Free Zero Hour by Andy McNab

on a job at the time and must have missed the coverage. ‘What about?’
    ‘Moscow. Young Moldovans didn’t like their leaders embracing the Kremlin. The president, Vladimir Voronin, was a Communist, very pro-Russia. For the past four years the Kremlin had mounted a charm offensive to woo him away from the EU and NATO with offers of subsidized gas and closer economic ties. It paid off. Voronin refused to join Brussels’s Eastern Partnership programme. He called it “a plot to surround Russia”.
    ‘Then came the elections. The trouble started as soon as the result was announced. The Communist Party had won a suspiciously large proportion of the vote.
    ‘Ten thousand demonstrators massed in the city centre, most of them students. They carried Moldovan and European flags and shouted anti-Communist slogans. They gathered outside the government building and made their way down the main boulevard to the president’s office. The police used tear gas and water cannon but they couldn’t stop the crowd breaking in. Windows were smashed on two floors and fires started.
    ‘Voronin called it an attempted coup d’etat and pointed the finger at Romania, a NATO and EU member. Moscow backed him up. The Kremlin were shitting themselves. Imagine - protesters overrunning Moldova’s parliament and ransacking its president’s office. The scenes must have been horribly familiar to them. It’s only five years since young pro-Western protesters toppled Moscow-friendly regimes in Georgia and Ukraine.’
    I nodded. I’d been to both after their ‘colour’ revolutions. Russia’s power in the region was at an all-time low. At home, the Kremlin kicked back by stamping out foreign-funded NGOs, abolishing local elections and setting up special ‘youth groups’ so they could keep an eye out for anything similar happening inside Russia. Abroad, the Kremlin’s new priority was to assert its influence and fight against increasing Westernization. Moldova’s unrest would have been a test of Russia’s ability to project power and protect friends.
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘What always happens when the people take on the state. The police came in mob-handed and arrested more than two hundred.’
    ‘Could Lilian have been involved?’
    ‘A sociology student? Does a bear shit in the woods?’
    ‘Russian bears shit wherever they want to.’
    She grinned. I liked it when she did that. ‘Ready?’
    I nodded. I was in her hands. I didn’t speak the language, and I wasn’t the world’s leading expert on universities.
    ‘They’ll think we’re parents visiting, or here to find out about evening classes or something. We’ll just wander round a bit, try to find out what bars she went to or groups she hung out with. Then we’ll take it from there.’
    We left Mateevici and followed one of the concrete paths that snaked through the grass. Anna had been on Google in the car. There were twenty thousand students, spread across twelve faculties.
    We stopped at a blue and white signpost that must have been really useful if you could read Cyrillic.
    ‘OK. Philosophy’s in that direction. Sociology must be close by.’
    She put her arm through mine as we followed her hunch. ‘These kids are hungry for knowledge, Nicholas. They know it’s the way out of poverty. You people in the West, you have it so easy. You think education is a right, not a privilege that must be earned. You have a welfare system to catch you if you fall, or if you just don’t give a shit. These people have no safety net. They have nothing without an education.’
    I could see through the windows that every lecture room was packed. We came to a newer building, lots of brick and glass. I held the door for her. Wherever you are in the world, an institution smells like an institution: a blend of body odour, wood polish, boiled cabbage and bleach.
    She led me down a wide corridor lined with posters, wall charts and notice boards. My boots squeaked on the tiles. Students young and