‘I can, Senior Lieutenant Sir!’ I replied, with the voice of a young communist – full of energy and faith in the Nation’s future.
He gave me a funny look:
‘Tell me, how many times have you been in?’
‘Two, Senior Lieutenant Sir!’ I replied, without missing a beat.
He whistled, and then asked:
‘Did you steal? Deal drugs?’
‘No, Senior Lieutenant Sir!’
‘Well then,’ he said, raising his voice, ‘are you going to share what the hell you did that was serious enough to get two juvenile convictions?’
‘I impaired some people’s health, Senior Lieutenant Sir!’
‘You impaired some people’s health? What language are you speaking, boy! Can’t you explain yourself any better?’
It was like talking to my late, great uncle Sergey. He used the same expressions, and his voice wasn’t cruel or fake like that of other soldiers.
‘I beat up and stabbed two people, Senior Lieutenant Sir! But I did my time and I’ve learned my lesson!’ I kept playing the good soldier, responding in the way I imagined that soldiers were supposed to respond: fast, like tap-dancing with your tongue.
‘Good boy! I like you!’ he said, amused. ‘Now take the keys and be careful with the transmission, it’s an old car…’ Then he paused, looked at all three of us and said in a normal voice, without any trace of mockery or arrogant bullshit or anything of the sort:
‘Never call me “Senior Lieutenant Sir” again, is that clear? From now on, you’re saboteurs. We don’t have ranks, just names, remember that. So I’m “Comrade Zabelin” to you. Let’s go, get this thing started…’
The saboteurs’ camp was in the paratroopers’ camp. It was a base within the base, with fences, checkpoints and everything. The paratroopers went about their daily lives and we never encountered them.
Our barracks were long, arranged on a single storey, and in the middle of the hallway there was an entrance that led underground.
During the first week they subjected us to various trials; they wanted to assess our health and endurance. Zabelin was our only drill instructor; there were a dozen sergeants who assisted, but he saw to the training himself. They woke us up during the night and made us run, armed and with full backpacks as if we were in the field. We would leave the base in total darkness, Zabelin at the head of the ranks and a few sergeants at the side and the back, and start running like a pack of animals. It was extremely difficult; we had to move in the dark down dirt paths in the woods, run up and down hills, and every metre of ground we covered cost us enormous effort. Lots of guys got hurt; one fell and broke a leg; another didn’t see a ditch and fell in, shattering one of his vertebrae. You couldn’t see a thing, and Zabelin didn’t let us use any lights.
‘You have to move in the dark like animals. Darkness is a saboteur’s best friend; you have to take advantage of it. It’s your lover, your partner…’ he would always say when anyone tried to complain.
We also had to learn how to orient ourselves in the dead of night; it was important to know where base was at all times, to be able to load our rifles, arrange things in our packs. Even in the barracks our windows were always covered by heavy shutters made of dark wood. We ate, did our business, showered, dressed, dismantled and cleaned our weapons, all in the dark.
Zabelin respected me because I had learned to run in the dark without being afraid to fall, I handled exertion well, I could go a long time without drinking water, and especially because I never asked pointless questions, which he hated more than anything.
After a week, we began target practice. Beforehand, Zabelin asked if any one of us was handy with weapons, if we had shot anything. A few of us said yes, so he ordered us to take up the AKSM-74 Kalashnikov assault rifles, and gave us each an entire clip. I had a head start; in addition to the target shooting I did in a city sports team, I had lots of hunting experience in Siberia with my grandfather Nikolay. Whenever I went to visit my grandfather, even when I was still just a kid, my father often let me shoot his Kalashnikov.
When it was my turn, I made a spectacular shot. Instead of just hitting the bullseye, I knocked it down, breaking the pedestal that secured it to the ground.
‘Siberian, what the hell are you doing? Why didn’t you aim for the centre?’ Zabelin pretended to be angry with me.
‘There’s no point in shooting straw targets with this cannon, Comrade Zabelin!’ I replied, like the ideal soldier. ‘If you want me to hit that bullseye give me a slingshot, at least then it would be fun!’
My comrades broke into laughter. Zabelin laughed, too:
‘All right, let’s make a pact: if you can knock down the rest of that pedestal, I’ll send you to a place where you can do whatever you want!’ His tone was very cheerful.
‘Consider it done, Comrade Zabelin!’
I levelled the rifle, fixed the stump in the crosshairs, lowered my aim by half a finger and fired, very delicately pressing on the trigger. The pedestal lifted off the ground completely, and fell with a bounce.
‘All right, Nicolay, you’ve earned a spot in the sniper course. Starting tomorrow you’ll be working with Comrade Sergeant Yakut!’
From then on, every day for four hours, I would leave the main group and follow individualised training with a small detachment composed of twelve men. The sniper instructor was a sergeant of Siberian origin, like me, and so they called him Yakut, after the region he came from.[1] He was sharp and knew all there was to know about war. He’d fought in several armed conflicts and was an expert in ‘micro expeditions’, brief and highly risky engagements in special war operations. He seldom spoke, and spent most of our lessons teaching us the basics of shooting with precision rifles. He explained how to make the most of the telescope and how to pick out and hunt down other snipers. The principle wasn’t difficult; you had to move slowly without letting yourself be seen, be patient, and be extremely alert – like a hunter.
After a month of training exercises, I’d figured out a way to escape from the base. So one night I grabbed a few of my things and crossed two fences watched by the sentry. Like a shadow, I crept along the walls, but when I finally emerged outside the base, thinking that I’d made it, there was Zabelin, eating an ice cream.
‘Want one?’ he asked casually.
‘Might as well…’
I couldn’t imagine what he had in mind, but something told me he wouldn’t get me into trouble. I followed him to where he’d parked his car. We drove into the city, although it must have been two or three in the morning, and we stopped at the sort of diner frequented by truckers, a place where people would sneak off to their cars with prostitutes.
We sat down at a table and, without exchanging a word, ate a meal together. He washed his meat down with long sips of vodka. He offered me some too, but I declined – I didn’t want to get drunk. After eating in perfect silence, Zabelin ordered two lemon ice creams. Once the obese, exhausted waitress had set them on the table, he finally began to talk.
‘Nicolay, I don’t know what kind of mess you were born into or raised in, but I can assure you that here, in the army, nobody cares who you are. You don’t exist. Here you’re a number, and if you make one mistake they erase you, just as they would erase a number. I’m certain you could become a good saboteur, and I think that this is your only chance to save yourself. You’re going to find yourself in serious trouble, but if you follow my advice you’ll thank me for it one day…’ He spoke softly, without a sign of irritation, still calmly eating his ice cream.
I was eating my ice cream too, and I wasn’t thinking about military prison – where, if he wanted, he could have sent me without much difficulty. The only thing that mattered to me at that moment was figuring out how he’d caught me, when I thought I’d been careful and invisible. He kept talking: