A Sudden Release from the Iron Gates: The Case of the Oil Baron Traber

The heavy iron bolts of Lefortovo have slid back, and Ilya Traber, a man whose name once commanded the docks and oil-pits of the North, has stepped out into the smoggy air. It is a strange turn of fate, indeed! The inspectors and detectives had him firmly in their grip, accusing him of a most heinous crime—the hired slaughter of Alexander Petrov, a deputy of Vyborg and father to a famed racing driver.

But mark how the body betrays the spirit! At seventy-five years of age, Traber’s health collapsed like a rotten tenement in a storm. The investigators, seeing the man wither in his cell, signed the order of release on the evening of the 27th of August. He is not cleared of his sins, mind you—the charges remain as heavy as a millstone—but he is to be carted off to St. Petersburg to face his fate in a softer bed.

This is no mere clerk from the counting-house. Traber is a creature of the shadows and the high salons. In the nineties, he reigned over the fuel-tanks of Pulkovo and the oil terminals, moving fortunes with a stroke of a pen. He dabbled in antiquities—courting the ghosts of the past—and walked the same cobblestones as the notorious Vladimir Barsukov, the kingpin of the Tambov gang. 'We were friends,' Traber once boasted, 'until our views on business parted ways.' A polite way of saying they ceased to dance the same jig!

His life has been a game of cat and mouse with the law. The Spanish authorities once hunted him as a member of the 'Russian Mafia,' but the courts of Spain eventually declared him innocent. He even fought a legal battle against a Spanish prosecutor to scrub his name clean, winning a victory in the courts of St. Petersburg.

Yet, the current shadow is darker. Beside him in the dock stood the likes of Alisultan Nadirbegov, a professional pugilist whose fists were allegedly the tools of the murder, along with Vladimir Danilenko and Sait Saladinov.

Now, the oil baron returns to his empire—a sprawling web of nine companies, from methanol plants to ecological fleets. Whether he shall return to the cold stone of the cell or find his fortune protecting him, only the dice of fate shall decide. For now, the carriage awaits to take him home.