Chapter 9
Tim awoke the next morning hung over. His head hurt, his throat was dry and it was far too bright in the room. When he first awoke he went to the bathroom and drank three glasses of water and a couple pain killers in quick succession before going back to bed for a couple more hours.
When he woke up the second time he felt a good deal better. The pain had subsided to a dull throb and he was ready to get up and face the day. He took a shower and gathered up his discarded clothing from the previous evening before getting ready to go out in search of breakfast. Seeing Laura’s bed empty, he figured she must have gotten up earlier and gone out rather than waking him. She was probably just downstairs having breakfast or out for a brief walk.
Once he was ready to go out, he wrote a quick note to Laura in case she returned explaining where he had gone and then left in search of breakfast. He decided to be a little bit adventurous, seeking out some authentic Russian breakfast food rather than the usual North American fare. He found a small bakery around the corner from the hotel that had a few tables and chairs out front. He went in and was transfixed by the incredible array of options. He was tempted by almost everything in the store, but eventually settled on something called a Kartoshka, a sort of walnut pastry with chocolate inside. He wasn’t really sure what made it Russian, but it was delicious.
While he sat outside eating it and drinking a cup of tea, he started planning out the day. He had gotten up a lot later than he planed to, so he would have to prioritize the sights he most wanted to see. It was a difficult choice to make, but he narrowed down his list a little to match the time remaining in the day. Once he finished breakfast he went back to the hotel and seeing no sign of Laura downstairs, headed up to the room to see if she had returned.
When he got to the room there was no sign of her there either, but the note he had written was gone. Tim assumed that she must have read it and gone out to find him, and was about to head out again when he saw another note sitting on his bed. It was typed on a thick, glossy paper.
‘Dear Mr. Harding.
We have your companion. She is safe and unharmed and will stay that way providing you transfer the sum of $45 million dollars into our account. Instructions will follow. Don’t contact the police.
Sincerely,
………..’
Tim stared at the note for several long minutes. He read it over a few more times to be sure he hadn’t missed anything. If the note was to be taken seriously, Laura had been kidnapped by someone who knew things about Tim that almost no one knew. He immediately suspected James who knew the most and had already shown himself to be dishonest, but it could have been someone who intercepted one of his phone calls or eavesdropped on a conversation. Whoever it was and however they found out, Laura was in danger.
Tim tried to remember the kinds of things you are supposed to do in a situation like this: Stay calm, wait for instructions, contact the police. It couldn’t be sure whether the last one was a good idea or not, would it really put Laura in danger? How would the kidnappers know if he did anyway? But then again, how did they find out about everything in the first place, they might well have methods he didn’t know about. For the moment he decided to play it safe, he could always call them later.
He wanted to keep his options open and was very bad at waiting. He called Ryan to see how easy it would be to free up his money and have it on hand to transfer. He tried calling but there was no answer. He realized after a moment that it was the middle of the night in Vancouver so it made perfect sense that Ryan wouldn’t be answering his office phone. Tim couldn’t think straight and had to get outside. He left a message at the reception desk to call his cell if there were any messages for him and in the mean time he left the hotel.
Being in the centre of town already, it was not a long walk to get to the river. His hotel was just off of Nevsky Prospect and within a few blocks he found himself at the bridge that crosses the Neva to Vasilyevsky Island which sits between the two branches of the Neva as it comes out into the ocean. On any other day and in any other circumstance he would have been awed by the opportunity to be walking these streets, but today he counted himself lucky not to have been hit by a car while crossing the streets in such a reckless manner.
He crossed over the bridge and veered right on the other side, following Bol’shoy Prospect till it came to an end at a pier, looking out onto the fierce Baltic Sea. To the North, just a little bit farther than the eye could see lay the borders of Finland and North of that, only Arctic Ocean. The history and culture of the city melted away to its barbarous nature, a defiant metropolis that echoed the harsh forces of nature that constantly besieged it. Somewhere in that city, so rich in charm and sophistication were despicable individuals who had taken his friend. He didn’t know what to do, but would find a way to get her back, even if it meant losing all his wealth.
