Best Laid Plans

     Even though Yuri had made sure his weapon would be seen on the seat between us in the "69" as we arrived, he did not want us visibly carrying weapons while in the camp nor while out at the debris site. So, when we all finally figured out where we were sleeping that first night, some of us had pistols under our pillow or under the covers...and some had both. I, of course, had nothing. Cindy had her mics pointed in the general direction of where we thought their camp and headquarters were located. A large campfire could be seen several hundred meters away and, with the use of the infrared scopes, we could see that there was a small bacchanalia underway there. Standing on top of the cage, Cindy reported that there were primitive barracks and tents set up around a larger trailer or shop-like building. And as she put it, "There is enough room for 20 or 30 normal people to sleep in those spaces. 100 or so psychotic assholes could also be there."

     Cindy slept up in the cage and I was on a cot in a tent that one would have had to walk thru in order to get to Cindy. Toshek slept in the spacious cab of the "66" and Yuri made a comfortable place for himself in the back of the "69". Vlad was no where to be seen but I had earlier noticed him folding blankets for himself to make a bed. He was probably within earshot of all of us and we just didn't know it. I got up and peed twice during the night and it did cross my mind that I needed to be careful that I didn't pee on Vlad. I didn't want to lose whatever good favor I had gained during the day by giving him the golden shower in a half conscious state. Before we turned the lights out, I asked Cindy if the wild dogs I could hear howling were some kind of Eurasian coyotes or some other relative of coyotes or wolves. She told me that it was the Golden Jackal or European Jackal. They sounded amazingly like the coyotes I'd grown up hearing in Eastern Washington. They quieted down by the time we were starting to doze off and it was only my imagination and fear of the human threat around us that caused my fitful sleep. And, as Yuri had warned me, there would be no contact with Cindy once the lights went out.

     The light of day came none too early as we all wanted to see where we were and understand better what our location was in relation to the camp and the nearby debris site. If anyone had had anything to drink alcoholic the night before, they had drunk alone. Vlad wandered in and out of camp in the morning grabbing his own canned fish breakfast and making tea. There was no discussion with him except for his brief reports that there was a lot of activity at the headquarters. We all seemed pretty fresh for whatever we were facing on our first day. Yuri even seemed upbeat as he decided to make some "cowboy coffee" in hopes that the aroma would entice the mafia scouts to report that the "American camp is drinking their cowboy coffee as we expected." Toshek and Yuri were actually quite good cooks and coordinated their activities in whipping together a very large sausage and scrambled egg plate. There was bread and butter and, if the eggs weren't enough, we had about 100 cans of sardines and 10 kgs of white farmer's cheese that could be used to make a tasty fish paste for open face sandwiches.

     Cindy, the last one to get up, was happy to have a good breakfast but she was all business that morning and was dressed in fatigues, a matching jacket that might have been a little large for her, and brown boots. The weather in June was usually a little warmer than what we were experiencing but it hadn't frozen during the night. The days, normally approaching 65 during this time, hadn't gotten to 60. I had my climbing boots from my days in Washington State hiking throughout the Cascades and was well dressed for the wilds we were in...except I didn't have a cowboy hat...which might have cast doubt in our hosts' minds that I was a real American businessman.

(It seems impossible to us now but many Russians at that time (as well as Poles) held the iconic image of oilman JR Ewing in 'Dallas' as the consummate US businessman.  As I had been in Europe by this time almost 10 years, I'd never even watched the damn show and always had to lie and say, "Of course I'm a 'Dallas' fan! JR and I are cut from the same mold!")

     With Toshek making an effort to clean the pans we had used for breakfast, we had a small meeting in our makeshift kitchen tent. It was decided that anywhere we went this morning, Toshek would stay behind to watch our things at the camp. We guessed that we'd be invited some place to discuss next steps.

     I asked Yuri, "How much have these guys already received from us?"

     "Almost $3000." Yuri said.

     "How much cash do we have here?" I hesitated but asked.

     "Not including what you got from Joe, about $100,000."

     "Is that going to be enough? It seems like a lot of fucking money for these guys sitting here in the mud." I said with a certain amount of disgust in my voice that might have been taken badly by Toshek since he was a 'down in the dirt' trader.

     "It might be. I don't know. These guys start their bidding at $10 million and sometimes take $10,000 for worthless shit. I really can't tell you if it's enough." Yuri said with his shoulders shrugged and a voice filled with frustration.

