Belka, Why Don't You Bark?

by Hideo Furukawa

Pretty much anyone who came along was killed.

  Four PM. A middle-aged man was directing the dogs. A balding Slavic man. He gave signals to the dogs, eliminated everyone who approached. The dogs’ unusual fighting techniques had been used before, in the 1980s, somewhere in Afghanistan. They had been used, as well, west of the line that divided Europe, to assassinate a senior NATO officer. The middle-aged man hummed loudly as he led his lightning squad into battle. He had a submachine gun that he used to cover the dogs’ tails, as it were, very precisely. He was the man Strelka called Opera.

  At 4:30 PM, still humming, he mowed down four mafia fighters without bothering to send in the dogs. A bit of rapid-fire action was all it took.

  The sun had already sunk well below the horizon.

  The dogs remained invisible to human eyes.

  Other dogs saw them, however. There was barking in the distance. Distant barks answered by distant barks—a conversation. Someone had been cutting the chains on pet dogs’ collars. In the forests outside the city, hunters’ dogs disappeared. Wild dogs ran through the city streets as if gone mad. Slowly, little by little, something was happening. Little by little, one by one, the dogs were being freed. Various mafia were heading by land toward the Russian Far East. To join the conflict—to enlist in a war that was, they still believed, with other mafia. To steal the drugs that had been left behind, to play their part in what they still believed was a tug-of-war among different criminal organizations.

  Mafia all across Russia watched the city very closely.

  Here and there, gates were opened. Whole trains were bought. They would screech to a halt a mile short of the station, and dozens of men would descend. Counterfeit papers worked their magic in airports. Police squads that had set up inspection stations on the highway saluted as their old buddies, the mafia kingpins, passed in their motorcades: Welcome to the Far East!

  Around midnight, the nature of the street fighting changed as a new strategy was introduced. Now the dogs were taking hostages. They no longer lunged at the throats of their targets but brought them back alive, as they had been commanded to do. They brought the hostages back, presented them to the old man.

  First one.

  Then another.

  And another.

  All night long.

  Barks echoed back and forth across the city.

  “I can prepare a table for us to negotiate at,” the old man said.

  What is all this? the other man said. What the hell are these dogs?

  “You remember 1812?” the old man asked.

  Who are you? the other man asked. The head of their tribe?

  “The Napoleonic Wars. You remember? You are a Russian, right? Or rather, you are a former Soviet? You must have learned your history. How that stupid French emperor marched into Moscow in 1812 with an enormous army, 110,000-men strong—marched into the capital, which the Russian army had decided, strategically, to give him. You remember what happened then?”

  What the hell?

  “They let the city be destroyed so that Russia would survive. Moscow’s residents abandoned the city. Napoleon’s army marched into a capital that was all but empty. That night, Moscow burned. It was set on fire. By the Russians. The city burned for a week, two-thirds of it reduced to rubble. And the French…they occupied the rubble and starved. All 110,000 men died of starvation. They ate crows. They ate cats. And still they did not last a month. And what is happening now?”—the old man asked, speaking now to himself, and then answering himself—“This is not 1812. This is not 1991. That is your explanation. You understand? We, the dogs, we condemn Russia! There is your answer.”

  The hostage’s face was deathly white.

  1991. Moscow in the winter. The temperature was below five degrees Fahrenheit. Sunset was still a ways off. A blizzard. The old man was walking. He saw three hundred people lined up outside the US Embassy. He stared at the snaking line of visa applicants. People standing without talking, exhaling clouds of white breath. Snow dusted their hats, their hair. The line progressed hardly at all.

  It was decided. The end of a state so huge it covered one-sixth of the earth’s landmass. Soon, the white-, blue-, and red-striped Russian flag would be hoisted up the pole in front of the Kremlin. Four months had passed since those summer days, and during that time a handful of men who acted in secret had won, and the Soviet Union was finished. Dead.

