When I arrived home, tired from the strain of the drive, I listened to the messages on my answering machine. Mr. Smith had called again. He’d already tried a few times. I did not want to speak to him. More days passed. My conscience nagged. Eventually I returned his call. We met at his hotel. I sat in the same armchair as before.
“Vadym investigated the telecommunications deal,” he said. I felt a shiver of alarm, but only a shiver. So many rumours surrounded Vadym’s death already. I did not know what to believe.
“I’m sure they killed him because of this and you need to be careful,” Mr. Smith said. “I saw Vadym not long before he died. He told me that he had all the evidence and would publicize the facts.”
I left the hotel more confused than ever, unnerved, a little ashamed too. Vadym followed up on Mr. Smith’s story while I merely toyed with it and uncovered little of substance. A better journalist would find proof that either substantiated Mr. Smith’s claim or disproved it — would add one more piece of evidence to Vadym’s case or eliminate one rumoured reason for his death. I did neither.
Around this time, I received a call from the procurator’s office. The office wanted to interview me as part of an investigation into Vadym’s case. My bitter feelings had subsided; I felt hopeful now.
On the day of the appointment, I walked up to the procurator’s office and told the authorities all that I knew. I gave a statement but received little information in exchange. In fact, I left with the impression that no investigation would ensue. I felt a wave of paranoia as I had during my early days in Kiev and wondered if the purpose of the interview was simply to ensure that I did not know too much, which I did not. That sense of unease intensified on my walk home. I understood so little of what really occurred in Ukraine. The best we could hope for with Vadym’s case, I thought, was that someday someone would feel the need to confess.
8
MOLDOVA
“Susie bear, do you have a funnel?” Bill asked. We stood in March sunshine on the road outside his apartment, just around the corner from mine.
I did. I also had several extra canisters for gasoline. Bill and I had phoned our gasoline contacts (I now purchased mine from the trunk of a local taxi driver) and pooled our resources. We knew that it would be hard to find fuel along the way, so we carried enough with us for our return trip. We were going to Moldova, which bordered Ukraine. I thought of Moldova as my turf. I had been there before, staked a claim, and would now return to cover a story that I considered mine.
“I hope we see a big hairy Cossack,” Bill said.
“I’m sure we will. I read that at least 150 are already there,” I replied. “A lot of the Russian Cossacks seem to be Afghan vets.”
“It’s Cossacks and Transdniestrians against the Moldovans. I guess the Russian army based in Trans-Dniester will be the deciding factor,” Bill said. We discussed possible outcomes for this conflict in Moldova that pitted ethnic Russians in Trans-Dniester (a region of Moldova) against the Moldovan majority. The two sides were separated by a river, the Dniester. Reports that Russian Cossacks had snuck into Moldova to support the Transdniestrians intrigued us.
“Last time I was there, the Transdniestrians thought the Moldovans were getting ready to unite with Romania,” I said. “They called the Moldovans Romanians.” Distracted, Bill said, “just a sec.” He rushed into his apartment.
“We’d better bring this,” he insisted as he came running back out. He waved a long, floppy rubber tube, a siphon.
“Oh no,” I groaned. Whoever used the siphon would end up with a mouthful of gas.
“Don’t worry, I’ll do it if we need to,” Bill said.
We packed vodka — no better currency for barter — and some food, but canisters of gasoline took up most of the room in the trunk. I thought briefly about the possibility that if rear-ended, we might blow up like a bomb on four wheels. Once we had finished loading the car, we set off. We travelled southwest toward the Moldovan border. I enjoyed the company, the scenery and the sense of freedom I always felt on long trips by car. I did not enjoy the road conditions, especially once we veered off the main highway and travelled along increasingly potholed tracks that could barely be called roads.
“I wanted to be a race car driver,” Bill shouted as he zigzagged at top speed past potholes, several of which were large enough to swallow us and the car. The odd time he accidentally dipped into one, my teeth clacked and my body banged against the door. I wondered if my Lada would shed parts along the way. We reached the Moldovan border and sailed through on our final leg of the trip to Tiraspol, the capital of Transdniestria.
“Look up there. What’s he got on?” Bill asked as we approached a driving school just outside Tiraspol. I looked at a man who stood by the school. He wore a faded military jacket that was different from any I’d seen before and baggy pantaloons. He held a long whip.
“That must be a Cossack,” said Bill, excited now. He pulled into the school parking lot. Once inside the building, we realized the Cossacks had turned the school into their headquarters.
A busy barber was cutting men’s hair in the hallway. I stopped in front of a small shrine set up in memory of a twenty-one-year-old Russian Cossack, who had recently been killed. His black and white photograph formed the centrepiece. A black funeral sash was stretched diagonally across the frame. This Cossack looked too robust and young for death. I wondered what had motivated him to come here and risk dying so far away from home.
I moved away from the shrine, struck by the raucous force of life that permeated other parts of the headquarters. Most Cossacks, shaggy-headed and needing a trim, lounged around and opened beer bottles with the bayonets on the end of their rifles. Several taped syringes to their rifles and stuffed their pockets with bandages so that they would have first aid supplies at hand if they were wounded.
A large man in a mismatched uniform approached me. He said that he came from Irkutsk. Siberia was so far away.
“Why are you here?” I asked him.
“To defend our brother Slavs. They’re under attack. We’ll protect them,” he said.
“But we’re not in Russia. This is Moldova,” I said.
“These are our people and this is our land. They won’t take it from us,” he angrily insisted. I pointed to the shrine set up for the young Cossack and asked how he had died.
“We had no guns when we arrived,” the Siberian Cossack said. “We armed ourselves with planks of wood.” I thought of the square in Grozny where men without guns had done the same. I felt disturbed that an item I associated with carpentry, maybe a board for a bookshelf, could so easily become a weapon.
“We captured guns from the Moldovans,” the Siberian Cossack explained. “The Transdniestrians gave us more.” I asked if by Transdniestrians he meant the Russian army stationed here but could extract no information from him on this point. Officially, the army remained neutral.
I felt insecure in this driving school turned Cossack headquarters. The disorderliness that bordered on chaos unnerved me, as did the abundance of weapons and alcohol. I did not think that vodka, beer and guns should ever mix.
I went to find Bill. I wanted to leave. He spoke with Mikhail, the Cossack whom we had seen standing outside.
“Don’t worry,” Mikhail said. “Any Cossack who shows up drunk for battle gets ten lashes from this,” he said and cracked his whip. Bill finished the interview. Then we left and drove into Tiraspol. We saw Lenin statues and hammers and sickles everywhere.