Zero Hour Part 6

15.15 hrs

We were parked on the wide avenue that divided the university from the park in the north-west of the city. The university was Lilian's last known location, which made it a good place to start.

The trams had looked tired and their wires had sagged across the cobblestoned streets as we drove out of the centre, but my first impressions of the city had been wide of the mark. It might have been in s.h.i.+t state, and there was quite a bit of rust about, but there was also a lot of civic pride. Mateevici was clean. The trees both sides were well tended. At first glance we could have been in any town in Connecticut, had it not been for the US emba.s.sy building about six hundred metres down the road.

The State University campus was a sprawl of trees, gra.s.s and concrete paths. Most of the buildings were ugly lumps of post-war concrete, part of Stalin's rebuild after the annihilation. A couple of grand Hapsburg Empire-type buildings had survived. They looked like giant Battenberg cakes.

The students walking past the car had come straight from Central Casting. Some were lanky; some were overweight. Most were scruffily dressed. Their day sacks were stuffed with books. Some shared jokes; some walked on their own with headphones or mobiles stuck to their ears.

'Hard to think that only in April last year these kids were rioting on the streets.'

I'd been away on a job at the time and must have missed the coverage. 'What about?'

'Moscow. Young Moldovans didn't like their leaders embracing the Kremlin. The president, Vladimir Voronin, was a Communist, very pro-Russia. For the past four years the Kremlin had mounted a charm offensive to woo him away from the EU and NATO with offers of subsidized gas and closer economic ties. It paid off. Voronin refused to join Brussels's Eastern Partners.h.i.+p programme. He called it "a plot to surround Russia".

'Then came the elections. The trouble started as soon as the result was announced. The Communist Party had won a suspiciously large proportion of the vote.

'Ten thousand demonstrators ma.s.sed in the city centre, most of them students. They carried Moldovan and European flags and shouted anti-Communist slogans. They gathered outside the government building and made their way down the main boulevard to the president's office. The police used tear gas and water cannon but they couldn't stop the crowd breaking in. Windows were smashed on two floors and fires started.

'Voronin called it an attempted coup d'etat and pointed the finger at Romania, a NATO and EU member. Moscow backed him up. The Kremlin were s.h.i.+tting themselves. Imagine - protesters overrunning Moldova's parliament and ransacking its president's office. The scenes must have been horribly familiar to them. It's only five years since young pro-Western protesters toppled Moscow-friendly regimes in Georgia and Ukraine.'

I nodded. I'd been to both after their 'colour' revolutions. Russia's power in the region was at an all-time low. At home, the Kremlin kicked back by stamping out foreign-funded NGOs, abolis.h.i.+ng local elections and setting up special 'youth groups' so they could keep an eye out for anything similar happening inside Russia. Abroad, the Kremlin's new priority was to a.s.sert its influence and fight against increasing Westernization. Moldova's unrest would have been a test of Russia's ability to project power and protect friends.

'What happened?'

'What always happens when the people take on the state. The police came in mob-handed and arrested more than two hundred.'

'Could Lilian have been involved?'

'A sociology student? Does a bear s.h.i.+t in the woods?'

'Russian bears s.h.i.+t wherever they want to.'

She grinned. I liked it when she did that. 'Ready?'

I nodded. I was in her hands. I didn't speak the language, and I wasn't the world's leading expert on universities.

'They'll think we're parents visiting, or here to find out about evening cla.s.ses or something. We'll just wander round a bit, try to find out what bars she went to or groups she hung out with. Then we'll take it from there.'

We left Mateevici and followed one of the concrete paths that snaked through the gra.s.s. Anna had been on Google in the car. There were twenty thousand students, spread across twelve faculties.

We stopped at a blue and white signpost that must have been really useful if you could read Cyrillic.

'OK. Philosophy's in that direction. Sociology must be close by.'

She put her arm through mine as we followed her hunch. 'These kids are hungry for knowledge, Nicholas. They know it's the way out of poverty. You people in the West, you have it so easy. You think education is a right, not a privilege that must be earned. You have a welfare system to catch you if you fall, or if you just don't give a s.h.i.+t. These people have no safety net. They have nothing without an education.'

I could see through the windows that every lecture room was packed. We came to a newer building, lots of brick and gla.s.s. I held the door for her. Wherever you are in the world, an inst.i.tution smells like an inst.i.tution: a blend of body odour, wood polish, boiled cabbage and bleach.

She led me down a wide corridor lined with posters, wall charts and notice boards. My boots squeaked on the tiles. Students young and old leant against walls and talked sociology s.h.i.+t, or maybe just s.h.i.+t.

Anna stopped an older guy in a brown and grey patterned sweater. He looked Scandinavian rather than Russian. He pointed in the direction we were already heading. I smiled my thanks and got a very dark look in return. Maybe my jacket didn't have enough herring-bones and snowflakes.

'Where are we going?'

'I thought we'd start at the administration offices. Maybe I'll say I'm an aunt on a surprise visit from Moscow, hoping to pick up her phone number or address.'

We came to a line of benches that would have been more at home in a park.

'Wait here, Nicholas. It might be better, just a woman on her own. And we'll have a problem explaining the fact you don't speak your niece's language.'

It sounded fine to me. I took a seat as she disappeared into the office.

7

I was surrounded by display cabinets bursting with trophies, framed certificates and photographs of bigwigs handing them over, shots of social and sports events, cla.s.s and year portraits. It got me thinking. I decided to have a closer look.

It took a few minutes, but it was worth it.

