by Val M Karren
“I just want my passport and plane ticket back when I succeed. That’s all I ask,” I added.
“And so it shall be. As a show of good will…,” he reached for my documents from the table next to him and gave them to me. “Here, you keep them so you have no reason not to trust us.”
“I will need my address book,” I commented.
“No, we will keep that for security purposes. You just concentrate on finding Sanning,” was the agent’s curt response.
“I need the address book to phone him,” I stated bluntly with an angry stare at him.
This revelation stunned the agent and he looked again disapprovingly at his colleagues as if they had missed something so simple and vital in the book.
“Please explain,” he said looking back at me with just a bit more respect.
“When Del told me to get out of Russia, right after I told him that Mr. P. was the son of Mr. S., Del gave me a business card with a telephone number on it. The business card had only the name of a Swedish construction company and its telephone numbers. He told me to leave a message on the machine to let him know that I had made it back to the USA safely. He said I wouldn't get a call back, but he would know that I was safe,” I explained.
“We did not find this business card in your belongings,” he stated.
“I know you didn’t. I wrote the number in the address book,” I retorted.
“We found nothing,” he rebutted again.
“Did you call every number?” I asked with some sarcasm and a hint of ridicule.
I got no response from anybody in the room.
“I disguised Del’s number under an entry of my real Swedish friends. You see an address, you see Sweden and a phone number listed under that. It is not the phone number of my friends. I only write letters with them. I didn’t call them from the USA. We are poor students. It’s too expensive. That is the number to Del’s answering machine where I am supposed to leave a message for him. If you will give me the book, I will call and leave a message right now on any phone you can provide me,” I offered.
The agent threw the book at me with a look of surprise and compliment in his eyes and motioned with his head to one of his colleagues to show me to the telephone.
I was shown into one of the bedrooms that had been converted into a field station office. All the blinds were drawn tight and no light from outside could be seen through the darkening drapes, closed off from all prying eyes and curious neighbors. The wall was covered in a map of the city with what looked to be random pins and post-it notes. A few photographs lined the perimeter. Without pausing and looking too curious I did spot what I thought was my apartment with a flag on it. I wondered what Babushka and Raiya were thinking as I never returned after the Victory Day celebrations with them. For them, I had just simply vanished from one moment to the next.
“I will dial the number for you,” I was told by the second agent, the one who hadn’t punched me repeatedly.
We first had to call the local operator to provide us an international line. I let my host do the talking. After the line was procured, the second agent read the number to the operator. We heard the whirling and clicking of the phone line connecting to the Swedish line, seven hundred kilometers away. It took a few minutes before the line starting ringing. Then, an answer, in Swedish. The agent listened on an earpiece while I used the handset.
“Tack for att du ringde Sver-Invest konstruktion. Vara kontor ar for närvarande stängd. Lamna ditt meddelande och lamplig officer kommer tillbaka ditt samtal sa snart som mojligt. For English press two.”
I pressed the two-button on the telephone, but instead of the needed tone, the telephone pulsed twice with two quick ticks in my ear. The Russian phone system was still using pulses and dials instead of tones. I rolled my eyes with impatience.
The tone to leave a message sounded before any English explanation was given. I was taken a bit off guard.
“Hello, my name is Peter Turner. My message is for Del Sanning. Please call me back at…,” I stopped. I looked over at my clueless guard who obviously didn’t understand what was said in either Swedish or English, and asked in Russian “how can he call me back?”
The guard stopped the call abruptly and hung up my hand set.
“Sergey, come in here,” he shouted to his boss. Sergey quickly appeared in the door way of the office.
“How can Sanning contact the kid? What is the number of this telephone?” he asked in an unconcerned way.
“That’s not possible. Please hang up the telephones,” Sergey huffed, “Blyat! We’ll have to find another place to be able to be contacted. We cannot give this number to a known foreign agent. We’d get shot, you idiot!”
“The number works,” I reported, sitting studiously and thoughtfully at the desk.
“Get out of my chair, punk,” Sergey hit the back of my head and picked up by my collar and pushed me into the living room again.
