A chaotic journey across half the planet by train — where bad planning collides with blind luck and sheer stubbornness keeps the story moving.
Chapter Seven: East Meets West at KGB Safe House
Our cramped apartment is the penthouse equivalent in a five story Stalinist communal apartment block that was built for KGB officers sometime in the late 1930’s. To access our safe-house down this nondescript alley off Ekaterinburg’s main Lenina Prospekt, we climb one flight of stairs above the creaky elevator’s last stop and pass through two steel reinforced doors that might withstand a low yield nuclear blast. This is way too cool. This really was a flat for young KGB officers back in the day.
Like diligent, well trained spies we glance behind us as we pass through each door to be sure we aren’t being followed. We would use the reflections in the apartment block windows to more surreptitiously spot a tail but the glass panes that aren’t broken have thirty years of dust and grime caked on them. We are sure we are being followed. Already we have spotted a pin-hole camera in the corner of the tiny graffiti covered elevator. Agent O’s re-purposed ipod makes protesting pops and whistles when she uses it in the apartment indicating a high likelihood that bugs are still installed here. We signal to each other the location of the bugs without letting the watchers know that we are on to them. Information is power in these games of cat & mouse. We agree through code to continue acting like innocent and clueless tourists. We are very good when under this cover. It’s our favorite one.
We had never heard of Ekaterinburg (Catherine’s Fort in English) before we made our train reservations. We only chose to stop here because it seemed like a good place to break up the journey, get off the train and maybe find a hot shower somewhere. Too bad the KGB safe house only has cold water. But at least there is a shower now. There were none when it was built. All these flats were built for maximal communal efficiency. Rooms were just rooms. One room per family and no kitchen, toilet or shower. All cooking and cleaning (personal or otherwise) was done in shared areas. This made it easier for the KGB informant amongst them to spot dissenters. Or at least know who wasn’t showering regularly.
We had no idea how significant a place Ekaterinburg is both geographically and historically. An X marks the spot where Asia and Europe officially meet near here. They city bookends the Soviet era with oddly symmetric historic events. A dusty basement near the train station was the final stop for the entire Russian Royal lineage. The last Romanov Czar, his wife, four daughters and a hemophiliac son were executed here. These murders marked the start of the Soviet era. To mark the end of the Soviet era along came the somewhat buffoonish Boris Yeltsin. He was born here, acquired his fabled capacity to consume stupendous amount of vodka at the Ural State University, became the communist Mayor of Ekaterinburg and Moscow and then went on to oversee the dismantling of the Soviet State as the first democratically elected President of Russia.
Ekaterinburg also bookends the great expansion of Tsarist Russia under Peter the Great. The city was laid out a by a Dutch Architect, de Gennin, who was hired by the Czar to design both St Petersburg (Isn’ it enough to name a city after yourself? Do have to declare yourself a Saint as well?) at Russia’s Western extreme and Ekaterinburg here in the East. Big Pete was obsessed with turning Russia into a more European-looking place. His plan really worked. Ekaterinburg is a walkable and very pleasant city (in the summer at least). We are glad we stopped here.
The city also played a special role in the Cold War. During WWII much of the military industrial capacity of the country was moved here, out of Hitler’s reach, and it has remained here ever since. It was a highly restricted area and no foreigners were allowed here until 1992. The only foreigner that did get to visit was Gary Powers, a most reluctant tourist. He was flying the U-2 plane that was shot down near here while taking not-so-innocent snapshots of the area. He caused a diplomatic incident by inconveniently opting not to swallow the cyanide tablets sewn into his flight suit. No wonder there were such a large contingent of KBG comrades here.
Late on our second night here we spot a suspicious character coming out of an unmarked door in a poorly lit corner of the building’s hallway. The glass in the door is mirrored and it’s very near the elevator we have just stepped out of. We seem to have caught him off guard. His expression betrays a moment of confusion before he recovers and fakes a drunken stumble down the hall. But in his haste, he has left the door ajar.
Once the elevator doors are shut we double back and ease the door open. A narrow staircase leads to another small rooftop flat. It is lit mostly by a bank of monitors showing live feeds from around the apartment block. In one monitor, we see our friend talking hurriedly on a cell phone and exiting the elevator. The software system seems to be built on a bootlegged copy of Microsoft Windows. It doesn’t take long to navigate to the photo archive section. Sure enough, we find a freeze-frame photo of us in the same elevator date-stamped on the day of our arrival. I guess they were on to us from the start. I quickly email a copy to agent 0’s dead-drop disposable email account for today and flick the screen back to live monitoring. Crap! Our friend is moving upwards past the 3rd floor in the lift and he has some muscle with him. They don’t look drunk now. We dart down the stairs and gently close the blast proof doors to our not-so-safe house just as we hear the elevator doors grind open.
We had no time to search the rest of the archives. If they had a video feed in the room, as we suspect, we will probably find ourselves on some C-grade Russian porno site taking cold showers. We pack our backpacks and check the train schedule for the first train out of this tough town. There is an 8 am train if we can hold out the night. It’s a day earlier than planned but better safe than sorry.
