‘Right here, right here? came the impatient voice of the lead Black Shirt. He’d reached the stage of drunkenness marked by a short fuse and quick temper.
Then there was, ‘You pull the son-of-a-bitch! You think this is easy?’ That’s the man holding the leash, Andreev saw in his mind’s eye.
‘Get up you miserable f-f-fuck!’ was followed by a hollow thud. And then another thump and grunt. ‘Hey! You listening to die man?’
The two kickers, Andreev realized. All were safely some distance away. In the park. But where was the fifth man — the straggler? He’d not said a word. The others bickered but managed to drag their victim to the intended place. ‘Up, up, up!’ the exasperated leader ordered. Andreev grew preoccupied by the mystery of the fifth man’s whereabouts. He brought the Ingram up. He was ready to kill any dark shapes that loomed over the narrow slit in the sidewalk.
There was laughter. They took turns pissing on the man. ‘Loo’s like e’s a fuckin’ fountain!’ the leader crowed. He obviously had a cigarette in his lips. They were all rolling with laughter at that one. But only the four. That’s when the begging began. The pleading. The last attempts from the battered man to appeal for mercy. His lungs grew ragged with the effort. He ceased completing his sentences. Sobs consumed what little energy he had left.
‘Hang his ass up there,’ came the command from the now lucid leader. It was as if he’d been sobered by the whole episode.
‘Wait a minute!’ It was the fifth man. ‘Wait. Why hang him?’ There was laughter. ‘I mean, nobody said to kill him. We don’t even know what the guy did!’
‘Don’t you know?’ replied the leader. ‘He’s a conformist! Or a believer in orthodoxy! Or an objectivist!’ The others all laughed. ‘Or… or — and this is my favorite one — maybe he’s an establishmentarian!’
‘O-o-o-u-u!’ came the voices of the chorus in mock disparagement.
‘This thing,’ said the drunk — putting on a show — ‘in other words, is a very, very bad man! And we, don’t you see, are very, very good men. Yes, we are!’ he said to stem the raging cackles. ‘We are, because we do this to bad people.’
A shot rang out — a single shot.
With his eyes closed Andreev listened to the echoes off the buildings. They had done the worst, he thought, till he heard the screams. Their prisoner was screeching at the top of his lungs. He was trying to cry and gasping for breath at the same time.
Another shot stopped everything. The street fell quiet.
‘Now why the fuck d’you have ta go do that?’ exclaimed the drunk leader.
‘That’s what you wanted!’ cried the fifth — the straggler. ‘That’s what we were going to do!’
‘But not no-o-ow! We only just got here! We can’t just drag the son-of-a-bitch one lousy block from his house and kill him! What kind of punishment is that?’
‘Fuck it,’ came a voice of reason from one of the others. ‘It’s late.’
‘No! I wanta hear an answer! What’s your answer, little boy? Worried what momma’d say if she caught you out with us? Maybe she’d make you stay home and help carry the shit out to the kerb!’
‘Come on, Seryozha. Let’s just go home.’
The silence was filled with the sloshing of liquid in a bottle. Next came a tortured exhalation and a burp. The group burst into laughter again. They proceeded down the street as untroubled as before.
Andreev waited for the sound of them to recede. Then he waited longer just in case someone came out of the apartments to check. So far as he could tell, however, no one even opened a window or a door. The night was deathly quiet. The seven million people who remained in Moscow had receded into the safety of the shadows.
Pyotr raised up slowly. When he peered over the kerb he checked out the scene. The street was empty. In the park, a man hung limply from where his bound hands had been hung on the statue. But Andreev’s heart skipped a beat when the dark form by the bench took shape. A lone man leaned his back against a tree. It was impossible to tell which one it was or what he was doing.
But Andreev had a guess what the answer to both questions was.
The fifth man rose with an audible sigh. He turned and headed back up the street in the direction opposite his comrades. His rifle dangled loosely at his side. He stared at the glistening pavement.
Lieutenant Hung — one of Chin’s fellow platoon leaders — sat on the end of Chin’s bunk. He’d been part of the last wave of new arrivals to crowd the barracks. There were now mattresses on the floor between the bunks, and Hung had moved onto one. From there he’d told Chin everything that had happened in the two days after Chin had been captured. It was a story of total collapse.
‘Would you go back if they gave you a choice?’ Hung asked.
‘Would I go back where if who gave me what choice?’ Chin replied. His voice had assumed Hung’s quiet tone despite the noise of a hundred conversations.
Hung leaned forward. ‘Would you go back to China if the Americans said you didn’t have to?’
Chin arched his eyebrows. ‘Well… of course. Where else would I go?’
Hung shrugged. ‘If they said you could go anywhere, you mean you’d just say, “Back to China, please”?’
It seemed a straightforward question. But Hung’s surprise at his first answer prompted Chin to ponder it. Where else in the world could I go? he thought. America? He looked up at Hung and nodded. His friend rolled his eyes. ‘What?’ Chin asked. ‘My whole life is back in China. My family, my friends, our farm. Why would I go anywhere else?’
‘Because,’ Hung whispered testily, ‘things are better in other places.’
‘Better how?’
‘Not as…’ Hung stopped himself and looked around. There were others within earshot, but they seemed not to be listening. Then again, how could you just come out and discuss such a thing, if it was what Chin was thinking. ‘Not as bad… politically,’ Hung finally said. His eyes again searched the barracks.
Chin just shrugged. ‘What are politics to me?’
Hung turned on him now. ‘They are everything! Those old men keep us down! They try to control us like it was the 1950s! To them, nothing has changed! But everything has changed! Have you ever heard of the Internet?’ he asked. Chin shook his head. ‘It hooks computers from all over the world together. You can talk — exchange ideas — with foreigners. And there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.’