Never Speak to Strangers and Other Writing from Russia and the Soviet Union. David Satter
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I am Erik Udam.” Udam was the leader of the Estonian dissidents. Udam then asked if there were addresses written on my note. I said there were and each person gave his correct address.
Reinart got up, a little less obviously distressed, and filled my glass with cognac and then poured drinks for the others around the table, who also began to relax. Udam asked me to tell him about the theft of my suitcase. I hesitated for a moment and then decided to tell them what had happened. If they were dissidents, they were entitled to know and if they were KGB agents, what I said would come as no surprise. I began to describe what had happened and, as I told them how I was distracted, pained expressions came over the faces of the four men. When I finished, Reinart said, “I’ll call Viktors immediately so he can warn everyone that your notes are missing.”
They then began to argue among themselves. Udam suggested that the theft was organized by black market operators but Niklus disagreed. “This was the KGB,” he said. Reinart asked me what we talked about. “Not much,” I said, “just trivialities.”
“They didn’t ask you any questions?”
“Nothing special.”
“That doesn’t sound like the KGB,” Reinart said. “They always try to find out everything they can.”
The conversation shifted to whether or not it was safe for us to meet later. We finally agreed that they would try to assess the situation and Ratas would meet me at 10 pm that night in front of the Tallinna Kaubamaja.
Before we got ready to leave, I told Reinart that I was sorry about what had happened. For the first time, his manner seemed to soften. “What can you do,” he said reflectively, “a young man, a beautiful woman …”
Udam said he had one request before I left. He wanted me to leave the list with the dissidents’ addresses and names with them. “It’s not that we don’t trust you,” he said. “We just can’t afford another mistake.” I took the list out of my wallet and gave it to Udam and he put it in an ashtray and lit it with a match, holding the match to the list until it had been reduced to a wisp of ash.
I returned to my hotel where I met my official guide. We agreed on a program for the next day. I then left the hotel to look for Masha. But I soon discovered that the address she had given me did not exist.
I returned to the Viru, went to my room and then to the lobby where I stopped to buy a postcard. I suddenly had the feeling that someone was watching me. When I turned to look, the only person I noticed was a young man with a mustache and goatee who was holding a square attaché case.
I finally left the hotel and walked to the Old City. There had been a slight break in the weather and there was a fine rain. Some of the accumulated ice on the roofs was beginning to thaw, causing water to drip from the eaves and run down the drainpipes. In the streetlamps’ hazy light, the paint peeling from the facades of the buildings made them appear particularly shabby. I turned down one of the side streets and through the window of a gabled stone building, I could see people queuing, waiting to test loaves in the bread racks. The drumbeat of dripping water was punctuated by the slamming of the heavy wooden door to the bread store as people left with their purchases. A little bit further down the same street, I passed a dimly lit café where, through a gauze curtain, I could see pensioners carrying their tin trays to metal tables and an old crone mopping up the broken tiles on the floor. I entered a quiet alleyway that ran along the city wall. At last, I came to a cul de sac where I was surprised to see an old woman with a few wisps of scraggly gray hair, a lined face and a dazed look in her wide open eyes. She stood motionless in the rain holding a tin can filled with pencils and made no effort to speak, looking past me as if I wasn’t there.
Shortly before ten I returned to the hotel where a group of Finnish tourists were showing the effects of heavy drinking. Finally, I walked to the door and glanced behind me. On the upper mezzanine, I saw the man with the attaché case.
At ten o’clock, I met Ratas at the Tallinna Kaubamaja. “They’re following you!” he said, his face completely contorted. “Be here tomorrow, two o’clock.”
The next morning I went with my guide to an agricultural institute outside Tallinn. The meeting lasted for several hours. I excused myself from the lunch that had been prepared and left the institute at 1 pm.
As we rode back to Tallinn, I tried to imagine how to meet the dissidents without being followed. Suddenly, I recalled a rundown hotel in the Old City called the Hotel Baltika that I had noticed the previous night. As we approached the Old City, I asked the driver to leave me off at this hotel. There was a moment of confusion but the guide agreed that the driver could stop there.
I got out of the car. I then cut back through a small park and started to climb the stone steps to the Upper City. Factories and railroad lines, the yellow cranes of Tallinn harbor and rows of brown and grey Soviet apartment blocks spread out before me. Glancing back, I turned and saw a man in a silver jacket at the bottom of the steps climbing rapidly. I hurried along a narrow path between the stone houses. Looking back again, I saw that my pursuer had reached the top of the steps. I turned into the entryway of a Lutheran church where an official Soviet guide, mistaking me for a tourist, began to describe the torture of heretics that had been performed there.
I left the church, turned down a cobbled path between two stone walls and then hurried across a broad square. My pursuer appeared from around a corner. Finally, in desperation, I turned and began to advance on him. When he realized that I was coming toward him, he quickly turned his back. I changed directions and doubled back behind one of the government buildings and made my way to the wall of the Upper City. I began going down the steps, watching for my pursuer. To my surprise, I did not see him. I plunged into the crowded streets of the Old City and flagged down a cab. With 15 minutes to go before the scheduled meeting, I arrived at the Tallinna Kaubamaja, where scores of people were stepping through the slush. There were old, fat women with canes, young women with pallid faces and stringy blonde hair, nondescript men in worn overcoats and, off to one side, the old woman with the can of pencils whom I had encountered the previous night.
At exactly 2 pm, Ratas appeared on the street and led me to a nearby courtyard. He said that KGB agents were everywhere and the group had decided that it was too dangerous for us to meet in Tallinn. They wanted to meet not in Tallinn but in Moscow. I asked Ratas if he had reached Kalnins to tell him about the loss of my notes. He said “our friends” had been informed.
The train for Moscow left as darkness fell and I was relieved to see that my companion in the compartment was a woman engineer in her 50’s with a dark mustache. As we rode to Moscow, I tried to restore my notes from memory, adding to them and elaborating on them.
The next few days in Moscow were uneventful. Life assumed its previous rhythm. I began to think that the events in the Baltics were an aberration and maybe even, to some extent, the product of my imagination. One night, about a week after I had gotten back, I decided to call Kestutis in Vilnius although I had no doubt that Udam had already told him what happened on the Riga to Tallinn train. I called from the central telegraph office reaching him at the institute where he worked as an archivist.
After I described the loss of my suitcase, there was silence at the other end of the line. “What happened” Jokubynas asked, “were you drunk?” “Kestutis,” I said, “We have to be careful. They may be listening.” “Oh, yes,” Kestutis said and then his voice began to tremble. “They’re listening. Of course, they’re listening. They’re listening to every word.” With that I broke off the conversation and promised to call him again.
A week passed and there was no word from anyone in the Baltics until one night I received a frantic call from someone who said he had to meet me and was waiting in front of the Puppet Theater across the street from my apartment on the Ring Road. I didn’t recognize the caller’s voice and after the affair in the Baltics, I was wary of provocation. But I decided to go. When I pulled up in my car, I saw Antanas Terleckas and Ints Tsalitis.
We got into my car and began looking for a place to talk. It was too dangerous to talk in an apartment and we would have had to queue for hours to