so, he realized that he’d forgotten his own military belt, complete with sidearm, in the barracks. He dashed back and found his leather belt and holster, but his service pistol was gone. Recently—only a few days ago—he’d taken it out to clean it, and so there was only one possibility: His pistol had been stolen. Leonid put on the rest of his uniform, including the empty holster. While he inspected his troops, he tried to determine from their faces which of them might be the thief. Officially acknowledging the theft was unthinkable; a soldier could be guilty of few faults worse than getting his service weapon stolen.
The next morning, while the cleanup was under way, Leonid spoke to the most senior of the sergeants and asked him how one could replace stolen pieces of equipment. “Buy them,” the fat man said. His face looked as though it were set in aspic. Leonid knew that the black market was illegal but tolerated, since officers, too, profited from it. Proceeds were distributed from top to bottom.
So what did the captain need, the sergeant wanted to know. Leonid named a hard-to-find sanitary article and was handed a piece of paper. The address written on it was in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the island’s chief city.
“People who aren’t in uniform get better prices,” the fat sergeant counseled him. “The man to talk to is Yevchuk.”
After going off duty, Leonid changed his clothes and took the bus to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Some men from his company, also on their way to town, inquired whether the captain was looking for a good time. For appearances’ sake, he asked them to recommend a nightclub.
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk was a town that had sprung up quickly, with the usual mixture of four-story apartment buildings and ground-level wooden houses. The administrative centers of the state oil and gas holding companies stood out like palaces in the cityscape. Leonid bought some smoked fish from a street vendor, and as he ate it, he was struck, as he’d been when he first arrived, by how many Koreans he saw, visible proof that Asians had decided to remain in the Soviet Union after Sakhalin was liberated from Japan.
The address the sergeant had given him wasn’t far from the train station. When Leonid got there, dusk was already falling. The building he was looking for took up the entire block and seemed, at least outwardly, to be a large store that sold seeds and fertilizer. Leonid looked around the official stockroom and said to the only clerk that he’d heard one could also buy spare parts for toilet facilities there.
“We’re about to close,” the man said gruffly, taking off his work smock.
“Is Yevchuk in the building?”
The clerk looked the visitor over, found him unobjectionable, and acknowledged that he himself was Yevchuk. “What do you need?”
At first, Leonid stuck to his story and inquired whether the store carried a certain kind of ball valve.
“Maybe so, maybe no,” said Yevchuk. Then he led Leonid into the real stockroom. “You have to look for it yourself.”
Leonid was ready for anything; nevertheless, the size of that warehouse amazed him. He saw displayed, on some five thousand square feet of floor space, all the basic necessities that were in such short supply elsewhere: dishes, housewares, canned goods, furniture, entire bathrooms, closets, even musical instruments. The largest section contained automobile parts. About twenty people were rummaging around in the items on the display tables; some customers clutched exhaust pipes or generators or dashboards in their arms. Yevchuk led Leonid to the toilet section, which wasn’t so well stocked—cracked toilet bowls, rusty pipe couplings. Relieved at being unable to find what he wasn’t looking for, Leonid casually asked what the weapons inventory was like.
“Who did you say recommended this place to you?”
The captain in civilian clothes named the sergeant and declared, in plain language, that he—Leonid—was looking for a good pistol.
“Don’t have any.”
Leonid had expected this response and indicated that he was prepared to pay a premium to anyone who could help him find what he wanted, but it was only when he pulled a small roll of ruble notes out of one trouser pocket and thrust them in the other that Yevchuk decided to take a chance. “In that case, we have to go down one floor.” He opened a door, made certain that nobody was following them, slipped in behind Leonid, and locked the door from the inside. Saying, “Our rifle selection is bigger,” Yevchuk turned on a light and presented the armory.
Leonid concealed his amazement.