     "You mentioned, Yuri, when we were driving that we can do wire transfers. Can we do a letter of credit based on receipt of goods or something that protects us?" I suggested trying to introduce standard business practices for risky deals.

     "We can suggest it but we shouldn't demand it. Instead, we take possession of whatever we can, we signal to our bank to make the transfer, and it is possible that we aren't allowed out of the compound until someone confirms that funds have transferred and are on an account.  That is one scenario."  Yuri's scenario was exactly how I had done a deal on the Lithuanian border two years earlier. But in this case, away from communication channels, we weren't sure how we would be communicating with our "bank". That was one of the most important things to find out as soon as we could. As we were ending the meeting, I asked Cindy if her Magic Message Machine worked out here. She only shook her head and pouted.

     Vlad stuck his head inside the tent a few minutes later and said in Russian, "Attention! We have the next welcoming committee coming. Two Lada Nivas with just drivers. No passengers. Probably coming to pick us up...I think."

     Yuri thought about it for a couple of seconds then told us to take our bags with docs and leave the most important mission related things locked up in the cage on the "66". He'd also suddenly decided that Toshek should not be left behind. Virtually everything was already in the cage so we were ready by the time one of the two drivers stepped out of their cars  talking on his walkie-talkie. He was clearly at least two meters tall, about 6'7" and had the features of a cross between George H.W. Bush and the famous American mountaineer, Jim Whittaker (the first American to scale Mt. Everest). He was almost jovial in the way he was reporting to someone back at headquarters, "We have arrived to pick our guests up. They are up and the smell of American coffee and breakfast is still thick in the air! They all look to be in fine spirits and we'll have them delivered to the office shortly. Over, Boss!"

     "Good day, ladies and gentlemen!" looking at Cindy with a small bow of the head as he greeted us. "Michael and the others are waiting for us. Our two little Russian Jeeps should be sufficient to take you over...unless you have something large you need to bring for our discussions.  Your group is five people?"

     "Correct" said Yuri. "Michael is the one I have been talking to for the past 10 days, I hope."

     "And you are also correct, Mr. Yuri." Michael is looking forward to meeting you all.

     "Billy and I will go with you. Cindy, Vlad, and Toshek will ride with your colleague."

     "Very good! More introductions when we get to the meeting. My name is Leo. We gave you a little extra time this morning since you came in so late last night. We are behind schedule so hopefully we can get a lot done this morning and come to some agreements. I am sure you are hoping to see the crash site here as soon as possible. The security team at the site is expecting you sometime later this morning. They are there 24 hrs a day with no access for anyone without Michael's approval."

     Cindy joked to me out of earshot of Leo, "Glad we know that now. Guess we won't be going there to walk our dogs." I don't know why I said it, but I responded, "...or to steal a kiss."  Cindy's facial expression, to my eye, said, "Oh well."

     We split up as Yuri ordered and drove the 400 meters on the muddy gravel road to the portable trailers that Cindy had seen last night as she stood on the cage with her night vision binoculars. Leo only remarked that he thought we would be a larger group and he turned around and said to me, "I hope our American friend is enjoying the beauty of the Siberian steppes. It is this part of Central Russia that I love the most with the lakes and the small woods that dot the landscape. Further south and the trees mostly end. It is here that we have a special kind of beauty. Someone told me that it is a little like West Texas here...but a lot colder in the winter."

     The Nivas parked side by side very close to the trailer and it was quite muddy all around the cinderblocks that formed the porch in front of the door. Leo apologized for the "muddy mess" and lead us through the door and into a room with a long table and decent looking brown office chairs that all swiveled. A large but quite pretty woman about 40 years old was making tea at the end of the long room and was putting cookies from a package onto a large plate. She was as muddy as we were and the bottom of her skirt, about halfway from her knees to her ankles, was also quite muddy. The sound of men's voices and loud steps in the trailer came as we were sitting down where Leo had suggested. We were on one side of the long table and our hosts were to be on the other side...nearest the door.  The only unsettling thing about their approach was that their stomping was so loud coming through the trailer and there was no talking whatsoever. Leo had been quite talkative but he became silent as we began to sit and waited for Michael.  Four men in average looking (but muddy) suits entered the room and we all stood. The reflex action to shake hands kicked in and I reached across to shake their hands and only Michael reached out. (I assumed it was Michael since he sat at the head of the table.)  I said, "Billy" and he said, "I am Michael." In that unexpected moment of being the one to introduce myself first, I quickly pointed to my colleagues and said their first names. Michael's response was, "These are my colleagues." and did not introduce them.

