Penguin Lost (14 page)

The night sky was darkening appreciably, the light more from the stars than the increasing sallow moon. It was a place for care and concentration, with the added danger of the occasional falling stone or rock.

“Ten days from now, I’m off home,” Maga announced suddenly. “To Dagestan?”

“Khasavyurt. I take money, see my parents, show I’m still alive. I’ve three sisters still to be married off, and my parents are far from well –you get the idea. The only place to buy medicine is Makhachkal, and it costs the earth …”

Stopping, he listened.

“Get down! Press in against the rock!”

Viktor did his best to do both as two helicopters flew by, beaming their searchlights on trees far below.

“Who are they after?” Viktor asked, he expected rhetorically.

“Basayev, Nagayev, Raduyev and other racketeers. You from Moscow?” he added, getting to his feet.

“No, Kiev, though I came on here from Moscow.”

“Some place, that! I’ve been!”

“Not now, not if you’re from the Caucasus. It’s all ‘Show your papers!’ And harassment.”

“So you wouldn’t see me for dust! But the girls! Mine has the most wonderful eyes. Same in Kiev?”

“No,” said Viktor, thinking of Marina.

“You can see why Chechens hate Russians, Chechen women being not much to look at and ageing early, whereas Moscow boasts the belles of Russia …”

With dawn came a mighty wind that even the warm MoES uniform was not proof against, and coming to a village, they sought shelter
in a wooden barn.

“I’ll have a breather, then go on,” said Maga. “You stay here.”

There were several spades and a tall stack of firewood. The floor was strewn with straw.

“Shame we can’t make a fire,” said Maga. “Still, I shan’t be long – we’re practically there.”

Left alone, Viktor tried to sleep, but without much success. Day was breaking, but only dimly through the dirty window. The gale was shut out. Uncomfortable on his seat of firewood, he kept going to the door and peering out, seeing no more than a wooden fence and trees beyond.

Trying to make himself comfortable on the floor, he felt something dig into him, and reaching into the straw and wood chippings encountered the ice cold though heavily greased metal of a Kalashnikov, and exploring further, the rough casing of hand grenades.

*

“Still there?” came Maga’s voice.

Viktor let him in.

“All’s well! You’re sold into slavery! We can go, they’re expecting you.”

“How do you mean, slavery?”

“It’s the way they put it here. Chechen men don’t work, slaves work for them. If I’d offered them you without charge, they wouldn’t have trusted me. They’d have taken you for Fed Security.”

“How much did you get for me?”

“A good price, don’t you worry. $220. They offered $100 to start with, but I ran them up. They’re short-handed.”

“What do I have to do exactly?”

“You’ll find out. You’re going to Khachayev’s, and that’s what you wanted. It’s all quiet there – no shooting in his ashore area.
Brought you something to eat.”

And they stood by the dirty window, eating dried meat and flat round loaves.

“There’s a Kalashnikov and grenades hidden here,” Viktor volunteered.

“Where?”

“Under the straw.”

“You can tell your boss, increase your credibility,” said Maga cheerfully, adding, as an afterthought, “No, don’t – I’ll stick them somewhere else, maybe sell them on.”

When they had eaten, they set off. For three hours they followed a forest track in silence and complete darkness. Coming to a road, they looked for and found the continuation on the far side. The track began to climb, growing increasingly twisty. Viktor asked Maga to go a bit slower.

“Not much further – under a kilometre.”

Coming to a large pipeline they followed it, now downhill.

“What is it?”

“Oil. Friendship Pipeline. We follow it, and in an hour we’ll be there.”

“Under a kilometre, you said!”

“Roughly I meant.”

In fact it was another two hours before they came to a large white A painted on the pipe and stopped.

“See – A for Ashore!” said Maga, and picking up some metal object, struck the pipe twice. “Let’s go and sit down over there.”

Over there, was to a tree where, surprisingly, there was a bench.

They did not have long to wait before a bearded young man in quilted jacket appeared and inspected Viktor, first without, then with, a torch.

“Best give him your weapon,” he said, indicating Maga. “Otherwise …”

“Hasn’t got one,” said Maga, getting up and holding out his hand for something.

My price, thought Viktor.

