by Earl Nelson
The sun was just rising when I climbed into bed.
I woke up to my roommate returning from class. He was noisy as all get out. He didn’t say a word to me as he threw his books on his bed and left. I suspect heading to the nearest bar.
I was wrong as I saw him in the commons room as I was leaving to find some food. He had a bottle of beer in hand so at least I had that part right.
After eating a dinner of Borscht and Golubsty. I headed on my next mission. That was to find out how to ambush my ‘friend’ who had tormented me in prison and faked my execution. He would pay for his funny joke.
I took a cab to Lubyanka square where my target worked. I would watch the front door at quitting time which was soon and see if he would come out that way.
There were a group of men playing chess in the immediate area surrounding the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB.
I would wander from a chess match to match pretending I knew what going on. These guys played better than I ever would. I did learn several chess terms I hadn’t hear before, fianchetto and en passant. I also learned Russian for, son of a bitch but I don’t think that is restricted to chess.
Around five o’clock play was suspended as the men all gathered to look at the main entrance. That was convenient for me as that is what I was here for.
I soon learned why they were watching the front door. A young woman came out. She was stunning. I heard the guys talking about her, they couldn’t figure out how a beautiful person like Katya Mayorova could work at such an ugly place.
There were many theories given but no knowledge displayed so I would probably never know. All I knew was that she was a classic beauty that would give Helen of Troy a run for her money.
I was so wrapped in the girl that I almost missed my ‘friend’, as he exited the building. I managed to recover and start after him. He beat me to a corner where a bus was getting ready to leave. I had to watch him get on it and ride away.
I took careful note of the bus route and was on that bus when he boarded the next day. When he got off at his stop I stayed on.
One more day and I was waiting at a distance when he got off the bus. I followed him for two blocks until he turned into an apartment complex.
The next day I was in place to see him push an elevator button for the sixth floor. The day after and I was at the end of the hallway on the sixth floor and saw him put a key into the door of unit 604.
Thank you, Mum, for your lessons in spycraft. This was front tailing at its best. It had taken me a week, but he never saw me or suspected that he was being followed.
Now I had to know if he lived alone or had a family in there. Unlike some buildings I had heard of there were no old women on each floor watching the comings and goings of the tenants and ready to report anything suspicious.
That didn’t mean there weren’t old men sitting in the lobby either talking or playing chess. Did you know chess is a favorite pastime in Russia?
I sat down next to a group of men who were just talking. At a break in the conversation, I asked.
“Do any of you know that clown that lives in 604?”
One of the guys said. “I do, why do you ask?”
“He just kicked a dog when he was coming in and I wondered if he was like that with his wife and children.”
“No, he is single, and I’m not surprised that he kicked a dog, he works for the KGB and none of them are nice people.”
“I’m not surprised to hear that; it is good to know that he isn’t married.”
One of the guys laughed, “He has a woman come to his place at seven o’clock every Saturday night. Who knows what he does with her?”
I didn’t want to know but that gave me the information I needed. I sat back quietly and after a while wandered off.
Chapter 31
I still hadn’t figured out what I could damage or destroy that was identified with the Soviet Union and not the people of Russia.
As I made my way back to my dorm, I saw one of the secret police prison vans a black maria. I wasn’t the only one. I was on a crowded street and I saw people making the sign of the cross Eastern Orthodox style. That is touching their right shoulder first then the left, Roman Catholics do it left shoulder first. I have no idea why the difference.
That was what I needed, if ever there was a sign of the Soviets hated by all was the black maria. Now I had to find out where they were kept.
It took me three days and some discreet questioning, but I found the home depot of the prison vans. It was in a warehouse district about five miles from the center of town.
They were kept running twenty-four hours a day, which said something about the police state. The building is a large brick building built before the nineteenth century so there was an excellent chance that the internal framework was wood.
I could tell its age from the huge numerals at the top front of the building, 1886.
The entire lot was surrounded by a chain-link fence with barbed wire coiled on top. There would be no climbing over that. The only break in the fencing was a manned gate. All vehicles entering were checked, some even had a device with mirrors on it slid under the vehicle to see if anything was attached to the bottom.
That was fine with me, I had no intention of getting that close. Instead, I walked the area around the warehouse. I stayed at least one block away from it at all times and didn’t go on any of the streets immediately adjoining the depot.
I was looking for a place to shoot from. I thought I had a good candidate when I found a dilapidated warehouse with an iron fire escape going up its side. I carefully ascending the fire escape and found that people were living on the roof.
They had built shacks from scrounged-up materials and had a small community. They even had a garden. I backed away from them as quietly and quickly as I could. I don’t think I would be welcome there no matter what they thought of the Soviet Union.
I had to go to the other side of the van depot before I found another likely candidate. It truly was abandoned, and the fire escape was shaky, to say the least.