     Michael did not talk for close to half a minute looking at some papers and organizing some documents. My assessment of that moment was that he did not know if I would be the voice of our group or if Yuri would carry the conversation. Yuri spoke up and said, "Michael, we should continue where we left off on the phone last week. We will translate for Billy periodically...not simultaneously."

     Michael seemed relieved that he would be dealing with another Russian and began with general questions about our arrival, if we had enough provisions to be self sufficient, and our intended length of stay. He suggested that his people might be able to provide some things but "everyone is very busy so we can't really promise anything."

     "We will be fine in our little camp for the short time we plan to be here and, with your good will and cooperation, we will all be happy businessmen." Yuri said.

     "As I promised on the phone, we have your first choice Soyuz remains on a trailer about 40 kms from here at another guarded location.  We are willing to release the entire trailer to you if you have a standard tractor that can pull it. We can also pull it someplace for you but it must be covered and disguised. We want you to offer a reasonable sum for the whole trailer load."

     "Michael, it is interesting you decided to jump to the big prize first. We expected to pay cash for items we retrieve here at this site and then start negotiations on the big prize." 

     "You can still pay cash for whatever you want from this site. That will make us very happy and it will pay our operating costs. But it is not really worth our time for you to come here and bother us for a piece of titanium from this site. I am sure that Mr. Billy did not come here for a bolt or a screw. Please accept our offer to travel to the priority site and examine it for yourself. If you like what you see, you will make an attractive offer, we will exchange goods for payment, and our deal is done. Very simple."

     "Michael, you have given us something to think about. I suggest that you let me translate this to Billy and we can reconvene in 10 minutes. Can we be alone for a short while?"

     "Of course," and our hosts bowed then stepped out of the room.

     Yuri quickly started in hoping we could quickly agree on a strategy. "So, I think you understood most everything. He is pressuring us to make an offer on his trailer load...as a whole. This site was his cash cow but I think it is not so profitable now and he knows that we want the third stage. If Vlad and I go with your papers from Joe to the trailer site and confirm that it is really what Joe wants, and you stay with Toshek and Cindy to see if the device below the attachment ring is there and removable, we should all be safe. He is going to be very surprised and likely accept a number less than $100,000 for such a quick deal and we will make a follow up deal on the rest of the trailer...and get our asses out of Dodge."

     I didn't love the idea of both Yuri and Vlad leaving us but it seemed safe to remain with Toshek and be with all of our things and vehicles nearby. And even though I knew that Cindy could take care of herself in most situations (probably better than I could) I was almost ready to suggest that Cindy go with Yuri and Vlad...but I didn't. I wish I had.

***

     Our Central Siberian mafia hosts returned and after 30 minutes of relatively easy discussion, we came to an agreement. Yuri summed it up for Michael at the end of the meeting, 

     "So, 1) it is agreed that three of us will stay and inspect the nearby site AND if we identify what we want, you will price that part and, if we agree to the price, remove it or help us remove it and take to the camp. 2) At the same time, two of us will go with you to the trailer site and inspect it. You are expecting an offer for the whole trailer. Your price is $500,000. There is some room for reasonable negotiation.  Is this what you understand from our discussions?"

     "Yes. We can start when you are ready." said Michael.

     Yuri shook his head in agreement then changed the subject, "Good. One last thing. One of your colleagues here is involved in a large military surplus supply business near Chelyabinsk. (That quiet guy, sitting across from me, woke up when Yuri mentions him.) I helped a different American buy a lot of things there. We paid some cash and the rest by bank transfer. So you can trust us if we make an offer and pay some by wire transfer, that we are good for it." 

     "It is not preferred but I will talk to Oleg about his experience with you and we will discuss it possibly." Michael said while staring at Oleg who looked a little embarrassed by the unexpected rise to stardom at the table.

     "We will prepare a larger vehicle for our trip to the trailer site and I will call the security team at the local debris site and tell them to expect three potential buyers for inspection in one hour. One thing you must know, though. It is not healthy to be at the site here for too long. Ten minutes is maximum exposure and then you should take a break. The security team will show you the safe zones and the danger zones." 

     "Fuel that came down with the rocket?" Yuri asked

     "Yes"

     Cindy rolled her eyes and put her hand to her mouth and said, "I knew I forgot something, the respirators."

