Bar in the Departure zone. The story of one escape
Alexander Couprin
Moscow 1981. The hard currency bar in the departure area of Sheremetyevo International Airport. The bartender murders a drunken West German citizen in the restroom. With the victim’s clothing, documents, and ticket, he plans to assume the victim’s identity and escape the USSR. The author, a former criminal investigator with extensive expertise, delves into the lives of the era’s protagonists, ranging from hotel prostitutes to KGB generals.
Bar in the Departure zone
The story of one escape
Alexander Couprin
Cover designer Denis Lopatin
© Alexander Couprin, 2023
© Denis Lopatin, cover design, 2023
ISBN 978-5-0060-2406-9
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
CATCHING ECHOES OF THE PAST
Attention passengers, please check in for your flight and note that the boarding gate has been announced…Final boarding call…
The woman in the booth appeared confused.
“Wait, so you are flying back to Germany now?”
“Oh, sorry.” The traveler felt a crooked smile form at the corner of his mouth. “Is it forbidden?”
“I just don’t understand. Your incoming flight just arrived, and you’re not even going into the city?”
“No, I don’t care to.”
The female control officer pressed a hidden lever, and the FSB officer began monitoring the conversation. The passenger is a US citizen named Dmitry Klimov. He is polite and pleasant, and his documentation is in order, but what does this mean? Getting off one plane, wandering around Sheremetyevo without leaving for the city, and then boarding another plane back to where he came from? The procedure to get here was arduous, with countless forms at the consulate, certifications, and photos required to obtain a Russian visa and purchase a business class ticket. And all this just to take a walk around the airport?
The FSB officer hunched over the monitor, listening to the conversation, and spoke quietly into the microphone. “Girls, take a look at the client in Area Four, male, athletic build, wearing a canvas jacket trimmed in leather, light brown shoes, and thick, blond hair – possibly a wig.”
Once upon a time, Department 7, the section of the KGB responsible for surveilling foreigners, employed operatives of both sexes, so that if the need arose, a target could even be accompanied to the toilet. Now, KGB successor, FSB is all about technology and remote video surveillance is so tightly organized that “guiding” a target has become no more difficult than playing a computer game, although physical surveillance is still used indoors and outdoors.
In the arrivals hall, a passenger was captured by camera operators, followed, and handed off to customs control. There, he underwent a thorough examination by legitimate customs officers and security personnel working undercover. If no contraband or suspicious items were found, the passenger was subsequently released into the city.
However, this passenger did not leave and instead wandered around the airport building, peering intently at the glass doors, stairs, and hallways. This behavior triggered all the government machinery. He was being tailed, video recordings were being made, and personal data from the visa application form was urgently requested. Only the old installation engineer, who once served in the KGB and had access to the monitors, gloomily commented, “He is remembering, remembering and comparing.”
“What does he remember?” insisted the shift supervisor.
“He’s a builder, most likely from Rutebau.”
“What’s that, Valov? What does it mean?”
“The firm that built the airport. The Germans built it. From West Germany. The Rutebau company.”
“Hmmm, I didn’t know.”
And you’re a brainless piece of shit, sadly thought the retiree. In the old days, I wouldn’t have promoted you beyond a first-grade technician.
But times had changed, and he is no longer an airport security boss, as he was back in the 80s. Ah, the 80s… Yes, and he himself should already be at rest due to arrhythmia. What a distasteful word…
He did not recognize the person on the monitor screens, although the thick hair remotely resembled someone from the distant past.
After wandering around the airport for an hour and a half, the passenger returned to the check-in counter, passed through customs and passport control, and was now slowly ascending the escalator to the second floor in the departure area.
Right there, where the stairs end, there was once a foreign currency bar, well known to the outgoing Moscow elite. Rubles were also accepted, but not from everybody. Here, well-known athletes poured beer from outlandish aluminum cans, diplomats focused on their caviar sandwiches. Here, the poet Yevtushenko ordered green tea, and beloved artist Volodya Vysoskiy politely asked for cold vodka. All of them famous, all of them bohemian, all those who would be granted the ridiculous foreign title “celebrity” had passed by this counter.
