"Sidetracked" - A New Book by Billy Mays

Excerpt from:


SIDETRACKED - One Polish Town’s Unusual Secret to Success

     The Nazi’s, swinging their clubs and shooting anyone who resisted them had even taken a shot at Kazek as he tried to squeeze his way through the crowd to hug his father one last time. Kazek last saw his father waving his arms frantically with tears streaming from his face as he tried to find him and his wife in the crowd of women and children packed desperately close to the train to get last instructions from their men and say a final “I love you” to brothers, fathers, and husbands that would never be seen again.

…They had been caught hiding in the forest not long after the invasion in 1939 and had been branded as part of the underground resistance movement. Now they were gone. Kazek was the only boy left and last year his mother had died leaving him completely alone in Florynka.

* * * * *



     The railroad tracks where Kazek had last seen his father and brothers met the road about a mile out of town. At that point, there was a sidetrack about 500 meters long that paralleled the main track. Trains heading east would pull over to allow the westbound rail traffic by after having picked up speed on the curving decline coming into the Florynka Valley. The eastbound trains might arrive around 5 pm and hold their position on the sidetrack until 8 or 9 pm when the westbound freight trains or the occasionally re-routed passenger train from Kiev to Krakow would come through.

     Kazek knew the schedule well and had gotten used to seeing the freight trains sitting on the siding. Lately he had noticed a lot more Soviet locomotives and freight cars on the tracks. He could always tell the difference between the Polish and USSR trains by the elaborate Soviet red banners and hammer and sickle adorning the gleaming, shiny, black locomotives. They usually sat with steam drifting up from a dozen points on the undercarriage of the sinister-looking locomotive. The tall smoke stack in the front, also shiny black, would belch both smoke and soot in mushroom shaped clouds as the train would pull away from the sidetrack having waited for hours for the westbound train to pass.

     This train and locomotive were especially ornate. It reminded him of the newsreels he had seen of May Day in Moscow on Red Square as missiles and the mighty Soviet war machines, draped in red banners with all of the favorite socialist slogans, passed in front of the camera with waving crowds of people cheering and sometimes crying. There were no locks on the doors, and no conductors guarding whatever treasures were inside. Kazek could see that only a sleepy assistant engineer sat looking out of the rear of the crow’s nest high in the locomotive towards the back of the train.

     Tonight he sat in the dark watching the train and the assistant engineer nodding off in his perch.

     On this evening, though, he was not thinking about his father and brothers’ last goodbye, but about what he was about to do and how to do it without being seen.

The Spy at Majdanek

Excerpt from The Rare Earth Series, Volume One: On the Job Training - Berlin to Vladivostok    

     The soldier began getting louder repeating, “NO FOTO…NO FOTO…NO FOTO!!!!”

     He pointed at a large sign that had a camera crossed out and the word “NIE!” written above it. The soldier then motioned for Jim to step out of the car and pointed at the camera waving his arm and the AK-47 to get it and go with him. Gary and I started to get out of the car not sure if we were all supposed to go with them. The soldiers angrily motioned for us to stay in the car. Jim looked a little sick and told us that if he wasn’t back in a couple of hours to try to get a message to the American Consulate or Embassy. He also muttered that he hoped they would take the film and let him go. He was escorted off through the trees across the road and disappeared behind them.


     Gary and I nervously waited for several hours. I told him that I had heard the automatic shutter going wildly as he panned across the view of the soldiers and the road.

     Gary kept saying, “I knew something wasn’t right with him.”

     We tried to get out of the car several times to get a bit of a breeze to cool off but the soldiers stopped us every time.

     “Under fucking military arrest in martial law Poland…just wunnerful!” Gary lamented.

     After what had been about two hours, a group of four soldiers carrying their rifles came out from behind the trees across the street marching double-time in unison. They formally surrounded the car and opened the door yelling at us to follow them…and to do so immediately without delay. We were taken across the road to a small building with all sorts of red and white painted metal signs emblazoned on the side.



     Gary kept saying, “I love you, Mom! Whatever they say I did…I didn’t do it!”



     I remembered Gary’s line from the old Flip Wilson skit, “The Gorilla in the Cage” but wasn’t laughing about the situation we now found ourselves in.

The Rare Earth Series, Volume Three: Cash in Advance - CIA...My Life Among Spies and Black Marketeers

The author expands on the adventures of being an unwitting spy as well as the role he played in carrying out specific surveillance and courier operations. He details the collection of data by himself and other operatives and describes the publication of numerous papers for Radio Free Europe that became classified CIA documents.

The Rare Earth Series, Volume Two: Trading Dangerously - Import/Export and a Little Thievery

The Soviet-Bloc era black market economy is described by the author, a direct participant in numerous underground transactions. This tell-all tale depicts a ravaged Eastern European reality both before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the economic and political upheavals that rocked Central Europe in 1989-90. Two secret expeditions deep into Russian Siberia to recover strategic materials for the US Government highlight this tale of international intrigue.

The Rare Earth Series, Volume One: On the Job Training - Berlin to Vladivostok

This is the first volume of a four volume series documenting Billy Mays’ twenty years, 1983-2003, living in Central & Eastern Europe. A student turned unwitting spy through his work for Radio Free Europe, Billy’s adventures both before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall are described in a career that spans two decades from Soviet-bloc martial law Poland through the Klondike-like era following the Soviet Union’s collapse.


In the course of an amazingly successful career as a director for several multinational firms (including FEDEX) and as a corporate real estate executive, the author befriends world leaders, becomes engaged in spy networks, is immersed in black market trading, and has numerous brushes with death along the way.

This is a true account of unusual events as they occurred in Central Europe when both political and economic upheaval changed the region from Soviet control to European Union membership. The author’s sometimes unexpected role and participation in that transformation of the “New Europe” provides an entertaining backdrop as he personally pursues a career…quite literally…getting his training while on the job.