Morgan Stone - The Russian Factor

“Do you know this uncle? You have met him, right? He exists?” Even by Russian standards 60,000 loose share certificates was far fetched.

“Absolutely, we would visit him in Volgograd. You know, you had a picture of him. You showed it to me in Kiev, and I pointed him out, remember?”

“Yeah, and if I had a picture of him, it’s not good news. He’s probably dangerous.”

Anna laughed. “Him? He was a little bit crazy. Maybe a lot crazy. He always had guns and thought everyone was out to get him. He was always afraid of things and kept the drapes closed.”

“You didn’t find that scary?”

“Jess, I was a child. They were adults. They were always right. He also had lots of western things. JVC video player, candy, toys. To me he was like a magician to have things like that.” She picked up the computer mouse she had pounded on, examined it then went on. “It was before the end of the Soviet Union. After that he just had everything. I knew it was unusual, but adults, your relatives especially, are always right. You don’t question them.”

I had a hunch who the magician uncle was. “He had lots of money around too? I bet he liked to show it off, right?”

“Yes, boxes and boxes of it. He would give lots of it to my mother.”

“Any of it in Soy Sauce boxes, like the ones in the trunk back at the Prokuratura?” It was a snide comment. I felt the usual after after-the-yap remorse. “Anna, your uncle is a money launderer.”

She stared at me.

“He takes money that comes from criminal ventures and makes it look like it came from a legitimate source.” I took her hands in mine. “It would be difficult and risky to sell more than a few shares at a time. Believe me, you haven’t lost much.”

Alexi resurfaced at the Windsor Arms Hotel a couple of days after we’d last seen him. With appalling timing, we emerged to find him convincing the doorman he was expected.

“Miss Jess, Miss Anna!” He’d seen us.

“Don’t make eye contact. Maybe he’ll go away.” I hissed.

We walked down the stairs and passed him on the sidewalk.

He chased us, babbling about doing business.

The Turkish embassy, where we were headed to see about Anna making a refugee claim, lay less than a hundred meters ahead. We forged onward.

“Listen to me. I can get you a passport.”

I stopped, turned and faced him. “Really? No cockamamie boat buying. An actual, real passport?”

“ Pravda , a real Ukrainian passport.”

“How much?” I asked.

“Let us talk over lunch.” He cracked a smile.

Yet again, in the basement of the Athena mall, we followed Alexi through the cafeteria line while he skillfully overloaded his tray. I grabbed a coffee and Anna, a tea. “Is that all you are going to eat?” Alexi noticed we didn’t have trays.

The cashier looked at me questioningly and I nodded. “Da, I’m paying for him.”

At the table, he leaned conspiratorially toward us and talked in a low voice about his niece, a young woman in an eastern Ukrainian village who could help her Russian comrade escape. Alexi was willing to arrange the whole exchange for a modest fee, and promised it was foolproof. He claimed that right from the start he thought Anna looked so much like his beloved niece, he was driven to help us. We would discuss the fee after we had seen the passport, which he promised would arrive within a week.

The Russian consulate is at least an hour’s walk from downtown Odessa. The terrain is predominantly dusty crumbling streets traversed by packs of wild dogs. Not a pleasant stroll at the best of times, but with an ankle on the mend the walk was excruciating. A lawyer, recommended by the hotel, suggested we try it in a last ditch attempt to replace Anna’s passport legitimately. Personal experience with the Russian consulate in Odessa had convinced him there was no reciprocity with Kiev or Ukrainian law enforcement. Unless an order to apprehend Anna had come directly from the Kremlin, they would treat her with the same disregard and contempt afforded anyone. Anyone without money, that is. “You do have money, of course?” He’d asked.

“Dollars? Yes, I have some money.” I thought he was asking for payment.

“Dollars, Euro, Rubles… doesn’t matter, it’s all money. Just as long as you have enough of it.”

“How much do you want?”

“Not me, them! The lizards at the Russian consulate. Without money they won’t do a thing, and don’t worry, they are not into kidnapping. Too much work, I imagine.” He stood, looked down at us across his desk, wished us good luck and dismissed us with firm handshakes. He never asked for payment.

From the street, only the sentry huts and a high concrete wall are visible, the consulate itself isn’t. Entry is gained by standing on the sidewalk in front of an intercom panel and making a request via closed circuit TV.

Anna pushed the call button and waited.

“Da, what do you want?” A perturbed voice squawked from the wall.

“My passport was lost. I need a replacement.” Anna said.

“We are too busy. Go away!” Click.

Anna pressed the button several more times at my insistence while I wondered what the chances were of getting a cab back from there.

“What? Speak!” The voice in the wall barked.

“My passport was lost…”

“Oye, it is you! Go away. We don’t deal with passports here.”

“Yes you do.” Anna’s voice was a nervous tremolo. “Our lawyer said this consulate must replace it.”

“So lawyers run the consulate now? Show your passport to the guard.” Click, silence… Clank . A welded steel door in the concrete wall opened a crack.

“Now, what do I do?” Anna panicked.

“You push it and go in.” I said, shoving the steel slab from over Anna’s shoulder.

“Passports!” Rasped a rotund man with three days of stubble, a cigarette and shotgun.

I dug out my Canadian passport and Anna handed the guard her internal passport.

He knew it was an essentially useless document outside of Russia. “What is this? Give me your passport. You think I am stupid?”

Anna stammered, “I am Russian. Ah ah, I lost my passport. The lawyer says I can get a new one here. My friend from Canada is helping me.”

“The Russian goes in,” the guard ordered, “The friend leaves.” He jabbed my passport into my chest.

I snatched it from between his tar stained hirsute fingers before he could poke me again.

“No, my friend must stay with me…” Anna stood firm.

I was impressed.

He straightened, getting as big as he could as I reached into my pocket and pulled out a fist full of Ukrainian hryvnya, candy wrappers, and lint. I placed it on a rusty table beside the wall. Before the breeze could disperse it, the guard had his meaty hand over the small pile. “You and your lawyer can go in.”

We entered a stuffy gray room packed with tired-looking gray people slumped on gray plank benches. The only place to sit was at an empty desk with a banged up metal chair. Anna and I took our places there and waited. There was no counter, no service window — no windows at all — just the door we entered through and a couple of gray doors leading who-knows-where. It felt good to sit, though.

An hour passed. Nobody had come or gone from any of the doors. I had just about given up when an inner door crashed open and an enraged woman shouted at us to get the hell away from her desk and chair. I recalled her voice squawking from the intercom embedded in the concrete wall. Anna jumped with enough violence to topple the chair. Nobody else reacted to the commotion. Maybe they were used to it, or maybe some of them had been sitting there so long they had died without being noticed.