The Death Trust

THIRTY-SEVEN

I got nothing more from Radakov. If there was anything else for him to give, he’d decided to keep it to himself. We trekked in fatigued silence for four more hours as the terrain steepened. The body we’d taken from the farmhouse was making the trip on a litter made from saplings roped together with bootlaces. I got the impression that none of the men felt particularly heroic or inspired about the enterprise earlier in the evening. Either they’d killed too many Russians over the years to give it any thought, or they would rather have been at home with their wives and children — if they had any — than walking cold, wet, and hungry toward the dawn. Perhaps they knew that the Russians would exact their revenge from people who were innocent of any crime, except for the one of being Chechen. Or maybe these men were just the walking dead, the light of their souls extinguished by a lifetime of hatred and bloodshed. In the end, did either the Russians or the Chechens gain anything except for a bunch of fresh holes dug in the ground?

Scott’s fascination with Russia’s spats with Chechnya still puzzled me. I couldn’t see how it fit in anywhere, unless it was to get an insight into Radakov. But I doubted that. There was something I’d missed, or something I didn’t know yet. According to Scott’s notes, the Russians had been fighting these people off and on for centuries. Apparently, even Leo Tolstoy had fought here, back in 1851, and the fighting was just as brutal then. Now, however, there was a new factor in the mix: oil. Moscow wanted it. Was that what this was all about? Oil? Or was the fighting here about something else entirely? There was nothing that stood out from Scott’s research, nothing that struck me as being related or significant.

The moon rose at some time during the night. It just appeared, a sliver of dull tin beaten over a cold, black stone. It emitted a ghastly light that fell exhausted through the trees. After this, if there was an after, I was taking a goddamn vacation.

We eventually came through the trees onto a muddy, rock-strewn road and picked our way along it for a time. Up ahead, a truck was parked, nuzzled into the bushes. One of the men whistled softly and the notes were echoed back by someone hiding in the deep shadows. It was the man with the red face, his rhubarb-colored splotches showing black in the ghost light. Another man jumped down off the back of the truck. I recognized him as being the man who’d read through Radakov’s purchasing agreement for the two teenagers, the same man who also — I assumed — provided the intelligence on the activities and whereabouts of the Russian interrogators. There was some quiet conversation between him and Radakov’s men, and then he knelt beside the body on its litter, wiped its face with a rag, and then gently kissed its dead lips. I heard him cry.

“It was his brother. He will be buried here,” said Radakov beside me, as the corpse was carried back into the trees.

“Where to now?” I said to Radakov.

He answered with a gesture indicating that I should get into the truck with the rest of his men. I didn’t have much choice. I pulled myself up, stepped under the tarp, and entered the familiar cocoon of smells that included shit, animal hide, and the rotten-egg stench of crude oil. I took a seat on one of the benches and found myself looking at the bent heads of the two young women from the village. They were sitting opposite. Wherever we were going, the girls were coming with us. One of the men stuck his hand up the skirt of the girl beside him. What he found there appeared to amuse him because he gave a hearty laugh like he was some pseudo Mexican bandit in a B-movie. Radakov stepped into the truck and whispered hoarsely at him to pull his finger out, or words to that effect. There was a brief, angry exchange of whispers between the two men, which, I suspect, had nothing to do with protecting the girl’s morals and more to do with not spoiling the merchandise.

I felt something brush my hand. It was the weasel. He’d managed to dock a syringe into the cannula on the back of my hand. He smiled. I shuddered. And then the lights went ou—