by Susan Viets
The court reached no verdict on who actually pulled the trigger. The judge described the killings as “professional assassinations” and told Gagik, “There is no real reason to believe that your hand was on the trigger. The murders appear to have been planned in this country by Martirossian [Mkritch].”
Gagik received two life sentences for double murder. I read, with sadness, that Alison cried as Gagik was led away to jail. I could not imagine the pain of discovering that your husband had led such a double life.
Stephen had arrived back from Ukraine. We were colleagues now in the same unit at work. I felt so happy to have his company here in my middle world, halfway between home and Kiev. He rented a flat in Chiswick, where Alison and Gagik had lived. I went for dinner one evening, strolled through this green and pleasant neighbourhood and thought of Alison again. I had heard that she’d moved in with her sister, Karen.
I reached Stephen’s apartment and rang the bell. He came to the door holding a wooden spoon. I followed him into the kitchen. Pots bubbled on the stove top. I smelled simmering tomatoes, garlic and basil.
“I’m not kidding. He said, ‘Gobble, gobble’ to me,” I told Stephen as I described a conversation that I’d had that morning with our manager. He stirred a pot while I watched and sipped wine.
“What does that mean?” Stephen said laughing.
“He said something about sacrificing a turkey for Christmas. I think they’re getting ready for job cuts.”
“That can’t be. They’ve just hired,” he said.
We switched topics. We discussed films and gossiped about friends in Kiev. I asked Stephen about his girlfriend Katya. They had met in Ukraine and planned to marry and build a life in England. I felt adrift compared to Stephen and Katya. The only real decision I had made was that even though I liked London, I did not want to settle here. I wasn’t sure that I would ever be fully accepted. A few weeks later I flew home for Christmas.
When I arrived back at work after the holidays, I saw an ad for a Kiev correspondent in our internal newsletter. I applied for the position. The next weeks passed in a blur of work during the day and study at night. I had to pass a newsroom test in order to qualify for the job. At home, I spread a map of the world across the kitchen table, memorized countries and their capitals, feeling that I was back at school again. Then I gathered key facts about each country and learned those as well. I passed the exam and prepared for the board interview.
At the end of February 1994, I found out that I got the job. Excited at the prospect of fieldwork once more, I shed belongings I had gathered in London and tuned my Lada for a return journey across Europe, back over the Carpathians to Ukraine. As I prepared for my trip, I heard that Alison had had an encounter with the police. She issued a copyright violation writ against them for a picture published without her permission. Alison’s mother had taken the picture. It showed Alison in a bikini. I did not know what to make of this but really now thought only of my move.
One morning in early April I stood outside our flat – a line of boxes stretched down the pavement, filled with tinned food and spices, books, clothes, posters and other items to make the place that I would rent in Kiev feel more like home. I tried to load the boxes in the car, pushed and squeezed, admitted defeat, removed a few, put them back in the flat and then finally slammed the back door shut for good, afraid to open it again in case the contents tumbled out.
Once I had cleared space around the driver’s seat, I turned the ignition, slid into first gear and felt the most enormous sense of freedom. I was on my way again.
I drove south toward the Dover ferry port. On board, I watched England recede, then disappear, as the ferry churned its way across the channel. I soon forgot London and looked forward to returning to Kiev with excitement, sped through France, Germany and Austria, and felt a surge of emotion at the Hungarian border, surprised by my attachment to a country where I had no family and no real roots. I reached Moskva tér in the centre of Budapest and parked my car outside Anna and Gyula’s building. I walked into the courtyard, which was unchanged. I had crossed it so many times before seven years ago, always holding the morning papers. I crossed it again now and reached Anna and Gyula’s apartment. I rang the bell. Gyula opened the door. “Zsuzsi! Szia!” he said with a warm grin and gave me a big hug. This was my home away from home. I had opted for the longer drive across Europe just for a moment like this.
Anna stood in the kitchen, unchanged, with that smile I remembered so well. She put my bags in the small room behind the kitchen, where I would sleep. Then we settled into the living room chairs, where we had sat so often before. Anna and Gyula discussed political developments in Hungary. Fidesz, the party that I so admired when I lived here, was now ruled by a man with a nationalist agenda. I felt alienated by this development. The economy had been generous to both Anna and Gyula, who were well employed. Their life looked good. I felt happy just to sit with them as dusk fell on Budapest.
The next day we briefly toured the city. Shop windows brimmed with goods once considered luxury items. This more prosperous Budapest still had its old charm intact. In the afternoon we returned to Anna and Gyula’s apartment. I packed my small bag and said goodbye. They stood on the sidewalk as I once more slid into the driver’s seat of my Lada, cleared a wide enough tunnel through boxes for a rear-mirror view, waved and then sped out along the highway northeast toward Záhony. I became increasingly apprehensive as the hours passed and I approached the border crossing into Ukraine. I reached it at 9 p.m., the last in a small line of about six cars.
“The Foreign Ministry sent advance notice,” the border guard said as he inspected my passport. I nearly melted with relief. He waved me through with barely a glance at the boxes stuffed in the back. My confidence soared. I spent so little time at the border that my ambition grew. Instead of stopping for the night close by at Uzhorod, I pressed on over the Carpathian Mountains toward Lviv, certain I could reach the city in less than three hours.
