A letter to a friend working
at the EU Human Rights Commissioner Office.
Dear M…,
I don’t know if I made myself sufficiently
clear. If I knew that at least someone might be interested I could give a
detailed analysis of my case, though it would require writing a book. Now that
my yogic labors brought fruit: quick insight, I can give a logic explanation to
almost anything. Naturally, it’s nothing but a story, my story. Still, I’d much
rather you knew it because this latent conflict with the secret services is
bound to have a final flare-up, though they would try to present it as yet
another accident. Anyway, I would surely appreciate your advice.
A few words about the role of the Russian
secret services.
General Kobaladze, former head of the Foreign
Intelligence Service’s public relations department, used to say in his
interviews that “We are ready to work with the Devil himself, if that’s in the
interests of our state”. This confession fully explains both the role of the
Russian secret services and the methods of their work.
First, while the task of the secret services in
the democracies is to protect its own secrets and steal foreign ones, in Russia
they are a secret instrument of power, government. The principle of their
government is “Divide and rule”. The division, through lies-half truths (And
the Devil is known as the Father of Lie and Great Divider) creates
polarities-tension-conflict. In short, a source of energy for government.
A person brought into a state of
tension-conflict can become such a source. The conflict can be external, for
instance, a social conflict with polarities “personality-state” or internal,
say, personal with polarities “conscience-self-preservation instinct”. Tension
can be eased through movement, the conflict - through work. To ease it
polarities are circuited, and the energy starts flowing from one polarity to
the other. Therefore, when a person who is in a state of tension-conflict is
offered a way-out, a solution of the conflict, he, like a cell, is switched to
the circuit of government. The discharge of one’s own spiritual energy so as to
save one’s own form-skin means collaboration.
One has an impression that the circuit lifts
the tension-conflict, in effect, it just regulates the tension between the
polarities so as to control the discharge of energy from its source. The
tension-conflict may be of different character: inner-personal, inter-personal,
social, ethnic, etc. But the way it is lifted-realized depends on the chain of
government. It could be compared to the man’s dividing the current of water
with a dam, thus creating polarities: upper and lower levels. After which the
polarities are linked with a chain of government (hydro-technical installation:
sluices, turbines, etc) which regulates tension (water levels) and
takes-transforms the energy from the system.
The chain of government is built along the
principle of inner-outer similarity-contrast. In the case of the secret
services it’s their network of agents who due to their outer similarity with
the object of government can pick information from it (and pass to the secret
services) and due to its inner contrast can exert on the object a governing impact
(stick and carrot). This function of a ‘semi-conductor” determines the split of
the agent’s personality, his inevitable inner conflict. All those collaborating
with the secret services become both the element of government and its “fuel”,
both the executioner and its victim.
Whereas earlier the secret services
exercised a) permanent control b) over
all – which required huge tension and energy spending, and often disclosed the
main conflict between personality and state which was inevitably labeled as totalitarian
-
Now they have a) permanent control exercised
over the necessary, key persons b) over all but at a necessary, key moment, the
rest of the time control is variable (according to the circumstances).
This flexibility creates an illusion that the
state is set on a democratic path because the conflict “personality-state
(secret services)” is transformed into other spheres: social, economic, ethnic,
etc. There’s no longer any need to put the person away – he can be made
unemployed, bankrupt, terrorized by the organized crime, etc. This style of
government helps to observe the other principle of the secret services: “Stay
in the shadow”.
Therefore, the whole process of government, for
example, recruitment, is split into stages: - 1) collecting information on the
object (stalking him) 2) provocation-governing impact 3) feedback from the
object (its reaction) 4) cover-up measures – which are implemented by different
persons as a rule.
At the first stage they study the object’s
personality features, his “values orientation”, interests, desires, traits,
etc. The main source of such information are relatives, friends, and colleagues.
It’s supplemented, checked again through ‘chance’ contacts. After which the
provocation is staged, the aim of which, in the case of recruitment, is to
split, break the personality by creating the internal or external conflict.
The split is done through polarization of
personality features, first of all of any excessive, hypertrophied trait. No
matter what it is -–a human weakness, or on the contrary, virtue. It’s similar
to the principle of Aikido martial art, where the fighter is to use the energy,
every momentum, of his opponent against him. If the enemy is passive, he’s
provoked by false attacks to counter-attack or retreat. If the enemy counter-attacks,
the fighter dodges – the secret services use false targets, dummies for this –
then reinforces the strike by simply pulling the enemy further forward and off
balance. If the enemy retreats, his retreat is accelerated by a push. The main
thing is to throw him off his balance. The open recruitment is usually carried
out with a fallen enemy: the spider appears only when its victim gets fully
entangled in its web.
The secret services usually recruit the person
exploiting his weaknesses, raising, enlarging them to a vice, which brings him
in a conflict with society, morals – here they follow the principle of an
“inflated rubber balloon”: when human ego is blown up like a rubber balloon to
a preposterous size, after which this ego-balloon is punctured. After the
euphoria of a “God-chosen”, the feeling of being ravished, bust is unbearable.
On getting consent to collaborate, they patch up this punctured balloon as good
as new, and re-inflate it again to a required size.
If necessary the vice is raised to a crime,
creating a conflict with the law. This was how they recruited one of my friends
whose “thirst” for liquor and women was encouraged and quenched by the secret
services until he was falsely accused of rape (perjury has never been a problem
here).
The case was hushed up with the help of his
college friend who had close ties with the underworld and consequently,
militia. He learned much later who was behind all this.
Ironically, this friend of mine had long before
collaborated with the security services voluntarily. Still, they don’t need
volunteers, but reliable agents. The person becomes reliable when they rape him
spiritually, break his integrity.
An opposite example of recruitment, on virtue,
is a story of a relative of mine. When a boy of 18, he ‘accidentally’ overheard
two bandits conspiring to kill a patrolman so as to get his arms – of which he
informed militia… Neither he, nor the bandits, nor even militia in general had
any slightest suspicion whose game they played.
Which is not surprising, because the perception
of an ordinary person is fragmented. He cannot see the unity in variability (E
pluribus unum). So in the whole process of government he perceives only
negative signals (the stick). For him the provocation is an accident, a
misfortune, not a link in a carefully planned by the secret services chain of
government.
But if the object shows deep intuition and
ability to analyze, the process of recruitment becomes much more complicated
and prolonged. (For decades, if necessary). In such case the secret services
follow the principle of “chasing the bull in a corral” until it lies down
exhausted. As soon as it lies down they’ll insert a ring in his nose”… If this
principle doesn’t work (the drivers haven’t as much wit and grit as the bull),
the bull is made to face the choice “Either the ring or the beef”. That’s the
fix I’m in. Before this happens I’d like to explain to the naive and uninitiated
what the Russian secret services are. To explain that this conflict is not a
result of some personal animosity. The conflict with a system the methodology
of which is based on science, pure and simple (general theory of government)
cannot be as superficial as a personal grudge is. It’s a conflict of outlook.