The memories seemed to weaken passenger’s knees. The bar was empty, and he chose a table at the edge, sat down, and threw his bag onto a vacant chair. A blue-shaven bartender with a military bearing leisurely approached him. He wanted to tell the visitor that they were on a technical break and that the chairs were not intended for luggage. He even raised a finger to point to the offending bag, but then visitor’s phone rang. Ignoring the barman, he spoke into the phone in German. The bartender silently returned to his post behind the counter. After about five minutes, traveler ended the conversation and sank into reverie. His eyes scanned the room, trying to recapture the past. Alas, there was nothing to grasp onto. Of course, this was not the same bar. Gone were the curved sofas and the odd barstools at a low and wide bar. And the bar itself was missing as the place had become more of a restaurant.
The ring! Of course, the ring! Where was it – the hole left from the bronze ring in the ceiling, dislodged by a champagne cork? The entire ceiling of the airport was made up of these rings – they clustered together and hung like brown honeycombs over thousands of bustling passenger bees. This was Sheremetyevo’s hallmark. No other airport, and probably no other building in the country, had anything like it. But the rings were gone. The ceiling was now completely different, ordinary like any other airport in the world.
What had he and Anya been celebrating in the storage room? And why had he not allowed her to open the bottle? In his inexperienced hands, the champagne popped deafeningly, the heavy cork shot up like a bullet and stayed there. Seized by horror, they stared as one of the millions of those rings fell. It turned out that they were not metal but rather plastic with a bronze finish. Frightened to death, they quickly stoppered the bottle with something and rushed to the exit, through the checkpoint to the bus.
Dima searched the ceiling for a long time for the stuck cork until Uncle Vlad, the senior bartender-administrator, noticed and remarked, “They already know your face well enough. Stop looking up.”
Yes, the ceiling of the airport was made up of rings to mask the lenses of surveillance cameras – it was a joke to all the employees of Sheremetyev-2 in those years. And the passengers presumably thought the same.
“Es tut mir leid, geht es Ihnen gut?” asked the bartender with genuine concern as he touched the passenger’s shoulder and set a glass of cold water in front of him.
“Oh, forgive me, for God’s sake,” he answered in Russian. “I just felt a bit dizzy. May I sit here for a few more minutes?”
“Yes, as long as you like. Call me if you need anything. I’ll be over there working on some papers.”
Oh, those papers… shift change schedules, the commodity report, warehouse requirements, and something else, and, finally, the most important thing is the report on the currency received. An error on any document could cost you your job. At the same time, if the figures were manipulated cleverly and plausibly, some excess money could drop into the bartender’s pocket without much risk.
“Paperwork is creative work,” Anya quoted a friend of hers. “Treat it with your soul and get a sweet reward.” She folded a small airplane out of a hundred ruble note and waving it above her head, walked into the back room.
“After all, you wouldn’t refuse to go with a lady to the Arbat tonight?” She pushed him against the crates of mineral water, pressing her breasts into his chest, and her eyes shone with a myriad of twinkling lights.
Looking up from the papers, the bartender regarded his only customer who was still looking off into the distance, into the depths of years past, and the bartender even imagined he saw a tear running down the guest’s cheek.
“No, no, I don’t need any help. And the flight has already been announced. Thank you. Thanks.”
He grabbed his half-empty bag and headed for boarding. Strange passenger.
DIMA (1981)
Dima shifted in his seat, his face still pressed against the window as he observed the spit-stained station platform. The view wasn’t particularly exciting, but as a passenger, it was customary to look out the window. Spherically fat grandmothers, or perhaps young women disguised as grandmothers, dressed in identical quilted jackets and gray shawls, were selling simple food on the platform. Nuts, pies with various fillings, including questionable “meat” that Dima had learned to avoid after getting sick in Khabarovsk. The gray mass vaguely resembled meat but was of uncertain origin, rumored to be a mixture of offal, soy, or even stray dogs. Dima had learned his lesson after two days of illness.
A cheerful former convict, released early due to illness, teased Dima, calling him “First on the Pot,” referring to his recent bout of sickness. Fortunately, the nickname didn’t stick, and Dima remained known as Dima for the rest of the journey. The ex-convict, weakened by his condition, rarely left his folding bench. He joked about going home on the “path of recovery,” a sarcastic reference to his release certificate. Although everyone in the train car understood the underlying meaning, it was a sensitive topic, and no one dared to make light of it.