  The old man reached his destination. A closed kiosk on the corner, a large umbrella in a stand in front. A man in an Italian designer suit, his features instantly branding him Caucasian, from the Caucasus, stood waiting. He was young. In his late twenties, perhaps—no older than thirty-one or thirty-two.

  “That business this morning,” the young man said. “Truly professional.”

  The old man grinned. “Who did you have following me?” he asked. “And why did you want to see me? Was the guy I killed one of your associates?”

  “No, no,” the young man said. “He was an enemy. You did me a favor. You know, having a real professional out there…”

  “A professional?” the old man said. “You mean me?”

  “Yeah. Having a professional like you running around…unchecked… don’t know if I like it. Seems dangerous, to tell the truth.”

  “You want to kill me?”

  “No, the opposite,” the young man said. “I want to give you what you deserve.”

  “You want to give me a job, you mean? In your organization?”

  “Exactly. Is that against your policy?”

  “No,” the old man said. I have no policy, his eyes said, twinkling.

  Twinkling with scorn…for history.

  “Well then, shall we discuss terms? Contract period, benefits, compensation…by the way, I was wondering, what should I call you?”

  “My name, you mean?”

  “Yes, your name.”

  “Listen.”

  “Hmm?”

  Silence. Two seconds later, a bell began chiming. It hung in the belfry of a church that had been destroyed long ago, in pre-perestroika times, whose restoration began in the late 1980s. It rang and rang as the snow skittered lightly in random patterns over Moscow.

  “Call me the Archbishop,” the old man said.

  One morning, Strelka awoke to a smell in the air, all over the city—it was the scent of the dogs. One morning, Strelka noticed that the temperature in the city had risen. HOT, ISN’T IT? she said to the dogs. ARE WE ACTUALLY KILLING THAT FUCKING COLD RUSSIAN WINTER? she asked Belka. Winterwinterwinterwinterwinter, the fucking billion-year-long Russian winter is finally ending! she sang to herself, again and again. She lifted her face to the sky, looked once more at the billowing black smoke. She was about to blow up a mafia weapons storehouse she had been guarding until a few minutes ago. She’d watched the old lady making explosives with TNT. You old bag, you’re good, she had said. And then she had listened to the old lady talking to her—You have no way of knowing this, of course, darling, but my husband was a commissioned officer in the special forces, and so was my son, and I myself used to look after the dogs in the breeding facility, and part of my job was to set up explosives in the training grounds. I know what I’m doing. Since the old lady was speaking in Russian, she didn’t understand a word, but she nodded. When someone died, the old lady continued, the Director always took care of the family left behind. Strelka listened, then replied: You’re half dog yourself, aren’t you? Not that I’m one to speak—I’m all dog. She said that in Japanese. Strelka knew that last night, WO and WT had gone around cutting the chains on pet dogs, setting them loose, and agitating the wild dogs. She knew that when WO and WT breathed, their breath smelled like a dog’s breath. I’m a dog, so I can tell. They’re half dogs too.

  I’m a dog. They won’t kill me.

  With all th
is street fighting going on, we’re invisible.

  Belka protected Strelka. He carried out her commands immediately. He was the older brother, watching over the others—and more. There was also the name. He had become the next Belka, so the other dogs acknowledged him, acknowledged that one day, at some point in the future, he would lead them all. Belka slept, awoke, ran. Belka slept stretched out beside Strelka, awoke, ran. Belka lay low, watching passively as gangsters had shootouts in the streets in the early morning, as black cars with tinted windows were blown into the air with rocket launchers. Belka understood. He knew the humans didn’t realize that the flames of this war they were fighting were being fanned by dog guerrillas. He knew the humans were looking for human enemies, so they wouldn’t suddenly start shooting dogs, or Strelka for that matter, because Strelka was a dog, and because in human eyes she looked like a defenseless human girl. So, Belka said, they’ll let Strelka kill them, they’ll be killed, and even as they die they won’t understand what’s happening, and all along, all throughout the town, the dogs…we dogs…we will multiply. Belka could feel it happening. He didn’t think it, he felt it—all across the Eurasian continent, his brethren, the other dogs…they were setting out, heading for this land, the Russian Far East, a massive migration.

