It happened to me on Sunday, August 2, 2010. As it came to a habit this summer I woke up in the morning, took a shower, packed my camera with a freshly charged battery and a virgin clean memory card, saddled up my bike and went out to the short trip out of the town melting in the heat wave.
That day I have decided to take a trip south of the town, to a nearby village where the two hundred years old mansion with a significantly large, a little bit neglected and, in such weird decadent way, even more beautiful park is overlooking the surrounding fields and meadows from the top of the hill.
The trail was quite straightforward. After the twelve kilometers along the highway I was at the mansion. There were a few people over there in such early hour — a gardener and a museum employee — both of them were busy with their duties and paid no attention to a solitary visitor.
The mansion itself and the park are on the hill top. With two ponds overgrown with water lilies and algae; one — thirty and another — twenty more meters down the slope. Some paths in the park are very steep and the whole place seems to be a descent bike trail yet to be explored.
I have rode there back and forth, up and down the hillsides, in and outside the park. Took some shots; though nothing worthy since the lighting in the park was dim, the sky outside was dully clear and the sun have climbed high already.
Anyway, I have spent a whole two hours there and I was very excited with my so rare chance of getting out of town for awhile.
On the road back I made a few stops to shoot. First time it was a huge brightly yellow sign flooded with the morning sunlight. The big bulky black letters, perfectly visible from the middle of the road, informed the passers by that there lies the guarded zone of the natural gas transportation pipeline. A meter further into the sun burned field was a second sign; as freshly painted yellow as the first one, it borne a skull and bones drawn with a touch of love.
The message, as I got it, was clean and simple — stay on the road, don’t cross the line the signs are standing at. I obeyed and my obedience was unable to stop me from taking a dozen of shots, as far as I was standing on the side of the highway doing nothing I was warned not to.
Second time the high voltage power line structures have made the perfect key of the scene. And the last time I’ve stopped to make some shots of the local oil refinery structures shining bright in the high noon sun.
Most probably, this last time got me into the attention of the road police. In any case, I was stopped by the road police officer who has told me that the assistant director of the road police regional office himself has reported the man on the red bike wearing glasses and a black shirt (that was short and professionally exact description of me) made photographs of the oil refinery.
I didn’t deny it and offered to delete all the “questionable” shots but the officer was adamant. He has talked to his colleagues via his own cell phone and, a minute after, a second police cruiser proved me they were very serious about this situation.
The second road police officer has forced me to pack my bike into the rear section of the pretty compact hatchback car and ordered me to sit into the front passenger seat where I had to hold the watermelon with my feet so it wouldn’t roll all over the car. The ride to the checkpoint 300 meters away on the highway took less than a minute with the lights and sirens on. Upon arrival, the officer helped me with my bike, grabbed the watermelon and escorted me into the small room inside the checkpoint.
The room was quite densely packed with the road police personnel. Immediately, I became the center of their attention. They were staring at me and my camera. After a short struggling with buttons the wisest among them managed to browse through the pictures. The number of shots of the same scene he sow overwhelmed him. I tried to explain it to him as clearly and simply as I can but it seamed he either ignored phrases like “aperture settings” and “focusing distance” or he took them as the further proof of my espionage.
“Why are you shooting facilities, power lines, signs?” – he asked.
“It’s my hobby. I am amateur photographer. Industrial landscapes are among my favorite subjects.” – I shrugged, being quite surprised to hear such a pointless question.
“What a dangerous hobby you have.” – he noted, putting me into deep thoughts.
As I have understood later, all their questions were dictated by curiosity rather than necessity. They have contacted regional FSB (former KGB) headquarters as soon as I was delivered to the checkpoint. After they have bated their curiosity, they ordered me to wait for an agent and left me alone, for the next two hours.
Two hours I spent under the sunshade of the police checkpoint on the busy highway as the temperature slowly made its way to the 39 degrees Celsius.
Finally, a tall and rather bulky man appeared. In contrast to clad in full uniform, bullet proof vests and high visibility outerwear road police officers, he was wearing short sleeved shirt, shorts and a pair of rubber slippers. “Captain Kwochkin S.V., FSB regional office” – he introduced himself.
In total silence he was provided with the spare room in the back of the checkpoint shack. He showed me the chair right next to the door and sat himself behind the table, paying no attention to a huge knife sticking out of the half eaten watermelon that was on the table – right in the line of sight between me and him. With the questions about my name, address and other backgrounds the interrogation started.
I was born on the North Caucasus. This humble fact of my biography has captured captain’s mind entirely. 30 years ago that region was a pretty dull back-country on the outskirts of Soviet Empire; now it’s a pot of boiling water where muscovites, locals and mid-east muslims are killing each other with a fortitude worthy of a better cause. Suddenly, in the eyes of the FSB agent, I became one of those guys.
After that discovery the interrogation come down the Kafkaesque way. I was constantly asked who ordered the shooting of the oil refinery, do I have any relatives or friends on the North Caucasus and why not, do I talking to the North Caucasian nationals here. I was answering “no” truthfully on every captain’s questions but it seamed it was just fueled up his suspicions. I began to think that I could repeat the way of the dozens of other “spies” arrested and put into jail for gathering the information from the open public sources.
Fortunately, after an hour captain offered me to bring him my passport since I had no photo ID with me. He gave me an hour to get to my home nine kilometers away and back, on my bike, under the desolate sun. That was a light of hope for me. I have asked for a twenty minutes more so I could be able to catch my breathe, calm down a little bit and, most importantly, make a few phone calls. He agreed.
It was 40+ degrees Celsius above the melting asphalt and I rode as fast as I could to save me a couple more minutes. At home I grabbed the passport and called a friend of mine. He sounded like he just woke up but he grasped the situation immediately and promised me all his help. In the end of the conversation he advised me to be as much helpful to the FSB agents as I could. I was (and I do) very grateful for the support. He managed to calm me down and I felt much better after our conversation.
When I got back to the checkpoint, captain was still there, waiting for me. He inspected every page of my passport. Asked me why I have changed my place of living last year (in Russia it’s all recorded in the national ID passport), and why I have divorced back in 2001. Than repeat questions about who payed me for shooting (I barely kept myself from a good laugh) and if I have any connections with North Caucasian terrorists’ networks. It seems, repeating the key questions two, three and even more times during interrogation is their favorite method.
Another half an hour later captain Kwochkin finally wrote down my evidence on the two sheets of paper, made me read and sign them, gave me back my passport and a camera. But this was not the end of the story but only the first half.
Captain waved with the Compact Flash card he took out of my Olympus E-410 and said me to visit him on Monday, August 3, 2010 at the FSB regional headquarters in the center of the city “for a short conversation”. And it was the second half of the story: Photography, the dangerous hobby.