The warehouse I was on stood five stories tall, and the van depot was only four. Since it was the middle of the afternoon, I got a good look at the area.
Of particular note was the roof of the depot. It was tarred and was probably wood underneath. That was perfect.
Another plus was that they had a fuel farm. There were large tanks for gasoline and several sheds where I saw workers take out what looked like five-gallon cans of lubricants. Russia was on a variation of the metric system, so I don’t know how much they defined as being on-site. By the Ricky Jackson system, it was a bunch.
I now had my targets and the start of a plan. I returned to my room at school. I wish I hadn’t, my roommate had allowed our room to be taken over for a floor party. He had a large bowl of grape juice filled with vodka and any other alcohol that could be found.
That my side of the room was now a disaster area was one thing, what followed was worse. My drunken roommate insisted on introducing me to everyone there, one at a time.
I had managed to avoid all of them as there was bound to be someone from Vladivostok that would know I had never been there.
After the round of introductions, one boy approached me with a big smile, “It is nice to meet someone from home.”
Oh boy. Thinking quickly, I took him aside in the hallway.
“Yes, it is wonderful. Let's have a drink together.”
He grinned and said, “My pleasure.”
“Let me get them.”
I went back and found a vodka bottle still half full and a grape juice bottle. He got a double shot of vodka with his juice. Mine was straight juice.
I handed him his drink and before he could ask me a question, I asked him which schools he attended. He named several and I shook my head.
“I didn’t attend any of them.”
“Which ones?”
<
br /> I leaned in close as if to share a secret and whispered, “I went to a church school.”
His eyes got big.
“I thought they were only rumors.”
“They are real.”
“Your secret is safe with me; how did you get transcripts to allow you to enter here.
I rubbed my fingers together in the universal sign of money and bribery. He had finished his drink, so I got him another glass. A triple shot this time.
He kept asking me questions which I managed to dodge but you could even see in his drunkenness he was wondering.
My timeline had been moved up, that or I needed another place to stay. If then it would only work for a few days as I would be reported as missing from school. When they started checking they would find that while I had slept in the dorm, I hadn’t attended any classes.
Even the worse students attended some of them.
My new friend from Vladivostok passed out after his eleventh shot of vodka. I had to admire his alcohol tolerance. I doubt I could have been awake after five shots. I didn’t intend to ever find out.
I left him asleep in the hallway. He was one of several. I waited until the party died a natural death and gathered my gear and went down one floor. I knew of an empty room that I could use. I had to sleep on the floor, but it was better than trying to find a place in the middle of the night.
I woke at first light. After using the restroom, I left the dorm for the last time and headed out. I had my backpack with several changes of clothes, my bow, and arrows. and my money.
Before I did anything I had to have caffeine. I found one of the many small coffee houses and spent the morning thinking while I drank cup after cup of coffee.
It was good coffee, better than anything I had found in Russia, they charged almost double per cup, but it was worth it. A lot of other people thought so, as there was a continuous stream through their door.
I asked my waitress what brand. She leaned over and whispered, “Maxwell House.”
It was a good thing I didn’t have any in my mouth as it would have gone everywhere.
It was Friday and if I wanted my plan to work, I had to proceed tomorrow evening. There were several things I had to do first.
I had passed a garage that was working on motorcycles and scooters. For five hundred roubles I bought a scooter which looked like it was good for a few more miles, and I mean just a few.
Russia has many shortages; hemp rope isn’t one of them. I bought a hundred feet of quarter-inch hemp.
I had to wait until after dark for my next step.
Looking like a pack mule with my backpack, wrapped bow and rope draped over the rear of the scooter I went to the warehouse next to the prison van depot. I crossed my fingers the whole trip when I found out that the headlight didn’t work.
At the warehouse, I parked the scooter in an alley hoping that no one would steal it in the short time I would be gone. I took the hemp rope up the fire escape along with my bow and backpack. Those were items that I didn’t dare lose. That and the six-shooter in my jacket pocket.
Finding a stout pipe that I pulled on as hard as I could I tied off the rope. I then suspended my weight over the edge to make certain the pipe wouldn’t break. It didn’t so I cut a length of rope long enough that I could rappel down the side of the building. When it was time to leave the scene, I wanted to be gone.
I hid the rope and my bow and arrows under an old water tank on the roof.
My scooter was still there, so I went to my next stop. That was the marshaling yard where they made up trains. I hid my backpack under a stack of railway ties that looked like they had been there for a long time.
I didn’t do it until I observed the surroundings for over an hour to make certain no one was around. Not only were my clothes there but the balance of my money. I hoped to make it useless shortly but wanted to hang onto it until then.
The weather had turned cold, so I took a chance and returned to the dorm and my room. My roommate was sound asleep when I got in, so I didn’t disturb him. He was gone when I woke in the morning.
