Week 9 Summary

Episode 9 Summary (“Official Documents”):
It turns out that Olga DID sustain some damage from her leap: we see her with her arm in a sling as she watches a more-than-slightly neurotic Russian military scientist deliver a presentation to a room full of sinister generals regarding the ring she stole from Yugo. The scientist concludes that the ring’s probably real, but Olga claims that, knowing Yugo, it’s most likely a very good fake and he’s hidden the real ring somewhere safe. The generals decide that the best thing to do is to capture Yugo and interrogate him with, as the scientist eagerly declares, “the very most efficient torture methods.”

Meanwhile Yugo has somehow gotten off the train without being detected and met Lyuba at the National Archives. She brings him bread, which shows that she loves him. *Hem.* Anyway, Yugo’s trying to figure out exactly what Romanovski’s hidden motivations for getting his hands on the girl might be so he’s looking through the shipping records to determine what got sent to America along with little Alexsandor. Unfortunately the archive is massive and the records are badly out of order; the two end up switching sections several times before they finally find the shipping records for 1919. They are blank: the government has been there first and erased them all. The only thing to do is to find the cargo manifest from the American company, but Lyuba has no clue where that might be; they have to ask the head of the archives, a “dyed-in-the-wool communist.” Lyuba’s convinced he’ll never aid a foreigner, but Yugo uses his usual wiles and by simply telling the man the truth—that he’s been hired by an untrustworthy imperialist to negotiate for a young girl and he wants to confirm his employer’s motivations—he gets him to agree to help. They find the cargo manifest for the only vessel operating in the appropriate time range (the U.S.S. Lincoln) and based on the volume and weight of the cargo determine that there’s only one thing it can be: gold. (Of course.) The head of the archives does some quick calculations and realizes that if the money were placed in a Swiss bank account (as it most likely was), the interest alone would be many billions of dollars. This is a serious fortune Nadenka’s got. But at that moment, the KGB bursts in and arrests Yugo. (He protests that he’s done nothing wrong, and gets the response, “oh, that doesn’t matter. This is Russia.”)

The torture session that follows is fairly unpleasant; Yugo is placed in an over-lit sterile room and pumped full of drugs while the wacko scientist screams at him through a microphone. (To relieve the monotony, the interrogators also try some electric shocks, gas, and the odd trick of letting Yugo open the room’s door only to discover a concrete wall). Eventually Yugo reveals that he left the ring in a block of ice between cars of the train he was on; the Russian generals all hurry off to stop the train while Yugo is set free. (If I were the Russian generals, I might have kept the prisoner handy until after I’d verified his information, but then again… “this is Russia.”) A couple of KGB operatives take him to a hotel room and give him a ticket home—he’s being deported—but he’s so weak that they have to prop him upright and end up leaving to call for further instructions. As soon as they’re out of the room Yugo leaps to his feet, tears up the bedsheets, and escapes onto the streets. Watch out, Russia! Yugo is coming for Nadenka!

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