Bar in the Departure Zone. The Story of One Escape

ABROAD

There was no point in staying at the airport, but Dima had nowhere to go. He just stood there and observed the slowly moving taxi queue. The drivers stretched muscles beside their vehicles, smoking and conversing in German, occasionally Turkish. As he wandered along the queue, he heard a Russian word and noticed a plump female taxi driver chatting with an older man, also a driver. Dima waited until the woman was alone and approached her.

“Excuse me, do you speak Russian?” he asked.

“Oh, a cute Russian,” she smiled and pronounced a few Russian words, “Peace, work, Olympics. Co chcesz? What do you want?” She was Polish.

But Dima didn’t know what he wanted. “Could you take me to the city?” he slowly pronounced the Russian words.

“Masz jakieś złotówki? Do you have some zlotys?” she asked, squinting slyly.

Thanks to Vlad’s stash, Dima had some zlotys, and he pulled out a wad from his pocket and handed them to her.

She laughed and said in Polish, “Zlotys are no good here. You’ll need to come up with some Deutschmarks.”

Dima had a supply of German currency as well.

She opened the taxi door and invited him to get in. He felt she understood Russian perfectly well, and he was right. In Polish schools, everyone studies Russian. She found her passenger intriguing. “Małgorzata Mosakovski,” she introduced herself. “You can call me Goshka.”

As they drove out of the airport, Dima finally felt a sense of relaxation, the tension dissipating. Goshka switched to accented Russian and engaged in lively conversation. Originally from Gdansk and working as a student, she drove a taxi in the evenings to earn extra money, following in the footsteps of her uncle, who had been in Germany for a long time. Her chatter helped Dima unwind, and eventually, he drifted into a deep, exhausted sleep. Having not provided a specific destination, Goshka pondered where she should take him. After a brief exchange on the radio with her dispatcher, she decided to take him to a church.

“Heiligen Nikolaus,” she announced, gently rousing Dima from his slumber.

“Nicholas?” he mumbled. “Is it a Russian church?”

“That seems to be the case,” Goshka replied, laughing and observing her drowsy passenger through the rearview mirror. She pressed a button to lower the window, allowing the chilly air to enter the car.

“Wszystko w porządku,” she reassured him in Polish, saying, “Everything is in order.”

As darkness gradually transformed into a soft gray hue with the break of dawn on the horizon, Dima caught a glimpse of the city’s silhouette ahead.

“Goshka,” he spoke up.

“Yes?” she responded.

“I’ve never been to a church before,” he confessed.

FATHER DMITRY

The church turned out to be an unassuming building located in an industrial area of the city, surrounded by warehouses and railway tracks. Goshka dropped off her drowsy passenger but hesitated to leave. She explained to Dima that she would return in the afternoon. Dima sat on the steps at the entrance, waiting, although he wasn’t quite sure what he was waiting for.

“Womit kann ich Ihnen behilflich sein?” A voice came from above him, speaking in German. “Can I help you with something?”

“I don’t understand,” Dima replied in Russian.

“A Russian!” exclaimed the priest, dressed in black attire. He was tall and thin, with a sparse beard. “What is your name?” he asked in Russian, with a soft accent.

“Dima… Dmitriy,” replied Dima.

“Me too! I’m Dmitriy, Father Dmitriy,” the priest said

“Who’s father?” asked a confused refugee, and the priest burst into laughter. He came from a family that had emigrated from Russia to Harbin, China, following the Bolshevik Revolution. After living in Yugoslavia and Austria, where Dmitriy was born, they eventually settled in Germany.

“Some work is available, but that’s not my department. I will introduce you to the deacons and the treasurer. You can’t live in the church, but if you have nowhere to go, I can allow you temporary use of the classroom.”

The church operated based on communal principles with a small congregation of fewer than 100 parishioners. Important decisions were made by a parish council consisting of ten people. Dima, being a Soviet citizen, encountered many surprises. For instance, great emphasis was placed on children, with Sunday school, excursions, and movies organized to ensure they wouldn’t forget their native language and culture.

