Lost and Found in Russia: Encounters in the Deep Heartland by Susan Richards Page A

cheeks: “You might have warned us.” Phone lines to Zarafshan were down, I explained, but Ludmila went on. “If only Oscar were here.” He was away on a business trip. She sounded desperate.
    I reassured her. “Don’t worry. Just give us a few telephone numbers and we’ll—” “You don’t have a clue,” Ludmila interrupted. “You can’t even step outside the door—they’re looking for you.”
    “Who?”
    “Who d’you think? The FSB.”
    I sat down rather suddenly.
    “Don’t you know anything about this place?” she asked, incredulous.
    “Well …”
    Ludmila’s face passed from incredulity to fury. Then she laughed until the tears fell.
    Zarafshan was a closed town, she explained. It was built around a vast complex of gold and uranium mines. Under the old regime foreigners had not been allowed here. “In theory the security was strict, but in practice it was all right. Now it’s awful! It’s a punishable offense not to announce the arrival of a foreigner to the FSB within twenty-four hours. You’d have been fine if it hadn’t been for that old bag—she’s the town gossip. The news was around the factory in minutes. You can’t stay here—they know where you are!”
    “We’ll leave—we’ll go to Bukhara.”
    “Not a chance,” Ludmila answered, serious again. “You can’t get out of here. There are no buses, and the next flight is tomorrow. Sit down. I must make some calls.” She walked out, closing the door on the phone’s long extension cord.
    We huddled on the sofa, considering our options. Ludmila could hand us over to the FSB, or she could hide us, but she was the mayor’s wife; she had to go on living here. When “they” caught up with us how was I going to explain my frivolous decision to borrow a Russian passport?
    Ludmila returned looking calmer. “Let’s get you out of here. Hurry!” We sprinted to her small car and headed out of town, toward those crumpled brown hills. As town gave way to scrub, and scrub to a leafy suburb of small dachas, she relaxed slightly. “It’ll probably be all right. Oscar’ll sort something out. He’s arriving tomorrow morning from America. I’ll just have to keep you out of the way till then.”
    She drew up at a bungalow set in a grove of fruit trees. We spent the afternoon at the dacha, picking up fallen apricots, which Ludmila split and laid in the sun. We worked in silence. I was mortified. The whole escapade was so unnecessary. Ludmila was taking a big risk. A gold mine! Now the airport security made sense. A car drew up and I retreated under the trees. But it was only a friend of Ludmila’s. Sasha ran the airport. His fair-haired good looks were marred by a squint so severe that to look directly at us he turned his face to one side. “How did you hear about us?” he asked. “Germans—what Germans?” Then he, too, laughed. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?
    “You’re in deep trouble,” he went on, squinting, grinning from ear to ear. “You couldn’t have picked a worse person to talk to than that hag. The news’ll be all around town. They’ll catch up with you—it’s only a matter of time. I’d get out if I were you.” Get out! I had to walk away or I would have said something rash. He knew very well that there was no way out until tomorrow.
    I went on collecting apricots, leaving Sasha talking to Ira. As I passed with an armful of fruit he was telling a story. “This tall, shining figure was walking toward him. ‘Stop!’ he shouted—the figure went on coming. He shouted for his mates. One fired a round of bullets—the figure went up in a shower of sparks.” Was he pulling Ira’s leg? But the slight smile on his face looked more like embarrassment. “They found the guy who’d fired the shot lying on the ground with one hand around a telephone receiver. It’d been ripped out of the wall. There were signs of a fight all around. The guy was unconscious, paralyzed from the waist down. When he came to