Yvonne Bornstein - Eleven Days of Hell

When Bob Woodward, the reporter who blew the lid off the Watergate scandal so long ago, came out with his inside account of the march to war against Iraq, Plan of Attack, I read with great fascination that the Bush administration’s Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz entertained the theory that today’s terrorists are linked to remnants of old Iron Curtain spy operatives and that unnamed ‘heads of state’ had warned him specifically that al-Qaeda may be working with ex-KGB officers. No offense, Mr Wolfowitz, but I already knew that, having been victimised by those conjoined forces of evil a dozen years ago.

I can only imagine how many other unfortunate Western businesspeople have been caught in that frightful nexus and suffered a similar—and, sadly, worse—fate than I. For this reason, I live with the fear that the saga did not end, and will not end until the people who kidnapped me finish the job. I have been told that those al-Qaeda sleepers have long memories and an unquenchable thirst for revenge, that once they start something, they will complete it, no matter how many years it takes. I suppose I will forever have that fear. I must live my life in spite of it.

This book will open your eyes to many things, including the utter breakdown of anything resembling law and order in Russia in the years since the fall of Communism—an ironic consequence indeed, given the wide-eyed expectation of a free and democratic society when the wall came tumbling down. I hope that one of the enlightening elements in this book is presenting this under-reported story, which serves as a critical backdrop to my own.

All of the diverse and terrifying conditions that surrounded our business and the devolution of Russian society coalesced for me on January 6, 1992, minutes after landing at the airport in Moscow, commencing what would be seemingly endless physical and mental torture by swarthy, greasy men obviously hired to carry out a very detailed plot of abduction and ransom—in our case, $1.6 million. As much as I try, I cannot wash away the faces of those men. They were like masks of death. Worse, I cannot wash away their smell. It is a stench I will never be able to forget.

In a page-one article in The New York Times dated January 18, 1992, the drama was described, aptly, as something out of the novel Gorky Park, while the lively Australian tabloids played the story with headlines such as, ‘TORTURE HELL IN MOSCOW’ and ‘TERRIFIED TWO THRASHED BY GYPSY SADISTS.’ For Danny and me, unaware of the entertainment value of the abduction, there was only one thing that mattered: survival.

Only in later years did I become fascinated and riveted by the breadth of the story. Thus, I went to great lengths to reconstruct and retrace the steps and the players of the rescue mission, which I had no idea was even going on at the time. This task required much research that included personal interviews with many people, some merely remotely involved with the case. The filing of the Freedom of Information Act requests initially were met with stalling or outright refusals. Finally, I was allowed to see the sheaf of documents attendant to my case, albeit some had pages with so many sentences stricken by big, black strokes of Magic Marker that almost nothing was left to read. Even so, the clues they provided were priceless.

I should say a few words about the structure of the text, lest anyone gets confused. My part in the story is related in a first-person narrative. However, there were events I was not part of and therefore did not see occurring; these, as well as some necessary speculation about why those events occurred, how they evolved, and what the motivations of certain people were, are set in italics with descriptive subheads. Certain events involving Danny I learned about only later, from Danny, and I am indebted to him for reliving the story along with me.

I should also point out that the names of some of the characters in the book have been changed for legal reasons. The fact is, certain people simply prefer that their identities not be revealed in a book, and the nature of this book justifies such a concern. Some who committed crimes were, for reasons to be seen, never convicted, or given light sentences without having to own up to the full extent of their crimes. Others committed crimes of omission, failing to prevent crimes they saw.

These people, who know who they are, live with private guilt. Still others realise the bloodthirsty nature of the people who kidnapped Danny and me, and their sense of retribution. While I gratefully thank the characters who gave their permission to be identified, I wish to see no one become a target of vengeance. Indeed, I share the same fear, every day of my life. However, I want to stress that the factual veracity of the story has not been compromised. Every other detail has been scrupulously verified.

Although I did survive, my life would break into pieces in the years after my ordeal. Fortunately, the pieces were put back together again by Sam, my husband. Part of his method was to tell me, in no uncertain terms, to forget about my self-pity and confront my devils head on, and to appreciate how good it is to be alive so I could finally drive on down the road instead of spinning my wheels in the mud. As usual, Sam was right, in many ways even he didn’t realise. In challenging myself and in creating my own growth, I hope that others—especially women who read this book—can grow as well, through me. One lesson of my story concerns this currently in-vogue notion of women’s self-empowerment. For me, that’s just a fancy way of saying we can do anything, survive anything, and come away more complete. Never did I believe I could be as strong on the inside as I turned out to be. I may have thought I was, but deep down I didn’t really believe it. Now I do.

Maybe the best thing I can say about myself is that at least I’m up to climbing Everest now. So, I hope you’ll pardon me if you pass me on the street and you hear me shouting encouragement to myself. All I really would like you to know about me is that the person behind the words on these pages is a lucky and grateful ducky from Down Under who, at age forty-eight (I don’t plan to get any older, or at least admit it), can say she has lived many lifetimes already—and hopefully has several more patiently waiting their turn. And wait they’ll have to do. For me, it’s not one day at a time but one lifetime at a time. The defining moment of my life came on that bleak morning in 1992 when I fully believed I was about to die and prepared myself for death to come. As it turned out, that was the moment when I had just begun to live.

My eyes opened after a fitful few hours of sleep to see a silhouetted figure looming closer through the darkness. Instinctively, my head shot up from the narrow, rickety bed.

‘Danny? Is that you?’ I called out.

Before the last word echoed in the airless room, the answer came as if with a kick in the stomach. When the shadowy wraith got close enough, I saw not the face of my husband, Danny, but rather the tall, bony, meticulously-groomed woman with the ever-present scrunchie around the bun of her dark-brown hair whom I knew only as ‘Rae.’ Her dark eyes darted nervously from side to side as she motioned furiously for me to get myself on my feet. In half-broken English and Russian, she told me to pack whatever belongings I had strewn on the cold, wood floor into the two gray suitcases propped next to the bed and come with her.