Naya

 

The floors were soggy. It had rained all night. Naya Einhardt got out of her vehicle without enthusiasm. It was cold, the air was full of a bad humidity, which a vicious wind took care to make pass under her clothes. The landscape was grim. There was something bad in the air, bad vibrations, a bad past.

The young woman shivered, she was one of the people who felt these things. She observed the buildings for a long time. They were in very bad shape. It looked like a bunker or an old nuclear power plant, a big concrete building. The place had not been lived in or maintained for a very long time, maybe a century. But it looked like ancient ruins abandoned for millennia. Something other than time had acted on these walls.

Naya had not anticipated this. She didn't feel like visiting the buildings as she had planned. Her job as a real estate expert, specializing in buildings in need of renovation, required her to visit buildings that were sometimes in poor condition. But here, the walls were full of mold, water had been seeping in for too long. The vegetation had invaded the buildings, as it had outside. The park around the building was overgrown with brambles, trees that had grown wild. What could be done with such a structure?

It would have to be bulldozed. That means not only removing the foundation, but also cleaning the ground thoroughly to meet environmental standards. It would take years of cleanup before any real estate development could be considered. And that would be expensive. But that wasn't her responsibility. She would pass on her analysis, and they would make their decisions.

She had an appointment with her client at 1:00 p.m. She had come early to get an idea of what to do. She had come early to get an idea of what was on offer. In front of clients, she always felt a little rushed. Since the client had only given the meeting place at the last minute, she had dropped everything to arrive as soon as possible. Naya did not have a good feeling about this case. The client did not have a good reputation. It was a company owned by financial interests with a murky reputation. The owners had close ties to organized crime. Naya didn't like working with those kinds of people. But her company had arranged this meeting. Naya already knew that her report would be extremely unfavorable.

The building had been presented to her as an old biological laboratory built on a park of several acres. Naya had her doubts about this. The building itself was much larger than she had imagined. It looked more like a military building. She had seen evidence of guard posts removed at the entrance. There were traces of a fence, of old earthworks.

Besides, it seemed to her that she had seen military trucks on the way in, perhaps people watching her from afar.

What could they be doing around here?

This region of Kladniv, in what had been the Ukraine, not far from the border with Poland, was a region that Naya did not know, because it was very far from her Berlin office. The hamlets she had seen on the way there all looked abandoned. There was no trace of life, except for the military, within an hour. She would have to find out more about the history of this area when she returned to the office.

The company that employed Naya was owned by Chinese investors. For them, from their headquarters in Hefei, in the inland province of Anhui, Europe was a small territory, even if it had been divided into several entities since the breakup of Europe. The order to visit the place had come from very high up, perhaps from Hefei itself. The owners of this building had connections at the highest level...

While she was pondering these matters, several cars appeared on the road. There were at least six of them. They were an hour early.

One vehicle stayed on the road, men got out, posted themselves. Military men, these guys moved like military men.

Naya watched the cars coming.

When they reached her, they did not greet her. The men were looking around. They were tense. This made Naya feel even more anxious. Perhaps the place was dangerous. She had not had a good idea to come alone and in advance.

The cars stopped. Men got out, armed, and immediately took up protective positions in the vicinity. After a minute, two men emerged from a vehicle in the center and came toward her, the chief and his direct collaborator.

"They're being very careful..." Naya thought.

The chief approached her, without smiling: "Have you been here long, Mrs. Einhardt? Weren't you supposed to come at 1 p.m.?

- I arrived early. I didn't know the route well.

The man repressed a chuckle of annoyance. "Didn't anyone tell you?"

- No, what... ?

- This area is unsafe. We had specified that you be escorted...

- Nobody told me anything...

The man was silent. Watching him and his assistant, Naya had confirmation that the communication problems between her Berlin team and the Chinese bosses in Hefei could have been fatal.

"General Poroshenko, I command the region. I wanted to meet you to set you free. I am a military man, Mrs. Einhardt, not a politician. I don't like their shenanigans, their schemes and their secrecy.

What do you know about this place?"

-I was called last night. The building was described to me as a former "biological" laboratory...

- And what is your feeling?

- It is an old military building. There has been an ecological disaster here. The area is devastated... I don't have a good "feeling".

- You are right. This structure has housed ... We have ... "transformed" some...

Naya had not heard anything. Suddenly, bursts of automatic weapons were heard nearby. Naya heard men shouting. General Poroshenko shouted at him: "Take your car, get out!" He himself was taken to his car.

Naya ran to her car. She didn't want to hang around.

She opened the door, turned on the ignition, and put her foot down on the pedal. The trip from the camp to the military car she had seen pull up was short, maybe a minute. But she had time to see human and animal forms rushing towards General Poroshenko and his men. She seemed to hear screams. The machine guns were crackling. She drove on, foot to the floor.

After a kilometer, she passed several military trucks driving at full speed towards General Poroshenko's men. They were going to war. They stopped her a little further on. The soldiers took her to a tented camp. A doctor received her with colleagues. They did several tests on her, measured her radioactivity level. The results did not seem alarming, but she was treated with BPI protein and fluoroquinolone.

Naya Einhardt was held for two weeks in a military camp. Apart from medical treatment, she was held incommunicado. Several agents of the Ukrainian secret service visited her. They did not answer any of her questions, and each time they asked her to keep what she had seen absolutely secret.

Naya's problem was that she hadn't seen much and didn't understand anything about what had happened. She couldn't see herself contacting a journalist. She had seen nothing, understood nothing. She had nothing to report.

A member of the German secret service came to get her at the military camp. He did not give her any information and told her repeatedly to keep silent about what she had seen or heard. A comfortable pension was paid to her as compensation for the loss of her job - she was fired from her company - and her identity since she was given another identity.

She was asked where she wished to rebuild her life. She chose Ireland. For years she searched the press, looking in vain for the name of General Poroshenko.

She almost convinced herself that nothing had ever happened on the Kladniv side and that all this was an excellent opportunity to devote herself to her passion for painting.