Dima taught me how to beg. You had to be careful because if the police saw you they would pick you up and throw you into jail. But my fair hair, and the fact that I looked so young, helped. If I stood outside the Bolshoi Theatre at night, I could earn as much as five rubles from the rich people coming out. There were tourists in Red Square and I would position myself outside St Basil’s Cathedral with its towers and twisting, multicoloured domes. I didn’t even have to speak. Once, an American gave me five dollars, which I passed on to Dima. He gave me fifty kopecks back but that was his own special exchange rate. I knew it was worth a lot more.
I got used to the city. Streets that had seemed huge and threatening became familiar. I could find my way around on the Metro. I visited Lenin, lying dead in his tomb, although Dima told me that most of the body was made of wax. I also saw the grave of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. Not that he meant anything to me now. I went to the big shops – GUM department store and Yeliseev’s Food Hall and stared at all the amazing food I would never be able to afford. Just once, I visited a bathhouse near the Bolshoi and enjoyed the total luxury of sitting in the steam, breathing in the scent of eucalyptus leaves and feeling warm and clean.
And I stole.
We needed to buy food, cigarettes and – most importantly – vodka. It sometimes seemed that it was impossible to live in Tverskaya without alcohol and every night there were terrible arguments when somebody’s bottle was finished. We would hear the screams and the knife fights, and the next day there would often be fresh blood on the stairs. Those who couldn’t afford vodka got high on shoe polish. I’m not lying. They would spread it on bread and place it on a hot pipe, then breathe in the fumes.
No matter how much time I spent begging, we never had enough money and I wasn’t surprised to find myself back at Reznik’s, the pawnshop. With Dima’s help, I got fifteen rubles for my mother’s necklace; more than the earrings but less than I’d hoped. I was determined not to part with her ring. It was the only memory of her that I had left.
And so, inevitably, I turned to crime. One of Dima’s favourite tricks was to hang around outside an expensive shop, watching as the customers came out with their groceries. He would wait while they loaded up their car, then either Roman or Grigory would distract them while he snatched as much as he could out of the boot and then ran for it. I watched the operation a couple of times before Dima let me play the part of the decoy. Because I was so much younger than the other two boys, people were more sympathetic – and less suspicious. I would go up to them and pretend to be lost while Dima sneaked up to the back of their car.
The first three times, it worked perfectly and we found ourselves eating all sorts of things that we’d never tasted before. Roman and Grigory were getting used to me now. We’d begun playing cards together – a game that every Russian knows, called Durak or Fool. They’d even found a mattress for me. It wasn’t a lot softer than the floor and it was infested with insects, but I still appreciated the gesture.
The fourth time, however, was almost a disaster. And it changed everything.
It was the usual set-up. We were outside a shop in a quiet street. It was an area we hadn’t been to before. Our target was a chauffeur, obviously working for some big businessman who could afford to entertain. His car was a Daimler and there was enough food in the back to keep us going for a month. As usual, I went up to the man and, looking as innocent as possible, tried to engage him in conversation.
“Can you help me? I’m looking for Pushkin Square…”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dima scurry up the pavement and disappear behind the raised door of the boot.
The chauffeur glared at me. “Get lost!”
“I am lost! I need to get to Pushkin Square…”
All I had to do was keep up the conversation for about thirty seconds. By the end of that time, Dima would have gone and two or three bags would have gone with him. But suddenly I heard him cry out and I saw, with complete horror, that a policeman had appeared out of nowhere. To this day I don’t know where he had come from because we always checked the immediate area first, but I can only assume that he’d been expecting us, that the police must have decided to crack down on this sort of street theft and that he had been lying in wait all along. He was a huge man with the neck and the shoulders of a professional weightlifter. Dima was squirming in his jacket but he was like a fish caught in a net.
I saw the chauffeur making a grab for me but I ducked under his arms and ran round the back of the car. There was nothing I could do for Dima. The only sensible thing was to run away and leave him and just be thankful I’d had a lucky escape. But I couldn’t do it. Despite everything, I was grateful to him. I had been with him for six weeks now and he had protected me. I couldn’t have survived without him. I owed him something.
I threw myself at the policeman, who reacted in astonishment. I was honestly less than half his size and I barely even knocked him off balance. He didn’t let go of Dima … if anything he tightened his grip, bellowing at the chauffeur to come and join in. Dima lashed out with a fist but the policeman didn’t feel it. With his spare hand, he grabbed hold of my shirt so that we were both held captive and, seeing us unarmed and helpless, the chauffeur lumbered forward to help.
We would certainly have been taken prisoner and that would have been the end of my Moscow adventure. Indeed, if I were recognized, it might be the end of my life. But as I struggled, I saw that one of the shopping bags had fallen over, spilling out its contents. There was a plastic bag of red powder on the top. I snatched it up, split it open and hurled it into the policeman’s face, all in a single movement.