By 1993,
I gave up my attempts to emigrate to the US because of the seeming changes
which began in the work of the Russian secret services, the lawlessness of which was the main reason for my desire to
leave Russia. One of the promising signs were the international conferences on
KGB organized by “Glasnost” Fund where I delivered my reports.
A ray of hope was emerging that an honest
person would soon be able to lead a normal life without fear of the Big
Brother. This hope of mine was by all means supported by my friends,
acquaintances, my colleagues at my other work,
the WPS news agency. I was given a chance to earn good money, in August
1993 the WPS sent me to Prague on a one-day business trip.
First time abroad after so many frustrated
attempts to tear a hole in the iron curtain. I was fascinated with Prague, and
a month later I was sent there again. At the same time my friends, former
school-mates, now officers who had close ties with the military intelligence
pointed out to me now and then that with my command of English I could have
traveled throughout the world and could have earned 5 times the amount I earned
both at Glasnost and WPS.
I guessed at once that my hopes for quiet and
what I treasured most, independent life were futile. At the same time my father
informed me that he received persistent phone calls from our district
psychiatric dispensary inviting me to visit them so that they could revoke my
diagnosis. I said I didn’t seek their schizophrenia – it’s they and their KGB curators
who used to detain and lock me up in psychiatric hospitals. Therefore the
question of my rehabilitation is entirely up to them to decide. This
schizophrenia is not a stain on me but on those who fabricated it. Besides
under the present conditions it had no practical limitations on my civil
liberties.
After which my friends began to pester me with offers of a good car at extremely low
price – I said with my diagnosis I’d much rather walk – then I was offered an
army carbine distributed to the top brass through some shadowy channels almost
for free. I again refused citing my diagnosis – and they again suggested I
apply for rehabilitation…
The bosses at my WPS work, looking me
expectantly into the eye, said there’s a chance to go on business trips to
Munich, or work in New York. They also
did their best to marry me to our beauties working at the WPS. In October 1993,
I saved some money and decided to go to Antalia, a seaside resort in Turkey.
The first tourist company I turned to postponed my trip several times under
various pretexts. Having guessed as to the real cause of the delay I bought my
tour in a Turkish tourist company and found myself in Antalia in no time. But
in Antalia I was surprised to observe that Turkish secret services could be as
zealous as ours.
This wasn’t hard to notice: preferring solitude while on vacation, I didn’t go to the hotel’s beach, but went to a deserted “halk” (folk) beach. On my way to this beach, I was slowly escorted by a policeman armed with a submachine-gun. When we reached the place he would swing his car and speed away. As soon as I got settled there, a young husky Turk with military bearing would drive in on his motorbike and lie down near by. This was my only company on the beach for 2 weeks. The things in my hotel room were regularly and carefully checked. There was an incident when the Turks, having noticed that I switched off the lights in my room unusually early, apparently decided that I didn’t go to bed but secretly slipped out the hotel. About midnight I was woken up by the people who had opened the door with their keys to check if I was in. I was mad to have my sleep disturbed. So the Turks apologized and brought a tray-full of fruit…
I had a hunch that all this was the result of some kind of a set-up job on the part of the Russian secret services so as to teach me a lesson for going abroad without their permission. Later similar misunderstandings took place in other countries and my suspicions turned to conviction.
After my vacation in Turkey my father, an ordinary retired captain, was given 1,650 sq.m. of land (free) by our district administration to build a house – a perk given to retiring generals, not to ordinary captains. I was suggested to invest my earnings in the house construction, and was assured by all that later it would become my property. But I know that the secret services have a talent of giving property in such a way that eventually you’d find yourself stripped of everything, even of your own things which you had before. Anyway, in my particular case this wasn’t difficult to do: my parents were divorced and father lived with the other woman. So spending money on this promised property wasn’t much to my liking, and I continued spending on tourism, this time visiting Egypt.
On the eve of my departure, my second-cousin,
Victor, lecturer at Zhukovsky Air Force Academy, told me there would be an
interesting girl in our tourist group and if I got acquainted and marry her I’d
have a job in Argentine. The girl was interesting indeed, but I don’t allow
anyone but God to decide my fortune, even in such a romantic way.
After this failure of mine to comply with their
advice, my earnings at WPS were drastically cut. I knew that if I were to say a
resolute ‘no’ to all these advances-propositions, I’d lose my job and find no
other (what actually happened in the end) therefore I pretended to be unaware
of the implicit recruitment taking place.
So they tried to explain themselves. For
example, my second cousin (with whom at the time we were close friends, until
it became evident to me that ‘friendship’ was his second - or may be, first -
job) asked me about my earnings and why they didn’t send me abroad any more. I
complained that the earnings were rather modest for a translator, as for
travels abroad they were restricted to a limited number of persons and I wasn’t
of that number. To which my brother remarked acidly: “Well, you want to be
independent, don’t you? Whereas in real life it’s either independence or money
and travels abroad – but ‘on company business’”.
I wasn’t going to sell my freedom to the Devil,
and so decided to improve my financial position getting a job at some
British-Russian joint-venture company which was to organize exhibitions and
fairs. I successfully passed all tests as interpreter and was told to start in
a week. But in a week these very people were shrugging shoulders and turning
their faces away. I repeated my attempt at the other firm – the result was
identical.
In January 1995, my mother brought a legal suit
against the commanders of our Cosmonaut’s Training Center whom she accused of
decades long politically motivated persecution. From all sources came threats and
abuse addressed to my mother, on whom I was told to bring pressure to make her
withdraw the suit. When I refused, similar threats and abuse were addressed to me:
“the scum”, as they put it, “who didn’t want to serve in the Soviet Army” –
this old accusation which had been used against me almost 20 year ago, in 1970s,
shocked me: the Soviet army had disappeared, the Russian one was speedily
crumbling, but the old charge stuck fast: “a schizophrenic draft-dodger, and a
CIA spy”.
A month later, in February 1995, I bought a
tour to London, planning to see the city and meet an old friend of mine. First,
they postponed the date of the flight, alleging that our tourist group wasn’t
complete, then I was told the cost of the tour had risen sharply and suggested
I take the money back. “Never mind, I’ll pay the price”, said I. Then they
returned my money and my passport, explaining that the British embassy refused
me entry visa. Which was an outright lie – and visa stamped in my passport
proved it. My friends hinted explicitly that if I turn to some other travel
agency selling tours to Britain I might lose all my money. I gave up and opted
for Sri Lanka.
In Sheremetievo airport, just before the
customs check, I was approached by a Hare Krishna follower who offered me a
Prabhupadha book. Having noticed my hesitation, he hastened to add: “It’s free”.
Despite my refusal he pestered me another ten minutes trying to foist this book
on me. I had long practiced yoga, but how he, out of a large crowd, could
single out a person who might be interested? He didn’t offer this book to
anyone else but me. What’s this – a case of clairvoyance? No, the choice of
this bait was easy to explain: on the eve of my departure I told my friends
that on Sri Lanka I was going to visit Buddhist sacred places and buy
appropriate literature. Their motive to have me entangled in something was also
apparent: After my mother’s resolute refusal to withdraw her case against the
Cosmonaut’s Training Center commanders and my unequivocal support of her
decision the reprisals were bound to happen.
