by Val M Karren
I arrived at Minin Square to see tall risers and stages being put into place for the viewing of the parades of workers, trucks, cannons, and tanks that would be held there. The red flag of the Soviet Union was hung on every street corner, the yellow hammer and sickle visible in the breeze. The university buildings were draped in banners and flags with the emblems of the different branches of the armed forces. The square itself had been cleared up as well. Rubbish bins had been emptied and painted in the city’s coat of arms. The gutters had been swept and washed and the flower beds were all teaming with newly planted pansies and red geraniums. The grass areas were cordoned off to protect it from being trampled by the crowds that would assemble. It had never looked more pleasant. Billboards were being renewed with nostalgic propaganda posters of the Red Army from 1944 and 1945, calling attention to their heroic efforts fighting back the Nazis. These posters reminded us again not to be chatty on the telephone as you never know who was listening! We were encouraged to contribute to the war effort by foregoing luxuries and sending any extra socks or boots to our soldiers on the front line. My favorite was a young man in a stormtrooper’s uniform, carrying a rifle and with an enthusiastic smile who was waving his comrades forward with the tagline “All the way to Berlin, boys!” How glorious they made it all look.
I decided to take a breather before I stormed into the Dean’s office and made a fool of myself and strolled the square out to the Chkalov Monument and looked down the grand stair case to the Volga. The hydrofoils were speeding down the middle of the river, running circles around the barges and the cruise boats. The river was blue and calm, like the vast sky to the north and west. It was a beautiful day, it had just started out poorly. After taking a few deep breaths, I turned to head back to the history department building and there across the street was my personal shadow pretending to talk on the public telephone. “What a dope!” I said to myself and paid him no attention as I entered from the street into the building.
The Dean offered me a chair as he finished his telephone conversation. Luckily the office window looked directly on to the square where the ‘British Knight’ had taken a seat and was smoking another cigarette and watching the door with one eye and the passing university girls with his other eye.
“Mr. Turner!” the Dean said putting down the handset, “We have not spoken since your interview. How did it go? I am very anxious to hear the details.”
“Good morning, sir. I am afraid that Mr. P. did not find the interview very ingratiating. He has somehow got a hold of Valentina Petrovna who has confiscated my notes from the interview and has forbidden me from writing about anything I learned in that interview in my paper,” I whined.
“That old cow! Don’t pay her any attention. She is an overcautious old lady. We must go forward with the project.” Dean Karamzin was very dismissive of the morning’s events. “You can still remember what you spoke about, yes? Just rewrite your notes and everybody will be happy. Mr. P. thinks he killed the story, Valentina Petrovna can tell the university director she stopped it and we will still publish your article. Everybody wins!”
“Valentina says that such an action would be dangerous for me personally,” I retorted.
“She has such an imagination! What does she think we live in Moscow of something? To my knowledge we don’t have a single Chechen in our city,” he continued his rant.
“Might it be possible to write this paper anyhow without using this example? Even without a name? I was able to get a picture of how funding from a small operation of theft and smuggling grows into a larger operation that then moves to legitimize their operations with the local government’s blessing. Perhaps we can find some more and make a composite picture instead of focusing on this specific local example, and then everybody wins!” I smiled with irony on my lips.
“Young man! We do not need another academic paper without specifics. If we are going to flush this pheasant from the underbrush we need to use the dogs!” he bellowed.
“Why is it your goal to name your friend and client? Wouldn’t that be bad for your business?” I challenged.
Dean Karamzin leaned back in his chair, a bit pensive and spoke quietly, “Mr. Turner, I know for a fact that the politicians of this city are in direct cooperation with the criminal elements to make themselves rich. They use their positions of power to make themselves rich and not care for the people of this great city that fought and worked hard to preserve the independence of our country from occupation. My father, my uncles! These criminal elements are quietly and secretly setting the policy agenda for the future of our country. I know you feel the same way I do regarding the way that these opportunists are robbing Russia blind. If you say you have the information that we can substantiate as criminal, I can bring you into contact with people who can tell you how that money is corrupting city council decisions.”
“And do you think people will really care? Aren’t they just resigned to the fact that Russian civil servants are only there for themselves and their own profit?" I replied.
“The governor will care! He has already been fighting the corruption and making more and more of what happens in Nizhniy more transparent. If we can show that the criminals of Nizhniy are in bed with the city administration we might get some change here, very soon, but we have to act quickly as Nemtsov is being courted by Yeltsin’s people and could in the next year go to work in Moscow with the national government,” he appealed to me.
“I am sorry, but I don’t have anything that I can substantiate as criminal. The way he tells his story it all sounds plausibly legal, especially during the Perestroika period. Nobody really knew what was legal and what wasn’t. Did he steal car parts just because nobody knew how to price them? I would have to do a lot of inference to turn shady entrepreneurialism into criminal. Inference is not an academic tool last time I checked,” I thought I had the Dean in check.
