Day of the Long Knives, page 15
‘Oh my God.’
‘I need you to help us.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Keep me on air. When Mingrelsky comes, you have to speak to him. Tell him he’s on air.’
‘Oh, blood and damnation.’
‘Can you do that?’
It took Ksansky some time to reply.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ said Tamara. ‘They’re here. I can hear their cars. They’re outside. Can you hear their voices?’
‘No.’
Just then there was a bang.
‘I heard that,’ said Ksansky. ‘What was it?’
‘They’re kicking the door in.’
Tamara opened the living room door, holding the mobile phone to her cheek.
‘Mingrelsky!’ she shouted.
And then she saw him running up the stairs, instantly recognisable despite the balaclava on his face.
It was him.
It was her nightmare.
He had come for them.
‘Mingrelsky!’
There were four others too, all armed with AKM assault rifles.
‘Ah, Tamara. So you’ve come round already.’ He grabbed her by the hair. He didn’t seem to notice the mobile phone. ‘I’ll tell you what, when we’ve shot your husband, we’ll take you with us, and this time I’ll make sure every White Eagle in Ronkoni fucks you before we slit your throat.’
‘Mingrelsky, you can’t.’
‘And why the fuck not?’
‘Because this is going out live on the radio.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve got Provisional Radio on the other end of this phone. We’re going out live.’
Mingrelsky hung his gun over his shoulder and snatched the mobile phone from Tamara, his other hand still clutching her hair.
‘Who the fuck’s that?’
‘Hi there. Erm, this is the Tembot Ksansky show on Provisional Radio. We’re going out live to a hundred thousand listeners all over the Ronkoni region.’
Mingrelsky’s eyes widened. Tamara didn’t know whether it was horror or fury.
‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘If you kill us in front of a hundred thousand witnesses, even Korgay won’t be able to protect you.’
Mingrelsky paused for a moment.
‘You fucking Rebel slut!’ he shouted and pushed Tamara to the floor. Then he turned the mobile phone off and threw it against the wall.
*
Lionidza never thought he would approve of a speech by Nina Begishveli.
‘We will defeat Korgay,’ she said. ‘When a regime is so discredited that it has to threaten to rape the wife of an opposition leader, then you know that regime has had it.’
Everybody cheered.
‘We just have to be patient. Soon the whole rotten edifice will come crashing to the ground.’
Cheers and applause.
‘But don’t imagine Korgay’s lost his teeth, because he hasn’t.’
The crowd were silent again.
‘He’s transferred all the democratic units of the army out of Ronkoni, and he’s brought the Third Motor Rifle Regiment in. Plus the White Eagles and the Ksord Home Army and all the other fascists. He wants to fight, and he wants to fight now, when he thinks he’s strong enough to beat us.’
Nina raised her voice to a shout. ‘We mustn’t give him what he wants. No matter what the provocation, we mustn’t give him an excuse to send the army and the fascists in against us. Whatever happens today, no violence. We mustn’t be provoked, not under any circumstances whatsoever.’
Some of the audience cheered, but here and there, Lionidza noticed a commotion among the crowd. They weren’t listening to Nina. It was as if they were listening to something else.
Nina tried to continue her speech, but the commotion seemed to be spreading. ‘Provocateurs,’ thought Lionidza. ‘There must be provocateurs in the crowd.’
The union leader who had just spoken pushed forward, a transistor radio in his hand. He took the microphone from Nina. ‘Excuse me.’
‘Friends,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got Provisional Radio here. You have to listen. They’re going to kill Ruslan Shanidza.’
He held the radio to the microphone, and Lionidza instantly recognised Tamara’s muffled voice: ‘Oh Jesus. They’re here. I can hear their cars. They’re outside. Can you hear their voices?’
‘No.’
Then there was silence for a moment as the union leader unplugged the microphone and plugged the lead straight into the radio.
‘They’re kicking the door in.’ Now Tamara’s voice was clear. It boomed around the square as 150,000 or more listened in absolute silence.
Lionidza heard four more bangs, then Tamara’s voice came over, very loud.
‘Mingrelsky!’