It was chilli powder. The policeman was instantly blinded and howled in pain, both hands rushing to cover his eyes. Dima was forgotten. In fact everything was forgotten. The policeman’s head was covered in red powder. He was spinning round on his feet. I grabbed Dima and the two of us began to run. At the same moment, a police car appeared at the far end of the street, speeding towards us, its lights blazing. We ran across the pavement and down a narrow alleyway between two shops. It was a cul-de-sac, blocked at the far end by a wall. We didn’t let it stop us, not for a second. We simply sprinted up the brickwork and over the top, crashing down onto an assortment of dustbins and cardboard boxes on the other side. Dima rolled over then got back on his feet. We could hear the siren behind us and knew that the police were only seconds away. We kept running – down another alleyway and across a main road with six lanes of traffic and cars, trucks, motorbikes and buses bearing down on us from every direction. It’s a miracle we weren’t killed. As it was, one car swerved out of our way and there was a screech and a crumpling of metal as a second car crashed into it. We didn’t slow down. We didn’t look back. We must have run half a mile across Moscow, ducking into side roads, chasing behind buildings, doing everything we could to keep out of sight. Eventually we came to a Metro entrance and darted into it, disappearing underground. There was a train waiting at the platform. We didn’t care where it was going. We dived in and sank, exhausted, into two seats.
Neither of us spoke again until we got back to our own station and climbed back up to our familiar streets. We didn’t go to the flat straight away. Dima took me to a coffee house and we bought a couple of glasses of kvass, a sweet, watery drink made from bread.
We sat next to the window. We were both still out of breath. I could hear Dima’s lungs rattling. Climbing the stairs was enough exercise for him and he had just run a marathon.
“Thank you, soldier,” he said eventually.
“We were unlucky,” I said.
“I was lucky you were there. You could have just left me.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I hate this stupid city,” Dima said. “I never wanted to come here.”
“Why did you?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged, then pointed to his broken nose. “My dad did this to me when I was six years old. He threw me out when I was seven. I ended up in
an orphanage in Yaroslav and that was a horrible place … horrible. You don’t want to know.” He took out a cigarette and lit it. “They used to tie the kids down to the beds, the troublemakers. They left them there until they were covered in their own dirt. And the noise! The screaming, the crying… It never stopped. I think half of them were mad.”
“Were you adopted?” I asked.
“Nobody wanted me. Not the way I looked. I ran away. Got out of Yaroslav and ended up on a train to Moscow … just like you.”
He fell silent.
“There’s something I want you to know,” he said. “That first day we met, at Kazansky Station.” He took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled blue smoke. “We took your money. It was Roman, Grig and me. We set you up.”
“I know,” I said.
He looked at me. “I thought you must have. But now I’m admitting it … OK?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I went on. “I’d have done the same.”
“I don’t think so, soldier. You’re not the same as us.”
“I like being with you,” I said. “But there’s something I want to ask.”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you mind not calling me ‘soldier’?”
He nodded. “Whatever you say, Yasha.”
He patted me on the shoulder. We finished our drinks, stood up and went home. And it seemed to me that I’d actually done what I’d set out to do. The two of us were friends.
ФОРТОЧНИК
FORTOCHNIK
For the next few days, we barely left the flat. Dima was worried the police would be looking for us and I also had my concerns. Forget Estrov. I was now wanted for theft and for assaulting a police officer. It was better for us not to show our faces in the street and so we ate, drank, played cards … and we were bored. We were also running out of cash. I never asked Dima what he had done with the rubles he had taken from me and it wasn’t as if we were spending a lot of money but somehow there was never enough for our basic needs. Roman and Grigory brought in a few rubles now and then but the truth is that they were too unattractive to have much success begging and Roman’s stutter made it hard for him to ask for money.
Even so, it was Roman who suggested it one night. “We should try b–b–b–burglary.”
We were sitting around the table with vodka and cards. All we had eaten that day was a couple of slices of black bread. The four of us were looking ill. We needed proper food and sunlight. I had got used to the smell in the room by now – in fact I was part of it. But the place was looking grimier than ever and we longed to be outside.
“Who are we going to b–b–burgle?” Dima asked.
Roman shrugged.
“It’s a good idea,” Grigory said. He slapped down an attack card – we were having another bout of Durak. “Yasha is small enough. He could be our fortochnik.”
“What’s a fortochnik?” I asked.
Dima rolled his eyes. “It’s someone who breaks in through a fortochka,” he explained.
That, at least, I understood. A fortochka was a type of window. Many apartments in Moscow had them before air conditioning took over. There would be a large window and then a much smaller one set inside it, a bit like a cat flap. In the summer months, people would open the fortochkas to let in the breeze and, of course, they were an invitation for thieves … provided they were small enough. Grigory was right. He was too fat and Roman was too ungainly to crawl through, but I could make it easily. I was small for my age – and I’d lost so much weight that I was stick-thin.
“It is a good idea,” Dima agreed. “But we need an address. There’s no point just breaking in anywhere, and anyway, it’s too dangerous. His eyes brightened. “We can talk to Fagin!”
