They hadn’t spoken much. There was no need to talk; everybody knew what the mission was about and what was expected of them. Most of the women had little or no experience of hostage-taking, but they’d been given clear instructions, trained for days and had the protocol drilled into them. They knew they were going to die. After one of these operations you didn’t live to tell the tale. Unless your name was Chalim Barchayev and Moscow had declared you dead on more than one occasion, but at the next fatal hijacking, kidnapping or hostage-taking you seemed to rise from the ashes like a phoenix.
Further down the corridor he saw the man with the head of a vulture. He was pushing a handcuffed woman with long black hair ahead of him. For a moment, Barchayev thought she was a sister-in-arms. If so, he wouldn’t have wanted her to die. He’d have taken her as his fifth wife and kicked out the other four.
‘She’s going to be the main attraction,’ Vulture Head said in Russian. ‘The grand finale. But first we’ll turn her into a film star.’
She’s too beautiful, Chalim thought to himself. But he knew he had no choice. The financial backer, who’d rewarded him so handsomely for this action, was too powerful.
11
On the other side of the digital camera, which was mounted on a slender tripod, the condor casually held a gun to the head of a young student begging for her life. From that position he looked at Farah with an almost bored grin.
‘Now say what I want you to say, bitch. And do it convincingly. You can save this girl’s life.’
‘What do you want me to say?’ Farah murmured. She was trembling with despair.
‘Repeat after me!’ the condor said. ‘I, Farah Hafez …’
‘I, Farah Hafez …’
‘… support the jihad against President Potanin’s criminal regime.’
Suddenly she saw her father standing in a corner. ‘Padar,’ she begged in silence. ‘Please help me. Give me the wisdom to do what I have to do.’
‘Give them what they want,’ her father said. ‘You’ll save a life by doing so, bachem.’ But when Farah repeated what the condor primed her to say, he only pressed the gun tighter against the whimpering girl’s temple and threatened to pull the trigger.
‘The jury thought your performance was rather, let’s say, amateurish. You’ll have to do better – with more feeling this time,’ he snarled.
Farah took a deep breath. She was on the verge of hyperventilating. She thought of the way she’d flung her Russian opponent on to the mat in Carré, and fired her text at the camera.
‘I, Farah Hafez, support …’
No shot rang out. Instead the condor slapped her in the face with the flat of his hand.
‘Don’t overdo it, bitch.’
12
Chaos abounded in the crisis centre: it was a pandemonium of Babylonian proportions with a room full of know-it-alls shouting at and through each other, each believing they had the best solution for the hostage crisis.
Amid the bedlam, Paul was acutely aware that there was no government representative present, while Chalim Barchayev had made it more than clear he was only prepared to deal with Kremlin officials. The result: a stalemate because Potanin’s people didn’t negotiate with terrorists, even if most of the two hundred hostages were foreign students. Thus the area was teeming with staff from different international embassies.
‘C’mon,’ Anya said. ‘We’re of no use here.’
Once outside, she walked up to an ambulance, where she spent some time whispering with two nurses outside Paul’s earshot. Then she motioned to him. A few minutes later, wearing white coats and carrying medical supplies, they approached the military cordon surrounding the building. Anya explained, and clearly successfully, that they’d just got word some of the hostages needed immediate medical attention. Once they neared the building, she also knew exactly where they had to go.
‘I went to university here, remember?’ Via the basement door they headed up two flights of stairs.
‘But if we can do this, why isn’t the army doing anything?’ Paul whispered, agitated.
‘It’s happening,’ Anya said. ‘Apparently Alpha Spetsnaz is assembled right around the corner. But top officials in the Kremlin have a vested interest in letting this boil over. A few hostages might even have to be sacrificed; it’s hard to know. Ditch the white jacket!’
‘Zhurnalisti!’, she shouted as they walked through a dark-tiled corridor. She pushed the Nikon into Paul’s hands. In a few seconds they were surrounded by three women with black headscarves clad in bomb vests.