  The humans had it all wrong.

  The city was full of dogs loitering, hanging around. So they thought.

  They allowed the dogs to remain invisible. Even the dogs who had been trained, thoroughly trained, in the deadly art of street fighting.

  All morning, the barking continued back and forth in the distance. Echoing. The dogs were on their way. The dogs were coming. The dogs were getting closer. From the taiga beyond the city, from enclaves in the mountains dozens of miles away, from across the Amur River, from the lands where Russian aristocrats were exiled in the nineteenth century. Gradually, little by little, their numbers increased as they converged on the city. In reality, however, three planes contributed the most to the great migration. Three planes owned by private companies that took off one after the other from Moscow, then landed together in the city. Dogs obeyed their own instincts. When a dog barked somewhere far off, they responded. And humans too…mafia members, too, acted in accordance with instincts they could not disobey. When an organization began to lose its grip on an area, competitors moved in to gobble it up. The three planes brought in 220 members of the most powerful criminal organization in Russia: a far-reaching international gang whose operations extended as far as the old Eastern Bloc, come now to overwhelm the city by force of numbers. The organization could display its power by taking control. We don’t need you little guys diddling around—we control the Russian underworld. That was the message. The mass media had been waiting, they were ready to spread the news across the Eurasian continent. They had been primed for two days now.

  The timing was perfect.

  That afternoon, there were two hours of hell. Hell for the mafia. Then an hour of rest. Rest for the dogs. Intermittent gunshots continued into the evening, but that was all—it was a scene, peaceful in a way, of ordinary mafia warfare. Then, suddenly, the situation changed. First there were Strelka, Belka, and six other dogs; ten minutes later there were Strelka and Belka and five other dogs. Number 114, a bitch, had died. Belka’s sister. So there were Strelka and Belka and five other dogs, and then, two minutes later, there were Strelka and Belka and three other dogs. Number 46 and number 113 had died. Belka’s brother and sister. Strelka barked. The old lady was yelling frantically in Russian. Pull back! Pull back! One minute later Strelka and Belka and three other dogs had become Strelka and Belka and one other dog. Number 44 and number 45 had died, been killed, and Strelka was still barking, and Belka was watching.

  The enemy had changed.

  The enemy had noticed the canine rebellion.

  The dogs in this city were no longer invisible.

  All of a sudden, the humans began shooting them.

  Belka stared. At the equipment of a group of a dozen men who had joined the fray. They were not mafia. They wore bulletproof helmets that fighter pilots wear and camouflage uniforms, and they had assault rifles with folding stock. They looked nothing like gangsters. Belka stared as number 48 was shot, yelping; Belka heard the yelp, he had to protect Strelka, the dogs are visible, and so Strelka is visible; the enemy will not hesitate to eliminate her. Belka recognized their smell. Not their biological, animal scent, but the smell of their group. Belka felt it. And he was right. The enemy was a special unit belonging to the Russian Federal Security Service, the new Russian secret police, successor to the Soviet KGB. The unit was in charge of domestic security. It was in charge of fighting terrorism. The unit would destroy. The dogs. Their revolution. Officials at the highest levels of the Federal Security Service had realized, during a committee meeting with KGB veterans, that many of the dogs that had turned up in the city were using the same combat techniques “S” had cultivated. The special forces unit was briefed, and arriving on the scene, they killed the dogs very quickly. In fewer than fourteen minutes, Strelka and Belka found themselves alone, with zero other dogs.

  At the same moment, in another part of town, a second special forces unit leapt out of an eight-wheel-drive armored truck and started firing at dogs, killing them. None of these extraordinarily talented dogs were allowed to survive. They brought in the truck, jumped out, did their work quickly. Another human ran into the crowd of special forces. Humming as he ran. Opera had bombs strapped to his stomach. He put his finger on the switch.

