Bar in the Departure Zone. The Story of One Escape

Bar in the Departure zone. The story of one escape
Alexander Couprin

Moscow 1981. The hard currency bar in the departure area of Sheremetyevo International Airport. The bartender murders a drunken West German citizen in the restroom. With the victim’s clothing, documents, and ticket, he plans to assume the victim’s identity and escape the USSR. The author, a former criminal investigator with extensive expertise, delves into the lives of the era’s protagonists, ranging from hotel prostitutes to KGB generals.

Bar in the Departure zone

The story of one escape

Alexander Couprin

Cover designer Denis Lopatin

© Alexander Couprin, 2023

© Denis Lopatin, cover design, 2023

ISBN 978-5-0060-2406-9

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

CATCHING ECHOES OF THE PAST

Attention passengers, please check in for your flight and note that the boarding gate has been announced…Final boarding call…

The woman in the booth appeared confused.

“Wait, so you are flying back to Germany now?”

“Oh, sorry.” The traveler felt a crooked smile form at the corner of his mouth. “Is it forbidden?”

“I just don’t understand. Your incoming flight just arrived, and you’re not even going into the city?”

“No, I don’t care to.”

The female control officer pressed a hidden lever, and the FSB officer began monitoring the conversation. The passenger is a US citizen named Dmitry Klimov. He is polite and pleasant, and his documentation is in order, but what does this mean? Getting off one plane, wandering around Sheremetyevo without leaving for the city, and then boarding another plane back to where he came from? The procedure to get here was arduous, with countless forms at the consulate, certifications, and photos required to obtain a Russian visa and purchase a business class ticket. And all this just to take a walk around the airport?

The FSB officer hunched over the monitor, listening to the conversation, and spoke quietly into the microphone. “Girls, take a look at the client in Area Four, male, athletic build, wearing a canvas jacket trimmed in leather, light brown shoes, and thick, blond hair – possibly a wig.”

Once upon a time, Department 7, the section of the KGB responsible for surveilling foreigners, employed operatives of both sexes, so that if the need arose, a target could even be accompanied to the toilet. Now, KGB successor, FSB is all about technology and remote video surveillance is so tightly organized that “guiding” a target has become no more difficult than playing a computer game, although physical surveillance is still used indoors and outdoors.

In the arrivals hall, a passenger was captured by camera operators, followed, and handed off to customs control. There, he underwent a thorough examination by legitimate customs officers and security personnel working undercover. If no contraband or suspicious items were found, the passenger was subsequently released into the city.

However, this passenger did not leave and instead wandered around the airport building, peering intently at the glass doors, stairs, and hallways. This behavior triggered all the government machinery. He was being tailed, video recordings were being made, and personal data from the visa application form was urgently requested. Only the old installation engineer, who once served in the KGB and had access to the monitors, gloomily commented, “He is remembering, remembering and comparing.”

“What does he remember?” insisted the shift supervisor.

“He’s a builder, most likely from Rutebau.”

“What’s that, Valov? What does it mean?”

“The firm that built the airport. The Germans built it. From West Germany. The Rutebau company.”

“Hmmm, I didn’t know.”

And you’re a brainless piece of shit, sadly thought the retiree. In the old days, I wouldn’t have promoted you beyond a first-grade technician.

But times had changed, and he is no longer an airport security boss, as he was back in the 80s. Ah, the 80s… Yes, and he himself should already be at rest due to arrhythmia. What a distasteful word…

He did not recognize the person on the monitor screens, although the thick hair remotely resembled someone from the distant past.

After wandering around the airport for an hour and a half, the passenger returned to the check-in counter, passed through customs and passport control, and was now slowly ascending the escalator to the second floor in the departure area.

Right there, where the stairs end, there was once a foreign currency bar, well known to the outgoing Moscow elite. Rubles were also accepted, but not from everybody. Here, well-known athletes poured beer from outlandish aluminum cans, diplomats focused on their caviar sandwiches. Here, the poet Yevtushenko ordered green tea, and beloved artist Volodya Vysoskiy politely asked for cold vodka. All of them famous, all of them bohemian, all those who would be granted the ridiculous foreign title “celebrity” had passed by this counter.

