by John Sweeney
Zeke had no response to that. Instead, he asked a question.
‘The dukhi commanders. They’re all the same?’
‘No. Massoud, the Tajik Lion of Panjsher, he’s a fighter but he’s correct. When we fight him, our men die, our men are captured, but they’re not skinned or castrated, at least not routinely. With Hekmatyar, the ISI’s favourite, our men suffer. It’s his men who throw acid at headmistresses, who hate the twentieth century. With him, there is no conversation. He is a fanatic, like Mao, like Stalin. Different ideology, same fucking madness.’
Their conversation was interrupted by the Yakut. The sergeant produced a torch from nowhere, switched it on and, using its feeble light, laid a booby-trap line to the single grenade he had on him, stretching it from side to side of a narrow defile in the great rock. In the dim light cast by the torch, he put his fingers to his lips.
The general leaned over and spoke into Zeke’s ear: ‘The dukhi will have watched us enter this rock and not leave. So we must go, but quietly.’
It struck Zeke as insane that they should be on the move again, in total darkness on an almost vertical slope. He was beginning to understand the depth of the Soviets’ fear of – or respect for – the dukhi.
The Yakut sergeant, who had eyes like a cat, led them out of the darkness of the half-cave into the blackness of the night. The wind soughed through the mountain passes, and in the far distance they could hear the sob of Soviet bombers, as melancholic as the draw of the bow across a cello’s strings.
Walking, stumbling and tripping, they staggered downhill for more than an hour, until a greyness ahead of them hinted at moonrise. They stopped and lay in the shadow of a rock the shape of a hammer, and waited for dawn. Zeke couldn’t find anywhere comfortable to rest, so he didn’t.
In the morning, they struggled down the mountain, half dead from lack of sleep, but made it to the road. The Yakut found a stream running, with cold water of the utmost clarity. They feasted on it until they were almost sick. Then they hung back in shadow, hidden from view, and waited.
An hour passed; two; three. The tension grew. After another twenty minutes, a convoy of Spetsnaz – Soviet special forces – thundered through. The general and the Yakut leapt out in front of the vehicles, screaming and cursing, using the most foul-mouthed Russian oaths.
The convoy juddered to a halt, but the moment it did the dust and rock around them began to pitter and pang and zsssst with incoming bullets. The rear door of a Russian APC clanked open and they ran inside, safe. Beyond exhausted, Zeke sat back, protected by bulletproof glass and thick metal. The general handed him a spent .303 bullet.
‘A memento of your stay in Afghanistan.’
The bullet was marked ‘POF’ – Pakistan Ordnance Factories – proof for Zeke that the CIA had been cheated out of hundreds of millions of dollars by the ISI.
Zeke smiled his idiot smile and put it in his pocket.
The handover took place on a wooden bridge on the road to Pakistan, a blue torrent bursting with snowmelt far below. Twenty Soviet soldiers, looking sheepish but delighted to be alive, trooped west. The general stood on the Russian side of the bridge and greeted every one of them, asking after their health, hugging some, slapping the backs of the others. They looked on him as if he were a god. After all twenty soldiers were safe on the Russian side, the general held up his hand.
‘Men, I’m glad you’re back with us. To be honest with you, how we did this’ – he smiled at Uygulaan, who grinned back at him – ‘wasn’t entirely by the rule book. So keep shtum. Not a word about what’s happened today to anyone. Not a word about him’ – he gestured towards Zeke – ‘or else it will be my balls on the wire. OK?’
He shook Zeke by the hand and pointed to a motorbike with a white flag flying from it.
‘Here, take this. It’ll save you a long walk. Your people are one, two miles away, straight down the track, on the southern side of a second bridge. And none of our Hinds’ – the Soviet attack helicopters – ‘will fire on this track for two hours at least. If they try, my men will alert them to their fraternal error.’
Zeke was embarrassed to admit that he didn’t know how to ride a motorbike. The general roared with laughter and then proclaimed in English: ‘I teach CIA.’ His troops stared, agog, as the teacher and the student, enemies in war, worked through the mechanics of double-declutching a Soviet Army motorbike. As the bike clattered in the dust, Zeke, riding solo at last, dared to salute the general and his boys as he went round, and in doing so almost came off, causing more hilarity.
