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Warning, the following episode contains explicit language and sexual themes. Listener discretion is advised.
I was very sick, just fever, but very heavy virus, and I was alone and I couldn't contact anyone, like, no one at all because I was hiding that time. And I remember I had such a strong fever that I passed over and I saw all all this goths, all these like souls of people whom I had to terminate. They all was standing in front of me and they told me that's your time. We're taking you with us. And I felt like I was lifted by them and
I went into the space. I reckon it wass a hell or something like that, because I felt pain in every single of my coorse of my body. It was so painful that you cannot even handle it. And I said like stop, stop, stop, I can't do this, and they said, well that's what you deserve. But then I was another soul ghost and it said let her go, and then it said to me, you you will be back, but you have to complete your mission. You didn't finish it yet, you have to go back and do it.
And then I woke up and the next day my favor was gone to kill you. I'm really sorry I had to do that.
I go tu like to you. Episode eleven, chapter twenty four, Fearless.
And then when I opened my eyes, I wasn't that kind of like military hospital. But it wasn't really hospital. It was just the big room in the building which was half destroyed. There were many, many different injured soldiers, and some of them they wouldn't survive.
Aliyah was still on the border of Chechnya and Russia, but further back from the front lines, recovering from her injuries in a makeshift military hospital.
I had a doctor maybe like forty forty five is years old, and she said, don't cry, everything will be good. You would do He also very soon, no worry, And I felt like I felt like she was like my mom, you know, like kind of like she cared about me, which it was nice that she she gave me this support, that moral support.
After a few days, the doctor discharged Aliah, gave her crutches and sent her to a hospital closer to her hometown in Russia. As she sat on the train back home, Alah thought about her friend and fellow soldier, Rashid, who had died in the attack on Alea's base.
I didn't even know where he lived. I didn't know his address or anything. I regretted that I didn't ask, and then at that point I felt guilty.
The train dropped the way off in her hometown, where she had been cut off by her family. She was taken directly to a hospital to recuperate. Alone, with no friends or relatives, Her thoughts began to fixate on the abusive colonel whose marriage proposal she rejected, and she wondered about his involvement in sending her to Cheeshnya.
I didn't want to believe that he would send me there Ford. You know, I still couldn't believe. I still was thinking that, no, he can't do it. He loves me, he can just like send me to die. It's probably a bad luck. That's what I was telling myself, and I was struggling. I wanted to hear his I was so curious, but at the same time, I was so devastated. If you would really do this to just kill me.
And I decided to call him and find out. Downstairs in the hospital, they had stationary telephone, and I remember I had his cell number. I even remember it now. I remember a lot of things about him. I remember the date of his verse every single day of the year. I remember that funny. So I called him and he picked up and I said, hey, this is me. And it was a long post and he said, so did you fix your mind? Did you learn anything in the world? Did you become more obedient? And I asked him, did
you know what really happened there? He said, it doesn't matter. So did you become obedient? He asked me again, and I said, what do you want exactly? And he said, I want you to listen to me and follow my order. Whatever I say you have to do. And he said, and if you didn't learn your lesson, I will give you another one. And I was so angry and frustrated the way he talked to me, like I was kind of like a dog on the street. He's like, I'll give you the second lesson, like you know, fuck you.
But I couldn't tell him fuck you. I wish I could. I just said goodbye, and I hang up with the phone. But straight away after this telephone call, I had them feeling inside it. Christopholla was right. He did send me there to die. And second, what shall I do now? And then the hospital gave me the paper where they stayed. Now you are recovered, and now it's time to go back to work. Then they sent this referral to my department, to my commander, and I came back home to my apartment.
It was really lonely and it was really empty. I even had some thoughts that time that I wish I could be dead with Rashett and other soldiers.
Part of that wish to no longer be here was because Leah knew what was waiting for her back at the Department of Internal Affairs, her commander, the lieutenant general whose advances she'd rejected. And sure enough, as soon as Leah was no longer on crutches, the nightmare with him resumed, but this time it would have a different ending.
By that time, I already didn't have crunches, but I still walked kind of like Limpin and my lieutenant general, my commander, he let everybody leave and he said stay here for a little bit where he was sitting. It was quite big room and behind on the wall where he was sitting there was the president portrait and the Russian flag, very patriotic. So he said, come closer. So I took all my papers and everything and I moved
to the chair which was closer to his table. And he said, take off your blouse and I said, excuse me? He said, take off your blouse. Like open new buttons. Oh, don't worry, like why you like again, like a fucking vision, just like, take some buttons. I just want to see. I surprisingly for myself. I started to open some buttons, and when I was opening, I was like thinking, what exactly does he want? And I was in like this doubt where I didn't want to go back to the war.