A group of students dressed like Victorians stood, bathed in suns.h.i.+ne, outside the building; a party maybe, or some kind of commemoration. Lilian was in three of the pictures. She was alone in one, poking her tongue out at the camera. In another she looked almost shy, alongside three or four other girls. It was the third that interested me. The lad she was with had eaten a few too many pies. He had a mop of fuzzy brown hair and b.u.m-fluff on his chin. He and Lilian had their arms around each other. Their eyes were swivelled towards the camera and they seemed to be enjoying a very un-Victorian kiss.

I was about to move on to the next display when Anna rushed out of the office. 'We need to go.'

I kept scanning the photos. 'Hang on, look at-'

She grabbed me. 'Now, Nick. Now.'

Sweaterman was piling down the corridor towards us with a posse of six or seven very p.i.s.sed-off mates.

'What the f.u.c.k's happening?'

The office clerk came to her door. She shouted and waved her arm to move us on.

'No questions.'

I started walking fast beside her. We went back the same way we'd come in, with Sweaterman's posse in hot pursuit.

8

Anna didn't turn a hair as we drove away. There was no need to flap. They hadn't jumped into vehicles and followed us. All we had to do was make some distance.

I watched in the wing mirror my side as we rumbled across a cobbled junction. Trams, buses, cars, carts - all tried to head in a dozen different directions at the same time. Once we were clear I glanced behind us.

'What the f.u.c.k was all that about?'

'They thought we were secret police.'

I turned back but kept an eye on the wing mirror. A dark blue Beamer with the new shark-eye headlights and low-rider sills was shadowing us, but keeping its distance. The front fairing made it look like a hovercraft. It was having a hard time with the cobbles and potholes.

'So teachers now stand up to the police round here, do they?'

'The people united will never be defeated. Haven't you heard?' She allowed herself a smile. 'Or, as they've been saying more recently, the people with Twitter will never be defeated.'

'Like the green revolution in Iran?'

'They had it here first. As soon as they heard the result, the students started tweeting, trying to mobilize opposition. There was also a rush on Facebook and videos on YouTube. Suddenly everybody knew what was going on. It gave them a sense of power. Something they'd never experienced before.

'The police wanted to get in there and grip everybody, of course. The first people to arrive for a rally outside the government buildings found their cell phones were dead. The network had been switched off. But somebody had Twitter, and they used it to give live updates over the GPRS networks. The authorities won that round, but it could be the beginning of the end of totalitarianism. It's fascinating, don't you think - what started as social networks becoming the tools of political change? I might do a piece on it-'

I cut in. 'Chuck a right.'

She didn't ask. She just did.

We turned onto a single-carriageway street lined with shops and apartment blocks. A group of cyclists, all women in black, wobbled over the cobbles in front of us. Anna had to slow down. She glanced in the rear-view. 'The BMW?'

I didn't turn round. I smiled and moved my hands as if telling her a funny story. 'He still with us? He's been back there a bit too long.'

She turned her head and smiled back. 'The registration is C VS 911. That's a Chisinau plate. Four men. Very short hair. Not smiling, not talking.'

I nodded as we eased past the women, still jabbering away with no awareness of the vehicles trying to get past in both directions. Anna changed up and we accelerated.

'Take the next right.'

The indicator clicked away. The Polo lurched across a pothole as we hit a small side road. I sat back and waited for Anna.

'They've come with us.'

'Any of them talking on a phone or radio?'

'No.'

'Good. They're not setting an ambush. As long as we keep moving we're OK for now. Every time we turn, see if they communicate.'

'Who do you think they are? Secret police? Uni security?'

'Did you get as far as mentioning Lilian's name in the office?'

'No. The woman was on the phone, face like thunder. She was probably getting the good news from the guy in the sweater.'

'Could it be the university warning us off, or trying to find out who we are? Might be police, I guess - maybe somebody saw me checking out Lilian's picture. They may be doing the same. Whatever, we need to bin them as fast as we can.'

'How am I going to do that? Are we going to drive around in circles until we run out of fuel?'

'Head back towards the hotel. Remember the supermarket across the road? Drive into the car park.'

We overtook an old guy with ladders roped to his bike as she worked her way back onto the main.

'They're with us.'

'Normal speed. Nothing we can do about them. We've got to concentrate on that lard-a.r.s.e in the photo. We need to find out who he is. Maybe she's done a runner with him. It could be something as simple as that. Falling in love and all that sort of s.h.i.+t.'

'How are you going to go back and check that out, Nicholas?' She sounded annoyed. 'You going to disguise yourself as a normal human being or something?'

'Give Lena a call and tell her we're on our way.'

I pulled out her iPhone and dialled the number. She was waffling away in Russian as we approached the multi-storey.

'We want one on the ground floor if we can. In between a couple of parked cars.'

She drove under the height bar and into the gloom.

'There, to the right - straight in.'

Anna swung the wheel. The Beamer followed us in and rolled to a halt. They only had two options: back out, park up and come back on foot, or come past us looking for a s.p.a.ce. They couldn't park close by because we'd have eyes-on. With luck, they'd have to carry on up to the next floor.

Anna slipped in between two minging old Skoda-type estate cars. The Beamer's tyres screeched on the painted concrete as it carried on up the ramp.

She turned off the engine and started to get out. I gripped her arm. 'Bring everything. This car's history. We're not coming back.'

We made for the pedestrian exit. There was no point checking behind. It was all about making distance and getting as many angles between us as we could.

We'd soon find out if they were following. I hoped not. There were a lot more of them than there were of us. And they were big f.u.c.kers.

9

17.05 hrs