Lawrence was sick, too.
He was sitting in the backseat of an SUV Reuters-mobile with a driver and a cameraman and guide (me), all going in the wrong direction.
“That is bullshit news,” he announced to all of us, but mainly to himself. “Nothing but propaganda.”
I only hoped he was right.
Finally, Mozdok—another drab farm town in the Russian North Caucasus, but one situated in the pro-Russian minirepublic of North Osetia, that now calls itself Alanya. Most of its citizens claimed descent from some proto-Persian stock, and that Josef Stalin is (or was) one of their number. Aside from total loyalty to the concept of “Russia” for a century or two, not a lot distinguished Alanya from its various North Caucasian neighbors. It was rural; it was a dump. As for Mozdok, its main distinguishing characteristic was that it supported a large military base and was filled with soldiers and their equipment. That, in turn, meant the roads were worse than elsewhere: Tank treads are not gentle on asphalt, nor the huge rubber wheels of the Soviet-style APCs.
We flashed our papers to the guards at the entrance to the base and were duly registered according to name, vehicle registration, and Defense Ministry press pass. We sought out the public affairs office to acquire the new permission papers, watching helicopters land and take off for Chechnya and trucks arrive to be loaded with boxes of ammunition. Behind our every step was the thought that somewhere on this base was the notorious “filtration” center that served as the torture factory for young Chechen men, such as the man named Vakha I had interviewed that first night in Samashki so many centuries ago. You could almost smell the evil, but never see it. This warehouse? Those railway cars?
But if the torturers and their victims were not to be seen, neither was anybody else who might issue the new, special passes allegedly required to make a legal foray into Samashki. After an hour or two of getting shuffled from one office to the next, we decided we were wasting our time. Two hours later we were back in Slepsovski, and a half hour later parked in front of the APC blocking the road to Samashki in front of Post 13.
This time, we were not alone. In addition to the APTV and WTN rivals, and a couple of other reporters drawn to the Samashki story like flies to fresh manure, I noticed an empty yellow bus flying a white flag. Next to it stood a man best described as Jesus-when-he-got-old, whose white beard and general mien suggested he was a Russian peacenik. He and the bus were there to go in and pick up the wounded. But no one was coming out.
Once again, we could hear the distant rat-a-tat-tat of small arms fire, often punctuated by the deeper bomb-boom of cannon or mortar. Smoke billowed from a dozen distant fires, merging into a single grayish haze over the town before merging with the enveloping dusk.
“I would truly like to allow you to go down the road, but it is simply too dangerous,” smirked the baby-faced sergeant or captain who had sent us to Mozdok that morning. “I have to guarantee your security, but I cannot. Even we do not know what is going on in there.”
Sheets and I discussed the idea of calling the officer on his words and taking security on our own shoulders. It was a crazy notion—but then again, we had done crazy things before. Then the blonde OMON man in the Reebok or Nike sports shoes we had encountered that morning came rushing at us, screaming. Actually, he was addressing the Russian peacenik wearing the long white beard.
“Why do you human rights-loving pacifist creeps care so much for these Chechen dogs!” he howled. “They are cutting off the legs and arms and heads of every one of our boys they capture, and sticking them in garbage cans!”
“Did you see that?” asked Lawrence.
“I don’t need to see it!” shouted Reebok Nike. “I know it’s true!”
I tried to imagine the men charged with such atrocities, men like Xamid, Shirvani, Ussam, Ali, and Hussein. It was impossible that they would do such things. But the little episode decided the matter for us. Even if we made the drive into Samashki at our own risk, we would probably never come out. Either we would be mistaken for Russian soldiers and be drawn and quartered along the lines alleged, and then made into tomorrow’s headlines, or we were being lured into a trap by the Russians, who would kill us out of general spite and then blame our deaths on Chechens like Hussein.
If he was still alive.
More Deep Purple acid rock from atop the APC blocking the road. It seemed to be the only tape the Russian grunts had. I would have offered them a change of tunes, but we only had one tape, too—a collection of Elton John’s incredibly overorchestrated Greatest Hits, which I got so tired of hearing that I banned Nodar from playing it while I was in the car. The Georgian driver was in a good mood. He had been trained to wait, and was getting combat pay. The cameraman was less happy. Either he was going through withdrawal, or he was expressing his frustration at not being able to shoot anything by sinking into a sustained funk and complaining about fever and stomach disorders. As for Uncle Larry, he was getting news-edgy.
“This is going nowhere, fast,” said Sheets after sitting around Post 19 for several hours. “Let us try the back door, if there is one.”
Reluctantly, I acceded. I wanted to wait, but it wasn’t my car. I was not even paying for my own bed in the shabby Hotel Sundja. I was there on sufferance. I had no rights, only friends.
We drove back down the empty road to Sernovodsk, inquired about a back road to Samashki, and were directed through the muddy streets of the town to a deeply rutted farm track snaking along the edge of a line of trees that serve as a windbreak. I wanted to believe the path was somehow connected to the abandoned water mill of Hussein’s youth. Maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t. We turned back when we noticed a red sign with a white skull and words in Russian that suggested very clearly that the area was mined.
Back to and through Sernovodsk and toward Slepsovski to another road Lawrence identified on his map. It went in the wrong direction, toward Achkoi Martan via the tiny settlements of Davydenko and Novi Sharoi, and was very likely the same bad road I took with Sonia Mikich and her ARD crew that nasty night when we and the monks and mothers were convoyed out of the region. In other words, it might theoretically lead to Samashki, but also it had been under Russian control for weeks.
I tried to explain this to Uncle Larry, but he would not listen and told Nodar to drive on. Then, within a mile of the turnoff west, we were stopped at a Russian guard post. A pack of cigarettes convinced the guards to let us continue down the bad track, allegedly to interview a garrison commander based at Davydenko.
“Be careful,” said the guard. “There are rebels in the forest.” Driver Nodar snapped on his flak jacket, then slipped a ceramic shock plate in the front envelope of the jacket. Then he took the back pocket plate and sat on it as protection against mine blast. Sheets and I reversed the order. We were sitting in the backseat, so we wore one plate in the back against bullets and sat on the second for protection against mines. Ha-ha, we laughed. The maybe-junkie cameraman in the passenger seat up front snoozed or slumped in his no-dope-related haze.
Davydenko consisted of a couple of houses near the road. The Russians had set up a tent camp and canteen in between the houses. Soldiers were everywhere. The maybe-junkie cameraman managed to shoot a few useless frames before being told to stop. We were led in quasi-arrest over to the local commander, a genial enough man from Perm, or some other obscure Russian city, who politely informed us that we had no business being in his sector, and to turn back the way we came. He added that, if instructed from above, he would be more than happy to host us and allow us to record a day-in-the-life of the regular soldiers under his command, as per his request. As for his assessment of the situation, well, all seemed rather quiet and under control, although that of course could change at any moment. Particularly worrisome were the mines the enemy placed on the road at night, obscuring them in pooled water and muddy tracks. We returned to Sernovodsk sitting on both ceramic shock plates and avoiding all pooled water and deep muddy tracks.