Help from Some Ladies

     Yekaterina (Katerina) and Yevgeniya (Zhenia) were in the dining car having soup with bread and a drink as the train pulled out of Samara. Yuri and I had made it back well before departure but we had been sitting in a small cocktail bar near the platform when we heard the whistle and announcement that the train would be departing in 2 minutes. We hustled over to our car, #4, and got on.  As we had passed the restaurant car, I had seen the two women sitting at a booth and realized that they had a different look about them. Very pretty but made up a little too much maybe for the dust and dirt that they would now be "swimming" through on the train, I wondered where they were from and where they might be going.  Chelyabinsk was 20 hours away. If the schedule was right, we would be arriving around noon tomorrow.

     Wanting to get back to my sleeping berth, get cleaned up a little, and then see if I could find our new travelers in the restaurant car, I walked into Vlad. He was clearly drunk and talking to himself when I stepped into our compartment. Yuri and Toshek were not around and I was forced to deal with him myself. He muttered something like, "You fucked up asshole." in Russian and was looking at me as he said it. While I wasn't positive that he was directing his comment at me, it did seem pretty likely since he was shaking his head and still staring at me.

     "I'm finished now and I can deal with you...however I like." he said to me as I was nervously changing my shirt and putting on my jacket.  I knew exactly what he had said in Russian but tried to act as if I hadn't. He poured a large shot of vodka into a green bell pepper that he had cut the top off of making a 3 or 4 ounce shot "glass". He downed it quickly and looked away. The vodka bottle was almost empty. Judging by how drunk he was, I guessed that this was his second 1/2 liter bottle. I was ready to leave and did so as fast as I could. The restaurant car was on the other side of the luggage car and I sprinted there hoping that Vlad would not follow me. The last thing I wanted was to have him barging into the dining car screaming obscenities.

     Katerina and Zhenia were still sitting where I had seen them. It was an elevated table for two with stools bolted to the floor and no chance of inviting myself to their table...unless I stood.  Instead, I asked the waiter if I could sit near the window that was closest to them. I also asked him if the ladies had ordered anything alcoholic to drink. He said that they had ordered one vodka but he thought it was time for a second shot and asked if I was buying. I told him I would be glad to buy for them...and for him. He smiled and said thank you, tipping his hat a little.

     "Do you mind if I sit over here by the window?" I asked the women in English as I passed by them and noticed that they were not wearing the typical bad Russian perfumes. They smiled slightly and the older woman said, "Not at all. Please do. We are leaving soon."

     "I'm sorry to hear that. I asked the waiter to bring out two more of whatever you were drinking."

     "Have you already paid him?" the younger woman asked as she looked at me and then looked at her friend without any change in her expression.  I lied and said that I had.

     "In that case we will have one more if you will join us here."

     "The table does not allow a third person. Maybe you will come to my booth here and join me?"  They gathered their few things and sat down. The younger woman next to me and the older directly across.

     "What is this word 'boot'? Are you saying 'boot' like shoe? The younger woman was beginning to laugh a little as her older friend was querying me about booth and boot.  I was pretty sure that the older lady was having fun with this language lesson and being playful...but she was a good actor as she played seriously.

     "Why would Americans or British use boot to describe a place to sit and have a meal. Boots are dirty!"  The younger lady was laughing and put her head back as she laughed out loud.

     "I am Yekaterina and this is Yevgeniya, my niece." said the older of the two. She held her hand out not sure if I would shake it or try to kiss it. I could tell that this was the case as she started with her palm down and then turned her palm perpendicular to the floor as she saw I was reaching out similarly. It was an important moment, I think. Shaking her hand would be more American and I wasn't sure if I wanted to play the Polish card yet. (Poles would always opt to kiss a woman's hand if it is offered.)

     "May I call you Katerina and Zhenia?" I asked. They both were surprised that I had already suggested an informal shortening of their names but Katerina replied, "Yes, it's ok. You said our names very well. I think you know some Russian."

     "Not much" I said. "I know Polish pretty well." And our drinks came out. The waiter put a bottle on the table with four glasses. I was looking at the fourth glass and the waiter said, "I will take my shot and go. Thank you Mr. Mays."

     "Mr. Mays...now we know your last name. Shall we know your first name? You know only our first names."

     "Billy or Bill"

     "Nice to meet you, Billy or Bill"

     "Let's make it Bill."

     "OK...Nice to meet you, Bill."

     "Very nice to meet you Katerina and Zhenia."

     "He has a nice voice, Auntie, don't you think?" Zhenia whispered in Russian but loud enough for me to hear.

***

     Katerina and Zhenia were returning to Chelyabinsk from what I understood had been three years in Moscow and Kiev. Katerina's sister, Zhenia's mother, had agreed to let Zhenia go to Moscow with Katerina after she had graduated from Nowosibirsk State University.  During that three years, Zhenia's mother had died of complications from kidney failure and inability to get dialysis while waiting for a donor and possible transplant.  Her death, two years ago, instead of bringing them both back to Chelyabinsk, pushed them to return to Moscow to forget the pain of losing her.  Katerina had never had a child and had always participated in raising Zhenia as she grew up. Now that Zhenia was in her mid twenties, they were best of friends. I guessed that Katerina was, at most, maybe five years older than me. She was a short haired natural blond, not super thin but quite muscular and about my height with slight Asian features in her face and Zhenia was a tall, thin, true red-head with long hair and had no sign of the Asian hints that I saw in her aunt. In fact, if seen on the street in Dublin, I'd have thought her a local.

     "Please, what do you do, Bill? Businessman maybe?" 

     "A little bit of that. Do you know the company Federal Express? It is in Moscow, too. I was the Country Director for Federal Express in Poland."   

     "Really?  I know the Country Director for Federal Express in Moscow, Brian."

     "Oh my god! You are kidding! No you aren't...you know his name!" Inside I was a little afraid that I had let slip my connection to FEDEX and regretted saying anything about it.  

     "I am no longer working for them and also do some teaching at a business school in Krakow. We want to discuss setting up an MBA program partnership with NSU."

     "Poles with Russians?!" asked Katerina.

     "Well, sort of. But with University of Detroit or some other American university as the main partner."

     "That is good idea I think.  Russians and Polish people don't always see eye to eye."

     "And you, two? What did you do in Moscow and Kiev for three years and what do you have planned upon your return to Nowosibirsk?"

     "We worked as escorts.  Now it is time to return to our home and do something for ourselves with the money we saved."

     It wasn't so much that Katerina was/had been a prostitute, it was more surprising for me that "Aunt Kat" had admitted that both of them were escorts after hearing the story of Zhenia's mother dying. I had imagined for Katerina, some kind of academic position at Moscow State and Zhenia doing translation work at Aeroflot on Tverskaya Street in Central Moscow. Instead, I listened as they told their story finishing the bottle of vodka and ordering fish and some beers.  These two operative women had escaped to Moscow from the Siberian steppes, worked their way into the elite world of Moscow prostitution and high end escort services, and socked away a cool $800,000 in three years where it was now sitting in an account on Cyprus.

***

     While I'd nearly forgotten about Vlad and his drunken threats, hearing his voice and the vulgarisms he was spewing as he loudly worked his way down the corridor towards us, I came out of my own slightly inebriated state and asked Kat if I could hide in her compartment tonight. She could see that I was reacting to Vlad's approach and asked, "Is he looking for you?  I heard him say something about killing someone before he started vomiting and fell down. Someone is helping him up now. "

     She handed me her key and said "7 car 7 compartment...go quickly!" 

     I couldn't help but notice Zhenia giggling again with her hands over her mouth as I struggled to get out the opposite end of the dining car unseen by my predator without knocking the waiter down as he was serving evening steak tartars and pickled herring to slightly horrified customers as a drooling Vlad was nearing the car.

