Dozens of civilian explorers have been recruited to help bolster underground defenses in Odesa, a port city in Ukraine. “We need to prepare people,” one said. “In any attack on our city, the catacombs can save us.”
The Ukrainian port city of Odesa sits atop a labyrinth of catacombs—technically, limestone quarries—which constitute perhaps the world’s largest network of urban tunnels, extending ten stories deep and tracing some fifteen hundred miles beneath the streets. Ever since the nineteenth century, as stonecutters mined the passages to build the city, locals have regarded these voids as a realm of mystery and peril.
On one of his first missions, he trekked with a band of men through a warren of limestone tunnels beneath the historic neighborhood of Moldavanka. Sweeping their flashlight beams through the dark, the group arrived at the door of an old bomb shelter. Peering inside, they found rusted walls, piles of rubble, and puddles of stagnant water.
It was clear from the first moments how much Mauser loved his city’s underground. He spoke English in a percussive Slavic accent that made everything sound like a pronouncement of wonder. “Very fucking amazing!” he would exclaim, as we turned down new passages or emerged into unseen chambers. Down one tunnel, we cast our lights over a ceiling that was ridged with brick arches like the ribs of a whale skeleton.
A few days later, on Mauser’s recommendation, I visited Nerubayske, a village to the north of Odesa where a section of catacombs had been opened to the public as the Museum of Partisan Glory. Several stories underground, I wandered dank, dimly lit tunnels that had the feeling of a lost troglodyte city. One stony chamber had been retrofitted as a kitchen, complete with a cooking stove and shelves for pots. Down another passage was a bedroom, with bunk beds carved out of the walls.
Before I left for my flight, Mauser met me on the cobblestones outside my hotel. As a parting gift, he brought a prized relic from his collection: an old Soviet gas mask, which I still have on a shelf at home.
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