How I arrested a CIA agent.
Everything happens in life. Personally, I have such a stock of character that I better remember the good. Or funny. Bad things have to be recorded.
Almost like a joke: I’m not bad. I am bad and my memory is good.
I joked if anyone did not understand.

Pristina, Kosovo, August 1999
In the city and throughout the country there is chaos. The Serbs have just left, there is no power. There is nothing. It’s hard to imagine, but try it.
So, let’s try: the sewer works, the water from the crane spills, but the pumping stations are empty. The Serbian specialists serving them simply left with the retreated Serbian army. No one came in exchange for them. Because no one. No prepared staff.
There is electricity, but there is no staff at the power plant. There are only a few low-growth gurks who serve in the British army. These gurkhis look at the instruments with their slightly narrow eyes and do not understand anything. The power plant works. (It worked so nothing, and then exploded, which should have been expected. Since then, there have been constant power outages in Kosovo. And so on. In all the institutions, people just got up and left, leaving furniture, documents, phones. I had a very strange feeling when I went into such places. The feeling of something unreal.
One of the first to Pristina transferred Americans, Germans, us and... Fijians. Moreover, the Americans were overwhelmed, a few hundred, like the Germans, in fact. My station was based in the building of the Serbian police. I was given the right, the car keys, a Fidji partner and they said, you are now the new sheriff, keep the order. And we went. There are fires in the city, people armed with machine guns on the streets. At first, Fijian and I took the machines from them, but then it came to us that they were nowhere to go. Do you understand what I am saying? There are no prisons, no rooms for storing evidence, nothing... When we brought to the station the first 12 Kalashnikovs taken from the joyful Albanians, they were simply placed in the chest in the only room not broken. A room without doors and windows was struck by a shock wave during the bombing.
And we just started driving around the city, demonstrating the UN flag.
Pristina, especially the old part, is very narrow streets. When you drive on them, you look with mirrors on the walls of the houses.
On one of the streets, we were stopped by excited local residents. None of them speak English, we do not speak Albanian, there are no translators. When we shake our hands, we are called somewhere. We go. We see a single-storey house-kiosk, with the inscription "video games". The windows are taken with blinds, on one of the windows the blinds are broken, the glass on the entrance door is broken. In front of the building a group of teenagers, overturned a wheelchair.
We enter inside. The painting, fucking shit. Along the walls slot machines, in the center of the room a billiard table. Under the table, on the floor, on the back, lies a young Albanian with a knife in his hands and with a wild expression on his face, throwing this knife into the table from below. On the table, like a cock, sits another Albanian, a couple of years older, sprinkled in blood and compresses a broken sting in his hands. When he sees us, he who sits on the table begins to whistle loudly, and he who is under the table turns to his stomach and very sharply begins to crawl towards us, whistling and tragically waving with a knife.
Remove unnecessary details.
Reconstruction of the event: a mentally ill semi-paralyzed guy in a wheelchair had to ride to this club to play video games. But he had finished his money. Then we visited his family. Terrible, deafening and shocking poverty. I saw the ground floor for the first time in my life.
So one day he was not allowed inside the club. The poor disabled man spent two days sitting in four walls on the very ground floor. During this time, something broke in his sick head and, armed with a knife, he went to restore his rights. When he came to the club he was in a hurry. Simply put, he slipped from the chair and tried to penetrate inside. The door was not opened to him. The determined teenager broke the glass at the entrance door and stretched on his arms, through the hole formed penetrated inside. They tried to expose him, but he objected.
He began to object very actively, reinforcing his intentions with a knife. In the course of an unequal battle, he managed to break the blinds on one of the windows and turn away all those present. Fixing the victory, a poor disabled man wrapped a knife in the ass of the owner of the hazard nest. The boy would have dragged his knife elsewhere, but he simply couldn’t get there. At this stage of the events, I appeared at the scene with the Fiji capral.
The boy was disarmed and examined. During the inspection, in addition to the knife of the English special forces, he was seized an antenna from the portable radio station Motorola and... the ID of an employee of the CIA. All honor in honor, with photo and print. Naturally a fake. We have such certificates in the subway for sale, for every taste. You can buy a sex instructor certificate, for example.
In the meantime, you have to decide what to do with it. Where is it nine? He cannot explain where he lives. It just washes and lets the saliva with bubbles. I said there is chaos in the city. There is a hospital, but it is empty, all the staff went to Greater Serbia with the army. I know that I will not be able to solve the problem by myself. I will contact the Central Service. Let them accommodate the poor, maybe even in a military hospital, they have such a possibility.
I also decided to joke a little. And to encourage our American friends.
