INTERLUDE: FROM THE DIGGER ARCHIVE

It was a documentary Vadim had made with a Russian TV channel. He was leading a camera crew through metro tunnels. At one point a train rushed past; he claimed it was running on the secret metro line. But of course, who could tell? A tunnel is a tunnel is a tunnel. But then he showed something that was real, that was indisputably scandalous, and it reminded me why he wasn’t just dismissed as an eccentric. He descended a few levels, down rusting iron ladders, and then ran through a series of narrow, damp, dark corridors. This time there were other Diggers with him, about four or five of them. They came to a halt and then Vadim pointed out that the rubber insulation around the electricity cables for the metro was rotting, and that the tunnel walls were dripping with water. With a gloved hand he picked at the cables and bits of rubber flaked off. Worse, he had proven by his example how easy it was to get underground. The territory beneath Moscow was completely unguarded: terrorists could strike at any time.

Vadim turned away from the screen and told me that he had met people beneath the city. They were men in uniforms, in gas masks, carrying halogen lamps, but they weren’t cops, or soldiers. In fact, he didn’t know who they were. He told the authorities, but they didn’t listen to him. Were they terrorists? He didn’t know.

‘Actually, maybe this film is one of the reasons why Luzhkov hates me,’ he said. ‘He looked very bad after it was screened.’