Oh Jesus, no. Not him. Please no, not him.
‘Mingrelsky!’
Lionidza wanted to scream. He saw Nina standing in front of him, tears in her eyes, her face a picture of despair.
‘Ah, Tamara. So you’ve come round already.’ It was Vakhtan Mingrelsky’s voice. Unmistakable.
There was a little scream of sorts from Tamara, then Mingrelsky continued: ‘I’ll tell you what, when we’ve shot your husband, we’ll take you with us, and this time I’ll make sure every White Eagle in Ronkoni fucks you before we slit your throat.’
Nina sank to her knees, covering her head with her hands.
‘Mingrelsky, you can’t,’ said Tamara’s voice.
‘And why the fuck not?’
‘Because this is going out live on the radio.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve got Provisional Radio on the other end of this mobile phone. We’re going out live.’
For a moment there was silence.
Mingrelsky’s voice boomed out again. ‘Who the fuck’s that?’
‘Hi there. Erm, this is the Tembot Ksansky show on Provisional Radio. We’re going out live to a hundred thousand listeners all over Ronkoni.’
Silence again.
‘Think about it,’ said Tamara’s voice. ‘If you kill us in front of a hundred thousand witnesses, even Korgay won’t be able to protect you.’
‘Oh, please,’ whispered Lionidza.
‘You fucking Rebel slut!’ Mingrelsky shouted. There were some indeterminate noises, and then silence.
Lionidza heard Nina wail, ‘Oh no, no. Please God, no.’
Silence.
Then Tembot Ksansky’s voice: ‘Tamara? Tamara? Mingrelsky? Tamara? Are you there?’
No answer. Ksansky asked again, this time it was obvious that he was crying. ‘Tamara? Tamara? She’s been cut off. Tamara, please for God’s sake ring us back.’
Nina was crying, her hands covering her face.
For several minutes, Ksansky’s tearful voice called out in vain to Tamara. At first the crowd was silent, but then came a strange noise that Lionidza had never heard before, the sound of thousands of people crying.
‘Come on, Sergo,’ said Orbeliani. ‘We have to make sure there isn’t a riot.’
They went to speak to Kakhi. There were no tears on his face, just an expression of fury. Meanwhile, on the radio, Ksansky’s voice was still begging Tamara to ring him back.
Orbeliani put his arm on Kakhi’s shoulder. ‘We’ll get them for this, but we can’t do it today. Korgay’s filled the city with his goons.’
‘Fuck them,’ said Kakhi.
Qipiani joined them, along with the union leader and a student leader.
‘We have to prevent a riot,’ said the union leader. ‘They’ll massacre our people.’
Everyone murmured their agreement, with the exception of Kakhi.
‘You fucking cowards,’ he yelled at them. ‘There’ll never be a better time than now.’
‘I respect your point of view,’ Orbeliani said. ‘You’ll have every right to pin the blame on us.’
‘I will, don’t worry.’
Lionidza knew Kakhi was just manoeuvring, making sure he could blame the others for this ‘lost opportunity’.
‘What about Tamara?’ said Nina, who had joined them. ‘She must still be alive. We have to do something for her.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Lionidza. ‘You’re right. We have to let them know we hold them accountable.’
‘Yes,’ said Orbeliani. ‘We end the demonstration now. Then they can devote all their energies to finding Tamara.’
Orbeliani went back to the radio and turned it off. He unplugged the loudspeaker lead and plugged it back into the microphone, tapping it twice to make sure it was working. ‘Friends,’ his voice boomed across the square, ‘if Ruslan Shanidza is dead, then his murder will not go unpunished, but that’s not our priority today. Not now, because we know that Tamara Shanidza’s still alive, and we know what Mingrelsky’s planning to do with her.’
A restless murmur came from the crowd.
‘We have to give this warning to Mingrelsky, to the Security Police and to Korgay: we hold you accountable for her life. We hold you accountable for her safety.’
People applauded and cheered.