He sat down by the peer just looking out for what seemed like an hour or more, before deciding that he should get back to the hotel to see if there were any more instructions, and that he could use a stiff drink. He generally retraced his steps back to the hotel, walking more slowly and without purpose. He was entirely helpless and it was driving him crazy.
Once he reached the hotel, he checked for messages at the front desk before heading back to his room to see if the kidnappers had left another note. Nothing. He headed down to the hotel bar, but changed his mind as he couldn’t separate it from the events of the night before. He went outside again in search of a bar that was open this early in the day.
For a city of heavy vodka drinkers, he was surprised to find it very difficult to locate an open bar. There wasn’t a lack of bars, but it seemed that none of them opened before early evening; perhaps people just drank at home until then. The street was getting busier as the day progressed and Tim didn’t feel like going back to the hotel, as he walked he came across a towering orthodox church along the Obvodny canal. He recalled his experience in Paris and decided to go in.
While open to the public, the inside was nothing like the Parisian cathedral nor that of Moscow that he had visited the day before. Though under renovations to restore itself, the barbarity of enforced Soviet atheism was evident. Where there had once been ornate windows of stained glass, there were now only feeble replacements of ordinary glass that would have looked comically out of place if not for the sense of loss. Much of the interior echoed this feeling of its beauty and history having been stripped away and only now, very slowly and gradually being replaced. But this was not a prominent cathedral and it was clear there was a lack of either money or interest in restoring it properly, perhaps both.
Tim found himself to be the only one there, no tourists cared and even the clergy, it seemed, couldn’t be bothered to show up during the week. Tim sat down on one of the creaking pews just to take a break from the world for a moment. Were there a God, it seemed clear that he had abandoned this building and perhaps the city. He certainly couldn’t be very fair or loving if he allowed Laura to be kidnapped. Tim felt like screaming.
He eventually got up and left. Having only just left the hotel, he felt it pointless to keep returning there. Having left instructions to contact him, he figured given the ingenuity of the kidnappers so far, they would find a way to reach him. In an effort to distract himself, he set about trying to visit some of the sights of the city. He had his guide book with him and decided to head over to the Dostoyevsky museum which operated out of a converted apartment that he had lived in during his time in St. Petersburg.
The building was close by, near the Vladmirskaya metro station. The apartment itself was surprisingly large and looked out from the corner onto the church nearby. In addition to the usual preserved rooms left the way Dostoyevsky had them, there were various drafts of his books and news clippings. Someone had even set out letters from his children asking for sweets. It was quite an experience to see the place where so many of his novels were written. Looking out the window he could see some of the locations featured in Crime and Punishment and for a brief moment, for get about his concerns. The museum offered audio tours in English that recounted moments in Dostoyevsky’s life, most of which Tim already knew, but it was a completely different experience hearing about them in the location some of them actually took place. It set down the impression of Dostoyevsky as a real writer, struggling with financial difficulties brought on by his gambling habits as well as the challenges of raising a family.
As tempted as he was to stay in the museum indefinitely, Tim eventually left after taking several pictures and buying a few mementos from the souvenir shop. He headed back towards the Neva, this time crossing a different bridge over to Petrogradskaya and the nearby Peter and Paul Fortress on Zayachii Ostrov Island. The complex housed a prison and cathedral, an exercise in contrasts, yet both possessing the grandeur and pomp of tsarist influence. Peter the Great apparently at one time outlawed the construction of any building taller than the spire of the fortress, which at various times held Russian writers and dissidents of various kinds, including Dostoyevsky for a little while.
After paying the admission fee, he entered the compound and marvelled at the monolithic stature of it all. He could see why both opposing armies and local adversaries of the government would be intimidated. Before he reached the cathedral itself, his phone went off. It was a text from a blocked number.
‘Transfer $45 million to account 4522237-809 based at the bank of Hong Kong. Once the money has been received, we will give you the location of your friend.’