While no specific job was available for Dima in the church, Father Dmitriy took pity on the sincere and open young man and allowed him to sleep in the school classroom. Something about Dima’s open face instilled trust in Father Dmitriy. Later, Father Dmitriy discovered that the young man had a wealth of interesting knowledge about life behind the Iron Curtain and a deep understanding of ancient history and geography. He also found Dima to be articulate and well-spoken.

With the recent passing of the longtime parish archpriest, Father Dmitriy found himself without anyone to consult. Taking it upon himself, he entrusted Dima with janitorial duties and various small tasks within the church.

“You see, Dima, although I’m the rector, I’m not yet an archpriest. I’m just a hieromonk, which is not a high rank. But I hope to be promoted to archpriest soon, as is fitting for a rector,” the priest explained.

Dima was captivated by the information. “So, it’s kind of like the army with ranks and such?” he asked, genuinely curious but also lost in his own thoughts.

The priest wondered if Dima was making a jest, but his serious and somewhat distracted demeanor indicated otherwise.

In truth, Dima couldn’t stop his mind from wandering back to his uncle Vlad, far away in snow-covered Moscow. Had his connections been enough to keep him out of trouble? Was life in Russia really so bad? He wasn’t a dissident, he hadn’t experienced starvation, and he hadn’t been persecuted. And was it all worth it in the end?

Then there was Anya. Where was she now? Why did everything happen the way it did? It seemed that his arrival in the bar had only brought grief to those close to him. Would it always be this way?

Noticing the priest’s perplexity, Dima raised his gaze. “I’m sorry, I was lost in thought. Did I say something foolish?”

“Dima, perhaps you should share with me what’s troubling you. How did you end up here at my doorstep? Your thoughts are far away from this place. You can trust me. There may be little I can do to help, but I’m willing to try,” the priest offered.

However, Dima wasn’t ready yet to confide in anyone about how he had escaped from the USSR. True, he hadn’t harmed the person whose passport he possessed. He didn’t even know how he managed to escape. But he suspected that the valid owner of the passport had been murdered, and he felt a sense of responsibility. The constant worry weighed on his mind, causing headaches as time passed within the church.

Father Dmitriy continued to ask him to open up, promising to help him. “I’ve seen many refugees,” he said, “and I can well imagine what you must have gone through.”

But Dima remained silent.

The following week, the priest asked Dima to help the school’s Russian language teacher. Dima got along well with children, but he had no teaching experience. Nevertheless, he proved popular with the children, and the priest was content.

The parish treasurer ran a camera shop in Frankfurt and hired Dima as a part-time assistant. The store was frequented by American military personnel eager to purchase German-made cameras, and Dima’s command of English soon made him invaluable.

Although life seemed to improve for him, Dima was still tormented by his thoughts. He ate little and slept poorly.

“I must decide what to do next, or I’ll go nuts,” he thought.

At New Year’s 1982, Father Dmitriy hosted a celebration where unsuspecting Dima tried some homemade kirschwasser. Fooled by the sweet aroma of cherries, currants, and almonds, Dima barely noticed the alcohol. But after four or five glasses, the effect became noticeable. He suddenly felt affection for these people who had been so kind to him. Then he fell silent. Father Dmitriy had been watching him and eventually came to sit beside him.

Dima began to speak, and stemming the flood of words was impossible.

THE PRIEST’S INQUIRY

Dima’s story confused the clergyman. It was not at all what he had expected. He had assumed that the young man’s distress stemmed from the relatives he had left behind or maybe a girlfriend. But the murder of an innocent German? Although Dima was not directly involved in the murder, this situation required some resolution. On January 2nd, he politely demanded that Dima surrender Rüb’s passport and left without explaining. Dima took this calmly. He was tired of being afraid, tortured by terrible thoughts. Any resolution to his dilemma would be welcome.

But Father Dmitriy did not go to the police. He headed for Braunschweig, and the address on the sticker affixed to the passport. Unaware of the priest’s plans, Dima waited for the arrival of the police outside the church entrance, hoping to avoid a scandal. But after three hours, he decided to go to the camera shop.