I was so tired and exhausted. I didn't want to have any other problems. And I asked myself that moment, could I potentially potentially have sex with this man who is so disgusting to me? I was asking my brain, like can you do it? You know, just to save ourselves. But just like first two buttons, and he said, listen, I'm not the man who will ask two times. I ask you one time, and I'm not the guy who will run after you and trying to chase you. And he said, with my position, I can destroy you or
I can reward you like a queen. You choose, and you know what, I made my choice that moment, and I said, inside of myself, do you know what if I survived the war, I'll survive. Fuck you as whole.
In that moment, a Leah realized that the only power that the lieutenant general had over her was fear. So she did something that her experiences in Shshnya made possible.
I closed my buttons, I turn around and I walked out from the room. And you know what I was thinking. I was thinking, it will be the day when I will press the trigger and you'll be dead.
You'll see the aliah Rosa that had left for Cheshnia was not the same person who had returned. When you've been the Helen back and are no longer afraid to die, threats, punishments and consequences hold no power over you, you are, in a sense free.
Something happened with me after that war. I felt like, you know what, like, what else can you do? Send me back? No problem? Send me back. You know you want me to be that I kind of like I already was there. I was almost dead. When you come to the point when you're not scared anymore, I became completely fearless, and it gave me so much power and I just felt it. I felt that moment and I said, like, I'm not I don't. I will never again in my life allow any man to use my body like they
used to do it. I will not allow that. I can only sacrifice my body for some big missions, if it has to be done to save some people, but I definitely won't do it just to please some asshole. And that moment when the lieutenant general told me, like, take off your blouse and I said and said, no, I'm not doing that. I started to respect myself. It completely shifted and I was proud of myself. I said, I will fight. I just had that feeling and I still have it.
After standing up to her commander, a strong sense of peace overcame Aleiah. That evening, she slept without nightmares for the first time in years.
I woke up feeling better and I woke up without having nightmares like I used to have every single night. I was in a good mood when I came to the department and as always eight am we have our report. Morning I looked at his face and I always tried to hide my eyes, but that morning I looked straight up to his fucking face, straight to his eyes, and I've noticed that he was a waiting looking into my face.
That's because he was planning. The same thing is done in the past, and someone rejects his advances, sends them on a mission where the most likely outcome is a bullet in the head. But this time it wouldn't be cheshnyah, it would be another type of war.
In the end of the reporting, our commander Lieutenant general said that he signed agents for the special mission, which was to find out places where hearing was supplied and sold from Afghanistan by the criminal gang, which was the biggest, the most violent, the most dangerous, not just in the city, in the whole area, and they monopolized the whole market of drug trafficking and human trafficking. And we're supposed to work on this gang. That moment, I felt like, oh my god, we are so fucked.
After selecting Lea for this mission, the commander that announced her support team, the four youngest least experienced agents in the department.
So we had the tia of losers, basicly, but nobody said anything. Everybody were so scared of our commander, and there was just sitting looking at the floor and just like doing nothing and just like sweating.
Chapter twenty five. The Mafia Estate.
The first half of the nineties was major gang wars, shootouts, explosions, grenades being launched into buildings, people being murdered on the streets, really a lot of mayhem.
This is Joe Cirio, author of several books on the Russian mafia and reportedly the only American to work in the Organized Crime Control Department of the Soviet National Police. Before we get into a Leah and her team's dangerous assignment, I called him to better understand how the mafia works in Russia, because it's nothing like in the movies. It's worse in an appetite for violence, a lucrative international enterprise stretching from Moscow to Israel to Thailand to the United States.
There have no qualms about murdering people.
If they have to kill you, they'll kill you. Absolutely.
Here's Joe Sirio again, explaining how the breakup of the Soviet Union created a power vacuum that the Russian mafia then stepped into. As Russian suddenly cut loose from state support looked for new sources of income. This network of gangs grew in size and influence.
You had these athletes who no longer had the support of the state. You had military that was being demobilized from Afghanistan. You had security services that knew where all the bodies are buried. And toward the end of the nineties and into the two thousands, it started becoming consolidated, especially around the oligarchs and the security services.
So when the government was ready to reassert itself, not only did it have to work with the mafia, but there was no telling who is government and who was mafia anymore. Everybody wanted money and power.
The one critical thing to understand in Putin is that he's not really running country. He's running a massive mafia state, and it's often, if not always, about money.
One thing that people have to understand is that organized crime mafia in a way that we think about it traditionally, was not an outside invading force. The gangs were part of the landscape. They worked hand in hand with the state. So some gangs were actually made up of prosecutors and cops. Some gangs were former state officials. Some gangs were the typical criminal gangs that came out of the quote unquote underworld.
You could have one guy who was a gangster and a bureau at end a politician all in the same person. But if you think about organized crime in mafia as a separate entity, you'll totally come to the wrong conclusions about Russia. So you're operating all the time in this environment of smoke and mirrors.
