“You have killed people, I expect. Do not bother to answer, I am sure you are not allowed to say—but you have killed people. That man out there has killed people too. Yet, who here do you suppose has killed the most people? I will tell you something: doctors kill people all the time.”
She tossed her head and gestured with her glass, slopping vodka onto the floor. “Some of them we kill on purpose, because they are suffering, because it is merciful. Some of them we kill by mistake. So long as we save more than we kill, all is well. Is this you, also? Are you a saviour who kills? The guns and the beatings, are they your scalpels and sutures?” She gave a contemptuous snort. “Are they hell…”
She’d drowned the rest of the sentiment in her glass, draining it and slamming it on the table before weaving her way to the door. Arkady had stayed silent, tending to his onions.
Votyakov joined them for dinner. He made his men eat elsewhere, not even allowing them into the restaurant, maintaining a strict, military demarcation between those giving orders and those expected to follow them. So far as Arkady knew, the Ogre had worked alone at Lefortovo, never in a position to give orders. He suspected it was something he was enjoying to the full, a thrill for the domineering sadist in him. Not his problem, he reminded himself. Not relevant to his mission.
Galina had passed through the belligerent phase of her drunkenness by the time they sat down to eat, and spent the meal in a fugue of remorse. The atmosphere round the table had been strained, made more so by the presence of the Ogre and the evident relish with which he made others uncomfortable.
In Votyakov’s mind, Arkady sensed, the doctors and the girl, lacking FSB credentials, were inferiors. He belittled them in subtle ways, reacting to things they said with amused superciliousness, revelling in his assumed authority. Arkady, he treated like a co-conspirator and equal, rather than a superior. Unless he did something tangibly insubordinate though, there was little to be done about that. Better to have him onside and satisfied than challenging and resentful.
The conversation had been dominated by Zapad initially, who expounded at tedious length about Cosmism and reanimatology. It was too esoteric for the others to contribute, and Arkady could see the Ogre becoming frustrated. He’d begun fidgeting and rolling his eyes, resentful of being made to feel inadequate by what would once have been viewed as bourgeois intellectualism.
His opportunity to assert himself had come when Sophia Molchanov interrupted the doctor with a question. They had finished eating by then, and she was tracing patterns on the tablecloth with her fork, chin resting on her arm.
“I need to ask a question,” she said, interrupting Zapad without looking up. “All this…stuff…all these theories…you don’t believe in life after death, then? I mean, there’s no chance my dad’s in Heaven or something, and that we’re going to spoil that for him…is there?”
Silence had descended. The others had looked to Arkady, as if expecting him to reply. He, in turn, had looked back at Zapad, who eventually gave an embarrassed cough and attempted to answer.
“No. No, I don’t think we need be concerned about that. Post-mortem survival, in the sense you mean, is really not something scientific observation can support. If it was, of course, there’d be no real rationale for cryopreservation. Ha! Er…however, ghosts, afterlives, that kind of thing, are rather easily disproven by rational argument. No, if your father is anywhere, he is in that cryostat. And in your fond memories of him, of course.”
“This is the problem,” Votyakov jeered. “Yet again we see the closed mind of scientists telling us what we can and cannot believe, denying what they simply don’t understand!”
Arkady noticed his balled fists as he looked around the table for support. He didn’t get any, and probably wasn’t expecting any. He was just being argumentative for the sake of it, letting Zapad know who was boss.
The doctor was taken aback by his outburst. “I apologise, Mr Votyakov. No offence was intended. You are a religious man?”
Votyakov had snorted in reply. “I’m not offended, Doctor. I simply pity you; and no, I’m not religious at all. I don’t need any of that nonsense. But I’ve seen enough of the world to know strange things happen, and death is not the simple thing you would have us believe. This is the trouble with you scientists. You expect the world to behave as it does in your laboratories. Those of us who spend our time in the real world know the truth is far stranger than your chemical reactions and”—he waved a hand in the air and shook his head, hunting for a suitable word—“quarks!”
