Alex Dryden - Red to Black

I DONT KNOW WHO IM writing this for but perhaps

I MET FINN for the first time back in January

NANAS DACHA AT BARVIKHA had always been my home, in

IT WAS NOT ONLY my father who was delighted when

THE KRASNOZNAMENNIY INSTITUTE, or KI, was where women trained for

DEAR RUSSIANS, very little time remains to a momentous date

FINN GETS UP, walks over to the window, stretches, and

WHEN FINN AND I had met a year before, at

IN THE SPRING of the year 2000 Vladimir Putin moved

IN THE AFTERGLOW of our mild hysteria, I walked alone

WHEN ID GOT OVER the shock of Patrushev actually appearing

AS I SIT now in the vault at Tegernsee, I recall how

AFTER FINNS SHOWDOWN with the embassys head of station, he

THE HEAT OF BODIES in the gasthaus at Tegernsee was

FINN PREFERS TO WALK. Even when he was in Moscow

FINN WAS BACK in London on the first Eurostar train

FINN RETURNS HOME that afternoon after his lunch with Adrian.

FOR TWO WEEKS Finn criss-crosses southern Europe, from the Russian

ON A FINE CLEAR SUMMER MORNING, when the outlines of

I WAKE ERRLY the next morning unable to sleep, the worst

AT THE BEGINNING of September 2001, just after we lost

AFTER MORE THAN A YEAR without contact between Finn and

TWO THINGS HAPPENED in the following seven days that changed

I MOVED INTO FINNS LIFE and his apartment in Camden

THERE ARE SEVEN OF US sitting in the Caf des

THE PHOTOGRAPHS LIE SPREAD OUT on a burgundy-coloured coverlet that

ON THE MORNING of the meeting, it is innocently bright,

THE DRESDEN FILE gives us five names, Finn says. He

THE PLANE LANDED at Scheremetyevo airport north of Moscow at

I DONT KNOW what time it wassometime after midnight certainlywhen

FINN CAUGHT THE TRAIN to Frankfurt, with or with the

I RETURNED TO LONDON two days after Vladimir had taken

AT THE END OF APRIL, Finn told me we were

FINN AND I FLEW to Bucharest one early morning in

I WOKE UP IN BED. I didnt know where I

FINNS EXCITEMENT is so naive. The almost boyish enthusiasm he

IT IS JUST MORE THAN a week later. Finn and

FINN SAID HE WOULD CALL twice a day until he

THERE IS ONLY one photograph of Mikhail in the public

I DONT KNOW WHO IM writing this for but perhaps its for you. If that makes it sound like a confession, you may wonder what Im expecting in return. A small part of me, I admit, seeks forgiveness, or at least understanding. But that part of me is less important than the forgiveness I wish to give myself, and which I find elusive.

I am writing to draw a line under the past, with its rot creeping into the present. I know now that if I had done this a long time ago, the present would never have been postponed and things would be different today.

In one of his more fatalistic moments, Finn said to me: Anna, you know our story can never be written.

Why not? I asked him.

Nobody would believe it, he said.

But Im here now, sitting in a medieval vault in a house in Tegernsee on the southern borders of Germany, reading Finns story-our story- and Im aware that all I have between me and the hostile forces that swim up at me from the pages is the Contender handgun and the twelve rifle shells on the table by my hand. And now that Ive found these notebooks of his, or books of record, as he calls them, buried in this vault along with all the other material of our secret profession, I see his fatalism was short-lived. As I sift through the piles of notebooks, oddments, scraps and sheets of paper, documents and microfiches-their edges stained with cellar dampness-with only the heat of an oil burner to keep me warm, I can see that he has practically written our story himself.

The notebooks certainly contain the facts and, without these facts, my feelings would be drifting in a vacuum, unmoored to the reality that at any moment I may need to use this gun and all my years of training to kill my way out of here. Feelings need to be clothed in reality and the factsthis storysupply the clothes. For days now, I have been reading and rereading Finns prose, notes and observationsover and over. Im reading them sitting in this dark stone vault and my eyes are running from the fumes of the oil burner and I strain in the dim light to follow the thread of a story that began long before I met Finn.

According to one note Finn made, our story begins in 1998, when Boris Yeltsins Russia reached its nadir. A later scrawl in Finns undisciplined handwriting names 1989 as the beginning, the year the Berlin Wall came down at last. But another, perhaps more thoughtful, observation says that it all started in 1961, when we Russians erected the Wall in the first place.

Whatever the true beginning, however, everything Finn and I have experienced will continue to unfold into a dark and uncertain future, with or without us.

As I read all his disparate and complementary records, the thing that strikes me most deeply about what Finn experienced in his long quest to have the truth accepted in his own country is his sheer obstinacy, the relentless autopilot of individual human endeavour when success seems impossible.

What also strikes me is that Finns past has dictated his life, much as my past has dictated mine.

You cannot escape your past, Anna, he once told me. But you dont have to live in it. You dont have to build the present in its image.

If only Finn had been true to his own belief.

Finn could have had a quiet life. That is the point, I realise, as I sit here shivering in the damp cold. He told me that he chose to pursue this quest, not just for the truth, but to have the truth accepted by his masters in London, and their political masters in the British Government. But did he really choose? Or was it his deep-seated need for acceptance that fed his stubbornness and single-mindedness?

For my part, I know Im looking for someone or something to find responsible for my own actions, but I cant escape my part.

Oh yes, Finn could have had a quiet life, a beautiful life. He had a great talent for doing nothing, which he called happiness, but he chose to go alone down the Tunnel, as he calls it here, and I hope Im not deluding myself when I say he would not regret that now, whatevers happened to him. For Finn has disappeared and, as I wait for the crash of sledgehammers against the door upstairs, Im looking for a clue to tell me something, anything that might help me to find him.

There is much, too, about Finn himself in these notebooks which distracts me from my increasingly urgent task. There are details of his internal struggle to understand his motives, a struggle which I never fully understood, and that he never told me, despite the fusion of our love. During all the time Ive known Finn, he never wanted to bring his own past like an evil spirit into our house. So he wrote it down in the notebooks and buried it with our secret story in this vault, which has hidden many things and many people in its long history.

And there is much in the notebooks about his feelings towards me.

There are three distinct spirits in our relationship, Finn once said to my grandmother at the dacha in Barvikha. This was back in the freezing winter weeks leading up to the millennium, when perhaps he and I were at our closest, and when trouble seemed far away. Theres Anna, me and the spirit that joins us. My grandmother, with her peasant background, was comfortable with the world of spirits. She laughed with mirth and hugged him. Like many people whose lives he touched, Nana loved Finn.