Dima stayed seated when the conductor motioned for him to come to her compartment.
“Why are you sitting there, kid? He almost certainly has tubik,” she remarked.
“What’s tubik?” Dima asked.
“Tubik, my boy, means tuberculosis,” the conductor explained.
“But he says it’s his stomach,” Dima replied.
“Well, then you must know better, doctor. Get out of here.”
Regretting her interaction with the youngster, the conductor worried that he would spread what she said throughout the car. Dima, however, remained silent, simply moving a bit farther away from the former prisoner.
On the platform beneath the dimly glowing neon sign reading “Sverdlovsk,” Dima purchased hot potatoes wrapped in newspaper and two limp pickles from the spherical ladies. Carefully removing the newsprint from the potatoes with a knife, he ate without much enthusiasm. The black newspaper text left a blue imprint on the potatoes, puzzling him. He sat there for a while, lost in thought, not about the color transformation of newsprint but about the fractures in life and the need to adapt and make changes.
Dima was not an outgoing person; he preferred to listen rather than speak. But the journey seemed to loosen people’s tongues more than any interrogator could.
“If you had stayed a few more years, you would be on the icebreaker ‘Lenin,’ feeding penguins,” someone remarked.
“Penguins? Are there penguins in the Arctic?” Dima asked, amazed.
“Why not? Where else would they have gone? I saw it on TV,” someone else chimed in from a nearby bench.
Dima found the statement to be blatantly ignorant and chose not to respond, not even turning his head.
“And so, is it hard to get into the Marine College?” the ex-prisoner asked, trying to keep the conversation going.
“No. I applied after being discharged from the Army. Service counts. Acceptance was easy.”
“Did they kick you out, Dima? Didn’t have enough pull?”
“It just wasn’t my thing. Even in the Army I got tired of barracks life.”
“Not your thing? Hah! But then what is your thing? Don’t answer. It’s already time for me to get measured for a wooden suit, and I don’t even know what my thing was or how I fucked it up… Did you say you have an uncle in Moscow?”
Dima sat on another bench, seeking solace in observing the ceiling covered with fly droppings. He preferred to have a conversation about life with the old ex-convict without the eager listeners surrounding them, making him feel like he was in a Komsomol meeting. Unhappy thoughts started to intrude into his mind.
Indeed, he had an uncle in Moscow. Despite his reluctance to turn to him for help, circumstances had left him with no other choice. All roads seemed to lead to Vlad, his weary uncle and only remaining relative. Dima loved and respected him, but there was an incident at Dima’s farewell party before he went off to the Army that left a sour memory.
Uncle Vlad worked as the manager of an anonymous café and an adjoining grocery store. Living alone, he felt a sense of responsibility towards his few remaining relatives, including his sister and nephew. He provided them with food, financial support, advice, and patronage. As a grocer, he held a respected position in Soviet society, and people from various backgrounds sought his acquaintance, including engineers and prosecutors.
For Vlad, organizing Dima’s farewell party as he transitioned from civilian life to the Army was a small matter, an inconsequential task. With loud farewells, the alcohol flowed, and Dima’s friends and neighbors slowly dispersed into the Zelenograd apartment block. But then, unexpectedly, a local small-time criminal known as “Chief” called Dima over. Dima, being non-confrontational and having no issues with Chief, approached the garages without expecting any trouble. However, what he heard there turned out to be worse than any physical altercation.
“Dimon, here’s the thing… your uncle Vlad is a fag.”
“What did you say?” Dima was outraged. “You drank the port wine and vodka he brought, and Vlad didn’t act oddly at all. What happened?”
“Chief” realized the conversation was going south and fell silent. Then Tolyan spoke – he was older, already had completed military service but had not yet found a job, preferring to spend his days hanging out in the yard.
“You don’t get it. He’s a real faggot, a queer.”
Dima wanted to get away never to return to this courtyard or this city.
As through a fog he heard Tolyan say that Vlad’s new friend, an Estonian, had tried to stab him. The police hauled both of them in, and the Estonian said he wanted to kill Vlad because he was jealous.
