The Russian Affair

by Michael Wallner

  “Thank you, Comrade Colonel. I’ll think it over,” he said. When the Colonel nodded, Leonid rose to his feet, saluted, and made an about-face.

  “Lieutenant.” Leonid, heading for the door, heard the voice behind him. “You’ve forgotten your book. I shall expect your answer in a week.”

  Leonid had neither spoken to Anna about this conversation nor reported to the Colonel after the week had passed. He’d simply kept silent. His transfer to Sakhalin had come through a month later in the form of marching orders passed on to him without explanation. Leonid had never again heard from Colonel Kamarovsky.

  There were sounds outside, and then men entered the building. Before the knock on his door, Leonid was on his feet, clad in his weather gear and ready to go. The first man to enter his office was Staff Sergeant Likhan Chevken, the alpha male among the men and the only Nivkh. As a member of one of the indigenous peoples of Sakhalin, he couldn’t become an officer in the Red Army, but he was the person best qualified to command Leonid’s frontier troops. Chevken had served in the company the longest; he was a soldier, mechanic, sailor, and medic, all in one person. He was familiar with all of Sakhalin’s natural phenomena and spoke all the dialects of the island. Chevken was short and round; his dexterity, tenacity, and fighting spirit were not immediately apparent. At the same time, he was the personification of gentleness, the only man in Leonid’s troop who didn’t make him feel that he wasn’t entitled to lead it. “So we’re doing the security check first?” Likhan Chevken asked in a tone that implied the existence of a better solution.

  “What do you suggest?” Leonid asked.

  “Maybe we could work in parallel,” the Nivkh replied. “Three men can inspect the cutter while the others prepare for the salvage operation.”

  Leonid didn’t act as though he first had to ponder Chevken’s suggestion; the man was always right. The captain divided his men into groups and gave the order to move out.

  The men left the barracks ten at a time, bracing themselves against the wind. It looked as though they were about to stagger straight to the edge of the abyss, but in reality, they were heading for the elevator that was hidden behind a rock overhang. The steel cables sang. The mounts for the guide rails had been driven into the stone a yard deep, yet Leonid got nervous every time he had to descend into the void that lay beneath the veils of sea-spray, fog, and drizzle. He stood as far to the rear of the elevator cage as he could, clinging to the grille. Before Chevken, the last to enter, stepped inside, he used a remote-control device to start the diesel motor, which was located in a bunker at the base of the elevator. The gears engaged with such a jolt that Leonid was afraid they were in free fall, but the metal cage slowly went into motion and slid down the face of the blackly gleaming cliff. When, after riding down in silence, they arrived at the bottom, the men dashed out into the storm and began running around busily. Since the elemental roar made speech impossible, they communicated with hand signals; like a bunch of deaf-mutes, Leonid thought, as he struggled toward the last of the three boats. He’d already been through the procedure: The first of the inflatable dinghies carried a load of steel cables, which would be transported to the site and made fast to the cutter; men from the second boat would mount balloons, which after being inflated by remote control would lift the grounded vessel’s cargo and hold it in equilibrium. Leonid would sit in the third boat, which served as a backup in case something happened to one of the other two. He felt for the weapon under his oilskin. In spite of the ice storm, a smile crossed his face; he wouldn’t be so careless a second time.

  Having ascertained with relief that Likhan Chevken would steer his boat, Leonid helped drag it into the water. The sandy fairway had been artificially constructed; other than that, the only land feature far and wide was sheer rock. The breakers immediately buffeted the light boat, yanking it away from the land, but Chevken gripped a line, held it steady, and motioned to Leonid to jump in. Irritated by his own clumsiness, Leonid awkwardly took his place amidships and held on with both hands. Chevken and another man sprang nimbly into the boat, paddled like mad, and started the outboard motor as soon as they reached the proper depth. When Chevken set the dinghy on course, a mighty wave plunged under it, thrusting its nose perpendicularly into the air; but the wonder of those boats was that they always stayed on top of the water. For a few daredevil seconds, the dinghy balanced on the crest of the wave and then rushed down helter-skelter into the next black trough. Leonid tightened his stomach muscles—a vomiting skipper was out of the question. He hoped with all his heart that the first salvage attempt would be successful; otherwise, they would have to launch the crane ship, a nearly impossible undertaking in such a turbulent sea. Leonid knew his men. They’d work until they dropped to remove the obstruction from their harbor. In the worst case, the cutter would have to be blown up.

