In truth, Rubinstein has captured the reason I was so keen to meet the Moscow Mafia's hit man: I believe our respect for executioners stems from the value we place on human life. On that level, we instinctively admire those who deal in valuable things, just as we are awed by the money of a billionaire, even if we disapprove of the way he made it. More than that is the sheer mystery of death, which extends to those who bring it on swiftly, efficiently, and unnaturally. We suppose they must possess a sort of power that other men do not have. Hence, my questions to Misha: What secrets does he know?
The Hit Man
Misha's story demonstrates the psychology of a nation in anarchy. In the fall of empires, morality is suspended. The institutions that were once the pillars of law and order—such as the police, the courts, or the KGB—are suddenly just nebulous organizations, floating desperately betwixt the State and the underworld, half-respectably above the water line, half-submerged in the mire.
Misha's world is one of mirrors, lies, and confusion. No one doubts these are strange times in Moscow: everything is expensive, except death. Life is the only commodity that is getting cheaper. Misha is a member of the fastest growing profession in the East.
Misha works for one of the leading bosses in the so-called "Moscow Mafia," although there are also Armenian, Georgian, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Czech, and Tartar Mafias in Moscow. He is afraid that the KGB will learn his identity and force him to betray his boss. Yet Misha is unaware that his Mafia boss is either working for the KGB or is the KGB. My contact, a distinguished, white-haired colonel in the organized-crime section of what used to be the KGB, owed me a favor. Sitting in his plush country house (or dacha) just outside Moscow, sipping Russian champagne and nibbling Caspian caviar in his bubbling Jacuzzi, I asked him if I could meet a Mafia boss or a hit man. He informed me that I could not meet a boss, but a hit man would be no problem, providing I never informed him that the KGB had arranged the meeting, never photographed his face, and never demanded his real name.…More caviar?
I had waited several days for Misha's call, which finally came at six in the morning from the lobby of my hotel. He said I may call him Misha, although he has other names if I am picky. He asked if I was alone, and, if so, said he would like to come up right away. He didn't want to waste time, he said. I understood that he was a busy man. He had people to kill. Time was money. Life was money, but there is gold in death for Misha.
My hotel room was a mess—clothes and papers on the floor. I immediately noticed that Misha was shocked. Misha disapproves of mess. He regards the debris of my things coolly but thoroughly, missing nothing. The mass murderer finds my mess distasteful.
Misha is a tidy technician of death. He is no thug. He is not even a Lucca Brazzi. He is young—28 years old—yet he has seen much, much more than any man should see in a long life. He has seen things no man should ever see. Misha has not only seen them, but he has done them without a second thought. After all, he is no philosopher. He has done unspeakable things with those very pale, dry hands that sometimes remind me of a surgeon's, sometimes a musician's, with fingers capable of beautiful things.
The moment I looked at Misha when he came in the door in his anorak, fur hat, boots, Levi jeans, sneakers, and polo-neck sweater, I could tell he was a soldier. There was a calm, almost innocent discipline in the way he held himself—the dry power of his handshake; the straight back; the cropped hair; and the pale, strong, impersonal expression of his face, with the gray wolverine eyes hollow of humor or humanity.
His English was not bad, so we could understand each other, but just in case he brought along a woman interpreter, whose English was far worse than his. She sat there, an anxious, bird-like creature, gripping two dictionaries with white knuckles. It was soon evident that she was far too afraid of Misha to interpret anything at all. She stammered, hesitated, and desperately thumbed through the dictionaries, until she finally sank altogether. As I became impatient, Misha calmly froze her with a sentence of Russian that she did not care to interpret and she never said another word. She just looked from me to him and back with a sad expression. I looked at her, reflecting that I might be irritated, but at least I was not capable of dispatching the poor girl to the next world. Unlike Misha.
So, after this tense start, Misha and I pulled up chairs face-to-face in the hot, messy little hotel room.
"When did you first kill a man?" I began.
"When I was 19, I joined the Blue Berets. Soviet Special Forces. They taught me many ways to kill a man, taught me languages and engineering. Looked after us. Best pay. Best food. Then they sent me to Kabul for seven years. There I killed the Afghans by mines, by hand, by dagger, pistol, rifle. We killed them every way. Like animals. And they also killed us that way. It was the wild. We felt we were alone. Forgotten."
"How many did you kill out there?"
"No idea. It was at distances. Often at night. We attacked villages and towns. Hard to tell. All I can tell you is that I only killed one man by hand, with a knife."
"But knives aren't very clean, are they?"
Immaculately dressed Misha, sitting uncomfortably amongst my messy belongings, shivered at the very suggestion of mess of any sort. "True;" he said gravely. "Very inefficient. Messy."
"Why did you kill all those Afghans?"
"It was our duty for our Motherland, Mother Russia."
When he returned from the war, Misha felt he was a hero. He believed that the Motherland would reward him for his service, but the Motherland was disintegrating.
Tags:
brandy,
dispatcher,
executioner,
fellow man,
flask,
fur hat,
hit man,
imbecile,
kind of man,
mafia,
moscow hotel room,
murder,
murderer,
philosopher,
psychopath,
Russia,
snoopers,
special forces,
strange feeling
