Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [100]
Yuri had not.
“He is the kind of FSB guy who could pull off such a thing. I would start the investigation with him.”
The next morning Felshtinsky took a plane to London, to meet up with Boris. As for Sasha’s escape, there was nothing more to do but wait for Sasha to call. From London Yuri went back to Boston while Boris flew to Malaga, Spain, for a peace-making meeting with Goose.
Even before Felshtinsky’s visit, Sasha had begun preparations for escape. His major concern was surveillance, which he was sure he was under. So, for nearly three months, he painstakingly tried to lull potential watchers and relax their vigilance. He was an ace at surveillance himself, and he found it amusing to be in the role of object to his oper. He had a fairly good idea of who his oper might be at Internal Affairs; he knew them all. He was also pretty sure which one of his friends was reporting to the oper; there was only one who seemed to want to be his guardian, patronizing him about being careful, growing extremely concerned when he came home late or did not call. Marina complained about having a logistical “threesome,” but Sasha played along. The suspected scout was his old friend Ponkin, his loyal subordinate who had stood by him at his first trial. Sasha did not hold it against him. In a way, he was happy for Ponkin if it meant he had been able to work things out in this way.
Sasha took special care to make Ponkin’s life easy. He fed him accurate information about what he was up to. He also made sure that whatever data were picked up by electronic surveillance—phone monitoring, bugs at his home—matched what Ponkin reported.
Sasha was pretty sure that he was not constantly followed; he could easily spot outdoor surveillance. Tails appeared only when Boris was in town, which was rare. He hoped his oper at Lubyanka was bored to death.
At the end of August, Sasha staged a little rehearsal: his lawyer obtained a court release allowing him to leave town for a one-week vacation. He gave Ponkin and the wiretap listeners advance notice of his vacation plans so that his oper could block the trip if he wished, but nobody objected. When he went with Marina to Sochi for a week on the beach, it appeared that they were not followed. This was all that Sasha needed to know. By the end of September he was fully prepared. Marina did not suspect a thing. On the morning of September 30, he surprised her with the news that he was leaving, just for a few days, to Nalchik, to help his father sell their house and move closer to Moscow. He had been urging his father to do it, calling him throughout the summer; he had also discussed it with Ponkin, who even helped him research the real estate market.
“I thought I told you. Just for a few days. It’s about Papa’s house.”
“You did not tell me, but never mind.”
They drove to the airport. He disappeared for ten minutes, apparently to meet someone, and then came back.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said. “Listen, this is very important. A friend of mine will come to you in a few days. He will tell you what to do. Don’t ask any questions; just do exactly as he says. Here is some money, keep it for me.”
Marina stared at him. This was the other side of Sasha, the one that she had not seen since he left the FSB, and only two or three times before that. The superconfident, no-nonsense rock of a man. The man who terrified the instructor when she was getting her driver’s license. The one who gave her orders without asking nicely, as if she were a soldier in his army without any right to ask questions.
“Okay,” she said. “Where are you going?”
“To Nalchik, to see Papa. Don’t worry, it will be just a few days.”
He left with a small shoulder bag, containing just enough clothes for three or four days. Instead of flying to Nalchik, however, he headed elsewhere. After landing in southern Russia, he took a bus to a small seashore town. Steamboats shuttled from there to an even smaller town in a neighboring ex-Soviet republic,