Finally the girls saved enough money to escape back to Peter where they took their story to Mikhail Milyukin. He did a big article about them in Ogonyok and persuaded the girls to speak to us and give evidence against Sultan. Along the way Sultan kidnapped one of the girls and half-buried her alive to stop her talking, but Milyukin managed to get the rest of the girls to stand firm.'
A real citizen, this animal,' said Kornilov, looking at the photograph.
We fixed him a holiday of his own,' said Grushko. A ten-year stretch in Perm.'
A spell in a labour camp would be enough reason to kill a man. But if this character's still in the zone as you say.'
These Chechens stick pretty close, sir,' Grushko explained. Maybe one of Sultan's friends killed Milyukin. Maybe they wrote him a fan letter as well. You know, from what I've seen the man got more hate mail than Rasputin.'
Look on the bright side, Yevgeni,' said Kornilov. Food may be in short supply. But at least you'll have no shortage of suspects.'
6
I spent the evening at the Big House, reading Milyukin's hate mail with Grushko and Nikolai. Having divided the pile of letters into three we sat around Grushko's desk and, fortified by a steady supply of coffee, cigarettes and a considerable quantity of dried bread crusts which Grushko kept in his cupboard, we applied ourselves to this distasteful task. Mostly we read in silence but occasionally one of us would read aloud from some particularly venomous letter. In truth there were none of them that threw up any definite leads. But by the end of that night I think we all found that our admiration of Mikhail Milyukin had grown considerably and, as a corollary, this increased our determination to catch his killers. None more so than Grushko himself. I don't recall every letter that Grushko or Nikolai chose to quote from. However the following five seemed to me to be typically unpleasant as well as indicative of the lamentable state in which the country found itself.
Dear Mikhail Mikhailovich,
Your patronymic would seem to indicate that you knew who your father was, although I find that very hard to believe, you intellectual bastard. You write about a drug problem among young people today as if there was someone forcing us to sit on a needle. But this is nonsense. Like most of my friends I enjoy swallowing a rope. Heroin, methadone, wheels, hot-water bottle it's all the same to us what we use. Frankly, we don't much care as long as we can blow our minds free of all that shit we learned in school. You ask what we can possibly believe in. Psychobilly music, that's what. It really helps you get out of your head. And talking of that, let me tell you. the next time I see your stupid face in the Leningrad Rock Club, I'll cut your ears off and spit in your skull. I'm serious. I've a good sharp knife and nothing would give me more pleasure than to stick it in your eye.
Dear Mikhail Milyukin,
Your essay in Ogonyok on alcoholism in St Petersburg was a typical example of the kind of journalism that makes this great country of ours an international laughing-stock. Bug spray in a bottle of beer! Shoe polish on a slice of bread! Boiling a wooden table leg with sugar! If nothing else your damnable piece must have served to give drunkards more ideas on how to get drunk. And you have the temerity to blame all of this illicit drinking on Comrade Andropov's anti-alcohol campaign. Why must we wash our dirty linen in public like this? I used to think you were a responsible man, but now I look forward to the day when the forces of law and order return to this country and sweep you and all your dirty kind back into the labour camps where you belong. And when that time comes the bullet you receive in the back of your stupid skull will be less than you deserve. I pray that your grave is marked only with the stool of the man who shoots you.
Comrade Milyukin,
In your recent article in Krokodil magazine, you compared St Petersburg's murder rate to that of New York. But this is rubbish. It is nothing like as great. Anyway, who really cares? Mostly it's the people from the swamps, the darkies from the southern republics, who are killing each other, for drugs, or for hard currency. No one misses scum like that. Except you, perhaps, you mealy-mouthed liberal. Let me tell you I didn't fight in Afghanistan and come home to get soft with criminals. There should be only one sentence for these people: death. I myself have shot lots of these animals to spare the courts the trouble. But it now occurs to me that the country would be equally well served if we sent a few of you so-called special correspondents the same way. So you know what? I'm going to track you down you bastard. And when I do I'm going to turn you into one of your own statistics. Depend on it. A patriot
Comrade Milyukin,
Do you know the Dieta supermarket, near Mayakovsky Square in Moscow? This morning I went to the meat counter and they were selling mortadella sausage at 168 roubles a kilo. My husband is a schoolteacher. He earns 500 roubles a month. So I ask you: how can we afford prices like this? I ended up buying ten eggs, and they cost me almost 18 roubles. Only a few months ago they would have cost me less than 2 roubles. My point is this: you have the nerve to tell me that things are better now. Well, let me tell you, your new democracy has destroyed the old economic system but you haven't introduced anything to replace it. How I wish Stalin was still alive and you and all your fellow democrats were forced to spend your time working on a collective farm. Better still, I think a few years in Solovki would do you a world of good.
Mikhail Milyukin,
Your piece about St Petersburg's Cosa Nostra' was one of the most stupid, misleading piles of shit I have ever heard anyone gob out on national television. There is no such thing as the Russian Mafia'. The whole idea of a Mafia has been made up by people like you who try and make money out of selling scare stories. There are just businessmen providing people with what they want and, just as often, with what they need the things you can't buy in the state shops. Our business methods have to be ruthless sometimes if only because in this stupid, backward country of ours there exists no understanding of supply and demand and free enterprise. If someone lets you down in business there is no real legal mechanism to enforce a contract or to have him pay compensation. So we break his legs, or threaten his children. Next time he'll do what he's supposed to. A man doesn't pay a share of his profits to his partners, we'll burn his house to the ground. This is just business. You are an intelligent man. You should understand this. And yet you continue to sell us the dead horse about the Mafia. A number of my business colleagues are very angry about this. They feel that the opportunity cost us by your continuing to peddle this kind of garbage is too high. So a word of warning. Stop it now. Because the next time you choose to describe joint ventures, traders, private businessmen, cooperatives as Mafia-run, you might not live to regret it. You will perhaps be interested to note that due to the large number of men leaving the military the price of a gun is actually coming down at a time when every other kind of price is going up. Think about it.
Ten o'clock,' said Grushko when the last letter had been read. Yawning, he stood up and went over to the window. The sky was still as bright as day and would remain so for several hours yet. During the month of June it is actually dark for less than an hour.
I usually look forward to this time of year,' he said. The churki don't much like the lighter evenings. More chance of being nicked, I suppose.' He shook his head wearily. I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting old. But when someone like Mikhail Milyukin gets his box, then I begin to think that whoever did it, well, they must think their chances of getting away with it are good. I mean, they must have known that we'd pull all the stops out. And still they went ahead and did it. It makes me think that they just don't care. That they don't expect to get caught. That they're laughing at us. It's. it's depressing.' He turned and looked at us with a frustrated sort of look.