    

Polish-Kazakh Family on the Train and Progress Rocket Space Center in Samara

          Yuri and Toshek weren't exactly talkative characters but, when approached by travelers and coaxed into a conversation, they could hold their own. It sometimes seemed like they had rehearsed their "good cop...bad cop" routines to be able to get information from people or, as in the case of casual train travel, get ordinarily quiet Russian or Kazakh travelers to open up about things they may not normally talk about to strangers. Such was the case with a Kazakh family returning home from Lvov in the Ukraine, a formerly Polish city that had been forfeited to the Soviet Union when the borders shifted at the end of WWII. Interesting in this case, this family could speak Polish since they had been uprooted and forcibly sent to Kazakhstan during the Stalinist terror of the 30's and 40's. With my Polish and their Russian with Yuri and Toshek, we had a pretty lively discussion about life on the steppes of Kazakhstan and the occasional  arrival of 20 ton Soyuz space boosters falling on farms and villages around their own property.

The following statement is from a recent conference and meeting between Polish and Kazakh National Governments recognizing a shared history:

***

     "Migration of Poles to Kazakhstan, largely of an involuntary character, began soon after the Kazakh Khanate came under the control of the Russians. Captured participants of the 1830-1831 November Uprising and the 1863-1865 January Uprising, as well as members of clandestine organizations, were sent into exile throughout the Russian Empire.  By the time of the Russian Empire Census of 1897, there were already nearly 12,000 Poles in Central Asia, 90% male.  Poles both inside and outside of the Soviet Union would later get caught up in Stalinist population transfers in the late 1930's.  At least 250,000 Poles from the Polish autonomous regions of the Ukrainian SSR were deported to the Kazakh SSR in 1930; among those, as many as 100,000 did not survive the first winter in the country."

***

     This family, with what I thought were classic Polish features, blondish hair and blue eyes, composed of mother and father around 40 and a boy and girl in their early teens, all unusually tall and thin but not unhealthy by any standard, lit up as I spoke realizing they would be able to practice their Polish with me. They all chimed in about the night a heavy piece of flaming metal streaked across the sky and crashed into a barn outside of their village, starting a fire that consumed several houses and killed a lot of livestock. Fumes from the fire and burning fuel killed another family that was downwind from the crash site. Other debris stories were told as fires starting in fields or woods and consuming large swathes of steppe...depending on the time of year and how dry the grasses or timber was.

          The father said it was common to find strange smoking hunks of metal on the ground, strip them of anything removable or useful for around the farm, and then plow around it for years until the dirt piled up and created a strange mound in the middle of the wheatfield.   He figured that there were nearly fifty or sixty such buried space fossils that he knew of within 10 miles of his village.  The young children chimed in and told their father that there were others that only children knew about and were keeping secret. They smiled and giggled as their father's eyes got big with surprised concern.

     Finally, an air of concern and even fear took over in the compartment with this family as Toshek asked about space part pirates. The father immediately reacted describing caravans of them coming to take these man-made meteorites away or claim them and then guard them from being taken or even being seen or photographed by others.

     "Who are these bastards?" asked Toshek "Locals? Rif-raf from Moscow?"

     "We have our own locals that try to control who gets space junk but we don't fear them. We fear the guys from Chelyabinsk and other bigger Siberian cities that come in and set up their camps. They have guns and feel comfortable in our village causing a lot of fear and pain. Small battles are fought all around us sometimes as the groups fight for control. We are told that some of the people are from the government trying to reclaim things that are rightfully theirs. I sometimes have my doubts about that since they seem just as willing to kill people as the rif-raf from Chelyabinsk."

     "Does anyone have the ability to lift a whole 10-ton piece of metal onto a truck and haul it away? Do you see this happening ever?"

     "That happened a few times. One of our richest neighbors in the next village has a trucking company. He hired a crane from a state construction company not far away and they rigged up chains and cables on several pieces of space junk. They were able to lift these pieces onto a flatbed truck he owns and haul them away. He has them on his property with guards and cameras all around...afraid that a space part pirate will come and try to steal them."

     "Would a farmer who has a piece of space junk on his property be willing to sell it if someone offers them money?"

     "Everything has its price. Of course!"

     I laughed and nodded in agreement along with everyone else but was thinking about earlier conversations about money, bribery, and how much money it might take to get anything done when I returned from Novosibirsk. Also, I wondered if I'd be doling out money to Dima's people before I ever got back to Chelyabinsk.  Would I have enough left? Would Yuri and Toshek take care of "arrangements" as they said their job was to do? Would I even find them when I returned with Dima and would Dima be upset that I didn't trust his arranging things?

This trip was wearing me thin emotionally and I was only heading into my fourth day.

***

     The train pulled into Samara after 48 hours of "rough-riding" the rails from Kiev. The short rail lengths still in that part of the former Soviet-Bloc made for a rhythmic "duggity - dug (two seconds) duggity-dug (two seconds) duggity- dug". I wouldn't guess that we had ever gone faster than 80 km per hour the whole way...if that. Stops at nearly every small village slowed our progress, as well. And, long waits on side tracks for priority trains going the other way when there was only a single track for two-way travel added what I calculated to be more than 8 hours to the trip.

     Once in Samara, Yuri suggested that he and I go to the factory that makes the Soyuz rockets..."PROGRESS".   It was located in Samara and offered some watered down tours for foreigners. At least I would become somewhat familiar with the unclassified versions of the booster and upper stages. Yuri also wanted to show me in person where some of the more interesting "bolt-ons" would probably be found if we actually got to the debris sites. I was happy to be off the train for a couple of hours and in a pleasant enough city on the Volga and Samara rivers. The rocket factory had a long history of space vehicle production as well as aviation and military jet construction...even before WWII.

     Industrial cities in the former Soviet Bloc all smelled the same. At least, that was what it looked like to me. Way too much coal always being burned in cities where humans actually needed to breathe to stay alive. It always seemed an overlooked aspect of the Soviet planned economies that factories and energy production, producing the most unpleasant of exhausts and pollutants, were walking distance from residential areas. Planned communities with names like, "First Proud 5-Year Plan" or "Defense of the Motherland" would be within two or three tram stops or right next to an extremely dangerous chemical plant or steel mill, as was the case in Krakow's Nowa Huta, where the Lenin Steel Factory was located just five minutes from the flat where I first lived in Krakow from 1986 to 1994.

     Samara seemed the same. It was mere walking distance to the coal fired generation plant that belched tons of unscrubbed sulphur and CO into the air every day. Just a tram ride of 10 minutes to the PROGRESS Samara aviation and rocket fabrication plant from the train station. How convenient!!!  The 10 megawatt generating facility on site took care of any problems with interruptions in electrical power, and added a nice gray to black patina to everything around the plant...especially to the east and the south. Add that, just like in Krakow, these plants were located upwind from the major residential areas, and you have to wonder what kind of city planning or urban development decision making was going on. In the case of Poland's communist leadership, decision making, and industrial planning, it served the government well to employ a hundred thousand workers moved in from the penury of the rural south of Poland and to locate the plant upwind from Poland's intelligentsia in an effort to literally smother it and silence the resistance. I can't say that this was the case in Samara but the similarities were glaring to these eyes in a new proud industrial city of the former Soviet Union.

     "Sergei greeted us in the visitor reception area of the PROGRESS Rocket Factory. Tall with silvery long hair and a face like Leonard Nimoy's Spock on Star Trek, his combed back coiffe reminded me of my intensive Russian teacher at the University of Washington.  Just as intense as that teacher that I couldn't get along with (I eventually dropped his class), Sergei acted unaccustomed to leading an unannounced American through the factory. He told of  "countless American official visits" and then, pausing to emphasize his surprise at my arrival, said that he'd only taken American relatives of high level PROGRESS employees, American astronauts, and NASA officials through the plant on short notice.   He finally agreed only on a short tour and asked us not to photograph anything. These were the days before cell phone cameras so we merely indicated that we had no cameras with us and signed what appeared to be a non-disclosure agreement in Russian.