Just before he left, the general whispered something in his ear: ‘I didn’t want to tell you this until I was sure the trade was done and my boys were safe. I heard a whisper in Kabul: there isn’t just one CIA man in town, but two. One is you. The other, the second American, is with us.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. Your job, I think. Good luck, Mr Chandler, good luck! Now go.’
Zeke rode the bike extraordinarily slowly at first, but as he got used to the machine and the flattish terrain he began to speed up, almost enjoying himself. The general had given him much to think about.
Jed Crone was waiting for him at the second bridge. Zeke got off the bike, killed the engine, and yanked it onto its stand.
Someone coughed, not quite meaning it.
‘How was Kabul?’ asked Crone.
‘So-so,’ said Zeke. ‘So-so.’
That fake cough again.
Zeke came out of his reverie to see the stone-faced man standing by the door. He apologised, stood up and was led into a wood-panelled office, lined with books. Along one side of a large oak table, five elders of the Church sat in high-backed chairs; on the other side stood one plain chair. He had known every single one of them all their lives. The high priest of the Melchizedek order, Elder Jeremiah Thring, some nine years Zeke’s junior, picked up a slim pamphlet in black covers from the table, cleared his throat and the proceedings began.
‘I announce that this session of the Strengthening Church Members Committee has been called to examine the following pamphlet written by Ezekiel Chandler. Brother Chandler, you wrote this thing?’
Zeke nodded.
‘Brother Chandler, this session is being tape-recorded for legal purposes, so we need to hear your responses, loud and clear.’
‘I am the author of the pamphlet in your hand,’ said Zeke.
‘And it’s title is “Mormonism: An Impudent Fraud?”’
‘That is correct.’
Elder Thring started to read in a voice edged with anger: ‘Joseph Smith, 1805–1844, the founder of the Mormon Church, claimed the Angel Moroni led him to golden plates on which was transcribed the Book of Mormon, proof that some Israelites had travelled to America until they died out around AD 400. The Book of Mormon identifies the following crops: barley, figs, grapes and wheat. But does the archaeological record provide any evidence of barley, figs, grapes and wheat in America before the conquistadors arrived, following Columbus’s discovery of the New World in 1492? It does not.’
He paused. The silence in the room grew until Zeke felt he had to puncture it.
‘And the animals?’ pressed Zeke. ‘Don’t forget the animals. The Book of Mormon says in pre-Columbus America there was ass, bull, calf, cattle, cow, goat, ox, sheep, sow, swine, elephant. Is there any archaeological evidence to support our holy book? There is not. Horses are cited in eleven separate instances in the Book of Mormon. Horses came to the American continent with Cortes in 1519. The Book of Mormon is hokum, Jeremiah.’
Thring let the pamphlet fall onto the table. ‘Brother Chandler, you were born into this faith and yet you mock it. You have been a good Mormon and have served your country impeccably, and yet you bring hatred to your people. You are of good family, with seven children and many grandchildren who are all Mormons of good standing. What on earth has made you do this – to attack this, our Church, with such poison?’
Five pairs of eyes bored into him.
&
nbsp; Zeke shifted in his chair, coughed, but said nothing.
‘Well, Brother Chandler?’
‘I read something by a man called Archibald Sayce.’
‘Is he a hater?’
Zeke shook his head.
‘You’ve got to say it out loud, Brother Chandler, for the record.’
‘Archibald Sayce was Professor of Assyriology at Oxford University in 1891. One of the very first people to decipher Egyptian and Hittite hieroglyphs – that is, he unlocked languages, cultures that had been dead to us for some three thousand years. Sayce was a genius. He was shown the pictures in the Mormon Book of Abraham. Sayce wrote’ – Zeke’s ability to recall detail had been a thing of wonder to his colleagues in the CIA – ‘that “it is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph Smith’s impudent fraud”. For the Book of Abraham, Smith cannibalised an Egyptian funeral drawing, crudely replacing the head of a jackal with the head of a man. If Sayce is right, then the Book of Abraham is hokum too. And all of the stuff about Kolob is wrong as well. Kolob the star, Kolob the nearest planet to heaven. All that space-alien stuff we believe in.’
