(Moscow) In the past five years over fourteen thousand Muscovites have vanished without a trace. Families have searched long and hard for them to no avail. In the days of Soviet terror and at the height of Lubyanka's fame the disappearances would have been noticed but never mentioned. Today their names are screamed from the rooftops, on television and radio. Posters bearing their faces blot out the occasional sun beating down on the bus kiosks and t shirts covered in screened photos ask, "Where are they all?" The answer has been, no one knows. Now, unfortunately, as strange as that sounds, their whereabouts may be coming to light.
Life on the edge in Moscow is hard. Criminal gangs prey on those who are one step removed from destitution. For the underclass, and the underclass is huge, life often seems not worth living. The men drink themselves into oblivion on cheap vodka and the women drink as well, but they drink so a life of prostitution or, if they are even slightly attractive, pornography, will be but a blur. Men and women have disappeared for years in Moscow. In the recent past when someone vanished family members assumed a drug deal had gone bad, or the wrong person had been robbed. Justice in Moscow has always been quick, sharp and usually very painful.
However, despite the occasional report of the old and crazed eating their neighbors, cannibalism was never much of a problem. Then, while investigating labor abuses in the meat packing industry reporter Sergei Pavlovich made a startling discovery.
"I was behind the bone building and talking to workers who are not much better than slaves when a new load of bones dropped down the chute. I glanced over at the bones . . ."
What Pavlovich discovered was truly horrific. Mixed in with the cow and sheep bones were bones of human beings. "I am no expert, but the arm bone of a woman or man is very different from the foreleg of a sheep. Even I can tell that." Pavlovich immediately called an acquaintance on the police force.
"We get reports from hysterical citizens all the time. My brother in law killed my sister. My step-mother killed my father. My grandmother is missing and so is the neighbor's boy . . . but never do we get a report like this. Pavlovich is a persistent reporter and not prone to hysterics. I decided to investigate."
What officer Nikita Mikoyan discovered is still the talk of the precinct. "There were over three hundred skeletons of human mixed in with the animals. Three hundred! Most appeared to be older persons. You would have to ask a forensics expert why they know that, but there are ways to tell. Three hundred! Some must have died naturally, some must have been killed. Who knows? It is hard to tell who they are when all you have are bones with no heads."
Why the heads were removed is anyone's guess, but Mikoyan believes it centers around the difficulty of identification when heads are missing.
"With heads we have a chance," Inspector Mikoyan continued. "Dental records, shape of the head, like that. No one really knows what your arm bone looks like, unless perhaps it was broken and even then . . ." He shrugged. "We have identified twelve of the three hundred. That's good, I think. But the rest . . . I think they will have to be unknown."
Adding to the horror of the skeletons is where the meat went. Mikoyan looked around, held his arms out and laughed. "We find three hundred in one day. They dump the bones daily; the three hundred were from one day! The next day there were no more. The day after that, no more. Since then, no more. It wasn't an accident. This is a meat packing plant. Ham, steaks, yes. But potted meat, canned corned beef, bolska steaks? They all come from here, too. Meat that is left over meat. Cuts that are not cuts, but pieces of meat gathered and put into a can as if it came from one animal. Where did the human flesh go?" He laughed again, and patted his stomach. "Three hundred in one day! Three hundred before that, and three hundred before that. Everyday, my friend . . . We ate them! Where do you think the human meat went?"
