Death of a Dissident (39 page)

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, and he planned to take one the next morning. Citizens of both countries could cross the border using internal ID. Foreign travel passports were not required.

He spent the night in a local hotel, paying cash. In the morning he came to the pier twenty minutes before departure.

“You are late, young man,” said the woman at the ticket desk. “Do you see the sign? Registration closes three hours before departure, because we have to submit lists to the border control. The next boat is at three o’clock.”

Sasha knew the system. But he could not allow his name to be checked against the border control watch list.

“I know, I know I’m late,” he said. “But look, I absolutely need to be there by noon. I have a date, you see, she won’t wait. What shall I do? Help me.”

“Go talk to the crew.”

The second mate looked at him sternly: “Don’t you know there is a border here? Haven’t you heard the USSR ended ten years ago? Okay, it will cost you ten bucks. You will be my crew for the trip. And another ten for the border guard. Put it inside your ID.” He nodded to the border guard in the booth nearby.

The sleepy guard glanced at his ID, collected the banknote, and waved him through.

“I walked down the pier. I was wearing the light jacket that I was married in, the only one that I had, and the lucky one. It was the longest walk in my life,” Sasha told me later.

On October 2, Sasha’s friend brought instructions to Marina. She had never met him before, but she had little choice but to listen. He told her to get a new mobile phone, not just a sim-card, turn it on, call a certain number, and then hang up. From then on, he said, keep the phone on at all times, but do not call anybody else from it. When Sasha calls, don’t pronounce any last names, use only first names. Don’t use the phone at home or in the car.

She did as she was told. The next morning Sasha called.

“Good morning, my darling. Where are you? Driving? Alone? Could you park and take a walk? I will call in three minutes.”

While she was parking, she imagined him counting seconds, as she was doing. The phone rang again.

“How are you? How is Tolik? Anyone looking for me? I’m in Nalchik, sure. Listen, this is what I want you to do. Take the money that I left. Go to a travel agent. Not the one you used last time. Anyone but him. Get yourself and Tolya a two-week package to any Western European country, preferably Spain; you always wanted to see it. Or France, or Italy. The sooner the better. This is a surprise, my present for our wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, I can’t be with you. There is some work here, but I will be waiting at home when you come back.”

“But, Sasha, what will I say at work? Or at Tolya’s school?”

“Better to say nothing at all. You can call them after you’ve left and say that you fell sick. No one should know where you are going, it is very important. Not even your mom. You can tell her later.” She knew without asking that it wasn’t just a vacation trip.

On October 8, in Boston, Yuri Felshtinsky got Sasha’s call.

“I’ve linked up with my friends whom I told you about,” Sasha said. These were the people in a “third country” who could get him a false passport. “Come as soon as you can, please. And bring some cash. Ten grand. Or better, fifteen.”

On October 14, Marina and Tolya left for Spain. It was Sasha and Marina’s wedding anniversary. He called every half-hour until the
plane was on the runway and she had to turn off her phone. When they landed in Malaga, she saw Yuri Felshtinsky waving from behind a barrier.

“Where is Sasha?” was her first question. “He’s not in Nalchik, is he?”

Yuri named the third country. “He will call any minute and explain everything.”

They got into Felshtinsky’s rented car and followed a tour bus. She had signed up with a tour for two weeks in Marbella, a resort on the coast of Andalusia.

“Of course, I realized that something was going on, that Nalchik was a cover. I thought that he wanted to get us out of Moscow because of some danger, you know. Such things happen in his profession,” Marina later explained. “But when he called he said that maybe we couldn’t go back to Russia at all, ever. I went into total shock. To me, this was unthinkable, like when you are told that you’ve got cancer or someone close to you was in a car accident.”

“What do you mean we might not go back?” she yelled on the phone. “What about my mom, our friends, our home? Where shall we live? Here, in Spain? Without you? How will you get here? You have no passport.”

“Marusya, please,” he used her nickname, “cool down, talk to Yuri. I will call back in five minutes.”

Felshtinsky explained that Sasha was waiting for some friends to get him false documents. When he received them, he would be able to get to a safer place, where Marina and Tolya could join him. This was the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario was that the documents would not be forthcoming, in which case Sasha would have to go back on the ferry to Russia to face imminent imprisonment. There was no chance that he would be acquitted a third time. The third country where he was waiting was not exactly a safe place, so telephone discussions had to be kept to a minimum. There could be no talk of passports on the phone. For the time being there was nothing they could do but wait.

Finally, she understood. She agreed to defer judgment until the situation cleared up. They checked into the resort, and for the next ten
days tried to make the most of their vacation, talking to Sasha about neutral, innocuous things, “like in Lefortovo,” she later joked.

On October 23, Sasha called to announce that his friends had delivered on their promise. He was in possession of everything he needed to continue on his journey. Felshtinsky packed up and left to join him. Marina and Tolya stayed in Marbella.

On the morning of the 25th he called again. He was in Turkey, and in relative safety. I had just called him from New York. It was time for Marina to decide: join him in exile, or return to Russia? He would do as she wished. This time he would not decide for both of them. The choice was Marina’s.

It was the most difficult decision Marina had ever had to make. She loved Sasha with all her heart, but she was not part of his violent and dangerous world; she had never asked for details when he went out to fight his fights. By joining him now, she would become a sort of comrade-in-arms. Perhaps she should return home and let him run alone. She would wait for him. After all, she had waited for him while he was in prison. Why shouldn’t he sort out his problems with borders and false passports without her? She had a six-year-old child on her hands, and a mother with a heart condition in Moscow.

In the end, as she explained to me later, it was Boris’s call that tipped the balance. She was lying in bed staring at the ceiling while Tolik played outside with a Russian child from their tour. A distant Andalusian rhythm echoed in the background. It was late afternoon. The phone rang.

“Marina,” said Boris, “I just spoke to Sasha, and I promised him that whatever happens I will never abandon you and Tolya. That is one thing that I need to tell you. The other is this. I believe that I know what’s on your mind. Actually I am now struggling with the same choice right now. The world out there, you know, in Turkey and beyond, must seem scary and cold and unpredictable. The one back in Moscow is warm and familiar, because it’s our home. Yet that is why it is so misleading. These people are killers, Marina. I have come to understand it just recently, a month ago to be exact. It’s why
I sent Felshtinsky to Moscow to tell Sasha to run. They are really bad news, Marina. If Sasha goes back they will kill him. And I am afraid that if you go back, he will follow you. Maybe not now, maybe in three weeks, or three months, but he will. He is not a loner. You give him the strength to go against Kontora, and he needs this strength now more than ever. That’s all.”

She lay there for some minutes more. Then she called Sasha to say that she would join him in Turkey.

She lied to her tour leader, saying that she had to urgently return to Moscow. It was late at night when her taxi pulled up at the Malaga Airport. She dragged sleepy Tolik inside the terminal. The departure hall was empty. All flights were gone. No one was waiting for them. Suddenly Felshtinsky appeared.

“We are going to a different terminal,” he said. “There are no commercial flights to Turkey, so Boris has sent his plane.”