THE VOICE of the air-traffic controller from the Stepanakert airport tears me from this contemplation — we are starting our descent. One can already see the small valley, a barely visible line of habitation, and then, after a moment, Suren points out the thread of the landing strip. This runway will turn out to be uneven and very short; no larger plane could land here. As a matter of fact, we ourselves come to a stop at the very end of it, and just ahead is a pile of rubble. Slowly we taxi toward the barracks — that is the airport terminal. As we draw nearer, Suren and Averik’s expressions stiffen: the place is surrounded by troops. The militia is everywhere. There is a state of war in Nagorno-Karabakh, and the district is governed by the military commissioner. The troops are units of the KGB brought here from deep inside Russia.
“There were never this many,” Suren mutters.
He has barely cut the engines when I see armed commandos encircling the plane and officers approaching. Suren says something to Averik and points at me. Averik nods his head knowingly.
“Walk ahead of me,” he says. We walk out of the cockpit. The only door in the plane is located in its tail. Averik opens it, the steps drop to the ground. I feel the blast of tropical air and see the soldiers gathering at the foot of the steps.
“Get out, get out and immediately walk straight ahead.” I hear Averik’s voice.
I know I cannot now hesitate for even a second or make an uncertain gesture, an unnecessary motion. I run down the steps, I pass the officers already crowding at the bottom, I pass the commandos and militiamen, I march straight ahead. Averik is walking beside me, and he (I am counting on this) knows what to do next. The most important thing is that no one is calling after us, no one is ordering us to stop. We walk straight into a line of armored trucks and soldiers sitting in the shade of these trucks. And here too no one stops us — we are wearing pilots’ uniforms, after all, everyone saw that a moment ago we brought in a plane. We walk the length of the trucks for about a hundred meters, until we reach a gate near which stands a small wooden building. Inside is a sort of bar, which offers one thing only — warm lemonade. Averik buys me a glass (in the confusion I forgot to bring money) and says to me: “Sit here and wait,” and, without a good-bye, he vanishes. After a period of time a young man with a beard appears whom I have never before seen and who, walking past me, mutters through his teeth, “Sit here and don’t move, from now on you are under my protection,” and vanishes.
The waiting starts to stretch out, longer and longer. I sit as if on burning coals. There are several tables in the bar, but they are empty; I am the only one sitting here. But there is nevertheless a lot of activity; people are continually coming in for lemonade. The greatest threat is the military patrols. Just imagine: a small, makeshift airport deep in the countryside, high up in the mountains. Sometimes a small airplane arrives, which, moreover, takes off again almost at once. The sole attraction is the bar, which sells lemonade. It is hot, everyone is thirsty. The military patrols are the most thirsty of all, for they are walking around in helmets, in bulletproof vests, and on top of that they are loaded down with hardware. What do these patrols have to do? Nothing, really — to walk and snoop, to walk and search, observe, question. And then, amid this deadly tedium and do-nothingism, they are presented with this tasty morseclass="underline" in the bar (the only one!), in the empty bar, sits an Aeroflot pilot. And what if one were to simply walk up and ask him a question. Let’s say — where are you from? Or let’s say — where are you going to? After all one can ask, especially if one is part of a military patrol on duty, in wartime conditions, in such a trouble spot as Nagorno-Karabakh. People come here very rarely. It is difficult to come here. They don’t just let anybody in.
If a Russian patrol accosts me — that won’t be so bad: I will pretend to be an Armenian; I will speak Russian, but with an Armenian accent. If an Armenian patrol accosts me — that won’t be so bad either: I can speak Russian with the kind of accent a Lithuanian or a Latvian might have. It is the mixed patrols, Russian-Armenian, that fill me with the greatest fear. That I won’t be able to weasel out of.
The second problem lies in the fact that I don’t have any documents. Yes, the edge of a Soviet passport protrudes from the pocket of my shirt. But it is the passport of a young Armenian murdered in Sumgait.
After an hour the bearded man reappears.
“Listen,” I say, “I cannot sit here, they are going to catch me here.” I see that his nerves are on edge.
“Sit,” he replies, “there is no way out. Sit.” And he vanishes.
Despite the heat, I pull the cap down over my eyes and pretend that I am dozing. It is a large cap, imposing, covered with all kinds of trimmings, stripes, and oak leaves. I treat it now as a sort of shield, a screen behind which I can hide. I also try to assume a pose that will discourage all contacts. The pose of some kind of a misfit, a grump, a Neanderthal, one that will signal to everyone: Better not come close!
Two hours after first sitting down in this bar I hear the roar of the departing plane. I feel even more lonely and trapped. Fortunately, now the bearded man appears again and says: “Follow me.” I walk out of the bar feeling as though I were leaving behind the walls of a hard prison. We go along the road leading from the airport to town, but no farther than a hundred meters, to a place where, beside the road but slightly below it, is a parking lot. At its entrance, in the shade of a roadside tree, sits an old Armenian. He and my young bearded man exchange knowing nods of the head, whereupon my guide leads me to a canary-yellow Lada. He says, “Sit here and don’t move,” and … vanishes. On the one hand I feel more at ease here than in the bar, where I had been a sitting duck, but on the other hand, the car, which had stood all day in the sun, is like a furnace inside. I want to get out and take a walk around the parking lot when the old man squatting in the shade of the tree hisses: “Don’t get out, they are right nearby!” Indeed, maybe fifty meters farther is a roadblock and next to it a military guard post. There would be nothing simpler than, upon seeing an Aeroflot pilot suffering in the sun, to invite him into the tent for a sip of refreshing tea and then, if only to keep the conversation going, to ask him who, what, how, where. After all, one has to talk, it’s natural, it’s human to talk, especially now, when there is glasnost, now one can chat even with a stranger.
The worst thing is that I still do not know what is going on. Clearly, our optimistic plan, prepared in Yerevan, has failed. Starovoytova was to have been greeted at the airport by local notables. This ceremony would have lasted a quarter of an hour, well, maybe a half hour. Next, we were to have gone in cars to town, eaten dinner, given presents to the schoolchildren, toured the park, met with the inhabitants of Stepanakert. It was supposed to have been warm, hospitable, idyllic. Whereas in fact no notables were waiting for us at the plane, only KGB commandos. There is no atmosphere of welcome at all; we have fallen straight into an ambush.
I ask the old man (he sits the entire time under the tree staring in the direction of the airport and doesn’t move his head even when he exchanges a few words with me) if Starovoytova has already gone to town, but he answers no in a worried tone of voice. That means, I reason, that either they are holding her at the airport or they have ordered her to return in our airplane to Yerevan. But the Armenian does not know.