Angel in the Shadows Read online

  He sprang to his feet and darted to the immense bookcase, where he ran his fingers along a few spines before pulling out a book.

  Paul immediately recognized the cover.

  ‘In 1968, RUDN acquired a fourth academic department,’ Sergey said as he returned with the book. ‘At that time, one of our guest lecturers was a driven US war correspondent, who was brave enough to seriously question his government’s war rhetoric and true intentions.’

  He put the book on the table in front of Paul. Bol’shaya Lozh, the Russian edition of The Big Lie, the book about the Vietnam War by his father, Raylan Chapelle. With the restraint of a classical musician, Sergey turned to the title page, which was signed.

  ‘For my friend Sergey, with warm wishes from Raylan,’ Paul read.

  ‘I was a student at the time – hungry for knowledge,’ Sergey resumed. ‘Your father’s lectures and book only made me hungrier. Later on, I ended up reporting on a number of wars. I’ve spent time in Afghanistan, where I witnessed our own mistakes – the Russians’, I mean. The same mistakes the Americans made in Vietnam. After ten years of pointless warfare, I saw General Michailov walk across the bridge over the Amu Darya and back into Russia. He was the last Russian to cross the Afghan border. It was the ultimate humiliation, packaged as a victorious homecoming. Our government also tried to sell lies wrapped up as truths to its citizens. Just like your father at the time, I saw it as my duty to expose those lies. If there’s anything I’ve learned in life, it’s what he taught me during his lectures.’

  Sergey sat back down in his designer armchair. ‘And now I’m sitting opposite his son, right?’

  Paul smiled uncomfortably and nodded.

  ‘I’m sure I’m not the first or only one to say this,’ Sergey continued, ‘but you look just like him, you know that? You’re his spitting image.’

  ‘I hear that a lot,’ Paul said.

  ‘Think of it as a compliment,’ Sergey said. ‘Anyway, the fact that I’m now having this conversation with Raylan Chapelle’s son makes this meeting all the more personal, don’t you agree? So what could you, or I, for that matter, be afraid of? What secret, what mystery or what important information could you possibly want to withhold? So let me repeat my question, Mr Chapelle. What has really brought you to Moscow? What has led you to this university, to this room, effectively to me?’

  Paul took out the list he’d brought along and unfolded it, which was a fairly pointless exercise, because it didn’t add anything to what he was about to say. But at least it gave him some time to process what Sergey Kombromovich had just told him and, above all, what he’d just shown him.

  His father’s handwriting. The same as his own illegible scrawl.

  He’d had many confrontations with this man he’d loved, but whose early death had not only made him an unattainable figure but also one impossible to live up to.

  He ran his finger down the list of student names. ‘One of these hostages witnessed my colleague being forced to record a video statement,’ Paul said.

  ‘And by “colleague”, I assume you mean the Afghan journalist who’s wanted?’

  ‘You’re well informed. But Farah Hafez is a Dutch national.’

  ‘I’ve spent many years working as a journalist in Afghanistan, Mr Chapelle. Look deep inside the heart of an Afghan and you’ll see they love no country other than the land of their birth. Your colleague is as much a Dutchwoman as you’re a Dutchman, for that matter.’

  Paul wasn’t sure if the irritation Sergey Kombromovich provoked in him sprang from the ease and directness with which he spoke or from the way the man kept hitting the nail on the head.

  ‘I watch television too, you know,’ Sergey resumed. ‘And of course, like the rest of Moscow, I thought I was witnessing the coming out of a fanatical Muslim when I saw Farah proclaim her sympathy for the Chechen cause. It seemed only logical that she should make common cause with the Chechens, after the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.’

  ‘In reality, she was a desperate woman trying to save a student. The girl was going to be shot if Farah refused to say what she was told to.’

  ‘A journalist forced to sell a lie, who ends up saving a girl’s life, but at her own expense. Is that an accurate enough summary?’