“This is why you must continue to research what you learned about his past and future plans. Perhaps you can pin him down squarely on criminal activities and then we can connect that black money to the city hall. You must keep digging away in that database and find a proof, find some documentation of his activities. We need to find the link!” he was almost desperate.
“Sir, I need to let you know that I am being actively watched and followed. I had a visit from the FSB to my apartment on Sunday evening for a short interrogation and to give me a warning. All this started after my interview with Mr. P.” I confided.
“I think you are imaging things.” he insisted.
I motioned to the window. “Please tell me if a young man, about my age, dressed all in black, except for his white shoes is still sitting on the bench in the square, smoking and watching the door of this building.”
Dean Karamzin stood and looked out the window. To his surprise he saw exactly what I described would be outside his window.
“For how long has this been going on?” he queried.
“Since Saturday afternoon. Today is Tuesday. He goes everywhere I go when I’m on this side of the river. When I am in Zarechnaya there is an ugly woman and a dog that keep watch over my apartment. That young man knew my home address and went there after I was able to shake him on Saturday afternoon in the old city. He drives a black Lada and has a partner.”
“Ah yes! A black Lada has just pulled up and they are speaking through the window,” the Dean blurted surprised.
“Voila!” I breathed out in French.
“I will speak with the Governor and have this stopped immediately!” he declared to me.
“No, please don’t! They don’t know yet that I know I am being followed. I need them to keep using the idiot on the bench in the white shoes so I know I can lose them when I need to, and know that I have truly lost them. I am not doing anything different than before so I have nothing to hide from them. It’s just to show you that if I go any further and make people mad they'll know exactly where to find me should they want to ‘persuade’ me with something more than words and
threats,” I calmly explained.
“You say the FSB came to your apartment?” He queried again watching out the window with his back to me.
“Yes, Sunday night around dinner time. They did not come with a police officer in uniform either,” I offered to get his response.
“They can’t do that! That means they are working without orders. Who are they working for? You didn’t tell them anything did you?" He seemed genuinely concerned now.
“I gave them truthful answers to everything they asked me of course. I was terrified!” I exclaimed.
“Why? What right did they have to take you anywhere?” he remarked with doubt in his voice.
“I threatened one of them with a knife….” I confessed.
“What? Why?” he turned to look at me with wide eyes.
“We thought they were the hooligans trying to break into our apartment,” was my apology.
“Did they take anything from you?” he asked the same question that Raiya had.
“No, I think they had Valentina Petrovna do that this morning to keep it from escalating or making me …,” I paused briefly and corrected my thoughts “make us suspect that they have a direct connection to Mr. P.” I ventured.
“What connection could they have to Mr. P? FSB is involved in state security, not local criminal activities,” the Dean slowly took his chair again as he expressed his amazement at this information.
“Are you sure you want me to keep looking for that missing link, sir?” I gave him a look filled with sarcasm and second guessing.
“Perhaps we should take a break for the May holidays and see where things are after that. I did not think that Igor was capable of getting involved in high crimes and treason. He never even seemed capable of signing his own name to a confession,” the Dean sounded a bit spooked.
“Perhaps I will head back to the library and refocus my research this week so that I can still make a paper about the privatization process of the factories and focus on the foreign investors. This way, everybody will clearly see that we didn’t use the local materials, and we can all walk out of this with our legs unbroken,” I proposed.
“I think that this might be a smart course of action, Peter, just until we can find our feet again,” was the Dean’s reserved response after he had regained his composure.
“Dean, you might think I have a big imagination, but, do you have a back door to this place?” I asked carefully.
The Dean walked with me to the concierge’s room on the ground floor and spoke to him in a low voice that I couldn’t understand and pointed to me a few times. The old man took a bushel of keys from his drawer and without speaking a word motioned for me to follow him. Before we reached the exit to the courtyard and then the street, we turned left down a corridor with a door which was always locked. He deftly picked a single key from the mess of metal and with it opened the door and ushered me through it and locked it behind us. We walked down a dimly lit narrow concrete staircase into the basement of the building. It was dank and dark and I could smell that we were underground. The old man led me through a maze of small corridors and past many locked storage rooms, hot water pipes with insulation hanging from steaming pipes. Dim light bulbs lit the way through the labyrinth, left, right straight on. After passing through this subterranean maze we ascended another similar staircase to the one we descended from the history department. When we emerged again at ground level we were in the lobby of the medical school that lies on the same block but kitty-corner to each other, not back to back. The lobby of the building opened up on the upper embankment street near the Chkalov monument and the grand stair case. I thanked my guide and darted out the door and down the stairs as fast as my legs would carry me. I caught a bus at the river station to the metro at the Moscow station; no sign of the ‘British Knight’ following on my heels.
