Oswald's Tale (43 page)

He did not have to worry. Official people greeted him right away, introduced themselves, showed their identification, and they all drove off. It was an overcast day, but no rain, no snow. Gray.

They went to the main building, to Lubyanka, drove directly into the edifice, and were received by higher-ups. Stepan thought it might be the Assistant Director of KGB. He didn’t know these high officers personally. It was his first visit to Moscow Center, and this legendary building, Lubyanka, was full of labyrinths. He had to follow closely behind whoever was walking in front of him, down endless narrow halls. A thin red carpet ran the entire length of each long hall.

Later he would go to Lubyanka many times on business trips, so he was able to find his way along some of these halls, but he can’t say he ever got it all down. You could go there and go there and still get lost. If he had to get out of that building on his own, he might lose his way. From the exterior, it was a large building of yellow stone, but inside it was strange, with these narrow corridors. In Minsk, their corridors were wide and you could walk more freely.

When he finally was led to the appropriate office, several people were waiting for him in a reasonably large room, but there wasn’t anything on their table. He doesn’t know if it was in their American Division or some other department, but Stepan merely said, “According to your instructions, our file on Oswald is now delivered.” And they said, “Good, just leave it here.”

Their first question came: “Did you attempt to recruit Oswald?” He said, “You can cut off my head, but not only did we not try to, this very thought did not even enter our minds. Read these documents. It’s very clear in which direction we were working. In accordance with your instructions.”

He looked at them and noticed that they practically sighed with relief. He wasn’t worried about their believing him, because the documents made it clear what kind of work they had been doing. You couldn’t falsify something like that. Of course, Stepan was somewhat disturbed, but he had no large fears. These documents made it clearly visible how they had been conducting their operation.

Afterward, when slanders concerning the Soviet Union kept circulating, he thought maybe Nikita Sergeivich Khrushchev would give these files to the American government. All these American rumors would then burst like a soap bubble. But it didn’t happen.

On this day, at this meeting on November 23, 1963, they invited him to sit down; they were polite. He remembers he even tried to stand up, and they said, “Sit down, sit down,” but there was nothing on their table, no tea. He doesn’t recall whose picture was on the wall, maybe it had been Dzherzhinsky, but no flag—that, he would have noticed. And the room was brightly lit. The last thing they said was, “Leave this file. And thank you. Your mission is over. We’ll organize a return ticket for you.”

He took a regular night train back to Minsk with the same fellow he had taken off with. Before leaving, they strolled around Moscow and went shopping. He bought something for his children.

On his return trip, Stepan didn’t have special thoughts. If Oswald had been CIA, he could not have done any more in Minsk than gather information in a contemplative way, not manifesting anything, not being an active agent. He could have studied Soviet life, and then disclosed such information later in America. Such a version could not be excluded. As much could be said for any foreigner who spent two years in the Soviet Union. “Besides, when Oswald came to Minsk in January 1960, Kennedy wasn’t yet elected President. So, Oswald could not have been sent with such a goal in mind.”

If Stepan had any troubled thoughts on his return trip, therefore, it was not over his own performance. He explored various scenarios, thoughts came into his head, various versions appeared, but in the end he said to himself, “Ach, it’s time to go to bed. Americans cooked it up. Let them figure it out.”

When he got home, which was Sunday morning, it was still Saturday night in Dallas, so Oswald would not be ambushed by Ruby for another ten hours; about six in the afternoon on Sunday in Minsk is when Stepan would receive that word. When he returned, therefore, on Sunday morning around eight o’clock, the first thing he did was go to his home to shave. Leaving in such a hurry for Moscow, he had not taken his toilet kit. He washed, then had something to eat and went straight to work, where he reported to his superiors. People, of course, were talking about it in the building. Everyone was listening to radios. Even then, a lot of his colleagues did not know he had worked on this case, but everyone’s opinion was stirred up. After all, it was a shadow on Minsk.

