Instead, he spoke, making an effort to inject some pathos into his words. “This is not to improve his sight. This is a special operation to prevent his getting worse. He suffers from terrible myopia, and if it gets worse, he could go completely blind.”
The officer reluctantly turned away from his recently charged cup to Mihailo. “What was your job at the Defense Ministry?”
“I’m an artist. I designed all the decorations for military parades and the Victory Day celebrations. May 9,” he specified, hoping to imply that the one day the Soviets had proclaimed for the celebration of the end of WWII was somehow sacred to him. “I don’t know any secrets,” he added. “I only painted pictures, wall decorations, devised ways to decorate parade routes.”
“You saw all our weapons,” cut in the officer. “You saw the weapons selected for parades, what was there and what was not, where weapons are stored, the types and quantities of heavy weaponry.”
“But I know nothing about that. And anyone who saw the parade saw those weapons.”
The officer gave him a dubious stare as he sipped his tea. “No,” he said, not wanting to accept the responsibility. “I can’t make such a decision. Permit you to travel to territory occupied by the Kiev junta? In time of war? I can’t. You must go to the head office in Donetsk. Let them decide.”
“Donetsk? But I have a child, don’t you understand? I’m guilty of what? Painting a few damned pictures? I only want to help my family. I just need to go to Kharkov and back. It’s the same New Russia we live in. I’m sure that soon we will liberate Kharkov.”
“Well, then, when we liberate it, then you can go there.”
Mihailo would recognize that significant and feigned unconcern from miles away. He’d encountered this unfortunate fact of life in Ukraine many times even before the war.
The officer was fishing for a bribe.
Mihailo sighed. Professionial intelligence operatives in such situations always have a handy bag of money near-by, but the Ukrainian “Donbas” volunteer battalion in which he served lacked such resources. People from Ukrainian villages provided food, medicines, clothing, even uniforms, handed over old binoculars, night vision equipment, army boots, and once they had even come up with an armored transport vehicle, a “BMP.” Any money they came up with went for equipment or assistance to refugees from the occupied cities. There was nothing for bribing the occupying forces.
Mihailo pulled his last paper money out of his pocket and held it out awkwardly to the Chekist who peered at it from the corner of his eye as he calculated whether he should take it or pretend to be insulted. After a slight hesitation he took the crumpled hryvna and said, “I simply can’t help. You don’t have much… justification here. But I can write a letter of recommendation to Donetsk. And one of our boys can take you there. Maybe you can get it all taken care of today.”
One had to be philosophical. Something was better than nothing.
The car was a standard “UAZ” with its doors bearing a hastily painted DNR flag. The reason for the art work was most likely not the particularly zealous separatist patriotism of the driver, but rather a precaution against being shot at a road block. He knew of at least two instances of fighters confiscating cars from staunch Russian sympathizers. In one, when the driver protested, they beat him and then killed his younger brother to prevent them going over to the other side. And there was the danger of falling under “friendly fire.” Not a single separatist had been punished.
Behind the wheel was a friendly young man, clearly a local. He grinned broadly at Mihailo and nodded toward the seat next to him. Mihailo got in without a word. He couldn’t be sure whether this fellow, who appeared not at all threatening, might be an enemy. They might have played together as children at one of the schools in the Old Quarter, as the Solnechniy area was known. They might have watched movies on the big screen in the square at the city center. How could it be that this young man worked for the worst of the occupiers?
The driver navigated the checkpoint without a problem with neither of them speaking. Mihailo couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say.
“Why are you going to Donetsk?” asked the driver.
“I need an exit pass.” His companion wanted to talk, and it would be necessary to gather his strength and get to work. “My son needs an operation on his eyes in Kharkov.”
“Why didn’t they give you a pass here?” The driver was suspicious. “My name’s Vasiliy, by the way.”
“Because, Vasya, I worked in the DNR Ministry of Defense, and they just don’t give passes to such people.” He said nothing about being an artist.
“OK,” said Vasiliy, now with the camaraderie due a colleague. “I won’t ask what your job was, but I hope they give you a pass,” he added with unexpected sympathy.
“Why is that?”
“Because soon enough everything here will be blown sky high.”
“Really?”
“Didn’t you hear that yesterday they blew up the bridge? The day before yesterday it was the reservoir.”
“Of course, I heard,” sighed Mihailo, doing his best to act cold blooded. “It’s because the ‘ukropi’ (dill pickles) are attacking.”
He was accustomed to calling his fellow Ukrainians ‘ukropi,’ all in all a relatively inoffensive term from the rich arsenal of curses with which the separatists were so generous.
“Well, yes!” Vasiliy replied. “But that’s small potatoes. I’m not talking about the chemical plant that our guys mined. I’m talking about the munitions factory. Do you know it?”
Mihailo went cold.
“Wait a minute… there are a lot of defective explosives stored there. They could all be detonated by an explosion and there will be nothing left of Gorlovka. The whole city will go up.”
“Yeah,” Vasiliy agreed sullenly. “And the results will be worse than Chernobyl. They’ve even mined the conduit for contaminated water. If it goes, there will be no water fit to drink here.”
“And no one knows about this?” Mihailo couldn’t believe it.
“What do you mean, ‘no one?’” snorted Vasya. “Do you think I’m revealing something top secret? Of course, they know. We in the MGB know practically everything. And the khokhly (Ukrainians) know it, too. We mined it so we could blackmail them. ‘Bes’ told them all about it yesterday. If they try to take the city, there’ll be nothing left. We’ll blow everything up along with them. So even the enemy knows. The locals are the only ones who’ve not been told.”
“Bes” (demon) was what they called the new governor of Gorlovka, a former (or formally former) GRU officer. The nickname was well-deserved. Blow up the city! His native city, every corner of which he knew. A city with rooftop pavilions known locally as “Athens,” the dilapidated façades of old houses that somehow conjured up images, not of ruins, but of comfort, parks full of frolicking children, and stores filled with tired women. And they so easily plan to murder these people if the lawful powers of this country should try to take back the city.
“Are you from around here,” Vasiliy asked carefully.
Mihailo shrugged.
Vasiliy continued speaking with such vehemence that Mihailo feared he would lose control of the car. “What else can we do? Himself ordered this, understand? A direct order from the Kremlin. And he’s right. It’s unacceptable that Kiev’s fascists retake the city. During the Great Patriotic War they permitted the Germans to occupy Kiev, and what happened? The khokly and Banderites loved working for the occupiers so much that even after all these years they are returning to Nazism. All these concentration camps, genocide, torchlight parades with portraits of Bandera, all of it… If it comes to it, it’s better to destroy the city than surrender it… There would be nothing to it. This fascist plague should be burnt to the roots. At any cost!” Vasiliy finished, and turned the wheel so hard that the car nearly careened off the pockmarked road.