I didn’t know whether to duck and cover or scramble for my camera. Two armies of exuberant youth approached from opposite directions, one in matching red vests waving the Soviet hammer and sickle, and the other wearing blue, flying the banners of a Kremlin supported party. I was in pajamas and it was cold enough in the apartment to see my breath. I was mesmerized, watching the red front approach the blue front. Would they merge and become purple? Color! It’s all about color! I slapped a roll of Kodachrome 64 into the Leicaflex and started shooting.
Significant or not, the event was certainly impressive. On the balcony, snow crunched under my slippers as I stepped into a throat raking twenty-below ice crystal haze and became enveloped by the noise of hundreds of unintelligible voices. Strangely, for a protest it lacked anger or even conviction. The armies were not opposing after all. They mingled in front of the Prokuratura, patting each other on the back and swinging their red and blue flags in unison. It was more of a pep rally than a protest.
I hit the first speed dial on the cell phone Galina had provided and got Luda on the third ring. “Oh them… They are paid protesters. Everyone gets paid five hryvnya per hour. If they are lucky, they get paid in American dollars — cash. They can keep the flags when it is all done.” She had to raise her voice over a swelling background cacophony of giggling and chattering. “Not to be rude, but I am very busy now. Galina will be there soon. She will tell you what is going on. Oh, the flags, what color are they?”
“Blue flags and red Soviet banners.”
“Okay, I believe they are on the same team, paid by the same party.” A high-pitched voice shrieked in the background. “Oye, must go! Poka — later.”
Galina arrived, stomped the frozen crud off her combat boots in the vestibule, and confirmed that, although colorful and probably expensive, the protest I witnessed was inconsequential. She reminded me that the people I was interested in would avoid the attention brought about by the protests and demonstrations. In other words, she was telling me to keep my eye on the ball, not the diversionary entertainment. To help facilitate that ball watching, she produced a stack of documents and photos. We went through it all, updating and comparing the data to what we had on our respective laptops.
A black-and-white eight by ten photo caught my eye. A group of four people standing close together near an exterior glass wall. An incensed middle-aged woman glared into the camera with narrowed eyes. Her mouth was wide open in mid shout. To her right stood a taller young woman in a nylon parka. A scruffy middle-aged man in a leather jacket was holding, possibly restraining, the younger woman from behind by her arms. To the left of the group stood a disinterested looking man in a military style cap. At a guess, the older woman spotted the photographer and was not impressed. What bothered me the most was that the tallish young woman very closely resembled the photos Anna had emailed me of herself.
Galina saw me staring at the photo. “You recognize someone?”
“Yeah, I think it might be someone I’m getting information from.”
“That screaming woman is called The Skater. The woman in the middle is her daughter and the man on the right, her husband. Not number one on our list, but pretty high up.”
“Oh wow, that’s Anna! Anna Prekrasnaya, we’ve been communicating for weeks.” I sucked in air like there wasn’t enough to go around. “She’s been providing me with information.” I flipped the photo looking for details.
“I know she has, but what I do not know is why she is doing that.”
“I guess she’s in trouble. Maybe she thinks I’ll get her out, keep her safe, offer immunity for information… I have no idea.” It bothered me to see Anna in distress.
“You can offer immunity? Oye, you are a diplomat now too?”
“No, of course not. She thinks I’m a journalist. We’re friends, she likes me.” I didn’t know how much to tell Galina. The photo’s date showed it taken long after we’d made first contact. I couldn’t help thinking I might have been the cause of whatever unpleasantness the photographer immortalized in one sixtieth of a second. “Anna is coming here, to Kiev. At least she says she will do anything she can to get here.”
“Are you paying her way?”
“No, why would I?”
“Just wondering.” Galina said.
“I’ve got a feeling she will be a willing source of information. We’ve had some pretty good contact and I think she wants to help us.”
“Oye-yoy-yoy, this is the first time I have heard of these plans with Anna, what was it you called her, prekrasnaya? Such a nice name, Anna Prekrasnaya — Beautiful. You think maybe it is fake?” Galina goaded.
“It’s her chat name.”
“Well, her real name is not Prekrasnaya. It is Keitel. Her mother, the screamer, is Yana Keitel, as I said before. She is called The Skater by her comrades. The bearded man holding Anna by the arms is her father. They are hiding something, but most of the people we are interested in have nasty secrets.”
I figured the photo, labeled as taken in Nizhny Novgorod shortly after I’d reconnected with my employer, was ordered to corroborate what I’d been sending Roger. “Keitel, hmm, name’s familiar.” I said.
“Da, da, da, yah znaio — yes, I know. One of your American movie stars. It is a common German name.”
“Not Harvey Keitel! I’m thinking of the Nazi and Wehrmacht supreme commander, Wilhelm Keitel.” I countered. “Not exactly a name one expects to see in Russia.”
“Really, it is a common name south of the Volga River. Yana Keitel,” Galina flipped the miserable photo over and tapped on the angry face of The Skater, “descended from Volga Germans. Long ago, Catherine the Great invited Germanic people to settle and populate the south Volga region. It was open immigration for Germans. Jews, however, were not welcome.”
“Wow, interesting. Anna’s chat name started out as Anna Ku Klux Klan, a group also very unfriendly to minorities.”
Galina tossed several more photos of The Skater on the desk in front of me: A blowup of an ID photo, Yana getting into a car outside the Kiev train station, Yana embracing a well dressed heavy-set man while another man, best described in Western terms as ripped, stands by looking in the other direction. Galina referred to the last photo. “That good-looking guy, he is Sergei. Yana’s business partner, friend and bodyguard. You should not make an enemy of him.”
“Believe me, it’s not my intention.”
It was dark by the time I left the apartment. It was also the first time I’d been out in over twenty-four hours. Shuffling over knobby ice, I struggled to stay upright. I needed fresh air, exercise, perspective and bottled water. I ended up at the supermarket, a round building that had once hosted a Soviet circus. It was barely above freezing inside the converted structure. Harsh mercury vapor light glared down on fur clad shoppers clomping through the muddy aisles. I bought bottled water and a box of Kiev Vecherniy chocolates, then did my best to skid and stagger back to the apartment before the mineral water froze solid.
Entering the code to get into the apartment building with down filled mitts was a lost cause. I pulled one off and gritting my teeth, pressed skin to super chilled metal. Clink — the door opened a crack, I weaseled the toe of my boot into the opening and, trying to swing the door open with my foot, slid off my supporting leg and landed hard on my ass. Clunk — the door shut. I had a lot to learn about getting around Kiev in winter.