Coming to the warning state vehicle inspection post 300m, the driver retrieved from his feet a plate reading saratov – novocherkassk which he placed against the windscreen. But the SVI hut on stilts was in darkness, its officers either sleeping or elsewhere.
On the left, the dawn of a new day was breaking.
“Twenty kilometres on there’s a bit of forest for a halt,” one of the men told the driver.
Half-sitting, half-lying on an upholstered double seat in a world of utter silence, Viktor came to. Straightening his aching back, he looked about him. Of the dozen or so other passengers, some were still asleep. Across the gangway an old man was eating meat from a tin, indifferent to Viktor’s awakening.
The driver had disappeared. They were parked in a forest. He could hear birds.
He got to his feet, made his way to the open door and looked out.
Sun shafting through pines. Shading his eyes, he was overcome with a paralysing sense of unreality. Where the hell was he? Beyond Bim, Eldar and talk of Sphinx, he remembered nothing. He checked his pockets. Passports and credit card were still there. He got out.
A short way off three men in leather jackets were sitting round a fire toasting mushrooms speared on twigs.
Going round to the front of the bus he read the destination board, then, in the grass at his feet, noticed a tiny snail slowly climbing a blade until, bending under his weight, it returned him to the ground.
Novocherkassk was near Rostov-on-Don. Both were North Caucasus.
“Here!” called one of the men by the fire.
He went over and was given a tin of meat, an aluminium spoon and a hunting knife.
“There’s no bread.”
Squatting on the ground, Viktor opened the tin with the knife and ate.
By the fire a ring tone sounded, and putting a mobile to his ear, one of the men spoke in a language Viktor did not recognize.
Just then his companion from across the aisle stepped down from the bus, hurled his empty tin into the trees, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his quilted jacket, squinted up at the sun, then came and joined Viktor.
“Got the time, boy?”
“Half past twelve.”
The old man nodded, sat on the grass beside him and watched the trio enjoying their mushroom kebabs.
“Been there before, boy?”
“Where?”
“Chechnya.”
He shook his head. He wanted to ask about Chechnya, but hesitated to betray the extent of his ignorance.
“Have you?”
“No.” The old man looked around. “Could do with some water … It’s meant selling the cow and slaughtering the two pigs to pay for this … So I’ll be glad to die … I’ve decided to trick them,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “by taking my son’s place. They’ve promised to let him go if I’ll work the debt off. I’ve nothing to ransom him with, even they can see that. Bloody parasites,” he gestured towards the fire, “they’ve bled me dry. The old woman’s left with damn all except potatoes to live on.”
Absorbed in watching two tiny snails engaged in the senseless blade of grass ascent he’d seen earlier, Viktor asked who the men by the fire were.
“Two are Chechen. The driver’s Russian like us.”
“Are the others for Chechnya?”
“They are, boy. Some looking for the missing, some hoping to bargain … I’m being taken as an act of kindness. They told me first I couldn’t go till November, then gave me this date. And you – who’ve you got over there, a brother?”
“No,” said Viktor, looking into weary, deep blue eyes, “a friend.”
It occurred to him suddenly that a miracle was what he’d been expecting of his restaurant meeting with Bim and Eldar Ivanovich, rather as, when a child, he’d been told by his father to close, then open his eyes. Now it was to see with amazement the effect of Bim and Eldar Ivanovich’s magic. But would he, knowingly, have set off for Chechnya in search of Misha? Or sought an opportunity for so doing? Yes, should have been the answer, but to his shame he could not say that it would have been, or yet wouldn’t.
One of the two tiny snails on the same blade of grass dislodged the other and climbed on, until dislodged by Viktor.
“God send you find your friend,” said the old man, getting to his feet.
“May I ask your name?”
“Matvey Vasilyevich. Just going for a piss.” Viktor finished his tin, took the spoon and hunting knife back, thanked the man and asked when they were moving on.
“When it’s dark.”