My suspicion that this Hare Krishna and his
book offer was a possible set-up was confirmed during customs check when out of
hundreds of departing tourists I chanced to be the only one subjected to a rigorous
search – which brought no results, except disappointment and anger barely
concealed by the usually impassive customs officers.
Later strange things began happening in Sri
Lanka. Mr. Silva, representative of a joint Russian-Lankan travel agency,
accompanying me on an individual tour to Kandy, the ancient capital of Sri
Lanka, was anxious for me to remain on the island, first suggesting I marry a
local girl, and when I declined such proposition, on the contrary, enter a
monastery. The two dramatically different propositions let me wondering about their
real motives, so I stated unequivocally that no matter how I liked the island I
wasn’t going to stay on Sri Lanka, because back at home I had lots of things
which required my presence there.
My response had visibly saddened Mr. Silva, and
all the way back from Kandy to Colombo we rode in intense silence. It was
broken only at the end when we pulled up at our Taj hotel: Mr.Silva turned from
his front seat, his face again beaming and, patting my forearm, asked me for a
small favor, namely, to take a suitcase of advertising materials to Moscow. Sensing
a possible trap, I nonetheless agreed - so as to avoid other possible traps
which could follow if I refused. My only condition was that they should supply
proper documents for this baggage: official statement of the nature of cargo,
sender, receiver, carrier, etc, because I didn’t want any possible problems
with the customs – the latter clause I stressed particularly. He assured me
that all proper documents would be given in due time. But on the day of my departure
he brought a huge case and a crumpled piece of paper with some hand-written scribbles
in it. Looking him coldly in the eye, I said I wouldn’t carry the case without
proper documents. Mr. Silva’s face distorted by a mix of despair and anger
reminded me of a similar reaction of the Hare Krishna follower back at home to
whom I had to say that he’d better look for suckers elsewhere.
When this provocation failed, the Russian
secret services tried another one in August of the same year when I visited my
relatives in Ukraine. This time they used the security services of the
officially independent state of Ukraine as their proxy, but the clumsy
willingness of their Ukrainian counterparts resulted in a political scandal
when Ukrainian deputies demanded their government explanations about the extent
and the reasons for cooperation between Ukrainian and Russian secret services,
as well as their role in harassment of human rights workers, citing my
particular case. (Read details of the story in my report delivered in 1995 at
the Round Table devoted to the Russian secret services).
When this story was made public, they replaced
the stick with the carrot. I was again offered a part-time job at WPS, where
they tried to speedily arrange my marriage with yet another of their company
beauties. As this blitz failed again, again I was fired…
To drive their message home, my relatives, friends
and acquaintances invariably gave their ostentatiously sympathetic comments to
my problems: “You won’t settle comfortably in this life if you don’t work for
the secret services.” And cited lots of examples to prove their point. I argued
back that any serious business with the scum of this type would cost a person
dearly in the longer run. And also cited lots of examples when the secret
services wasted human lives treating people as pampers.
Seeing that such arguments had only increased
the determination of the Russian secret services to have me recruited at any
cost, by hook or by crook, in the spring of 1996, I decided to visit my close friend
in Washington. I thought quite naively that a month spent in the US, not with a
tourist group but with my friend who had served 10 years in the Russian labor
camps on alleged espionage charges, would completely compromise me as a
possible recruit for the Russian secret services.
As soon as I expressed in a telephone talk with
the friend my intention to visit him in Washington, the threats to my life came
from all sides; the usual warning was: “The presidential electoral campaign is
starting, they’d frame you as political extremist - which is not difficult,
bearing in mind what you say about the regime - and would take measures for
your neutralization. If you want to take a rest, OK, buy a tour to Canaries, or
go to Burma, visit your school-mate, now diplomat, there”.
Despite my fascination with the East, I chose
to go West, thinking that in my particular case Canaries would be a much safer
option.
A couple of days before my departure, I was approached
in metro by a man, judging by his looks, a national of the Caucasus’ republics,
who showed me a piece of paper with some address in it and asked how to get
there. I hardly had a chance to answer when a Negro came up with a similar
piece of paper and a similar problem. The meaning of this provocation became
clear to me only later, on Canaries.
From the very first day there I was placed
under surveillance, first amateurish, apparently by the local police force,
then under a tight professional one.
My bafflement as to the cause of surveillance quickly
turned to anxiety when Spanish representatives of the travel agency (its head was
a Spanish national with Russian citizenship, while half of its staff were ethnic
Russians), began persuading me to buy a suite in their club hotel at a symbolic
price: 300 odd dollars. I later learned that such room costs ten times as
much.
Seeking advice, I phoned my friend in
Washington and described the situation. “Judging by the provocation in metro,
said he, they want to frame you as a drug carrier. Those photographs with you
and those two stool pigeons, Caucasian and Negro, were plainly insufficient for
this, so they offer you this room in their hotel. To spend a vacation in a club
hotel one should apply for a reservation 6 months ahead, time sufficient to set
you thoroughly up and present with the choice: either you work for them, or
they put you behind bars using the services of Spanish police.” After this talk
Spanish police lifted surveillance, apparently having no desire to be pawns in
the dirty play of the Russian secret services.
The real master-minds behind this provocation
remained in the shadow, as usual, but the travel agency with which I signed an
agreement for a tour to Canaries and the staff of which so zealously carried
out the orders of the Russian secret services, they made a mistake: instead of
the promised 4-star hotel and the corresponding service there I was put up in a
club hotel with the service infinitely inferior. I could easily prove this fact
of cheating with the documents, so on my return to Moscow I brought a legal
suit against this agency, seeking cancellation of their license so as to make at
least those KGB stooges responsible.
My friends and acquaintances were unanimous in trying
to dissuade me from litigation with this travel agency, because “all Russian
travel agencies are Mafia-controlled and they would simply kill you for trying
to obstruct their business”. I said the Mafia they were referring to had been
known in Soviet times as KGB, and I brought this suit to try to prove it.
Six months later after attempts to bring a
libel counter suit against me failed, and so did the judge’s tactics of endless
postponements of court hearings, I finally obtained the prompt examination of
my case in court, and a brief decision to
reject my suit. Explaining her decision, the judge said smugly that I, the
plaintiff, was himself to blame: “Just stop going abroad”, she counseled. “Had
you spent your vacation at some Russian seaside resort you’d have had no
problems with the travel agencies”. My request that these comments be put down
in the transcript had the judge convulsing with hysterics. Naturally, no
written decision whatever was given to me.
Seeing that the secret services were getting
more and more brazen, I phoned my friend again and said that this time I would
go to him at whatever the cost might be.
