The Talib stares into the beam of light.
“Come on, tell me how. A bullet in the head?”
“No.”
“Hanged?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“The women will come.”
“And then what?”
In response, the Talib takes pebbles from the ground and tosses them one by one into the dark corner of the dungeon.
“Curse on you, dagi,” Tarasov snarls. “Whatever death you die, you’ll deserve it for killing all those children in Beslan.”
“Beslan was wrong, but if I deserve to die for that, you deserve to die for what happened in Grozny. That was wrong, too.”
“That was not my fucking war! I am Ukrainian. We had nothing to do with what happened there!”
“Beslan was nothing to do with you, either, since you are Ukrainian, just as it was nothing to do with me, since I was not there and would never have been. In any case, it is not up to you or me to judge. No judgment is fair but God’s. If we die, it will be because we deserve to die. I can trust his judgment. And you? Is there anything left you can trust in?”
“Now listen up, you… ”
Tarasov’s words end in empty curses. The Talib has hit a nerve in his mind. Desperately, he refers to the only supernatural power he had experienced.
“I have bested a place worse than hell. It eats the laws of your god for breakfast. Whatever created it is far more powerful than your so-called god.”
“Really? Will this power come and save you?”
For a moment, Tarasov falls quiet. “It’s you who’s praying to get out of here. Not me.”
“I pray for strength to accept my fate, not for a chance of escape. But you are angry. You are not brave enough to face your fate. I feel pity for you, weak man, and pray to God to have mercy on you. Why are you laughing?”
“Because fate is so absurd. If I believed in God, I would have prayed each day to give me revenge. It was people like you who killed my father. People like you turned this land into a wilderness with stolen warheads…”
“Those were to be used elsewhere. The Americans came on my brothers and left them no choice but to martyr themselves.”
“You fucking bastards!”
Tarasov tries to move closer to the Talib but the chains cut into his neck. He coughs heavily before he can continue. “You deserve to die a thousand deaths. And I would gladly give them to you but I can’t reach you, and instead of smashing your head against the wall all I can do is just sit here listening to your bullshit!”
But no matter how much he shouts and shakes his fists, Tarasov knows that he is losing this war of words, as if fate wanted to prove to him how empty he is inside.
“You are a cruel man,” the Talib murmurs, “and even if you could kill me now, I wouldn’t accept mercy from you. Mercy from an infidel would disgrace me. But you should have mercy on yourself. These devils will not have mercy on any of us. I am prepared to die happily. And I pray to God that he gives you…”
Tarasov spits all his anger into the Talib’s face in four words.
“Shut the fuck up!”
Exhaustion and despair overcome his senses.
I will die anyway… but even if that wasn’t so, I can’t keep myself awake any longer.
The sound of opening doors awakes Tarasov from his uneasy sleep. Startled, the Talib moves back into the darkness but it is Tarasov the guards are after. Seeing the anger that still presses hard on his face after the argument with the Talib, the blue-eyed guard gives him a grin.
“So, Russkie, do you want to make that call to Amnesty International?” he says, removing the shackle from Tarasov’s neck. “I found their number, but now I’ve misplaced my mobile phone.”
“You are very absent-minded today, Brother Polak,” the bearded guard says, shaking his head. He grabs the major by his arm and hauls him to his feet. “Get up, Russkie. The Colonel wants to see you.”
Whether because Tarasov’s fate is sealed or for a reason only known to them, this time the guards don’t bother blindfolding him. The sun is already low and the clean, cobble-stone streets are empty save for a few fighters sitting here and there on carpets laid around small campfires, smoking hookah pipes and curiously looking at Tarasov as he passes them by.
The guards lead him through a maze of mud houses to a massive tower. Climbing up several stairs, they arrive at a wooden door guarded by two warriors, as big and frightening as the First Lieutenant who killed Squirrel. They too wear heavy exoskeletons and are armed with machine guns.
Good God. There’s more of them.
Without saying a word, they open the door and signal for him to enter.
The Man Who Would be Khan
Tarasov finds himself in a small room with only one window, its walls covered with carpets and large maps. A paraffin lamp casts a weak light onto a chair and a simple field table, where Tarasov sees a switched-off laptop, a radio, an ashtray full of cigarette butts and several books: Napoleon’s memoirs, Sun Tzu’s Strategy, a novel by Joseph Conrad and a collection of Rudyard Kipling’s short stories. Thinking for a moment that he is alone, Tarasov reaches for the books.
“Do you like literature, Major Tarasov?”
The tired, yet deep and dominating voice comes from a dark corner of the room. The words are spoken slowly, in the way of a Texan. Straining his eyes, Tarasov makes out a man in the shadows. A small flame flares as he lights up a cigarette, but the light is strong enough for the major to see something of the man’s face: graying hair cut short though his age could only be roughly estimated, with eyes that are sunken deep in their sockets. The Colonel — if that is who this man was — has the appearance of a hard, and hardened, military man.
“Bring the light here,” the man says, and Tarasov is about to reach for the lamp when another shadow emerges from the darkness. A young woman with a scarf draped over her head appears and places the lamp closer. For a moment, the light falls on her face and Tarasov notices a tribal tattoo on her forehead. But as she turns and the lamp casts light on the right half of her face, he sees a horrible scar — the skin looking almost molten. The sight makes him shudder, the impact of the old wound made worse by the realization that, without it, she would have possessed an exceptional beauty.
“Yes, I like literature,” he finally replies with a dry throat.
With a grunt of satisfied laughter, the Colonel steps forward. Tarasov takes a step back, stunned by the size of the man. He is a giant, maybe even surpassing the superhuman size of his exoskeleton-wearing warriors, though he wears only a loincloth. He wears the emblem of the Marine Corps tattooed on his chest, but a long, deeply cut wound runs across over it, ending right above his heart.
“So what the report said is correct. You do speak English.”
“Yes.”
“Do you like English literature?”
“I like all kinds of literature… in general.”
“That’s good, Major… Literature begins where strategy ends.”
The Colonel sits down on the chair standing next to the table. His consort starts tending to the wound above his heart. Something cold runs down Tarasov’s spine as he sees her sewing it up. Judging by the many stitches in the bronze-colored skin, she is not doing it for the first time.
“A scrimmage in a border station, a canter down some dark defile, two thousand pounds of education drops to a ten-rupee jezail. That is my favorite quote. It sums up everything about us and them.”
Not knowing where the quote comes from, Tarasov does not reply.