“All the best,” Maga wished him, and set off back along the pipeline.

Hardly able to keep his eyes open for sheer fatigue, Viktor followed quilted-jacketed Seva, yet another of the Russians posted as “missing”.

“I’ll let Aza see you, then you can get some sleep,” he said as they walked. “We’re not working today. No raw material.”

A little way into the forest they came to a log cabin. Seva pushed open the door, let Viktor in ahead of him, then knocked at one of the several doors opening off the passage.

“Aza! Addition to the workforce,” he called.

The door opened, revealing a plump, bald-headed little man in a blue tracksuit. His round face, prominent nose, button eyes and shaggy brows were of the Caucasus, but not Chechnya. He yawned, looked briefly at Viktor, then turned to Seva.

“Not got a gun, has he?”

“No. He’s very tired. Wants to sleep.”

“So he can,” he said, nodding at the door across the passage. “You’ve aired Dzhangirov’s?”

“And kerosened.”

“They could be bringing custom tomorrow night. One of the Feds came,” said Aza and taking another look at Viktor, went back into his room, closing the door.

Viktor’s small room had two roughly fashioned beds with mattresses and red quilts. Under the window was a little table, and in the middle of the floor a small stove made out of a metal keg with a flue that went straight up into the ceiling.

Viktor woke, still weary, to a strange smell. The little room was warm and dark, the only sound from the stove, whose glow seen through its slotted door was reflected on the floor. The other bed was empty. And but for the smell hanging heavy in the air, he might have succumbed to an illusion of comfort. It could have been kerosene.

He pulled on his boots, then removed them to wrap his feet in the strips of cloth the old Chechen had given him. The door opened, and behind the beam of a torch, in came Seva.

“Sleep all right?”

“Yes, but what’s the smell?”

“Home-made kerosene. We’ve a whole barrel. Chechen barter. Just the thing for mosquitoes, though too much, and you get a headache. Not to worry, it’s soon got rid of. And with winter coming, mosquitoes are out. So, to work!”

“Doing what?”

“Getting heat up.”

The sky above was clouded and starless. A stiff breeze barely perceptible at ground level was stirring the tree tops.

“Splendid! Just the weather we need!” said Seva. “You’ve no idea just how lucky we are.”

Viktor followed Seva and his torch into the darkness, bending,
taking care, or watching out for roots where and when told, until they came to a large shed. Seva unlocked the hefty padlock, opened the door wide “to air the place a bit”, and as they stood there Viktor noticed that this pipeline was much smaller than the one he and Maga had followed.

“This is tapped into the main oil pipeline,” Seva explained shining his torch along it and suddenly illuminating a white-painted have a good flight! He spat in disgust.

“Forgot to paint that out. Dzhangirov got pissed like the fool he was and wrote things. Hang on, I’ve got some paint left.”

He fetched a tin from the shed, broke off a fir branch, and with Viktor holding the torch, used it to black the letters over.

“Where does the pipe go from here?” Viktor asked.

“Into the shed and up through the roof of it. Come on, I’ll teach you valve control.”

Striking a match, he lit several candles in shallow tins on the floor, and on a table at the far end. The shed was spacious, 20 metres in length and almost as wide. The pipe entered at ceiling height, to be connected to an enormous iron coil sprouting flow valves and dials. Leaving the coil, it passed into a great reducer drum on iron legs, beyond which and another flow valve, it tapered gradually to a diameter of 50 cm before branching into a dozen smaller pipes welded to the closed end of an enormous cylinder resting on the ground like a crude space rocket. The far end was also closed, but capable of being opened or even removed, like a door. The scale of the installation was impressive, although for the time being its purpose was a mystery.

“Tomorrow’s Fat Friday, so let’s get to work,” said Seva.

At his direction, Viktor operated the heavy wheels of the flow valves, while Seva played engineer, hopping from dial to dial with his torch.

“Bit more. Bit more. Back a bit. That’s it.”

The coil came alarmingly alive, hissing with the menace of a rocket about to destruct.

At the final flow valve where the pipeline branched, Seva took over.

“A mistake at this point, and it’s goodbye!” he whispered, eyes on the dial. Adjustments completed, he stood back, breathing deeply.