As soon as I announced my decision, attempts
were made to frame me as a pedophile: apparently our secret services were
convinced that if they succeeded the US embassy would refuse me their visa,
bearing in mind the severity with which the persons suspected of such behavior were
treated in the West.
First, they tried to use a couple of child
prostitutes as a decoy. One evening I
was returning home from my allotment riding in a half-empty commuter train.
With bags on my both sides, in old working clothes, I sat in a corner reading a
newspaper. My reading was interrupted, rather importunately, by two girls in
their early teens. Which baffled me: neither my shabby appearance, nor my
conduct gave the slightest hint about me as their possible customer.
Nonetheless, they were openly soliciting…
Next day the same provocation was repeated: I, again
in working clothes with bags on my sides, was sitting
on a railway platform bench, reading again. A
very pretty girl of about 14 in a miniskirt sat by and started drawing closer
and closer, until her further progress was checked by one of my bags. The girl
looked languorously in my face and asked to take this bag down. A strange
request, considering that there was nobody else on the bench to sit. There was
no other option for me but to get up quickly and go.
It was already obvious for me that their
provocations would have to go much farther than these because all they had so
far managed to photograph could hardly compromise me, especially in the eyes of
the US authorities well-informed of the dirty tricks of the Russian secret
services. In other words, they badly needed the key photograph, in flagrante,
which required intimacy. This meant that my intimate friends and relatives were
most likely to be employed. Unfortunately, I proved right in my guess.
So, shortly afterwards my cousin Victor, his
wife and daughter came to their allotment over the weekend. After work on our
two neighboring allotments, we, as was usual, sat to table to dine and drink.
Victor began reading aloud an article in some tabloid asserting that in ancient
times sexual relations between middle-aged and even old men and teen-age girls
were quite normal, even welcomed as a remedy for rejuvenation. Guessing quickly
what that talk was intended for, I broke in, saying that it could have been a
norm in ancient times, but nowadays pedophilia was a crime and that’s
apparently the reason why the Russian secret services had been doing their best
of late to set me up with the underage. I did hope he would get me right and
stop there and then.
As was usual, Victor and his family spent the
night in our uncle’s house. Next day, instead of working on land, Victor began
fixing something in the uncle’s TV-set, setting a new antenna, and so on. In
the evening, prior to his going home, he told me looking strangely aside: “I
and Lena (his wife) are to report for work tomorrow, so we’ll leave Katya
(their 13-year-old daughter) in your care. You’re sleeping here on the
allotment, so she’ll live with you for a while, and cook for you, too…” I was so confused and disgusted I didn’t say
anything. Nor did try to I play into their hands, of course. I just went on
sleeping on the allotment alone, while my mother took Katya every evening back
to our home in the Star City.
Being aware that it was a provocation, pure and simple, the third in a week, and I also knew its reward: the cousin was due to get his promotion to colonel as well as a larger living apartment – I nonetheless still refused to believe this: beside myself, “the scum who didn’t want to serve in the Soviet Army”, there was another innocent victim of their slur, his own daughter, a child too…
I’m not an expert in electronics, least of all the one used for surveillance, so naturally I couldn’t determine if he had planted some video-monitor when he fixed something in the TV-set in the uncle’s house. Nor did I need it: whenever I want to find out if I’m audio or video monitored I send a “control signal”, i.e. say or do something which is bound to provoke response of the secret services. I sent such a signal, and the response was positive.
After their attempt to frame me as a pedophile
failed and I got a US visa, a colleague-translator began tempting me with a job
with such fantastic rates, that even I began wondering “why not postpone my
trip and make some money?” I refused, nonetheless, remembering that this job
was actually offered by those very people who a few days earlier did their best
to smear me: the translator’s brother was a colonel in the foreign
intelligence.
The last provocation before my departure to
America had taken place near the Air France office where I was going to buy a
ticket. I was approached by a young man who introduced himself as a reporter of
the Moscow TV-Channel, which was marking its anniversary, and in this
connection he offered me a set of pens and suggested I answer a few of his
questions. The set was rather expensive and I decided it could be an excellent
present for my friend who liked expensive pens. Then I thought that this fancy
of his was hardly a secret to our secret services too, besides no TV-channel
would give away such expensive things to men in the street. Apparently, they expected
me to take this set to the US where, after their tip, I’d be apprehended with
those pens, or whatever they were. I took no risks and immediately returned
this set to the young man, triggering an outcry of protest and despair.
So, despite all attempts of the Russian secret
services to stop me, I, nonetheless, spent a month in Washington and came back
home, though my friend did his best to convince me to stay, saying that ‘these
bandits won’t leave you alone anyway.” Unfortunately, he proved right. A few
months after my return from the US, one of my school-mates, former navigator who
had flown on reconnaissance missions, tried to persuade me to go to Saudi
Arabia or the United Arab Emirates as a consignor of one of the Russian air-line
companies. I refused outright, and explained why: not so long ago one of our
common acquaintances, a retired Air Force Colonel who had fought in Angola,
worked in the UAE as a consignor. Finally, his cargo was arrested by the Russian
Federal Security Service, and Mafia which controlled that cargo traffic (drugs
and arms) docked him for 1 million dollars, and as he had no cash to pay, he
was sent back to the UAE to pay the ‘fine’. Naturally, Mafia was only a front
company, so to speak, whereas all bidding and overseeing business was done by
the Russian secret services. With the end of the war in Chechnya this channel
of trafficking had to be closed, which required the withdrawal of their own
people and hiring of dummies to be used later as scapegoats. After which our
gallant secret services could safely stage a noisy campaign of uncovering a
gang of criminals, which they in fact had organized. A couple of days after my
refusal the same person offered me a job at the Foreign Ministry, in one of its
missions. I answered diplomatically that I have a diploma of a teacher of
English, not a diplomat, and even this one I obtained by correspondence.
Next day, taking a jar of frozen currants and a
bundle of dried herbs to the market, my mother was attacked by a racketeer. No
racketeer, either before or after, had ever extorted money from her. And what
could one extort from an old woman selling trifles to buy herself bread? Their
goal was simple: as I’d been out of work for almost a year, and the only source
of income for us was the market where mother sold what we managed to harvest at
our 600 sq.m. allotment, they thought that denying us this source of
subsistence would make me more conformable.
This surmise became a conviction when I found
out that this particular bandit who had attacked my mother never collected
money himself, but commanded a gang of collectors… Seeking to check this
outright banditry, in March 1997, I addressed a letter to A.S. Kulikov, at the
time the interior minister who oversaw the secret services. By the end of April
an inquiry commission of the interior ministry’s central apparatus arrived in
Zvezdny Gorodok (the Star City). Answering their questions concerning my
letter, I said that in view of the fact that the secret services had begun an
open campaign of terror and banditry and all our appeals to the law were
ignored, in this situation I felt compelled to respond quid pro quo. And as I
was unable to conduct operative-investigative work and determine the concrete
master-minds behind those provocations, in such case any officer of the secret
services would be regarded by me as a justifiable target for the retribution.
