Five years later I was sitting in my kitchen flicking through an expat magazine dedicated to Moscow’s real estate racket. I don’t make a habit of reading that sort of crap, but I need somewhere to put my eyes while I eat, and there was nothing else in the local supermarket’s free newspaper rack that day.
The magazine, which we shall call Residential Property Shit as it is very close to its real name, consisted of pages and pages of ads for flats in the centre of Moscow that were leased by cowboys in suits to Western snobs at hilarious prices: $14,000 a month for one room, unfurnished, near the Kremlin, 24-hour security, device for extracting the blood of young virgins included, that sort of thing.
Just as I was reaching the point where I was ready to plant bombs to hasten the revolution, I stumbled upon an article at the back that had nothing to do with the magazine’s usual rubbish. In fact, its position there made so little sense it looked like a surreal prank.
It was called ‘Notes from Underground. Touring Moscow’s Catacombs: Skeletons, Ancient Treasures and Stalin Bunkers’. Instantly I realised that this was what Sergei had been talking about: the ‘Diggers of the Underground Planet’. The journalist had spent a day with Vadim Mikhailov, the leader of the Diggers, following him underground, collecting legends.
I started reading.
Legend #1: The Moscow metro has a dark double, the M2, the secret metro for government officials and the state security services. Allegedly it links the Kremlin to the KGB headquarters at Lubyanka and ultimately to a vast nuclear bunker in the west of the city. Mikhailov didn’t say much; just that it existed.*
Legend #2: Ivan the Terrible’s lost library. Beating his daughter until she had a miscarriage, accidentally murdering his own son and hunting an archbishop stitched into a bearskin with dogs have overshadowed Tsar Ivan’s reputation as one of the most learned scholars in his country, acclaimed by some as the greatest prose stylist of his day. Legend has it that he had in his possession some arcane manuscripts that had escaped the fire at the great library at Alexandria, but that these rare papers vanished soon after his death. Mikhailov didn’t say much; just that the manuscripts did indeed exist, and they were probably in a secret chamber under the Kremlin.
Other Legends: The Digger spun tales of subterranean vampires and dwarves, of bands of maniacs and tribes of cannibals, and claimed he had seen rats that were one and a half metres in length. Not only that, but he was a new type of human, a genetically altered mutant with telepathic powers. He was going to run for the Russian parliament; and once elected would attend parties in a coat made of rat fur.
In the photos the Digger was wearing an orange jumpsuit and a white helmet. He was tall and athletic, with a strong jaw, hair pulled back tight in a ponytail and an expression of fierce determination on his face. The images of his subterranean kingdom, on the other hand, were less impressive. It was a world of abandoned gas masks and rotting space junk, of strange machines going bad in broken-down bunkers.
The most interesting image was a plan drawn up by Mikhailov himself of the whole clandestine world below central Moscow. There was an ancient river rushing through a stone tunnel, a three-storey bunker containing a huge sculpture of Stalin wreathed in cobwebs, a train rushing through a secret tunnel and, most outrageously of all, at the deepest level, huge roads, along which trucks and cars and tanks were speeding: the secret city built by the Soviet elite, to which they would retreat in the event of a nuclear war …
The magazine had printed the Digger’s phone number at the end of the interview. There was a note for journalists that a tour with the Digger cost $100.
I had just sold my first book, Lost Cosmonaut. It had taken the best part of two years to complete, and so I didn’t want to jump into another big project immediately. I thought it would be better to write a few articles on stories that interested me, things I could tie up in a couple of thousand words, without too much pressure. The Diggers and their legends seemed ideal.
I approached a magazine that specialised in stories of murder and psychosis. Some of the Digger’s more outrageous claims would fit nicely, I thought. My plan was to put meat on the bones of the legends I had read in Residential Property Shit, to set foot on the secret metro, to enter Stalin’s lost bunker, to open this lost world.
I wasn’t doing it for the magazine’s fee, though. I was doing it because this story had fascinated me for so long. I loved Moscow and knew the surface of the city well. I had spent years exploring not only its black heart but also the outlying labyrinth of industrial zones and sleeper districts. I could be dumped in almost any neighbourhood and still make my way home on foot.
Yet I knew nothing of the vastness that lay beneath: only the façades of the metro stations. This gap in my knowledge haunted me.
The magazine accepted the proposal. I was on my way.
‘Hello, is that Vadim Mikhalkov?’
