Morgan Stone - The Russian Factor

My second full day in Kiev started with a mob of angry coal miners hollering fascist accusations at the Prokuratura. Galina arrived and we faced each other with our laptops open and logged into the Russian Acquaintances chat site. She was monitoring the packet stream for anything untoward, checking IP addresses and routing, and I was chatting with Anna.

ANNA PREKRASNAYA: News is good. Mama going to business trip. I buy ticket for plane and come to Kiev when she is depart.

“Mama is already departed.” Galina commented sardonically in English. Reverting to Russian, she said, “Yevgeniy called with news from the airport last night. He spotted Sergei, The Skater’s friend. Sergei was with his Mercedes picking up a woman matching Yana Keitel’s description. The car has Russian plates. It is registered in Nizhny Novgorod to the construction company you are interested in.”

“Perfect, Mama’s here? Better see what Anna meant by ‘going.’ Good catch, Galina.”

In the chat window I asked Anna to tell me when her mother was leaving, and got the reply, “Is already depart yesterday.”

Galina gave me a thumbs-up.

The rest of the conversation with Anna focused on where she would stay. Galina decided Anna would stay at my apartment in front of the Prokuratura. That way she would be right in the middle of the promised political action. Not only that, but if Anna was going to do any finger-pointing, she would be in the right place for it.

“I still find it hard to believe someone would visit a total stranger in another country and stay in their flat.” It was a normal in the former USSR and Eastern Europe, but still weirded me out.

“Well, get used to it. That is how things are done here, and simply look at this place. Your apartment is like the Hermitage. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, even a kitchen. Oye, I can only dream of such luxury!”

By my third day in Kiev, I’d gotten into the habit of following the protesters from the Prokuratura to one or the other of two large public squares situated over subway stations. There, they’d join their comrades for rallies, concerts, demonstrations, information sessions and even kasha — porridge — ladled out of mobile battlefield cauldrons by commandos in fatigues and skinheads in black leather. Packing the camera and several roles of film, I reveled in the wealth of photographic subjects and the riot of color, sound, and energy directed toward bringing about change.

The smoldering rage, despair and fear of the generation that had lived under the Soviets clashed in the vast squares with an army of predominantly clueless youth praying to America. This opportunistic, dysphoric crowd was out to party, get drunk, get high, piss off the old Socialists, anything but take life seriously. These post Soviets added their chaotic passion to the addictive, intoxicating experience I had always craved in the former USSR. This time, however, I was acutely aware of my own futile rage at what Russian gangsters had done to Jack.

I kept an eye open for familiar faces I’d either seen in Galina and Luda’s stacks of photos or recalled from my own memory. If someone looked at all familiar or even just interesting, I took a picture. If they didn’t turn out to be who I thought they were, the photo might still end up being important later on. Nothing is wasted in my line of work.

Walking back from a rally in front of the Ukrainian Central Election Commission, an organization with zero credibility but a huge building and an expansive public square, I saw a blacked out Lexus, wheels spinning at an ungodly rpm, stuck in the driveway of my apartment building. Vehicle and pedestrian surfaces are rarely cleared in Kiev, allowing ice to build up into wickedly slick humps, hillocks and ruts that not only make walking an adventure in potential sprains or fractures, but driving a highly specialized skill. The hapless driver of the trapped Lexus was adding to his skill set by learning what not to do on ice. At the same time he was producing enough noise and steam from the screaming tires to have several Prokuratura guards coming to his rescue.

Galina was in the apartment when I opened the door. “Did you happen to see who was in the Lexus stuck there?” She asked.

“Nyet, sorry.”

She left the window where she’d been shooting with a digital camera and showed me the photos she’d just taken.

“Vladimir Ambalov, I know him!” I hit the viewer zoom on Galina’s camera.

“I thought you would recognize him.” She yanked the camera back. “He is down there and you are out somewhere seeing the sights, having a good time, instead of here taking his picture. It is a very good thing you did not offer to help push the car.”

“Yeah, damned good thing. He would have recognized me. It would have been game over.”

“Not just for you. This is serious, Jess. It is not a holiday. You are here to recognize them, not to have them recognizing you!”

I was already too familiar with Vladimir Ambalov, known locally as the Dnipro Don — one of the regional bosses in the Menchikovskaya syndicate. He owned, controlled and ran companies and interests along the Dniper River from Belarus to the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odessa. Over the years, he had specialized in smuggling everything from sex slaves to nuclear waste through his network. I had done business with Vladimir, raised more than a few glasses of vodka with him, dined with his family and admired his collection of priceless icons, and it was probably Vladimir who ordered Jack’s murder.

The Prokuratura guards managed to rock the Lexus free and it parked directly below my kitchen window. I used the Leicaflex to snap pictures of well-dressed men leaving the Prokuratura with their bodyguards and getting into the car. I never saw Vladimir, but I didn’t try very hard. I had Galina’s digital photos of the car approaching, Vladimir opening the back door, getting out, looking at the wheels and getting back in. It was all I hoped to see of Vladimir.

Business done, the Lexus skidded its way out of the parking lot. Anticipating nothing else interesting that day, Galina left with the accumulated photos and the data from Gavin’s listening devices. From my fourth floor perch, I watched a platoon of Prokuratura guards in cheap business suits and light jackets swarm onto the apartment’s driveway with picks, axes and shovels. They worked into the night, providing an anvil chorus accompaniment to the usual megaphone protester’s wailing and shrieking. They did a beautiful job of clearing the ice from our building’s parking lot and driveway. Influence at work, I figured. What neighborly concern for the residents across the street from their workplace. What a joke!

Days went by with morning demonstrations followed by brazen afternoon wheeling, dealing and bribery. Overwrought amateur protests carried on well into the night. Sometimes there were news crews, sometimes riot police, and sometimes only my camera or one of Gavin’s homemade night-vision digitals keeping an eye on the action.

Luda came by with reports, photos of people I should look out for, and information I needed to know. She would leave with the data from Gavin’s devices and my encoded reports. We weren’t about to send that data by Internet and we were careful about generating network traffic beyond what one might expect from a tourist or freelance journalist.

Anna tried to make contact with me when she could do it surreptitiously. She claimed something or someone always prevented her from making a break for Moscow and out of Russia. Even though her mother wasn’t around to watch her, and had last been reported in Kiev by our own network, it sounded to me like she knew Anna was a flight risk and was having her watched. Anna didn’t think so, promising me she had taken every precaution to keep her plans secret.