10. Captain Klimov
On one February evening, about two hours after yet another search, my wife and I were tidying up the house. I was picking up books from the floor and putting them back on the shelves, while Zina was busy in the kitchen, putting away scattered dishes and food. At that moment, someone knocked quietly on the window. I opened the door. Stepanov was standing on the doorstep. “Let’s go,” he said, “we need to talk.” By then, our homes were already bugged. We went outside. It was a frosty evening, snow was falling. It was too cold to stand and talk in the yard, so we walked down the street. My Lyuba had found a notebook that belonged to one of the KGB men. Most likely, it had been dropped when they confiscated the manuscript of poems. Lyuba had wanted to save that manuscript from seizure. She had quietly taken the notebook of poems, hoping to toss it into the yard just as secretly. Dusk had already fallen. Lyuba went out into the yard, but a KGB man was standing there. He saw the notebook and lunged at Lyuba to snatch it away. A struggle broke out between them. Another KGB man, Captain Klimov, who was supervising the search, came running at the noise. It seems one of them had dropped the notebook. We didn’t notice how we reached the Stepanovs’ house. An hour later, I was already examining that notebook. It had seventy pages. Its contents were difficult to decipher, as some information was encoded in numerical codes, some in shorthand symbols, and several pages were filled with abbreviated words. After a quick glance, it became clear that the KGB was receiving information from informants within our community.
I took the notebook. Let’s see what happens next. A few days later, late at night, someone knocked on the window of the Stepanovs’ house. It was Captain Klimov. He was wearing work clothes, and Stepanov did not recognize him at first.
“Vladimir, I need to talk to you. Only, please, not at home; your house is bugged.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Please, give back what you found.”
“What do you mean? What am I supposed to give back?”
“Do you really mean you didn’t find anything? Maybe the children found something?”
“What kind of provocation is this? What findings? What house bugging? Have you decided to play spies or something? I’m asking you not to come to me anymore, and I don’t want to discuss anything. This is a provocation.”
“Vladimir, I beg you, give me back what you found, please; you are a believer. I couldn’t have lost it anywhere else—only at your house or in your yard.”
After that, Stepanov, as we had agreed, sent him to me.
“I think Boris found something around here. Go to him.”
The next day, in the evening, Klimov was already riding the bus with me as I was returning from work. He signaled with his eyes for me to get off with him at the stop. I got off the bus, but he did not get off right away—just as the door was closing, so that it almost caught him. Again, he signaled with his eyes for me to follow him. We walked about forty meters and turned around the corner of a building. It was a deserted back alley.
“Sell me what you found.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play games with me. Stepanov told me you found it.”
“I also think we shouldn’t play games. If you want a businesslike conversation, speak plainly.”
“All right, you found my official notebook. I’m offering you money for it—300 rubles!”
“Not enough.”
“500 rubles!”
“Not enough.”
“How much then?”
“I don’t need money. Help me.”
“With what?”
“I need to know who among us is working for you.”
“Are you pushing me toward betrayal? I’m an officer. I took an oath. Do you one favor, and then you’ll start blackmailing me—you’ll harness me for life.”
“I don’t need much. You know that believers don’t deceive, they keep their word.”
“Yeah, right—I know how you believers keep your word.”
“It’s precisely those kinds that interest me, the ones you know about.”
“I took an oath. I can’t go through with this.”
“You’ve already broken your oath. You’re bargaining with me over your notebook. Go turn yourself in.”
“I can’t turn myself in—that would be the end of my career.”
“That’s your business. If you don’t want to, don’t. Actually, I’m not asking you to give away state secrets; I don’t need that. My only request is: reveal the agents from our community. You yourselves despise them, because they betray their own brothers and are ready to send anyone to prison. I know that you may have promised them emigration, money. And you’ve caught some in something and just blackmail them, and they work for you out of fear. If you expose them, the security of the state won’t suffer at all, and you might save some people from prison.”
“Yes,” Klimov said thoughtfully, “you’ve got a tight grip on my throat with both hands. I know your biography. We’re the same age. We could have been in the same class as kids, could have been friends. Instead, we’re hunting each other.” He fell silent. I was silent too, letting him speak.
“To be honest, it’s thoroughly unpleasant for me to wage war against you, against believers. I imagined everything differently. I joined the KGB thinking I’d defend the Motherland, unmask foreign agents, fight against the mafia—and here, you see how it turns out. Well, alright, I’ll think about it anyway.”
“How much time do you need for that?”
“Two days, but I need a guarantee that my notebook won’t end up anywhere.”
“The guarantee is my word.”
We agreed to meet in the Yuzhny microdistrict, in the forest.
“As soon as you get off at the last stop in Yuzhny,” I said, “keep walking straight along that street; where the houses end, the road becomes a forest path, and I’ll see you there and come to you myself.”