We sat in a stalemate in the living room with Sergey, the chief agent, pacing the floor thinking. The two other agents looked rather sheepish and unsure about how to proceed and exchanged glances at each other every few moments for moral support. Everybody was at once very tense and unsure. Somehow, I felt I had the upper hand in this situation. Without me, they had no way to find Del, or else they would have been looking for him already someplace else instead of having waited for me to pop my head up again in Nizhniy. It slowly dawned on me as I watched the two agents and their superior officer scramble to get back on top of their strategy that perhaps this was not an official operation. Otherwise, why didn’t they have further resources at hand to track down state secrets? Why were they relying on a student and giving him so much influence? This wasn’t about the murder of Mr. P. This was about recovering the disc without letting their superiors in on the fact that they had lost track of it and it was in the open. They were in damage control and to ask for further resources would be to have to admit that they had lost their mark. I sat quietly observing their silent panic. I felt a bit of hope creep up in me.
Sergey abruptly ended the silence, “We will move to the hotel, and Sanning can call the kid back there.”
With this command, the other two quickly stood and moved toward me with hostile body language as if I had made a break for an open window. These men were attack dogs and all they knew how to do was bite! Their handler called them off.
“That’s not needed. The kid will have to check himself into the hotel without a bag over his head. I’m sure he is going to be very cooperative as he has no way around us,” and turning to me said in a grave tone, “Am I right, young man?”
I nodded in agreement, ready to take any olive branch of non-violence towards me that was being given, no matter how short or thin it was.
“Excuse me, sir,” I addressed Sergey politely, “I cannot check into a hotel wearing this, with blood all over my shirt. I have my own clean clothes in my apartment. Will you take me there and let me gather up the things I need to make this operation believable? Nor can I meet Sanning looking like this. He’ll see me and know to disappear again knowing exactly who is handling me. I must look myself or you won’t get your disc back and I’ll go to jail for murder and espionage. Something I know I don’t want.”
Sergey gave an understanding and agreeing nod.
We headed down the elevator and out to the waiting black Volga and sped through town, dodging street cars and old ladies crossing the road.
“I assume I don’t have to tell you my home address…,” I muttered with some irony from the back seat squished between Sergey and the second agent who enjoys punching people in the face. No response from the three, humorless counter-intelligence officers in the car. They all looked straight ahead. I found the comment rather humorous and felt my wits coming back to me after taking a beating and bleeding from Brutus, sitting left of me.
29. Setting the Trap
It wasn’t dark at all at seven-thirty when we arrived at Prolataraskaya metro station. The car wa
s parked a distance from my apartment and Sergey and I walked together to my apartment. I had zipped up my jacket to hide the blood-stained undershirt. The left side of my face was swollen and aching, but luckily my eye hadn’t become swollen. I could see fine. As it was evening already the old ladies had gone inside to roost. Any earlier and they would have been outside still peeling potatoes and cutting vegetables outside chirping away like barnyard chickens. The Sunday evening was still and warm.
Through the familiar dark entrance, up a half flight of stairs, directly into the right dark corner of the landing I found my door by touch alone. It was dark enough for me maybe to make a dash for the door, but I knew that I couldn’t stay hidden long from the long arm of the secret police. They had patience and means longer than I could hold my breath. My keys slid into the locks. One, two times around, click, clunk. The door popped open a crack, released from the grasp of its deadbolt and I put my shoulder into it and leaned to push it open. The apartment was dark and quiet. How I hoped nobody would be there.
I stepped to my door and spun the cylinder deftly and pushed the door wide open. Sergey stepped in behind me and guarded the door. The apartment was just as I had left it. Bloody jacket, ripped slacks and scuffed dress shoes atop the clothes that were strewn around the room. The broken windows closed but the room was drafter than normal, the table on its side, chairs broken in pieces, books with broken backs. I found my blue jeans and a few shirts, my felt cap and some lace up shoes, pajama pants and a tee shirt. I motioned to Sergey that I needed to move down the hall to the bathroom to collect my shaving kit. As I shuffled passed Natasha’s room in my sandals she opened the door with a start to see the back of me enter the bathroom.
“Pyotr, Pyotr. Is that you? Have you finally come home? Are you healthy?” her voice sounded worried and relieved as she entered the hallway to follow me to the bathroom. She did not notice Sergey standing silently at the end of the corridor guarding the front door behind her.