People who knew Oswald immediately said Alik couldn’t have done it. So said people who knew him.

Even many people who didn’t have contact with the fellow didn’t believe it: We’re getting along with America a little bit better, so now all this business?

They didn’t do further analysis. Their file was in Moscow; they didn’t have materials. Besides, what could they have analyzed any further? When the file came back from Moscow some twenty-seven years later, nothing had been removed or commented upon; everything was there as he recalled it, certified and signed by him. Stepan was asked why then had Igor Ivanovich reacted so strongly as to say, “Everyone blames me,” but Stepan indicated that Igor was a more sensitive person than he was.

2

Veracity

The bulk of the interviews in Minsk had been completed, but the interviewers still had one large problem. It was whether to give any credence to Yuri Merezhinsky’s account of his relations with Marina. If she was anywhere near as promiscuous as he stated, then all interpretations of her life with Lee Harvey Oswald would be colored by such information: It would suggest a different subtext to her marriage than what had emerged from her account of their difficulties.

Kostya Bondarin had, of course, been dubious of Yuri’s claims, but then, he was only one witness. The real question must be whether Yuri was a liar of dramatic proportions or was telling some kind of truth—exaggerated, perhaps, by the intensity of his presentation, but still not unpossessed of its own veracity.

So, the interviewers went back to Yuri Merezhinsky one more time, which is to say that they asked him to come to Minsk from his sanatorium several hundred kilometers away and subject himself to an interview about his experiences after the assassination, to which he complied, and met them at his mother’s apartment, had his vodka, and talked. Given his personal style, which consisted of dictating the content of the interview from his own point of view rather than responding particularly to most of the questions, he began by speaking of his parents:

Very important people, he would say. He waved a finger in warning. Let nothing in the air be ready to disagree! Very important people, he repeated, but all the same, obedient! When they received their big Soviet encyclopedia and an order followed years later to cut out certain pages because they were now historically incorrect, his father obeyed. Yuri’s parents were not average people, but still, they were afraid. For example, his father kept a private diary, yet even his own pages were not truthful. They never mentioned that every day Yuri was asked to go over to KGB. It had been a nightmare.

This was when he started to understand life. Every day, he would tell you, he was called to come to KGB, a terrible nightmare.

“When was this?” his interviewers asked.

He waved his hand. “First they said, ‘Confess, confess, are you an agent of Japan? Are you an agent of CIA?’” Instead of going to his Medical Institute for his daily lectures, he had to visit the Organs and spend his whole working day there. Each time, he had to register; then, he would sit in front of one person, Captain Andreyev. This Captain would sit with a newspaper in front of his face and pour so much hot coffee for Yuri that afterward Yuri could not stand coffee—he vomited when he saw it. For a long time.

They asked: Was this after Lee was accused of killing Kennedy?

“Yes,” said Yuri.

The interviewers asked, “Earlier, when Lee Harvey Oswald married Marina, did the KGB bother you?”

He shook his head vigorously. His parents were high people, said Yuri. When he did something that KGB did not like, they would call his mother and say, “Your son got drunk,” or, “He is making love with a certain girl, the wrong girl.” His family was watched because they were high-ranked people.

After Kennedy’s assassination, however, he was called directly to KGB. It happened in this manner: Every Institute has a resident officer from the Organs—in this case, Captain Andreyev, who invited him into his office and had a conversation with him there. All subsequent conversations, however, were in the main KGB building, on Lenin Street.

The first questions were: What kind of relationship did you have with Lee Oswald? What did you talk to him about? Was he a spy? Was he CIA? No one was taking notes, just two of them.

“Tête-à-tête,”
said Yuri.

After this first meeting, Yuri went home and told his parents, and they responded with fear. They didn’t blame him; they started to discuss what protective measures could be taken. They wanted to use their friends.

Another interrogation from KGB was started on the following day. They called him at home and asked him to come over to their main building. He went alone. He bought a pack of cigarettes and walked in.