‘We have to make sure they have no excuse. We have to make sure they can’t say they were too busy dealing with us to go after Mingrelsky. So this demonstration ends, now. We just go home. We don’t riot. We don’t throw stones at the police. We just go home and bear witness. And we leave the authorities with no excuse for not rescuing Tamara Shanidza from Mingrelsky. Is this agreed, friends?’
Shouts of approval came from the crowd.
‘Then please join me in two minutes of silent prayer for our dear friend Ruslan Shanidza and for his wife Tamara.’
Lionidza closed his eyes and bowed his head. It was all too much for him. It wasn’t until that moment that he realised how much he loved them, both of them.
There came a noise from the crowd.
How dare they make a noise?
‘They’re cheering,’ Nina whispered.
Something was happening, like ripples in a pond, a cheer was spreading out from various points in the square.
‘Put the radio on! Put the radio on!’ shouted voices in the crowd.
Orbeliani clumsily hooked up the radio once more, and Tamara’s voice boomed out from the loudspeakers: ‘Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I couldn’t get a signal.’
An enormous cheer erupted. Nina raised her arms in triumph. She embraced Lionidza and kissed him. Then she embraced Orbeliani and almost everyone on the platform, even Kakhi.
Lionidza could just make out Tamara’s voice above all the din: ‘We’re all fine. Ruslan and Sufiya look as if they’ll be coming round soon. Tembot, I have to thank you. You saved our lives. You were brilliant.’
‘No, Tamara,’ said Ksansky’s voice. ‘You were brilliant.’
Part Two
SEVENTEEN DAYS LATER
VLADIMIR OBLAST, RUSSIA
Chapter Seventeen
RUSLAN AND Tamara stopped while Shota bent down to pick up the feather. He beamed as he held it up for them. It was the longest feather either of them had ever seen, almost half as long as Shota was tall. The first 12 centimetres of the shaft had no barbs at all. After a few white downy barbs, the rest were a soft light brown, with beautiful brown and white marbling near the top.
‘Wow,’ said Ruslan. ‘That’s an amazing feather.’
Shota jumped up and down with excitement.
Tamara turned to the nearest bodyguard and spoke to him in Russian. ‘Where’s Kostya?’
‘He’s behind.’
Tamara looked back along the forest path and waved to him. ‘Kostya! Kostya! Come here.’
Ruslan looked at her nonplussed.
‘He loves birdwatching. He’ll know what kind of bird it’s from.’
Kostya trotted towards them. As he came near, Tamara told Shota to show him the feather.
‘Do you know what it is?’
‘Oh, it’s so beautiful. It’s a golden eagle.’
Tamara translated for Shota, who was clearly thrilled to be in possession of such an illustrious feather.
‘Are there lots of golden eagles round here?’ Ruslan asked.
‘I’ve never seen one this close to Moscow. Tell Shota he’s a very clever boy to find such a fantastic feather.’
They had been in Russia for a week. Their Russian friend with influence in high places, the TV reporter Sergei Ivanov, had found them a secluded dacha in an area of beautiful beech and pine forests in the Meshchyora National Park, 120 kilometres from Moscow. He had also arranged for a posse of bodyguards to protect them. As she extracted their life stories, Tamara learned that they were SVR (the Foreign Intelligence Service of the former KGB), so she and Ruslan took it for granted that they were also spying on them.
Shota kept Ruslan and Tamara busy when he was awake, but as soon as he went to sleep, the aftershock of recent events would catch up with them. As well as his physical injuries and a cough that had still not quite gone away, Ruslan was haunted by the memory of his interrogation, particularly the near drowning, and by the humiliation of being unable to defend himself and his family.
Tamara, for her part, had faced up to her worst nightmare and defeated it. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw Mingrelsky’s masked face.
What would have happened to them if her neighbour hadn’t given her the mobile? Or if she hadn’t been able to get a signal? Or if Mingrelsky hadn’t put the phone to his ear to hear what Tembot Ksansky said?
She and Ruslan would be dead, she was sure of that. He would at least have had a quick death, a bullet in the head, though she had no doubt Mingrelsky would have wanted to revive him first, to let him know who was killing him. But for herself, her last hour of life would have been spent suffering the horrors of gang rape with only a slit throat to look forward to. She told herself to count her blessings and rejoice in the fact that she was still alive, but the death that she had so narrowly avoided continued to haunt her.