     Our final meeting, again in the kitchen tent, was to go over panic procedures. Yuri felt that we were sitting in a good position with very little chance of things going south. He told us that the presence of the other mafia bosses, especially Oleg, at the meeting actually encouraged him because they represented a kind of conglomerate.  The pressure for a numer stulecia with the rocket debris was a lot less since they had businesses elsewhere (at least one) that was doing quite well.

     "You three stay within sight of each other. Who knows how Michael is treating his 'security team'. If they are marginalized from the others, they could try to do something on their own. That's when it gets dangerous.  We should be back by four or five in the afternoon. We'll figure out where we are and what we do next tonight."

     The driver arrived in an UAZ, to pick up Yuri and Vlad for their trip to investigate and confirm the stage 3 debris.  If all went well, they would be back from the trip in 2-3 hours and be ready to offer Michael a sum of cash that would cover our retrieval of the device(s) we were after and get us out of the "mafia preserve". That in itself would represent a very successful end to our mission.

      Cindy, Toshek and I viewed our stage 2 investigations today as insurance against the possibility that we were being scammed with debris that was not actually from the stage three site.  If we actually found the "lower priority" electronics and housing today, we'd still be able to say that we'd successfully accomplished our mission.  Because the meeting with Michael had gone so well and our sense of danger was beginning to come down, in retrospect, it is quite likely that we let our guard down. Yuri had warned us, and Cindy had been sensitive to the fact that the lower end mafia "servants" could be a unique danger on their own, and this is what bore out in the end.

     Within half and hour of their departure to the third stage rocket trailer site, Toshek, Cindy and I were ready for our "tour" and inspection of the local stage two site. One of the Niva's we had ridden in earlier arrived with the UAZ that picked up Yuri and Vlad.  It had been waiting for us sitting about 100 meters from our camp. We made a small plan for the visit that, if we were allowed, we would spend as much time as possible inspecting the debris carefully. It had been agreed upon several times that we would not separate during the visit. We piled into that car with my toolkit and Cindy had her own tools in a small bag. If Toshek was carrying any weapon, it had to have been in his coat. My weapon, the dagger-like knife that I had been given at the Embassy was the only thing I had that was in the category of a "weapon". If I had known how to use it, I might have thought of it as a weapon, as well.

     It took about ten minutes for us to get to where we could see the main hulk of the debris in the immediate distance. It just looked like big darkened pipe lying on the ground from where we were. The muddy road and the driver's swerving to avoid deeper puddles made the distance seem longer than it really was. At one point we avoided a very deep gully and the driver told us that it was a crater from where the twenty ton Soyuz rocket debris hit the Earth first and bounced after it's 20 mile free-fall back to meet the ground. He then pointed past the main body of the third stage and said that there were other pieces that had broken off or "came down with it" not far away. One thing we all had noticed as we got closer, there was a large carcass of some type of animal about 100 meters from the main body of the debris. I wanted to ask our driver if the space junk had hit the animal but I got my answer before I was able to make my joke. Toshek translated what the driver advised us about:

     "Rocket fuel killed a lot of animals here.  You'll see them as you walk around. We are suggesting that you do not spend too much time...maybe 10 minute intervals...at the debris itself. We usually start to feel sick after that much time. It's probably still in the soil. Depending on the wind direction, get about 50 to 75 meters away for 10 or 15 minutes." Cindy and I nodded to each other since we had been informed about such a possibility in the docs we got from Joe. 

(The use of Syntin or 1-Methyl-1,2-dicyclopropylcyclopropane in the Soviet Union and later Russia made for an extremely toxic fuel for the Soyuz -U2. But, I doubt that any environmentalists were screaming about it during the Cold War and shortly after the political changes.)

     Well, that certainly would be a limiting factor on what we could get done today, I thought. Effectively, half our time is spent detoxing. The driver stopped about 30 meters away and said our "monitor" would be meeting us in a few minutes.

     "He is told to stay with you at all times to make sure you don't steal anything." he added. Looking at me straight in the eye I nearly stuck my tongue out at him but thought better. Cindy kicked me in disbelief when she heard him say it.

     "If we find something we want, what is the procedure for removing it?" I asked. Toshek translated.

     "Just tell the monitor and mark it on the diagram he has. You can negotiate a price with Michael." was his answer.

     Three men came out of the woods to the left and were walking directly towards the main fuselage lying in the dirt and grass. We were interested in the front or leading edge where the attachment ring (we hoped) would be and the hypothesized target electronics package just below the ring attached to the inner wall...or the ring itself. We got out of the car and walked directly toward the rocket. The three men followed us closely without speaking to us. They were, though, talking to each other about this or that "bastard that had cheated (them) and wanting to 'fuck them up' next time they saw him."  Cindy was looking at me with a disgusted facial expression and she told me, "This is the asshole that noticed me in the "66" last night and said what he said about the Americans."

