Firewall (39 page)

The train stopped with a rumble and a loud squeal of brakes. We seemed to be in a rail yard. Fuel tankers and freight cars appeared on either side, all covered with Russian script and caked in oil and ice. I was back in a scene from a Harry Palmer film again, only Michael Caine would have had a suit and trench coat on instead of piss-stained jeans.

The train just seemed to have driven into the yard and stopped, and that was it. Going by the number of doors opening, it was time to get off. Welcome to Narva.

I looked out of the window and saw people jumping down onto the tracks with their shopping bags. The only other remaining passenger in my car was leaving. I did the same, traipsing through the snow across a massive shunting yard, following the others toward an old stone house.

I guessed that it hadn't been built until after 1944, because I'd read that when the Russians "liberated" Estonia from the Germans they flattened the whole town, then rebuilt it from scratch.

I went through gray-painted, metal double doors into the ticket office.

The room was only about twenty by thirty feet, with a few old plastic, classroom-style chairs around the sides. The walls were covered with the same thick shiny gray paint as the doors, onto which graffiti had been scratched. I thought the floor was plain pitted concrete until I noticed the two remaining tiles refusing to leave home.

The ticket office was closed. A large wooden board was fixed to the wall near the sales window, with plastic sliders upon which, in Cyrillic, were the names of various destinations. I looked for anything that resembled the word Tallinn. It seemed that the first train back was at 8:22 each morning, but even if they'd spoken English, there was no one around to confirm it.

I stepped round the obligatory puddle of vomit and came out of the main entrance. Over to my left was what I took to be a bus station. The buses were of 1960s or 1970s vintage, all battered and some even hand painted. People were fighting to get aboard, exactly as they'd done in the capital; the driver was shouting at them and they shouted at each other. Even the snow was exactly the same as in Tallinn: dirty, downtrodden, and viciously icy.

Digging my hands deep into my pockets I cut directly across the potholed road, following the map in my head along Puskini, which seemed to be the main street. It wouldn't be far to Konstantin's address.

Puskini was lined on either side by high buildings. On the left, what looked like a power station loomed behind them and, bizarrely, electricity towers were set into the street and pavements, so pedestrians had to pick their way round them. Russians seemed to have sited all their industrial units as near as possible to the stations that powered them; then, if they had any space left, they'd squeezed in accommodation for the workers, and fuck the people who had to live there. I'd seen enough to tell me this was a miserable, run-down place. The newest buildings looked as if they dated from the 1970s, and even they were falling apart.

I headed up the street, keeping to the right. It was quiet apart from the occasional tractor and one or two Russian-plated articulated lorries surging past. The roads and sidewalks were jet black with grease and grime, with a good coating of slush from passing vehicles.

Christmas hadn't arrived in Narva yet. I wondered if it ever would.

There were no street decorations, lights, or anything remotely festive, even in the windows. I walked past drab storefronts which advertised everything from second-hand washing machines to Arnold Schwarzenegger videos.

Further along, I came to a small food store. It was an old building, but had the brightest lighting I'd yet seen spilling out onto the iced pavement. I couldn't resist it, especially as I hadn't had anything to eat since my chocolate and meat combo, from which I'd long since parted company.

An old man was lying on top of a cardboard box to one side of the main entrance, sheltered by the shop's canopy. His head was wrapped in rags, his hands covered with strips of canvas. The skin on his face was dark with ingrained dirt and he could have grown vegetables in his beard. Beside him was a wooden tomato crate turned upside down, displaying a rusty old screwdriver and a pair of pliers that were clearly up for sale. He didn't bother looking up at me as I passed. I must have looked as though I was all right for rusty tools.

The store was laid out to exactly the same template as a small town corner store in the U.K. It even had some of the same brands Colgate toothpaste, Kellogg's Cornflakes, and Gillette shaving cream but not much else apart from crates of beer and a large cooler that had nothing in it except rows of different sausages, including the risky red ones I hadn't eaten on the ferry, strung out in lines to make the display look more generous.