At the entrance was a booth with a window. There he gave his name and showed his passport, and Andreyev came down in civilian clothes and took him back to his office, where they sat at a table. He had to answer the exact same questions he had been asked at his Institute, and he thinks this new room may have been bugged, although, unlike yesterday, Andreyev now took notes. Their meeting consumed six or seven hours. Every day after that they met, except on Sundays. It was now Yuri’s daily job to go to the main KGB building on Lenin Street.

He smoked cigarettes. There were always Prima cigarettes on Andreyev’s table, and coffee. Sometimes when Yuri arrived, Andreyev did not even speak to him. Merely read his newspaper while Yuri sat before him. They would give him an hour for lunch. Then he had to come back. He didn’t sign anything. They told him to, but he never signed one paper. Not one. His parents told him not to. This officer said, “You don’t want to sign? Then don’t. Any punishment will come through a court; they will decide how to treat you.” Of course, at that time you didn’t need a lot to be punished. He was asked if he had been a Japanese spy. He didn’t know why they’d choose Japan, except that Oswald had been there. No Japanese in Minsk.

Since he went to this office every day except Sunday, he stopped going to his Institute. Education was no longer something that he worried about. And every day when he went home he told his parents what had happened, and every day they gave advice. They thought maybe some of his friends were also being questioned, but he didn’t worry too much about that. When you spend your entire day at KGB, you don’t think about your friends. He had even been warned not to talk to anybody.

These interrogations went on for a few months—same time, same man, same room. It was a big stone on his shoulder. The only picture in this office was a portrait of Felix Dzherzhinsky. Plus a safe, a table, chairs. That’s it. Plus a window through which he could see the street. And every day he went with a feeling that this would be the day they would not let him leave. He had a signal to give his parents. He would make a point of coming home every day by a certain hour. If not . . .

His mother worked at the Academy of Sciences. She was doing secret work on space. So, there were KGB Colonels who worked in association with her. His mother was always trying to use such a connection to save him. During this period, his parents were worried much more about him than over their own careers. And his father kept telling him not to sign anything, because among such papers usually there is a special paper which states that you are not allowed to leave your city. Finally, his father told him: “Leave Minsk. Don’t take any suitcases. Just go the way you are, in your own suit.”

They gave him lots of money, several thousand rubles, and he went to the railroad train station and jumped on the night train to Moscow without a ticket and paid the conductor. In Moscow, he never lived for more than two days in any hotel; he changed his residence every two days. Yuri had many relatives in Moscow, and many good friends, but he never went to visit any of them. He had arrived with no more than what he was wearing on his back, and he never worried about growing a beard or dyeing his hair.

In Russia, said Yuri, all you needed for travel was your residence passport, so on each night that he went to a new hotel, he handed it over, and by morning he’d be given it back. Then, in forty-eight hours—no more—he would move.

For two months, he did that. He spent each day in museums or at the movies, and he enjoyed his time. He was free; he was not under arrest. He never called home; he never wrote a letter. He had fear inside him, of course. It was uncertainty. So, he only made new acquaintances. Because it was safer, he never took a single room. That would attract attention. It was better to share with strangers.

Then, on December 31, 1963, he decided to go back to Minsk. He still had a lot of money, but he was lonely and he wanted to have a good New Year’s Eve. So, he bought an airplane ticket and flew to Minsk, took a taxi, came home. His parents were pleasantly surprised and happy.

They told him that his file was closed. His whole investigation was now closed and over. He thinks maybe some people in KGB, some ugly elements, thought they could make a career on his mother, his father, and himself. So, they had tried to damage his parents through him. But it had not worked. His parents were too strong.

In fact, it damaged Andreyev, the man who interrogated him, because his parents had gone to the highest people in Byelorussia.

Yuri saw Andreyev again, fifteen years later, on Lenin Street. Andreyev smiled at Yuri, came up to him and said, “How are you?” as if, after fifteen years, they were best friends meeting again. Yuri was so taken aback that he just turned away. He was trying not to spit into Andreyev’s face. Andreyev even asked him to obtain medicine for him.