‘Anya Kozlova, from the Moskva Gazeta. I’m here for Chalim Barchayev.’
In the improvised command centre in the cafeteria, Paul saw a menacing-looking man who reminded him of a radical imam. But this man wasn’t wearing the prescribed long robe, the mustahab, but wore camouflage fatigues, was hung with grenades and had an automatic weapon within reach. Barchayev began to smile broadly when he saw Anya, grabbed his AK-47 and pointed it at her.
‘You know what we do with Russian infiltrators?’ he said, laughing.
‘It’s not funny, Chalim, you don’t want to know what tricks I had to pull this time to get inside,’ Anya said.
To Paul’s shock, they embraced. But he realized she was bluffing. He could hear it in her voice. She was pretending to be the defiant terrorist sweetheart and it worked.
‘And who’s he?’ Barchayev casually asked, pointing the barrel of his weapon at Paul.
‘My photographer.’
‘Looks like he pissed off a whole lot of people.’
‘Right you are,’ she replied. ‘He’s the worst photographer ever.’
Their laughter belonged in a pub at last orders, not in this cafeteria with the sobbing of female hostages in the background.
‘What’s your plan now, Chalim?’ Anya asked, displaying little emotion.
‘Simple: to die,’ he said with a grin.
‘Again?’
‘Yes. And all the hostages die with us. Because I don’t expect the Kremlin guys to show.’
‘But you’re at war with Russia, not the rest of the world. Most of these students aren’t Russian.’
Suddenly Barchayev sounded very calm. ‘It’s time to show the world that no life is sacred to those Kremlin bastards.’ To Paul it sounded like a line someone else had thought up for him.
‘May we take some photos?’ Anya asked. ‘The world always wants to see faces.’
The auditorium stank of sweat and urine: the smell of fear. The stench made it hard for Paul to breathe. There was a large black flag with Arabic writing on it. When Paul discovered Farah amongst the hostages, he felt his heart skip a beat. She was handcuffed to a chair, with a wide piece of tape across her mouth. An explosive was strapped to her chest. The wires were connected to a laptop, with a digital clock ticking down the last thirty minutes. Farah was sweating profusely and her body was trembling all over, despite the stifling heat.
‘A gift from our client,’ Barchayev proudly mocked.
‘Who gave you her?’ Anya asked as Paul walked towards Farah, holding his Nikon. He didn’t hear Barchayev’s reply. He was only focused on Farah’s huge terrified eyes. She wasn’t looking at him, but at something behind him. Before Paul could turn around, a rifle butt cracked his skull.
He woke up in the corridor with Arseni Vakurov looming over him.
‘Pentimento, pentimento. Repentance, repentance!’ Vakurov echoed as if he were singing the lead in Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung. ‘Haven’t you learned anything, Chapelle?!’
Vakurov’s kick hit him in the midriff, cutting off his breath. The boot rested on Paul’s left arm. He feebly resisted with his right hand but couldn’t prevent the other boot from kicking his head like a football.
He realized he was going to be stomped to death. He vomited blood. Lay there motionless. Heard the sound of heavy panting above him.
Vakurov was staring at him.
‘This is no fun. What are you, a faggot? Get the fuck up!’
Paul pulled himself up on his hands and knees. He grabbed on to a door handle, rose to his feet unsteadily only to be met by a karate kick to the chest that propelled him backwards right through a stained-glass door. Paul landed on the floor amidst the broken glass and could barely hear what Vakurov said next, ‘Now it’s over.’ Prophetic words to say the least. When the condor kicked what was left of the door out of its frame and stepped through it to finish Paul off, he tripped a booby trap wire.
Before Paul even realized it, Arseni Vakurov had been blown to bits, his body parts flying in every direction.