Fagin was an old soldier who lived three floors down in a room on his own. He had been in Afghanistan and had lost one eye and half his left arm – in action, he claimed, although there was a rumour he had been run over by a trolleybus while he was home on leave. Fagin wasn’t his real name, of course but everyone called him that after a character in an English book, Oliver Twist. And the thing about Fagin was that he knew everything about everything. I never found out how he got his information but if a bank was about to move a load of money or a diamond merchant was about to visit a smart hotel, somehow Fagin would catch wind of it and he would pass the information on – at a price. Everyone in the block respected him. I had seen him a couple of times, a short, plump man with a huge beard bristling around his chin, shuffling along the corridors in a dirty coat, and I had thought he looked more like a tramp than a master criminal.
But now that Dima had thought of him, the decision had been made and the following day we gathered in his flat, which was the same size as ours but at least furnished with a sofa and a few pictures on the wall. He had electricity too. Fagin himself was a disgusting old man. The way he looked at us, you didn’t really want to think about what was going on in his head. If Santa Claus had taken a dive into a sewer he would have come up looking much the same.
“You want to be fortochniks?” he asked, smiling to himself. “Then you want to do it soon before the winter comes and all the windows are closed! But you need an address. That’s what you need, my boys. Somewhere worth the pickings!” He produced a leather notebook with old bus tickets and receipts sticking out of the pages. He opened it and began to thumb through.
“How much is your share?” Dima asked.
“Always straight to the point, Dimitry. That’s what I like about you.” Fagin smiled. “Whatever you take, you bring to me. No lying! I know a lie when I hear one and, believe me, I’ll cut out your tongue.” He leered at us, showing the yellow slabs that were his teeth. “Sixty per cent for me, forty for you. Please don’t argue with me, Dimitry, dear boy. You won’t get better anywhere else. And I have the addresses. I know all the places where you won’t have any difficulty. Nice, slim boys, slipping in at night…”
“Fifty-fifty,” Dima said.
“Fagin doesn’t negotiate.” He found a page in his notebook. “Now here’s an address off Lubyanka Square. Ground-floor flat.” He looked up. “Shall I go on?”
Dima nodded. He had accepted the deal. “Where is it?”
“Mashkova Street. Number seven. It’s owned by a rich banker. He collects stamps. Many of them valuable.” He flicked the page over. “Maybe you’d prefer a house in the Old Arbat. Lots of antiques. Mind you, it was done over last spring and I’d say it was a bit early for a return visit.” Another page. “Ah yes. I’ve had my eye on this place for a while. It’s near Gorky Park … fourth floor and quite an easy climb. Mind you, it’s owned by Vladimir Sharkovsky. Might be too much of a risk. How about Ilinka Street? Ah yes! That’s perfect. Nice and easy. Number sixteen. Plenty of cash, jewellery…”
“Tell me about the flat in Gorky Park,” I said.
Dima turned to me, surprised. But it was the name that had done it. Sharkovsky. I had heard it before. I remembered the time when I entered Dementyev’s office at Moscow State University. I had heard him talking on the telephone.
Yes, of course, Mr Sharkovsky. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.
“Who is Sharkovsky?” I asked.
“He’s a businessman,” Fagin said. “But rich. Very, very rich. And quite dangerous, so I’m told. Not the sort of man you’d want to meet on a dark night and certainly not if you were stealing from him.”
“I want to go there,” I said.
“Why?” Dima asked.
“Because I know him. At least … I heard his name.”
At that moment, it seemed almost like a gift. Misha Dementyev was my enemy. He had tried to hand me over to the police. He had lied to my parents. And it sounded as if he was working for this man, Sharkovsky – assuming it was the same Sharkovsky. So robbing his flat made perfect sense. It was like a miniature revenge.
Fagin snapped the notebook shut. We had made our decision and it didn’t matter which address we chose. “It won’t be so difficult,” he muttered. “Fourth floor. Quiet
street. Sharkovsky doesn’t actually live there. He keeps the place for a friend, an actress.” He leered at us in a way that suggested she was much more than a friend. “She’s away a lot. It could be empty. I’ll check.”
Fagin was as good as his word. The following day he provided us with the information we needed. The actress was performing in a play called The Cherry Orchard and wouldn’t be back in Moscow until the end of the month. The flat was deserted but the fortochka was open.
“Go for the things you can carry,” he suggested. “Jewellery. Furs. Mink and sable are easy to shift. TVs and stuff like that … leave them behind.”
We set off that same night, skirting round the walls of the Kremlin and crossing the river on the Krymsky Bridge. I thought I would be nervous. This was my first real crime – very different from the antics that Leo and I had got up to during the summer, setting off schoolboy bombs outside the police station or pinching cigarettes. Even stealing from the back of parked cars wasn’t in the same league. But the strange thing was that I was completely calm. It struck me that I might have found my destiny. If I could learn to survive in Moscow by being a thief, that was the way it would have to be.
Gorky Park is a huge area on the edge of the Moscow River. With a fairground, boating lakes and even an open-air theatre, it’s always been a favourite place for the people in the city. Anyone who had a flat here would have to be rich. The air was cleaner and if you were high enough you’d get views across the trees and over to the river, where barges and pleasure boats cruised slowly past, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, another Stalin skyscraper, in the far distance. The flat that Fagin had identified was right next to the park in a quiet street that hardly seemed to belong to the city at all. It was too elegant. Too expensive.
Russian Roulette: The Story of an Assassin Page 10