The night was deepening, and his father might well have fallen or turned his ankle — but if so, why didn’t he call? Vlad would have gladly grabbed a flashlight and headed for the woods, but he knew full well that in the huge park he would be lucky to find anything by himself.
After another half-hour his mother became seriously concerned. “When did you speak with him last?”
“Two hours ago. He was in Bittsevskiy Park.”
“My God! And you said nothing all this time?”
They called the police but were informed that people were not considered missing before three days had passed. “Are you sure he doesn’t have a sweetheart on the side?” was the only comment of the indifferent police duty officer.
Vlad would remember events of this night for the rest of his life. The scenes would repeat themselves minute by minute, over and over, indelibly imprinting the inevitability and helplessness of it all. His mother called her father and brother. Along with a good-hearted neighbor they armed themselves with flashlights and spread out among the many pathways of the woods. In some spots they crossed depressions full of mud from recent showers with the ends of fallen branches protruding from them. The night enveloped them in cold desperation, abetted by another shower driven by a wind that whined through the trees.
It was Vlad who spotted the shapeless form lying face down at the foot of an old, cracked birch. He rushed to turn it over. In the flashlight’s beam he recognized his father, beaten nearly beyond recognition. Viscous blood that had not yet been washed away by the rain fell in rivulets over his disfigured face.
Vlad grabbed the lapels of the gore-covered jacket and tried to lift his father’s body. One arm bent unnaturally as though instead of bones it was filled with straw.
He cried out, not from terror, not from pain, but rather from an impotent wish to break through the hopeless wall of death, to reach his father, to call him out of this broken shell.
His mother screamed behind him, and he heard his grandfather wail. From the corner of his eye he saw the quick gesture of his neighbor who pressed his hand to Sergey’s throat to find a pulse, but Sergey’s heart had stopped beating.
Vlad knelt on the muddy earth and grasped his father’s cold, muddy hand. From behind him, as though through a fog came his grandfather’s words. “He was beaten… beaten to death… Dear God! Who could have done this?”
Vlad stood unsteadily and embraced his mother. She needed his comfort now. His father’s careless words echoed more loudly in his ears than his mother’s sobs: “The biggest maniac of all is sitting in the Kremlin.”
That very maniac was behind every cruel blow that had beaten the life out of Sergey, behind the scum who gave the order and those who carried it out.
He forced himself to look again at the battered body and resolved to find every one of his father’s murderers if it took the rest of his life.
Chapter 6
Gorlovka, Ukraine
The Ministry of State Security of the unrecognized Donetsk Peoples Republic (МГБ ДНР) (MGB DNR) was located in an unremarkable, Soviet-style gray building. It was the former quarters of the Ukrainian Security Service, the SBU (СБУ). Mihailo Korzh was challenged immediately by a guard, a sergeant of short stature with small, mean eyes.
He held out his passport. “Mikhail Korzh. I’m expected.” Best to use the Russian version of his name in this building. It might get him farther.
The guard examined his documents and reluctantly wrote out a pass. “Go straight ahead then left to reception,” he growled. “But first, empty your pockets and pass through the metal detector.
One wall of the faceless lobby was decorated with the black-blue-red flag of the DNR. The entrance to the basement was guarded by two rough men who might be Serbs.
Mihailo was long accustomed to the presence of Chechens and Serbs in his home town. Since February, thousands of Russian citizens, the majority of whom clearly belonged to the criminal classes, had flooded into his city with the braggadocio of an occupation force. Arrogant skinheads with swastika tattoos swaggered through the streets as though they owned everything and had come to oversee the conquered. They took over workers’ quarters on the outskirts of town and came out in force to every pro-Ukrainian rally in the Donbas to start fights. Armed with knives and rebars from construction sites, intoxicated by their anonymity, inflamed by herd instinct, these gangs of bandits attacked unarmed groups of protesters and pitilessly beat them.
On their heels arrived the new “leadership” — officers and workers of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Army, the GRU (ГРУ), in khaki uniforms, unshaven and with a strange gleam in their eyes — a mixture of idealistic fanaticism and greed. Upon arrival they took over the city with predatory and ruthless force. They confiscated transport, businesses, money, kidnapped people and demanded ransom, cracking down on anyone foolish enough to try to escape their indiscriminate plunder. They dealt in the same way with anyone who disagreed with them.
Soon it was the Serbs’ turn — wide shouldered, no longer young, veterans of the Yugoslavian wars, taciturn and cruel; without a word they got busy with arrests, torture, and firing squads. Chechens appeared at guard posts and on patrol with the terrifying appearance of merciless fighters with AK-47’s at the ready.
It seemed as if the very earth had opened and hell itself had sown terror and death throughout the city. Hunger was one of the results — empty store shelves, astronomical prices and the absence of salaries. The battle over water and electricity would come later.
The local inhabitants watched with resignation as the familiar elements of civilization disappeared to be replaced by a monstrous amalgam of chaos and military drill. The once peaceful city became sluggish as it awaited its turn to become a battlefield…
“Why do you need a pass?” The officer studied Mihailo from under lowered brows.
“My son urgently needs an operation on his eyes. This was arranged in Kharkov before the war, but his turn came only now,” replied Mihailo. The office was a normal room, impersonal and maybe too sparsely furnished for its size. The only thing to distinguish it was a map on the wall with red rectangles for houses and green patches for parks. Mihailo made an effort to memorize as much of the map as possible.
“On his eyes?” the MGB officer asked again.
Everything was upside down in this bizarre new world as though they had drifted into another dimension: criminals were soldiers, former civilians were on patrol, regular soldiers were in charge of security, and intelligence officers headed the city administration. And here was this well-fed MGBnik, clearly a bored and annoyed junior army staff officer, speaking to him in a sing-song voice. “There are children here of real patriots who can’t leave. With heart disease, by the way, who’ve waited years for surgery. But eyes? You must be kidding. Get him some glasses.”
Heart disease, in truth, was the first idea that had occurred when devising possible reasons for leaving. He didn’t know any heart doctors, but he did have a friend who was an eye doctor.
From a cupboard behind him the officer withdrew a bowl filled to the top with sugar and set it on the desk. He unceremoniously intended to drink some tea right in front of his guest. Mihailo swallowed the saliva that started in his mouth. There was no longer any sugar in the stores, and when some did appear at a market it was outrageously expensive. Mihailo barely restrained himself from dipping into the white crystals to stuff some in his mouth and more into his pocket to take home.