Eleven Days of Hell

by Yvonne Bornstein

  Straining hard to hear what was being discussed downstairs, it struck me that Oleg now seemed to be no more than a yes-man, grunting a word or two every once in a while as the interrogation continued. He did, however, reestablish his authority when Danny’s answers were insufficient. At that point, his angry voice echoing throughout the house, Oleg grabbed Danny by the neck and hustled him off to that execrable cellar.

  I gulped, knowing that it would now be my turn. But I was rather curious as well, wanting to know about these new players in the drama. When I was led downstairs, I could see that we would be dealing with a different animal. Both Kuzin and Robert were fair-skinned and fair-haired, well dressed and quaffed, and polished right down to their fingernails. Kuzin, the smaller of the two, couldn’t have been older than thirty and was somewhat delicate looking. Standing only around five foot six, he wore a tailored, dark-gray suit and light-gray dress boots.

  Robert, who was about twenty years older, stood about six feet. He also wore a dark suit and stylish metal-rimmed glasses. With his cloying smile, his swagger, and courtly manners, he would have made a perfect diplomat.

  For all their extraneous refinement, they may also have been well-dressed executioners. Both had exceptionally beady eyes. Once they began grilling me in tandem, Kuzin was so analytical that he kept trying to find hidden meaning in everything I said. The two of them conferred privately in hushed tones. Clearly, they were used to working as a team and were highly skilled interrogators. Not once did they raise their voices—in fact, I was the only one who did, bravely and probably stupidly screaming, ‘What is it you want from us?’ Neither batted an eyelash at that, but Robert did progressively become more threatening, hoping to break me so I’d reveal some secret information (which I didn’t have).

  They were the ice to Oleg’s fire, and their dogged, unrelenting hectoring did ultimately locate a tree they could shake. That happened when I noticed they kept harping on the fact that Danny and I were Jews, which to them was apparently a synonym for being wealthy. Getting the message, I incorporated it in my answers. At one point, I said, ‘We have very good friends—Jews—who have immigrated to America,’ consciously using two ‘magic words’: Jews and America.

  They bit.

  ‘Which Jews will pay your business debt for you?’

  ‘We know Jews who will pay money for our lives, if I have the chance to tell them how serious this situation is.’

  ‘No!’ came Robert’s reply. ‘This is a business debt and must be paid now. You cannot tell anyone you have been kidnapped or beaten at all.’

  However, they sensed an opening. Being infinitely smarter than Oleg or Grigory, they by now must have realised that we really didn’t have the funds in our account to authorise an immediate wire of money. It would take the involvement of other people, people who—to their delight—were American Jews.

  If a script could be worked out that we could follow, which would not in any way tip off that we were in danger but simply seeking money for our business, such a call could be made. It would be a delicate thing for the kidnappers. They ran the risk of calls being traced and of letting us do the talking, speaking with people we knew but they didn’t. They wouldn’t have complete control for those few minutes.

  This would leave cracks that perhaps we could exploit. Of course, we also would run some very perilous risks. If they ever suspected that we were trying to trick them, God knows what would happen. They might easily say the hell with it and kill us on the spot. That would certainly happen if they got wind of any attempted rescue, or even if word leaked out that we’d been kidnapped. Yet tricking them would be our only chance. After all, we were going to be killed in any case, either before or after a ransom could be paid. We had absolutely nothing to lose.

  With Kuzin and Robert agreeing that a call would be made, suddenly things didn’t seem quite as hopeless. We had a tiny crack of life. But I was a long, long way from being optimistic.

  Oleg now had me escorted back upstairs; a few minutes later, Danny was released from the cellar, and I told him about the plan to call ‘our rich American relatives’—knowing there were prying ears listening from outside in the hall, I spoke the words unwaveringly, sincerely, not betraying that I had no bloody idea which relatives we could call. Neither did Danny. When we sat on the bed, in a whisper, he said, ‘Who?’

  ‘Well,’ I whispered back, ‘it’s not like we have a choice, you know. We have only one relative in the US.’

  He nodded. We both knew who would get the call. Only weeks ago, Ian Rayman had said to call him when we got back from Russia. Now, it would be up to him to determine if we would get back from Russia. We decided among ourselves that Danny would be the one to make the call. I would remain at the dacha. I was afraid I might break down and cry hearing Ian’s voice. Danny would also be better able to explain the details of the business transactions relevant to the collection of the ‘debt.’

  It was around 7pm. Because of an old law from the Communist days that had not yet been changed, one could not make an outbound call in Russia until after midnight, so we knew wherever they would take Danny to make the call, it would be soon. The minutes ticked away slowly, agonisingly.

  There was at least a small bit of relief during the tense prelude to the phone call. At around 10pm, the babushka flitted into the bedroom and made hand movements while saying, ‘Doosh, doosh,’ the Russian word for shower. She led us to the bathroom, instructed us to remove our clothes, and walked out. Again, the bathroom had no door, and we were somewhat reticent, but our skins were crawling, not having bathed since the morning we left Melbourne, so we went ahead and disrobed.

  The bathroom was a microcosm of the contradictions in the house. The purple wallpaper and matching, shell-shaped wash basin only accentuated the demented décor. A thicket of rusty pipes and hoses poked out of random holes in the wall. One end of the dirt-stained, old-style tub tilted down so water could run into a drain; the other end looked like it had been broken off with a sledgehammer. If the faucet was turned on too hard, the water would spill onto the floor and flood the room.

  Another tub hooked to the same primitive gas-driven hot-water system was used as a makeshift washing machine. A soiled pile of wet clothing was inside it, and there was a wooden ladder across the top to hang clothes on to dry. It was all one step above the cavemen. And yet, on the peeling ceiling were expensive ceramic and glass chandeliers. One had exquisite detailing of pink roses; another had blue, hand-painted flowers.

  The interior decorator of this house could only have been Rasputin, the infamous ‘Mad Monk’ of Czarist days, and anyone living here seemed to be indeed mad.

  When Danny and I had peeled off our clothes, we gasped when seeing the bruises on each other’s battered bodies. Rather than stand in that revolting tub, we let the water from the sink soak two sponges and swabbed each other, all the while eyeing the doorway to see if anyone was out in the hallway taking a peek. I also wondered the same about the big window, which had no blinds or shade. I could see out to the backyard; anyone down there could see right in whenever I would use the toilet.

  Fortunately, only the babushka came in during our ‘shower.’ I had made sure to bring into the bathroom fresh clothing for us. Our old clothes were so dirty and smelly that I rinsed them in the sink and wrung them out and hung them on the radiator under the window of our bedroom.

  Although we felt clean for the first time in three days, my nerves were still on edge as we waited for Danny to be taken to make that life-or-death phone call to Ian Rayman. Indeed, my whole body jerked up from the bed when I heard a voice from downstairs bark, ‘Daniel!’ But instead of making the call, when he went downstairs, several of the goons merely wanted him to help them move furniture—though they really just wanted to humiliate him. That became clear when they ordered him to lift a couch by himself and then laughed like hyenas when he couldn’t. Then they sent him back upstairs, content in having won some sort of ‘victory’ by deriding a big, strapping man
like Danny.

  On his part, Danny just shook his head at how utterly insane was this gang. Rather than being humiliated, we both felt almost smugly superior to them. I even had a surge of confidence.

  ‘We’re going to get out of this,’ I told him. ‘I know it. I can feel it.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We won’t get out. They’re going to kill us.’

  At about 10:45pm, Boris pushed open the cloth hanging and pointed at Danny.

  ‘Daniel, telefon,’ he said.

  It was time.

  Boris was wearing an overcoat, and he was carrying Danny’s coat. So the call, we now knew, would be made on the outside, somewhere where outgoing calls to foreign countries wouldn’t have to be booked in advance. I figured, in any case, that calling from the dacha would present too great a risk that the line could be traced, and it added to my anxiety that Danny would be taken out of the house. What if something went wrong? What if they caught him tipping off Ian? Would they kill him and then come for me?

  All these fears were rattling in my head as Danny put on his coat and began walking out with Boris. After a few steps, he stopped, turned back to me, and reached out his hand. Mine went out to meet his, and for a brief moment, we held hands, saying not a word, our eyes saying everything. Then he was gone. The front door downstairs closed, then the gate clanged shut. I lay back on the bed. Waiting for him to come back, I knew, would be the worst torture of all.

  THE FIRST CALL

  It was a pleasure for Danny to put on his warm boots and thick shearling coat and go out into the cold air. Snow was falling lightly as he was walked to a waiting sedan, its motor already warmed up. Boris sat in the driver’s seat, Oleg in the back next to Danny. As the car moved down the driveway, two other long, black cars followed behind, carrying Robert, Kuzin, and other hoods. There was a distinct pattern to the way the drivers of the cars took turns leading the pack—an old KGB ploy to keep any snoops confused about which car held the agency’s prey.

  After an hour riding on slippery country roads, Danny knew by the rising skyline that he was in downtown Moscow. He recognised streets he knew from his past trips. This was the business district. Soon, the destination became obvious: the office of SovAustralTechnicka, at 25 Chekhova Street.

  After the convoy pulled up, Danny recognised something else: the dim figure of Grigory Miasnikov, coat collar up, cigarette in his mouth, standing just outside the darkened building. Danny was taken out of the car, surrounded by six men, and walked inside. Two of the men carried plastic bags containing turkey and black bread. Evidently, they planned to stay a while.

  Inside the familiar environs of the office suite, Robert took the lead. When everyone had taken seats around the big table in the conference room (whereupon some of the men occupied themselves with brandishing knives), Robert told Danny he wanted answers—useful ones, with no hemming or hawing—to just two questions: Who would Danny be calling, and what would he be saying?

  Now, the name of Ian Rayman finally surfaced for the first time. Robert wrote the name down on a legal notepad. Then he tore off a page of the pad and slipped it in front of Danny.

  ‘Write down what you will say to this Ian Rayman,’ Robert said.

  Danny composed a few questions and showed the paper to Robert, who took it and left the room with Miasnikov. Together, in Grigory’s office, they honed the questions. Forty-five minutes later, they returned. Robert gave Danny the paper, on which were several new sentences including the very first one, which read: ‘I am in hiding from the Soviet authorities …’

  Danny had to hold himself back from displaying the pleasant surprise he felt. Ian, he thought, would not believe this line of bull—hiding from the Soviet authorities? Did Robert and Grigory think Americans were idiots, that Ian wouldn’t know there was no Soviet Union anymore? What’s more, Ian knew what Yvonne and Danny’s business was all about. He knew the Russian ‘authorities’ were pretty much bystanders and several times had pulled strings to help them cut through red tape.

  Amazingly, the kidnappers were giving Danny an opening line that might easily be taken as a red herring by Ian—and a red flag.

  For Robert and Grigory, the lapse was likely born of desperation and greed. They wanted to create a bogeyman that would lend credence to their demand for money and assumed Americans still reliably considered ‘Soviets’ the enemy. Grigory was tone-deaf to Western modes of reality. This was somewhat understandable; he was boorish by nature. That Robert, with his Western sensibilities (as shown by his conscripting of a Western name as his alias during this caper), was just as goof-prone as Grigory—and the break he needed.

  Keeping his poker face intact, Danny eagerly awaited making the call as Oleg spliced together wires from an office phone extension and the fax machine that would be used to call out. Robert, who would listen in on one extension using a headset to mask any sound, gave the thumbs-up sign.

  Danny began dialing Ian’s home number.

  It was around 1pm in Wayne, New Jersey. Had the call been made a few minutes later, Ian would have been on his way to his office at the Pediatric Professionals Associates building a few miles away and likely would not have been accessible that day. As it happened, heavy rains the day before had flooded the basement of the building, knocking out the phone system. It was being repaired slowly, and many calls were going unanswered.

