4
Come on now, remember. Remember everything you can. Everything you know about interrogation techniques: torture methods, psychological pressure designed to humiliate you and break your will. You don’t know how it might help, but you desperately try to remember. In reality, you are simply fighting your fear. Yes, that’s it. But what is there to be frightened of? After all, you’ve already realized your time left on earth will be brief. At least in the human dimension of time… Although it will stretch on endlessly in another dimension. And it is this other dimension that frightens you. Its inevitability frightens you. There is no alternative path. Perhaps you could have improved your lot by telling them everything. And perhaps that’s what you’d have done, if you were an optimist. But you were never one to build castles in the air. Someone in your blood far stronger and wiser, some ancient, mighty voice in your blood begins to speak: You are a warrior. And a warrior is dead from birth. His death is never seeking him: it is always there with him on his shoulders. So why did you get so frightened when you looked into the face of death? You knew you couldn’t live for ever. Soon your ordeal will be over. No matter how eternal it may seem, it will not last long in time. You should know how to die in combat. If there’s nothing left to fight for, then fight for your death. You’re still at war. But now you face the most challenging battle of all on the warrior’s path. This ancient voice stirs some feeling in you… Is it pride, perhaps?
You may be lying wounded and beaten, face down on the dirty floor of a helicopter, but never in all your brief life has anybody shown you such honour as this. And what counts most of alclass="underline" it is your oldest mortal foe showing you this honour. The Russians consider this tiny person so dangerous to their vast country that they have brought two helicopters especially for you. The reality is that helicopters always fly in pairs, but that does not matter, for this is the last mark of respect you will get in your life. So you cling to this false belief. In just twenty minutes or so, perhaps sooner, you will have to answer before God for all the sins of your ancestors. Meanwhile, you try to remember anything that might be of help in the battle to come. You feel the helicopter descending – it is over. You’ve arrived. This is your final stop. From here on you will start on a different journey, known but unknown, and thus terrifying. From here you will depart for eternity. This is a journey you’ll have to make, one way or another. But how you make it is up to you.
The helicopter lands and you tumble out. They catch you below and slam your head against the tracks of an infantry fighting vehicle. Despite the blood gushing, you do not pass out. You hear them flinging your guide along with you on to the vehicle. All this time your eyes are blindfolded and your hands are tied, so you can only hear and feel. You feel not with your fingers but with the entire surface of your soon-to-be-tortured body. Before long you are thrown off the IFV and led away under further beatings. You are worried about your friend, he is not guilty of anything. They interrogate him first. You cannot hear the questions or his answers. Meanwhile, you’re lying face down in the sun, and they are slowly and expertly beating you. You pray to God that your stories will match. And God hears your plea: they will match more or less. They lead you away to be interrogated. You are set in front of an unseen officer who asks you questions. You answer them. The story emerging from their questions and your answers goes more or less as follows.
‘I’m a journalist. The guide is a guy I went to school with. He knew I was a journalist but he didn’t realize I was armed. This morning I had a tip-off from someone that a delegate in the talks with the Russians had arrived at Chechen military headquarters, and so I was making my way there. I needed to interview him. It’s my job. I’d left some weapons hidden in the forest, and when my guide saw that I was arming myself, he wanted to turn back. But I talked him into going a hundred metres further with me. Of course, I’m not on a salary, but there’s a war going on. And it’s my duty as a journalist to witness this tragedy at least, so I can write about it later. Yes, I think war is a tragedy. And I dream of it ending. It doesn’t matter how, just so long as the killing stops. Why was I armed? Well, you can’t work with them unless you’re armed. They take the attitude that a man wandering around the positions without a weapon must be an enemy agent. I paid two hundred roubles for the RPG launcher out of my savings, and the hand grenades were a present from some rebels. No, I haven’t killed anybody. I haven’t fired at anybody. I’ve never been arrested. I served in the Soviet Army, then I studied at the Chechen State University. Before the war I never wrote about politics. I wrote only about culture and sometimes I wrote on science.’
They aren’t happy with your answers. They suggest that you tell them the truth. You object: ‘I’ve told you the truth. If you don’t believe me, you can check with all the Russian, Chechen and foreign accredited journalists who are working here. They all know me.’
‘Of course we believe that part of your story. You look too sophisticated to be a rebel. But we also know that you’ve lied to us. Now that is not in your interest. You’ll tell us the truth anyway, in the end. Everyone always does. But it’s in your interest to tell it sooner. Do you hear, your friend wants to tell you something’ – you hear your friend scream. ‘He’d certainly advise you to tell the truth.’