  While Leonid was squinting against sleet and spray, Likhan Chevken, barefaced and open-eyed, drove the boat out of the cove. Already the leftmost of the Three Brothers was coming into sight; Chevken skillfully steered around the sharp-edged, jagged rocks. Beyond them, the scrap-iron cutter appeared, lying aslant like a rusty arrow thrust into the seabed. The other two dinghies were bobbing toward the freighter, but they yielded the right-of-way to the commander’s boat. Chevken fired off a flare, which was answered by a flashing signal from the cutter, inviting them to come aboard.

  A rope was let down from the stern into the water. The storm lifted the rope and flung it against the ship’s side. Chevken cast out a boat-hook and maneuvered his vessel alongside the ship. Leonid peered into the raging sea-spray. The distance between their boat and the grounded ship looked immense; however, he stood up, grabbed the auxiliary rope, and swung one leg onto the rung; the other leg was still standing in the inflatable boat. Chevken called out, “Now!” and already the wave was upon them, driving the boat toward the open sea. Leonid made a false step, slammed against the ship’s rump, and sank up to his hips in the water. The icy cold robbed him of breath; he pulled himself up the rope ladder with both arms, found a rung, and started to clamber, uncomfortably aware that the arrival of a Soviet frontier patrol officer ought to have looked different.

  It was a pretty good bet that the cutter was carrying not only scrap iron but smuggled goods; the reception its crew might give their rescuers would not necessarily be friendly. Leonid made sure that his men were close behind him, reached the lopsided railing, and pulled himself on board. In such weather, every formality was dispensed with; the ship’s mate led the way for Chevken to follow. Leonid wiggled his toes in his boots, which had taken on a quantity of ice water. The bulkhead leading to the wheelhouse opened, and a cold gust of wind blew the visitors inside.

  The captain of the cutter was a bearded man with Kyrgyz eyes. “You’re bringing some shitty weather with you,” he said to Leonid by way of greeting.

  “You’re in a restricted area,” said Leonid, disinclined to make small talk. “Your ship is blocking the entrance to the harbor,” he went on, as if he were telling the captain something he didn’t know.

  “I radioed to say we’d sprung a leak.”

  “The harbor entrance must be cleared as quickly as possible. We’re initiating a salvage operation.” Seeing only two others in the room, Leonid asked, “How many men do you have on board?”

  “Fourteen, Captain.” The commander of the freighter put on a show of obsequiousness.

  “Call them together,” Leonid ordered. By then, the third member of his group had also arrived. “I’m going to inspect the ship. Bill of lading and logbook, please,” he added, a little more courteously. “Tell your people to have their papers ready. Any foreign nationals?”

  The captain shook his head. “All Soviet citizens.”

  “Soviet citizen?” Leonid pointed to the helmsman, whose skin was almost black.

  The mate answered for him. “He’s a Tuvan from the Yenisei valley.”

  Leonid placed himself in front of the captain. “Open your cargo hold.”
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  “As you wish, Comrade.” The captain took some keys out of a metal box. “One bulkhead, however, is sealed.”

  “According to your radio message, you’re carrying only scrap iron. Why the sealed bulkhead?”

  “I couldn’t say. The stuff was brought on board and sealed as per the shipowner’s instructions.”

  Leonid turned to Chevken and asked, “Do we have the Geiger counter with us?” The Nivkh nodded. Leonid then ordered the third man to begin salvage operations. The man took out a walkie-talkie. Leonid didn’t feel that he was under any threat from the crew, but the sealed bulkhead made him uneasy. It wasn’t unusual for shippers to enhance the market value of their freight with contraband. The captain of the cutter couldn’t have given much thought to the possibility that his ship would get into distress, and he would try to prevent the confiscation of his cargo. Leonid’s hand rested on his holster. Although he’d never had to use his service weapon while on a mission, the pistol was the object of his special care. The reason for his attention lay half a year in the past.