“Yes, Baba, it’s me. But I cannot stay. I must go back to America,” I replied from in the bathroom.
I found my bag of toiletries and put it in my backpack. As I turned to face her she froze in horror to see my face swollen up.
“Pyotr! Who did this to you? You must let me put ice on this. You come sit down in the kitchen!” she pulled me by the arm, with her back still toward Sergey in the hall. I looked to my guard with a question on my face. He gave a flick of his head to say ‘go with her, don’t cause alarm, the fewer people who know about this the better.’ I followed Natasha into the kitchen and sat on her stool. She pulled a frozen, wrapped piece of meat from her tiny ice box and held it against my face.
“Do you need some tea? Why are you dressed so funny? I’m glad to see you cut your long hair. Boys shouldn’t have long hair. Where have you been? Why did you leave without telling us? Yulia has been looking for you and is very worried,” she chirped and whirred through the kitchen.
“Baba, please, I cannot stay. I have to go back to America. My colleagues are waiting to take me to the train station in their car. I’m sorry but I don’t have time for tea.” I handed the frozen chicken breast back to her and smiled.
“You will be coming back, right? You’ll send us the photos from the award ceremony, right?" she did not want to hear that I was going.
“I’m sorry, but my camera was stolen. I don’t have the photos any longer. The people who stole my camera are the ones who did this to me.” I motioned circles in the air around my swollen face, “they are very powerful people and I need to leave so you and Yulia are not in danger.” As I said Yulia, I looked Natasha straight in the eyes, hoping she would understand to tell Yulia that I had shown up alive and was returning to America. “Please tell Yulia I will call her from America as soon as I can.”
Babushka started to cry.
“Give Raiya my best. But I have to go now,” and with a quick embrace, I hurried past her and quickly out the door. I tossed my keys onto the floor of my room, pulled the door closed and slipped out the front door behind Sergey.
My three new friends set up camp in my hotel room at the Rossiya overlooking the river without my invitation. On my request, Sergey sent Brutus to buy some fried chicken from Gordost just up the street. While we waited for the food, Sergey wrote down the telephone numbers for Del to use to call me back, if he ever would, and insisted I call again and leave a message.
The same recording in Swedish played. The message was clear: I had reached Swed-Invest Construction, leave my name and number, Beeeeeep!
“Hello, my name is Peter Turner. This message is for Mr. Del Sanning. Would ask for a return call at the following number. The matter is very urgent.” I read the sequence of digits Sergey had prepared, “I am in room 375…with a great view of the Volga.” I hoped Del would catch the message of which hotel I was held up in by the remarks about the river. Sergey wasn’t amused.
“If you do that again I will shoot off a toe,” he muttered at me angrily. “You say only the very minimum information on the telephone. Is that clear?”
“Listen!” I snapped back at Sergey, “Del and I talk to each other in a certain way. If I don’t sound myself, he won’t call back. I need him to call back so I can go home. If Del is a secret agent he didn’t tell me about it and I am not working for him. I don’t even expect he will call back. I’m not on a mission for him. He has no responsibility for me. So, I’m going to do everything I can to get him to call me back, otherwise, you will see that I go to Siberia. I don’t like that idea. I don’t work for Del or his government. I don’t work for you and your government. I just want to get out of this alive. Got it?" I was up in his face from across the table where he sat listening to my call.
“You will say only what I say you are allowed to say,” Sergey repeated slowly, alliterating his words carefully.
“Tell me then! What do I say to Sanning when he calls me back?” I hissed through my teeth.
“You tell him that you have to meet him as soon as possible,” Sergey commanded impatiently.
“Why, then? Because I miss him?" I shot back sarcastically. “I have no reason, I have no more business with Sanning. He doesn’t know that I know that he shot a man and stole a disc. How do I introduce the subject?"
Sergey did not have an immediate response and looked angrily into my eyes.
“Like I said Sergey, I want to get out of this as much as you want to get Sanning. It has to sound right, so let me do the talking. Are we going to trust each other?” I pleaded with him.