     Indeed, the tour was short and we were only allowed to view production areas through windows on second level mezzanines. Cameras were everywhere pointing at us wherever we went. A lot of mirrors, too. Probably these mirrors were one-way glass. I'd always been amazed at how Russian heavy payloads were boosted into orbit by rockets with a lot of engines that seemed much smaller than US rocket engines. I asked Sergei and he told me that for the first stage booster rocket, there are four identical conical liquid booster rockets, strapped to the second stage core. Each booster has a single rocket motor with four combustion chambers, two vernier combustion chambers, and one set of turbopumps. I then understood that it was four rocket engines with multiple combustion chambers for each rocket booster that made it look like a Soyuz rocket had to synchronize nearly two dozen engines.  I hoped I would see such a configuration during my debris site visit in a couple of weeks. 

     Yuri, showing no emotion but acting a little rushed, suggested we finish the tour after about 30 minutes out in production areas. We were taken to a large room for tea and cookies that had displays with scale model rockets and some famous rockets that had carried the world's first humans to space.  Sergei excused himself for a few minutes and allowed Yuri and me to walk around the room on our own reading the displays and museum exhibitions. 

     "You see interesting things? Get better idea what Soyuz rocket look like?" Yuri asked.

     "The stuff in the information packet is pretty detailed but it was good to see these things in person. I am glad we took this little side trip."

     "Not saying too much now, please." he whispered to me.

     Sergei came back and asked us, "We are interested in where you are going now. You said Novosibirsk earlier. Are you scientist, businessman, or government person?"

     "Novosibirsk is my final destination. I have some meetings with a man to introduce me to Novosibirsk State University officials. We are going to discuss a business program cooperation project.  And maybe I will visit some more factories."  I noticed that I was starting to talk like my host and Yuri. That was inevitable whenever you wanted to avoid confusing someone when speaking in English and unsure how proficient your audience was in the language.  

     "Very good idea! I am a former faculty member at NSU. Political Science and Information Management...kind of propaganda expert"  Sergei laughed at his own joke.  "Your train is leaving soon. Best to be on your way."

     We thanked Sergei and were given a bag full of Soviet and New Russian pins and brochures about the factory, The propaganda chief also gave us a brochure on the beautiful area around Samara that included campgrounds on its rivers.

     Sergei waved at us as we were leaving, "Much luck and be careful! Don't be too curious out here in Siberian back country. Curiosity is not good for survival here except in the laboratory."

     As Yuri and I walked back toward the tram stop, I asked him what he thought Sergei was really trying to say.   He replied, "Sergei is not sure what he smells but he wishes he were involved in it.  It's a good thing he works here. If he worked in a uranium enrichment plant, every bad guy would get what they want with his help."

   

New Details Emerge about the Plan

     As was confirmed to me many years later by a former CIA administrative staffer that I reported to while working at BAE Systems in Washington DC, a lot of CIA guys go around the world paying people money for things they do.  In fact, that former boss of mine told me a couple of stories of being handed a bag of cash, a plane ticket, a meeting place and time, and a name with a picture to give the money to.  That cash can be for services rendered or CIA...CASH IN ADVANCE.  As I look back now, I seemed to be on a "services rendered" basis while, others were "cash in advance". 

***

     Toshek and Yuri broke it to me on the train that my mission had changed and they had new documents from Embassy Joe. They'd met him in Almaty, Kazakhstan where he had suddenly shown up with bags of money for them to distribute and new instructions for me...without money. While the finer details were convoluted, the thrust of the change was that Yuri and Toshek would be with me to Chelyabinsk, get off the train there, and then we would meet up when I came back that way with Dima...if Dima was, in fact, with me. Toshek would be in charge of all "arrangement making" to get me to the debris sites safely. Maybe that faraway look I described earlier with Toshek came from his having more money than he had ever seen to use for bribes and "arrangements"...and probably a hefty portion for himself.  

     Neither Yuri nor Toshek mentioned Vlad in the plans and, from what I could quickly gather from the amended instructions I'd gotten from them, Vlad was absent from the discussion. So, I asked, "What about Vlad? You said something earlier that he was finishing his last job and you hoped he would be leaving us soon." Toshek's unchanging grin slightly altered but could still be called a grin or a smirk. He said to me, "Vlad the Impaler might have to do something for money for us."  

     "Vlad the Impaler!?  The original Count Dracula I think.  You said, do something for money?"

     "Maybe better to say he should be available to do something for money if needed." Yuri corrected.  I wasn't completely in the dark by this time that Vlad was the "hatchet man" for the group. (Using the old US NAVY Underwater Demolition Team terminology for the one guy that carried a lethal weapon to quietly neutralize someone if required while carrying out their mission.)  He certainly looked the role. 

     "Yuri went on, "These places you are going with Dima are not picnic places. Money talks there and also there are strong eyes from Moscow everywhere. Eyes sometimes want money too and these eyes can only respect similar strength. Your Dima is not strong and his small money would only insult them. Our job changed when Joe came to Almaty. Now we are spending a little time with you and we are watching for some more important people that might be around Chelyabinsk.  Vlad will be needed for you to be successful with your photos and dirt collection and disassembly of Soyuz.  We need to get used to his dirty looks."

     "So, can I ask you how much money Joe gave you for this job?"

     "NO...it would be very rude question. But I will say that it was a lot more than the $5000 you were given."

     

Yuri, Toshek, and Vlad

     Yuri, Toshek, and Vlad got on the train in Kiev. Embassy Joe had routed me through Kiev to have time with my "assistants" as the slow train through the Ukraine was now making its way toward Samara, Russia. Yuri, though extremely nervous and always tending to issues or taking notes, spent time talking to me and was filled with information that he mostly agreed to share. Toshek and Vlad, both Ukrainian, were just plain scary guys. Toshek, tall and thin with dark hair that stuck out on one side of his head and was matted down on the other, had this half smiling look in his eyes and face that almost never changed. He too, like Yuri, was tooth challenged and the combination of a shit eating grin with spaces between his teeth unnerved me. I knew my feelings were a bit unfair towards Toshek and I figured I'd eventually get used to it but hadn't yet in the 4 hours I'd been around him.  As for Vlad, Yuri warned me to keep my distance from him and not to speak too much English when he is around.

     Yuri suggested, "Even if asks you question or tells you something, just move head or be silent...and don't make smiling too much."

     "Why? what's up with him? He knows I'm an American...I assume."

     "He get very nervous on people sometime.  He can shout easy and maybe try to hurt people if he thinks you are laughing at him. That's why no smiling from you. Americans smile too much. But I see you not making smiles so much. That's good."

     "Thank you for the advice.  I'll do my best to keep a serious face and avoid Vlad."

     "One more something about Vlad: He is still taking care of last job for someone. If he leaves sometimes, probably is taking care of things for his job."

     I didn't exactly understand what Yuri meant at the time but I had witnessed Vlad sneaking back to the luggage car and opening windows. My assumption was that he was smoking a cigarette there since we were in "No Smoking" compartments. Vlad, a powerful looking man over 6 feet tall with a purposeful gait whenever he walked, would scan all around him as he took half the steps I would getting back to the luggage car.  He wore a very dusty jacket with matching dusty pants that looked color coordinated with his dark sandy hair that I imagined was "bowl cut" by himself. And, to go with what Yuri had said, his chiseled Slavic face and deep set eyes looked madder than hell all the time. A jaw clenched with tendons taut in his neck and muscles of mastication on his head constantly twitching and writhing.