Sigismund, the owner, had placed a new sign in the window, “English spoken here.” Seeing Dima, he waved and pointed to the sign. Inside the store, Sigismund treated Dima to leftover pies from New Year’s Eve, and Dima calmed down.

After several hours on the autobahn, Father Dmitriy reached the Rüb house. Half hoping no one was at home, he rang the bell at the gate of the impressive two-story structure, trying to think of how to raise the subject of the murdered man with his family. But the door opened to reveal a girl of about ten wearing yellow rubber boots that were clearly too big for her. She ran to the gate.

“What magnificent boots you have,” started Dmitriy, wondering how to continue the conversation.

“They’re for working in the greenhouse,” the girl boasted.

A man’s voice sounded from inside the house. “Emma, Emma, come back inside. You’ll catch a cold.”

When he saw the man, Dmitriy started. It was the same man whose photo was on the passport. The man walked to the gate and opened it. “Good afternoon. How may I help you?” he asked.

Dmitriy was dumbfounded. He could do nothing but hand the passport to the man.

Sigismund closed the shop, and Dima wandered back to the church, where he sat on the steps to continue his vigil. It was already dark, but no one appeared, not the police, not Father Dmitriy. Finally, shivering with the cold, he entered the school annex and lay in his sleeping bag with a book.

Father Dmitriy was eager to share his news with Dima. When he arrived at the church, he parked behind a white minivan he had never seen before. As he approached, three men stepped out of the van. One of them wearing a kindly smile. “Herr Rayevskiy?”

And Dima’s life took another sharp turn. Once a week, he was invited to talk to another federal official. They gave him a new ID and offered to move him to free lodgings. He was already comfortable at Sigismund’s house, but they insisted he move, and he had to agree.

A second meeting was convened in the building on Dzerzhinsky Square. The head of the First Chief Directorate, Kryuchkov, listened with a bored air to the reports from various sources about the defector. There had been no past contacts with foreigners. There had been contact with citizens of socialist countries in the Riga hostel during a short period at the aviation institute. As is always the case with large-scale operations, side events that were not directly related to the defector were revealed. The head of the personnel department reported that intelligence interrogations of the porter’s girlfriend, Anna Gracheva, who had been expelled from the informant network, revealed the immoral behavior of a colonel of the political department, Shadursky. The order for his dismissal was signed. In addition, it turned out that Anatoly Nititich Lakhov, a retired inspector of the personnel department of the Far Eastern Shipping Company, was actually Eduard Izrailevich Lurie, who had been on the all-USSR wanted list since 1961 for embezzlement of social property on an especially large scale. The real Lakhov died in 1959 during the explosion of an exploration pit. The regional police department was investigating. Lurie was arrested and testified, but there was no reason to believe he knew more about the defector.

The head of the KGB’s Fourth (Germany) Department reported that the person involved’s whereabouts had been established. Cautious attempts to contact him were unsuccessful, but sources in East Germany revealed that he had no plans to return.

Kryuchkov concluded the meeting. “Let’s continue the operational work on this porter. Find out his movements and contacts. Something tells me we will hear more about him.”

FRANKFURT

“You’re not a kike, so they’ll probably hand you over to the Tolstoy Fund.”

“What did you say?” The words were unintelligible to Dima.

“You’re not a jew.” Yurek the interpreter corrected himself, slightly embarrassed.

Dima was puzzled. “Why would they hand me over?”

“That’s the way it works. Jews have many helping organizations, but Russians only got this Tolstoy Fund. But they’ll help you out.”

“How?” the refugee persisted.

“Well, they will help you adapt faster, teach you the language, and so forth.” Yurek was Polish, and when he was excited, he reverted to his native language. “Mógłbym Pana o coś zapytać?” May I ask you something?

This made Dima laugh. “Sure, zapytać me.”

“But you mustn’t tell anybody.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Why are you staying here? Why don’t you go to America? You already speak English.”