Arkady wondered if he should step in and declare the conversation over. Sophia looked around, worried she had inadvertently sparked a confrontation. Zapad, though, perceived no slight, and was more than willing to debate the point.
“Well, of course I freely admit there are limits our methods cannot yet transcend. Thanatology is, by its very nature, speculative. But the scientific Method—”
“I will tell you something that will transcend the limits of your scientific Method, Doctor,” interrupted Votyakov. “I will tell you a story—a true story—then you shall tell me what your scientific Method has to say about it.”
“Agreed!” said Zapad, slapping the table in his enthusiasm. He seemed happy to have found someone willing to debate him, which Arkady doubted had been Votyakov’s intended outcome.
The Ogre scowled and leaned forwards, making the hunch in his spine even more pronounced. He waited until he was sure he had everyone’s attention before beginning to talk.
“Long ago—long, long ago, now—I was sent to Afghanistan to question captured mujahideen: a waste of time. Farmers, to a man, they couldn’t read, couldn’t write, they were infested with lice—they had no great tactical secrets to uncover. Their only plan was to run at our soldiers, shouting and shooting, until we were all dead. Still, I was sent and I went.
“It’s a beastly country, let me tell you. When it isn’t hot as hell, it’s cold as murder. In the mountains, where the dukhi were hiding, the air is so thin it’s like breathing through a scarf—worse even than here. Where things did grow, plants and grass, you become suspicious, because it was probably full of Basmachi bastards lying in wait. A terrible country…
“One day we received a report that a DShB unit had captured an enemy fighter they suspected of being Pakistani special forces. Of course, we knew for a fact the ISI were supplying the rebels, but the possibility of a live captive able to prove this was far too important to ignore. I was sent with a detachment of men to retrieve him from their outpost, way up in Panjshir.
“They would not provide a helicopter, of course, so for ninety miles we bounced down a road made of nothing but dust and shit, hour after hour, in the back of a bronya. By the end, I was hoping the dushman would attack us just to relieve the monotony!
“When we arrived, it was clear the captive was not a Pakistani—just another stupid local churka with stolen boots, shivering with opium withdrawal. Still, I had a job to do, and I questioned him thoroughly before telling them they’d fucked up. By the time we got to the bottom of things it was almost dark, which meant we had no choice but to spend the night. You did not travel the roads by night in the DRA. Not unless you were determined to die. Night belonged to the dukhi. The DShB made us welcome though, because we had cigarettes to trade and I had brought three bottles of vodka. These men had been reduced to drinking cleaning solvents and cologne, so even cheap, shitty vodka was like God’s tears to them!
“That night, I sat up drinking with their sergeant. He was a good man, for an Estonian. Young, but strong; quiet and fierce; the kind of man you want in combat: a man of action, not just words. He was tired though, to the point of exhaustion, and as we drank more he began to talk about things he could not tell his men. He talked and I listened, to all his complaints about the war and his commanders, about the difficulties they had with communications and supplies. It was dangerous for him to tell me, but once the quiet ones start talking, they never stop.
“Then h
e told me about the attack by the dushman two days before, when they captured the man I’d been questioning. It had been a night attack, of course, in numbers, dozens of mujahideen swarming straight down the barrels of their guns, RPGs bursting in every shadow. I told him, ‘yes, I saw the damage to the trees by the road.’ ‘No,’ he corrected me. ‘That was not the mujahideen. They came from the valley. I blew up the trees last week, with mortar fire.’
“When I asked him why, he told me it was because they were full of crows. There was a rookery there, and all day the crows would bark, and he couldn’t stand the noise. ‘But they are just crows!’ I laughed. ‘Save your mortars for the dushman!’ That is when he became very serious.
“‘They fly back here anyway, no matter how many times we shoot at them,’ he said to me, and then he asked if I believed in fate. Of course, I told him ‘no.’ Such superstitions had no place in the mouth of a Soviet soldier, or so I thought at the time, but I did not say so. When a man begins to incriminate himself, you let him talk. I listened, and he told me all about the crows.”
By now, the company around the table were entranced by the Ogre’s story. He paused to take satisfaction in their suspense, his long, cadaverous face leering at each in turn.