Tim now at least had something to go on. The message didn’t provide a time line, but he suspected kidnappers weren’t the patient type. It would now be early morning in Vancouver, so Tim tried Ryan again. There was no answer, but he left a message to call as soon as possible. In the mean time he went back to the hotel to get a late lunch and figure out what to do next. The fortress would have to wait for another time.
He arrived to find his room as he left it, no new notes or traces of the kidnappers. He sat down and collected up his and Laura’s things in case he needed to leave on short notice. He figured he probably had a couple hours before Ryan would have a chance to respond. He decided to try to read for a little while and picked up his Tolstoy in hopes of finding something more upbeat than peasants dying. As luck would have it, this one was even more depressing, concerning a merchant who was wrongly convicted of a murder and sent to Siberia, only to eventually be acquitted but dying before he was released.
Tim decided that Tolstoy must not believe in justice and that this reading material was hardly improving his mood. After ordering up some room service, he ate it and took a nap to kill some time, only awaking a couple hours later to the sound of his phone ringing. It was Ryan returning his call and asking what he needed.
Tim explained the situation and asked if he would be able to transfer the money over. Ryan replied that although he had already invested it, he should be able to have it released and transferred by the end of the day to the account Tim had specified. Tim was relieved to hear it and asked that Ryan call once it was complete, regardless of the time.
Tim was now stuck waiting again, early evening approaching and nothing to do. Feeling restless and cooped up in the hotel, he went out for another walk, this time following the Neva South East as it twisted and turned through the city. The walk was quiet and the evening already gave indication of the approaching winter. Occasionally he would see other people crossing over the many bridges, but for the most part he was left alone with his thoughts. Ordinarily according to their original plans Laura and he should have been heading back to Moscow the next morning to begin their journey on the Trans-Siberian.
He walked on aimlessly for hours, eventually coming to the bridge that the M-11 highway uses to cross the Neva where it divides North and South of the city and outlying areas. While the river runs east, emptying into an enormous lake 40 kilometres further, the highway winds West, connecting first to Estonia and then onwards to the rest of Europe. Tim suddenly felt tired, despite his earlier nap, and caught a cab back to the hotel. He decided to forgo dinner for the moment and try to get some sleep while awaiting news from Ryan.
He slept fitfully, waking up at regular intervals to check his phone and make sure he hadn’t missed something. The hours passed by slowly, each one bringing tiredness and frustration. Finally, half-dozing, he heard the sound he had been waiting for. He answered the phone before it had the chance to ring a second time. Ryan had been able to transfer the money, after a few hiccups and assured Tim that it would be in the account when the Hong Kong bank opened in an hour or so. Now all Tim could do was to wait for further instructions and sleep. He thanked Ryan and went back to bed, this time falling asleep almost immediately.
Despite his short sleep, he found himself wide awake by 7:00 the next morning. Unable to fall back asleep, he went downstairs and got himself a coffee. When he returned to his room to shower and change there was a note on his pillow on the same kind of paper as before.
‘The funds have been received. You will find your friend at the train station in Novosibirsk in two days time.’
Not knowing the location the note mentioned, Tim had to get out his guidebook and locate it on a map. It appeared to be a city in the middle of the Tran Siberian route. If Tim caught the train they had originally been planning, he should be able to make it there in 2 days time, but he would have to hurry. He collected up all his things as well as Laura’s and took them downstairs to check out. The hotel was very understanding and within 5 minutes he was in a cab on the way to the train station. He got to the station just as the train was boarding and had to run across to the far end to get onto the express train to Moscow that would then transfer onto the proper Trans-Siberian.
The trip to Moscow was much quicker on the Express train and within about 4 hours of uneventful travel he found himself disembarking in favour of the number 2 train. He had a whole cabin to himself as it turned out and was eager to get going. To distract himself he spent a couple hours reading the guide book he had bought for the trip. It turned out the route he had planned was technically called the Trans-Mongolian as it cut through Mongolia and finished in China, rather than the conventional Trans-Siberian that ended in the much less interesting Vladivostok, a shipping town with very little to see or do.
