This is a second part of my August story. You can find the first part at vk7.org.
On Monday, August 3, 2010 at 9:36 in the morning I was heading to the office when my phone rang. This was captain Kwochkin. He asked if I forgot that I owe him a visit. Not paying a lot of attention to my negative answer, captain proceeded to arrange our meeting at 12:30 at the FSB regional office headquarters.
At the appointed time I came to the front doors of the white massive soviet-style building and dialed the number the morning call came from. A minute later the door opened, captain appeared in the doorway and invited me to enter inside with a barely noticeable nod.
Inside, in the small, dimly lit lobby, I was greeted by the two more men. One of them was at least 55 years old, he introduced himself as the FSB deputy director Ushakov. The last one was barely 25 and didn’t bothered to say his name.
Captain silently left us alone. Deputy director and his young protégé escorted me into the meeting room right next to the lobby. It was even smaller than the lobby, though a wide grated window was letting in enough of high noon light. The entire room was decorated in cheap wood. With the old soviet era varnished table in the middle it was just like a KGB movie decoration.
Deputy director took the conversation into his own hands straight from the first minute and didn’t weaken his grip throughout whole meeting. He told me that he knows that kind of man I am. He called me “romantic” and added that there are no more than five hundred of “us” in the entire city. What a remarkable example of flattery and assurance that resistance is futile in one sentence!
The Freedom — FSB deputy director literally spit the word out — that has followed the fall of the Soviet Union, gave birth to a lot of such people, troublemakers, and those who might turn into enemies. And now we’ve become a problem. Fortunately, the FSB is stronger than ever and have anything on its hands to keep us at bay.
Our conversation was, in fact, a monologue of the deputy director. He weaved their paranoid questions about me spying on their fragile facilities, which I almost get used to, into his thrilling stories of the North Caucasus terrorists’ networks; mobsters, who are using small businesses for money laundering; and how he was invited to teach the graphic design by one of the local universities.
My photography practice was thoroughly scrutinized as well. Deputy director Ushakov confided in me that he is an artist too, an apt photographer who had personal exhibitions here in the city back in those days. He advised me to buy a Pantone color chart to calibrate (he used the term to tare for that matter) my camera LCD screen because the RAW files on my card were displayed with the colors went all wrong in their software.
“You have a very good camera,” — Ushakov said, — “the one with the three sensors; so you should learn it better”. The advice that always comes in handy. The only thing I should note here that the last digital still camera with the three separate sensors (for Red, Green and Blue channels respectively) I heard of was a 1998 Minolta; and the ACR shows pretty accurate colors in my RAW files with the default WB — nothing I couldn’t fix most of the times; and it’s pretty pointless idea to calibrate Olympus E-410 as well as any other entry level DSLR LCD display since they are all crappy anyway, but mostly because it’s impossible.
As it came to my mind at the end of the meeting, it was his in-born need to dominate in any area he encountered. His knowledge is all embracing across a countless number of disciplines… but rather shallow.
I was going to went out of all that story alive and free, so I was nodding in agreement most of the times. It was harder than it seams because some of the questions were actually designed to catch me on anything illegal. I had to play a role of a village guy eating gratefully anything they fed me and to keep my wits about me in the same time.
It’s all true: those guys are really doesn’t care about your guilt or innocence, they want you prosecuted by any means necessary.