The interviewers were puzzled. Yuri’s story had taken them around one turn too many. If the Organs had interrogated him all day long, six days a week, for months, what had they talked to him about? The interviewers encouraged him to tell his story again. In more depth.

Underneath all of this, Yuri said, was an undertext, a subtext. It concerned Komsomol. There were really two groups studying then at Minsk Medical Institute: First were those who had already done their military service and so were now high Komsomol members. The rest were like himself, who had come into Minsk Medical Institute from high school and so had been in severe competition to pass their entrance exams. For that reason, they knew how to study. So, people from that first group, who had done military service, were envious and tried to humiliate all these younger students.

For example: When they all went out in summer to work on a collective farm and bring in the potato crop, these high Komsomol members said that Yuri, Kostya Bondarin, and Sasha Piskalev had stolen a large piece of
salo.
That, he explained, was high-grade pork fat and very tasty if eaten with pickled cucumbers, bread, and vodka. A thin slice of
salo
coated your stomach. You could drink more.

Salo
cost very little, but Komsomol acted as if such an act of petty theft, a prank, had been highly irresponsible. It was built up into a big moral issue—they said that Yuri and his friends were not only well educated, the cream of their country with the best chance for a future, but had been educated free of charge and with a stipend taken from the taxes of other people less well educated and so the future of such an elite group belongs to the country, not to themselves. Stealing one piece of fat brought moral damage to their Medical Institute: One piece of fat, five centimeters by ten centimeters by ten centimeters! It was small enough to shove into your pocket!

Yet, they were all three brought up before a Komsomol meeting at his Medical Institute, and all his personal feelings, said Yuri, were treated with contempt. “They mixed me up with dirt.” And his friends Konstantin Bondarin and Sasha Piskalev were also mixed with such dirt.

It was all because Yuri’s father was Vice-President of this Institute, and they wanted the dirt to reach up to his father. Ugly elements were opposed to his father and were using Komsomol members recently discharged from the Soviet Army, people whose highest entertainment was to get drunk in a hostel, get down on their knees to fart, and put a match to their ass—lightning! This was the very best entertainment in their life. This was their culture! All the Komsomol leaders at his Institute. These were his judges concerning that theft of
salo
!

Highly confused by this enrichment, the American interviewers went through Yuri’s story again. If they understood what he was saying, on the second or third day after President Kennedy’s assassination, he had been asked to come to Andreyev’s office, and that had set off a process of going to the main office for two consecutive months, so it could only have been well after New Year’s that he quit Minsk and went to Moscow. But then the interviewers pointed out that he had stayed in Moscow for two months, so it would have been something like three months after New Year’s before he came home.

Now Yuri decided that the Organs had begun to interrogate him before Kennedy’s assassination. Perhaps it had been in the first days of August 1963, after he had been caught in the embarrassment of helping to steal a little pork fat. Then they interrogated him for a very long time, for two or three months, until November, he would guess. Then, after the assassination, he had gone to Moscow. In fact, he now remembers every detail of how he left town. He was with friends, and they were all drunk, and he was drunk, and they all went to Minsk railway station to see somebody else off on another train to another place. But since the next train happened to be for Moscow, he got on. And he slept on the third bench, the top rack in a third-class car, where mattresses and pillows were kept.

It had been planned he should go away. His father knew how to act in situations. His father had worked years ago for Stalin, and when Stalin ate a meal, his father had been the man chosen to be in charge of Stalin’s food. So, if the Soviet leader took one piece of meat, his father had to take two. Yuri’s father’s name was Mikhail Fedorovich, and he had learned a lot in those years, so he also knew how to run away from the Organs. His father had once been on a business trip, but they had taken him off his train and put him in a line of people waiting. He had asked, “What is this line for?” and they said, “Here is where they take away your Party membership.”