  ‘I’d like to give her back what’s rightfully hers,’ Paul said. ‘Her life.’

  ‘That’s not only a noble objective, which you’re right to pursue, but it’s your journalistic duty as well, I should think.’

  Sergey sat down in front of his computer, typed something and turned the screen towards Paul as he began to scroll down a list with personal data and photos of smiling, sometimes shy but often self-assured-looking young men and women.

  There were a great many of them, and, because of their youthfulness, they began to resemble each other, even when they were different ethnicities. But as soon as he saw her, he knew.

  Her blue eyes had an inquiring gaze, her smile was timid, her face pale and freckly. He read her name out loud: ‘Yelitsa Andreyevna, aged twenty-two, Number 54 Volzhsky Boulevard, Kuzminki, Moskva.’

  Over the edge of the computer screen, Sergey peered at him long and hard. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

  It was her. It had to be her.

  Paul nodded.

  ‘In that case it’s me who’s afraid now.’

  Paul looked at him, taken aback.

  ‘I’m afraid it brings this pleasant, but unduly short meeting to an abrupt end. You need to find that young lady asap.’

  Paul didn’t know what to do except shake Sergey’s hand. ‘Thank you for your trouble.’

  ‘No,’ Sergey replied. ‘It’s me who ought to thank you.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For breathing new life into my memories.’

  Sergey accompanied Paul to the lobby. There they stood facing each other, without a word. When they shook hands again, Sergey cited an old Russian proverb. ‘Those who fear wolves –’

  ‘Shouldn’t enter into the woods?’ Paul finished his sentence.

  ‘But you are going into the woods,’ Sergey said. ‘And you’re doing it fearlessly, just like your father. If he could see you now, he’d be proud.’

  Paul felt at least as awkward now as he had when he and Anya had been in the bar and she’d told him how much she missed him. He didn’t know how to respond to people’s warmth; it made him uncomfortable. It brought home to him just how ill-equipped he was to meet friendliness with friendliness, warmth with warmth, love with love.

  Acutely aware of this, he gave Sergey a comradely slap on the shoulder and was surprised to see the emotion it produced in the man.

  While crossing the seemingly endless lobby to the glass sliding doors, Paul felt Sergey’s eyes in his back. When he looked over his shoulder, the Russian was still in the same spot, motionless, with one hand in the air – like a tragic figure at the end of Maxim Gorky’s Summerfolk. A man after his own heart.

  Outside, the world greeted Paul with a haze of soot particles and snippets from charred trees a long way away.

  9

  Without drying herself first, Farah walked straight from the bathroom to the closed shutters of the stuffy hotel room and flung them wide open. The early-morning light poured in, and modern-day Jakarta’s tower blocks rose up behind the masts of the wooden schooners in the old port.

  It reminded her of standing in front of her window in downtown Amsterdam, the evening before she was due to leave for Moscow. At the time, she’d had the disconcerting feeling it might be the last time she looked out on to the old square.

  The view across the port only seemed to reinforce the feeling that she would never see her home again.

  From a distant minaret, the sounds of a muezzin came drifting across the quay of the Sunda Kelapa, calling the faithful to morning prayers. She remembered what her mother once told her when she was little.

  If you have true faith in God, you’ll always be happy.

  After all that had happened to her in
recent weeks, it had become practically impossible for her to believe in a god. And, while deep down she might long to bow towards Mecca, the way she’d done as a child, to do the prostrations, touch the ground with the palms of her hands, knees, feet and face, and ask Him to free her ‘from all the evil the devil whispers into people’s hearts’, she probably would never be able to bring herself to do it again.

  Placing her salvation in the hands of another felt like an empty and pointless thing to do.

  She had to keep moving, keep steering her own course.

  Never stand still; never take a step back.

  She took the laptop from her rucksack, removed the USB stick from her charm bracelet and used the decryption key to unlock Anya’s files. To her great relief, she managed to read the documents just as she used to: incredibly fast. Hungry for information, she devoured the sentences, each and every word.

