Dmitry’s
desperate gamble/ By Olga Bonnel
“His
heart racing, the young Russian walked towards the waiting plane. He knew he
was only steps from freedom—or capture”
Entering Moscow’s Sheremetievo Airport, he looked line
any Western tourist on his way home. He had a camera slung over his shoulder,
and he was wearing a bow-tie, glasses and a French-made suit. The passport he
carried identified him as Paul Duchalon, a university student from Berne,
Switxerland.
His real name was Dmitry Fedorovich Mikheyev, a russian
student trying to leave his country. It was October 3, 1970, and Dmitry and
Paul were partners in a daring escape scheme. At the airport’s foreign-exchange
window, Dmitry filled out a form to convert his local money to Western
currency. Comparing the signature on the form to the one on the passport, the
clerk looked suspiciously at the tall, blond man.
“Is this really your signature?” she asked.
“Of course,” Dmitry replied. Relax, he reminded himself. Relax!
“I was in an awkward writing position,” he explained, flashing his friendliest
smile. Dmitry grabbed another form and this time he did a convincing imitation.
From the exchange window, Dmitry went through the
passport, visa and customs checks. So far
so good, he thought. Just a little
further. He strolled through the exit door and walked towards the giant
airliner. Act natural. Don’t arouse
suspicion. His pulse racing, Dmitry reached the boarding steps of the
plane.
Then a voice caught him short. “Monsieur Duchalon?.....”
Dmitry Fedorovich Mikheyev was born in Siberia in 1941.
Even as a youngster, he was independent. In a speech to a communist youth
organisation, 16 year old Dmitry accused the government of “robbing the
subscribers” of a public loan. His indiscretion was hushed up because of his
excellent progress in school.
He came to official attention again in March 1965, at
Moscow University, when he chaired a discussion group at which a student name
Viktor Kuznetsov spoke for an hour and 20 minutes on cynicism in social
life—why Soviet youth had lost their ideals. “ It is because we have been
living a lie since the first day of the Revolution!” Kuznetsov thundered.
In the weeks that followed, the KGB interrogated Dmitry
seven times, convinced that he and Kuznetsov had plotted this outraged, acting
under Western influence. In the end, Kuznetsov was packed off to a psychiatric
hospital. Dmitry was threatened with university expulsion but, because there
was no proof of a plot, officials finally allowed him to stay.
Any illusions that Dmitry still had about communism
melted away, and he started wondering about the West. He began mingling with
foreign-exchange students from non-communist countries, learnt about Western
freedom, even began studying to improve his English. In 1969, he applied for
permission to travel outside the Soviet Union. But this required a form
certifying he was “a good communist.” The party commissar for the university
refused to sign. “I haven’t forgotten the discussion-group incident,” he told
Dmitry.
Dmitry decided to get out of Russia any way he could. In
the spring of 1969, he explored the Finnish border by train, unaware that a
special permit was required for travelling on the line. He was arrested and
released after 24 hours of questioning. That summer, he tried again –this time
on foot. He struck out across flat, marshy country for Finland. After days of
wandering, often lost (maps of the area could not be bought), he abandoned the
attempt.
Helping hand.
During his last year of postgraduate studies, Dmitry made friends with a Swiss
student named Fritz Muller. One day Dmitry was examining his friend’s passport
when an idea struck him. With a foreign
passport, he reasoned, I’m free, I
could go anywhere. He scribbled an outline: “Fine a foreigner who looks
like me. He –Mr X –comes to moscow,
gives me his passport and his return ticket. I take the plane instead of him
and, three hours later, I’m in the west. Meanwhile, Mr X goes to his embassy
and reports that his papers have been stolen.”
Dmitry discussed the plan with Muller “ Dmitry was like a
man drowning, struggling for a breath of air,” Muller recalled later. “He was
my friend, and he needed help
Muller returned to Switzerland in June 1970. He and
Dmitry planned to keep in touch through another of Dmitry’s Western friends,
Karl Vogelmann, an Austrian student at the university. Vogelmann shared a flat
with an Austrian diplomat and received all his letters through the diplomatic
pouch, assuring a private line of communication.
The toughest job was to find someone daring enough to
serve as Dmitry’s Mr X. Muller screened his friends, looking for someone about
30 years old, with straight blond hair, an athletic build, about 182
centimetres tall. Then one August evening, as he walked out of a library, he
bumbed into Paul Duchalon, a close school friend he hadn’t seen for two years.
“Just the man I need!,” Muller exclaimed, even before asking how his friend
was.
Duchalon followed Muller into a near-by café. “There’s a
young Russian behind the Iron Curtain,” Muller told him, “and he needs help
getting out.” Muller showed him Dmitry’s escape plan and a photograph. “He’s
just a student like you and me,” Muller said, “curious about the world, pining
for a chance to live a free life. Dmitry has thought of everything. You ask for
a new passport and we will provide a photo that looks like him. We will also
have your picture taken with glasses and a bow tie, which both you and Dmitry
will wear in Moscow. These are the kinds of details that distract attention.”
As he pondered his decision, Paul began to feel a kinship
with Dmitry. Both were science students, they were almost the same age and they
even resembled each other. Paul also felt drawn to Dmitry by Switzerland’s long
humanitarian tradition. “All during my youth,” Paul recalled later, “I had
heard tales of my own family members, hiding Jews or helping them cross the
border from France into our country.” After long deliberation, Paul made up his
mind: “I felt I had to try.”
Muller conveyed to Dmitry the good news. Escape day was
set for Saturday, October 3, 1970. The plan called for Paul to travel from
Geneva to Helsinki, returning via Moscow and Vienna. That made Moscow seem just
a stop-over, instead of the trip’s objective.
