The defection
Luce and Meehan left immediately to meet Mogilny in Stockholm, Sweden, where Mogilny had just helped the Russian team to a gold medal at the men’s World Championship.
Their first meeting, which Meehan said was primarily for identification purposes, took place at Mogilny’s hotel. They were then scheduled to meet at his agent’s apartment for dinner until a series of phone calls resulted in a change of plans.
“We went [to the apartment] but we got a communication from them last minute not to go there because they said, ‘They’re watching me,'” Meehan said.
Instead, they agreed to meet Mogilny and his agent, Sergei Fomitchev, at a shopping mall in Stockholm.
“He and his agent were standing in the doorway, like kind of hiding,” Meehan said. “And then as soon as they saw us we waved, we opened the door, and they dove into the backseat of the car and we drove away, just to make sure that, you know, obviously if he was being watched they would see us as well.”
“I see these guys come out in the mirror, chasing him,” Luce added.
Mogilny and Fomitchev remained with Luce and Meehan for the remainder of their time in Stockholm, a three-day operation that found two hockey lifers taking precautions befitting of secret agents. Meehan had been advised by a personal friend from the immigration office in Buffalo, Ben Ferro, to remain untraceable throughout the process. They switched hotels each night. When Meehan went to the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm, Luce spent hours driving Mogilny around the countryside.
Their prudence was warranted. Luce took Mogilny to a public call center to reach his parents, and the call was twice disconnected.
“He was only in there about five minutes,” Luce said. “He came out and said, ‘They know where we are.’ You didn’t know what was going to happen. You didn’t know what they were going to do. Every time Gerry came from the embassy he said, ‘We’ve got to be careful, they’re after us.’ You don’t sleep easy when that’s happening.”
Luce and Meehan both recall arriving at the Stockholm airport for their flight to JFK and seeing all four of their names printed in a local newspaper. The details of their trip were all printed, save for the location of their final hotel.
The four men were escorted off the plane by federal agents upon landing in New York, after which Mogilny was interrogated.
“Alex, for a 19-year-old kid, he was pretty calm,” Luce said. “I know because he told me afterwards, his parents said, ‘Just go. Don’t worry about us.’ They did lose their jobs. [Alex] was sentenced to death for desertion. They had rough times to go through.
“… You figure, if you went to another country where you hardly know the language and the traditions and you’re 19 years old, you’re going to have some adjusting to do. You’re not going to let your guard down right away. I think that took Alex a while to feel comfortable. That’s a huge step for a 19-year-old kid. I don’t know if an adult could do it. But he had a lot of courage.”