     While I had hardly seen Toshek at all and started wondering if he had gotten off someplace along the way, avoiding Vlad wasn't as easy as I had hoped.  With two days on a train to Samara, there were few places to hide and we found ourselves face to face more than a dozen times. The train was not packed tight with people but very few compartments had any vacant seats. Every time I got up from my converted sleeping berth, Vlad would watch me and usually stand up to see better if I went in the direction of the luggage car.  Twice I was held up next to the luggage car by passengers standing in the corridor talking. Both times Vlad drifted out and stared at me until I passed the people and continued toward the restaurant car.  He definitely didn't like me being anywhere near his things and/or he was hiding something in the luggage car I figured.  So far, the only thing I had seen him doing in the luggage car was standing by the open window with one arm out and the other arm holding what looked like a sleeping bag or duffle bag. The bag was very shiny and black, though, like a garbage bag for yard work. That seemed strange. I ran ahead quickly when I realized he might react to me watching him.

***

     Our sleeping compartment was three bunks on either side. The top two sleeping berths would fold down against the wall with the middle bunk becoming a back rest during the day when we four were awake and sitting on the bottom "beds".  With my assistants moving about all day back and forth to the luggage car and the restaurant car, we were rarely all four in the compartment at the same time, except at night. I hadn't slept well the night before they joined me and on this first day together, around 2pm, I asked Yuri if he minded if I took a short nap on one of the bottom bunks.  He nodded and pointed to the free bunk across from him. "Not a problem."

     There were six blankets in our compartment and some pillows without pillow cases that smelled pretty badly. The odor was identifiable somewhere between armpit and old urine.  I grabbed one of the blankets...kind of like an American moving blanket or quilt with half the stitching out or loose. The fill in the blanket was coming out. It was a strange dark-colored sawdust. I put the pillow in my jacket and zipped it up.  As I was taking my shoes off and getting ready to lie down, Yuri handed me a small plastic cup with vodka in it and said, "Maybe you will get better napping if you take a small drink. Please!"  Surprised but not refusing it, I smiled at Yuri and shot it in one gulp.  Recognizing from the flavor that this was "bimber" (moonshine from sugar) it nearly came up as quickly as it went down. I'd never gotten used to sugar based bimber in Poland and had an immediate gag reflex when I smelled it.  Miraculously, I kept it down but my eyes were watering. Yuri said, "Not many Americans like our national beverage I think. Rest for now."

     Hard to say how long I was asleep. The bimber took effect quickly and I was out. With a bit of a sleep deficit, I quickly started dreaming.  It was a repeat of the absurd scene I'd witnessed leaving a small town in the Ukraine the afternoon before. The train was slowly picking up speed and rocking side to side as we began passing small farms along the way. On a steep berm next to the tracks, I'd seen an older man masterbating openly with one hand and waving at the train with the other. I had a beer in my hand at the time and was staring directly at him through my open window as I stood in the corridor. Others in the train, also looking out through open windows, were laughing out loud and waving at him. The scene was the same in my dream except for the two boys sitting near him watching and cheering him on. That dream faded and the next began. I was suddenly on a huge open plain with rockets and jets scattered on the ground as far as the eye could see.  I was surrounded by them and suddenly I was in a panic that I was going to die from the fumes of all the rocket fuel that the ground had soaked up from these behemoth boosters lying all around.  I started running in the dream but couldn't get anywhere as events started going in slow motion.

     With a start I woke up and for an instant couldn't see very well. I reached for my face quickly and my vision came back, as a handful of three inch long cockroaches went scurrying off. Realizing they had been on my face, I was extremely upset and tried to get to the WC to wash my face off. Someone was in the bathroom at the time and I waited in the corridor with my towel and a bar of soap. I washed my face after a mother and daughter came out of the WC. Feeling a little better I joined Yuri back in the compartment.

     "Why you look so upset?" he asked.

     "I woke up with cockroaches on my face!"  I said loudly and with more than a hint of disgust.

      "Probably thirsty. They were taking a drink from your face...maybe tears from your eyes or something from nose or mouth."

     "Shut the fuck up. Jesus, I can barely take that."

     As I was expressing myself in more colorful terms than usual and in English that was louder than my usual hushed whispers, Vlad came down the corridor and around the corner with a very curious look on his face. He and Yuri exchanged some comments about my being a drinking fountain for cockroaches and then Vlad left. He was headed back to the luggage car.  I asked Yuri what Vlad and he were talking about. Yuri thought for a few seconds about his answer and said, "Vlad hopes nothing bad happens to you while he's around."

     "What the fuck does that mean?!"

     "I don't know."

   

   

CIA - Cash in Advance?

     On the table in the conference room straddling the old USIA and CIA desk areas, were laid out my "tools" for my trip toolbox. Soil sample bags and soil extraction scoops were first. No problem understanding how to use them except I felt like I was getting a lesson on how to do a prostate exam by the way the fellow was describing the hand/finger and extraction motion preferred for a soil sample. Fine...got it.

     Next, a GammaData hand-held geiger counter. Joe hadn't mentioned this. My instructor showed how to turn it on and off. He said taking it on the journey was optional...but recommended doing so considering the rif-raf I would be around. (I had other thoughts about it. I questioned how I would be received having a geiger counter when I was supposed to be looking for titanium and aluminum and maybe some other rare-earths. He shrugged and gave me a calibration lesson...which I appreciated later that year while on a different tracking job.)

     A small Olympus camera that fit in the palm of my hand was next to a pen camera with an instruction sheet. Next to that was what appeared to be a black glass button with sticky tape on it. It was also a camera that could be placed almost anywhere and activated by touch. My teacher seemed to be getting bored after he showed me how to use it and said, "Use your imagination when it might be appropriate. It can be used in the dark, too."  Three similar but smaller button-like plastic rings were wireless bugs. "We like to eavesdrop. They are easy to hide and you should assume that they are always on." he told me.

     The "weaponry" was two scary looking ice pick-like daggers that were to be hidden in my clothing and my briefcase. I told him I couldn't imagine using them but the teacher went on describing the best ways to kill or severely incapacitate someone by severing arteries, delivering a hatchet like blow to the head and face, and inflicting the most lethal damage to blood filled areas during close fighting.  Thanks...next.

      A super swiss army knife was next. This thing was 3 or 4 times larger but still very light and, instead of blades and scout-like implements, it had various advanced looking tools for screwing, unbolting, bending, and whatever else Soyuz rockets needed to be disassembled.  The instructor only pointed at one implement on the tool that he thought I would need. It looked like an advanced philips head screw driver with a curved head and an extension piece in the handle.  I waited for the teacher again. He said what I expected, "Use your imagination."

     Finally, 50 new $100 bills were in an open envelope. I asked, "Mine to keep? I didn't know that CIA stood for Cash In Advance" My instructor frowned and said, "Keep track of where you spend it or who you bribe. Remember, $100 still goes a long way in the former Soviet Bloc. Unnecessary spending will come out of your honorarium."

     "And my shoe phone?" The teacher wasn't amused with my Get Smart joke. He was holding a pretty normal looking pen in his hand. "This pen is your panic button. Removing the inside spring and then replacing it says to us, 'I am probably in trouble, something has happened, and I want to abort the mission. I will take action on my own'. Removing it and not replacing for more than an hour says I am being held captive and in extreme dire straits. If you are being held captive and being moved from one location to another. Try to replace the spring after each move so we have a chance of finding you."
 
     "How does it work?" I asked. "I mean, is it transmitting at some weird frequency?"

     "A special satellite, of course, detects the transmissions. Has to be pretty new technology. The Russians are on their way to doing the same thing.  Maybe that Soyuz booster you will be investigating lofted theirs into orbit ."