“Is it far?”
“Weren’t you told?” asked the man in surprise, and with the merest trace of foreign accent.
“No.”
“Well, seeing you’re one of Eldar’s, I’ll tell you … I’m Rezvan.”
Their destination was Achkhoy-Yurt, he said, and they’d be there the day after tomorrow. The seven road blocks were no problem. They did the run every week. They had friends amongst the Russian Feds with their own interest in promoting trouble-free transit. At Achkhoy-Yurt the Green Cross would get to work. They were a good lot, Chechens prepared to trace the missing, dead and captured, help negotiate, and whatever.
“Last time we got out eight for one ransom,” Rezvan added proudly. “True, we lost one, though. His fault. Wouldn’t be told. Fatal in the mountains. Given a photo have you?”
“Photo?”
“Of who you’re looking for?”
Viktor ignored the question.
“Can I get back with you?”
“You’ve a choice, but we’re the cheaper. $300 is the Fed charge by helicopter.”
Again the musical ring tone, and producing his mobile, Rezvan moved away.
Returning to the minibus, Viktor drew the plush curtains towards him, and resting his head against the window, fell asleep.
37
As darkness fell they continued their journey. The passenger compartment was unlit, and Viktor’s eyes soon tired of counting oncoming headlights. After sleeping during the day, he was now in a state of nervy wakefulness. Added to which he was feeling increasingly hungry. Rezvan’s Chechen companion came round with a thermos of drugged tea which Viktor refused and later wished he hadn’t, artificially induced sleep being preferable to abnormal alertness.
Matvey Vasilyevich was asleep, head against the window. Luckiest of their number was a tall dapper man in an Alaska jacket stretched out on the rear bench seat, snoring loudly, while the rest dozed in semi-recumbent postures. At last he relapsed into a state verging on sleep which, though far from ideal, left him registering no more than the noise of the engine, the snoring of other passengers, exchanges in Chechen and terse remarks to the driver, until at last he slept.
Pulling onto the verge, the minibus flashed its warning lights. Ten minutes later a Volga drove up. Two men in battle fatigues heaved two fat sacks into the minibus, then, as the Volga drove off, returned carrying Kalashnikovs.
Light went on in the passenger compartment, the Chechens shook sleepers awake, and pulling from his sack a warm camouflage top and trousers and tossing them onto Viktor’s lap, told him to change into them. The driver replaced the destination board with one bearing the letters MoES in red, which also adorned Viktor’s jacket. They now all looked more or less alike, except for Matvey who with his desiccated, deeply lined face, continued to look very much himself, Ministry of Emergency Services disguise notwithstanding.
Transformations complete, the minibus drove on, the rear bench seat now occupied by the two newcomers. Ahead, the lights of a village. The road was utterly deserted.
38
His far from deep slumbers were fitfully invaded by distant conversation, first in Russian, later in impenetrable Chechen, by which time he was aboard a yacht way, way out at sea, gently rocked by the faintest of breezes. Suddenly the wind strengthened, the sails filled, the boat heeled sharply over throwing him against what proved to be the seat in front. The bus had braked.
The men with Kalashni
kovs were gone. Rezvan was now alone on the passenger seat talking to his companion, who was driving. The Russian driver was no longer with them.
The narrow earth road through the forest was not for vehicles, but to Viktor’s amazement their mini climbed with a will, even with the engine sounding at times at last gasp. It was now light. Somewhere above the densely wooded mountain slopes the sun was shining, and what little of it penetrated to the forest floor seemed the brighter for having done so.
For a brief moment the road levelled out, and with a sigh of relief the driver pulled up and looked at his watch.
Rezvan produced a walkie talkie, spoke into it, waited, and receiving an answer in a burst of static and nodding to the driver, addressed the passengers.
“Which is it to be – blindfold or drugged tea? So if you fall foul of Fed Security, you can’t rack your brains remembering which tree or tree stump you passed.”