“Must relax a minute after that,” he said in a shaky voice.

It was not the moment for asking questions.

Still visibly shaken, Seva opened a tiny vent in the rocket-like section, and lighting a roll of paper, thrust it deeply in as though into the jaws of some fearful beast. A mighty bang followed, and Seva leapt back with the alacrity of a gymnast, again breathing deeply with relief, then closed the vent and checked the dial.

Viktor touched the cylinder, expecting it to be hot, but it wasn’t.

Waxing expansive, Seva explained that it was an inner cylinder that was heating, but that this outer one got hot too, so that when there was snow, the grass stayed green within 50 metres of the shed.

The temperature in the shed was rising.

“We heat for another 20 minutes, then ease back and wait for custom,” said Seva.

20 minutes brought a considerable rise in temperature. Seva, seeing Viktor about to take off his jacket, stopped him, threw open the door, and after adjusting the final flow valve, suggested a breath of air.

Seva lit a cigarette, and Viktor watched the dense smoke from the chimney being carried quickly away and dispersed by the wind.
Seva took one last drag, stamped out his cigarette, and went with his torch to meet the custom. At a loss what to expect, Viktor withdrew into the trees, and from there saw two men carrying on their shoulders what looked like a rolled carpet. They followed Seva into the shed.

“Hi! Viktor!” bawled Seva from the door. And when he came out from the trees. “No skiving off, or you go the way of Dzhangirov!”

*

“What way was that?”

“Never you mind. Let’s get on with it.”

On a blanket on the ground at the far end of the furnace was the body of a man, but whether Russian or Chechen was impossible to tell, so pulped was his face. The men who had brought him were Chechens.

“Have these against the heat,” Seva ordered, handing Viktor boxing-glove-like gauntlets.

Each taking a handle of the outer door of the furnace, they pulled, and beyond the blast of hot air Viktor saw the door of another cylinder, clearly the one into which the heater jets ran.

“One, two, three, and tug,” said Seva.

They tugged, and with the heat came a distinct odour.

“Pop him in,” Seva told the Chechens, who after some hesitation proceeded to do so, head first.

“Pull his boots off!”

One of the Chechens got them off and threw them into a corner.

“Look back in two hours,” said Seva, shutting both doors and opening the flow valve.

Outside, he produced a heavy silver cigarette case, and selecting a cigarette, lit up.

“May I see?” Viktor asked.

The inscription read:

It was repeated on the other side in Georgian.

“Where did you get it?”

“From the Feds in lieu of dollars. Never know your luck – look at this.”

He displayed his watch.

“Rolex?”

“And not your Chinese crap either. On the back it’s got ‘To our idiot Tobacco Factory Director on his birthday from grateful colleagues.’ So, work hard and you, too, will be rich.”

The two hours allowed for the incineration of the corpse seemed to drag on for ever. Viktor kept looking at his watch, thinking the time was up, but his watch said differently. Now and then, above the noise of the furnace, the wind could be heard and the shrieks of night birds. Suddenly there were footsteps and Aza appeared carrying a ledger-like book and a pencil, and sat down beside them.

“Got his name and date of birth?”

“Not yet,” said Seva, striking a match and lighting a cigarette. “And what’s the point? They’ll be false anyway. It’s the Feds who always tell the truth.”

“False or not – I don’t give a toss. That’s on their heads. The main thing’s to get a name and bung it down. Tidy paperwork’s the need for any job – ours especially.”

“Well, get it when they come for the ashes,” snapped Seva.

Fifteen or so minutes later the Chechens returned, looked into the shed, and finding nobody, looked around and espied the three sitting under the trees.

Seva got to his feet.

“All done. Let’s have his name and date of birth.”

“What for?” one asked.

“The record. State requirement. Then if anyone comes looking, they’ll find here was where he was cremated and be reassured.”

“Well, if that’s the idea, Ilyas Zhadoyev, date of birth ’83, Nizhniye Atagi,” said the Chechen with little trace of accent. “Anything else?”

“That’s fine,” said Aza, opening his ledger.

To Seva’s instructions, Viktor shut off the flow valves in reverse order. They opened the outer furnace door, allowed the heat to be dissipated, then opened the inner – the question now being not so much one of heat as of odour.