Killings Read online

  Sergei Kourdakov

  * * *

  Southern California

  MAY 1973

  On New Year’s Eve, not long after midnight, the sheriff’s department of San Bernardino County sent a patrol car to Running Springs in response to the telephone call of a young woman who said that her boyfriend had shot himself. Running Springs is a tiny town in the mountains, at the point where the road up from San Bernardino splits into one highway going toward Lake Arrowhead and another toward the ski resort at Big Bear. It has an oddly temporary look, as if it had been put up absentmindedly and might someday be dismantled in the same way. The attempts at the ersatz-chalet style that sometimes distinguishes mountain resorts from supermarkets in Southern California seem halfhearted—a piece of artificial timbering here, a few loops cut out of a knotty-pine porch railing there. Running Springs has a couple of motels that catch some overflow from the resorts on a busy weekend, but they look less like modern California motels than like what used to be called tourist cabins. When the sheriff’s officers arrived, a distraught young woman led them to a room at the Giant Oaks Motel. A muscular young man dressed in a T-shirt and blue jeans lay on the floor between the two beds. A champagne bottle and a glass were at his feet. There was a bottle of strawberry wine on the television set. On the desk, there was a typewriter with a partly typed page in it. A .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver lay on the rug. The young man had been killed by a gunshot to the head. The following day, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner ran a front-page banner headline that said, RUSS DEFECTOR DEATH UNDER PROBE.

  In some circles, Sergei Kourdakov had been known not just as a “Russ Defector” but as a repentant, evangelical, born-again Christian Russ Defector. Since last summer, he had been traveling to churches around the country as a speaker for Underground Evangelism, a Glendale organization that describes itself as “a ministry to the suffering church in the Communist World.” The issue of Underground Evangelism’s monthly magazine that had just been published carried a chapter of Kourdakov’s reminiscences and an advertisement for a cassette tape, available for a donation of four dollars, of the Sergei Kourdakov story—“A Persecutor of Christians Now Witnessing for Christ.” The cassette, a recording of one of Kourdakov’s public appearances, has an introduction in which L. Joe Bass, the founder and president of Underground Evangelism, offers a dramatic account of Sergei Kourdakov’s first twenty-one years—his triumphs as a model young Communist and Soviet naval cadet, his awful adventures as the leader of a brutal attack group that raided one hundred and fifty underground churches in the region of Kamchatka, his decision to leap from a Russian trawler off the west coast of Canada, his miraculous swim through icy waters to shore, his conversion, his amazement at discovering that a Russian-language Bible presented to him by a Canadian pastor was identical to the Bibles confiscated from the Christians he had once beaten and despised, his joy at finding in Underground Evangelism the very organization whose smuggling efforts had provided those Bibles to the persecuted Christians of Kamchatka. Underground Evangelism had featured refugee Eastern European Christians before, but never one who was a repentant persecutor of Christians as well. Orders were already coming in for his forthcoming autobiography.

  Underground Evangelism was accustomed to reporting the deaths of Christians at the hands of Communist torturers; that had become, in fact, something of a specialty. The death of a Christian—Underground Evangelism’s featured Christian—by his own hand while he was sharing a motel room with a seventeen-year-old girl was another matter. Within a week of the shooting, Underground Evangelism had issued a press release stating that suicide, which had been mentioned in some early press reports, was out of the question, and that the circumstances of Kourdakov’s death remained “strange” and “uncertain.” His life had been threatened several times by Russian-speaking men, the release said, and he had once told Bass, “If you ever hear I have had an accident or committed suicide, don’t believe it. I know how the Soviet police work, because I was one of them.” The problems Underground Evangelism could expect from the press became obvious immediately after the shooting when an item appeared in Toronto, where Kourdakov had lived before coming to the United States. The Toronto Star quoted Kourdakov’s Toronto pastor as saying that Kourdakov might have succumbed to the fast pace of the American evangelism circuit—part of the fast pace being, in the pastor’s view, that Underground Evangelism had been using Kourdakov and exaggerating his career and exposing him to too much publicity. A young woman who said she had known Kourdakov at George Brown College, in Toronto, was quoted as saying that, according to a letter she had received from him, Kourdakov had regretted going into evangelical work and had confessed that he did not, in fact, happen to believe in God.

