After two weeks in the country, Eduard got a message from Mikhail. One of Eduard’s most trusted confidants was making a special trip to Khabarovsk to deliver a message to Eduard in person. Eduard took this as a good sign — why would someone come all the way to the Far East only to deliver bad news? Two days later Eduard and the guards got into the car and left the dacha to meet the man from Moscow at a café on the outskirts of Khabarovsk. When his friend arrived, Eduard’s hopes were almost immediately dashed. His friend shook his hand with a grave look of concern. They sat and ordered tea and began to talk.
«We’ve tried everything», the man said. «There are some very powerful people involved. Nothing is going to change. This is not going away».
«But why come all the way here just to tell me that?»
The man leaned forward. «Because, Eduard, I wanted to tell you face-to-face — you must leave Russia. You’re in danger of being killed. These people who are after you will stop at nothing».
This shook Eduard to the core. After this meeting, he called Mikhail and said, «I need to get out of Russia. Can you help?»
«I’ll do what I can», Mikhail said.
Since Russia is such a decentralized country, the power of an influential businessman in some areas could rival that of the Moscow Interior Ministry. Mikhail was one of the most important businessmen in the region, and Eduard had no choice but to put his faith in Mikhail’s influence. He had to hope that it would help him navigate the security and immigration checkpoints that every traveler had to pass through on their way out of the country.
Mikhail arranged to have a local fixer escort Eduard through the airport all the way to the gate. Eduard asked over and over if this fixer would be able to get the border agents to let him pass. Mikhail just told him not to worry. Of course, Eduard couldn’t help but worry.
On October 18, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., Eduard went to the airport and was met by the fixer, a short man with friendly eyes in a well-tailored, gray suit. Eduard already had a UK visa, so he went to the Asiana ticket desk and bought a round-trip economy ticket to London via Seoul. Eduard checked in and waited until an hour before the flight to go through security and passport control. When he couldn’t wait any longer, he and the fixer walked toward security.
They walked straight to the front of the security line and went through. The fixer stayed with Eduard the whole time, nodding and winking at the security people, and even shaking a few hands. Eduard put his bags on the scanning belt, presented his boarding pass, and went through the metal detector.
They then moved toward passport control, and when they reached the immigration booth, the fixer shook hands with the border guard and they exchanged pleasantries.
The guard then took Eduard’s passport. He placed it on his desk, looked at Eduard, looked back to the fixer, found a blank spot in the passport, slammed his stamp onto a red-ink pad, and punched the stamp onto the paper. He didn’t even bother to look at his computer. He closed the passport and handed it back. Eduard’s eyes met those of the fixer. He winked. «Thank you», Eduard said. He turned and hurried to his gate. He had only a few minutes until the doors closed.
He made the flight, and the plane took off. Not until two hours later, when Eduard could see that the plane was flying over the Sea of Japan and was therefore out of Russian airspace, did he finally, after all these weeks, feel at ease.
He was out.
Later that day in London, Vadim’s phone rang with a number whose country code he didn’t recognize. He picked up. «Hello?»
«Vadim! It’s Eduard».
Vadim jumped from his chair. We hadn’t heard from Eduard in nearly two months. Every day we’d swung between hope and despair, wondering if he was safe or dead or somewhere in between. «Eduard!» Vadim exclaimed. «Where are you? Are you O'kay?»
«Yes, I’m fine. I’m in Seoul».
«Seoul?»
«Yes, Seoul. I’m coming to Heathrow on the next Asiana flight. I’ll be there tomorrow».
«So you’re safe?»
«Yes, yes. We have a lot to talk about. I’ll see you soon».
The next evening at 7:00 p.m., a car picked up Eduard at Heathrow and brought him straight to the offices on Golden Square. As soon as he walked through the door, we took turns giving him big, backslapping hugs. Though I’d met him only once before in my life, it was as if I were being reunited with a long-lost brother.
When we finally settled down, Eduard told us his story, with Vadim and Ivan taking turns translating. We were rapt, and when he finished, I said, «That’s amazing, Eduard. Truly amazing. Thank God you made it».
He nodded. «Yes, thank God is right».
That evening, I allowed myself a moment to savor that Eduard was safe, but our problems were nowhere near over.
While Eduard had been underground, Sergei was still fully exposed in Moscow. In late September, we’d come across an article in an obscure Moscow business weekly called Delovoi Vtornik. The title of the piece was «Purely English Fraud». It repeated the now familiar claim — that Eduard and I were the masterminds behind the fraud — but it slipped in a name we’d never seen in print before: Sergei Magnitsky.
After this, Vadim tried to convince Sergei to leave, but Sergei steadfastly refused. He insisted that nothing would happen to him because he had done nothing wrong. He was also indignant that these people had stolen so much money from his country. He was so adamant and believed so faithfully in the law that, on October 7, he actually returned to the Russian State Investigative Committee to give a second sworn witness statement. Once again, he sought to use procedure to insert more evidence into the official record, and this time he provided a number of additional details about the fraud and who was behind it.
This was a bold move. It was also a worrying one. While I couldn’t help but be impressed by Sergei’s determination and integrity, given what they had tried with Eduard and Vladimir, I was terrified that they would just detain him on the spot. Remarkably, they didn’t.
On the morning of October 20, 2008, Ivan made another attempt to convince Sergei: «Listen, all of our lawyers are being targeted. Eduard is here. Vladimir is here. We’ve seen materials with your name on them. I believe that something very bad is going to happen to you if you stay, Sergei».
«But why would anything happen?» Sergei asked, sticking to his guns. «I haven’t broken any laws. They’re only after Eduard and Vladimir because they fought the fraudulent lawsuits in court. I never did that. There’s no reason for me to leave».
«But you must leave, Sergei. They’ll arrest you. Please. I beg you».
«I’m sorry, Ivan. The law will protect me. This isn’t 1937», Sergei said, referring to Stalin’s purges, when people were disappearing left and right at the hands of the secret police.
There was no changing Sergei’s mind. He was staying in Russia and we could do nothing about it. He was of a different generation than Vladimir and Eduard. Both of them had been adults during the Soviet era and had seen firsthand how capricious the government could be. If powerful people wanted you arrested, then you were arrested. The law didn’t matter. Sergei, on the other hand, was thirty-six years old and had come of age at a time when things had started to improve. He saw Russia not how it was but how he wanted it to be.
Because of this, he didn’t realize that Russia had no rule of law, it had a rule of men.
And those men were crooks.
29. The ninth commandment
Early on the morning of November 24, 2008, three teams of Interior Ministry officers reporting to Lieutenant Colonel Artem Kuznetsov moved out across Moscow. One team made its way to Sergei’s home. The other two were headed to the apartments of junior lawyers who reported to Sergei at Firestone Duncan.