by Terry Fallis
“We just have a few questions to help us solve a bit of a mystery,” Matt said. “We’re looking for a member of the 1972 Soviet National Hockey Team who was also in Ottawa in 1990. We know you lived in Canada for a while when you coached at the University of Toronto. When exactly did you arrive in Canada and how long did you stay?”
Yuri looked at the ceiling and winced with cerebral effort.
“Okay, let’s go fast so you can leave and I can lie down again,” Yuri said. “I arrived in Toronto in early November 1990, and I stayed until sometime in 1992. Okay?”
“We think you may have arrived in Canada early in 1990, and that you were in Ottawa in February or early March,” Matt persisted.
“Nyet,” Yuri said. “Nyet, nyet, nyet.”
He shook his head and turned to engage Dimitri in a heated conversation in Russian. We could only watch. Then Yuri fished through a drawer in a beaten-up desk under the window. It took him a few minutes to find what he was looking for. When he did, he handed Matt what looked like a certificate of some kind on card stock, and then pointed to a line at the bottom.
“I’m sorry, I can’t read this,” Matt said. “It’s in Russian.”
Dimitri took it from Matt and scanned it, nodding his head.
“I’m sorry, but Yuri is right. He was in Moscow in February for six-month alcohol rehabilitation program that finished July 1990. That is the date on this certificate.”
“You weren’t in Ottawa in March 1990? You didn’t meet a young woman?” Matt asked Yuri.
“No. I was not allowed to leave facility. And I’ve never been to Ottawa. Just Montreal, Winnipeg, Toronto, Vancouver, and Hamilton.”
You must have been in Ottawa. You’re the only player left. You’re our only option.
“It makes no sense,” I said, unable to stop myself. “Do you have a tattoo on your left arm?”
“Da.”
I pulled the photo from my backpack and held it out to him.
This is you, isn’t it? It has to be you!
“Isn’t this a photograph of you?” I asked.
He took the photo, stared at it, and furrowed his brow. He did not give off the air of someone who was looking at himself. He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Is not me.”
Bullshit! It has to be you. Who else is it then?
He handed me the photo and then pulled his hoody over his head, revealing a white T-shirt underneath. So there he was, in jeans and a white T-shirt, just like our father in the photo. He then turned to show us his tattoo. It all crashed down around us then. Yuri pointed to his tattoo and then to the tattoo in the photo.
“You see, tattoo is same, but mine is on outside of arm not on inside, like in photo,” he said. “Some players have on outside, some on inside. I want people to see it so I have tattoo on outside of arm. Story over. Visit over.”
Matt looked at me. He looked as gutted as I felt. At one and the same time, I was crushed that Yuri Golov was not our father and happy that Yuri Golov was not our father. I think Matt felt the same way at the same time.
“Why did you stop with hockey?” Dimitri asked. “You were good. Big and powerful. Good hard shot. But also a thinker on ice, too.”
Yuri looked like he might cry. He stared at his feet for a few seconds before responding.
“I stop for the same reason I was fired in Toronto,” he said. He nudged an empty vodka bottle with his bare foot. “Fucking Gentle Bear. Fuck Gentle Bear.”
—
By 2:30 we were back on the train for the return trip to Moscow. Dimitri seemed more discouraged and dejected than we were. We’d asked Yuri who he thought the man in the photo might be. He wracked his brain and came up with a few names, every one of which we’d already researched and rejected. And that was it. I don’t remember much about that train run. I just turned my face to the window, closed my eyes, and tried very hard not to think about it all. This technique didn’t really work very well. The Yaroslavl baker was not our father.
“Are you so sure about the dates?” Dimitri asked as the train eased back into Moscow Yaroslavskaya station at 6:40 p.m.
“It’s one of the few things we actually are certain about,” Matt replied. “We were born December 23, 1990, we were only a week premature, so we had to have been conceived mid-March 1990. Those are the facts. We can’t control them. We can’t change them.”
We thanked Dimitri for his efforts and offered to take him out to dinner. He seemed a little reluctant to say goodbye, but eventually declined our invitation. I gave him my cell number in case he needed to reach us. We shook hands, then he walked to his car in the parking lot nearby, and Matt and I headed for the Metro.