  The San Bernardino coroner’s office had pretty much concluded that Kourdakov had killed himself accidentally while playing with the revolver, but Bass said that a county like San Bernardino did not have the facilities to deal with such sophisticated matters as the death of a Soviet defector. “What better time than midnight on New Year’s Eve, and what better place than that small, tourist-packed resort area for Sergei Kourdakov to have an ‘accident’?” a newsletter sent to the Underground Evangelism mailing list said. “It’s a rural county, mainly desert and mountains, with a small population and a relatively small law-enforcement staff.” That was not a line of reasoning that pleased the law-enforcement authorities of San Bernardino County. “Any time you have a death such as this, where there was a young man in a motel room, a young girl, and a bottle of wine,” the coroner, Bill Hill, told the San Bernardino Sun, “I guess you could call it ‘strange’ and ‘uncertain.’ ”

  Attacks on Underground Evangelism over its handling of Sergei Kourdakov had begun from sources that could be expected to be even more persistent than offended county authorities or a suspicious secular press—two neighboring Glendale organizations called Jesus to the Communist World, Inc., and Evangelism to Communist Lands. Glendale, a middle-class section of the Los Angeles sprawl, is a center for ministries to the suffering church in the Communist world more or less the way Seventh Avenue is a center for the garment industry—an industry with which the Glendale missionaries seem to share standards of goodwill toward the competition. Glendale grew as a center for oppressed-church missions as Eastern European refugees who had moved to town to work for Underground Evangelism took acrimonious leave of UE and formed their own organizations. Jesus to the Communist World is run by Richard Wurmbrand and his family—Wurmbrand being a Romanian Lutheran who wrote a book called Tortured for Christ and was, for a while, best known in this country for having removed his shirt before members of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee to illustrate his testimony that the Communists had left him with eighteen scars in their effort to make him forsake the church. Evangelism to Communist Lands is a smaller operation, run by Haralan Popov and his family. Popov is a Bulgarian; his book, written while he was still with UE, is called Tortured for His Faith.

  The three Glendale missions have some difference in emphasis—whether to concentrate on smuggling Bibles in by clandestine couriers, for instance, or to float some of them toward Russia or Cuba on appropriate ocean currents—but their literature tends to tell the same kinds of stories about the need for Christian literature and the need to help the families of jailed and tortured Christian martyrs. They tend to use the same terms, and even the same martyrs. One distinguishing feature of the Wurmbrands’ discussion of mission work to the suffering church in the Communist world is their contention that L. Joe Bass has never done much of it, at least not enough to justify the two million dollars UE collects every year for that purpose. That contention was made in a thick report that Bass answered with a counterreport denying all allegations and accusing Richard Wurmbrand of carrying on a vendetta because he was thwarted in an attempt to take over Underground Evangelism. At first, Jesus to the Communist World reacted to Kourdakov’s death merely by accusing Underground Evangelism of exposing him to worldly tempt
ations he was not prepared for in its haste to exploit him. Then it began to question parts of the story told about him—whether there actually could be one hundred and fifty raidable underground churches in Kamchatka, for instance—and his own sincerity. (According to a letter the Wurmbrands circulated, Kourdakov, after falling to the floor of a temple in Toronto and shouting that he was filled with the Holy Spirit, was asked, “With what Ghost are you filled?” and replied, “Money.”) Finally, the Jesus to the Communist World literature began saying that Kourdakov not only was not in danger from the KGB but may have been a KGB plant himself. The Popovs, who ordinarily use more restrained language than the Wurmbrands in denouncing Bass, limiting themselves for the most part to charges of lying and deception, said they were saddened that Bass had used Kourdakov instead of giving him the opportunity to grow in Christ. “He was what we call a backslider,” Ladin Popov, Haralan’s brother, said of Kourdakov recently. “And the wages of sin are death.”

  Bass explains the defection of people like Wurmbrand and Popov partly as a tendency in “the Eastern European mentality” to prefer small family businesses rather than large, centralized organizations. He says that those who accuse Underground Evangelism of trying to make a martyr out of Sergei Kourdakov are themselves guilty of vilifying the boy in order to further their campaign against Underground Evangelism. According to Bass, such attacks are no more than the leader in the field should expect. “Let’s face it,” he said recently. “They’re interested parties. They’re trying to build an organization from the same pool of donors.”