The weight of the situation overwhelmed the 18-year-old Dima, leaving him physically ill. When the dizziness subsided and everyone had left, he found himself alone. His uncle, who regularly sent greetings in letters from his mother, had taken over the correspondence when she fell ill with advanced form of breast cancer and became unable to write. In the winter of 1979, Dima was granted leave to attend his mother’s funeral. At first, he didn’t fully grasp the fact that he was now completely alone in the world. It was only after returning to the barracks that the reality sunk in.
During the memorial service, the director of the Defense Research Institute, where his mother had worked her entire life, mentioned that although housing was state-owned, Dima could keep his mother’s apartment if he agreed to join the institute upon his return. However, deep down, Dima knew that he would never return to that apartment or the Moscow satellite city, let alone the closed defense facility. He observed his grief-stricken uncle Vlad with detachment and dismissed the rumors that were circulating. After all, the Estonian had been released quickly, and there he stood behind Vlad, wearing a comical hat adorned with a wolf’s tail.
Six months later, the monotonous life in the army barracks came to an end. Private Dmitriy Klimov, accompanied by a group of partially intoxicated former soldiers, walked out of the gates of the army base. Instead of the cumbersome uniform, he now donned a windbreaker. Instead of a suitcase filled with photo albums, he carried a half-empty sports bag containing his military ID and a document called a “Military Transportation Order,” granting him a free railway ticket. Dima had chosen Vladivostok, a distant city on the Pacific coast, as his destination.
FMD and SMD
The most important and prestigious section of the KGB is, of course, the First Chief Directorate – FCD (intelligence). This is the dream of young romantics whose heartfelt wish is to join the “Komitet.” Bitter disappointment awaits many of them. Upon returning from various foreign assignments, they will discover they are being watched, their phones tapped, and their careers will come to a halt. They spend long hours with their heads in their hands, trying to recall where and when they had aroused suspicion. Which of their comrades could be the source of the denunciation? The trouble, however, is that there may not have been any denunciation at all. The colleague has returned from beyond the ideological front, and who knows, who knows?
Members of the Second Chief Directorate – SCD (counterintelligence) almost never go on operational trips abroad, and because of this, their careers are more predictable. Life and service are simpler. For example, they are not required to live undercover – neighbors and friends could know that so-and-so works in the KGB. For every FCD officer, however, a cover story was arranged. Usually, for friends and neighbors he was supposed to be an engineer at a secret defense facility. Most employees of the FCU of the KGB of the USSR never used an official ID – a plastic card without a photo and without a name was used to enter the huge complex at Yasenevo on the outskirts of Moscow, and it never occurred to anyone to flash a brown folding ID with the embossed letters “KGB” to anyone without serious cause. Any way you look at it, life in the SCD was simpler.
The senior operations officer of Department “T” of the SCD, Major Valov, left the Detskiy Mir (Children’s World) store. In his right hand was a slim diplomatic briefcase while in his left, like a conjurer, he held two ice cream bars. Squinting at the sun and glancing at his watch, he ate both and discarded the sticks in an overflowing trash can, crossed the street, and disappeared into Building No. 2 on Dzerzhinskiy Street, the former Bolshaya Lubyanka. Here, on the fourth floor with a window overlooking the dreaded Inner Prison where the employee cafeteria is now located, was his office.
But it was not easy to find Valov there. More often, he could be found in one of the unmarked rooms in the main building of international airport Sheremetyevo-2, right behind the Deputy Hall. Or in the basement of the airport behind a steel door with the inscription “Civil Defense.” Or in the departure hall where he walked around with a detached look pretending to be a passenger. Often, he would sit at the bar with his habitual double-scoop of ice cream. Of course, the staff knew who he was, no secret about that. Among themselves, they called him “our curator from the KGB” or simply “curator.” In fact, the departure zone was his real workplace, a sort of battlefield where, like chess pieces on a board, his proxies and confidential informants were placed, special equipment was installed and concealed. Valov had sources among cleaners, customs officers, border guards, and even pilots.
It is not that the average Soviet citizen was naturally secretive and close-mouthed, but having been caught in a petty theft, a bribe, immorality, or any offense that entailed a trial and dismissal, he became extremely talkative and provided mountains of information, sometimes unexpected and sometimes unrelated to the work of the KGB. He would be investigated and asked to sign a document obligating him to voluntarily cooperate with the authorities, a pseudonym was selected, a schedule for secret meetings was agreed upon.
