Вил Мирзаянов - State Secrets - An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program

It would be a good idea to take some underwear and clothes, I thought mechanically. However, I realized that I was causing my child psychological trauma, so it would have been an inexcusable cruelty to prolong the scene he had to witness. I quickly put on a ski sweater, a light overcoat, a ski cap, and old winter boots that had already lost their original lining a long time ago.

“Hands!” ordered the OMON officer. I didn’t understand. However, when he barked the word out again, I saw the unmistakable threat and the resolve in his eyes to knock me down with a shattering blow. Then it dawned on me – he wanted to handcuff me. I dutifully obeyed. My son’s eyes were wide open and full of terror. Tears were running down his cheeks. He cried without a sound like old men do. [303] After that he suffered from a nervous tic for a number of years, and no pediatrician could cure him. Even the “Holy water” that Nuria bought for a tidy sum from non-traditional healers didn’t help. At night, in bed, he threw his small thin body from side to side, bumping against the wall, and pleaded in despair, “Mama, this is not my body. It is jumping. Help me please!”

Finally, Nuria got a bit of control over her migraine and got up to close the door after us. I purposefully went to the door, trying not to look back at Sultan any more. I didn’t even have any strength left to tell him, “I’m sorry.” Probably I cried, too, but without tears or sobbing. When we were descending the stairs, one policeman with an automatic weapon went ahead of me and the other behind me.

A small paddy wagon was waiting for us in the street. Mechanically, involuntarily, my gaze went up to the kitchen window of my apartment on the fourth floor. I saw my Sultan’s little face and quickly turned away. I wasn’t able to wave good-bye to him. A lot of residents of my apartment building were watching all this from a distance.

I was glad that the policemen didn’t bow my head down, while I was getting into the car as police in the U.S. sometimes do in the movies.

The car stopped in the yard of the Police Department 139, and I was ordered to get out. I was taken through a first floor corridor, which reeked of rats and urine, to the officer on duty, who was sitting behind a barred window. The OMON officer who had escorted me gave the duty officer some paperwork and opened the door to a room screened off from the corridor by glass squares covered with white oil paint.

A drunken middle aged man was crying in the room there, saying that he was the former hockey player “K”. I could hardly recognize the famous sportsman who used to play so well on the trade union team. After that he was a hockey referee for a long time. However, the cruel twists of fate in this sportsman’s life finally broke him. He had become an inveterate alcoholic, although something remained of his appearance that showed he wasn’t an ordinary citizen. His clothes were clearly made abroad and were of a very high quality. You couldn’t just go into a store and buy them in Russia. Also, he smoked Camel cigarettes. Soon one of the sportsman’s relatives came and took him away. I was left alone.

I could hear the duty officer calling someone and asking what he should do with “this Mirzayanov.” However, the jail mechanism worked slowly, and nobody was in a hurry to “place” me anywhere. The wait was long and agonizing, and no one offered me anything to drink or a chance to use the restroom. About five hours passed. Finally, the officer opened the cell door and commanded, “Hands!” They handcuffed me, which meant that they would take me to a prison. I didn’t even ask which jail. What was the difference, as it no longer depended on me? We drove around Moscow for a long time and, the car finally stopped near a red building. One of the guards went up to the building and soon he came back and explained something to the driver. I realized that neither the driver nor the guard knew their way.

Eventually, the car stopped near an arch with large iron-clad gates. We drove a few dozen meters further, stopped again and I was ordered to get out. Somewhere people were loudly and constantly shouting, like at a construction site. However, here the voices were anxious. They were taking some kind of a roll call, calling out names. Construction debris and some other trash was scattered about near the walls of the building. The OMON officer opened the iron door and showed a paper to the sentry inside. We went a few meters down the corridor, and I saw many men dressed in dirty military uniforms sitting behind a poorly illuminated wooden barrier. The room was full of gray tobacco smoke and the stench was a mixture of foul odors and vodka.

The ceiling was of an uncertain color, with some hints that it could have once been white. The walls were once painted green, but there was almost no paint left, and you could see the yellowish lime of peeling plaster. On the remaining surfaces there were huge patches of mold. Drunken eyes were glittering in the dim light, and I realized that I was in the famous jail with the lyrical name, Matrosskaya Tishina. This prison was probably originally constructed as a rest home for sailors, and the name translates as “Sailors’ Silence”, though its official name is “Investigation Isolator IZ-48/1.” Isolators are special prisons constructed during Soviet times, which were used mainly for detaining political prisoners and espionage suspects. This maximum security prison in recent years has also held its share of chronic and extremely violent criminals.

The OMON officer gave my papers to the officer on duty and took off my handcuffs. I was ordered to follow a guard along the corridor. He took me to a cell where there were already a few people, and ordered me to take off all my clothes and to give them to the security guards who were sitting behind a window. I understood that they wanted to make a search. I had few clothes on and hadn’t taken anything with me. This was a great blunder. Quickly I removed my clothes and handed them through the window, with my boots. Soon they gave me everything back except my scarf, belt, a little money and the keys to my apartment. I got dressed. It was cold and reeking of sweat and sewage.

Soon I was taken to a different cell which was about 30 square meters. Almost all the window panes behind the iron bars were broken, and a few benches stood near the walls, firmly fastened to the concrete floor, which was black with coagulated dirt. The toilet was near the door on a small platform. A few people were sitting on the floor of the cell enjoying a lively conversation. They paid no attention to my “hello.” I sat down on one of the benches and waited to be taken to a different cell. Officers from Police Department 139 had kept my watch, so it was difficult to say what time it was.

More and more people were brought into the cell. Soon it grew warmer, and it became incredibly stuffy. After a while, the cell was completely full of people! A small Chinese man, who didn’t know a word of Russian, was sitting on the floor near me, yet a fidgety snub-nosed fellow was loudly trying to explain something to him, by mispronouncing Russian words, so that they sounded like Chinese. A young Korean was lying not far from me, and a young man from the Caucasus Region, with a swollen hand, was continuously rushing around. Groaning with pain, he was squeezing between the other prisoners, who were standing, sitting, and lying around. Judging by appearances, all the prisoners were young, mostly in the 20-35 year age range.

Soon three people made themselves comfortable on the floor near my seat and animatedly discussed their stories of murders, which they asserted they were not guilty of. “Of course, I did them in, those assholes. What else could I do?” one was saying to another. “And it is not the first time, either. So what? I did my time for the last one. OK, let me do my time now. You know, I didn’t do it on purpose, it just happened. Something is wrong with my nerves and my head.”