13
Major Sergey Boldyrev was thirty-six and a staff officer of the Alpha Spetsnaz anti-terror unit in charge of special operations. He and his commandos had rolled out of the hold of a Flying Tank, a MI-24 helicopter that had landed not far from the Seven Sisters earlier in the day.
He’d spent years fighting in Chechnya as a member of the Seventh Novocherkassk Special Force, during which he’d managed to kill both of Barchayev’s infamous brothers, Abdul and Movsar. Eliminating the most feared scion of the Barchayev clan, Chalim, would be the crowning glory of his career.
Sergey had gathered together his men in the building next to the Mass Media Centre. The commandos had been trained to force their way into occupied buildings and to quickly eliminate their opponents with precision shots. Sergey had been given the green light by his superiors and after the explosion he’d just heard he didn’t want to wait a second longer.
He’d shown his men the floor plans. ‘This is where we are. The terrorists are over in this sector. We suspect they’ve installed booby traps at the entrances, there and there. So that’s why we’re entering here – where they’ll least expect us. It’s a narrow passage. I want five scouts to take the lead. Watch out for explosives. Marksmen close behind. As soon as we’re in, deploy stun grenades. The back-up team provides cover. Stick close to the marksmen. Ready?’
‘Deystviye!’
Thirty commandos ran, stooped down, across the grass towards the auditorium. They broke the windows and glass doors with the backs of their automatic weapons, then threw the stun grenades, whose furious thunder and lightning effect disorientated the terrorists who were then shot in the head with silenced hand guns. In that way Sergey managed to free all the hostages from the three seminar rooms within the space of a few minutes and break through to the auditorium, where he eliminated the remaining black widows. There was no trace of Barchayev.
Suddenly a man with a ravaged face appeared in front of him. His clothes were splattered with blood and, by the looks of it, pieces of human skin and tissue. He frantically pointed to a young Middle-Eastern-looking woman who’d had her mouth taped shut and was strapped to a chair. With his ear protectors on Sergey struggled to understand what the man was saying, but he instantly knew what was going on. He yelled into his microphone for assistance with an improvised explosive device.
Then he ordered the immediate evacuation of the building.
He knelt down beside the woman. He recognized the army-green casing in front of her belly by its inscription: FRONT TOWARD ENEMY. It was a M18A1 Claymore, filled with hundreds of steel bullets which, upon ignition, would be expelled at more than 1,000 kilometres per second. Two wires were connected to a laptop that showed a digital clock counting down.
Sergey noticed they had seven minutes left. He took off his ear protectors and spoke briefly with the man who’d been badly beaten. He turned out to be a Dutch journalist. The woman in the chair was his colleague. Sergey had received basic training in disconnecting timers, but didn’t know how to do this on a laptop. There was no guarantee he’d manage to save the woman’s life – and with that all of theirs. He told the man to talk to her, to keep her calm.
14
Paul could immediately tell from Farah’s eyes that she was somewhere else, far away, hiding behind a curtain of fear. They were surrounded by noise, screaming, orders being shouted in Russian, students fleeing through the exits. It was total mayhem. He knelt beside her and began talking as calmly as he could manage.
‘Farah, it’s me, Paul. Do you recognize me? Farah, can you hear me?’
The Alpha commander instructed him to take hold of her shoulders to stop the trembling. It would be best if she moved as little as possible.
‘Stand next to her. Try to keep her focused!’
Paul did what he was told, leaned over her caringly and continued talking.
‘I … you know what it is, I haven’t seen you in over thirty years … but I’ve never forgotten you … did you know that? And after all that time, you saved my life in a car accident! Do you know how that feels? Listen to me, it feels brilliant. It feels amazingly brilliant. You hear what I’m saying, brilliant! And you didn’t fucking pull me out of that wreck to …’
She was breathing too rapidly. The commander now had two others assisting him. They deliberated in a feverish tone as one of them was about to cut a wire attached to the timer. The other man stopped him because he discovered something on the laptop screen.
