civilian humanitarian project.’ Mac will meet her in Helsingborg to fill her in on the ‘project’ and get professional photos from a photographer’s studio for her Finnish passport. He’ll also give her an American cellular telephone that works directly through a satellite network and covers the Northern hemisphere.

Mac pointed out the problems we’ll face if the grandmother won’t cooperate, or if her granddaughter can’t recognise a photograph of her mother. He suggested that Anna might have to pose as the child’s mother – to fool Nakita Sylvina for the journey back to Hong Kong. I think it’s still too early to suggest that to Anna, and I hope we won’t have to resort to such measures. I told him I’ll deal with it in Moscow if it becomes necessary, and that he should just steam ahead from his end.

With luck, this side trip to Finland and Russia won’t clash with any of the business I have under way with Gerry and Earl. I reckon Sui-Lin can handle the bank account openings, and Gerry will keep watch over the Gambia, Manila and Yokohama timber deal.

Hamish has agreed to sell the receipts for two of the apartments I hold booking deposits on – to raise some extra dosh. I offered him a cut of the profits, but he said he’d prefer more ‘Russian lessons’ in Macau; Gerry’s pal Nico can arrange those. Hamish seems to get a thrill out of spending a weekend with a whore without paying for the pleasure. Perhaps he pretends to himself that it’s a date, not a business arrangement. Just so long as he doesn’t fall for a Ruskie beauty and think of marrying her. I have enough on my plate trying to look after Gerry’s situation, without having a love-sick, freckle-faced Jock looking to ‘buy out’ the love of his life.

MOSCOW: OCTOBER, 1985

I’ve booked and
pre-paid our Moscow accommodation. We have two adjoining rooms at the three-star Hotel Katarina in the name of the Shangri-La Hotel Group, with guests’ names to be confirmed upon arrival. The train tickets for the return journey will be bought locally, and the tickets to Japan will be purchased on board the ferry.

Mac gave Anna operating funds, and he sorted out her plane tickets and overnight accommodation in Finland. She’s flying directly from Helsinki to Moscow, but she’ll be stopping in Helsinki to go shopping for clothes and soft toys with ‘made in Finland’ labels for Nakita Sylvina, and an anorak for me. The temperature in Hong Kong is still a pleasant twenty-eight degrees Celsius, but it could be twenty degrees below zero in the USSR.

———

I flew from Hong Kong to Finland and took a Finnair flight from Helsinki-Vantaa Airport to Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport. I thought it was cold in Finland, but the icy wind that hit me as I stepped out of Moscow’s largest airport took my breath away. With every intake of breath it feels like shards of ice are forming in my lungs. I stuffed my gloved fist in my mouth in a futile attempt to stop my tongue from turning to ice.

Despite all the warnings I’ve been given, I hailed a taxi. Against the noise of the wind and the roar of aircraft engines taking off from the runway behind me, I summoned the last of my breath and yelled to the taxi driver. “Hotel Katarina, Shlyuzovaya Embankment.”

I spoke to the driver in Finnish, but he’s convinced himself that I’m an American – on speaking terms with Michael Jackson and Mel Gibson. Nothing I say persuades him otherwise, so I gave up trying. I concentrated on the snow-covered buildings, monuments and parks we’re passing on our forty kilometre drive into the city centre. It strikes me how effective a blanket of snow is at unifying the ugly and unkempt, transforming it into something that looks beautiful and cared for.

The elderly man behind the reception counter at Hotel Katarina glanced with glazed eyes at my passport and handed it back to me. I always try to hang on to my passport in a foreign country – especially when it’s not
my
passport – and I’m relieved that I don’t have to leave it with him. Just as in France, hotels in the USSR are obligated to retain visitors’ passports for police inspection, but obviously the elderly gent has other ideas. Maybe he’s a White Russian and he has no truck with the Red Russian rules and regulations. Anyway, he reached up and dislodged a room key – attached to a lump of grey granite – from a hook above his head. He banged the key down on the counter in front of me, mumbled something under his breath and appeared to fall asleep. Thank God he’s in no mood for conversation.

A porter in a Cossack outfit appeared out of nowhere, grabbed my bag and took off in the direction of the lifts. I chased after him, and we rose silently until the lift came to a shuddering stop on the eleventh floor. We walked down the corridor and the porter stuffed my suitcase under his arm when we got to my door. Before he turned the key in the lock, the door swung open to reveal a medium-sized girl with fair hair, ice-blue eyes and a slightly upturned nose standing akimbo in her pyjamas.

Anna babbled something in Russian, leapt past the bewildered Cossack and sprang into my arms. Our love making started tentatively. But it quickly picked-up where it left off twenty-one months earlier in the studio apartment in Helsingborg – before I took the ferry to Helsingør.

I can tell Anna’s itching to quiz me about who I’ve been with, but she resisted the temptation. I’m impressed with her maturity, almost as much as I am with the sex. And thankfully, I don’t get the impression she’s been practising with anyone else.

———

Anna and I are in the hotel coffee shop waiting for our breakfast. I get the feeling that we’re being helped already, but I can’t be sure. No one came asking for our passports this morning, but that could just be carelessness on the part of the hotel.

An Asian man dressed in workers’ dungarees just dropped a note on our table as he walked by; the note’s written in Russian. Anna translated it first into Swedish and then English – because that’s the way she learnt to do it at school.

When her translations were complete, she read the note out loud. “Go outside the hotel and wait on the pavement. At ten thirty a taxi will pull up to collect you. Get in. Finn, it’s signed Friend of your Friends. What the heck does that mean? Is it the IRA? Are we really doing something for the cause?”

I have no response for her. So I just used a kind of knowing smile to put off giving her an answer until I’m certain myself.

We stood outside, as the note instructed; a taxi pulled up at precisely ten thirty a.m. The taxi drove to Ulitsa Okhotnyy Ryad, and then to Bolshaya Nikitskaya, where we collected a Chinese man.

“So pleased to meet you. I am Robin, and I have the honour of being the ‘Friend of your Friends’ of Uncle Sui. I am responsible for assisting you in any way we can.”

As we pulled back into traffic, Robin gave me a photograph of a young girl with pigtails and rosy cheeks. The child’s dressed in a school uniform, holding the hand of a tall, middle-aged woman wearing a head scarf and a long woollen coat trailing in the snow. Robin handed Anna a bulky envelope with twenty more photographs, and the middle-aged woman’s address – which we already have from Nataliya Yelena. He also provided the name and address of the school Nakita Sylvina attends from seven forty-five a.m. until five p.m., Monday to Saturday.

Robin’s speaking rapidly in Russian to Anna, and she’s translating for me. “‘The receptionist at your hotel has been instructed not to record your arrivals in the hotel records, and not to hold your passports for the police. Your bills will disappear before they reach the accounts office, so…enjoy your stay.’”

It crosses my mind what a pity it is that I’ve pre-paid the hotel rooms.

“Mister Finn Flynn, please forgive my use of my native tongue, rather than conversing in English…of which I make many errors. You will forgive, yes?” Robin said.

“Of course,” I assured him.

The taxi pulled to the side of the road, and Robin got out without a backward glance.

When the taxi stopped in front of Hotel Katarina I reached into my pocket for roubles, but the taxi driver shook his head no. He passed a mobile phone to Anna and said something to her in Russian which, of course, I don’t understand. “
Cпасибо
,” she said, which I do understand. She put the mobile phone in her leather knapsack, together with the bulky envelope from Robin.