  As expected, Anya had done a good job.

  The first file revealed the background of the Indonesian government’s ambitious nuclear programme, one which they hoped would allow energy supplies to keep pace with the explosive rise in population. New nuclear power stations were to be erected across the entire Malay archipelago. After an international call for tenders, a Chinese firm, a large Japanese company and Russia’s AtlasNet had made it through to the final round. An independent commission under the chairmanship of Indonesian Finance Minister Gundono had assessed the plans submitted. Valentin Lavrov’s Sharada Innovation Project, which proposed the construction of small floating nuclear power stations off the Indonesian islands, emerged the winner. The decision had been made; now Parliament had to rubberstamp it. And there lay the rub. There was opposition to the project. The most vocal opponent was Baladin Hatta, a prominent member of the Partai Persatuan Pembangunan and the Mayor of South Jakarta.

  Anya’s second file contained information on the Indonesian magazine Independen. The magazine had a long-standing reputation for being controversially critical, having overplayed its hand in a corruption affair surrounding Gundono. He was depicted on the front cover holding a piggy bank, and it was claimed he’d lined his pockets with foreign bribes. Gundono had taken Independen to court for slander, and a six-month publication ban was slapped on the magazine. The editorial offices were bombarded with stones and fire bombs – a ‘spontaneous street protest’, according to the authorities; a revenge attack orchestrated by Minister Gundono, according to Editor-in-Chief Ayu Saputra. Saputra went to the police to report an act of vandalism, blaming Minister Gundono, and in response was thrown into a cell where half a dozen police officers had a heavy-handed ‘word’ with him. Subsequently, a seriously injured Saputra retracted his allegation and Independen was officially disbanded.

  Farah could feel her heart racing. It was certainly not unthinkable that Lavrov had clinched his nuclear-energy project in Indonesia by bribing ministers. What if she could somehow find evidence of this? But it didn’t take long for Farah to be overcome by her usual doubts. What did she, a woman on the run, with a false passport, hiding in an unfamiliar metropolis on the other side of the world, think she could do against a Russian industrialist who was in cahoots with a powerful Indonesian former general?

  Her mother used to warn her all the time. My child, one of these days your blood’s going to boil over. Think before you act! Back then, Farah’s mother, Helai, knew her better than she would ever know herself. Again, she had been ensnared by her own impulsiveness.

  She’d managed to convince Anya and Paul with her Jakarta plan. They’d helped her to make her way over to Indonesia. But now that she was actually here …

  Keep moving.

  She packed the few things she’d brought – her passport with the strange name, her laptop with the encrypted files – into the small rucksack, and without so much as a glance over her shoulder left the room where she’d spent barely any time.

  The room bill turned out to be three times higher than agreed the previous day. Farah paid the girl behind the desk only the agreed rate and then calmly walked down the stairs, ignoring the threats of having the police sent after her.

  Shielding her eyes from the bright sunlight, she walked on to the teeming Sunda Kelapa quay, where she blended in with the crowd.

  10

  In the stuffy silence of the interrogation room, Radjen Tomasoa sat down at the table opposite Efrya Meijer, leaned forward, looked into her eyes and saw an impenetrable darkness filled with grief.

  ‘I can imagine this is hard for you, Efrya, but we need more information. You were the last one to see Thomas alive; you knew him better than anyone else. Whatever more you can tell us about him would be very helpful for our investigation.’

  ‘He hanged himself, Radjen. What is there to investigate?’

  Radjen shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Esther, who was sitting beside him, said in a calm voice, ‘Wouldn’t you like to know why he did it?’ Tears welled in Efrya’s eyes as she nodded. ‘Same goes for us,’ Esther said softly. ‘We’d like to know too …’

  Efrya drank the glass of water, wiped the tears from her face and looked both of them in the eye. From the depths of her sadness, the faintest smile appeared. The fragile smile of a frightened child in need of comfort.