The evening dragged on late into the night. Sergey slept by the door in a chair. Brutus in a chair by the window and I got the bed that they made me pay for. I was not sleeping and neither was agent number one who had guard duty. From my perch on the bed, I watched the moon rise over the river at about one in the morning and shimmer on the river’s current. I watched a number of barges pass by quietly below. I thought back just twenty-four hours earlier with Lara on the back of the Zhukov watching the stars spin around the pole star, sitting next to her curled up in the blankets from my cabin. What a difference, twenty-four hours can make! Talking with her I was sure my plan would work. Now, my only hope was for that telephone to ring. I wasn’t sure it would.
At around five o’clock, the phone on the table buzzed and choked instead of rang. It was a ghastly noise that woke up those not on guard duty. We all counted to three…
“Hello, this is Peter,” I mumbled with sleep in my breath.
“Peter? Where are you kid?” it was Del, but he was smart enough not to say so on the phone. I didn’t repeat his name.
“I’m in a hotel in Nizhniy center.” I kept it short and exact.
“What happened? I thought you were gone,” he left out details.
“I was running from the same people and took a cruise to get away. Sailed with old friends who kept me safe for a week or so,” I watched Sergey’s face. He didn’t disapprove.
“Are you safe now?” he asked.
“Yes, b
ut I need your help to get out of Russia.” I was not lying.
“Can you get to Moscow on your own?” he asked me. I didn’t ask if he was there.
“Yes. Something awful happened and so they aren’t looking for me anymore…I think,” I speculated.
“Can you meet me at Kyivskiy Station in Moscow this afternoon?” he proposed.
“No, sorry, I can only get the two o’clock from Nizhniy to Moscow later today.” I didn’t know any other way.
“Ok, meet me on Wednesday afternoon, twelve-thirty at the taxi stand at Kyivskiy Station. I’ll find you. We’ll do our best to help you get out quickly,” Del assured.
“Ok, thanks. See you then,” and we hung up our telephones.
I flopped on the bed relieved and exhausted with my ears pounding with the sound of adrenaline in my blood stream. My hands and armpits had been sweating and I could feel their cold dampness against the rest of my hot skin. After half a minute, I sighed a huge sigh of relief and then sat up and looked to Sergey for his next instructions.
As if it was déjà vu, I found myself back at the Moscovskiy station just like twenty-four hours earlier at eleven-thirty buying a train ticket to Moscow, but this time I was not in disguise and I was buying a first-class ticket and traveling with three colleagues in a private compartment. We made an unsightly quartet.
Sergey had insisted that I arrive on the train from Nizhniy as I had told Del on the telephone. He was certain that somebody other than Del would be watching for me at the Kazanskiy station where the train would arrive. If I arrived in Moscow without having arrived on the train from Nizhniy then perhaps the meeting would fall through. Sergey also mentioned that if I arrived at Kyivksiy station with the same people around or anywhere near me that stepped out of the train at Kazanskiy, then the entire operation would be blown.
About one hour away from Moscow, Sergey gave me very exact instructions about how to proceed once I stepped off the train. I was to leave the train and the station alone and take the Moscow metro from Kazanskiy to Kyivskaya. From Kievskaya metro station I should cross the street and take the room at the Slavayanskaya hotel that had been reserved for me. He and his agents would meet me in my room later that night. It was imperative that it appear that I was alone as Del would certainly have a team following me to watch and see who was already potentially following me. Sergey warned me that other FSB agents that I did not know and would not recognize would be following me from Kazanskiy station to make sure I didn’t make a change at Byelosrusskaya and head for the airport. If by chance I managed to make it as far as Sheremyetovo Airport, my name had already been alerted to border officials and I would be detained anyway while I tried to board a flight. He assured me again that he was in his control and trying to flee Moscow would be futile. I believed him and was spooked to the point that I decided to follow all his mysterious, nuanced instructions. I thought that this intrigue, cloak & dagger, had all ended at the same time as the Cold War. The words that my half-drunk friend Olya said, back at the disco night at The Monastery rang in my ears. “You think that all departments of KGB just stopped existing? They changed the name to FSB and kept their jobs. That’s it. We still do the exact same thing, Peter.” How right she was!