Though calling itself an express, the train actually stopped every 3-4 hours for about 15 min in all kinds of small towns and cities along the way. While this didn’t allow time to explore, it did mean one could get out and buy food and souvenirs from the locals who would crowd the platform in anticipation of the upcoming train. Tim tried a number of local foods with varying degrees of success from the delicious to the entirely bizarre.
The diversity and vastness of Russia reminded him of back home. Though he had spent most of his life in urban areas, he had done a couple trips across the country and always found the physical experience of the distance astounding. It was one thing to look at a map, but quite another to actually travel it by land, the feeling of a kilometre by train is much different than on a plane, you pass by every tree and town at eye level.
As he was travelling on his own, he tried to leave his compartment often to get tea or snack and socialize with the other passengers. There were a number of westerners on the trip and he was able to distract himself by hearing about their travels. The only trouble was when they invariably asked why he was travelling alone at which point he would usually clam up and find an excuse to leave.
The first day passed quickly and Tim found he was able to sleep relatively well in the cramped bed, though it initially took a while to get used to the feeling of movement. He awoke the next morning to find they were crossing over a river and approaching an industrial town. When the train stopped 10 min later Tim went out to look around and grab some breakfast.
Being a larger town there were more choices of merchants and Tim found it hard to make up his mind on what to have. After looking around for 5 minutes and getting concerned that he wouldn’t get back to the train in time, he settled on a plate of potato dumplings smothered in cheese and served with sausage. He got back on the train and stopped at the samovar to fill up his mug with hot water for tea. Making his way back to his compartment, he sat down and enjoyed his breakfast as the train pulled out from the station and continued its long journey.
The train passed through towns and cities at regular intervals, and Tim began to settle into the routine. The scenery changed, but very gradually so as to be almost unnoticeable. They were now passing through the Ural Mountains, but because of the vast scale it was at times impossible to determine the elevation. Tim gradually got to know some of the passengers by name and would say hi to them when he passed by their compartments or when they ran into one another in the dinning car. At times he was almost able to forget the purpose of his trip and just enjoy the travel experience.
He liked train travel, and while it wasn’t always exciting, it was certainly more relaxing and civil than planes or even extended car trips. Not having to worry about driving or car sickness, he could read, eat, or socialize while looking out the window and enjoying the natural and artificial landscapes. Time passed differently too as there was less to divide different parts of the day. Train life was pleasant though repetitive and by the evening of that day he grew restless both because of not having very many places to go and knowing that the next morning they would be arriving in Novosibirsk.
Nevertheless, there was little he could do beyond read, eat and sleep to pass the time. Sleeping that night proved more difficult because of not having done much to tire himself during the day. The bed, which the previous night had felt perfectly comfortable, now felt cramped and too hard. The noise of the engine was too loud and the periodic sound of footsteps in the corridor seemed to echo in the compartments. With all these distractions he tried all the more to sleep which ensured that he couldn't. It was only around 3am when he had exhausted himself in trying to sleep that he gave up trying and was able to rest.
Morning came minutes later to the sound of his alarm going off. He momentarily forgot where he was before looking out the window and seeing the scenery move past at a brisk pace. He pieced things together and resolved to get some tea, almost falling off his bunk while making his way to the samovar. Once he got back with his tea he sat down on one of the lower bunks and drank it. He had about half an hour till the train was scheduled to arrive and he wanted to make the best of it to clean himself up a little.
Living on the train had encouraged a slight disregard for his appearance and while he had showered the previous morning, he hadn't bothered to shave since Moscow. Locking the door behind him, he went down to take a shower at the end of the carriage.
As it was still relatively early Tim found himself the only one up and free to take as long a shower as he liked. While it too was cramped, the hot water was plentiful and he was able to wash his hair and feel like a human being again.
He emerged from the bathroom feeling a good deal better and headed down to the restaurant car to see about some breakfast. The train unfortunately did not possess the variety of pastries present at many of the small town stops, but it did offer a rather hearty oatmeal dish that was sufficient to start his day. Just as he was finishing up, the conductor announced their pending arrival in Novosibirsk in less than 5 minutes.