Plan in action.
Paul’s plane took off on September 27, 1970. After three days in Helsinki, Paul
arrived in Moscow. One by one, all the other passengers picked up their
luggage. Paul waited and waited. What
could this mean? He wondered. In the deserted baggage hall, the exaltation
that he had felt began subsiding into panic. What have I gotten into? After a long delay, a man finally brought
his suitcase. Paul looked through the bag; he had the feeling it had been
searched, but nothing was missing.
From the airport, Paul telephoned Vogelmann’s room, where
Dmitry was waiting. “I’m to say hello to you from your cousin Helga,” Paul
said. This was the agreed code to indicate his safe arrival.
Paul’s next stop was the Hotel Ukraina. In the lobby, he
was approached by the tall, blond Dmitry. “I see you’re a tourist,” Dmitry
said. “Would you like me to show you Moscow?” Paul smiled. In case they were
being watched, Dmitry wanted it to appear he was befriending this foreign
visitor.
The two men went into the hotel bar. Paul was nervous. “I
think that man is staring at us,” he said, gesturing towards one of the
musicians in the orchestra. Dmitry tried to reassure him.
The next day, they took a tour of the city. That evening,
in Volgelmann’s room, Dmitry practised Paul’s signature and learnt to operate
his camera. As the three men parted for the night, Vogelmann turned to Dmitry:
“See you soon, in Vienna.”
At 1 p.m. on October 3, Dmitry and Paul chatted over
coffee in the second-floor lounge of the Hotel Ukraina. Then, after Paul rose
and went to the lavatory, Dmitry slipped some sleeping medicine into Paul’s
cup. The dose was strong enough to prove Paul had been drugged –if he had to
undergo a blood test –yet not stiff enough to knock him out. Paul turned to his
seat, emptied his cup and soon pretended to doze.
Picking up the suitcase, Dmitry walked slowly out of the
hotel. “The airport,” he told the taxi driver in English. In the car he
adjusted his bow tie, put on his glasses and slung Paul’s camera over his
shoulder. Half an hour later, he entered the airport.
“Monsieur
Duchalon?......”
Dmitry froze. It was 3.15 pm., and his flight for Vienna
was about to leave. Now one of the two men by the plane called out his assumed
name.
“Do you speak English?” the man asked. Dmitry nodded.
“Will you follow us, please, for a passport check. Don’t worry, the plane won’t
leave without you.
There were a dozon uniformed men in the airport office
where he was taken. The man in charge was a KGB colonel. “Your photo isn’t a
very good likeness,” the colonel remarked.
Dmitry broke out in a cold sweat. “That’s what my mother
says too,” he replied, smiling.
Back at the Hotel Ukraina, Paul continued to feign a
drugged sleep until 7 p.m, half an hour after Dmitry’s scheduled arrival in
Vienna. Then he telephoned the Swiss embassy. “It’s Saturday, sir,” the duty
clerk told him. “There is no one here. Call back in an hour. I’ll try to reach
the ambassador.”
As he hung up, Paul felt a chill. Something’s gone wrong, he thought. I know it. Suddenly, he was very thirsty. He had 30 kopecks left
–just enough to buy a bottle of milk.
In pursuit.
Outside the hotel, he ducked into an underground passage that came up in front
of a food store. Before leaving the passage he spied a man’s silhouette. On his
way back he notice with relier that the man had disappeared. Then Paul turned
to look again. The figure had reappeared behind him, motionless.
Paul saw two more men blocking the right-hand exit,
leading to the hotel –but the staircase on the left was still free. He took the
steps four at a time, and raced to a nearby phone booth. His hands shaking, he
dialled the embassy number and asked if he could go there at once. The clerk
agreed. When he emerged from the booth, there was no taxi in sight. He took
off, running through the streets, away from the hotel. Behind him, a car
screeched to a halt. Five men piled out, grabbed him and hustled him into the
back seat. It was 8 p.m.
At 8.05 the phone rang in the airport office, and the KGB
colonel picked up the receiver. His face brightened as he turned slowly towards
Dmitry. “Now, Dima,” he said in Russian, using the familiar form of Dmitry’s
name, “tell us a little about the young fellow who slept so soundly at the
Ukraina.”
During the interrogation that followed, Dmitry realized
that he had been under surveillance for months, probably for years, partly
because of the Kuznetsov affair five years before. He had been filmed with
Duchalon in the Hotel Ukraina, and his conversation in Vogellmann’s flat had
all been tapped.
The KGB arressted Vogelmann, interrogated him ceaselessly
for three months and threatened him with 10 to 15 years in prison. Finally he
signed a confession. He was allowed to return to Austria in December 1970
Paul went to prison for a year and a half, then was
released to return to Switzerland. After a trial that drew considerable
publicity in the West, Dmitry spent five years in the Gulag. Released in 1976,
he moved to Kiev and married a woman who shared his desire to emigrate;
together, they repeatedly requested visas –always without success.
In March 1979, the KGB found a copy of an anti-soviet
novel Dmitry had been writing. But he was no longer an obscure student; if he
were sent back to the Gulag, the authorities risked turning their now-famous
victim into a martyr. Concluding that Dmitry would be less trouble out of
Russia than in prison, the authorities gave the young man and his wife visas.
On January 2, 1980, Dmitry and Paul were reunited for the
first time in Paris. They fell into each other’s arms. “We were very young and
idealistic,” admitted Paul, “and we both paid a heavy price.”
“The more I think of our adventure,” added Dmitry, “the
more I realize my debt to my Western friends. For the future of the world, may
there be many more men of their courage.”
“To
the optimist, all doors have handles and hinges; to the pessimist, all doors
have locks and latches.” –W.A.W.
