In the Shadow of Mordor

Chapter 6

Gorlovka, Ukraine

The Ministry of State Security of the unrecognized Donetsk Peoples Republic (МГБ ДНР) (MGB DNR) was located in an unremarkable, Soviet-style gray building. It was the former quarters of the Ukrainian Security Service, the SBU (СБУ). Mihailo Korzh was challenged immediately by a guard, a sergeant of short stature with small, mean eyes.

He held out his passport. “Mikhail Korzh. I’m expected.” Best to use the Russian version of his name in this building. It might get him farther.

The guard examined his documents and reluctantly wrote out a pass. “Go straight ahead then left to reception,” he growled. “But first, empty your pockets and pass through the metal detector.

One wall of the faceless lobby was decorated with the black-blue-red flag of the DNR. The entrance to the basement was guarded by two rough men who might be Serbs.

Mihailo was long accustomed to the presence of Chechens and Serbs in his home town. Since February, thousands of Russian citizens, the majority of whom clearly belonged to the criminal classes, had flooded into his city with the braggadocio of an occupation force. Arrogant skinheads with swastika tattoos swaggered through the streets as though they owned everything and had come to oversee the conquered. They took over workers’ quarters on the outskirts of town and came out in force to every pro-Ukrainian rally in the Donbas to start fights. Armed with knives and rebars from construction sites, intoxicated by their anonymity, inflamed by herd instinct, these gangs of bandits attacked unarmed groups of protesters and pitilessly beat them.

On their heels arrived the new “leadership” — officers and workers of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Army, the GRU (ГРУ), in khaki uniforms, unshaven and with a strange gleam in their eyes — a mixture of idealistic fanaticism and greed. Upon arrival they took over the city with predatory and ruthless force. They confiscated transport, businesses, money, kidnapped people and demanded ransom, cracking down on anyone foolish enough to try to escape their indiscriminate plunder. They dealt in the same way with anyone who disagreed with them.

Soon it was the Serbs’ turn — wide shouldered, no longer young, veterans of the Yugoslavian wars, taciturn and cruel; without a word they got busy with arrests, torture, and firing squads. Chechens appeared at guard posts and on patrol with the terrifying appearance of merciless fighters with AK-47’s at the ready.

It seemed as if the very earth had opened and hell itself had sown terror and death throughout the city. Hunger was one of the results — empty store shelves, astronomical prices and the absence of salaries. The battle over water and electricity would come later.

The local inhabitants watched with resignation as the familiar elements of civilization disappeared to be replaced by a monstrous amalgam of chaos and military drill. The once peaceful city became sluggish as it awaited its turn to become a battlefield…

“Why do you need a pass?” The officer studied Mihailo from under lowered brows.

“My son urgently needs an operation on his eyes. This was arranged in Kharkov before the war, but his turn came only now,” replied Mihailo. The office was a normal room, impersonal and maybe too sparsely furnished for its size. The only thing to distinguish it was a map on the wall with red rectangles for houses and green patches for parks. Mihailo made an effort to memorize as much of the map as possible.

“On his eyes?” the MGB officer asked again.

Everything was upside down in this bizarre new world as though they had drifted into another dimension: criminals were soldiers, former civilians were on patrol, regular soldiers were in charge of security, and intelligence officers headed the city administration. And here was this well-fed MGBnik, clearly a bored and annoyed junior army staff officer, speaking to him in a sing-song voice. “There are children here of real patriots who can’t leave. With heart disease, by the way, who’ve waited years for surgery. But eyes? You must be kidding. Get him some glasses.”

Heart disease, in truth, was the first idea that had occurred when devising possible reasons for leaving. He didn’t know any heart doctors, but he did have a friend who was an eye doctor.

From a cupboard behind him the officer withdrew a bowl filled to the top with sugar and set it on the desk. He unceremoniously intended to drink some tea right in front of his guest. Mihailo swallowed the saliva that started in his mouth. There was no longer any sugar in the stores, and when some did appear at a market it was outrageously expensive. Mihailo barely restrained himself from dipping into the white crystals to stuff some in his mouth and more into his pocket to take home.

Instead, he spoke, making an effort to inject some pathos into his words. “This is not to improve his sight. This is a special operation to prevent his getting worse. He suffers from terrible myopia, and if it gets worse, he could go completely blind.”

The officer reluctantly turned away from his recently charged cup to Mihailo. “What was your job at the Defense Ministry?”

“I’m an artist. I designed all the decorations for military parades and the Victory Day celebrations. May 9,” he specified, hoping to imply that the one day the Soviets had proclaimed for the celebration of the end of WWII was somehow sacred to him. “I don’t know any secrets,” he added. “I only painted pictures, wall decorations, devised ways to decorate parade routes.”

“You saw all our weapons,” cut in the officer. “You saw the weapons selected for parades, what was there and what was not, where weapons are stored, the types and quantities of heavy weaponry.”

“But I know nothing about that. And anyone who saw the parade saw those weapons.”

The officer gave him a dubious stare as he sipped his tea. “No,” he said, not wanting to accept the responsibility. “I can’t make such a decision. Permit you to travel to territory occupied by the Kiev junta? In time of war? I can’t. You must go to the head office in Donetsk. Let them decide.”

“Donetsk? But I have a child, don’t you understand? I’m guilty of what? Painting a few damned pictures? I only want to help my family. I just need to go to Kharkov and back. It’s the same New Russia we live in. I’m sure that soon we will liberate Kharkov.”

“Well, then, when we liberate it, then you can go there.”

Mihailo would recognize that significant and feigned unconcern from miles away. He’d encountered this unfortunate fact of life in Ukraine many times even before the war.

The officer was fishing for a bribe.