  Shortly after Leonid’s duty on Sakhalin Island began, the garrison was struck by a severe earthquake. The tremors started after midnight. Jolted out of sleep, Captain Nechayev didn’t figure out at first what was happening. His iron bedstead was vibrating and the lamp above him swaying back and forth as though someone had given it a good push. Leonid turned on the light. Shadows flitted over the walls and the furniture. The quarters he was in had been built at ground level without any special anchoring. It was late summer, and the weather was pleasant; Leonid looked outside and saw soldiers in their underwear and others with their pajamas tucked into their boots. Wearing his uniform trousers and a pair of slippers, he left the building and watched from the parade ground as the trembling earth sent the wooden barracks into strange convulsions. Here a window burst into pieces, there a roof crown fell off or a wall collapsed outward, exposing the interior like rooms in a dollhouse: bunk beds, chairs, tables with liquor bottles rolling off of them. Leonid hurried to a briefing with the major, who ordered him to have his men fall in properly. Leonid, who hadn’t yet been assigned to the technical unit, passed the order to his sergeants. A few minutes later, the platoon under his command had fallen into line as directed. Leonid allowed the men some time to sort out their equipment, and while they were doing so, he realized that he’d forgotten his own military belt, complete with sidearm, in the barracks. He dashed back and found his leather belt and holster, but his service pistol was gone. Recently—only a few days ago—he’d taken it out to clean it, and so there was only one possibility: His pistol had been stolen. Leonid put on the rest of his uniform, including the empty holster. While he inspected his troops, he tried to determine from their faces which of them might be the thief. Officially acknowledging the theft was unthinkable; a soldier could be guilty of few faults worse than getting his service weapon stolen.

  The next morning, while the cleanup was under way, Leonid spoke to the most senior of the sergeants and asked him how one could replace stolen pieces of equipment. “Buy them,” the fat man said. His face looked as though it were set in aspic. Leonid knew that the black market was illegal but tolerated, since officers, too, profited from it. Proceeds were distributed from top to bottom.

  So what did the captain need, the sergeant wanted to know. Leonid named a hard-to-find sanitary article and was handed a piece of paper. The address written on it was in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the island’s chief city.

  “People who aren’t in uniform get better prices,” the fat sergeant counseled him. “The man to talk to is Yevchuk.”

  After going off duty, Leonid changed his clothes and took the bus to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Some men from his company, also on their way to town, inquired whether the captain was looking for a good time. For appearances’ sake, he asked them to recommend a nightclub.

  Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk was a town that had sprung up quickly, with the usual mixture of four-story apartment buildings and ground-level wooden houses. The administrative centers of the state oil and gas holding companies stood out like palaces in the cityscape. Leonid bought some smoked fish from a street vendor, and as he ate it, he was struck, as he’d been when he first arrived, by how many Koreans he saw, visible proof that Asians had decided to remain in the Soviet Union after Sakhalin was liberated from Japan.

  The address the sergeant had given him wasn’t far from the train station. When Leonid got there, dusk was already falling. The building he was looking for took up the entire block and seemed, at least outwardly, to be a large store that sold seeds and fertilizer. Leonid looked around the official stockroom and said to the only clerk that he’d heard one could also buy spare parts for toilet facilities there.

  “We’re about to close,” the man said gruffly, taking off his work smock.

  “Is Yevchuk in the building?”

  The clerk looked the visitor over, found him unobjectionable, and acknowledged that he himself was Yevchuk. “What do you need?”

  At first, Leonid stuck to his story and inquired whether the store carried a certain kind of ball valve.

  “Maybe so, maybe no,” said Yevchuk. Then he led Leonid into the real stockroom. “You have to look for it yourself.”