We arranged to meet at two o’clock, but I came an hour and a half early. I climbed the opposite slope and from there began watching to see how Klimov would arrive—whether a KGB car would bring him or he would come by bus—and whether there was an ambush. All the same, it was dangerous to try to recruit a KGB agent, and I was also tormented by doubts: maybe it was a provocation, maybe the notebook had been planted, and then I could face a criminal charge—inciting a state security officer to betray his duty—and that could end in execution.
I sat on the slope, hiding in hazel bushes, surveying the area, observing through binoculars. Noticing nothing suspicious, I began watching the road and the bus stop. A bus came. Several people got out who did not interest me. I resumed scanning the surroundings, but also kept an eye on the road. About twenty minutes later, the next bus arrived. The people who got out dispersed in different directions, and only one walked straight along the road. I began to examine him closely through the binoculars. It was Klimov.
I had come early for safety, to forestall surprises. I thought I was ready for danger, but when I saw Klimov appear more than an hour early, I felt uneasy. He walked along the rutted road, reached the place where the road turned into a forest track, stopped, and then suddenly made a sharp leap away from the road into the bushes, and began moving along the road through the bushes. I realized he didn’t want to leave tracks in the snow. Having climbed about fifty meters upward, Klimov stopped. He was hidden by bushes and trees. I couldn’t see him well, but still, through the binoculars, I made out that he leaned against a tree and was taking something out from under his jacket.
My nerves were on edge. One conjecture after another raced through my mind. What had he pulled out from under his jacket? A submachine gun or a sawed-off hunting rifle? At the same time, a growing feeling came over me that I was surrounded on all sides. Instinct told me to get away while it was still possible, but common sense urged me to stay calm. Klimov stood for about five minutes, then, without climbing higher, moved along the slope. Now he was carrying something in his hand. I no longer doubted that he was armed. Then he stopped again and suddenly disappeared into thick hazel bushes. I lost sight of him. I was surrounded by trees that hid my enemy and seemed hostile at that moment. The frosty wind hummed through the treetops, making it impossible to hear footsteps. I pulled myself together and began carefully scanning the terrain again. I decided to descend toward the road and, without stepping onto it, observe what Klimov would do. Then it would be clear whether to meet him or not. I started climbing down slowly, hiding in bushes and behind trees. My legs wouldn’t obey me; a nasty weakness crept into them. By sheer will, I forced myself downward. About twenty meters before the road, I stopped and watched. Klimov was glancing at his watch. It was twenty minutes past two. I decided to go ahead with the meeting. I stepped out from behind the trees and whistled. Klimov turned around and saw me. I waved for him to follow me. We climbed a little way up the slope. I stopped. Klimov saw the binoculars in my hands and laughed.
“Sorry, but I want to search you—you never know what you might have brought here, maybe you have a weapon.”
“Go ahead, search.”
Klimov flung open his jacket. Binoculars hung around his neck. Now we both laughed.
“Did you bring the notebook?”
“Surely you don’t think I’ll give you your notebook without verifying the information. You could tell me anything right now. Your notebook is in a safe place; no one but me can get it.”
“All right, tell me specifically what interests you.”
“I need operational information about us. What do the authorities intend to do with us? Who is under threat of arrest? Who among us is working for you?”
“Oh, how many questions you have—and you said just one. I look at you, Boris, and I can’t figure out whether you’re a fanatic or an adventurer. Don’t be offended that I say that. I mean it in a positive sense. But still, it looks abnormal. We have our own convictions, too, but we don’t work only for the sake of convictions. We have very high salaries, great perks—in the end, we work for awards, for ranks, for positions. And you, what do you do it for? I know you’re no fool, and you know what you’re going up against, what kind of machine you’re standing in the way of, and how terrifying that machine is—how many people have fallen under its teeth, and not a trace, not a memory of them remains. In the end, it will break you, too. Do you ever think about that? And do you think about what you’re dragging me into?”
“You see, Aleksey, you realize that you are one of the teeth of that machine. You yourself admitted that you are well lubricated. I know that I may fall under the teeth of this machine, but I do everything so that as few people as possible fall under those teeth, while you, on the contrary, are doing the opposite. And I don’t expect any rewards here for this work.”
Klimov fell into thought. He stared at his feet for a long time. Occasionally he shifted his gaze to me. And then, suddenly, he said decisively:
“I’ll tell you now, not in exchange for the notebook. Don’t think that you’ve recruited me—I loathe that word—but simply… I’m a human being, too. I don’t know all the agents from your community, only those I work with, but I’ll give you the address of the safe house where the agents come. There aren’t as many of them as you think; you’ll see that. But each agent has his own informers, or his own agents of influence, who don’t even suspect that they are carrying out our will and helping us. Through them we gather information, spread rumors that are advantageous to us in your circles. Each agent has his own day and time; they work according to a schedule and never meet one another, and they don’t know that they work for the same master.”
“You could name honest people, and I would be counting them as agents. Let’s do this: when you connect with your agent who gives information, what is in your notebook?”
“On Thursdays. I need to find out from him who photographed Chuprina’s ruined house. It’s very disadvantageous for us if that photograph reaches the West. I must task the agent with finding that out.”
