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."