Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [11]
Grigoryants was investigating reports of a massacre of civilians by federal troops in the Chechen village of Samashki on April 12, 1995. Toward the end of that year, he was supposed to travel abroad for a human rights conference. He was bringing videotaped evidence of Russian troops shooting civilians in Samashki. Sasha’s unit was brought in for an unusual assignment: to plant some shotgun shells in Grigoryants’s companion’s bag at Moscow International Airport so that they would be stopped for a search. During the phony search, his videotapes would be confiscated and “accidentally” damaged.
“That’s the only case I’m ashamed of,” Sasha said.
“I hereby accept your repentance and forgive your sins. Amen,” I joked. “By the way, if you were twenty years older, I could have been one of your objects.”
I told him how, in the 1970s in Moscow, under the vigilant eye of the KGB, I passed information about political prisoners to Western correspondents. Sasha explained to me the nitty-gritty of how an oper would have kept tabs on me. The lecture would have been immensely useful twenty years ago, and was still amusing today. Notwithstanding different backgrounds, we had a lot in common.
Marina met Sasha on her thirty-first birthday, June 15, 1993. She had been divorced for four years, a free and self-confident woman, enjoying life, not seeking a serious relationship. She lived in her old room in an apartment with her parents, retired industrial engineers, in a huge residential complex just south of the center of Moscow. She had never met anyone from the “services” before. When her best friend, Lena, told her that she and her husband wanted to bring an agent along to her birthday party, Marina’s eyes popped: “That’s some strange present you have for me.”
“He’s not like a secret agent at all,” Lena protested. “He’s funny. He has a great sense of humor, you’ll like him. Besides, he saved us.” She explained how Sasha was helping her husband fight off racketeers who were extorting money from his business.
“All right, then, bring your KGB man,” Marina said.
Sasha’s interest in Marina was already piqued because Lena had told him that she was a dancer. In his line of work he met all kinds of people, but never women who danced for a living. Marina took up dancing while still in college, where she was studying oil engineering. After graduation she decided that the oil business was not for her and went into ballroom dancing full-time, even winning some competitions. By 1993, she was teaching dance and aerobics.
That night the guests stayed late. They talked about the final resolution of Lena’s husband’s problem, planning for Sasha to arrest the extortionists as money changed hands. Marina, who had loved crime stories from childhood, could not believe her eyes: could this fellow, “light somehow, radiant, and as emotional as a child,” really handle the bandits who had recently beaten Lena’s husband and threatened to break his legs if he did not pay up?
To Marina, despite his cheery confidence, Sasha seemed “uncared for, unanchored somehow.” When the subject of divorce happened to come up, Sasha said that he was married and would never divorce because of the children. Marina had a rule against dating married men, yet the way he said it made her feel that not all was well in his family.
She saw him again in a week. Sasha was leaving on vacation after successfully arresting the gang who had terrorized her friends, and Lena called her to join them for a farewell party at the train station. To her surprise, Sasha was alone, no wife or children around.
“His wife kicked him out. Because of us,” Lena whispered into her ear. “They were supposed to go away last week, but he stayed on to finish our case. So she made a scene, and when he came home that evening, all his things were piled up outside the door. He hasn’t been home in a week. And this isn’t the first time. If not for the kids, he would