  ‘I saw him for the first time on Good Friday,’ she said. ‘What a blessed day. For years I’d asked God to send me a good man. Thomas arrived in my life that day.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Just over three years ago.’

  ‘Where did you meet each other?’

  ‘In Axim, where I was born.’

  Axim was the place furthest west on the Ghanaian coast that Radjen knew. Dutch settlers had built a fort there once, mainly as a transit point for African slaves from the interior of the country who were being transported to the Caribbean. The fort in Axim was now run-down and the town itself didn’t seem to be any better.

  ‘I was teaching at a primary school and there was a nine-year-old girl in my class named Gifty. Her mother died in childbirth and nobody knew who her father was. Her aunts were taking care of her. She got money via a charitable fund. Thomas was involved with that fund. He paid for her schooling from the Netherlands and wrote to her on occasion. He came to Axim because he wanted to meet her.’

  Radjen didn’t know where all of this was leading, but he saw Efrya relaxing, and he decided go with the flow. ‘So Gifty was the reason you met?’ he asked.

  ‘She shouted “Daddy, Daddy” and they hugged each other. That night we went to church. Gifty sat in between us. Thomas held one of her hands and I held the other. A moment I will never forget. Through Gifty, I was connected to Thomas in some way.’

  Radjen saw a spark of life appear in Efrya’s eyes. ‘We got married in Accra; our car was covered in ribbons. People danced and sang the whole day. I was so happy …’

  ‘The best day of your life,’ Esther said, this time without any trace of irony.

  ‘His wife had died two years earlier. Thomas didn’t think he’d ever meet a woman again who’d be important to him,’ Efrya said.

  ‘Did Thomas have children?’

  ‘He had one son, but they didn’t have contact.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘His son got divorced. Thomas disagreed with his decision. “If you make a promise to someone,” he said, “you mustn’t break it.” ’

  ‘He was more than twenty years older than you,’ Radjen said. ‘Was that ever a problem?’

  ‘Love knows no age,’ Efrya said. ‘There were problems, but not between us.’

  ‘What kind of problems?’

  ‘It started when Thomas went to the Dutch Embassy in Accra with our marriage certificate to officially register the marriage. An employee asked him, while I was standing beside him, whether he was aware of the risk he’d taken by marrying a Ghanaian woman, and especially one so young. The woman said that most young wives leave their husbands once they arrive in the Netherlands. Our marriage was acknowledged by the embassy, but I couldn’t g
o to the Netherlands with him right away.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  ‘I first had to do something called an integration exam: learn to speak the Dutch language and get to know more about your country’s history. Thomas paid for the books and the course, and I took the exam at the Dutch Embassy. I passed. We wanted to bring Gifty with us but first we had to officially adopt her. This was a long and difficult process, so we agreed that Gifty would finish school first while living with her aunts and I would come to the Netherlands. But I missed my family. I missed Gifty too. I did my best, tried to make Thomas happy. I cooked for him, did the housekeeping, attended the compulsory civics course for permanent residency. Classes three days a week at a primary school. I was used to standing in front of the class, not sitting in a classroom.’

  ‘You did everything you could to try to make Thomas happy,’ said Esther, who seemed to sense that there was something else going on. ‘Did you manage it?’

  Efrya nervously dabbed at her nose with a tissue, paused and looked away.

  ‘We’re here to help you,’ Esther said calmly. ‘You said it yourself: you did your very best.’ Behind Esther’s calm tone, you could hear her pushing for more information.

  Efrya looked at her a little shyly. ‘Thomas said that I was his wife, so now I had to give him a child. A child who was really ours.’

  ‘And what did you think about that?’

  ‘I told him that he’d promised to always care for Gifty as if she was his own daughter and that she’d brought us together. Without her first coming to live with us, we’d never be a real family.’

  Radjen was beginning to lose patience. He forced himself to remain calm.

  Efrya’s face was now pale.

  ‘Around that time he started having nightmares.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘I think, four or five months ago. He saw faces.’