Elder Thring wanted to interrupt, but something about Zeke made him hold his tongue. It never crossed Zeke’s mind, but the elder was afraid of him. They all were.
‘This summer I went to New York State to examine the court records myself, with my own eyes.’
Now it was the turn of the committee members to shift uneasily in their high-backed chairs.
‘So I went through the paperwork and found court records showing that Joseph Smith was a confidence trickster. The word for it back in the 1820s was “glass-looker” – someone who duped others into thinking that he had magical powers and could find treasure in Indian burial mounds. So, gentlemen, this fall I came to the conclusion that I have spent my entire life in the sway of a false belief, based on the word of a liar and a fraud. And so have all of you.’
His words fell on the committee like pebbles lobbed into a silent pool. After a time, Elder Thring squared his chest and studied the faces of the other four committee members in turn. All four nodded. He faced Zeke directly: ‘Brother Chandler – we, the Committee for Strengthening Church Members, do unanimously find that you have mortally abused the good name and goodwill of our Church by writing this poison, and we recommend that your name be struck out of the records as a Mormon of good standing. You may now leave.’
He gestured to the pamphlet lying on the table.
‘And you can take your filth with you.’
Zeke picked up his leaflet and left the room, his head held high. He crossed the street, walked four or five blocks downhill, entered a 7-Eleven and bought himself a packet of cigarettes and some matches. Then he found a bar – Harry’s Bar – secured an empty table and went to order a drink or two.
‘Hi. Can I have a bottle of white wine, a bottle of red, an Irish whiskey, a beer, a screwdriver and a coffee?’
‘I’ll bring the drinks over. Where’s your party sitting?’ asked the barmaid.
Zeke smiled thinly and said, ‘I’m sitting at table seven. Oh, and a crème de menthe.’
SOUTHERN RUSSIA
On the edge of town, stout homes of brick gave way to wooden shacks, becoming poor and poorer, but what was virtually the last house was a shrine to kitsch, seven storeys high, concrete, as ugly as sin, its frontage of fake gold glittering in the winter’s sun.
‘More money in pigs than you’d think,’ said Reikhman.
The others held their tongues.
The palace was guarded by a high brick wall and lay behind two large blue gates. They sat in the SUV and waited, until the gates opened and a big black BMW saloon eased out onto the road and headed off, fast, away from the town. The driver was a conspicuously short man, all but a dwarf, in his early sixties.
‘Target number two,’ said Reikhman. ‘They call him Vysoky, the Tall One.’ Konstantin got ready to follow, but Reikhman called out from the back, ‘Don’t move for now. I know where he’s going.’
After ten uneasy minutes, Reikhman gave the order for Konstantin to start up. They headed out into the countryside, turned down a side road with good asphalt, which led to a broad river, frozen from bank to bank in a milky carapace. The BMW was parked close by. Vysoky had walked out into the middle of the frozen ice and was occupied with turning a hand drill to carve a hole in it, his fishing rod lying by his side. Reikhman took his camera, adjusted the focus, then handed it to Iryna. ‘It’s on autofocus. Just point it at him. I won’t be long.’
They watched as Reikhman walked out onto the ice, carefully, slowly, so that he didn’t slip. The two men had a conversation, but they couldn’t be heard from the SUV. Suddenly Vysoky made to run, as fast as his little legs could go, but Reikhman shot him twice: first in the right leg, then the left. Vysoky buckled, fell, and ended up lying on the ice, clutching his right leg, a pool of blood spreading out from his wounds. Reikhman circled him, staring while he loaded a fresh round of bullets into his gun and then pointed it straight down and fired into the ice, moved and fired again, letting off six more shots in quick succession, tracing a half-circle around Vysoky. He slammed in a second fresh clip and completed the circle. Then the newly created ice floe, sodden with blood, started to upend. Vysoky lost his balance but managed to grab on to the uppermost tip of the ice with his right hand. The tug of the current made the upended floe wobble but Vysoky held on, one-handed, desperate to survive. Reikhman crouched down and Iryna zoomed in; through the viewfinder she saw him take out a knife and slash at Vysoky’s fingers. Vysoky let go and slid down into the river, the current under the ice, strong and fast, doing the rest, dragging him under. Reikhman threw rod and hand drill after him into the hole in the ice, its edge rimmed with blood, and started walking back to the SUV.