‘No, it’s Vadim Mikhailov.’
That was a good start. I introduced myself, saying what I wanted.
‘Absolutely impossible.’ The voice was gruff, brusque.
‘Why?’
‘The police won’t let me take foreigners underground right now. It would be dangerous. For me and for you. Maybe in the spring.’
It was October 2004. Spring was at least six months away. But that was OK; I didn’t believe him. I thought he was playing hardball, for reasons of his own.
‘I can’t wait that long,’ I said. ‘I need to do it now.’ There was silence on the other end of the phone. He gave me a number. ‘That’s my assistant, Tatiana. Call her. She deals with all enquiries.’ He hung up.
His assistant? I called the number. The voice on the other end of the telephone was soft, almost a whisper.
‘Mr Kalder,’ she said, ‘Vadim cannot take anyone underground at the moment. Because of the current terrorist situation in our country … the police don’t like people going places where they shouldn’t.’
‘OK but –’
‘Foreigners,’ she repeated, ‘are not welcome underground. It is getting more difficult even for the Diggers themselves. Vadim is willing to give an interview, but under no circumstances will he take you underground.’
The offer didn’t interest me at all. ‘An interview is not enough,’ I said.
‘I will ask him, but I fear it is impossible.’
Later that evening Tatiana called back.
‘Vadim says a tour is possible. It will cost four hundred dollars.’
‘What?’
‘Two hundred for the meeting, and two hundred for the tour.’
‘I’m not a tourist,’ I said. ‘I’ve lived in Moscow for a long time. I know how much things cost.’
‘You must understand, it is dangerous for Vadim to take you down there. He will have to pay bribes to at least two different sets of police …’
‘Four hundred dollars is too much.’
There was silence. Tatiana sighed. ‘OK. I’ll talk to him again. But he isn’t usually very flexible.’
Fifteen minutes later Tatiana phoned back. ‘Vadim would like you to come to his flat, to discuss things.’
‘Discuss what?’
‘He didn’t say.’
I thought about it for a moment. Why not? I’d go over there, look him in the eye, listen to what he had to say. That in itself would be an experience. There was always the off chance that he’d bury an axe in my head, cut me up and lick my bits, but what the fuck: I decided to take the risk.
The scene: Late October; winter was coming and with it, the long nights, the omnipresent cold and the sense of a life lived underground.
Digger HQ: The yellow building next door to the peppermint green Belarus station. It is in the Stalinist neo-classical style, covered with plasterwork depicting sheaves of wheat, sickles, every symbol of agricultural plenitude, with little turrets at the top. Somewhere in there, the Lord of the Diggers himself is waiting.
The Tunnel: A haven for stray dogs and homeless alcoholics. Hawkers sit in cramped glass kiosks selling pies, pirate CDs, little gold Buddhas and porcelain dogs.
The chemical toilet: A bored woman stands guard, collecting crumpled paper in exchange for deposits of urine and faecal matter.
The Land Rover: At the arc leading into the courtyard, next to a hot dog stand, this vehicle is decorated with orange and yellow emergency stripes, Diggerspas (Diggersave) written on the bonnet and the doors. Its tyres are flat, its frame rotting. This Land Rover hasn’t saved anyone for a long time.
I had brought my friend Semyon with me, to help translate. I knew that talking to the Digger would not be easy, and so I wanted to make sure I could understand everything precisely. Semyon punched Vadim’s number into the door code. It rang out. Eventually, at the other end a hand picked up a phone and held it close to a mouth.
‘Who is it?’ It was a woman’s voice, old, with a slight tremble: probably the Digger’s mother, I thought.
Semyon explained who we were.
‘I know nothing about this,’ said the voice.
‘Is Vadim in?’
‘I can’t let you in.’
‘But –’
‘Call back later.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know. In an hour.’
‘But we organised …’
‘Go away.’
We hopped cafés for a while, eventually going back through the underpasses to a swanky place across the road. We took seats by the window looking out at the Digger’s building, looming in the darkness behind the streaming lights of Leningradsky Prospekt. There it was, a grimy yellow fortress containing secrets, secrets that I wanted.
I was dealing with the Digger, with the Underground Man. I couldn’t expect order, normality or even manners. Those who do, have no business crossing through to parallel dimensions. For in truth, that is what I was about to do: enter another reality.
After an hour we called again. This time the voice was less panicked.
‘He is waiting for you.’