And what about Sufiya, they young woman from Ruslan’s staff who had been babysitting Shota? Would they have shot her? Or would she have suffered the same fate as Tamara? She seemed to have shrugged off her close encounter with death, but Tamara worried that the trauma might catch up with her later.
And Shota? Poor Shota. What would have happened to him? Would Mingrelsky have killed him too if her neighbours hadn’t taken him in? And who would have looked after him if he had been orphaned?
Tamara knew that Ruslan’s family would have stepped in. But how could they ever love him and cherish him the way his mother and father did? Again, she told herself to count her blessings. She was still there for her little boy. Ruslan was still there for him. They would give him the happy childhood he deserved, once he had put the horrors he had witnessed behind him.
Shota had refused to speak to Tamara after the attempt on their lives, so furious was he that she had abandoned him in his moment of greatest terror.
Ruslan told him again and again that Mama was a hero, Mama made sure you were safe so she could make the nasty men go away. Shota would reluctantly allow Tamara to dress him, put him in his high chair and feed him, or put him on the potty and wipe his bottom. But he would only speak with Ruslan or with Sufiya, who he had come to adore.
He kept it up the next morning, and Tamara began to fear that he would never speak to her again. But after lunch, she gave him an apple and he said, ‘Thank you, Mama’ and walked up to her for a cuddle.
She held on to him and wept for joy.
*
For Ruslan, once the elation of being released had worn off, the days and weeks that followed were a nightmare. As political crisis and the threat of civil war swirled around him, the pro-opposition press and Central Kuban and Russian TV insisted on interview after interview. He had to detail the torture he had suffered, the attack on Tamara and the attempt on his life. He could just about retain his composure when he talked about his torture and the attempt on his life, but doing so while recounting the threat to gang rape Tamara proved to be impossible every time.
Every interviewer asked him about his ‘brilliant’ crossed-fingers message to Tamara. He didn’t feel able to tell anyone that it hadn’t been a signal at all, just a fleeting moment of defiance brought on when his interlocutor said something that annoyed him.
He also faced an intrusive medical examination (‘no lasting damage but more than 70 bruises and welts, mostly in the back, buttocks, chest, arms and legs. Some bruising of the testicles and evidence of epididymitis, also evidence of mild pleural effusion and a chest infection consistent with a near drowning’).
The newspapers and TV wanted pictures of his injuries. His press officer gave him four options: trousers, shorts, underpants or swimming trunks. Ruslan decided to be filmed and photographed naked, confident that his backside and his private parts wouldn’t appear in the press or on TV (in fact Central Kuban TV and two Central Kuban newspapers featured his backside in their reports, somewhat to his and Tamara’s amusement).
And all the while, he scarcely managed more than three or four hours of sleep a night. If it wasn’t the trauma of captivity and torture that kept him awake, it was a fury that consumed him and resisted every attempt he made to calm himself down with breathing exercises or meditation.
Nina and Lionidza eventually visited Ruslan and Tamara together to persuade Ruslan that the opposition would survive without him and he needed to take a break. Nina said that if she and Lionidza could actually agree on something, they must be right.
Troops from the Second Motor Rifle Regiment drove Ruslan, Tamara and Shota to the border in a convoy of three BTR-60 armoured personnel carriers. The Russian authorities put them in a much more comfortable Chaikas and took them to Stavropol, from where they flew them to Moscow.
*
Grateful as they were for the help and protection offered by the Russians, Ruslan and Tamara didn’t like the idea of being spied on by the SVR. There was a wicker bench on the dacha’s veranda, and they moved this 10 metres away from the dacha so they could sit outside in the evening and talk without being listened to.
The dacha had a good stock of beer, wine and vodka, but Ruslan and Tamara agreed that they wouldn’t touch it. Both of them had been self-medicating with alcohol, and they realised that they needed to stop. From now on, they would be free to drink socially, but the two of them would only drink at home together once a week, and they would never drink when they were alone.