Of which I gave my official notification. I was assured by the commission
investigator that henceforward the secret services would leave us alone.
Naturally, I wasn’t so optimistic. I expected
they would be more careful, and in their next provocation would probably try to
set me at loggerheads with police, so that I wouldn’t appeal to them for help.
That’s what actually happened later on. They left me alone for almost 6 months,
then resumed surveillance and telephone tapping. In November 1997, I was
detained by ticket collectors for riding without a ticket in a commuter-train,
and was taken to Mytischy transport police station (which controllers had no
legal right to do). To justify this illegal detention, they falsely accused me
of an unprovoked attack on them and the use of abusive language. They had even prepared
a district deputy attorney for a witness. In police detention, they searched me
and “found” a military ID (which gave the right of a free passage in public
transport). Now they charged me with forgery.
When interviewed, I told the investigator that
this was a provocation staged by the secret services of the ministry of defense
and that I would give evidence as soon as I was officially indicted. Such ‘
turning the tables’ baffled the investigator - apparently they expected that 2 hours spent in
the cage, threats by a gorilla in the rank of a police major to spread me like
dirt on the wall, as well as 2 fabricated charges would be sufficient to break
my will to resist. Seeing that I was in
no bluffing mood, the investigator admitted frankly that he needed 2 days for
consultations.
On my return home I phoned my colleagues in
“Glasnost” Foundation and informed them of the provocation and its purposes.
They outlined some contingency measures of legal and other help if the
situation were to deteriorate. Two days later when I reported back to the investigator,
he, looking gloomily into a corner, said: “Andrei Ivanovich, please, don’t
misunderstand me: I have to deal with vagabonds, muggers and other scum. I know
neither you, nor your background, and I don’t want to be a fall guy in this murky
case. In short, please, write a report that you’re a serviceman, that this ID
is yours, and you lost it in a commuter train. I’ll return your ID to you, and
bid you good-bye.” I replied that I would be happy to oblige, but the fact was
that since 1981 I had been removed from the registry of the military draft
office, for the reason of being entered at the same time in the registry psychiatric
patients. “Well, what am I to do with this ID then?”, asked the investigator
uncertainly. “I’d rather send it to the
guys who’ve forged it, or to their military museum”, I joked. The investigator looked at me
reproachfully – he was plainly not in a joking mood: “Andrei Ivanovich, please,
pay 10,000 rubles (about 50 cents) fine and I hope we’ll never see each other
again.” So we parted.
In 1998 all attempts of the secret services
were aimed at driving me out of my allotment so that I should move to my father
who received 1,650 sq.m. of land from our district administration free, as his
property, and built a house there. He, his new wife, all his friends and
neighbors had close ties with the secret services and had I moved to his place
I would have immediately become entangled in their web. A simple example: in
summer 1998, my father was visited by his sister and his nephew, an officer in
the Strategic Missile Corps, who on his arrival phoned me and tried to persuade
me to come to my father’s place so that we could meet. Before this my cousin
had always come to my place in Zvezdny Gorodok (the Star City). This fact, as
well as his and the rest of my kin insistence that I should come alerted me. I
promised to come, but stood them up instead.
As they themselves told me later, laughing,
they invited me to make me acquainted with a niece of a neighbor – a retired
officer. As I failed to come to their dinner-party, the niece “got acquainted”
with my cousin, and next morning put an ultimatum to his mother, saying that
after all that had happened between them, her son, as an honest officer, had to
marry her. Avoiding such provocations, I tried to be as rare visitor to
father’s place as possible.
On their part, the secret services did their
best so that I and my mother should lose our legal right to our own land and,
therefore, to material independence. That’s why our endless attempts to have
our allotment officially registered as property or at least as rent were always
refused by the authorities without any explanation or legal justification.
Which, in turn, gave the secret services a free hand to stage provocations on
our land, and effectively outlawed all our attempts to defend the fruit of our labor.
Naturally, their provocations were not limited to our allotment only.
Thus, in late August 1998 long bursts of
automatic gunfire erupted behind our fence – in broad daylight and in the city
limits too. I was too busy to inquire about the cause, but in the evening on my
way home I noticed lots of dead crows shot in the marsh close to our allotment.
I remembered that daytime shooting, inspected closely the surrounding territory
but found no shells. Next morning my mother and I went past the marsh to our
allotment and nearing the gates came under fire, which, as the day before, was
conducted in long bursts. 2-3 meters from our gate a couple of ducks were
nestling – our small marsh cannot feed more- and the fire was conducted in such
a way that anyone approaching the gate came in its range. I wondered why should
they fire long bursts at the two wretched ducks which have long disappeared –
just like everything else which could fly or crawl? Still the absence of game
didn’t deter the ‘hunters’: they went on firing one burst after the other. I
stalked the gunman to take a good look of him: a sleek young dude in expensive
leather jacket, expensive fashion shoes, and expensive automatic shotgun. His
pal in high rubber boots was in the reeds looking for ‘ducks’. I recognized
both young men: A few days earlier they had tried to force our gate pretending to
be drunken workmen from a neighboring factory, demanding that I let them pass
through our land, because it was the shortest cut to their work. Infuriated by
such impudence, I went to the factory’s director, who simply showed me all his
men for identification. Naturally, those two young men were not among them.
The next day after this shooting, my cousin Victor
came to his allotment, as I guessed to see if I was sufficiently scared by
yesterday’s show of strength. “What are you doing?”, he asked watching me bend
an aluminum tube. “Well, I want to have this end of the tube bent so as to pour
melted lead there.” “What for?” “To make a good sap”. “Why?” “Well, there are
wise guys who think I can be hunted like a duck”. And I told him what happened.
“Your vivid imagination is always complicating things. These are simply two
stupid poachers who tried to obtain game for dinner”. “May be, though I cannot
understand where those fools acquired a professional habit of collecting their
shells? I searched the whole place around here and found nothing. Anyway, if I
see this son of a gun here again, that’ll be his last hunt.” Cousin’s face visibly
changed with these words. “Gee, this
dude must be from your gang, otherwise you wouldn’t be so scared”, thought I.
And seemed to be right: next day I wanted to finish my blackjack, but could
find neither the tube nor the lead for it, though I searched all my and
neighboring uncle’s allotments.
In December 1998, in my telephone talk with a
friend, I blurted out that I was writing an article for a Swedish journal on
yoga and meditation. The next two days I was repeatedly provoked into fighting,
first with a vagabond, then a drunken mugger – both provocations failed.
Seeing that I was plainly avoiding any
conflict, and being aware that in winter season transport expenses took the
largest share of my subsistence budget, they decided to hit me where it hurts:
so the other day a ticket collector in a commuter train, without saying a word,
crossed my season ticket, good for another 3 months (the date was stamped so
clearly that a blind could see it), and was about to make off with it. Such
cheek made me jump up and rush to the collector, but I checked myself in time:
it was yet another provocation, this time so sophisticated that I nearly
swallowed it for real.