The major despised “initiators” – those who voluntarily sought contact and offered information. There were a large number of them, but, all employees at Sheremetyevo were not averse to snitching to the KGB. However, Valov, being an experienced operative, understood that these volunteers all wanted to use him, Major Valov. Some wanted to settle a score through him, some wanted to advance in their jobs, and others, anticipating future problems, wanted to get into his favor as an excuse or to receive special treatment.
Major Valov never refused to listen but mainly trusted his own tested informants, recruited based on solid evidence, indebted to him, and deeply involved in their own informant activities. In official documents, this is referred to as an “informant network,” and through this network, streams of foreigners flowed day and night. They would drink too much, eat, and buy souvenirs, speculating that the cashier or a cheerful bartender might have some connection with the “kay-gee-bee” (KGB). However, these were the rules of the game during the height of the Cold War.
The network provided a vast amount of information, often of a criminal nature, or as it was termed in the KGB, “police related info.” It was meticulously documented but never directly shared with the police to protect the anonymity of the sources. However, it would be incorrect to say that this data was not utilized – it was often used to recruit new KGB informants.
Foreigners, as a category, rarely interested Valov. This was the domain and concern of the prestigious First Chief Directorate of the KGB of the USSR. Instead, Valov focused on Soviet citizens actively seeking contact with foreigners. Providing a tip about such individuals could earn an informant a cash bonus, exemption from legal troubles, and, in some cases, a State award. These awards were granted by a secret order of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Recipients were prohibited from wearing or boasting about them to neighbors or relatives. However, Valov had never had such informants in his network. The majority of individuals in Valov’s network were ordinary people who had found themselves in some sort of trouble, which had been documented in intelligence reports that landed on Valov’s desk.
Major opened steel safe and pulled out two folders – one thin folder labeled “Personal” and the other thick folder with the words “Operational” written on the cover, along with the bold inscription “Confidential Informant LARIN” in felt-tip pen. Glancing at his watch once more, Valov picked up both folders and headed to meet his boss.
The head of Department “T,” responsible for counterintelligence operations at transportation facilities, occupied a bright and spacious office on the third floor. This “General” had formerly been a high-ranking member of the Party’s Central Committee, but during the campaign to “strengthen intelligence,” he was transferred to the KGB. Despite lacking experience as an intelligence officer and never holding a military rank, he was promoted to the rank of General overnight – a common practice aimed at imposing Party control over law enforcement. In the USSR, ideology always took precedence over professionalism. The Dzerzhinsky Red Banner Univercity of the KGB even had a special faculty to train those transferred Party and Komsomol workers for leadership positions within the KGB.
The former Party boss held a certain appreciation for Valov’s superior operational skills but also harbored a slight fear due to the absence of compromising information on him. Consequently, their interactions were infrequent. Although the major had a direct superior, that person had recently gone on vacation, leaving Valov in charge. After explaining his request, the General leaned over to read the contents of the “personal” file.
Valov had made a peculiar request – to seek approval for hiring the nephew of the informant named “Larin” as a porter. Larin, whose real name is Vlad Klimov, himself worked as a bartender in the departure zone of Sheremetyevo-2 and implored Valov not to obstruct his nephew’s employment. Larin had already handled all the necessary paperwork with the airport management using his connections, and the only remaining step was to secure the Committee’s approval.
“I don’t quite understand why he wants a relative to work there. And I understand even less why we need him,” the General emphasized the word “we.”
“There’s nothing illogical about it,” the major responded quietly. “There isn’t a single shift change at the bar without shortages. The porters typically steal beer and cigarettes. They drink the beer and break the empty bottles so they can claim they were damaged in transit, and the cigarettes are simply smoked in the storage room, eliminating the need to carry them through the checkpoint. Sometimes they loosen the caps of the cognac bottles and extract ten or twenty grams. Currently, they’re short of a porter. All the shift bartenders have to come in an hour early and transport the goods themselves on carts – they complain, but it’s better than shortages. A porter who doesn’t drink and happens to be a relative of the senior bartender administrator is precisely what they need.”
“Well, what good is a teetotaling porter to us then?” the General asked, once again emphasizing the word “us.”
“None. But “Larin’ wasn’t rewarded at all for the mother-of-pearl icon case,” the major replied.
