an index of the top brass on both sides of the war: General of the Federal Army Valentin Vladimirovich Korabelnikov, Special Battalion Vostok Commander Sulim Yamadayev, Commander of the Northern Caucasus Military District Alexander Ivanovich Baranov, the deceased mujahideen leader Ibn Al-Khattab, separatist field commanders Ruslan Gelayev and Shamil Basayev, even a deputy from Putin’s office, both rebels and Feds cohabiting peacefully by the thin partition of letter envelopes.
“Be careful with those,” she said, pulling her hand away.
“Why do you have these?” he asked, as the first of long-overdue misgivings unsettled him.
“For unhindered travel. They take care of bureaucratic formalities.”
“I wish you’d told me before I’d sewn shut my pockets.”
She smiled.
“Have you actually met these people?”
“Of course not. Most are from the man we’re going to see. He says he can steal the spots off a snow leopard.”
“A criminal?”
She shook her head and glared at him with complete disdain.
“Is common decency too much to ask?”
“Excuse me?” she said, but he knew she couldn’t claim affront. Common decency was the one thing he had that she didn’t, and he held on to it as a rare, improbable triumph.
“You said every doctor and nurse to ever work for you has left but Deshi. Do you think that might have something to do with the way you treat people?”
“I think you’d better have brought your boots, because you’re walking home.”
He spoke in a measured tone as her knuckles whitened on the wheel. “You think I’m an idiot. An embarrassment to your profession. You are probably right. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“I think you need to be quiet, Akhmed.”
“Why?” He didn’t dare turn to her.
“Because two days ago, I thought I was adding a competent doctor to my staff. Instead I’m babysitting a child who speaks in riddles and a man who couldn’t identify his own foot if he tripped over it.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to treat me dismissively. I’m trying to help you.”
“Actually that gives me every right to treat you dismissively. It gives me every right to dismiss you and the girl and fuck off back to London where even eighteen-year-old biology students know better than to give an unresponsive patient a questionnaire.”
“The Feds are looking for Havaa,” he said. “You’re this prodigy surgeon, right? Leaving London to come back and save lives? You are saving hers, Sonja. Each day. And you don’t even have to cut off her legs.”
“How do you even know they want her? Why would they care about some child?”
“An informer was waiting at my house yesterday.”
“I don’t want to hear about it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll be quiet.”
“What could you possibly be sorry for?”
“I’m sorry for you. Something in you is broken.”
“Another razor-sharp diagnosis, Dr. Akhmed.”
“No, it isn’t that.”
“I’ve amputated one thousand six hundred and forty-three legs. You’ve done three, and you think you have the right to diagnose me?”
“I’m not diagnosing you.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing?” She turned fully from the road and he saw her pupils, as wide as kopek coins, for the first time that morning. He shook his head at the windshield. Brown fields were everywhere.
And Grozny appeared, gray on the horizon as the road devolved to a basin of broken masonry and trampled apartment blocks. Cigarette kiosks slouched on the sidewalk. Akhmed wished he had taken paper and a pencil with him to capture his first trip to the city. Sonja brought the jeep to a crawl as they tipped into a crater. The street rose and disappeared somewhere above them, the whole world of dark wet earth, the tires spinning and reaching the lip. No scent drifted through the open window but the engine burn. No sewage or raw waste. Nothing. A flattened bureau basked in the sun, knobs pried out. The flicker of an oil-drum fire three blocks out came as a small, welcome signal of human habitation. Behind the flame a man turned a rotisserie fashioned from clothes hangers and a gardening stake on which was impaled a pink fist of flesh. Two pigeon claws revolved over the fire. Behind the fire, wooden gangplanks connected pyramids of rubble. Some lay over craters, others were suspended two or three stories high, bridging alleyways. This is Grozny? He should have visited sooner.
“It’s like scaffolding,” he said, the first words in many kilometers.
“Built by the street kids that live in the ruins,” she said, and in a tone of apology added, “You were smart to bring her in.”
No faces peered from the yawning walls. The thought of