I picked up a family-sized bag of chips, two packs of sliced, processed cheese, and four cake-type rolls. I didn't bother with a drink as I hoped I'd soon be getting a hot one at Konstantin's. Besides, there wasn't much choice apart from beer and half-bottles of vodka. I couldn't be hassled to get toiler tries or a toothbrush to replace the stuff that had been stolen. All that sort of thing I'd grab if I needed it, but I didn't plan to be in the country that long; and in any case, no one I'd seen so far seemed to give much of a shit about personal hygiene.

As I paid for my goods I helped myself to two shopping bags, putting one pack of cheese and a couple of rolls into one, the rest into the other. Passing the old guy on the way out, I put the smaller bag down beside him. I hadn't bought him any chips because I didn't think his gums could tackle them. I knew what it felt like to spend hours outside in the cold.

With hands back in my jacket pockets, the bag dangling from my right wrist and banging rhythmically against my thigh, I moved on. I skirted an electric pole that was half in the street and half over the wall of a small factory, and more rows of miserable apartments came into view, identical to the ones I'd seen from the train. There were no names on the blocks, just stenciled numbers. At last I'd found one thing that my childhood project had over this place: at least every building there had been named after locations in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The rest of it, though, was much the same rotting wooden window frames and cracks in the panes taped over with packing tape. I remembered why I'd promised myself at the age of nine that I'd get out of shit holes like this as soon as I could.

It was only about one thirty in the afternoon, but already the town could have done with some streetlights on. Unfortunately, there just weren't that many around to help out.

Things started to liven up after another hundred yards or so. I came to a giant parking lot, full of buses and cars. People who seemed to be carrying everything from shopping bags to suitcases were shouting at each other, trying to be heard over the noise of air brakes and engines. It looked like news footage of refugees moving through a checkpoint. The closer I got, the more it started to look like somewhere Han Solo might go to get a spare part for his spacecraft.

There were some strange looking people around.

I realized I was at the border crossing point, the road bridge into, or out of, Russia. Harry Palmer would have been a regular here.

The parking lot was clogged with new Audis, old BMWs, and Ladas of all sorts, shapes, and ages. It was the Ford Sierras that looked strangely out of place. There were fleets of the things. I now knew where all the second-hand ones went when they weren't snapped up by cab drivers.

Money changers plied their trade along the edges of the parking lot, and kiosks sold all other types of kit as fast as Chad could manufacture it. I walked over to a green-painted garden shed with a small sliding window, dodging the arctic trucks that thundered past as they cleared border control. If you didn't get out of the way, tough.

Camel, Marlboro, and a million different Russian brands were taped to the glass, together with as many different styles of lighters. An old guy who looked like a gypsy, dark-skinned with thick gray curly hair, showed me his list of exchange rates. It seemed I could get about 12 EEK, whatever they were, to the U.S. dollar. I didn't know if that was good or not, just that Duracell batteries were taped up at just a couple of EEKs each, so either it was the bargain of the century or they were duds. I didn't want to show that I had money, so I went and sat on a garbage can behind the kiosk, got a warm $100 dollar bill out of my sock and replaced the boot pretty quickly.

Once he'd carried out about five different checks to make sure it wasn't counterfeit, including smelling it, the old guy was very happy indeed with his hard currency, and so was I with my new EEK wedge. I left the refugee camp behind and headed further up Puskini, toward a traffic circle which, according to the map in my head, led to the road I wanted.

The only buildings that looked at all inviting were near the traffic circle. Flashing neon signs told me these were "komfort baars."

Music blared from loudspeakers rigged up outside. Originally, I supposed, they'd been ordinary bars or shops, but their windows were painted out now. It didn't need much imagination to work out what was on offer the other side of the emulsion, but for the benefit of anyone in doubt, there were pictures of women and Cyrillic stenciling, no doubt defining exactly what was meant by "komfort." The best picture of all was on a blue window, showing the Statue of Liberty with Marilyn Monroe's face, pulling up her robe to reveal an ace of spades between her legs. Underneath, in English, it read, "America. Fuck it here." I wasn't too sure what it all meant, but the Russians who had parked all the trucks along the road obviously didn't have any trouble reading the menu.