21. Exit Strategy
Upon arriving at the train station, I stopped at the public phones to see if I could reach Yulia and ask if I could stop by to collect my money and plane ticket that I had left in her apartment just in case I needed to think about a quick exit from the city. Perhaps I was being a bit too paranoid? I asked myself. The phone at Yulia’s apartment was not answered. She must have still been at school. As I hung up the telephone I saw through the blurry, scratched glass of the phone booth a familiar figure step out of a taxi. She wasn’t Russia that was for sure, but I couldn’t place her for a split second.
“Els? Els is that you?" I called out to her still on the curb.
Just then, Del stepped out from around the other side of the taxi and was fishing in the trunk of the car to retrieve their travel cases.
“Del! Els!” I called out again. This time they heard me and looked my way, but didn’t see me immediately. I stepped up closer. “It’s me, Peter,” I removed my cap so they could see my face.
“Oh, Peter! What a coincidence. What are you doing here in the middle of the day? Shouldn’t you be in lectures?” Els asked me.
Yes, I should be but some difficulties have arisen. I am just on my way back to my place on the metro line.” I tried to keep my answer vague and untroubled. “Where are you heading?”
“We’re catching the two o’clock to Moscow. We have some business to take care of there.” Del replied.
I was startled to hear that they were leaving and feared that they may not be coming back.
“Peter, what is wrong?” Els asked me, “and don’t lie to me!”
“Is it that obvious?” I asked with ashamed eyes.
“You can’t fool this one, Peter. She can read everybody like a book,” Del conceded.
“Are you coming back?” I asked with concern in my voice.
“We’ll be back next Thursday. We just have a few meetings over the next week with different people,” Del informed me. “Heard that you have had some troubles since the weekend.”
“You aren’t leaving because Misha and I were followed and you all had the apartment broken into and all?” I asked a bit relieved.
“Kid, let's step inside where we can have a private word,” Del said as he turned to pay the waiting taxi driver. “It’s not good to speak about such things where everybody can hear us.”
I helped carry their bags into the train station and the three of us found a table in corner of the station restaurant where we spoke in quiet tones. Del sat with his back to the wall so he could keep a full view of the people in the restaurant.
“Kid, since our chat on Friday night we have been able to uncover a bit of information that you should probably know about.” Del spoke to me but never looked me in the face, his eyes scanning the dining room and the door. “It turns out that in fact Mr. P’s plans are real and he is planning to officially submit his application for a building permit during the May holidays so that nobody from the steering committee is around to prepare any resistance. Technically, the mayor’s office is open these weeks even though all of his staff will be on holiday. Citizens are therefore able to submit requests per legal procedures. The mayor, of course, will stay in the city for the Victory Day ceremonies so business can be done ‘legally’ but under the radar.”
“Who told you this? How did you find out?” I was puzzled.
“Everybody has a price, kid. Problem is that I can’t act on it without jeopardizing my information source for the future. Past info has also proven to be correct, so I believe it’s very credible,” he avoided answering my direct question.
“Why does this concern me?” I protested, not wanting to hear Mr. P. ’s name again that day.
“Because he is at a critical phase of planning and it would be a good idea if you stopped stirring the pot for a while. The word is out that Mr. P. is having somebody followed to make sure that they don’t cause any further trouble for him. I can only guess that what he told you was not meant to be in the open before the tenth of May,” Del speculated.
“What’s so important about the tenth of May?” I asked.
“He has an appointment with the mayo
r that afternoon when he will submit the application for what we understand will be a quick approval process with different witnesses to the process.” he answered.
“But what about your project?” I protested, “they can’t just set your project aside.”
“Listen kid, it gets better. You know our little side hustle of searching for apartments for expats? Well, a councilman, also on the city’s steering committee evidently had the same idea. So, we have some competition,” Del confided.
“Well, I wish them all the luck in the world. They won’t find the types of apartments that will fill the bill,” I puffed with resentment.
“They are going about it all a bit differently. He and his ‘investors’ have bought up a small apartment building in the old town and are, as we speak, renovating the entire building up to standard. There will be a compound with full security and full lock down capabilities. They will provide car and drivers for the residents, one driver and car for each three apartments. It sounds like they've got the right idea. Just don’t know from where they are getting the financing,” Del speculated
“Del, there is so much black money flowing under this city, I’m surprised it hasn’t come up through the toilets and the plumbing yet,” I hissed emphatically over the table.
“Keep your shirt on, kid, keep your shirt on.” Del didn't want our conversation to look too secret. He scanned the hall for people standing about looking our direction. Not finding any his eyes came back to me. “It's important that you and Misha stop looking for any further apartments until I get back from Moscow next Thursday night. If you are being followed, somebody will get word that the two of you, known to be associated with me, are searching for apartments. It could set off alarm bells. Until I know who is financing those apartments we had better keep our heads down. Get it?”