Excerpt
Further out from the city centre her entourage flashed past dilapidated apartment blocks and run-down neighbourhoods. Iryna saw roads closed and ordinary people being held back by policemen to allow the cavalcade to proceed unhindered. As she looked into the eyes of those flashing-by faces, she saw only silent contempt. She felt pity for them, not because she was in a big limousine, had a grand office and high salary and they had nothing or very little, but because she felt for them. She knew they had been overlooked by successive administrations, who paid lip service to the population while lining their own pockets. Although cocooned in her plush car – isolated and remote from their daily lives – she also felt part of them; more so than many of the politicians that she had to work with.

Her cell phone rang. ‘Iryna, where are you? I’m on my way now. Do you know what this is about?’

 She liked Yuri. He was as honest as a man could be as the Head of the City Police. They had been professional colleagues for many years; she felt she could be a little sarcastic with him.

 ‘Well, if I were to use my imagination for a while, I would say it’s something to do with the thousands of protesters who have set up camp in the middle of Kiev’s main street. What do you think?’

 She immediately regretted sounding so patronising. Yuri would take her comments personally. She was tired. She had been up most of the night reviewing reports on Russian movements in Eastern Ukraine near the border.

‘Well, yes, of course, of course. I’ll see you there then.’

 Now she felt worse. Poor Yuri had been wounded by her words. She’d make amends to him when she could.

She slumped back in the soft limo seat and wondered what was so important to warrant being summoned to his villa on Saturday morning. The protests had been going on for months now – it wasn’t as if the demonstrations were anything new to the government. Her mood was as dark as the light snow falling from the grey skies outside. The rumbling of the vehicle tyres on the cobblestones made her feel drowsy. She closed her eyes and wondered what new challenges would be thrown at her this time. She was tiring of this administration and their mendacity with the people. Things were coming to a head; her team of loyal operatives were ready. All it needed was for Zakrenovich to make another wrong move and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down.

She knew the president was under pressure to end the city centre Maidan demonstrations. The Maidan – or square in English – was traditionally the location in downtown Kiev were protests were focused. It had now become the focal point and encampment for thousands of protesters who wanted change; change from the old culture of corruption and political favouritism that endured from the

Soviet times. They wanted to turn their eyes westward – toward Western Europe and democratic accountability. As the political shenanigans continued between eastern and western administrations, the demonstrators’ demands and determination became more entrenched; and the camp itself literally became a tented town with its own barricades, guarded entrances, its own impromptu security people and foot soldiers, all in the main street of Kiev – Khreschatyk Street.

There were daily running battles between riot police and demonstrators, with little sign of it ending soon. The demonstrators had become entrenched and well organised in their enclave. Both sides had now reached an impasse, with the bulk of the population supporting the protesters. She knew there was a clique in the government that supported Moscow’s line and was only paying lip service to their support for Western Europe. She suspected that there were high-level Russians in town, and events looked likely to take a new course. She feared it was going to get even more ugly. She despised the likes of Zakrenovich and his ministerial mobsters. They had no empathy with the nation other than what wealth they could squeeze out of it for their own ends. Like her father, her sense of duty made her a loyal servant to the system and she hid her contempt for them under a cloak of duty.

As her car entered the presidential compound past the heavily guarded security gate she looked around the garden and at the facade of the president’s house and wondered if there was a secret manual for despots somewhere, because they all seemed to share the same fascination with zoo animals, onyx tabletops and gold taps. But Zakrenovich must have rewritten the chapter on how to completely misalign taste and opulence. There is a subtle difference between fine furnishings, matching colours and elegant artefacts. Zakrenovich had taken tastelessness to a new level of ugliness.