Mihailo sighed. Professionial intelligence operatives in such situations always have a handy bag of money near-by, but the Ukrainian “Donbas” volunteer battalion in which he served lacked such resources. People from Ukrainian villages provided food, medicines, clothing, even uniforms, handed over old binoculars, night vision equipment, army boots, and once they had even come up with an armored transport vehicle, a “BMP.” Any money they came up with went for equipment or assistance to refugees from the occupied cities. There was nothing for bribing the occupying forces.

Mihailo pulled his last paper money out of his pocket and held it out awkwardly to the Chekist who peered at it from the corner of his eye as he calculated whether he should take it or pretend to be insulted. After a slight hesitation he took the crumpled hryvna and said, “I simply can’t help. You don’t have much… justification here. But I can write a letter of recommendation to Donetsk. And one of our boys can take you there. Maybe you can get it all taken care of today.”

One had to be philosophical. Something was better than nothing.

The car was a standard “UAZ” with its doors bearing a hastily painted DNR flag. The reason for the art work was most likely not the particularly zealous separatist patriotism of the driver, but rather a precaution against being shot at a road block. He knew of at least two instances of fighters confiscating cars from staunch Russian sympathizers. In one, when the driver protested, they beat him and then killed his younger brother to prevent them going over to the other side. And there was the danger of falling under “friendly fire.” Not a single separatist had been punished.

Behind the wheel was a friendly young man, clearly a local. He grinned broadly at Mihailo and nodded toward the seat next to him. Mihailo got in without a word. He couldn’t be sure whether this fellow, who appeared not at all threatening, might be an enemy. They might have played together as children at one of the schools in the Old Quarter, as the Solnechniy area was known. They might have watched movies on the big screen in the square at the city center. How could it be that this young man worked for the worst of the occupiers?

The driver navigated the checkpoint without a problem with neither of them speaking. Mihailo couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say.

“Why are you going to Donetsk?” asked the driver.

“I need an exit pass.” His companion wanted to talk, and it would be necessary to gather his strength and get to work. “My son needs an operation on his eyes in Kharkov.”

“Why didn’t they give you a pass here?” The driver was suspicious. “My name’s Vasiliy, by the way.”

“Because, Vasya, I worked in the DNR Ministry of Defense, and they just don’t give passes to such people.” He said nothing about being an artist.

“OK,” said Vasiliy, now with the camaraderie due a colleague. “I won’t ask what your job was, but I hope they give you a pass,” he added with unexpected sympathy.

“Why is that?”

“Because soon enough everything here will be blown sky high.”

“Really?”

“Didn’t you hear that yesterday they blew up the bridge? The day before yesterday it was the reservoir.”

“Of course, I heard,” sighed Mihailo, doing his best to act cold blooded. “It’s because the ‘ukropi’ (dill pickles) are attacking.”

He was accustomed to calling his fellow Ukrainians ‘ukropi,’ all in all a relatively inoffensive term from the rich arsenal of curses with which the separatists were so generous.

“Well, yes!” Vasiliy replied. “But that’s small potatoes. I’m not talking about the chemical plant that our guys mined. I’m talking about the munitions factory. Do you know it?”

Mihailo went cold.

“Wait a minute… there are a lot of defective explosives stored there. They could all be detonated by an explosion and there will be nothing left of Gorlovka. The whole city will go up.”

“Yeah,” Vasiliy agreed sullenly. “And the results will be worse than Chernobyl. They’ve even mined the conduit for contaminated water. If it goes, there will be no water fit to drink here.”

“And no one knows about this?” Mihailo couldn’t believe it.

“What do you mean, ‘no one?’” snorted Vasya. “Do you think I’m revealing something top secret? Of course, they know. We in the MGB know practically everything. And the khokhly (Ukrainians) know it, too. We mined it so we could blackmail them. ‘Bes’ told them all about it yesterday. If they try to take the city, there’ll be nothing left. We’ll blow everything up along with them. So even the enemy knows. The locals are the only ones who’ve not been told.”

“Bes” (demon) was what they called the new governor of Gorlovka, a former (or formally former) GRU officer. The nickname was well-deserved. Blow up the city! His native city, every corner of which he knew. A city with rooftop pavilions known locally as “Athens,” the dilapidated façades of old houses that somehow conjured up images, not of ruins, but of comfort, parks full of frolicking children, and stores filled with tired women. And they so easily plan to murder these people if the lawful powers of this country should try to take back the city.

“Are you from around here,” Vasiliy asked carefully.

Mihailo shrugged.

Vasiliy continued speaking with such vehemence that Mihailo feared he would lose control of the car. “What else can we do? Himself ordered this, understand? A direct order from the Kremlin. And he’s right. It’s unacceptable that Kiev’s fascists retake the city. During the Great Patriotic War they permitted the Germans to occupy Kiev, and what happened? The khokly and Banderites loved working for the occupiers so much that even after all these years they are returning to Nazism. All these concentration camps, genocide, torchlight parades with portraits of Bandera, all of it… If it comes to it, it’s better to destroy the city than surrender it… There would be nothing to it. This fascist plague should be burnt to the roots. At any cost!” Vasiliy finished, and turned the wheel so hard that the car nearly careened off the pockmarked road.

Mihailo didn’t reply. This wasn’t his first experience with fanatics reciting Russian propaganda. Still, every time it happened the words shook his soul. What concentration camps? What genocide? This was all lies from the first to the last word. And thanks to these lies a bunch of dimwitted fanatics wanted to erase a city from the face of the earth. It was impossible to come to terms with this.

“Are you sure all that is true? That they’ve already laid the mines?” he asked, hoping for a negative response.

“I’m sure,” growled Vasiliy. I planted the explosives myself.”

Maybe his trip to Kharkov and the meeting with the battalion command should be postponed. He couldn’t leave Gorlovka without discovering the precise locations of the explosives.