     "This big envelope is for you, too. Instructions, maps, the stuff Dima gave you, and whatever else we could cobble together for you to learn so as not to get yourself killed on the first day out." He handed me a large manila envelope splitting at the seams with a lot of material. Joe and his staff had pulled together about 250 pages of people, places, targets, alternative targets, goals ranked by priority, dangers and suggestions for mitigating risk, survival techniques from a CIA handbook, a topical Russian phrasebook geared to the intelligence community, and as Joe had said, some letters to be delivered to faculty members at the University of Nowosibirsk.  "Hey, Joe asked me to tell you that they are keeping that doctor's bag that Dima gave you. After chemical analysis, it appears that Dima has, maybe unknowingly, transported some bad stuff...and relatively recently. They found trace amounts of plutonium dust, sarin gas, depleted uranium, and other 'funny' things.  If Dima was expecting you to give it back, tell him that it was stolen in the train station or something."

     "Shit! He didn't give me the bag. He loaned it to me to carry the stuff he had given me."

     "OK, let me tell Joe. You aren't leaving for a week or so. He might have finished the tests he wants to do by the time you leave. There could be a few holes or some pieces cut out of it that were used for the tests, though."

     "I can say a dog chewed on it or something. Thanks for asking Joe. I'd really rather get it back to Dima if at all possible. Even if it is a little radioactive and carries the scent of nerve gas.

***

     My tools just barely fit into my little leather backpack I always carried. From that day forward, that backpack became, "My Toolkit". With that toolkit and a million thoughts racing thru my mind, I had to organize my time to study the materials I'd been given, work out a schedule with Dima and coordinate the trip with him and Joe (so Joe could get his/my people hooked up with me for the trip to Nowosibirsk). 

     It was beginning to dawn on me that I may have taken on a bit more than I really had bargained for. Weapons in my toolkit, classified sensors, bugs, and camera equipment. To date, I'd looked at my activities for Joe as grown up hide and go seek games. While I knew, of course, that I could get into serious trouble for what I was doing, it always seemed odds were in my favor to do what I was asked without people noticing or getting caught. And if I did get caught, I figured that the worst that could happen to me would be deportation. I'd seen in the late 80's American college students doing what I was doing and eventually getting caught. The Polish government at the time chose to make a big deal on TV but they were out of the country within 48 hours. What I had been doing since the Wall came down was more of a hide in the open and help keep bad things from happening game...except when they asked me to go to Moscow for a disinformation run. This trip, though, was different. I was out in the open and bait for Dima's competition and a target for those in Russia who would look for foreigners to kidnap and ransom.  As far east as I was going, it was unnerving that sanity was inversely proportional to the distance from Moscow.  Whereas even in post-Soviet era Moscow, there were laws and a functioning system of government, it was hit and miss the further you got away from there. I'd gone through one strange kidnapping and another failed attempt in the Ukraine and had this strange feeling that I was setting myself up for the charmed third time.

***

     "My briefcase feels lighter, I think." Dima proclaimed as I gave him his radioactive and nerve gas tainted bag back, again at the Marriott Hotel. This time, though, we were in the downstairs lobby bar hidden somewhat from the crowds by the windows facing ul. Jerozolimskie (Jerusalem Street).  I purposely put my sweater and another coat and scarf on the chairs next to us to keep some distance from the other patrons in the bar. Dima sensed that I was either nervous or gearing up for a serious conversation and did what most Russians would do in such a situation, he ordered a whole bottle of vodka for just the two of us. Shit! I was trying to dry out a bit before my trip but I knew it would be a big insult to refuse him.  I begged him to avoid song and dance as well as kissing and hugs as we talked...and drank. He seemed disappointed to have to hold his exuberance over our trip planning but, by about 8pm, with 3/4 of a liter of vodka in him, he wasn't THAT upset. 

     We worked out that the three strange northerly Soyuz debris sites would be accessible but he did not hide his disappointment that I had chosen exactly these. Bribes and negotiations with the rogue locals and mafia were going to be necessary he said. That would also require his man who arranges everything of that nature. And, of course, this guy would need to be paid, as well.  I could already see that my $5000 extra dollars was now probably $4500.  I would go by Trans-Siberian Railway past the debris sites to meet Dima.  We would get together in Novosibirsk where I would spend a few days under his guidance meeting some of the academics that were in his group. That would give me time to deliver the letters that I had been given to faculty at Novosibirsk State University. and then we would travel together back to do the site exploration and extraction. These sites were at about the same latitude as Novosibirsk but far to the west of that city off the Trans-Siberian Railway route by several hundred kilometers.  Photos of the sites showed mainly barren steppes with patches of woods and wetland not far away.   I wasn't sure if camping in the open was preferable to being able to hide in the woods. Something told me that I was in for some hide and go seek in Siberia.

     Dima loved the part about a possible collaboration with an academy or the university itself in setting up an MBA pilot program.  That would give him the visibility that he wanted with the Economics department at NSU that had avoided his harping on about selling things to the West and building relationships with Poles and Americans. Dima wanted me to deliver part of my introduction speech in Russian to better gain the respect of this group. Damn! Another nerve racking presentation in a language that was beautiful but not my own. I always worried that I would use verbs that meant either farting or fucking in slang. My Polish wife had taught me quite a bit of that sort of verb play but I almost never got things right during parties with her university colleagues and embarrassed everyone more than once.

     Three other technical institutes were on the table to visit that added several thousand more kilometers and logistics issues to our journey stretching from Chelyabinsk in the West to Krasnoyarsk in the East.  A weapons related facility in Novosibirsk was on our "must visit" list. In Chelyabinsk, a weapons related instrumentation facility was identified as well as a nuclear plant for fuel cycle reprocessing. The facilities in Krasnoyarsk were also nuclear related: fuel cycle enrichment plant and a reprocessing facility.  While Dima had been viewed as a small time operator, Embassy Joe's folks decided that we should give him a chance to open the doors to these places that were viewed as the most likely to "lose" nuclear material to bad guys. Providing an additional ticket "in" was really my goal...and the hopes for Embassy Joe. Grabbing anything off the Soyuz debris and getting soil samples became secondary to the plant visits but still an important part of the trip.  A schedule was tentatively agreed upon and one last shot for the both of us was left in the Belvedere Vodka bottle. I picked up the bottle and poured our last shots into our elegant crystal glasses. I facetiously asked Dima if anyone was going to make any money on this trip or as a result of this trip. He answered, "It all depends on the characters we meet and the strength of our character."

     I nodded and toasted, "Na zdrowie!"

     How right he was about those characters.   

Getting Smart...for the trip

     With a slight hangover and a deficit of morning caffeine to rouse me from an evening talking to "Teledyne" Dennis over vodkas and beers, Embassy Joe filled me in on what he'd come up with that night.

     "Dima is basically a very low man on our totem pole of interests but he has some heavyweights behind him that he probably doesn't even know about or really understand who they are and what they are doing...or hoping to do.  He is who he says he is: an agent for marketing these materials to potential Western buyers. He is competing with a much darker gang of ruthless "sales agents" that don't care who buys their products and they are willing to do anything for the sale. Dima is a bit of a "front" for them so that there is an air of credibility and a bit of a diversion from the sinister work they are trying to do...sell anything that can get them rich."

     "What about the scientists? Are they bad guys, too?"

     "From what we have now, we think that the pure science folks aren't really involved so much. He is lumping another group into his SCIENTIST category. The general managers, technicians, operators, industrial/administrative staff from some of the nuclear facilities are in this group...because they still have signature power to go against procedures and release materials to whomever they wish.  Throw in a handful of former KGB agents and military generals into the mix(some loyal and some resentful of the New Russia) and you have a very unstable situation."

     "Israeli, German, British, French, and even Polish intelligence contributes to the state of our understanding of what is going on.  German sensitivities to all this are among the strongest since former East German military folks know a hell of a lot of what's going on in these facilities...including missile defense circles. The Israelis, concerned that they are a prime target of whatever could be fabricated from such material, predictably, have more Mosad agents wandering about than we can keep track of.  Some will know that you are being courted by Dima and that you are with us. That doesn't mean that they will be friendly to you if your paths cross, though."

     "I suppose you have photos or a film of me with Dima yesterday?"

     "Yes"

     "You're shitting me!  That fast?"