We both felt terrible, miserable, cheated. We’d come all this way, gotten so close, only to hit a brick wall, or perhaps an iron curtain. I’d never really experienced such excitement followed so quickly by such disappointment. It wasn’t just emotional. There was a physical side to it, as well, that’s hard for me to describe. But it can’t be good for you.
We made it back to the hotel shortly after seven and realized we were both famished. We didn’t even go to our room, we headed straight for the hotel restaurant. When the waiter approached, I ordered a steak, medium rare.
“Is that how you always order it?” Matt asked, ignoring the waiter for a moment.
“Yep.”
“Me, too. No surprise, I guess.” He turned to the waiter. “Sorry, the same for me, please.”
We were finishing our crème brûlée when my iPhone vibrated with a text. I figured it was Abby looking for another update. Beyond the long email I’d sent the previous night, I’d kept her informed and texted photos on our train ride north, but I hadn’t yet broken the news about our failed mission to Yaroslavl. As it turned out, it wasn’t a text from Abby, it was from a number I didn’t recognize with what I thought was a Russian country code.
“Where you are now?” it read.
“Who is this, please?” I replied.
“DD”
“Matt, it’s Dimitri,” I said before turning back to my iPhone.
“Where you are?” he texted again.
“Restaurant at the Courtyard Marriott Pavel. Hotel,” I texted back.
“Meet me in hotel bar in 20 mins,” his next text read.
“Okay. Why?”
“Just meet me there in 20.”
“K”
—
We charged our meal to our room and then moved to the bar. We took a booth along one wall. It was a very quiet night. In fact, save for a few young couples on the other side of the room, we were pretty much on our own. The music was Western rock and roll and it was quite loud. We ordered beer, Heineken for me and a Stella Artois for Matt. Fifteen minutes after we’d taken our seats in the bar, Dimitri arrived. He acknowledged us with a glance, quickly scanned the room, and then walked straight to the counter to speak to the bartender. The guy nodded and moved to the sound system control panel at the far end of the bar. He turned the music up even louder. Then Dimitri joined us. He turned down Matt’s offer of a drink. He looked anxious, nervous.
He opened his mouth and I presume some words came tumbling out but they were lost in the raucous music.
“Pardon?” Matt and I both said.
Dimitri tried again, but again, whatever sound emerged from his gaping mouth was lost to the pounding backbeat.
I have no idea what you just said. In fact, I’m not sure any sound came out of your mouth.
“Sorry?” Matt said, pointing to his ears and leaning in close to Dimitri.
“I won’t be staying long enough to drink!” Dimitri shouted.
“Is everything all right?” Matt asked.
Dimitri shook his head but whatever he said was again overpowered by the music.
Still can’t hear you!
Matt waved at the bartender, who miraculously noticed. Matt pointed to his ears again and used hand gestures to persuade the guy to turn down the music. He did.
D
imitri looked annoyed and leaned in closer.
“For what I have to tell you, is safer for music to be loud,” he said.
Right. We’ll both be safer but with permanent bilateral hearing deficits.
“Dimitri, yelling at one another so we can hear is not going to work very well either,” Matt said.
“Okay, but lean in,” Dimitri replied.
We leaned in, so that anyone observing us would instantly know we were sharing deeply privileged and sensitive information. We looked like we were planning a hit or, at the very least, a multimillion-ruble drug deal.
“Okay, what’s happened?” Matt asked.
“Shhh! Not so loud,” Dimitri scolded.
“Sorry. What’s happened?” Matt whispered.
“Something didn’t feel right,” Dimitri started. “It didn’t hit me until I was just looking at my 1972 national team list on computer again. I saw there was only twenty-nine players listed. But I know there was thirty. And it all came back to my memory. I finally figure out problem, and then I wished I didn’t figure out problem.”
Dimitri shook his head and looked around the room as if ensuring we weren’t being watched. I almost looked under our table but didn’t think Dimitri would appreciate my sense of humour.
“Okay. Here it is. Here’s news. There was a second backup goalie on the national team who made trip to Canada in ’72, but never played a game and never even got dressed. I completely forget about him, maybe on purpose. I remembered there was thirty players, not twenty-nine,” he said, looking up and shaking his head.