By 2 a.m. I realized my mistake. The car crawled up pitch-dark mountain roads pitted with trench-like potholes. I had forgotten the reality of road travel over here. By 3 a.m. I gave up and pulled over, the car so full I could not stretch out. I slumped over the steering wheel, threw a quilt over my head and woke four hours later when the sun peeped in through a crack in the cover. Two men stood in front of the car. There was no one else in sight on this deserted stretch of road. The men smoked and looked relaxed. If they wanted to kill me, I thought they already would have smashed a window and done the deed, so I opened the door, got out and said hello.
“Not Polish,” one said disappointedly when he heard my accent. They thought I was a trader who might sell them goods from my laden car. As we said goodbye that man muttered, “You have a problem,” and pointed at a green trickle of fluid that leaked out from beneath my car. Every man here was an amateur mechanic, so I popped the hood and let him jiggle a pipe. The other man returned from a nearby stream with a jar of water that he poured into the radiator. “Don’t stop again until you reach Kiev,” he said. Skeptical, but grateful, I did as instructed and arrived there with no further mishap.
In the city centre, traffic jammed Khreshchatyk – a big change from 1990 when the roads had been nearly deserted. I reached my old street, turned onto it and drove up a hill, around a bend and along a route so filled with memories that nostalgia welled up in me. I belonged here. My new apartment stood across the street from the Foreign Ministry press office, where I first applied for accreditation, close by to many friends.
I met several for dinner that evening. We chatted about politics. Recent parliamentary elections, the first since independence, had proceeded well; a presidential election would follow in two months. The state seemed stable despite tensions that still simmered between Ukraine and Russia over the Black Sea fleet. I was back at work already. I relished my escape from a nine-to-five desk job, though I did not have quite the same freedom as I had when I last lived in Kiev.
I sti
ll had to go to an office for work. We had a studio in the centre. In this twenty-four-hour news operation the work day never ended. Some stories broke in the middle of the night. I would get up, check facts and report. The news machine must be fed.
I shared an office with Mykola, the journalist who gave me dating advice. I benefited from his knowledge and insight about politics in Ukraine, and enjoyed our friendship. Soon we hired younger reporters to help. They attended the news conferences. I began to spend more time in the studio than I wanted to and less time at events than before. I was in the office one June day, at my computer, when my boss, Zoya, called from London.
“I’ll be in Kiev next week for a few days. Let’s meet for dinner,” she suggested.
I looked forward to her visit.
On the evening of Zoya’s arrival we went out to a restaurant. Once we had ordered food, we exchanged news. I spoke of gossip related to the presidential election, a successful transition to a new leader and yet more proof of a stable state. She listened, interested, then asked. “Do you know about Alison?”
“No. What happened? Last I heard she’d moved in with her sister.”
Zoya said that Alison and Karen lived in a town in Surrey, near London. Most of their neighbours worked for banks or security companies. She explained that Alison had returned to work and that her office routine remained unchanged. Colleagues respected her need for privacy. Sometimes she worked day shifts; other times, like everyone else, she worked nights.
Then Zoya said that one day police officers who were on patrol in Alison’s town followed a driver in a red car who was behaving suspiciously. He circled around roads on the housing estate where Alison and Karen lived. The officers decided to stop the car. Zoya did not know the details, but we guessed the police flashed their lights or sounded a siren. Panic-stricken, perhaps, the driver rammed his car into a curb. Then he got out of the car and ran. He escaped from the police on foot.
The driver left items behind in the car, the two most significant being a gun and a map. The bullets in the gun had been hollowed out and filled with a mercury explosive, tipped with wax – a professional hit man, the police concluded.
The man had marked several places on his map. The police deduced that he intended to kill a housing estate resident. One theory held that the motive was robbery and the target, one of the bank or security company employees. The police also included Alison on their suspected victims list because of Gagik’s murder convictions.
Five homes, including Alison and Karen’s, were put under surveillance by the police. Technicians installed panic buttons. Police officers began armed patrols. They instructed residents not to open their doors if strangers knocked. I tried to imagine how Alison and her sister felt – terror at the possibility a hit man might be after them? Relief that he had come to the attention of the police and that they now had protection? Denial – perhaps the hit man wanted someone else? Zoya said that despite the scare, their daily routine remained as it had before.
At the end of April, on a Saturday, nearly a month after my arrival back in Kiev, Alison worked the night shift. Karen stayed at home. The doorbell rang. The person on the other side of the door identified himself as a pizza delivery man. Karen had not ordered pizza. She opened the door to tell him this. The man on the doorstep held a pistol. He shot Karen dead. Alison subsequently disappeared, presumably having been advised by the police to go into hiding.
I stopped eating. I had no appetite anymore. Zoya told me what little more she knew. The police believed the killer mistook Karen for Alison – they looked alike, with similar hair and glasses – and killed the wrong woman. After Zoya left, I asked a friend to fax me news coverage of the shooting and read a statement Alison had issued through the police: “I am deeply shocked and distraught by the death of my sister, Karen, who was murdered so horrifically simply because of her relationship to me.” I thought of their parents, who had lost one daughter forever and the other to police protection. I felt so tired of violence.