Paul was still talking. ‘We’re going to be okay, you hear me, you and I. So stay with me. Look at me, Farah! I’m here with you, don’t give up!’ He was handed a bottle of water and put it against her mouth. She drank instinctively.
‘We’re going to take care of everything. Look … look at me …’ And he bent slightly forward to look into her eyes.
‘The first time … Do you remember the first time? The butterflies in the garden? Can you see me …? Farah, do you see me standing here?’ For a moment he thought he caught a glint of recognition in her eyes.
‘Farah …!’
15
The Fokker Executive Jet 70 taking off from Domodedovo International Airport bound for Schiphol was only half full. The Dutch prime minister and his staff had immediately cancelled the rest of the planned visit, but part of the trade delegation had chosen to stay despite the hostage crisis.
Thanks to the connections of a former detective colleague, who now worked for State Security back home, Joshua had managed to get a seat on the private government plane. Before taking off, he’d called Tomasoa and explained the situation to him. Tomasoa had the impression that the Public Prosecutor was stalling on the Lombard matter, but he’d had contact with the National Department of Criminal Investigations. The plan was for a team to be waiting at the gate when Lombard landed and to detain him for questioning.
But Joshua had an uneasy feeling, especially since Tomasoa had told him that the preliminary investigation into Kovalev’s death had stirred up trouble. ‘It’s all getting rather complicated.’ Joshua couldn’t get those words out of his head. Tomasoa was not a man who easily labelled things ‘complicated’.
Once the Fokker had landed and was hooked up to the gangway, Joshua felt his heart throbbing in his throat. He followed closely on the heels of the security men escorting Lombard. As they approached the gate, there were indeed two men from Criminal Investigations waiting, accompanied by two military policemen.
He felt a moment of quiet triumph. He made eye contact with the national guys. After the arrest, he’d compliment them and perhaps even give them a comradely slap on the shoulder. But his joy gave way to disbelief when he saw that the detectives didn’t stop Lombard and his party. All four of them were now staring at him with taut faces. A detective a head taller approached him.
‘Detective Calvino,’ he calmly said, ‘in connection with an investigation into the death of a man in custody and violation of diplomatic law, you are hereby under arrest.’
16
The butterflies scattered because the boy suddenly came and stood in front of her. His face looked like he’d just been in a fight. He was sweating and he gazed at her intently with his bright-blue eyes. He knew her name, he knew who she was. He asked her if she could see him. He asked in Dari.
‘Farah, do you see me?’
She said she could see him, he mustn’t think she was blind, but she didn’t hear herself sp
eaking. Her voice was lost somewhere. No sound came out of her mouth. Still, she carried on talking to him.
‘I can see you, Paul. I know who you are.’
She wished she could calm his nerves, because he was sweating and talking too fast. She herself was calm; she was where she wanted to be: in the garden, among the butterflies that were fluttering all around her. She wanted to reassure him.
‘There’s no scaring me.’
She said it with as much persuasion as she could muster, but it didn’t get through to him. He came really close, his face hovering right in front of hers. Then she noticed that the droplets running down his cheeks weren’t sweat. She’d never been this close to a boy before. She could hear his breath in her ear. Felt herself growing light. Her heart was beating so fast now she thought it might burst.
‘Farah?’
Her father’s voice. This was confusing.
‘It’s time, Farah.’
She saw her father, looking at her like he’d done before he drove off in the black Borgward for the last time.
‘Padar!’ She yelled at the top of her lungs.
And then the sun broke into a thousand fiery pieces and the butterfly garden turned as white as snow.
Acknowledgements
Dad for all your travels and Mum for being his rock.
Marianne for your faith in me.
Jihane for your beautiful stories.
Tom for your inspirational guidance and support.
Patricia for your take on Farah and your help building her world.
Diana for your surprising insights and incisive analyses.
Butterfly on the Storm Page 45