‘I have told the truth…’
‘No! Not the whole truth. You haven’t said anything about the number of rebels, the weapons they’ve got… You haven’t given us the names of the rebels or their commanders.’ As you discover later, your comrade’s interrogation is following a different track. ‘You haven’t shown us the location of their headquarters and bases. You haven’t told us who your notes on the sabotage attacks of a certain mid-ranking field commander were intended for and where you got them. It’s a report with your findings meant for Dudayev or Maskhadov. Isn’t it? And you’re not a journalist at all. You’re using your journalist ID as a cover. Who are you?’
‘I got that information officially, as a journalist. And they’re forever shifting their bases and headquarters about. As for names, no one thought to introduce themselves by name to me as I’m a journalist. They all have call signs, but I can’t remember them. And I don’t know the first thing about weaponry. I’m a civilian. And for my army service I was based at headquarters.’
‘OK. You’re under stress and we realize there’s a lot you’ve forgotten. But we’re here to help you remember it all. And the quicker you remember, the better for you. Now go and have a chat with our friend!’ Once again you are led off for a ‘chat’, as blows from rifle butts are lavished upon you.
They run and slam your head against a pillar repeatedly, then they stomp on your wounded, bleeding foot. Dizzied from the blows to your head, you slump down in the guards’ arms – but they won’t let you fall to the ground yet, and dragging you further, they beat you even harder. Despite the many blows to your head, for some reason you’ve not passed out. Very soon you will desperately want to pass out, but you won’t lose consciousness even for a second. They will not let you. They are experts. The guards hand you over.
5
Electricity is a blessing. It supplies mankind with heat and light, with communications; it has uses in medicine. Of course, if you are not careful, it can hurt you, kill you even, but these are accidents, and accidents happen in the course of day-to-day life. But it turns out electricity has one more application. It can be used for the methodical infliction of pain: for torture. You are no longer being roughed up any old how, with random blows from rifle butts and boots. No. You are being tortured. And the difference between the two is phenomenal. Beating is beating. It has no system: any old person can do it, using any old thing, in any old place. The soldiers beating you are unleashing all their fury, their dread of death, their sleep terrors and nightmares. They are blaming you personally for their grim, tented existence, for the cold and the hunger. To them the one person guilty of all their woes is you. And in any case, you are the enemy. All their hatred centres solely on you – because you are right here in front of them. They beat you because they’re afraid; of you, of combat, of death. They punch and kick with fervour. The beatings in this place often result in disability and death and nearly always leave a permanent mark on your health. But the torture… Here everything is done slowly and meticulously; they strike each spot only for a matter of minutes, so the body cannot get used to the pain. The torture almost never leaves long-term outward marks. The torturer’s task is not to cripple but to beat out of the victim the maximum possible information. And in the process, delivering the maximum degree of pain with the minimum possible consequences. No emotions are involved. That is if you’re being tortured not by the sadistic OMON paramilitaries but by professionals. There are no feelings. There is only the cold calculation of professionals. Everything has been worked out down to the finest detail, and everything is done with a purpose. They are acting on a broad front here, working on body and mind simultaneously, trying to get through to you that you’re nothing. There is nobody, nothing that can help you. Only you can help yourself, by giving them the truth. You need to take pity on yourself, and then your overlords will give the order for you to be pardoned; they’ll let you eat and drink. They’ll even arrange for your release. But you feel that they are lying. They cannot do anything. They are just torturers. They laugh… They sing an old pop song, ‘Call Me Up’,[28] as they wind the handle of an old-style telephone set. But this isn’t sadism. It is their job. An ordinary job, which they do with skill and to their utmost ability. The longer and faster they wind the handle, the higher the voltage and stronger the current shooting through you. Naked wires are attached to your fingers and toes. To enhance the effect you are constantly doused with water. The current rips through your body like a thousand red-hot needles. Your body arches… You lie face down the whole time. The current is increased. The voltage is so high that your thumb nails are burning. But right now, of course, you’re not aware of that. They continue to wind the handle, cheerfully singing, ‘Call me up, oh, call me. For the love of God, call me…’ You realize that they won’t stop unless you scream. You let out a scream. This is the only torture to wrest a scream out of you. You’re screaming more from impotent rage than from the pain. They stop. Only to start again five seconds later… They won’t kill you until they believe that you have nothing left to tell them. Your task is to convince them of this as fast as you can. To do that you need to stick to your initial story, grit your teeth and not let a wrong word slip out.