“Tsarevich Aleksey?” the General became interested.
“Yes, it all happened in his bar, and he was the one who provided the initial information,” the major confirmed.
“Right, but all the glory went to the Counter-smuggling team! He should be punished for this,” the General exclaimed, laughing.
It had been a significant incident involving the wife of an African diplomat who had attempted to smuggle out an antique icon by strapping it between her legs and nearly strangling Officer Shubin from the Tenth Department (counter-smuggling) with his own tie. Many employees from the Tenth Department were rewarded, the woman was expelled from the country, and Sasha Shubin became the head of the department.
“Well, I can’t tell an informant that contraband isn’t our job, that Department “T” and Department ’10” are not the same,” the major explained.
“True, of course,” the General agreed. “But could he be revarded with money?”
“You clearly don’t understand how much they make over there,” Valov replied, daring to show a touch of insolence as he gazed out the window, his eyes filled with hatred. “So let me tell you – up to three hundred rubles a day! In just one day! And during the Olympics, that faggot managed to earn enough to buy a one-room cooperative apartment.”
The general disliked Valov’s tone and wanted to put him in his place, but Valov continued, “The bartenders receive more tips in rubles and foreign currency in a five-day week than you and I together in a month. They’re the ones who could motivate us with money.”
Noticing the expression on the general’s face, Valov fell silent.
“Well,” said the general, “try to control your emotions and explain what you want from me. You could have approved the nephew yourself.”
“I can’t. They are close relatives. The instruction states ‘in special cases.’”
“What instruction?” the former Party member asked, immediately regretting his question.
“Instruction Two Zero Sixty,” the major replied in surprise.
Oh, you’re a bitch, thought the general to himself. He was upset and changed the subject. “Is he really a homo?”
“Yes. He was recruited in 1977 in an incident with his homosexual partner – he was pulled out of the incarceration unit of the Zelenograd police department. Jealousy. Fight. Non-penetrating stab wound in the stomach.”
“I don’t care for your attitude toward sources,” pronounced the general in the officious tone of a former instructor of the Central Committee. “But why so much hate? Why do you speak with such irritation about your own informant who has worked with you for years? Yes, sometimes they have a lot of money; yes, they are not awakened and called to report in the middle of the night as we sometimes are. They live materially better than us in some ways, but tell me honestly, would you change places with this ‘Larin?’”
And again, the apparatchik realized he had blundered. After all, the informant was a homosexual. What a day!
NEPHEW AND UNCLE
“Well, everything seems to be settled,” said Vlad. “You start work on Friday.”
Dima’s heart beat a tattoo – what incredible luck! He had been living for four months in his uncle’s new cooperative apartment on Leningradskaya Street, a life he found quite pleasant. The apartment, although only one room, was quite large with a glassed-in balcony and a spacious kitchen.
Vlad had a custom-made sofa in the corner of the kitchen. One side of the sofa was wide, and the other side was narrow. This was where Dima slept and kept his clothes in large drawers. Vlad was rarely at home, and when he was, he usually played LPs on his expensive audio equipment and read Western magazines that foreign customers left at the bar.
After graduating with honors from the Moscow Institute for National Economics, Vlad quickly climbed the corporate ladder before becoming bored and requesting a transfer from the Moscow Food Production Center to manage a small café in the Moscow district of Izmailovo. His request was granted, and Vlad began to enjoy a life of freedom and good money.
Having been on the receiving end of fiscal reports for years, Vlad spent his evenings revising almost all his paperwork. An old accountant, Nina Ivanovna, had been asking for a pension for a long time, complaining of failing eyesight. Instead of a pension, the new manager started paying her a quarterly bonus and took over half of the accounts from her. The old lady could hardly believe her luck, and soon the enterprise began to function almost like a private business – with neat reports and revenues just a little bit higher than those of the previous manager, while a significant portion was kept by Vlad.
The café didn’t earn much, maybe a tenth of the culinary turnover, but by renting it out to the right people for weddings and birthday parties, the young manager made acquaintances. The food service also brought in a lot of money. Bones, for example, were a profitable commodity. Vlad received two small truckloads of bones per week from the meatpacking plant. He would bring his nephew, Dima, to the café to help and the two of them would trim the bones of cartilage and residual meat with special curved knives. These trimmings would then be used in meat pies and dumplings.