“So that will be in two days. Send this agent to Patrushev, and let him be at Patrushev’s on Friday evening. If he comes and inquires about this matter, I’ll hand over the notebook to you right after that.”
“Good,” Klimov agreed, and continued, “Regarding arrests among your community, I don’t know anything. You are all under Moscow’s authority, and only Moscow decides who to arrest. You are beyond our purview. If no one abroad knew about you, we could arrest anyone from your group at our discretion. Regarding emigration, there are lists of everyone who has applied to leave on religious grounds in all OVIRs throughout the Soviet Union—in every republic, every region, every city, every district. And no one who appears on those lists will be allowed to leave under any pretext—not for family reunification, not with an Israeli invitation, not for any other reason. And, as far as I know, this will be the case for ten years. During that time, only those whom we need there will be let out, because if we let you out, the Soviet Union would thereby admit that we have no freedom of religion.”
Klimov fell silent, took a deep breath of the frosty air, looked upward, then around at the surrounding hills. He wanted to say something else but could not make up his mind. I did not press him. Klimov suddenly looked me in the eyes:
“Don’t try to contact me again, and whatever you do, don’t call. In the future, if there is important information and I consider it necessary to pass it on to you, I’ll find a way to do it. For every contact with any of you, I’m required to write a report. I must state why I met and what we talked about. Does anyone know about our contacts?”
“No one knows.”
“And does Zina know?”
“No, Zina doesn’t know either.”
“Remember, if this gets out, it could destroy both of us.”
By the following week, we already knew the identities of several agents. I kept my word, returned the notebook, and never again asked Klimov about anything. But later on, he himself rendered me several services and gave information about KGB plans.
In June 1978, I was planning to go to a meeting with the Adventists. They had a printing press, and we did not have our own publication organ. We had nothing except typewriters. By that time, we were already supported by over ten thousand Christians throughout the Soviet Union, and we simply had to have our own printing capability. I was supposed to meet with Adventist leaders in Moscow and negotiate with them about this matter. On that trip, Timofey Prokopchik was to accompany me—a reliable man who had already served a term in Soviet camps, and despite being quite young, he was already a member of the church council.
I began looking for a replacement for myself; I sensed that I wouldn’t remain free much longer, and I started bringing not only Prokopchik but also Sergei Onishchenko and Vitaly Istomin into the work. All of them are younger than me, but all are trustworthy people. The following route was worked out: we were to be driven by car to Partizansk, about sixty kilometers from Nakhodka. There, a man was to wait for us on the station platform with train tickets to Khabarovsk. We were to arrive exactly at the train’s departure, take the tickets from that man, and travel to Khabarovsk. In Khabarovsk, we were to buy plane tickets to Moscow. That was a different region, not within the jurisdiction of the Primorsky Krai KGB directorate.
A few days before the planned trip, Rudnitsky came to my workplace. Right during work, I was taken to the KGB office for interrogation in the case of Shcharansky. I was led into an office. Klimov and a man in civilian clothes whom I did not know were sitting there.
“Senior investigator for especially important cases, Lieutenant Colonel Kuzmin,” he introduced himself. Two years later, Kuzmin became my investigator, but for now he was interested in information about Shcharansky.
“I know Shcharansky as an honest, courageous man. He is a victim of the KGB. That’s all I can say about him.”
Shall I write it down like that?
Write it down like that.
We bickered like that for about an hour. Kuzmin understood the pointlessness of our conversation and said:
— I was telegraphed to interrogate you about this. I’ll report exactly how you behaved. Escort him to the exit, he said, turning to Klimov.
We went out into the corridor.
— Call a car, please, Klimov said to the duty officer through the window.
The KGB garage is about fifty meters down the street. When the massive door softly clicked shut behind us, Klimov looked around. The car hadn’t arrived yet. He said quietly:
— We know you’re planning to go to a meeting with the Adventists. True, we don’t know how you’ll travel or why, but know that your name and photo are at all airports in the Primorsky and Khabarovsk territories. Everything is blocked all around. This information isn’t from Nakhodka; it’s from agents within the Adventist milieu. If you fly, don’t fly any closer than beyond Khabarovsk. And I also warn you: beware of Rudnitsky. He’s a beast. He’s capable of anything, even murder. Never travel alone. I’m not saying this for nothing.
Just then a car pulled up.
— Take him to work, Klimov ordered. I changed my route completely, not telling anyone, so that if anything went wrong, I wouldn’t suspect anyone.
We reached our destination safely, but the meeting with the Adventists didn’t take place. They didn’t show up at the appointed place. A few days later I learned that their troubles had started. Several of their print shops had been smashed, and arrests began. A few months after these events, their leader, Vladimir Shelkov, was arrested; a year later he died in prison.
The Adventist underground movement almost ceased to exist. Klimov was right. There were many secret KGB agents among the Adventists, and even Shelkov’s son-in-law had been recruited and was a secret KGB agent.
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