Then he leaned in even closer and used his curled index finger to beckon us into a tighter huddle. So we moved in closer. Dimitri took one final look around the restaurant before turning back to us.
“Alexei Bugayev,” he said. “Alexei Bugayev.”
Who is he?
Matt and I looked at each other, then back at Dimitri. We both shrugged and shook our heads at the same time. Uncanny.
Dimitri pulled out his phone, called up a photo, and turned it so we could see it. It was an action shot of a goalie in his crease wearing the now familiar red jersey with CCCP across his chest.
“Is this Alexei whatever-his-name-is?” Matt asked.
“Yes, but look more closely,” Dimitri instructed.
Matt squinted at the photo, studying it.
“Well, the bloke looks very sweaty, but that’s all I see,” Matt said. “What am I supposed to be looking at? I’m not following.”
“You don’t play hockey, do you?” Dimitri asked.
“Well, not beyond one painful week of field hockey at school.”
“Field hockey,” Dimitri snarled, and angled the phone so I could examine the shot.
“He’s a lefty,” I said, immediately.
“You played hockey!” Dimitri replied. “Yes. He is lefty. And he was removed from the team’s history. It is like Alexei Bugayev never played on the team.”
“But why?” we both asked at precisely the same time and in the same tone.
“Well, and this is where my help will have to be over,” he said, glancing around furtively, “Alexei Bugayev was not great goalie. He was not even good goalie. But he was very calm and very good with languages. His time with national team meant he travelled a lot at young age.”
“Okay, but what does that mean?” Matt asked.
I thought I knew where we were headed, but I kept it to myself in the hopes I was wrong.
“It means Alexei Bugayev was scouted and recruited at young age and I don’t mean by national team. His goalie skills were really not good enough for national team. So let’s just say, he was not third-best goalie in Soviet Union. But still, there he was, on team, travelling to West.”
He was a spy, right?
“Spy,” I said. “Alexei Bugayev was a spy.” Dimitri shushed me and looked around. Then he nodded, and looked very uncomfortable doing it.
We leaned in again.
“As I remembered Alexei, more and more of story came back to me. When Alexei was seventeen and playing at tournament in Finland, he was scouted by agent who worked in Russian Embassy in Helsinki. Within one year he was on national team. Everyone who knows hockey was shocked, but no one said nothing. They knew not to. Alexei was good with languages. He spoke Finnish, German, and English and French.”
“How do you know this?” Matt asked.
“I was the one told to remove him from hockey records,” Dimitri explained. “The first call came from someone who worked for Central Committee member. Then I got a visit from someone who didn’t tell me his name, and I decided not to ask. It happened very long time ago. I almost forgot about it.”
He stopped to survey the room again.
“I’m sorry, but this is all I can do. I don’t know any more than I told you. And now I don’t even know you. I cannot go any deeper. It’s up to you now. And I would be careful. I will deny everything if this comes back to me.”
“Can we at least have the photo?” I asked.
“I cannot email it. I’m sorry.”
“Of course not, but you can Airdrop it to my iPhone and no one will even know,” Matt said, pulling his phone out.
Matt gently took Dimitri’s iPhone out of his hand and completed the transaction.
“So is Alexei Bugayev our father?” I asked as Dimitri started to slide out of the booth.
“He could be. He’s only lefty we don’t check.”
“Before you go, how do you spell his name?” Matt asked, ready to type it into his phone.
“A-L-E-X-E-I, B-U-G-A-Y-E-V.”
“And he worked for the KGB?” I said.
He shushed me again and leaned in very close to us both.
“We don’t call it that any more. But Alexei Bugayev was very much KGB before world changed in ’91. I don’t know where he is now, what he does now, or even if he’s alive now. And I don’t want to know.” He shook our hands a last time, stood, and walked out of the restaurant.
