‘Yeah, you got a point. You don’t look like some suicidal idiot who’d come straight from the forest right into our hands. Particularly after the latest events… Go on through!’
He handed me my passport. The whole time he didn’t once look down at my shoes. If he had, I would never have left the checkpoint. For, coupled with the distinct smell of forest smoke, the shoes would have been grounds enough for me to join the ranks of the ‘disappeared’. People had gone missing at that checkpoint on far flimsier evidence. I only understood the true extent of the risk I’d taken a bit later, when I dropped in on some friends. They could hardly believe that I’d passed through Checkpoint Caucasus. According to them, you could smell my intense forest campfire aroma from several metres away. Most of the other fighters also returned without incident.
22
It is an early morning in March. The weather is cool. March in the Caucasus is not quite spring, but it is no longer winter. The first flowers appear; the Cornelian cherry comes into blossom. It is the first tree to blossom and the last to produce its harvest. But the sowing season has not started, meaning it is not yet spring. That is how we have thought in the Caucasus since time immemorial. According to the old Chechen calendar, sowing begins when the rooks return, and it ends without fail when the cuckoos arrive. This year, spring has come a little early, and so the snow has melted, although there’s still some frost at night.
I’m standing at the appointed place on the outskirts of Nazran, in Ingushetia, along with my go-between. He got in touch with me yesterday through another intermediary, someone I trust, and he told me the location for the meeting. Today I have a long journey ahead, one not without risk. I’m travelling to Georgia. Under normal circumstances the risk might not be particularly high, but so far in the last six months I’ve taken part in two guerrilla operations, changed apartments several times in the hope of a quiet life, thwarted an attempt by an ‘old friend’ to turn me in to the Ingush branch of the FSB, and I’ve shown up in certain circles. Thanks to these considerations and certain persons, lately I’ve been gaining experience of life underground, a skill that will come in handy in the future. And now, finally, I have a real chance (albeit a risky one) to slip for a while under the radar of certain parties who are after me. At the appointed time, a car should be arriving to take me into neighbouring Georgia through the Verkhny Lars border post in North Ossetia.
Soon two cars stop near us, and no one gets out. The go-between walks up to the first car and beckons me over. Throwing my holdall into the boot, I get in and we pull away. There’s a full crew of Chechen resistance fighters in the car behind us; in this car there are four of us. I’m next to the commander of one of the guerrilla squads, in the front is the man responsible for ferrying people there and back, and sitting in the driver’s seat is a young guy with classically Slavic looks. He is Russian. He’s an FSB officer. And he’s helping the resistance fighters. Of course, he’s doing this out of the goodness of his heart. The sum he receives is meagre recompense for risking his life and career. He is close friends with one of the Chechens – their friendship goes back to those happy days when they were both eighteen and war belonged in the history books. His friend is a commander in a guerrilla squad. It is his belief in his friend that motivates him. I find all this out from a conversation during the journey. He comes straight out with it: ‘If my friend, whom I’ve known half my life and whom I’d trust with my life, has chosen to join the fight for freedom, then as far as I’m concerned that’s a pretty powerful argument that you’re on the right path.’ Perhaps just lofty words, or perhaps not. Only he knows the truth. He will later die in a firefight against FSB officers, which suggests we should believe him, as he is no longer alive. We don’t introduce ourselves and don’t ask questions. As you’d expect. It isn’t done to ask for names here – it only makes everyone uncomfortable. His task is to provide us with safe passage through the police and army checkpoints along the road as far as the border post. And, once there, he is to get the group past the border guards without having their passports checked. Of course this involves paying the guards.
At Checkpoint Chermen, between Ossetia and Ingushetia, they stop us to check our passports. But our ally – let’s call him Oleg – shows them his ID and presents us as officers in his organization. We arrive without incident at the Verkhny Lars border post. Oleg goes into an office and he soon emerges, having agreed a deal. Of course the guards realize who these guys in the cars must be, seeing as they don’t want to produce their passports. But this does not stop them from coolly taking their bribe and making things easy for all of us. After all, if they tried to detain us, we’d have no option but to attack them. And there’s no telling how that would end.
Having taken us just over the border, Oleg returns while we drive on in cars that have come to meet us. In the depth of the night we arrive in the capital of Georgia and the next day we go our separate ways. Each of us has his own mission, and we each now embark on it. I have no alternative but to ply my trade as a journalist, so I busy myself in these new conditions. And, thanks to the large number of Chechen refugees, there is plenty of work.
23
Today, I’m dying. No, not from wounds; from stupidity. From my own unforgivable stupidity. I let myself be tricked and broke my resolution. I drank water. Not much – just a few sips. But it was enough to make me collapse on my way up from sheer exhaustion and with the bitter feeling that this folly had brought death upon my soul. No, the water isn’t poisoned. Yet this pure, life-giving moisture, which I once craved more than life itself, has now turned into a poison, slowly killing me. And this has never happened to me before, in all my long years at war, where I’ve often covered vast distances in speed marches with the Chechen fighters. What a strange, unpredictable trick of fate! That same substance that can save your life at other times can kill you. Whatever made me drink it? I’ve never drunk water while climbing up a mountain. But today the mountains deceived me. Looking up towards the summit, I decided there must be five hundred metres left at most. Meaning as the crow flies – along the track it would, of course, be further. Five hundred metres is nothing, and it is a very hot summer day. So I had a sip of water from the flask. But when I’d climbed those five hundred metres, I discovered that I still had a steep ascent of several kilometres ahead of me. It was five hundred metres only to a bend in the ridge. You should never trust your eyes in the mountains – you need to double-check everything in sight.
We have been on the road for a week. We’re a guerrilla formation under Angel’s command.[51] And I’m with them from force of habit. They are returning to Chechnya, and I’m returning with them. After around a week of speed marching, we rest for a few days, setting up camp in some remote spot where people prefer not to venture. We cannot travel like normal people: we are guerrillas. So the roads are off limits to us. The enemy air reconnaissance is almost ever-present in the sky. Our enemy is cunning and wily. And so we have to be even more cunning and wily. They have planted agents among us. We don’t know who, but we know for sure they’re among us. This means only a very restricted circle can be told the next day’s route. This is the key to our success. The agents in our midst can only send their masters information about the ground we’ve covered, not about the route ahead. They can also pass on intelligence about our weaponry, but this intelligence is rarely accurate. Whenever there’s a skirmish the guerrillas invariably seize trophy weapons, and so the quantity of arms is always in flux. We need to take particular care: we know the enemy are waiting for us. Only recently another guerrilla group was travelling along one of these routes when they were ambushed, surrounded, and almost completely wiped out. And the fact that they fell as warriors and sold their lives dearly was cold comfort to us. Now the enemy are waiting for us in several locations. But the bulk of their forces are concentrated on the same route that the ambushed group were taking. They think this route holds the greatest strategic value for us and they’re expecting us to repeat the mistakes of the first group. And their agents are encouraging them in this belief, having been cleverly hoodwinked by Angel’s commanders just in time.
51
This journey is the return to Chechnya of Hamzat Gelayev’s guerrilla unit. Until this time, he was based in the forests of eastern Georgia.