     "The whole Marriott is bugged and cameras are everywhere.  We just don't have a way to know what kind of crazy shit is going to happen or when crazy people like you and Dima are going to show up.  You told us you were there and we pulled the camera and recordings to confirm."

     "I must have a big file...don't I?"

     "Let's say that you have an active file that has gotten rather thick. If you knew who was hovering around you from time to time, you would probably drop everything and go back to Kennewick, WA."

     "Meaning?!"

     "I wouldn't worry about it. You've been a pain in the ass for the Poles from the beginning. Polish Intelligence is now hyper-Americanized but there are a few former Bloc agents that would have liked to haul you in and scare you a bit."

     "Let me guess. A Krakow based agent that is a friend of my wife's ex?"

     "No comment.  Back to Dima and his Siberian adventure...or yours.  We suggest the following general scenario with details to be worked out:

     First:  You accept Dima's offer conditionally and tell him that there are three very northerly tracked Soyuz rocket remains that your buyer is interested in. We have located them on the maps he gave you but he did not circle them as options for you. We are somewhat interested in photos and whatever you might be able to bring back from any or all of these sites...if anything is left of the debris. You get a big bonus if you can remove anything and pack it with you.  We'll also have you do some soil sampling. Easy stuff. Put some dirt in a special bag and seal it up.  A word of caution, though. There is an average of 10% of unburned fuel that comes down with a jettisoned stage of a Soyuz rocket. That shit is very toxic. Do not approach the rocket debris if there are a lot of dead animals (or people) around the site.

     Second:  We'll give you names of people we want you to meet and deliver things to in Nowosibirsk and maybe some other places. I'll know more soon.  We should have you build your presence in Nowosibirsk to take the attention away from your "camping" in the wild looking for Soyuz third stage rocket debris.

     Third:  Tell Dima you will meet him in Nowosibirsk. You will be escorted by train from the Polish border to Nowosibirsk by two or three of our friends. Get to know them a little. They know the dark counterparts to Dima and will have some involvement with this little journey. Trust me on that.  Dima is not prepared to safely deal with the lawlessness of where you are going and they are. They also want to see if Dima's competition might show up to assess you and see what you are worth to them."

     Fourth:  We need to get some tools of the trade to you and make sure you know how to use them. Tracking devices, bugs, cameras, drugs, tools for the rocket dismemberment (just in case), and some light weaponry (no guns, though).

     Fifth:  The naive businessman shtick can be scrapped for space travel enthusiast and special metals trader. You can use your friend, Dennis, as one of your potential buyers. He has agreed to that.

(Dennis had told me this during our vodka and beer chasing session. He also said that the dumb American thing was a no-go for this trip in his opinion. Instead, he gave me a bunch of sanitized spec sheets - no company names - on titanium, aluminum, and some other rare earth metals needed for achieving super-strengthened alloys.  He thought I should bone up on some of the lingo. He also had a good idea suggesting that I promote discussions with the university or other economics institutes in Nowosibirsk for cooperation in starting a joint MBA program there. Dima would get excited about something like that. This would be similar to the early MBA Program where the Krakow Industrial Society and Jagiellonian University in Krakow Poland had negotiated in 1990 with the University of Detroit. I taught General Management and Operations Management courses at this institute for two semesters.)


     And finally the Sixth:   "Fifi 66" from anyone's mouth at any time means they are with us.

     "WHAT!?  Fifi 66?  Where did you come up with that?"

     "Your first pet in 1966 in Guthrie, Oklahoma when you were living on Warner Street in what you have always called, 'The Pink House'".

     "Wow!  You do know a lot about me."

     "You talk a lot and say more things than you realize."

     "And you are listening, obviously. By the way, will I have a shoe phone with me?"

     "Not exactly a shoe phone. We'll know where you are if our guys lose you in the forest and if the signal goes on and off, we'll know that you're trying to let us know that something is wrong and need help. If it goes off and stays off then something is really wrong...like you've been cremated or buried along with the tracker."

   "Thanks Joe.  I feel a lot better. How much are you paying me for this?"

     "A little more than usual. This is a promotion. But you are on probation."

***

     Joe asked me to come back later that afternoon for my "tool kit". Leaving the embassy through the Consular Division door, I met Jane, the former USIA Director, who was still in Warsaw but leaving soon. She saw me, pulled me into a small room and angrily ran me down for taking another job "out of my league".

     "Bill, please! This isn't your stuff to do. You aren't trained for it. They don't give a rat's ass if something should happen to you."

     "But Jane, this seems like a different kind of job...."

     "You're goddamned right it is a different kind of job, you idiot!"

     "No, I mean it seems that there are a lot of folks that will be interested in where I am and what I am doing. In fact, I'm getting some tracking devices, bugs, cameras and other tools for this one...."

     "Shit...it was a promotion but you carry all the risk here.  I'm not sure what you will be doing but I will suggest one thing now.  If you get into deep shit and sense that you are in grave danger, then hide and slowly make your way back on your own. Buy an open ended train ticket before you leave that allows you to get on any train anywhere in the former Soviet Union. Take a lot of cash...or at least more than usual.   You've obviously won the trust of Joe and his crew enough so that they are bringing you into this anti-terrorism group. But this is the type of work for (she pauses) someone different from you. That's all I'm going to say.  I fly out this week. When you get back to Warsaw, they will have my office address in DC. Write to me.  By the way, I started out in Joe's crew and couldn't take it.  The suggestion I gave you worked in my case when I got into trouble many years ago."

     Jane hugged me for a little longer than usual and then walked away.

Dima's Invitation Accepted...with a Little Help from My Friends

     In fear that our little love and poetry session was quickly going to devolve into vodka and singing, I told Dima that I had other meetings soon and hoped that he could show me some documents of some kind. He had long ago guessed that I was not the end user or buyer for the "spacewares" he was peddling and knew that I had to show something credible to my buyer, He kept asking, "Are we selling to the American 'shpiony'?" (Russian slang for "spies"). I replied, "No...we are selling to American industry...best in the world!" just to get his goat. He'd used that phrase so many times during the hour we'd just spent, "Soviet-Russian industrial complex...best in the world!"

     With a long reach under the table that I just noticed had an extra large table cloth on it, giant Dima nearly disappeared as he was gathering his three large diplomatki filled with documents, photos, maps, and other quality verification sheets. (A Russian diplomatka is an old-style black leather briefcase that reminds me of the kind doctors used to carry on a house call back at the turn of the century...20th to be clear.)  Careful to pull out what he wanted and not to share too much, Dima was licking his fingers and checking a small notebook that appeared to be his reference guide or index for what was in his cases.  One diplomatka was mainly maps and detailed location descriptions for fallen Soyuz debris. Names of local mafia bosses that needed to be bribed to gain access to some locations were attached and he was mumbling to himself to be careful and make sure I got what I needed but not too much. At this point I realized Dima thought I spoke no Russian but I was already learning a great deal about the difficult reality of the logistics of such a journey based on his mutterings.  This told me that I should continue to be a non-Russian speaker. It might save my life.

     What I could tell, Dima was trying to give me authentic papers for the least valuable and the most difficult or unlikely targets for a potential adventure into Siberia. The material all had clear stamps and seals from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and Soyuz launch vehicle data...on a variety of different industrial center letterhead. What might be sensitive material I could see on some of the sheets with stamps indicating secret data and some sheets with blacked out paragraphs. Trying to get locations, I would always look at the city on the letterhead and see if there was a name for the complex I could remember:  Samara/Jupiter; Chelyabinsk/Nova Rosya; Khabarovsk/Cosmos; Novosibirsk/Universitet (actual cities but not actual complex names).  I left the meeting with one of Dima's diplomatka's and the feeling that Dima had put a lot of work into collecting this material but was in over his head now with the mafia and other controlling entities limiting his access and influence to be able to become the rich man he had dreamed of being with this cache of information and support from the scientific community he represented. More likely, the scientific community he represented now was starving and also hoped for a big cash out day that was unlikely to come unless they personally went rogue and sold strategic material in their institutes to a terrorist or some other cash paying customer.