After this I applied for foreign passport,
thinking that its possession would make it difficult for them to drive me into
the ‘fifth corner’. When all deadlines for processing my application passed I
phoned passport-visa service of the 8th Department of the Interior Ministry to
inquire about the cause of the delay. It turned out that my documents were
still screened by the Federal Security Service. “What is there in my documents
to examine?”, asked I. I didn’t serve in the army and for the past 10 years
haven’t worked anywhere but “Glasnost” Foundation. I called a week later and
got the same answer. “The FSB hasn’t sent your documents back. We are not to
blame.” “OK”, said I, “I’ll bring the legal suit against our special department
in the Star City.”
Next day after this threat of mine I was phoned
from the telephone exchange of the Star City garrison: “We’ll switch off your
telephone. You are not a serviceman, your are not working at our Cosmonauts’ Training
Center, you are simply a drain on our defense potential which we must
strengthen by all means possible”. “OK”, I said, “go ahead and strengthen it.”
A pause of hesitation followed: “You’d better come to our office so that we
could talk it over.” “What is there to talk over?” Silence again, then
peevishly “Well, as you like”.
Although the telephone was taken away, they, nonetheless,
had to give me the passport. But to hide the fact that all deadlines were
broken the passport was issued backdated, they even took care to do the same in
the passports register so that no documentary evidence might be left of their
involvement. It didn’t bother me much: at least I had a passport – my last
chance, should the situation become really hot for me. And it was getting hot.
This time they tried to provoke me into a fight
counting on my readiness to stand up for the weak.
I was going to my allotment in the early
morning commuter train. The car I was riding in was empty. I was the first to
enter it, then followed two husky guys, apparently street vendors, who left
their huge cart with merchandize in the car’s platform area. Later on at one of
the stops an old woman entered, and right in the doorway raised a terrible
shriek demanding that the vendors move aside their cart, which blocked the
entrance. Her demand was unduly sharp and dramatic, bearing in mind the empty
car and two buccaneer-looking vendors. Who replied with a hail of insults and
threats, heightening tension yet more. But what surprised me was that their
abusive language didn’t contain a single four-letter word! (The use of which is
a stylistic norm in the language of these entrepreneurial vulgarisms). The
glaring eyes of the two warring sides were fixed not on each other, but on me,
the only spectator of this play. I examined the platform. Indeed, the huge cart stood close to the
automatic doors blocking entrance-exit. No vender would leave his cart there.
They either leave it in the opposite end of the platform so as not to block
entrance-exit, or bring it in the car so as to keep an eye on their
merchandize. What finally convinced me of the provocative nature of this
incident was the fact that these venders didn’t seem to care for their
merchandize: they had been sitting in the middle of the car, and had there
happened to be some practical joker entering or leaving the car who would push
their cart off the train so as to clear his passage, the vendors simply
wouldn’t have noticed it.
With this in mind, I left the car and standing
in the platform area was prepared to get off the train at the next stop but soon
after the old woman also entered the platform and appealing to me, yelled that
those damned venders wouldn’t let a poor old person pass and there was no decent
man in the world who could stand up for the poor old woman. Her amazingly
healthy vocal chords attracted attention of one of the venders who rushed to
the platform and shouted back that he wouldn’t remove his cart because of some
old hag whose proper place was in the cemetery. Shouting at the old woman, the
bastard was eyeing intensely the reaction in my face. This cheap pathetic
climax was too much for me – with a wry smile I got off the train wondering if this
KGB>FSB farce would ever end in this country?
Next day they tried to provoke me into a
conflict with two teenagers who had penetrated in our allotment. The father of
one of them was watching the developments from a distance. Being fully aware that
those personages were nothing but decoy in this rather protracted chase of me I,
naturally, wasn’t going to have any squabble either with the man or with the
children. I just ignored the whole incident the way I did it the day before in
a commuter train.
At home having a lengthy discussion with my
mother of those latest incidents, I voiced out loud the thought that an
organized chase of me was in progress. With our apartment being permanently
bugged, I wasn’t surprised in the least when next day I met this same father
waiting for me at my allotment gate who, without any initiative on my part,
with no apparent reason or any preliminaries, began convincing me that his boys
penetrated my allotment absolutely by chance with the single intention to stealing
something so that he could buy himself a drink. To an outsider such behavior of
a self-confessed thief might seem ludicrous, but to me it was obvious that he
was simply made to confess of being a thief just to conceal the fact of being
used as a stool pigeon.
Seeing that I was really in for a spell of
‘strange’ developments and being apprehensive of their outcome, I turned for
advice to Sergei Grigoriants, my boss and the head of “Glasnost” Foundation. After that I had a 2 month respite from their
provocations during which my friends and relatives did their best to show their
love and sympathy. For example, my uncle with whom I had rather strained
relations because he, being our neighbor at the allotment, was often forced to
carry out the orders of the secret services whenever they wanted to ‘get’ me at
my allotment. Well, this time his masters’ orders apparently changed, and the
uncle in a sudden bout of sympathy for me (never observed before) and my
back-breaking labor of carrying water from the marsh to the plants on my
allotment, he let me pump water from his well! Moreover, my uncle and my cousin
Victor, who also had his allotment there, began treating me to beer! I knew too
well that treatment to various kinds of ‘carrot’, all this buddy-buddy business,
was done with one purpose only: to find out how to use the stick against you,
and where it would hurt your most (say, for me and mother cash shortage was at
the time a serious problem). So when my former school mate, the one who had
already offered me jobs in the Middle East and foreign ministry, suggested that
I should solve my financial problems by signing up for work in Turkey (as a representative
of some Russian travel agency there) to which, bearing in mind my prior tourist
experience in this country, I resolutely refused, I was fully aware that the
following day, as before, my refusal would be punished with the stick. So I
wasn’t surprised when next day, coming home I found that ‘somebody’ broke the
lock in our apartment door. Without
saying a word so as not to give joy to the enemy, we spent our last cash to replace
the lock.
Seeing that this trick was too ‘cheap’ for us,
they devised a much more dirty and psychologically sophisticated thing: On July
7, 1999, my mother and I were returning from our allotment, walking on a tarmac
road, edged with thick willow bushes, to Sokolovskaya railway platform. Usually,
I would set out for the platform later than mother giving her a handicap of
about 100-200 meters. Only on the railway platform, she told me that when
passing the willow bushes her attention was attracted by a young man who was
facing her behind the bushes with his pants down to his knees. He was swinging
his genitals and urging “Come on, come on…” My first urge upon hearing this was
to drop all our bags, find that scum and beat him to death. But time has
already passed, besides, mother, not used to such demonstrations, immediately
turned her face the other way, and therefore could hardly identify him. In my
helpless anger I scolded her for not raising the alarm there and then so that I
could do the bastard in right on the spot.
Back at home, after dinner when passions
settled, mother returned to the incident and noted some strange thing: having
passed about 10 meters past those bushes with the young man there, she turned
back and saw a young woman passing that very spot, passing it in a normal
casual manner without turning her head or showing any other sign that someone
in the bushes was trying to attract her attention. This aroused my suspicions,
and I asked mother if the man’s movements were coordinated, may be he was
drunk? No, she said, sober.