So, as Aliah tells this next part of her story through her experience, it may be helpful to zoom out and consider what her commander's real agenda might have been, perhaps not just for her death, but for his enrichment.
Russia is about survival period, end of story. The mentality is a thousand year old mentality, and the mentality among gangs, gangsters, organized crime groups, politicians, people in power is I will take until you're strong enough to stop me. And the difficult part of all this is that you have this mafia mentality in the state, and you have this mafia muscle in terms of gangsters, in terms of firepower, So what do you do with that?
Leah was in her early twenties at this time, and had lived a very insular life, first in her strict home and then in the military, so she was unaware of this complicated game of chess being played around her. But those walls were slowly coming down.
A few times, my agents, my colleagues, we were chasing some drug dealers, and eventually when we would like get into the house or like apartment where they would sell drugs, our commander would call us and say, get out of their like you can't touch them, and we would like understand, how like fuck again, like we couldn't touch them because they would give money to our commander because he was bribed. But yet our commander wanted us to complete five cases
a week. How the fuck was supposed to do that? And of course, like agents, like what they're supposed to do. We take like prostitute or drug dealer, put in the back or like in the pocket, like these drugs and then pretend like there is the whole criminal case and send them to the prison and say, like okay, if we did five cases, so what.
Despite getting pulled in by this corrupt culture, Eliah still wasn't aware that the problems in Russian intelligence went far beyond bribery and abuse. She was still inspired or brainwashed by the belief that there were bad people and good people out there, and her job, her assignment was to fight the evil, at least when the evil wasn't paying a cake back.
By that time, my motivation was to I don't know, I just I still have Nightmarcy cannot forget these faces of these twelve ten years old girls being like overdosed and being literally like dad, laying on the floor of different labs and on the street. So for me that time, I thought, I don't want to leave anyway, but at least my life can be for good. You know, when you don't have fear to be killed, you don't have fear of death, you can do crazy things.
The Leah and her team decided to do their best with the mission they'd been given to bring down one of the biggest drug and human trafficking gangs in the city. They were then assigned a slightly more experienced team leader who had been undercovering the gang for the last few months as a small time drug dealer, providing them with escorts. Under his direction, they began a surveillance operation on a gang.
So we divided and the first team that would patrol the house the criminals would hang out, They would check restaurants where they go and basically everyone who is involved. Then the second team would be doing exactly the same but with another members of the gang. So we were just collecting information. The gang was really big, and it took for us like quite a long time because we
had to find out all details. And then every single day in the morning, like at eight am, during the report, my commander he would scream at us and say, like give me more information, like what did you do? Like do you do any.
Shat Their main target was the leader of this gang, Vladimir.
My colleague brought the photo and he said, well, this is our guy.
This is the leader, a great danger to themselves. Aliyah and her fellow agents again staking out Vladimir at the boxing gym hewned.
So we basically earn his daily routine. He would wake up early morning. He lived in the house together with his other guys in the gang. Then they would drive black trunk and they would drive to the boxing court and then they would have meetings like meetings with the brothers. And one day, remember we were following the car and we went maybe like twenty kilometers from the city and it was closer to the forest. The meeting was between
two criminal leaders. For like maybe ten minutes, maybe twenty people was standing in front of each other and there was some tension going on. But then at one moment, everybody took the gun and started to shoot each other. So the few brothers were killed from both sides. So I thought like, yeah, this is pretty scary and it's pretty wild.
And it was about to get scarier for Leah because her team leader, who was undercovering the game as a sort of pimp, soon gave her a specific assignment.
So he told me, I will bring you introduced you to the Vladhimer and you need to use all your seduction techniques because you need to establish connection with Vladhimer. And I couldn't say no because he's the boss of our team, you know.
In other words, he would be introducing Leah to their target as an escort, and her job was to somehow, while playing that uncomfortable role, seduce Vladimir into wanting to see her more. Leah thought back to her training in order to figure out her first.
Moves in the academy. They told us, and they taught us. First of all, the most important if you want to have a power of anyone, any of your target, the most important thing is to find his weaknesses through his childhood, mostly could be parents than former partners, the first lave and knowing this weakness, you can manipulate your target motives, emotions, dreams, desires.
Leah and her team went through one of Vladimir's high school yearbooks and look for former classmates who they could reach out to. Eventually they found someone willing to talk.
His former classmates said that Vladimir was coming from a good family and he graduated his school and eighteen years old he was sent to the army. And this is very important information. Now he had a sweetheart, a girl from Uzbekistan, and for a few years they had this boyfriend girlfriend relationship and it was his first love. Everybody knew that one day they would get married and have children and nice family, but it didn't happen. When Vladimir went to the army, she didn't wait for him, so
she started to date someone else. She started to date one criminal, and then he came back from the army and she was already pregnant from that criminal guy. So Vladimir was heartbroken and he went first to the police, then he quit and he went to the criminal gang. And when we heard that story together, we have exactly the same idea. It's the same strategy of each really learned in the academy. I will explain. It's a little
bit veered, but that's exactly what government does. For example, users are what they used to do when they try to manipulate the whole population.