The unexpected arrival of his nephew pleased Vlad, not only because the boy was his only relative, but because Vlad’s own life had somehow stalled. Two years earlier, Vlad had experienced bouts of severe depression followed by some improvement, but the turbulent 1980 with the Moscow Olympics and the transition to work at Sheremetyevo, brought about a further improvement.
Vlad’s relationship with Jurgenson, the Estonian, continued, but it had become monotonous. His life was well-structured, and he didn’t expect any significant changes at work. When a letter arrived from distant Vladivostok, Vlad was filled with enthusiasm and looked forward to seeing his nephew. Dima was not only a kindred spirit but also an interesting and unusual person in many ways.
From kindergarten to seventh grade, Dima had a clear notion of his future. He wanted to travel! He will be a worl famous traveller. He found conversations among other kids about astronauts and the military amusing because those dreamers knew nothing about space or the military. But Dima knew everything about his future life. He could easily name all the capitals of all countries. He knew which countries bordered Paraguay and could easily find the city with the strange name Papeete on a map. Putting little Dima to bed was never a problem. He would simply close his eyes, and a huge, slowly rotating globe with mountain topography and blue oceans would graciousely descend from the ceiling. All that remained was to concentrate on the southern tip of Chile, bring it closer, feel the spray of Cape Horn on his face, listen to the cries of thousands of gulls, and the boy would fall asleep with a smile on his face.
But around the seventh grade, he began to realize the catastrophic nature of his situation as a Soviet schoolboy. His mother was the first to explain that his plans were unrealistic, but it was not easy to deprive a person of their dreams, and Dima felt offended, not by the system, but by his lonely, hard-working mother. He thought that if she were, for example, the Secretary of the Regional Party Committee, he might have had a chance to become a traveler. He saw that Julia from another class went with her parents to Bulgaria, and her father was only a Komsomol apparatchik, not even a Party member.
Closer to the end of school, Dima’s understanding of the situation became clearer, but his childhood dreams of traveling the world did not fade away. Strangely, he had no interest in the geography and beauty of his homeland, whether it was the White nights of Leningrad or the vast forests of Siberia. The realization that his dreams were hindered by the political structure of the country turned him into a quiet, passive enemy of the system.
He started listening to the BBC in English and the Voice of America in Russian, not because he was interested in dissidents or exposing regime crimes, but simply to learn about the world and how people lived abroad. He didn’t have any intention of fighting against anyone; he just wanted to escape by any means possible. However, the problem was that there seemed to be no way to escape. The extensive Soviet border was heavily guarded primarily to prevent people from leaving. Entire regions were designated as “state border zones,” with forbidden zones reaching up to two hundred kilometers in width. Approaching the controlled border strip was unthinkable, and crossing the land border was out of the question.
Meanwhile, school came to an end, and Dima’s confused mother called Vlad. “Listen, he’s flying to Riga to join some aviation institute.”
Vlad was taken aback. “That’s strange. I don’t remember him showing an interest in aviation.”
“Vlad, we need to dissuade him. He should go to a technology institute.”
“I’ll try to talk to him.”
However, Dima didn’t apply to the Institute of Electronic Technology, the only institute in Zelenograd. Instead, he flew to Latvia, even though he knew his chances were slim. Soon after his failed attempt to enter the Riga Institute of Aviation Engineering, he received his draft notice in the mail. The dreamer accepted the news calmly and decided to request to serve in the border troops.
Night after night, he was tormented by the same recurring dream where he would throw his AK-47 gun and cap to the side and briskly run through the plowed control strip trail, escaping from the Soviet country.
Overcoming his hesitation, Dima turned to his only relative for help. After all, Vlad knew everyone and could do anything. He must have a friend in the military registration and enlistment office who could help his nephew join the border troops. Dima shared his confused request with his uncle, who asked a few questions and then began staring at his nephew. Vlad remained silent for a long time and suddenly buried his face in his hands. Dima knew his uncle was sensitive and sentimental, but this time he became genuinely frightened. Suddenly, Vlad stood up, opened a vintage cabinet drawer, and took out a map of the USSR. He spread it out in front of his silent nephew and began nervously tracing the entire extensive border with a pencil, piercing the paper as he did so.
