Provocation
This is a novel about Elena Kotova, who got into an unbelievable situation: she is haunted by four secret services and she is under investigation of two prosecutions – in Russia and in Britain. Her answer to the surreal situation is a fictional novel about Varya Vasilieva, who got exactly in the same trap, this is a ready-made thriller.
Varya, a Board director of an international bank, is turned overnight into a criminal. This so absurd, it’s practically Kafka! The only way for Varya to cope with it is to write a novel, turning her grim reality in noir comedy. In this novel Varya finds all clues as to how the provocation against her happened. She sees clearly all provocation’s participants, knows exactly what each secret service officer in which country says and does, she understands the triggers and the motives, she sees through the curtains. And… she falls in love with her British lawyer, Matthew Darsy, who appears to be the white knight, rescuing her. It could not be otherwise: when you cope with unconceivable reality, there is no world and no life beyond the world, which you build for yourself. It does not matter, if this world is real or not.
Documentary comments by Elena Kotova resonate with the fiction: the reality is even tougher and more surreal than Varya’s fantasies.
Matthew rescues Varya, they are both in love, they celebrate their victory in Matthew’s house in England. Embracing Matthew in her sleep, Varya hears a strange sound…. She gets up, opens the door… and there the Moscow police raids into her Moscow flat with a search warrant..
The reader learns that the real Matthew lost the criminal case of Elena Kotova, she finds herself in court, and faces a conviction. When she reads disclosure materials she sees how the non-fictional narrative had unfolded. Amazing, but exactly like in Varya’s fictional novel!
Borders between reality and fantasy get blurred, now, it is Elena, who struggles to conceive where the reality is. She feels like her once written novel about Varya has materialized in even un uglier story. She feels that all, what is happening to her, has been pre-determined by those forces behind the scene, that only appeared to be fictional. She perceives herself to be a marionette in their power games. Thriller mixed with love melodrama materializes into ruthless reality and does not want to end. Elena has to turn back into Varya. She sees how Varya decides – against all odds – to return to England. Not to embrace Matthew, but to stand the criminal trial. Most likely Varya is insanе, but Elena also does not have appealing options, other than to face the music in London trial. As Varya steps into a plane, Elena observes her, and thinks that there is only one thing, that she knows to be real and true: she must regain her freedom.