Then, I said, this strange selectivity had only
one explanation: failing to provoke me into the brawl with the so-called
‘vendors’ who so ostentatiously hurt the feelings of the old woman in a
commuter-train, the secret services decided that I, being a loyal son, would
certainly stand up to defend the honor of my mother - and would certainly find
myself charged with unprovoked assault, because this bastard would say that he
was there behind the bushes with his pants down just to urinate. Realizing the
devilish sophistication of the whole trick I admitted that mother was right in
ignoring the incident. "Still, I said, you should have had a good look at the
bastard so as to remember his face well."
The case was that only few of the local youth
in Sokolovskaya area were known for their anti-social behavior: those from the
school of welders, and cadets from two intelligence and counter-intelligence colleges.
While the simple-minded welders excelled only in drinking and fighting, there
was no meanest crime which the scum of would-be spies could not do in the
service of their country. As for the erotic demonstrations behind the bushes a
simple hint from their commanding officers would be sufficient. That’s why I
told my mother to take care to memorize their faces: I was not going to forgive
such things in future. Had I known this bastard’s face and should I have ever
met him in uniform, I’d have stalked him and settled the matter accordingly.
This threat of mine, said aloud, didn’t pass unheeded.
A week later, on July 13, I was busy in the
garden when at 14.00 my uncle came to his allotment. He has a small house there
(5 x 4 meters) which he uses as a bath and storehouse. He opened the door to
the walled veranda, entered it, then suddenly called me. I went to him and
asked what the matter was. He pointed glumly at the broken open second door
from veranda to the house and to a hole in the veranda’s roof. Uncle is a Jack
of all trades and makes everything in a thorough way: a strong ironclad door, a
strong plank roof, iron clad too. Having closely inspected veranda, we entered
the house. At the threshold, in the anteroom an axe was left, which was
normally placed, as all other instrument, in the veranda. “The axe is left here
deliberately”, remarked uncle. We looked into the bedroom: the TV was on, bread
leftovers and two empty cans of canned fish on the table, while bountiful stock
of liquor was left intact. Nothing of
any value was taken. Only a large bag of dry bread kept for our dog
disappeared. We returned to the anteroom. The uncle clicked the switch and
opened the door in the shower-room. All as usual. He was about to draw back the
shower-screen when a big boy (190 cm.) rushed at us, seeking to force his way
outside. He got in the anteroom, when we, hanging at his sides, began twisting
his hands behind his back. The boy shouted not to twist his arm, which was allegedly
fractured recently. I took pity and slightly eased my grip, and the boy got
free. The moment was critical: the axe was lying close at hand, a knife and a
hammer with a chisel were near-by on the table. The temptation to snatch any of
them was strengthened by fear that your enemy would do it first. By God’s
miracle no blood was spilled. We managed to overpower and tie him. After which we
began questioning who he was, as well as how and why he got in here. He gave
his name, he also said he was 19, an orphan, living with his granny in Mytischy
(a neighboring district in our Moscow region). A fortnight before he had a row
with her, after which he left the house and now lives a vagabond life. He got
here by chance, and penetrated the house so as to put up for a night. He had cheap
cotton pants, a clean cotton shirt, on his neck was a chain with a silver
crucifixion. He also had a lighter and a pack of cheap cigarettes. Such
scarcity of belongings was strange even for a Russian vagabond. Besides, it
wasn’t clear how he got here. The case is that those four allotments: uncle’s,
mine, and two neighboring ones, are surrounded by three factories, a substation
and a marsh. Which makes them effectively sheltered against a stray visitor. Besides,
to a stranger our high fence of sheet iron and 2 rows of barbed wire looks more
like some depot, than an allotment. And why has it chanced to happen exactly on
the day when the uncle was at work? – he works every fourth day and the rest of
the time usually spends at his allotment. Strange circumstances of the case and
the fresh memory of previous provocations made us question the boy thoroughly.
The first question I asked, so as not to waste time on others, was if he was
registered as mentally insane? – No. –
Any criminal record? – No. – Take alcohol or drugs? – No. - His work place? – After school he hasn’t
worked anywhere – How do you live then? - My late father taught me carpentry,
so I take all odd jobs.
True, the boy’s hands were visibly used to
manual work. His crew cut and draft-age made me ask why he wasn’t in the army.
– They didn’t take me because of the weight deficit. – Oh, you are dystrophic,
I said with mock sympathy, I guess that’s why two big men, barely managed to
overpower you. How did you get here from Mytischy? – I walked. – How long? -
Two weeks. – Where did you sleep, what did you eat? – I put up at summer
cottages, ate what I could find there. – Name the places where you put up. – I
cannot remember. – For 2 weeks you put up at different cottages, in different
places, and you cannot name a single place? – No answer. - OK, may be you can
tell us where you were wandering yesterday before turning up here? - I was
walking in the forest until I reached some military unit, then I came here. -
It’s about two kilometers from the counter-intelligence college to our place,
so please, describe your route in detail. – From the military unit I walked
along a single-track railroad, past some factories, and got here. - If you walk
along the single-track from the military unit you’ll get to Sokolovskaya
station, but not to our place by any chance. We are way off the single-track.
Strange, you haven’t noticed this. Well, explain me this thing: now it’s the
peak of summer vacations which people spend mostly in the countryside. So, how
did you manage to put up for a fortnight in various summer cottages, and not to
get caught? – Well, I checked if there was anyone living there, if there was a
dog which could alert neighbors, and I came at dusk time, late in the evening,
penetrated the house, slept there, and left in the early morning so as not to
be caught by the coming owners. – What did you break the locks with? – I took
care to find a proper piece of iron beforehand. – Well, then why didn’t you do the
same thing in this particular case? Why did you get into a place with a dog?
You knew perfectly well that next day somebody would come to feed it, didn’t
you? Still, instead of leaving early in the morning, you sit here till 2
o’clock in the afternoon watching TV. May be you waited for the owner to come?
– No answer. – Why did you leave the axe at the threshold? – I found it in the
veranda and forced the door with it. After breaking in the house, I put it at
the threshold. – You cannot force this door with this axe! – No comment. - What
time did you get here? – Somewhere between 11-12 p.m. – How did you climb the
fence? – Found some prop and climbed it. – And what did you break the veranda’s
roof with? – Bare hands. – Well, a 2.5 meter fence, 2 rows of barbed wire, and
a planked, iron-clad roof, isn’t it too much even for such a “dystrophic” case
like you? By the way, how did you force the inner door to the house? You couldn’t
have seen anything in the veranda at that time -. I used my lighter. – Then,
you couldn’t have forced the door neither with the axe, nor even with a crowbar
if you had had it: one of your hands would have been occupied with the lighter.