“Here, here, here, and here!!!” Vlad hissed, pointing to the length of the Soviet borders from China to the Arctic Ocean. “And this tiny piece is the Turkish border. See how small it is? You already know that the Finns and Iranians immediately give defectors back, don’t you?”
Dima didn’t know, but he nodded. Vlad tore out a section of the border with Turkey using his fingers and handed the piece of paper to Dima.
“Take this and measure it along the rest of the border and calculate.”
“What do you mean?” whispered Dima, shocked.
“This fraction, this unit, divided by the rest, will give you your odds, your one-in-a-thousand chances to make it there.”
Later, when Dima was in the army, he learned that there was a special selection process for serving on the Turkish section of the USSR border. He realized there was no chance for him at all.
Vlad’s attitude toward Dima changed. He became attentively alert. Knowing about his nephew’s childhood dreams, he couldn’t imagine that Dima was still holding onto them, that he hadn’t outgrown them or abandoned them. This earned Vlad’s respect but also instilled fear. At eighteen years old, Vlad had never experienced anything like it. Could it be the call of Balkan blood? He knew little about Dima’s father. He knew his exotic name was Dzhanko, but the Hungarian communist Dzhanko was infinitely far from Zelenograd.
During her passionate Komsomol youth, Vlad’s sister won a two-week all-inclusive tour to the newly opened Sputnik International Youth Camp, and Dima was conceived there. Apart from the unusual name, it was known that his father was an ethnic Serb but held Hungarian citizenship for some reason. Dima’s mother categorically refused to talk about him, and Dima never asked. Vlad made inquiries initially but soon realized it was a dead-end. Many years later, Vlad discovered that Dzhanko was alive and well, having moved to Yugoslavia, where he got married and had many children. “Such a nimble dad, a prolific bastard,” Vlad thought, but he didn’t take any action. Contacting anyone abroad was dangerous, very dangerous. Vlad’s sister had long since cooled toward the Komsomol, and besides, she worked at a military factory. Vlad didn’t need a relative abroad mentioned in his personnel file; it would mean an immediate end to his career. “To hell with him, this gypsy,” Vlad decided and never returned to the topic.
Vlad had his own dreams of escaping the USSR and even attempted to register a marriage with a cheerful Odessa woman of Jewish origin, hoping to be included as her husband in her exit visa to Israel. However, it ended horribly. The woman had hoped to turn the marriage of convenience into a real marriage. Vlad had no choice but to confess his sexual orientation to her, leading to an emotional explosion. Even with a lot of money, it was difficult to pay her off as she had already envisioned herself in Jerusalem with her handsome husband, whom she believed owed her his escape. This was followed by a failed attempt to get a job on a cruise ship with the Black Sea Marine Company. Thankfully, he was rejected at an early stage. The personnel department explained that without collateral in the form of a loving wife and a couple of children ashore, no one would allow him on a foreign cruise. Gradually, Vlad’s hope of escape faded and was replaced by prolonged episodes of depression. But after a few years, Vlad was no longer sure if he truly wanted to leave. He was earning a significant amount of money by Soviet standards, his life was settled and comfortable, but it was from this dead dream that his unnoticed mental disorder began to take hold. However, helping and being involved in the lives of his few relatives distracted him and gave his life a special meaning.
Vlad’s sister was torn between work and doctors, and Vlad felt the need to have a serious talk with his nephew. He didn’t ask direct questions, fearing to push the boy into lying and causing pain for both of them. Instead, he simply asked Dima to listen.
“You see, there’s nothing unusual about your desire to leave. Thousands of people dream about it, many have tried and ended up in penal colonies, and only a few have succeeded. And there’s no guarantee that you’ll be one of them. My advice to you is not to freak out! You’ll completely ruin your life.”
“It seems like it’s not really my life at all,” Dima replied wistfully.
“None of us here are living our own lives. Learn to accept reality.”
“So, what can I do?” Dima whispered.
“Just live. Don’t take unnecessary risks and live with your dream. Without dreams, all you have is crap. Go to the army, and we’ll think of something. There are legal ways to leave. You could marry a Jew and then apply for a permit to emigrate to Israel,” Vlad said, but his words lacked conviction, and Dima didn’t pay much attention. At eighteen, two years in the army felt like an eternity.
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