  Leonid was ready for anything; nevertheless, the size of that warehouse amazed him. He saw displayed, on some five thousand square feet of floor space, all the basic necessities that were in such short supply elsewhere: dishes, housewares, canned goods, furniture, entire bathrooms, closets, even musical instruments. The largest section contained automobile parts. About twenty people were rummaging around in the items on the display tables; some customers clutched exhaust pipes or generators or dashboards in their arms. Yevchuk led Leonid to the toilet section, which wasn’t so well stocked—cracked toilet bowls, rusty pipe couplings. Relieved at being unable to find what he wasn’t looking for, Leonid casually asked what the weapons inventory was like.

  “Who did you say recommended this place to you?”

  The captain in civilian clothes named the sergeant and declared, in plain language, that he—Leonid—was looking for a good pistol.

  “Don’t have any.”

  Leonid had expected this response and indicated that he was prepared to pay a premium to anyone who could help him find what he wanted, but it was only when he pulled a small roll of ruble notes out of one trouser pocket and thrust them in the other that Yevchuk decided to take a chance. “In that case, we have to go down one floor.” He opened a door, made certain that nobody was following them, slipped in behind Leonid, and locked the door from the inside. Saying, “Our rifle selection is bigger,” Yevchuk turned on a light and presented the armory.

  Leonid concealed his amazement. The weaponry on offer before him would have sufficed to arm an average-sized company: everything from assault rifles, sorted according to their year of manufacture, to component parts for light artillery pieces. The items displayed for sale were all in excellent condition, not damaged or substandard goods but modern equipment that was missing from the military’s inventories.

  “Pistols are over there.”

  Leonid went to the display table. After a brief glance, he knew his weapon wasn’t on it. “These seem positively antique,” he said, not looking at Yevchuk. “Don’t you have anything newer, anything that’s come in recently?”

  “New acquisitions must be treated first.”

  “Treated?”

  “You don’t want to buy an item that can be traced.”

  Leonid understood. “Ah, the serial number.”

  “Our weapons have never had such a number,” Yevchuk said with a smile.

  “I’m kind of in a hurry,” Leonid said, unrelenting. “What would it cost me to buy a pistol with a serial number?”

  “We’ve never had such a case.” Yevchuk’s suspicions had immediately reappeared.

  “Please do me this favor.” Leonid extracted his money roll, peeled off a bill, laid it next to a revolver, and turned away. When he looked at th
e table again, the banknote had disappeared.

  “I’ll see what came in yesterday,” Yevchuk explained. “Wait here.”

  He wasn’t gone five minutes before returning with a cloth bag that contained two weapons. Yevchuk placed them on the table for Leonid’s inspection. He recognized his pistol at once.

  “This one’s an ornamental piece,” Yevchuk said. “It belonged to a colonel. You see the initials on the barrel? And that’s a one-aught-six, standard issue for the armored infantry. It’s got a good feel in the hand.”

  Leonid’s pistol had been unloaded. He patiently let Yevchuk explain to him the workings of his own weapon, seemed to hesitate before his two choices, and asked about the price of the colonel’s pistol. Yevchuk named a sum that was unquestionably too high.

  “In that case …” Leonid put the colonel’s gun aside. “I’ll take this one, then.”

  Yevchuk offered a price break for the more expensive pistol, but Leonid didn’t waver. They haggled a while longer. In the end, Leonid bought his weapon for the equivalent of a month’s pay.

  “We could still file off that number real quick,” Yevchuk offered. His customer thanked him but declined, asked if he could have the cloth bag for carrying the piece, and left the store as quickly as possible.

  Relieved at having evaded disagreeable consequences, Leonid examined his surroundings. The streetlamps were just coming on. This part of town was quite lively, with people going in and out of the little bars around the train station. Leonid decided to take the late bus back to Korsakov, stuffed the cloth bag containing his recent purchase into an inside pocket, and strolled off into the evening. The soldiers he saw were wearing linen uniform jackets, which were a rarity on Sakhalin even in summer. A couple was having trouble with their motor scooter; to save face, the young man had his girlfriend sit on the scooter and started pushing both machine and girl up a hill.