  When the phone rang at the Raymans’ home, Wendy picked up in the bedroom.

  ‘Hello? Hello?’ Danny said.

  Wendy thought she knew the voice, but the sound quality was poor. There was a slight buzzing and crosstalk on the line. It had to be from overseas. But the voice was distinctive, if a bit stiff.

  ‘Danny? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes. I must speak with Doctor Ian Rayman. Please give me his number at the surgery.’

  Again, Wendy was stupefied. Danny knew Ian’s work number. Why did he sound so formal, like a stranger, drawing out his words so affectedly, so robotically? And why would he call his former brother-in-law ‘Doctor Ian Rayman’? She knew Yvonne and Danny were on their Russian business trip. For him to call now at all was most odd. A shudder went through her. Something was going on.

  ‘Danny, if you need to speak with Ian, he’s right here,’ she said, gesturing for Ian to go into another room and pick up an extension.

  ‘Yes, I must speak to Doctor Ian Rayman.’

  Ian put the phone to his ear. ‘Hi. Danny?’ he said.

  Then he heard that dull, clipped replica of Danny, a Danny he did not know.

  ‘Doctor Rayman,’ began Danny, looking at the sheet of paper to make sure he touched all of his talking points, ‘I am in hiding from the Soviet authorities.

  ‘Yvonne and I arrived safely in Moscow and are staying with friends. We are in no danger.

  ‘We will be out of contact for a few days.

  ‘We need to raise one point six million dollars to cover a business debt.

  ‘We will not be allowed to leave the country until this debt is paid.’

  The pallid voice, the staccato cadence, the unconnected sentences and the non-conversational nature of the call led Ian to think this was perhaps a recorded message, until Danny responded to a few general questions. Ian assumed people were listening in on the other end and thus refrained from asking pointed questions that might put Danny on the spot. Instead, he addressed the money issue.

  The money, Danny said, reading from Robert’s script, was to be wired in US dollars to the Vnesh Econom Bank, formerly the Bank of Foreign Trade of the Soviet Union, in Moscow.

  Ian played for time.

  ‘I need to make some arrangements. It’s going to take some time to put together that kind of money. I’ve got to call the bank. Can I call you back tomorrow? Where can I contact you?’

  Robert was shaking his head furiously, no, no, no, and mouthed the words ‘You will call him back’ and stuck five fingers up.

  ‘No. I will call you back tomorrow. Five o’clock or thereabouts.’

 
Robert nodded, then pointed to the last item on the sheet of paper: having Ian send a telex to the office confirming his willingness to pay the money. This too was a boon for Yvonne and Danny; the telex number could be traced right to the SovAustralTechnicka office. Yet Robert was willing to bend on this detail, believing that Ian bought the fact that this was a business debt, not a ransom. Besides, he would keep moving to different locations for future calls. The Russian police, he knew, were notoriously inept and riddled with corruption; any trouble from them could be erased with a few bribes.

  After Ian agreed to send the telex that day, Robert ran his index finger across his throat, a signal to end the call. Danny hung up. Robert took off his headset and glanced at Oleg, who lifted a thumb into the air and smiled.

  ‘Charasho,’ he said.

  Robert agreed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was very good.’ Relief flowed into Danny’s body.

  He would live until tomorrow.

  In Wayne, Ian and Wendy stared at each other. Trying to make sense of the last few bizarre minutes, they agreed that the Weinstocks were in serious trouble. They bandied around disjointed thoughts: Where was Yvonne? What might have been done to her? It’s that goddamn business that landed them in this mess. Heaven knows what kind of shady people they hooked up with. They thought back to their last trip to Australia. Remember that guy they met, the one who was with Yvonne and Danny that night at Toto’s Restaurant? What was his name? Oh, yes, Grigory. Yes, that’s it. Grigory something. Miasnikov, yeah, that’s it. He ordered the grilled flounder, and he was so slick, so mysterious. Did Yvonne and Danny really know him that well before making him a partner? Could he be in on this thing?