Variously expressed, passenger response was unanimously against drugged tea.
Rezvan grinned.
“Just as well, as we’re out of it. Have your kit on the seat beside you.”
The driver handed round black blindfolds, telling them to help each other and not cheat. Viktor blindfolded Matvey Vasilyevich, then himself.
The minibus set off again.
39
At each of the five or six stops that followed, Rezvan ordered everyone to stay blindfolded, then shouted who was to collect his things and get off, this being the stop requested. Outside were always Chechen voices, once there was yelling and the revving of a lorry or armoured troop carrier.
The names he shouted were fairly ordinary – Medvedyev, Pishchenko, Kartashov, Polenin, Dmiterkin – and others that he didn’t remember.
It was a good three hours before they stopped again, having been climbing almost continuously. He tried to reckon how many were left on the bus. Three or four, perhaps, apart from himself. He began to wish he’d asked Matvey Vasilyevich’s surname.
Resting his head against the soft plush curtain, he fell asleep again.
The bus stopped.
“You, and Vasilishin,” came Rezvan’s voice, followed, as Viktor raised a hand to his blindfold, “Keep it on, just get up and out!”
He felt for his sports bag, now the heavier for his clothes, and edging forward, stumbled, only to find an arm supporting him from then on.
“Two steps forward march,” ordered a Moscow voice, and he obeyed.
“One of Eldar’s,” he heard Rezvan say.
40
The deafening beat of helicopter rotor-blades prompted Viktor, seated back to a tree, to look up, though to little purpose. Seated beside him, breathing but not saying a word, was Vasilishin. The blindfold heightened physical awareness, especially of the discomfort of his chewed left shoe, which wriggling his toes did nothing to ease. Two or three male voices approached, then went away – one, to his confusion, speaking both Moscow Russian and Chechen.
He dozed until woken by three helicopters flying over, one after the other, or was it the same one circling? Then silence, then the crackling of a fire.
“You can take your blindfolds off.”
Screwing up his eyes against the sudden light, he found that it was night and that his companion was Matvey Vasilyevich. He held out his hand, and it was firmly shaken.
Sitting by the fire were two men, one tall, crew cut, the other, shorter and plainly a native of the Caucasus, busy stirring a pot.
“We eat, then bash on,” said Crew Cut. “Which we can’t by daylight without one lot or the other trying to kill us, or Special Forces shinning down from helicopters … Come and sit down.”
Which, a waft of boiled mutton whetting the appetite, they did.
Crew-cut Petya was from Zagorsk, something he’d lived down by adopting a Moscow accent, which, in the silence of the Chechen night, rang out so odd and alien, as to be in danger of stopping a bullet any minute.
Maga, the other man, was a Dagestani from Khasavyurt, here, as he explained in the very opposite of Moscow Russian, for the money.
“Good money?” asked Viktor.
“For some, not for others.”
They spooned the mutton stew straight from the pot, eating small dry cake-like loaves with it.
Before they moved on, Petya stamped out the fire and for good measure urinated on the embers.
Following a steep and tortuous path, they came out onto bare, moonlit mountain. Petya and Maga set a cracking pace, and Viktor kept up, gritting his teeth against increasing pain in his left foot. Looking back, he saw that Matvey Vasilyevich was managing, though with difficulty.
Soon the track narrowed to no more than a ledge bounded on the right by vertical rock, on the left by a void, slowing progress and calling for care.
Following close behind the pseudo-Muscovite, Viktor found himself thinking of Kiev and Snail’s Law, some article of which he was very likely offending against – possibly that of having, so to speak, drunk himself out from under the protective shell of Bim, in ignorance of what, beyond finding himself with no fixed shell of abode, the end would be. Here different laws applied, of which he had yet to learn.
He walked with a lighter step, temporarily forgetting the pain in his foot, just as for a while he had forgotten Matvey Vasilyevich.
They came to a ravaged village. Maga led the way through the ruins to where some houses were still intact.