     All six of us, in two groups of three, huddled around the front of the second stage fuselage and then I began looking at the inside lip of the 9ft diameter tube we had walked into. There seemed to be several potential locations for small electronics to be tucked into the collar where the attachment ring would be located. Standing inside the Soyuz U2-A I began looking very closely at the rivets and was hoping to see an area that looked more like screws. I did not have a torch but I knew that Toshek and Yuri had a small torch in the "66" if it was necessary to cut a piece out (That was, of course, assuming that we had a torch that could cut some of the special metal alloys that these rockets were made of.)

     "I need a flashlight to check the line around the inside of the leading lip." I told Cindy

     "We've already been here ten minutes. At most we've got five more minutes. How do you feel?" she asked me.

     "I feel fine. The wind is blowing enough that I think the draft through the fuselage is giving us natural ventilation." I told her.  "And you?"

     "I feel nothing."  she said in agreement.  "Let's stay a while longer." With that, Cindy handed me a mini pocket flashlight so I could see behind the inside lip of the opening. After about 10 more minutes of going rivet by rivet, I saw no possible location for an electronics package but I had only done 20% of the whole ring...and the part that was 9ft in the air represented a problem without a small step ladder or something to stand on.

     Cindy broke the sounds of me talking to myself as I was counting the rivets and giving each a negative grade, "Monitor Mike here is pointing to his watch saying we need to leave, Bill."

     Toshek heard Cindy and shook his head agreeing to begin moving away from the crash site. At about that time, the third monitor returned to where we were and asked Toshek if he wanted to see where the other parts of the debris site were located.  Toshek probably agreed to do so thinking that Cindy and I together would be fine. He said to Cindy, "I'm going to take a quick look at the other two debris sites very close to here. I'll be back in a few minutes."

     I didn't understand that we were now alone inside the fuselage but I noticed that the behavior of the two monitors immediately changed. The main monitor, who had been two or three meters away but tracking Cindy's movements throughout the fuselage, inside and out,  was now right on top of her within a few feet. She began to pull away from him and show that she was very uncomfortable with his approaches. Instead of yelling loudly to signal to Toshek that something was happening, she shoved her palm into his face starting a fight. He grabbed her by the crotch and then the fight went full tilt. It was at that moment that the lights went out for me. The second monitor saw me grab for my toolkit, yelling, and kicked my head from the left side. It must have hit the side of the fuselage along the ring because the skull fracture I had was on the right. Cindy must have put up quite a fight because it wasn't until the second monitor saw that I was out, that they gained control over her. He stepped in to help Monitor Mike and Cindy was eventually taken to the guard shack some 100 meters away. I don't know if I was left on the ground where he had kicked me or if they had dragged me to where I woke up some minutes later. Whatever had happened, I was covered in mud on the front and my mouth was filled with it too. I'd either been dragged face down through the mud to where I was left about 50 meters from the shack on a large wooden pallet, or I had gotten up and made it to the pallet on my own...falling several times along the way. My head wasn't bleeding terribly but I couldn't see straight and I remember gagging and then alternately vomiting, talking to myself trying to figure out where I was and what had happened. When I stood up, I would get sick and would lose vision after a few seconds. I reached up to feel my head and could tell that it was swelling along a line from my temple to about the middle of the top right.  Sitting on the pallet, holding my aching head and hoping that the nausea and vertigo problem would go away, I tried to focus looking out to see if I could see Toshek anywhere. With the buzzing in my ears, I couldn't hear anything and the one time I tried to yell, it nearly caused me to faint again from the pain. At some point I was able to stand up and I set myself, to the best of my recollection, on a course back to our camp. Luckily, my toolkit was still clicked into my belt loop and everything was still in it.

     (The rest of the next 24 hours I have pieced together from what others have told me and from the reports that Joe sent me over the weeks after I returned to Poland.  I remember "snapshots" or mental images of people and places along the way and I also remember very clearly my obsession with getting away from the Lakes. I also worried at the time in my state that we had all been tricked and that Toshek, Yuri, Vlad, and Cindy were either dead or being held for ransom and all I could think of was how I would get away. Once I decided to leave alone, I focused on that and didn't really think about anything else.)