  —

  At the coroner’s inquest, held in San Bernardino the last week in February, the star witness was, of course, the young woman who had been staying with Kourdakov at the Giant Oaks Motel—a blond high school senior who had met Kourdakov at a church camp. Her parents, also churchgoing people, had invited him to be their houseguest while he was in California. According to the testimony, the parents were aware that Kourdakov and their daughter were going to take a weekend trip together—first to Disneyland and then to the mountains, where they hoped to do some skiing while Sergei worked on the papers he had promised to prepare as part of the effort Senator Strom Thurmond and others in Washington were carrying on to win him permanent residency. A polygraph specialist for the sheriff’s office testified that the girl had responded to a question about her sexual relations with Kourdakov at the Giant Oaks—a question that had been included in the polygraph test at her father’s insistence—by saying that they “had come close but not completed an act.” (“I might say that was the area of the greatest concern of this young lady at the time of the test, as opposed to whether or not she had shot the man,” the polygraph expert said. “So I feel we have very definite…truthful responses.”) As the girl described New Year’s weekend in Running Springs, she had spent most of her time watching television while Kourdakov typed away. On New Year’s Eve, he had paused to watch The Dick Van Dyke Show and some other programs he liked, and then they had shared some champagne, and then, for no apparent reason, he had held the gun up and shot himself.

  From what the investigators gathered, Kourdakov may have made a mistake about which way the cylinder turns on a Smith & Wesson .38. The previous day, it was testified, he had taken out one bullet, explaining that he was removing it for safety reasons, and the investigators surmised that he might have thought he was firing an empty chamber. The gun had been borrowed from the girl’s father, an electrician, who testified that Kourdakov had his permission to borrow a weapon whenever he felt the need of one. The father had heard that some people in Washington were working on obtaining permission for Kourdakov to carry a gun—ordinarily illegal for an alien—but, he testified, “it’s been my sad experience in the past that bureaucracy moves so slow that he would get killed just about the time they got papers on him.”

  “How many weapons do you own?” the coroner asked.

  “Seven,” he replied.

  Bass offered depositions from churchmen in Washington attesting to what an exuberant, life-loving Christian Kourdakov had been. Some friends of the girl’s parents who had met Kourdakov just before the young couple went off for the weekend testified that he had been in fine spirits and had been particularly delighted with some new custom-fitted ski boots. According to his contract with Underground Evangelism, offered in evidence, Kourdakov had no financial worries. He was receiving a salary of two hundred dollars a week, plus ten percent of the offerings collected at his speaking engagements (after expenses were deducted) and twenty-five percent of the cassette take—an arrangement that had permitted him to clear $1,688.01 for the month of October. (“He’s done quite well for being a resident of our country for a short period of time,” one member of the coroner’s jury remarked to the court.) The future looked even brighter, since Kourdakov’s contract called for him to receive fifty percent of the profits from his autobiography. He appeared to have both business and literary plans for the future. The page found in his typewriter was not documentation for Senator Thurmond but what appeared to be part of a short story.

  Denying charges that Underground Evangelism had exploited Kourdakov, Bass said that the money spent on “developing Mr. Kourdakov into a well-rounded resident far exceeded any remuneration which our organization received as a result of his activities”—or, as the assistant treasurer of UE later put it to a reporter, “If you want to look on the cold, hard financial facts, we lost money on the kid.” Bass said that Underground Evangelism had been mainly concerned about Kourdakov’s “developing and growing into the American way of life.” Much of the testimony, of course, indicated that Kourdakov had already grown into the American way of life at the time of his death: a weekend at Disneyland and at a motel, a seventeen-year-old girl more emphatic about her reputation than about murder, strawberry wine, a pair of custom-fitted ski boots, a Thunderbird in the parking lot. Where else but in America, after all, could Kourdakov find, to his ultimate misfortune, that the father of a girl he met at a church camp owned seven weapons?