Do not judge me for that. There is the following dialogue:
- Pristina control, this is the alpha-25 patrol, reception.
Pristina Control is listening.
“We have an armed attack on a video club, the coordinates are like that. There is
He was injured and was given first aid. Suspect arrested with weapons
is captured. In addition to weapons, the suspect was confiscated parts of the device.
radio communications (this is the same antenna, but I do not go into details) and
Certificate of CIA officer.
- Alpha-25, you did not understand, repeat, whose certificate was withdrawn?! to
- Pristina-control, I repeat: the suspect's identity card has been seized
The CIA officer.
- Alpha-25, I understood you correctly: the suspect had a passport
The CIA officer?! to
“Pristina Control, I confirm that. Suspect arrested
Certificate of CIA officer. Pronunciation by letters: C-R-U
Pristina controls are silent. From the unexpectedness and unusuality of the situation, the connectivist-American is enchanted and he even forgets to let go of the tango, I hear in the air his singing. It is heard by everyone, as is all our previous dialogue. The silence is delayed, Americos can not digest what is heard and react. Per he was one that was so stupid, others thought faster. Suddenly, in different parts of Pristina dozens of siren are turned on, I understand that all the clever guys who heard our conversation in the open air are rushing to their help. To release, so to speak, his colleague, the CIA agent who failed the operation and fell into the hands of the insidious Russians.

As the sounds of the sirens approach us, Pristina control finally comes to life.
- Alpha-25, it is Pristina control. You are sure the detainee is
A CIA officer?
The answer is no, I don’t have that certainty.
But he has a card with him, did I understand you correctly?
“I confirm that the detainee has a CIA certificate with him.
Is Alpha-25 a real certificate?
I find it hard to answer affirmatively. I have never seen certificates.
The CIA and I don’t know how they look.
Alpha-25, you said that he was confiscated. What is this weapon?
The suspect got a knife. This is a large landing knife.
Just a knife? There were no other weapons?
There was only a knife and no other weapon.
Suspect in handcuffs?
The suspect is in handcuffs.
Alpha 25 has resisted.
The suspect had armed resistance.
Was Alpha-25 physically harmed by UN police during the detention? Do you have wounded?
The response was negative, there were no injuries among the police.
Alpha-25, the suspect is injured?
The answer was no, the suspect was not injured.
- Alpha-25, can you let him talk to us on the radio?
The answer is no, he cannot speak.
What about him? Why can’t he say that?! to
“Pristina-Control, we have no doctor in our patrol and we don’t know.
Why can’t he talk. Visually: He has a foam from his mouth and he
and swim.
What? what? and chasing?! to
I confirm that it washes.(I would add “and peel out the eyes,” but I then
He did not speak English so well.
I go aside, take out the patrol notepad, pen and wait for events with a very serious face. Finally, with a wave of sirenes, cars begin to fly, doors are knocked, and troubled Americans run to our Toyota from different sides. Some with guns in their hands.
They run and look inside. And inside is a Fijian and an unfortunate disabled, all in the saliva.
Americans are looking around. They see me, I rewrite the numbers of their cars. I don’t need that stuff, yes, it’s fun.
Where is the CIA officer?
He is in the back seat.
Is this a CIA officer?! to
“Yes, we found a CIA official’s identity card with him.
Show him it!
Who are you?
We are U.N. police.
You are not from our station, it is not your area of responsibility. Leave from
Imagine the car. Show me your certificates, I will rewrite yours.
Name for report.
One of the Americans sits on the border and begins to rust. His right hand with a gun lies on his knee and the gun shakes in a laughing tone, with the other hand he wipes his tears. If he had been an Indian, his fellow tribes could have given him the name of the “Fast-Making Deer” or something like that.
The rest are silently standing half a circle in front of me, and their tense faces read a hard work of thought. I’m standing with a notebook, waiting.
They look around, questioningly look at the rushing man, and he just rushes and that’s all. Finally, the most active man rows the mat, sensibly spit under his feet and goes to the car. Sitting down, he loudly, angrily knocks on the door.
Of course, it’s offensive to feel like an idiot. Most importantly, there is nothing to show.
I did not lie a word. And the attack was, and weapons, and the ID of a CIA employee was.
Others also sit in the cars and leave. Only one remains sitting on the border. He puts a gun in the cabaret, smokes, looks at me for a long time, fits.
How do you look at drinking a couple of beers after a change?
Unfortunately I cannot. Someday another time. In some
Another life.
He smiles comprehensively, makes the last stretch and, somehow almost in Russian, with a click, throws away the bull. I smile too. We walk on our cars.