When the train stopped at the station, Tim jumped off and ran down the platform to look for Laura. The station was fairly sizable, but he checked it thoroughly and saw no sign of her. He had absolutely no means of contacting the kidnappers nor knowing whether they would actually keep up their end of the bargain. It seemed that either way she wasn't there immediately. He went back to the train and collected everything from his compartment, it was apparent that he would not be getting back on the train before it left in another 5 min.
He found a spot on the side of the terminal where he could see both people entering it and people disembarking trains. Not knowing how or where the kidnappers might be coming from, he wanted to ensure he didn’t miss anything. He decided to grab a coffee from one of the nearby vendors as the heat of the day had not yet arrived.
He sat waiting for about 40 min before a dark sedan pulled up about 50 meters back from the station and someone got out the back door before the car drove off without incident. Though it took him a moment to recognize her, it was Laura. Tim ran over to her and hugged her. She looked to be in good shape considering and insisted she had been well treated. They slowly walked back to the bench and sat for a long while in silence. Tim asked her a few questions, but it quickly became clear she wasn't inclined to talk about it at the moment. There would be time for many questions on both sides before long.
While Tim was inclined to book a flight back to Vancouver from there, Laura said she wanted to continue the journey to Beijing, saying that if they left now the kidnapping would be her strongest memory of the trip. After making sure that she was alright on her own for a couple minutes, Tim went to check the schedule for when the next train would be arriving. It looked like there was a local commuter train leaving in half an hour that would take them to Irkutsk where they could rejoin their proper train and continue on to Beijing. Tim bought the appropriate tickets and went back to the bench.
He asked if Laura had eaten, and upon finding out she hadn't flagged down one of the vendors and bought a bunch of pastries and chocolate for her, along with a small bottle of vodka for himself. Despite the early hour he was inclined to have a drink after all the stress of the last few days.
After eating and drinking, they both felt better and it wasn't long before the train had arrived and they were boarding. This train was a good deal less nice than the one Tim had been on previously. They were booked in compartment with 6 other people, roughly the same size as what Tim had had to himself before. Additionally, there appeared to be very few other tourists on board, the conversation was almost exclusively in Russian. Tim had learned to pick up bits and pieces of it and could ask basic questions, but was certainly not able to carry on full conversation.
Laura seemed content to rest and read, evidently tired from whatever she had gone through the past couple days. Tim was careful not to push her to talk about it and tried to content himself with reading and exploring the train.
Being a commuter train, there was no dinning car, though there was still a samovar for tea, evidently seem among Russians as a privilege rather than a right. The other passengers seemed to be from various different professions, ranging from the group of farm hands playing cards next door to the family with 6 children in the compartment at the end of the hall.
The next several stops were much like those before until they arrived in Krasnoyarsk in the early evening, the only other major city before Irkutsk. They found a plethora of choices for dinner and noticed a subtle difference in the architecture as they drew nearer to the Mongolian border. The train stopped there for close to 30 minutes as there would be few more stops for the next several hours. They very briefly walked a couple blocks into the town to stretch their legs and get some small sense of what it looked like.
It was surprisingly more urban than Tim would have imagined, apparently close to a million people according to his guidebook and complete with skyscrapers and enormous steel bridges across the river. Apparently Chekhov had judged it to be the most beautiful city in Siberia, which while it may not have meant much, still sounded nice. Before long they had to head back to the train, but they took a handful of pictures before leaving.
The next several hours were largely uneventful, both continued to read until they got tired and then tried to sleep in their very small beds, complete with rowdy Russians playing cards below. The noise subsided around midnight and they did catch a few hours of rest, albeit not quite what they would have liked.
When they awoke and looked out the window the countryside looked almost identical to the night before. They found it difficult to determine where they were as there were no discernible landmarks in any direction. After grabbing tea and some instant cereal, they felt more awake and checked the timetable against their watches. It looked as if they should be arriving in Irkutsk in under an hour where they would transfer back to their regular train. Rather than read as they had been doing the previous day, Laura said that she was ready to talk.
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