Encounters #3, Frank.

Sighisoara, Romania.

It’s not every day someone boasts to you about fixing elections in Gagauzia, but then Covid was a strange time for all of us.

When travel reopened I booked flights to Romania. It was a poor choice. A curfew had been put in place which translated into evenings spent on the top bunk of my self-check-in dormitory with a can of Ursus reading a book under insufficient light.

Covid had other unexpected repercussions. I found it impossible to get clothes washed. I didn’t understand how Covid could affect a washing machine, and the manager’s arguments made little sense. Perhaps mine didn’t either. So I took my bag of soiled cotton and went from hotel to hotel asking if they had a laundry service. Again and again “Sorry, residents only.” “Sorry, because of Covid.” Then I entered a hotel on Hermann Oberth Square and met Frank.

The building’s main room was a restaurant and bar: leather, mahogany, brass, tasteful. I walked down a corridor to reception where I was again met with “Sorry, because of Covid.” Thankfully the barmaid was more helpful and opened a laptop to try and find a laundry service, while the only other present, a heavy-set, red wine swigging, sixty-year-old man, engaged me in conversation. He recounted the links between his region and mine, the Flemish having played a significant but unheralded role in medieval Scottish history. He had a stronger grasp of events than I. The best I could muster was something about the Scottish discoverer of antibiotics being of Flemish descent. “Why don’t you join me for a drink?” Well, because it’s ten thirty in the morning Frank. However dirty clothes and repeated rejection had frustrated me, so I agreed.

Frank was waiting on a Russian visa. He was due to speak at a conference in Ufa, but was unlikely to receive the paperwork until the event had ended. “It’s okay. I have friends in Moscow. I’ll go anyway and see them.” He handed me his card.

HONARARY SENATOR

HONARARY MEMBER OF THE FLEMISH PARLIAMENT

CHAIRMAN TO THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN POLICY EUROPEAN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

I took a photo “in case I lose it” and excused myself to the bathroom where I sent the snap to a Belgian friend, asking what she knew of him.

Frank liked to talk about himself and the more he talked the more he revealed. “I’m a facilitator. I don’t have skills, I don’t have money, but I can connect people”. “There are a group of us, we call ourselves ‘Friends of countries with no friends!’”

I’m good at showing interest and flattering people, and Frank was glad to meet a stranger who had heard of, and even been to, some of the places where he “facilitated” proceedings. He showed me videos he’d taken from Donetsk, Sevastopol, Hainan, Damascus. Photos of him with officials, dignitaries, presidents, as well as people like Adnan Oktar. Frank was surprised I’d heard of him but he was all over the news when I lived in Istanbul, tabloid front pages displaying photos of the cult leader surrounded by his surgically-enhanced “kittens”. Oktar was later sentenced to eight thousand six hundred and fifty-eight years in jail.

The next time I went to the bathroom I had heard back from my Belgian friend. “He was supposed to be observing the election in Crimea, but journalists saw him passed out drunk in the middle of the day.” Election observing was one of his specialities, popping up with quotes to show how free and fair rigged counts are “The elections were very democratic, in contrast with the Belgian system, where people are obligated to go vote.”

Morality aside, he was entertaining and told his stories well. “One day I got a call from the Kremlin. They wanted me to help fix an election in Gagauzia — usual job, usual fee. I said no problem, I’ll be there. Well, once you tell me where it is!”

Although he half-heartedly asked if I was sure I wasn’t a spy, I was surprised at how open he was with me “If it’s not illegal, I’m not interested!” but the man clearly loved an audience and loved showing off. He continued showing off long into the night.

One year on I’d almost forgotten about Frank when a message from my Belgian friend pinged my phone: “Your associate is in the news.”

There was nothing about his meetings with Bashar al-Assad, nothing about his work for the Kremlin, actually nothing about anything he had told me. It didn’t matter though. Frank’s career was over.