  —

  After three days of testimony, the coroner’s jury reached a verdict of accidental death. Bass, under questioning from the coroner, said he was satisfied with the standards of San Bernardino County police work after all. But Underground Evangelism still answers questions about the case by saying that “quiet inquiries” are being made; the last two issues of Underground Evangelism’s monthly, both of them devoted almost entirely to Sergei Kourdakov, mention nothing about his gunshot being self-inflicted but talk about his insistence on continuing his work despite the danger. The inquest had, of course, brought out some information embarrassing to Underground Evangelism. The Wurmbrands ordered a copy of the transcript, and Congressman Earl Landgrebe, of Indiana—one of the sponsors of Kourdakov’s visa, and a man whose own commitment to the cause is strong enough to have resulted in his being detained in Russia last year for handing out Bibles—said he believed he himself had been exploited by Underground Evangelism. Bass has said that the rank and file of Underground Evangelism supporters remained loyal despite the circumstances of Kourdakov’s death—which may indicate that evangelical Christians are more broad-minded than they are usually given credit for, or that Underground Evangelism supporters depended for their information on UE literature, which gave them nothing to be broad-minded about, having mentioned alcohol not at all and sex only to say, in an early newsletter, that, contrary to rumors, “official sources completely rule out any misconduct in relation to a girl.”

  The April issue of Underground Evangelism’s magazine announced “a fitting memorial to Sergei”—the Sergei Kourdakov Memorial Fund. Kourdakov’s book is almost ready. Bass has just returned from a European trip on which he closed a deal for the German rights and began negotiation for publication in England. There have been reports that Kourdakov may have left heirs—some brothers in Russia—but they would probably have difficulty claiming his fifty percent of the book royalties even if they made their way to Glendale. Clause 11 of his
agreement with Underground Evangelism said that he would not “commit any act that will reasonably tend to degrade him or to bring him or U.E. into public contempt, ridicule, or would tend to shock or offend the constituency of U.E. or the Christian church in general.” Sergei Kourdakov had obviously broken his contract.

  You Always Turn Your Head

  * * *

  Gallup, New Mexico

  MAY 1973

  Pete Derizotis, City Alcoholism Coordinator: I was in the mayor’s office….Somebody knocked….I opened the door. It was Larry Casuse and another Indian fellow.

  —Radio station KGAK live coverage, from the street in front of Stearn’s Sporting Goods store, March 1

  In Gallup, it was taken for granted that employees of the city government would recognize Larry Casuse on sight. A couple of years before, he had been just another one of the Navajo students at Gallup High School—a bright, husky, energetic boy who served as an aggressive linebacker on the football team and as an officer of the Indian Club. Unlike a lot of students who had grown up on or near the huge Navajo reservation that Gallup serves as a trading center, he had brought little firsthand knowledge to the Indian Club’s study of Indian ceremonial costumes and Indian dances. In a city where radio advertisements for pickup trucks are in Navajo, he spoke only English; among students whose brothers returning from Vietnam were likely to have felt the need for an Enemy Way ceremony, he was accustomed to only Roman Catholic rituals. His father, a Navajo from the reservation town of Mexican Springs, had married an Austrian woman while serving in the Army and had then settled near Silver City, far from the reservation, where he found work in the copper mines and raised his children among non-Indians. In high school, Larry had spent a lot of time on Indian Club work—making costumes, helping to organize the first Gallup High School powwow—and when he went to the University of New Mexico, in the fall of 1971, he joined the Kiva Club, an Indian cultural and social organization that had been best known for its sponsorship of an annual dance. When he became president of the Kiva Club last fall, its interests began to turn from dances to questions such as whether the university’s history textbooks presented a true version of Indian history and whether the advertisement of a local merchant was insulting to Indians. By that time, he had also been active for several months in Indians Against Exploitation, a group of young Navajos in Gallup who had organized to protest against the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial on the ground that it was a white-run business operation that made money for whites by presenting Indian religion in a cheapened form for the entertainment of tourists. IAE had expanded its criticisms to include the way Gallup treated the Indians who came in to trade and the Indians who came in to drink, and Larry Casuse had been to City Hall before to complain or demand or condemn. When the State Commission on the Bicentennial Celebration met in Gallup in January, Casuse had been one of the young Indians who appeared to say that money should be spent not for celebrations but for people in need. When Pete Derizotis opened the door of the mayor’s office on March 1, the Larry Casuse he recognized had the look of an Indian militant—blue jeans, long black hair, a red bandanna worn as a headband.