I think we were both a little shell-shocked by Dimitri’s revelation. He’d only been with us in the bar for about fifteen minutes, but so much had changed so quickly. I realized in that moment that I’d never really believed Yuri Golov was our father. The idea just hadn’t sat well with me. It never quite fit. It never quite felt right. There was no instant connection, no involuntary surge of recognition. When I looked at his photo or at him when we’d met, it had left me cold. Now, even though I was looking at Alexei Bugayev through the wire mesh of a goalie mask, I felt something. I can’t explain it. But something was there – perhaps only wishful thinking – but it was there.
“What do you think?” Matt asked.
“It’s less what I think and more what I feel,” I replied. “I feel something when I look at him. And I can’t even see his face.”
“Me, too,” he agreed. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”
We got up and headed briskly for the elevators in the lobby. I was reaching for the Up button when the bartender caught up with us. He didn’t look pleased to see us.
“You did not pay,” he said.
Five minutes later, when we were back in our room, we each pulled out our laptops and agreed on an approach. I started searching online for vintage hockey card dealers. We needed a good, preferably colour, photo of Alexei Bugayev where we could actually see his face. Matt’s job was to take a broader approach and start Googling Alexei Bugayev.
It took me less than ten seconds to find my way onto what seemed to be the largest and most popular online trading card site on the Internet. At least, that’s what they claimed on the home page. They offered trading cards across countless sports and from the worlds of music and entertainment. I simply typed “Alexei Bugayev” along with “1970s” and “Soviet National Hockey Team” into the search bar. I suddenly felt very hot. My stomach tightened as I hit Return.
In less than three seconds, I got four hits. Who knew that the Soviets also produced hockey cards just like the North American versions, with stats
on the back and everything? Four small thumbnail images appeared. The first three were the same, showing the action shot of a Soviet goalie behind his wire mesh mask. In fact, it was the same photo Dimitri had shown us on his phone. But the fourth thumbnail showed the classic face-on, head and shoulders shot, of the player wearing his official team jersey. The card was dated 1972. I clicked on the thumbnail and a larger version of the card instantly appeared, crisp and in focus. Alexei Bugayev. I enlarged the full colour photo so it filled my screen. There he was, at age twenty-two, looking right at me.
I can’t explain why I knew he was my father, our father. I couldn’t point to his eyes, or his nose, his hairline or the shape of his chin. It was nothing in particular, but everything in general. I knew. In my head, in my heart, in my gut, I knew. I followed his left arm down to the bottom of the frame to his elbow. Of course, the sleeve of his red jersey covered it, but I knew lurking beneath was a tattoo of two flags, two crossed hockey sticks, and a puck. I just knew.
“Matthew,” I said, quietly.
He looked over at me as I turned my screen towards him. His face changed when he focused on the photo. I could tell before he said it, he knew, too.
“Holy shite. You found him.”
“We found him.”
Matt came over and perched on the bed beside me. We both just stared at the photo for a while. Alexei Bugayev was quite good-looking, with wavy brown hair parted at the side. He wasn’t smiling, but I wasn’t sure Soviet hockey players were allowed to smile, except perhaps upon scoring. Some Russians have that distinctly Slavic look, like Yuri Golov, Leonid Brezhnev, Vladislav Tretiak, Anatoly Karpov. But Alexei Bugayev did not. I snagged a screen shot of the trading card photo and Airdropped it to Matt’s computer.
It was hard to stop looking at the photo on my screen, but we had much more to do. To avoid having to jump up and cross the floor whenever one of us discovered something, Matt grabbed his laptop and sat on the bed beside me, pillows between our backs and the headboard. It was kind of like John and Yoko’s bed-in for peace in that Montreal hotel room all those years ago, except we weren’t under the covers. That would have been weird. I joined Matt in a straight-up Google search on “Alexei Bugayev” filtered for “relevance.” There were dozens and dozens of hits on his name, far more than I thought a KGB operative would ever want. We coordinated our efforts as we followed online trails that sometimes suddenly turned cold and other times gave up important information. In about three hours of dedicated effort, we were able to assemble many, many disparate strands of information, from many, many disparate sources, and knit together a reasonably coherent and convincing story about Alexei Bugayev across the last thirty-five years or so. There were some newspaper articles, magazine pieces, blog posts, photos, book excerpts, and even some archival video footage courtesy of YouTube.