It was part of life here as well. Something dark hung over Ukraine. I covered stories on baby smuggling in Western Ukraine, the arrival of the international drugs trade, the drop in life expectancy and the rise of HIV. I also felt the effects of a conflict between Russia and Ukraine over energy supplies. Ukraine could no longer afford to pay for imported Russian gas.
One night in early November, I sat in my kitchen. Our building had no heat yet. I turned the oven on full blast and closed the door to trap heat inside. I held a phone bill in my hand and looked at so many zeros tacked on to the end that I wondered how long it would take me to pay. I converted $US1 into karbovanets (the Ukrainian currency) and calculated the modest number of dollars I would need to pay the bill, set the money aside and went to bed.
I got up early the next morning. As I stepped out of my building, I saw an elderly woman ahead of me. She stood erect and wore a warm coat. A small dog tugged at the end of the leash that she held. The woman approached a dumpster. Then she stopped and looked in. I averted my eyes to protect her dignity. I had seen so many pensioners foraging in garbage cans. Their pensions could not keep pace with hyperinflation. When she had finished, I gave the woman some money. Both of us embarrassed, I hurried on.
I stood in line at a money exchange kiosque next door to where I used to live. I held a pillowcase in my hand. When I reached the kiosque window, I handed over dollars. The woman inside slowy counted karbovanets. I shovelled each huge pile she made into my pillowcase. When the transaction was finally over, I knotted the pillowcase closed and walked across the square to the post office. I joined a long line. When my turn came, the woman behind the counter counted each note. Finally she stamped my bill paid. Next month I would have to hire someone for this process. It took too much time.
I liked Kiev and my friends. For all the bad, I enjoyed life here, but somehow I wondered if by staying I was wasting time. The stories that I covered did not mean that much to me – a sewage plant that collapsed out east, a U.S. presidential visit, religious disputes. Time was on my mind when I returned home in the summer for another visit. I introduced my father, usually so forward-looking and engaged by new ideas, to the Internet.
“This is for the birds,” he said when pages about golf, his favourite sport, loaded slowly over our cottage dial-up connection. I realized that my parents, although not quite old, were no longer young.
“I think I should go back, but I have no idea what I’d do,” I told my friend James.
We sat in my kitchen in Kiev waiting for his two visitors. These American journalists would join us for dinner. James, a photographer, worked with them.
“Couldn’t you report for Canadian TV or radio?” he asked.
“Maybe, but I’m not sure I want to stay in journalism. Before independence I felt that sometimes I discovered significant information no one else reported. Now stories are so routine,” I told him. The doorbell rang. James’s friends arrived. We poured wine for them. The visitors joined our conversation.
“Have you thought about international aid?” one of them asked. She told me about aid workers that she had met in Bosnia, how they brought food into Sarajevo during the siege and how they monitored prisoners’ treatment to ensure it abided by the Geneva Conventions.
I had tried to volunteer for aid work after high school. I spent a year in Europe before university. An aid organization in Paris turned me away because at seventeen, I was still considered a child under French law.
I thought about our conversation in the weeks that followed and researched international aid organizations. I had no specific plan in mind but built a roster of contact numbers. As an experiment, I called one office and then another. Soon I had a series of interviews booked in London. I telephoned Stephen and told him that I would visit. He invited me to stay. In November I flew to London for the interviews and felt encouraged by the responses.
I heard the telephone ring early in the morning on my departure day. At first I thought it was my alarm clock.
I had to leave early for my Kiev flight. Then I heard Stephen answer the phone. A minute later he knocked on my door.
“It’s for you,” he said. “It’s your sister.” I took the receiver. Deborah told me that our father had died from a brain aneurism. I hung up and sat on the sofa, unable to speak.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Stephen asked. He booked me a flight home.
Deborah and Mark met me at the airport in Ottawa. We drove home to the emptiness of a fatherless house. Winter had set in and the light had disappeared. This was a bleak time of year under any circumstances in Canada. I still could not believe that my father, a fit, vibrant man, had died and that my mother would be alone. I missed my father so much. I felt a shift in generations and that my place was now back here.
I spoke to friends who had already lost a parent. I thought of Alison as well. She had disappeared after Karen died. I wondered if she had to cope with grief by herself, separated from family and friends.
My brother and sister went back to Toronto. I stayed with my mother. We went for walks, read the paper and looked after my father’s new dog. I also phoned aid agencies in Canada to look for a job. International experience, which had been viewed as such an asset in London, was a liability here. I had no Canadian work experience. That was a big hurdle to surmount.
Back in Ukraine, those final months dragged. When my Kiev posting ended in June, I arranged for a three-month leave of absence. I spent it at the cottage with my mother. I wondered how I could return for good. In September, at the end of my leave of absence, I had no answer, so I flew back to London to work in the radio newsroom.
“Do you know any eligibles?” I asked Stephen one day. Not long afterwards he invited me for dinner with a guest from Australia named Sydney, my future husband. He was divorced, a year younger than me and an IT specialist.