  Singing, now, at the top of his voice, he pressed the switch.

  Two hours earlier. The old man said: These are my terms.

  An hour earlier.

  All right, the old man said, I have just injected two different chemicals into you: the first is a truth serum, and the second—you may be surprised to hear—is a rabies virus. It is a biological weapon, actually, he explained kindly, developed during Soviet times. I have got to say it again and again to make the hypnosis work, so I will keep repeating it as often as you like: now that I have captured you, I have finally got what I was after. Now that you have come to this city with 220 of your soldiers, you have finally given me the card I need to negotiate successfully. You volunteered to take charge of this raid because you wanted to put yourself forward. You wanted to be noticed. What are you, number three? Or is it number four? You are the treasurer, right? Yes, it is very nice to rely on your mafia instincts, the old man said to the hostage. I know, you wanted to do something big, he went on. I have been waiting for you, you know, stupid thugs colluding with the government. Here, look, this is a serum that kills the rabies virus, see? The incubation period for rabies may last thirty days, but when you get sick, you will get sick, there is no escape: you will feel uneasy, then terrified, you will have delusions, hallucinations, and then your whole body will go numb and you will die, the old man told the hostage kindly. All I want are the documents that show how the money moves, that is all I ask for, the old man said. All I want to do is stir up a little scandal in the office of the president. That is all, the old man said.

  Ten minutes earlier.

  That is all I need, that is enough to topple the eight leading figures in the government. With this information I could do it tomorrow, the old man said. I have prepared channels to pass the information along to the Western media—a little international pressure is all it takes in these cases, am I right? Then the whole system will collapse. This is a real revolution, my friend, not like that stuff they pulled in Moscow in the summer of 1991, that was no revolution. Not bad, this, huh? A revolution carried out entirely by dogs, the old man said. The problem is, dogs cannot disappear in Moscow, it is too urban, too much of a national capital, you know what I mean? But out here in the Far East! A kak zhe? I am sure you have guessed this already, my friend, but I have totally lost my mind.

  One minute earlier.

  The old ma
n had trapped his prey in a room in a thirteen-story hotel. The commander of a force of 220 mafia fighters in a room on the twelfth floor. The room had windows, but the shades were drawn. You could hear things, though, from outside. Even through the thick soundproofed glass he could hear the roar of military helicopters hovering over the city. He stood up.

  The window exploded. A spray of bullets shattered the glass, shredded the curtains. Quick work, the old man thought. They are fast, faster than I thought, if only by a…he thought. But he never finished his thought.

  Now.

  The old man’s body danced as the bullets pounded it.

  1990

  Dogs, dogs, where are you now?

  Early in 1990, you lay sprawled on the ground at an execution site. You lay in a sea of blood. You had been part of the unit before, part of “S,” but now, with one exception, you had been eradicated. The one survivor was looking up, devotion in his eyes. Peering up at the man who stood at the top of the chain of command. At the man known as the Director, the General, and by various other names.

  The man had aged.

  Our own homeland, he said. To the dog. The Soviet issued the command, he said. That we be eliminated. They ordered it. We are the evidence, they say, that must never be discovered. And so we must be destroyed.

  The old man raised his gun, aimed it at the dog.

  The dog did not flinch. He listened.

  All around the man and the dog a terrible stench hung in the air. The smell of countless deaths, of so much spilled blood.

  The old man gazed at the dog.

  The dog’s name, this dog’s name, was Belka.

  The unit has disbanded, the old man said. Do you understand that?

  Belka listened. He heard. And he answered: Woof!

  Tears spilled from the old man’s eyes. His right hand, gripping the pistol, trembled. I just, he said, I just…I just, I just…

  Woof! the old man cried.

  “I am going to lose my mind,” he told Belka. “And you, you are going to live.”