The memories seemed to weaken passenger’s knees. The bar was empty, and he chose a table at the edge, sat down, and threw his bag onto a vacant chair. A blue-shaven bartender with a military bearing leisurely approached him. He wanted to tell the visitor that they were on a technical break and that the chairs were not intended for luggage. He even raised a finger to point to the offending bag, but then visitor’s phone rang. Ignoring the barman, he spoke into the phone in German. The bartender silently returned to his post behind the counter. After about five minutes, traveler ended the conversation and sank into reverie. His eyes scanned the room, trying to recapture the past. Alas, there was nothing to grasp onto. Of course, this was not the same bar. Gone were the curved sofas and the odd barstools at a low and wide bar. And the bar itself was missing as the place had become more of a restaurant.

The ring! Of course, the ring! Where was it – the hole left from the bronze ring in the ceiling, dislodged by a champagne cork? The entire ceiling of the airport was made up of these rings – they clustered together and hung like brown honeycombs over thousands of bustling passenger bees. This was Sheremetyevo’s hallmark. No other airport, and probably no other building in the country, had anything like it. But the rings were gone. The ceiling was now completely different, ordinary like any other airport in the world.

What had he and Anya been celebrating in the storage room? And why had he not allowed her to open the bottle? In his inexperienced hands, the champagne popped deafeningly, the heavy cork shot up like a bullet and stayed there. Seized by horror, they stared as one of the millions of those rings fell. It turned out that they were not metal but rather plastic with a bronze finish. Frightened to death, they quickly stoppered the bottle with something and rushed to the exit, through the checkpoint to the bus.

Dima searched the ceiling for a long time for the stuck cork until Uncle Vlad, the senior bartender-administrator, noticed and remarked, “They already know your face well enough. Stop looking up.”

Yes, the ceiling of the airport was made up of rings to mask the lenses of surveillance cameras – it was a joke to all the employees of Sheremetyev-2 in those years. And the passengers presumably thought the same.

“Es tut mir leid, geht es Ihnen gut?” asked the bartender with genuine concern as he touched the passenger’s shoulder and set a glass of cold water in front of him.

“Oh, forgive me, for God’s sake,” he answered in Russian. “I just felt a bit dizzy. May I sit here for a few more minutes?”

“Yes, as long as you like. Call me if you need anything. I’ll be over there working on some papers.”

Oh, those papers… shift change schedules, the commodity report, warehouse requirements, and something else, and, finally, the most important thing is the report on the currency received. An error on any document could cost you your job. At the same time, if the figures were manipulated cleverly and plausibly, some excess money could drop into the bartender’s pocket without much risk.

“Paperwork is creative work,” Anya quoted a friend of hers. “Treat it with your soul and get a sweet reward.” She folded a small airplane out of a hundred ruble note and waving it above her head, walked into the back room.

“After all, you wouldn’t refuse to go with a lady to the Arbat tonight?” She pushed him against the crates of mineral water, pressing her breasts into his chest, and her eyes shone with a myriad of twinkling lights.

Looking up from the papers, the bartender regarded his only customer who was still looking off into the distance, into the depths of years past, and the bartender even imagined he saw a tear running down the guest’s cheek.

“No, no, I don’t need any help. And the flight has already been announced. Thank you. Thanks.”

He grabbed his half-empty bag and headed for boarding. Strange passenger.

DIMA (1981)

Dima shifted in his seat, his face still pressed against the window as he observed the spit-stained station platform. The view wasn’t particularly exciting, but as a passenger, it was customary to look out the window. Spherically fat grandmothers, or perhaps young women disguised as grandmothers, dressed in identical quilted jackets and gray shawls, were selling simple food on the platform. Nuts, pies with various fillings, including questionable “meat” that Dima had learned to avoid after getting sick in Khabarovsk. The gray mass vaguely resembled meat but was of uncertain origin, rumored to be a mixture of offal, soy, or even stray dogs. Dima had learned his lesson after two days of illness.

A cheerful former convict, released early due to illness, teased Dima, calling him “First on the Pot,” referring to his recent bout of sickness. Fortunately, the nickname didn’t stick, and Dima remained known as Dima for the rest of the journey. The ex-convict, weakened by his condition, rarely left his folding bench. He joked about going home on the “path of recovery,” a sarcastic reference to his release certificate. Although everyone in the train car understood the underlying meaning, it was a sensitive topic, and no one dared to make light of it.

Dima stayed seated when the conductor motioned for him to come to her compartment.