     In sum, though, when I left Dima at the Marriott, I was in possession of documents and materials that made me quite nervous. This looked like stuff you could get arrested for...even by my own country...or maybe especially by my own country. I felt I needed to get it to the embassy as quickly as possible but not directly. I imagined Dima could have had me followed so I tucked the diplomatka into the backseat of my Peugeot 405 and drove through Warsaw for several hours, finally coming back to my flat on Juliana Bruna street around 8pm. I'd called the embassy and asked to meet my contact at 8 in the morning tomorrow. It was agreed upon. I did not sleep well that night.


     "You initiated the contact with Dima?"

          "No...Artur did based on a fax...at my insistence."

     "Artur has done business with Dima?"

          "Not that I know of...I'm sure that he hasn't. He would have said."

     "How did you leave it with Dima?"

          "I said I'm going to show the docs to my client and get back to him today...possibly."

     "You should have let us know before you met him."

          "I was intrigued by the way it mentioned scientific support, and suggested unlimited military                contacts.  The fact that there was a Warsaw phone number made it all the more enticing to                    meet them and find out what was up. Putting on the naive American businessman hat is not                  very difficult for me, Jim."

      "Give us the briefcase...your diplomatka...we are going to analyze it. We'll know where it's been and what he's had in it since he got the thing in 1899." A sly grin came over Jim's face. Jim joked a lot but it was usually very dark humor and often based on the grim reality of losing agents he had been in contact with and the danger that his current "staff" faced.

     "Dumb American businessmen are disappearing too. I'd rather not have you on that list since we can't do much about it if you get caught.  Tell your Dima that you need until tomorrow at noon to make a decision about working with him. I can tell you that there are some interesting things in this cache of documents but they are probably not what you think. See you very early tomorrow morning...please."

An Invitation from Dima to Siberia

     The Warsaw Marriott opened in October of 1989 and quickly became the most popular hotel and business meeting venue in Poland, and possibly in Eastern Europe. The only hotel that you could dial and make a phone call directly out of the country from your room, it offered the first true 5-star luxury for its guests and made for the perfect meeting place for Western business groups seeking partners in the New Europe. The Warsaw Marriott was also a magnet for the money making moguls coming from the growing Klondike-like East just across Poland's borders with Belarus and the Ukraine. There were as many Russian Volga limos as there were Mercedes 500's parked around the hotel just across from Warszawa Centralna (Warsaw Central Rail Station).

     A late morning or lunch scene in the Lobby Bar and second floor cafe of the crowded hotel might find four or five Polish State Ministers meeting a Western Ambassador in a cordoned off section of the cafe while seven to eight easily recognizable TV and film stars would be scattered through the rest of the crowd. American and British businessmen making deals or loudly protesting Polish corporate tax rates while comparing notes about the pluses and minuses of hiring expats versus local talent for green-field start ups in the country made up the bulk of that noisy crowd.  But, if one paid attention, it was possible to see that there were dangerous deals involving far-eastern former Soviet territory being done in the relative safety of that Marriott cafe and bar.

     Re-organization schemes hatched by the nouveau rich Russians to offer 1/1000's of the real value of factories or distribution centers to former workers that had been given ownership "chits" in half-baked efforts to privatize Soviet industry were born in the Marriott Hotel cafe. Contracts with the Dutch to buy as much virgin timber as the local logging companies in Eastern Ukraine and Lithuania could manage (slightly radioactive of course) were being signed here. And, no doubt, contracts for Polish made armaments, tanks and bombs, were routinely being signed during this period when the Polish State was wrestling with its own problems of Western debt relief and currency devaluation. Keeping a new democratic country running during its most vulnerable time left a few holes for illegal and probably illegal (but definitely unethical) activity to exist at the edge of former Soviet anarchy near its borders in Poland.

***

     Dmitri, a large, dark haired good natured Russian Kazakh with a wide smile and thick dark glasses, told us he liked doing business in the Marriott. He could bring professors and other academics from the universities and academies in Novosibirsk here without complication. Warszawa Centralna was across the street. First time visitors to the West could get on a train in far away Eastern or Central Siberia and make their way across the steppes in a week with a couple of station changes without great complication. Businessmen could fly Russian Aeroflot airlines from a dozen Siberian cities like Krasnoyarsk or Irkutsk to Warsaw Okecie airport with even greater ease...though a bit more costly. Dima - DEEMA - as he preferred to be called, told us he had a small flat near the Marriott and could walk there in less than five minutes. (I wondered if he had rented my old flat just around the corner from the Marriott. After three staph infections and a dozen mornings of cold water showers, I had walked out on the landlord without paying my last month's rent several months earlier.) Dima also told us that the "business opportunities" he represented were rather wide and were just now "beginning to avail themselves to the West".  Having such a perfect place to do business on the border of East and West was his dream and he was beginning to live it out.

     "So what are those business opportunities, Dima? Give us some idea of how you are combining the academics from Siberia with the emerging market economies and business there."

     "Our meeting was for the high purity aluminum and titanium mentioned in the fax you received but perhaps a good introduction is a short story of some of the people behind the deal."

     "Perfect! Thank you! Please carry on."

     "Government officials from the former Soviet Union, managing directors of factories, and smart business people have crafted plans for marketing our product. People have been hired by this group to help carry out the plan at differing levels. These two groups make up the business side of this opportunity. These are people who had the vision to bypass the problems of our lagging infrastructure and non-existent market economy and go directly to buyers with a variety of products. For now, we are talking about titanium and aluminum and some other rare earth metals that were mostly processed and fabricated in the former Soviet Union."

    "And the academic side?"

     "I was just about to tell you."

     "Sorry for interrupting."

     "It's quite alright. The academic side is the whole group of participating scientists and research people that have access to the materials or are knowledgeable about our products to facilitate a transaction. Their actual roles vary widely from simply putting together a proper product description and offer on letterhead to coordinating permits, preparation, and transfer for transportation of material to a buyer. Because some materials may be very dangerous or toxic, their role can be extremely important."

     "I think I'm starting to get it." I said. Artur, by now, has such a bewildered look on his face I can see him staring at the former Miss World, Aneta Kreglicka, who happens to be sitting a few tables away in a very short tight white dress with black Polish Army boots on. Having been focused on Dima for the past 15 minutes, I wasn't sure if it was Dima or Aneta that had caused his face to wrinkle as it had. I turned away from Artur to continue listening to Dima.

     "Your titanium and aluminum are a special case, though.  Since the late 50's and especially starting in the mid sixties, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd stages of Soviet-made rockets have been falling back to Earth onto the steppes of southern and central Siberia and some have fallen in the forests further north and east of the Baikonur Cosmodrome where they are launched in Kazakhstan. Most of the material that can be relatively easily gotten to is in the Altai region Northeast of the Cosmodrome. If you go to that area now, you will find farmers tending their crops or building their barns from material they have secured from a booster rocket or 2nd stage piece of a fuselage that suddenly landed in their field or knocked their house over. An almost surreal image for a primitive and remote people that have accepted that a 20 ton piece of metal might at any time come raining down into the middle of their village wiping out a whole family...or several families"

     "I suppose that's why the United States and NASA decided on Florida's East Coast since the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean is probably a lot safer for dropping 20 ton surprises after launches." Artur inserted as he was getting more into the conversation.

     "Precisely...but don't underestimate the Russian pride associated with being the bull's eye of the falling 1st stage Soyuz rocket during an important space mission for the Motherland!"

     "Not to mention having the lightest and strongest titanium sickle in the whole country after you cut a piece of something off the debris."  With that comment from Artur, I sensed he needed a break and suggested he go introduce himself to Miss World.

     "Dima, who is the owner of that debris? Who are we buying it from?"  

     "Billy, I'd like to say that there are ownership papers and a contract can be drawn up but that would be a lie. In most cases, where the Russians or Soviets haven't come around to secure the debris, it is for whomever claims it or disassembles it and takes it away.  With a few exceptions, it is the property of the owners or caretakers of the land that it falls on. If it is in the middle of a village, then the village divides up what can be divided.  The technology and facilities for recycling this high purity metal are popping up in Western Europe. We just need to find it and get it there. I have maps and precise coordinates of every piece of debris that has officially and unofficially fallen back to Earth and landed in the former Soviet Union."

     "So...are you suggesting that this is a deal without guaranteed terms and conditions? An offer to share an adventure seeking titanium and whatever else that has fallen from the sky? A fifty-fifty split on a treasure hunt in the far Eastern Asian Siberian steppes? And you have the Treasure Guide!"

     "You are sometimes more poetic than I am, Billy.   What a lovely picture you have painted of this adventure."

Contacting the Russians - Dmitri wants to meet

     "Interesting that there is a phone number and it is a Warsaw number."  Artur noted and suggested we call.  "Let me call and speak in Polish...if they can speak Polish, that is." I told Artur that this would be a very unusual situation if Poles are actors in this operation. He agreed but was certain that any Poles would be under the thumb of Russian operators.

The conversation went something like this:

     "Hello, Dmitri here." (English)

     "Good day. I'm Artur. Can you speak Polish?" (Polish)

     "Not well but passable. Better in Russian or English." (Dmitri in fair Polish)

     "I am calling about the fax related to high purity aluminum and titanium. Can you tell me more or  can we meet to talk about it? I see you are in Warsaw...or at least this is a Warsaw number." (Artur and Dmitri speak in English for the rest of the conversation.)
   
     "Yes, I am in Warsaw. Will you be representing yourself and, if not, who is the buyer? Are you an intermediary? What nationality are you and who is the buyer...or interested party?"

     "There will be an American with me representing American interests here in Warsaw. He is the Managing Director of the Polish office of a multinational firm. And may I ask who you are and who you represent? Also, do you have something concrete we can look at that will help us figure out if this is really something we want to pursue?"

     "Just as the fax says, there is a group of Russian businessmen and some scientists, also from Russia, involved in the sale of these items. I am part of the business side of this deal and I am closely connected to the scientific interests that have made this opportunity available. I have papers, photos, and a proposed 'extraction plan' with me. So...is this American just an intermediary or somehow connected to the actual buyer? And what company is he the local representative for?"

     "If you wouldn't mind, we can discuss this at the meeting. Where and when shall we meet?"

     "Tomorrow at 10am at the Marriott upstairs cafe ok for you?"

     "See you there at 10...with my American friend."

     Artur shrugged his shoulders at me, "He says he has papers, photos, and some kind of 'extraction plan', whatever that fucking means." 

     "So we are meeting tomorrow?  What's this guy's name?"

     "Yep. Dmitri at the Marriott at 10am in the upstairs cafe."

     "Good"

     "So, are you interested in this because of Dennis at Teledyne? Somehow connecting him to it hoping he will be the buyer?"

     "Maybe. I'll probably run this fax by him and see what his reaction is. He'll roll his eyes and say it's bullshit...then run over to his Teletext and squeal on me to the CIA guys two seconds after I walk out the door.  By the way, where are Toby and Nick?   It's so quiet in here. Strange."

     "Nick and Toby left for St. Petersburg this morning. They said goodbye to their girlfriends, picked up their stuff and left. Nick was all smiles. He got his insurance check for the equipment that he claimed had been stolen. He's all good for St. Pete now for a few months, I guess."

     "So what will you do without Toby? Write and publish on your own?"

     "Most likely back to the marketing and design stuff. My mother is leaving me this apartment so it's officially mine. I'd like to pull some money out of my hat so I have my eye on a coffee deal in Africa. Kind of risky but I'm talking to a trade rep from China in town. He's a rich motherfucker and knows how to pull these scary deals off.  You are welcome to partner with me if you are interested."

     "Let's see how this thing goes tomorrow. I may get a work gig out of it if I handle it right.  I could use some of that deal training you will be getting from your Chinese contact, though.  Thanks for the offer."

     I almost told Artur at that moment that the gig might be for the US Government but thought better at the last moment. I'm glad I held off.



   
   

Russian Space Parts for Sale - A Trip Deep into Siberia

     Eighteen hours had already passed since the train we were on was elevated and Russian wheel carriages were bolted into place to accommodate the wide-gauge rail system that the Soviet Union had long ago adopted in its efforts to keep Western invaders (mainly the Germans) from overrunning the country using the West European track system. I had often gone through the three hour carriage retrofit operation at the Polish – Soviet border, but this was the first time, following the recent political and economic upheaval of the region, that I had had a chance to enter the new Russia by rail in what was now officially the CIS or Confederation of Independent States.

     As first impressions usually stick with you, I sensed at the border a heightened level of fear and distrust toward both the Westerners on the train as well as the rough crowd that I found myself a part of as we continued east from Kiev. That feeling remained as the conductor came through checking our tickets for the third time and telling the disheveled and nearly toothless traveler across from me to get his foot off the seat in front of him. Yuri introduced himself briefly when he finally found me on the train then parked himself in the sleeping compartment next to me and fell asleep. He would wake up every 20 or 30 minutes, get up, and nervously pace between the luggage wagon where all of our expedition provisions were stored and our sleeping compartment, where two other men in our group remained bunked out as the train made its way to the East. Yuri made notes on the maps where we were to pick up additional supplies, explosives, and a “specialist” or two that were necessary to carry out the mission. He often swore as he thought of things we needed to do to minimize the risk that we were going to be taking going into restricted areas.

     One of the “specialists” would have documents waiting for us to authorize entry into zones that foreigners were absolutely forbidden from entering. Another specialist knew the deep Siberian territory that we were going to be traveling through and offered protection from either the dangerous natural environment or protection from the dangerous human element that was also part of the risk of traveling through the region. Yuri was most concerned about the danger posed by territorial “gangs” that had claimed certain Siberian regions as their own…and had established their own rule of law.

     How the other two men in the compartment with us played into this fantastic mission, I was not yet aware of.  And the mission itself…fantastic as it seemed…was to travel to at  least three Siberian rocket debris sites to retrieve Soviet and Russian Space parts scattered throughout the Siberian steppe and forest…an area covering more than 10 million square kilometers. We were “focused” on three unusual orbital tracks from the Baikonur Space Complex that significantly reduced our number of target sites and the territory we had to cover. If unable to secure high value targets, we were to try to establish the beginnings of a network that would bring specific items out for delivery to the US or to US interests.

     There was the hope that certain instrumentation and other devices would be still attached to first thru fourth stage rockets that had fallen back to Earth, crashing into remote areas that we now had maps and satellite imagery of. Our information detailed probable targets, the priorities for each site, and some of the dangers we could expect in the area. I couldn’t help noticing, as well, that notes written on some of the documents suggested we interview villagers in specific areas about reports that US MIA-POW’s had been repatriated/sold from China and held for decades since the Vietnam War in the Siberian forest where we were headed. That was not part of the information I had received in Warsaw as I had accepted this unusual task.

     This mission and resulting trip had, in fact, been my brainchild that the CIA had adopted and "edited" after viewing an unusual fax at Artur's place late one afternoon.

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ATTENTION!

Russian Scientists and Team of Business Executives Offers:

1)Very High Purity Aviation/Aerospace Grade Aluminum and Titanium for Sale

2) Multiple locations in Russia for purchase and retrieval

3) Willing to provide a team of specialists to assist in operation.

4) Possible access to other strategic materials and "devices" related to space industry and military science.

***Interested parties contact 48 - 22 - XXX-XXX for more details.***

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