“Really?” Yuri questioned. He perked up. It had been a long time since Yuri had been there. He remembered the delight he’d felt the first time he’d visited Red Square, with the Cathedral of St. Basil sparkling like an architectural jewel. He’d never seen anything so beautiful or moving.

“I was there for almost five days,” Harvey said.

“You’re lucky,” Yuri said. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

“Ha!” Harvey voiced with disdain and a wave of his hand. “I couldn’t wait to get out. As soon as my meetings were over I fled to London. Moscow is out of control, what with the crime and the economic situation. The place is a disaster.”

Yuri felt a renewed pang of anger from the knowledge that the current problems ravaging Russia had been created by the likes of Harvey Bloomburg and the rest of the worldwide Zionist conspiracy. Yuri could feel his face flush, but he held his tongue. Now he really needed a glass of vodka.

“How long have you been here in the States?” Harvey asked.

“Since 1994,” Yuri grumbled. It had only been five years, but it felt like ten. At the same time Yuri could remember the first day he’d arrived as if it had been yesterday. He’d flown from Toronto, Canada, after a three-day problem with U.S. immigration, which resulted in his obtaining only a temporary visa.

Yuri’s odyssey to get to America had been grueling and had taken over a year. It had started in Novosibirsk in Siberia, where he’d been working at a government company called Vector. He’d been there for eleven years but had lost his job when the institution was downsized. Luckily he’d saved a few rubles before being terminated, and by a combination of plane, train, and accommodating truck drivers, he’d made his way to Moscow.

In Moscow, disaster struck. Because of the sensitive nature of his previous job, the FSB (the successor to the KGB) was notified when he applied for an international passport. Yuri was arrested and thrown into Lefortovo Prison. After a number of months, he managed to get out of prison by agreeing to work at another government facility in Zagorsk. The problem was that they didn’t pay him, at least not in money. He was given vodka and toilet paper in lieu of cash.

Fleeing in the dead of night on the evening prior to a midwinter holiday, he walked and hitchhiked the thousand miles to Tallinn, Estonia. It was a terrible trip, full of setbacks, illnesses, injury, near starvation, and unimaginable cold. It was the type of hardship that the armies of Napoleon and Hitler had experienced with disastrous results.

Although the Estonians were less than friendly to him as an ethnic Russian, and some Estonian youths had beaten him up one night, Yuri was able to earn enough money to buy fake papers that got him a job on a freighter plying the Baltic. In Sweden he jumped ship and applied for refugee status.

Sweden questioned the validity of his being a refugee but permitted him to stay temporarily. He was allowed to work at menial jobs to earn enough money to book a flight to Toronto and then to New York. When he finally arrived on U.S. soil, he bent down like the Pope and kissed the ground.