“He told me he had once been to see a fortune teller. A mystic, one of these old bitches who supplement their pensions by reading palms and pretending to see the future in crystal balls. It was on the night before he was to leave for his first day in the army. He went with a bunch of friends and, I think he said, his girlfriend. They were kids—teenagers. They thought it would be fun.
“She saw them one at a time. The girls came out giggling, the boys came out laughing and shaking their heads. It was just a joke, a cheap kick for some drunken kids. He went in last.
“She asked him what he wished to know, this dirty old babushka, with her Jewish symbols and imitation jewelry. ‘I am joining the army,’ he told her. ‘Tell me if I will be sent to Afghanistan.’
“He put money in her hand, and she made a great show of rolling her eyes and moaning, stroking his hand, doing all those things they do. At last, she opens her eyes and says ‘I can tell you how you are to die—if you wish to know.’
“Of course, the man did not believe her, for all her show. ‘She is trying to scare me,’ he thinks, ‘testing my courage. It is a way to extort more rubles from me.’
“‘Tell me, then,’ he demands. ‘I expect I shall live longer than you!’
“The babushka shakes her head. ‘It is a bad death,’ she says. ‘Perhaps it is best not to know.’
“‘I’ll pay you not one ruble more!’ my man tells her, and stands to leave.
“Fast as a striking snake, she grabs his wrist. ‘In a far-off place, you will find your coffin,’ she snarls. ‘Amid fire and thunder, your body will break. A mighty hurricane will smash you to the ground, torn and shattered, deafened, but not dead. There will be shock, yes, and pain—pain without sensation, overwhelming, inner pain—but you will not be dead. You cannot move. Your head is turned towards the sky at a strange angle. You see clouds in the blue sky, above the drifting dust, so peaceful—so far away from hell!’
“My man jerks his hand away from her. This is morbid, rotten, he has no wish to hear it! Still she gibbers at him. ‘Time is passing. The dust settles. A man is pawing at you, taking your possessions. The enemy has come. He thinks you dead, but you are not. He leaves you, and all is still once more. Your eyes and the clouds are the only things to move. Thirst claws your throat, thirst such as you have never known. From this you know you must be bleeding, and tell yourself it cannot now be long.’”
At that point, Votyakov was interrupted by the scrape of a chair. Galina got up to leave.
“I think I’ll go for a cigarette,” she’d said, affecting boredom. Votyakov just smirked. Her show of disdain hadn’t fooled him. Sophia was sat upright now. Everyone’s attention was riveted on him. He watched Galina go and then took up the story again, revelling in their attention.
“‘The sun is sinking when the birds arrive,’ says the crone. ‘Crows. Smart creatures, they are wary at first but soon conclude there is nothing to threaten them here. They have come to claim the dead. Wings flutter about your face, and you cannot move to drive them away. He sees you blinking, this black monster, and it gives him pause. He is only a crow, but he knows the dead do not blink. No matter. You are not moving, and he will take your eyes!’
“Ewwwww!” Sophia grimaced and turned her face away in reflexive horror. Votyakov nodded with satisfaction and hurried to continue his story before Zapad could interrupt.
“By now, the man is disgusted. He shook as he told me the tale, drips of sweat cutting clean paths through the dirt on his face. ‘For months I saw that bird whenever I closed my eyes to sleep,’ he told me. He thought the babushka had put a curse on him, and perhaps she had. ‘You cannot stop his dirty, plunging beak! You are powerless! He will eat the eyes right out of your head and leave you blind!
“‘You will lie there, lost and alone, carrion birds feeding from your wounds. There will be no sensation but misery and horror. At last the sun will go down, the birds will leave, and rats will arrive to burrow deeper still into your flesh, gnawing and clawing their way into you. The darkness will become complete, your thoughts will slow, and you will realise you have died.’”
The Ogre grinned at them, lips drawn back to expose his gums, teeth like a row of headstones. His eyes gleamed with wickedness, like those of a small boy tormenting animals. Arkady had shuddered, and he shuddered again now, recalling it. The Ogre enjoyed death. It amused him, and the morbid pleasure he took in his story was more disturbing than his words.