Besides, had you really used the lighter, you’d have noticed a switch at the
door. You see, boy, there’s light in the veranda, and I wonder how you
managed to find an axe there, but overlook a switch…
Uncle and I went out in the yard to discuss the
situation and decide what to do next, while the boy was left tied in the house.
Uncle was sure the boy wasn’t there by chance (and on his work day too), that
he was neither a vagabond, nor a burglar, otherwise he would have gone long time
ago. Whereas this boy, putting the axe at the threshold, was calmly waiting for
the owner to come. The uncle suggested the boy could be from the
counter-intelligence college and wondered what grudge the secret services could
have against him (he seemed to do all as was told). I presumed it had nothing
to do with him but with me: they simply had gone back to their ‘active’ methods
of recruitment, and because I had said resolute “no” once again, this time they
opted for classic measure: “recruitment on blood”. The scheme was simple: had uncle
entered the house alone instead of calling me the way he did, he would have had
his head chopped. After which the unwanted guest could have slipped out quietly
because I was in the far end of the allotment picking raspberries. They would
have had no difficulty in framing the corpse on me: both relatives and friends
would have confirmed that I and uncle had strained relations. Besides, for the
past month the uncle and I have often had a drink together after working in the
allotment, so such case could have been easily presented as an ordinary drunk
brawl, in which a drunken nephew struck his drunken uncle with an axe. After such
“household” frame all my explanations that it was the provocation of the
military intelligence would trigger nothing but laughter.
Even in the situation which did take place,
i.e. when uncle and I entered the house together, the bloodless outcome was a
miracle, taking into account a complete surprise for us, the heat of the
tussle, and abundance of the cutting and stabbing instruments in the premises. In
such case the victim would have been a ‘poor vagabond’ killed by two greedy
beasts, uncle and I, for eating our canned fish. Whatever scenario had taken
place, I would have been set up for murder. You won’t appeal to Amnesty
International or ask for political asylum with such a charge brought against you,
even if you are a professional human rights worker.
The uncle decided to go home to fetch a camera
and a tape recorder, so as to have at least some evidence in this case. While
we talked, the boy managed to free his legs from the rope, and still with his
hands tied behind him, rushed out of the house, but soon tripped on the
dragging rope and fell in the raspberry bushes. This time we tied him so that
his heels almost touched the back o his head. The uncle went home, I stayed to
guard the boy. I had a chance to take a calm look at the boy, and examining his
simple face detached by doom, I felt that in this provocation he was as much a
victim as I was. So I decided to clear out what kind of a victim he possibly was,
taking into account his draft age and his crew cut. The boy moved his arm and
moaned, which reminded me of his shouting about his fractured arm. So I asked
sympathetically: “Is your arm OK?” – “Yes.” - “When did they break it?” – “Over
a month ago”.- “Were you badly beaten when detained?” – “Middling”. This slip
of the tongue made him moan again. I no longer pestered him with questions –
the situation was quite clear.
Uncle came back, made two snap-shots of his
“guest”, switched on the recorder but the cells were dead. I, for the sake of
procedure, asked the boy’s name again. His answer made us laugh: “You could
have remembered your name, at least.
First it was Victor, now Alexander. You’re evidently neither a burglar nor
a vagabond. Are you a deserter?” – “Yes, railroad corps”, the boy said this in
one breath and closed his eyes. – “Well, we are not going to ask you who and
why brought you here, it’s evident”. Uncle began untying him. “Have you long
deserted your unit?” – “Two months ago. I deserted as soon as I came from a
training camp.” – “Beatings?” – “Yes”. I remembered that in Sokolovskaya area he
could name only the military unit and the single-track, so I asked: “Did you
service the warehouses on the single-track?” (Those warehouses belonged to the
intelligence and counter-intelligence colleges) – “Yes”. – “I see”. Being aware
of the fix he was in, I suggested he appeal to human rights organizations, and
offered my help in this, but he shook his head hopelessly. Uncle noted that the
boy seemed to have had a crucifix. “Yes”, the boy confirmed, “a silver one on a
chain”. We looked for it in the raspberry bushes where we had to struggle to
tie him again, but found nothing. We saw the boy to the gate, where he looked around
and asked puzzled which way he was to go. Uncle whistled in surprise: “Did they
march you here? You even don’t’ know your
whereabouts…”, and showed him the way to the station.
After this the uncle went to our neighbor, who spent
his vacation in his summer cottage, to inquire if he had heard any noise the
previous night. The neighbor said the night was quiet as usual. Uncle thought
it strange because our dog was extremely sensitive. I said there was nothing
strange about it. “You see, the boy knows neither where he came from, nor where
to go to. Which means somebody brought him here. He didn’t climb no fences,
broke no roofs, and forced no doors, otherwise the dog would have raised hell
here. All locks were opened – Victor has his own set of keys. The whole burglary
was just a sham. How else would you explain the fact that he, tackling the
door, didn’t notice a switch right before him? Nor could he eat four odd kilos
of the dog’s biscuits. They gave them to the dog to keep him quiet. One thing
is clear: Victor is definitely implicated, because without his insider’s help they
couldn’t’ have staged all this quietly. To prove it further, I advised uncle
not to mention this incident to anyone. I knew from my experience that the secret
services were bound to inquire through their men about our reaction to the
provocation, i.e. if we suspected them, and if so, they’d do their best to
cover up their tracks and allay our suspicions, because they invariably observe
their main principle: ‘Stay in the shadows’.
Back at home, I told mother about the incident
and gave my bitter summary: “The army seems really bent on carrying out its old
threat of framing me as a criminal – in which case I’ll have to explain to all
and sundry that in this country we have not an army but a gang of uniformed
criminals”.
Next day I was much surprised when early in the
morning my cousin came to our allotments, on his working day too. Always
self-assured and slightly derisive, this time he looked dazed and angry. I
asked him with an implicit taunt: “Victor, why are you not on duty? Or watering
cabbages is now in your line of service?” Victor said nothing, he simply got
down on all fours and began looking for something in the uncle’s raspberry
bushes. “A mopping up”, I guessed. In a couple of hours he emerged from the
bushes reassured. Swinging on his forefinger a chain with the crucifix, he
asked with deliberate carelessness: “What’s this crucifix?” So I had to tell
him. Having listened to my story, he shook his head: “All this is so
mysterious”, said he, provoking me to express my opinion on the incident.
“What’s so mysterious about it?”, objected I. “Recruitment on blood is classic
for the intelligence services. Which is punished by law in the democracies, incidentally,
anyway so I’ve heard”. Victor gave me the once over and exclaimed
contemptuously: “Andrei Ivanovich, what intelligence, what recruitment? Who
needs you? It’s all your fantasies.”
His deliberately impudent tone didn’t confuse
me. “Fantasies? Why, sure, brother, it is fantasies. Not so long ago they used
to call it ‘persecution mania’ – and put people away for it. Now they call it ‘fantasies’.
But some day, sooner or later, it may become a testimony leading to possible
indictment”.
October 19, 1999. Andrei Shkarubo
.