“Take the old un on to Duda, shall I?” Maga asked Petya.
“Then come to Arbi’s.”
“Good luck,” said Matvey Vasilyevich, giving Viktor his hand.
Viktor was sad to see him go. Somehow he’d expected that they would be kept together.
“Come on,” said Petya.
The tiny street led downhill, and at last they came to a tiny house tucked away amongst the ruins. Smoke rose from the chimney. Telling Viktor to wait, Petya went in.
Standing watching the smoke, he became increasingly aware of the cold and its effect on hands, face, thoughts and breath.
On his flight to Argentina the pilot had announced “We are now at 10,000 metres. The air temperature –45°. Those who wish to acclimatize can open the windows.” Everyone had laughed. Thanks to the champagne, there had been a lot of laughter. What was the altitude and air temperature here?
The door creaked open. Petya motioned him to enter.
41
Viktor was allotted a corner curtained off with a camel-hair blanket, with, against the wall under a tiny cracked window, a trestle bed topped with two striped mattresses. On a bedside table a candle threw light on walls and ceiling. On the wall, two copper plates and a black-ribbon-draped photograph of a young man in Soviet Army uniform.
The old Chechen whose house it was spoke no Russian, and having shown Viktor to his corner and pointed to the bed, he left him.
Dumping his bag on the worn carpet, Viktor sat on his bed and took in the silence. From beyond the camel-hair blanket, which was decorated with a brown tiger, came a muttering and rustling. Peeping out, he saw the old man standing looking into an open cupboard.
On the dressing table there was a candle, and the walls were hung with a great number of photographs in old wooden frames. Of what it was too dark to tell.
“Good night,” Viktor said softly, at which the old man swung round in alarm and shook his head.
*
He was woken next morning by someone knocking loudly at the door of the house. Brilliant sunlight was streaming through the tiny window. Pulling on his trousers and scorning his shoes, he emerged from his corner. The old man, in grey dressing gown and black boots, was standing at the open door talking to Maga.
“You can wash out here,” Maga broke off to say.
Edging past them and treading cold stone, Viktor saw a blue washstand with an enamel bowl. Splashing his face and gargling in ice-cold water, he looked round for a towel, but there was none.
The cold was intense, in spite of the bright sun, and returning to the house, he dried his
face on the camel-hair blanket, put on his shirt and his MoES tunic.
Maga motioned him outside.
“Got some photos?”
“No need. There can’t be more than one penguin in Chechnya.”
Maga looked puzzled. He repeated the question several times, thinking he’d misunderstood, and finding he hadn’t finished by giving a dispirited shake of the head.
“Where do we look?”
“He was brought here from Moscow by a businessman called Khachayev, so where Khachayev is, he’ll be.”
“This isn’t a Russian village, you know, where everyone knows everyone else. What are you prepared to pay?”
The question caught him unawares. “Quite a lot.”
“I’ll do my best, though penguins aren’t exactly my line.”
“What is your line?”
“We’ve our Green Cross, a bit like your Red, only privately run. We trace dead and prisoners, and we help negotiate. We’ve a fair fixed tariff.”
“How did Petya get here?” Viktor asked suddenly. “Desert?”
“Posted ‘Missing’. Look, I’ll see what I can find out about this Khachayev. No joy, and that’s my lot. I’ve a living to earn. Anything you need?”
“Boots. My shoes leak.”
42
Viktor spent two days in his corner, going out only to wash or relieve himself. The old man brought him disc-like loaves, dried meat and cheese from the two goats he kept. Maga advised him not to show himself outside any more than he had to.
Conversation with the old man was out, even in sign language. Viktor tried to convey something about himself by way of the photographs on the wall, but in vain. The old man was simply not interested. All Viktor gathered was that he was sleeping where the old man’s younger son used to sleep. This son had died during military service, but how and where was not to be discovered.
Penguin Lost Page 10