“Do you think that’s possible?” The idea excited Dima. He had a vague, uninformed idea of somehow getting to the USA, and now Yurek made it sound relatively easy. “But how would I go about it? I’m already recognized as a refugee here in Germany.”

“They have only just established your identity. There’s still a lot to do, and they can’t prevent you from going to the Americans. I would if I were you.”

“Can you help me, Yurek?” he pleaded. “I don’t want to offend the Germans. Will you take me to the Americans?”

“What do you need me for? You speak English. Just tell them you’ve always wanted to go to America, but you couldn’t come until the Germans completed their investigation. Take your papers and go. I can’t go with you, or I will get into trouble.”

The matter was decided a few days later when two girls in U.S. Air Force uniforms visited the camera shop. Dima spent over an hour contineusely talking – helping them select lenses for macrophotography. They were curious about life in the USSR and weren’t shy about asking questions, which he answered easily in English. It occurred to him that becoming equally fluent in German would take years.

The following day, Dima passed through the iron gates of the massive American Consulate complex in Frankfurt. Inside, he encountered dozens of people in uniform busy with various tasks, supporting the maintenance of U.S. military bases scattered throughout the district.

Approaching one of the counters, Dima informed the official that he was from the Soviet Union and seeking political asylum. The official made a call, and within five minutes, a short, middle-aged man named Sam appeared. Speaking perfect Russian, he introduced himself as Semyon and led Dima down a corridor to a small, windowless office. They spent three hours talking and filling out forms with Dima’s personal information there. Semyon expressed his intention to speak with Father Dmitriy.

During the car ride, Dima learned that Semyon had also been a Soviet soldier and had escaped to West Berlin during the construction of the Wall. He married a German woman, moved to the United States, pursued studies, divorced, served in Vietnam, and was employed by the U.S. government.

Semyon made several more visits, bringing additional questionnaires for Dima to complete. Eventually, a phone call came to the camera store, summoning him back to the consulate. He was escorted to a spacious, well-lit office adorned with a portrait of President Reagan. Waiting for him, there was an athletic-looking woman who wore no makeup. She asked him several questions: what would happen if he returned to Moscow, whether he had made any phone calls to Moscow if there had been any contact with relatives since his escape, and his rank at discharge from the army. As Dima answered, she took notes in an open folder. When the questioning concluded, she extended a cold hand and informed him that he could leave.

The meeting with the female interrogator had left Dima feeling depressed and uneasy. He sensed that something significant had happened, possibly not in his favor. Semyon, looking somber, accompanied Dima back to his office, where he asked Dima to sit down.

“I have bad news for you,” Semyon began.

Dima’s alarm grew. “Are you going to send me back to Moscow?” He felt a wave of dizziness wash over him. “Are you sending me back???”

Puzzled, Semyon reassured him, “No, no, not at all. Why would we do such a thing? The Consul has given the green light, and you’ll go to a special camp in Munich, where you’ll stay for a couple of weeks before heading to New York.”

Confused, Dima questioned, “But you mentioned bad news.”

Semyon looked at him with sympathy. “I’m very sorry to inform you that we’ve received confirmation that your uncle, Klimov, Vladislav Mikhailovich, passed away. It appears he committed suicide last December. I didn’t disclose this information earlier, but our colleagues from the Bundesnachrichtendienst verified it, so there’s no doubt about its truth.”

***

The PanAm liner steadily climbed, leaving behind a vista of gray clouds extending to the horizon. The seatbelt sign flickered off, accompanied by a faint squeak, signaling passengers were free to unfasten their seatbelts. Dima released his seatbelt and took a deep breath.

Soon, he would walk beneath a towering portrait of a smiling Mikhail Baryshnikov, another Soviet defector, at Kennedy International Airport, and a new, amazing Golden Era would start. A fresh wind of freedom would cool his face, marking the beginning of a new life full of amazing discoveries, mistakes, disappointments, victories, and losses along the Pursuit of Happiness he’d join. He would see the World, fulfilling his childhood dreams. Many years from now, he would even visit Sheremetyevo for a few hours…

Good luck to you, the porter from the bar in the departure zone.