The Friday Flight · Moscow Rules

This radio drama uses AI-generated writing, voices, music, sound effects and artwork. All spoken performances in this edition use ElevenLabs V4. Three weeks ago, on a Friday, the metals dealer Arkady Zimin went to a Moscow airport for his flight to New York and never boarded. A girl at the check-in desk saw two men in long coats show Federal Security Service passes and walk him out. His secretary has come to the detective Maksim Volkov: who walked Arkady Zimin out? 🎧 Full episode of Moscow Rules: a modern spy and detective audio drama set in Moscow, a radio mystery performed by a full cast. Listen as a podcast, with full transcripts: https://mono-noir.transistor.fm/ Stories, transcripts and the schedule: https://matezz.com 🎭 Directed Edition — every role cast for this story and every line performed with full voice direction. Moscow, autumn 1997. The secretary Nina will not sit down in the Chistye Prudy flat of the detective Maksim Volkov, where his papers have long since beaten the furniture and his coat lies across the piano. Three weeks ago, she says, her employer of eleven years, the metals dealer Arkady Zimin, set out on a Friday to catch a flight to New York and never got on the plane: at the check-in desk a girl saw two men in long coats flash Federal Security Service passes and walk him out. That afternoon a man who said he was an officer telephoned the office to say that Zimin was only detained, and he gave a reason that Nina, with the receiver in her hand, cannot now recall. The militia shrugged, but Nina still answers his telephone, and at eleven she still sets a fresh glass of tea on his desk. Volkov and Doctor Grigori Melnik follow her to the two rooms above a shuttered bakery where Zimin worked, then climb to the boardroom of the rival metals house, run by a director named Kask, and sit down at Petrovka with a major named Tarasenko, who gives them rather less than they came for. Three weeks of silence, a telephone still answered and two long coats at a check-in desk: where is Arkady Zimin? From the series Moscow Rules: a real post-Soviet event reimagined as a modern detective radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast with an original score and sound design. Loosely inspired by a real Russian case of the 1990s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the missing businessman, his secretary, employees and family, rival businessmen and company directors, their staff and advisers, airport staff, officers of the security services, police officers and investigators, government officials, and anyone suspected or accused of his disappearance — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, district, street, airport or public body is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the companies and offices named in it are invented too. This is a work of fiction, not a factual account of any real person or institution. No real person is portrayed, and no real individual, company or organisation is accused of any act shown here. Setting: Moscow — autumn 1997. Writer v2.7 — the studio's newest writing process: the plot is planned and checked by an AI story editor, then each act is drafted with the whole story in view and edited before a word is voiced — and then cast and performed with our new casting and voice direction. Chapters:0:00 A Visitor Who Would Rather Stand2:00 Two Rooms Above a Shuttered Bakery3:43 A Boardroom Nine Floors Above the River5:06 Dusk and the Absent Man's Chair6:46 Nina Shuts the Door on an Empty Room8:22 Two Hard Chairs in a Room Blue with Smoke9:57 Cabs Nose to Tail Beyond Departures11:44 Four of Us Sinking in a Panelled Lift12:58 A Cardboard Box on the Empty Desk15:20 Up Again to the Long Table16:56 A Night Visit Across the City18:31 Nina in Her Good Coat, Next Morning19:55 Back Again That Afternoon22:12 An Evening in the Outer Room23:41 Departures Loud by Ten Next Morning25:53 Out Through the Doors, a Step Behind27:25 The Flat Again, Newspapers Where We Left Them #MonoNoirRadioDrama #NoirMystery #AudioDrama