Although this had begun as a suicide mission, Eliah felt that through this weakness she now had a possible way into the gang. She just needed to use one of the key techniques she'd learned in her training. What psychologist and marketing expert Robert Chaldini explains here as pre suasion.
Pre Suasion is the practice of gaining agreement with a message before you deliver it. The choices that we make are more related to what is top of mind just before the choice.
That's exactly what we decided to do for Vladimir. His first love was Asian from Central Asia. I have the same look, and we created that plan. What if we will program his unconsciousness that there is a happy end, potentially somewhere in another world, in another life with another woman, but same as her, but just better version. This is the manipulation technique, where you create a virtual reality for the target brain.
I found it interesting and terrifying that these love traps are often set and planted in the target's unconscious mind long before the target has even met the agent.
So I ask some of my friends girlfriends who looked more or less Asian, and we created three couples, kind of couples. Every morning, Vladimir would have his breakfast with his brothers, so this one couple would go to the same cafe and they would sit just in front of him in the next table. They would kiss each other and hug each other and just look at each other with the lovable eyes. So it was first step, the second step, another girl Asian looking and another boy who
was wearing uniform from the army. We put the pillow in her belly, presending that she was pregnant. So once Vladimir went out from the boxing cort going to the car, he saw that couple. Third time, we had a little baby. We gave it to another Asian looking girl, and we had another guy who would wore the uniform from the army, and we put the baby into courage and they would walk around the house where Vladimir lived. So we planted
in his head. In some reality, there is a potential happy ending of the story.
Once these subconscious messages were implanted in Vladimir's brain, the next step was the conscious part of the seduction. It was time for Leah to turn herself into a version of this woman, a reminder of the path not taken.
We couldn't really find out the way she looked like, but we asked some questions from the classmate, so his first laugh, she looked Asian. She was very funny, all this positive and smiling. She was wearing like short skurs use a type of uniform, and the white sox. She
had long hair braided. So we started to work on my appearance and we decided that I should be somebody like a student, but on the side, I would need to be a prostitute basically, so I had to play this role that I don't have money and I am a student and I need money for my parents who are sick.
So still before her first encounter with Vladimir, Leah began practicing for the role. Living in this new identity.
I had to create the name of my mom. I had to create her illness. I created the whole background which never existed in my life, but I just created in my brain and made my brain believe in it. It's important because sometimes, like when you sleep, or you in or you in a high pain, unconsciously, you can give your real name. That's why as an agent, you literally have to become this person.
In addition, whenever her fellow agents arrested prostitutes, Aliah would speak with them so she could learn and imitate how they dress, walk, talk and act.
Every time when I would check prostitutes in order to find drugs in the bag, I would find just a few things which always were there. Condoms, lubricant, powder, lipstick. That's it. So I literally started to carry in my back same stuff. I created that image of that girl who was that good girl, but she needed money, so she desperately needed his help. Somebody who will protect her and somebody who will fall in love.
Eliah was now ready for the most dangerous seduction of our life. Setting a love trap for a foreign official comes with low consequences. If you're caught in your own country, it's just a failed mission. But with criminals. If your identity as an undercover agent is revealed, there's typically just one consequence death.
I was preparing for the most important meeting in my life, and I knew that I will go to the club, same as Vladimir and his brothers go almost every day. And I knew exactly what table it would be, what bar, how we'll respond, how we we'll talk. And I wrote a report to my commander and I said, we will do the first contact next Friday. And the commander said, okay, I confirm you can go ahead. And we received the confirmation, so you were ready to go.
Leah's story continues in episode twelve as she begins this dangerous mission infiltrating one of the biggest drug gangs in the city.
He started to kiss me, and I just forgot that it was my job.
To die for is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with iHeart Podcasts. The show is hosted and written by me Neil Strauss, with additional writing assistants by Tristan Bankston. Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Matt Frederick and Alex Williams. Lead producer and editor is Tristan Bankston. Additional editing by Miles Clark and Christian Brown. Supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Consultants
include Nushin, Valiza Day, Chelsea Gooden and Jamie Albright. Artwork by Byron McCoy. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set, mixed and mastered by Dayton Cole. Our theme song is Killer Shangwi Law by Psychotic Beats featuring Pattiamore. Special thanks to Aren Rosenbaub and the team at Uta Bech Media and Marketing Aarren Siegel, Becky Johnsen, the Nord Group, Meredith Stedman and Alex fespustaed