“He left her parlour in a temper,” Votyakov continued, “and tried to put the whole thing from his mind. It was silly! She was silly, not worth thinking about, just a daft, old Estonian bat! Still…every time he heard the cry of a crow, her words came back to him, and he couldn’t relax when they were around. When I met him, he had been stationed at that godforsaken little outpost for five months, quietly losing his mind.
“The next time I saw him, he was dead.
“I was finally ordered to return to Moscow. I tell you, I was very glad to go! Worse than the dirt, and the heat, and the cold, and the discomfort, was the boredom. I had nothing to do in the DRA…most of the time, at least. I was looking forward to getting home, getting drunk…getting laid.” He paused before continuing, with a sleazy, predatory smile, his eyes drifting towards Sophia.
“My flight home is from Bagram. When I get to the airfield I find I will be on a ‘Cargo 200’ flight: a repatriation run. My fellow passengers will be the dead. There is a hangar there that is like a slaughterhouse, where they are putting soldiers’ bodies into boxes for transport. While I wait, I talk to one of the ground crew and he tells me most are from a DShB checkpoint near Panjshir.
“Of course, I ask him if there is a sergeant among the dead, and make him check the manifest. Sure enough, there is the name of my companion from the outpost. I remember his story. I remember what he was afraid of. I order them to open his coffin.
“Well…he is not a pretty sight. They were hit by dushman artillery: 107mm rockets which blew them all to hell. His neck is broken, spine severed. Animals have made their marks on him, his eyes, tongue, ears, all gone, his torso split and eviscerated.”
The Ogre sat back, and let them savour the horror for a moment before turning to face Zapad.
“So, you tell me, Doctor: how does your science explain the fact that some fat Estonian witch knew how he would die, years before he did? What is your official, rational explanation for that?”
Zapad had been waiting patiently for his chance to dissect the Ogre’s account, and leaned forward, eager to give his interpretation.
“Well, of course it’s an interesting tale in many ways—thank you for sharing it—but a single, anecdotal account is seldom able to meet the burden of proof. Replicability is crucial, of course. Now, if we
could find your Estonian soothsayer and have her repeat such a feat under laboratory conditions, it would dismiss many of the scientific objections…but, of course, we cannot be certain the man died in the manner she described. It is perhaps more likely he was killed in the barrage and his body was predated post-mortem. An interesting account, nevertheless. Perhaps one day, when our descendants have restored all of us to some form of consciousness, we will have the opportunity to ask him for ourselves!”
Votyakov bristled at the scientist’s polite dismissal of his story, but Arkady jumped in and press-ganged Zapad and Sophia into service in the kitchen before things could escalate to the point of outright argument. Disgruntled, the Ogre announced it was time for him to depart for Novosibirsk, and left to round up his men. Arkady imagined he had probably taken out his frustrations on them instead. He’d left two behind, ordered the other two into one of the Land Rovers, and rattled away across the plateau, headed for the airport. Arkady watched them go, waiting on the doorstep until the car’s brake lights were swallowed by the gently-sighing pines.
Now though, lying awake and listening to the persistent beat of pop music from Sophia’s room down the corridor, the Ogre’s tale kept running through his head: pecking birds and gnawing rats, a dark threshold gradually crossed. He thought about the ominous, silver tank in the corner of the calorimeter room, and wondered whether anyone else was having difficulty sleeping, too. Was it his imagination or had a morbid shadow fallen across the plateau and their little team? For all his pragmatism, he couldn’t shake a sense of predestination, as if their choices weren’t choices at all, just station stops on a track taking them…where? The world’s exit felt close just there, midway between the valley and the clouds.
His sleep was fitful, punctuated by dark and formless dreams.
*
He woke feeling groggy and thirsty, unwilling to face the day. The room was too cold, the morning too dark, and the pain in his leg gritty and persistent. He forced himself to get up and avoided looking in the mirror until he had showered and dressed. Shaving be damned, he thought. He wasn’t in the office now.
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