I'd just stopped by the traffic circle to check which road I wanted next when two white Suzuki Vitaras with flashing red-and blue light bars screeched to a halt outside Marilyn's.

Three guys piled out of each, dressed exactly the same as the SWAT team at Tallinn station, but with a different logo. Theirs was also sewn on the back of their bomber jackets. I couldn't make out the wording from this distance, just that it was all in red and in the sort of typeface used on surf wear Pulling out smaller billy clubs than the lot at the station, they piled into the bar.

I stepped into a doorway to watch, taking one of the rolls from my shopping bag. Pulling the bread apart, I threw in a few slices of cheese and a handful of chips and watched as a very tired-looking green Lada police car turned up and parked near the Vitaras. Two fur-hatted figures inside didn't get out. I stamped my feet to keep them warm.

The Vitaras were showroom clean and had a phone number and logo emblazoned on the side and what looked like the letters "DTTS." The police car was falling to pieces and looked as if the insignia on the side had been hand-painted.

For the next few minutes nothing much happened. A stream of vehicles negotiated the traffic circle and I ate my roll, along with a few more chips. A few of the passing cars were quite new-Audis, VWs, and even a Mere-but not many. The popularity battle was really between rusted-out Sierras and Ladas.

I was still putting the finishing touches to my second cheese roll when the black teams emerged from the bar, dragging out three guys between the six of them. All three were in suits, with blood pouring down their faces onto their white shirts, while their smart shoes got scraped along the ice. They were thrown into the back of the Vitaras and then given the good news with billy clubs. The doors were closed and one of the team, noticing the police car, just waved them away. None of the passers-by even bothered to glance at what was going on; it was hard to tell whether they were too scared or just couldn't be bothered.

The police headlights came back on and off they drove, exhaust pipe rattling, toward the border-crossing parking lot.

The Vitaras and their crews also left, and I finished the roll as I crossed the traffic circle and turned right, toward the river. The address that Liv had given me was on this road, which was known simply as Viru. Still wondering what the three guys had done to cause Marilyn such offence, I started attacking the last roll and the remaining cheese and chips. Like I didn't have my own stuff to worry about.

31

Viru wasn't any more uplifting than the rest of town, just gray, miserable blocks of housing, more black snow and more un cared-for roads. Then, bizarrely, just up ahead was a burned-out bumper car, its metal frame and long conducting rod charred and twisted. God only knows how it had got there.

The only thing moving was a posse of five or six dogs, creating a haze of steam above their bodies as they skulked around, sniffing at stuff on the ground then pissing on it. I didn't even feel bad as I dropped my plastic bag, along with the chips and cheese wrappers. When in Rome Now and again a patched-up Sierra clattered past on the cobblestones, its occupants looking at me as if I was mad to be walking in this neighborhood. They were probably right, if the sulfur fumes I was inhaling were anything to go by. There was obviously another environmentally friendly factory near by.

Slipping my hands deeper into my pockets and my head deeper inside my collar, I tried to adopt the same miserable body language as everyone else. Thinking about what I'd seen at the "komfort baar," I decided not to tangle with private-enterprise security if I could help it. The State police looked a softer option.

Viru started to bend to the right, and straight ahead I could see the icy riverbank, five or six hundred yards away. That was Russia.

As I neared the bend I could see into the gorge, with the river Narva about 200 yards below. Following it around, the road bridge was about 400 yards away. Cars were lining up to leave Estonia, with foot traffic moving in both directions, carrying suitcases, shopping bags, and all sorts. The checkpoint on the Russian side had barriers across the road and guards checking papers.

If the numbering on the map was correct, Number 18 Viru would soon be on my right, a little past the bend and facing the river.

It wasn't an apartment building as I'd been expecting, but a large old house that was now a baar. At least, that was what the sign said, in white but unlit neon lettering above a rotten wooden door. Big patches of rendering were missing from the front of the building, exposing the red clay brick underneath. It was three stories high, and looked really out of place among the uniform concrete blocks surrounding it on three sides. Most of the upper windows were covered by internal wooden shutters; there were no curtains to be seen. There was another neon sign, also not illuminated, of a man leaning over a pool table with a cigarette in his mouth and a glass of beer on the side.