My backpack didn’t have room for all the clothes I had accumulated so I was able to take a shower and put on clean clothes. This was my big day when I was going to let the Soviets know that messing with Ricky Jackson was not a good idea.
Chapter 32
I had a large breakfast at one of the cafes in the university area. While I was drinking my tea, the coffee was terrible, a couple of NKVD police came in and went from table to table demanding to see identity cards.
One unfortunate guy told them he had forgotten his in his dorm. They handcuffed him and took him away. Life in the USSR.
I went over my plans in my head trying to visualize each step of the way. When I got to the part with my ‘friend,’ answering his apartment door I realized I had assumed that might not be true.
I spent the next few hours taking care of that. It only required another few feet of rope from the hardware store and an eyehook. I took the only eyehook on the shelf, so I was lucky to find one.
There were constant shortages of everything in Russia. I wondered how much longer the people would put up with it.
I had read enough in Pravda to know that they had a huge disinformation program going telling people that Russians had it good, that American’s were starving in the streets as their capitalist masters lived like royalty.
I was careful to obey all traffic rules on my scooter. It had a license plate on it from the people I had bought the scooter from. For all, I knew the scooter was stolen so I couldn’t afford to be pulled over.
The one thing for certain if I were pulled over it would be for pollution and not speeding. The scooter was a white Italian Vespa which was immensely popular and a bunch of them on the road, just not in Russia.
It didn’t stick out like a sore thumb, but it was different from the few Russian scooters I saw. If mine hadn’t had many thousands of miles on it, it would have been worth a lot of money here.
I liked the ease of handling of the scooter, it was more like a toy than a motorcycle, but it was a toy that would go places. It was a shame that I couldn’t take it with me. I would have to see about buying one for the 707 when I got home.
I had a late lunch at a small family restaurant near my ‘friend’s,’ apartment. Across the street was a small park. Though a little chilly, people were picnicking.
After lunch, the men would take a nap on their blankets while the children would play while being watched by their mums. Some things were universal.
It gave me an idea. I rented a blanket from the owners of the restaurant. I paid five roubles for the afternoon. I wanted to take a nap!
Since the ratty old blanket, they handed me wasn’t worth a rouble they were getting a good deal even if I didn’t return it. The blanket smelled like it was the dog's blanket. This was confirmed when the family pet came up to me and whined while pawing his blanket.
I would be certain to get it back to him. Life was hard without losing your bedding. I knew from experience.
I did manage to doze off and catch a couple of hours of sleep. I needed this as I wouldn’t get much that tonight.
At six-thirty, I was in place at my ‘friends,’ apartment. I had debated where to wait. I decided on the end of the hallway on the sixth floor. There was a small vestibule there with a chair.
I didn’t know what the woman visitor would look like and didn’t want to approach the wrong one. This left me with the tradeoff of being conspicuous by sitting in the vestibule or talking to the wrong person. I decided to take my chances with the vestibule.
I was lucky as only one man got off the elevator and went to his apartment. He did glance up at me but ignored me as he went into his apartment.
At almost seven on the dot, a middle-aged woman got off the elevator and started towards unit 604.
If I had waited downstairs for her, I would have let her pass. I had an American Holly
wood prostitute in mind, one that would work the strip in Vegas.
She and I reached the door at the same time. I was ready for her. As she reached to knock on the heavy metal door, I held out my hand.
I held five thousand roubles. Even high notes made a thick wad.
“Go home.”
She looked at the money and then grabbed it as she left. I waited for her to get on the elevator then knocked on the door. I pulled my six-shooter out.
When my ‘friend,’ answered the door I was glad I had visualized the events. He was wearing a bathrobe with no pants on.
I shoved the pistol in his face backing him into the room. I forced him to his knees, then using a small length of my hemp tied his hands behind him. I tapped his head with the gun barrel. Not hard enough to knock him out, but enough to disorient him. At least that was my goal.
He fell forward. I used the opportunity to circle his waist with the length of rope that I had fixed up in the morning. Then I clipped the eyehook onto the other end of my original rope.
Then the piece de resistance, a hangman's noose around his neck. I forced him to get up. He couldn’t see the noose because I had draped it over his back.
One thing you could say about these apartment buildings was that they were sturdy. I tied the other end of the rope off on a chandelier. I was careful with my measurements so that I had the exact length of rope.
I didn’t want to kick him off the chair and land on the floor. He had to dangle in the air. The fall wouldn’t be more than a few inches so he wouldn’t break his neck.
At gunpoint, I had my dazed ‘friend’ climb up on a kitchen chair. I tighten the noose and pull the rope, so he was standing on his tiptoes. I tied it off and went to his bedroom where I found a hand mirror. I took it out and showed him that his head was in a noose.
He peed himself. That was great.
“Remember me?” I asked him.
He stammered, “Yes, please don’t do this.”