‘He’s psycho,’ said Konstantin. Iryna gestured to the blinking red light on the camera monitor, still picking up sound. Konstantin closed his eyes, sickened by his mistake. Iryna knew she should delete Konstantin’s remark but she felt frozen by her fear of Reikhman. In the end, she did nothing.
‘Two down, one to go,’ said Reikhman when he got back into the SUV. The others stayed silent.
For Anna Shakhmatova, the old schoolmistress, Reikhman had special instructions. To review the case, he plugged his headphones into the micro-recorder and listened to Iryna coaxing the story out of the old babushka. She had a good way with people, this Iryna; she got them to talk naturally.
‘Little Zoba was the quietest child I ever taught. His home life was so very miserable. His father, well, he wasn’t there, and his mother had come here, found a new man, who didn’t like him one bit. A sadness, an unhappiness about this boy. The other kids, they sensed this. Children can be so cruel. They picked on him, calling him the devil’s bastard. Because he was so alone and unpopular, it seemed he had to prove himself, to do manly things. Once he went into the countryside and ended up in a thorn bush. I heard that one of the other children pushed him into the bush, deliberately. They used to bully him so. The poor boy, his back was covered in thorns, like a porcupine. I took out the thorns he couldn’t get to, the best I could. There was lots of blood. The strange thing was, he didn’t cry, not a sound from him. Poor, miserable thing, you sensed that no one loved him. I felt sorry for him but he stuck to me like a cat. I never felt . . . None of us back then ever dreamt that he would one day end up where he is now. Such a sad little boy.’
Reikhman switched off the micro-recorder and stared out the window of the Mercedes, watching snow on snow, the endless forest filing past: silver birch, larch, a few pines.
The old schoolteacher lived on the fourth floor of a Brezhnev-era block of flats close to the centre of town. They parked the car a few blocks away, to be on the safe side, and left Konstantin to his own devices.
Iryna led the way, punching in a key code and pushing the steel door wide open. They entered an unlit hallway, stinking of piss, boiled cabbage and cheap tobacco. She pressed the button for the lift and they got in
; it climbed up the shaft as if it had asthma.
She spent the whole time looking down, Reikhman noted. Neither she nor Konstantin had made proper eye contact with him since the Elephant; nor had they uttered a surplus word. That was fine by him.
The schoolteacher was small, ancient, dumpy, a little arthritic, but she had some vim about her. As he set up the camera equipment – just a formality, he explained – Anna’s face furrowed into a frown.
‘Ah, you’ve come again, have you?’ she asked Iryna. Smart, too – an edge of wariness in her expression, a sense that maybe she had spoken too much the last time.
Reikhman asked for some black tea, no sugar, and sat down on a lumpy sofa and tapped his case lightly with his fingertips as she bustled around her tiny kitchen. Iryna sat, stiff and upright, on a chair facing the net curtains. Against the far wall of the lounge was a heavy wooden sideboard, stacked with plates and knick-knacks, and above that an icon of the Virgin. A good mother of the Church and someone who had been decent to his master back then. Well, not the Elephant for Anna, for sure. Something else, something painless.
The kettle whistled. He opened his suitcase and fished out a small pillbox, masking it from view. ‘Hold up, mother, I’ve got some saccharine for my tea.’ Lithe, quick on his feet, perhaps the most striking thing about Reikhman was the way he could move into other people’s space without it seeming an obvious act of aggression, as if they were somehow doing him a favour. In the tiny kitchen, he said, ‘Where’s the tea, mother?’
Anna pointed to three cups brewing. He squeezed past her, edging her out of her kitchen, moved closer to the cups, his back to her so that she couldn’t see what he was doing. He unscrewed the pillbox marked ‘Saccharine’ in simple black letters, dumped one pill into the first cup of tea and stirred it with a teaspoon, taking care never to touch it himself. Reikhman turned round and called out to Iryna, ‘I’ve forgotten the paperwork. Could you go back to the car and retrieve it?’