The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  They drank and chewed a slice of salami in silence. “It is not a good idea,” observed Zaporoshchenko, “to eat too much before a match. But I hear that you don’t play, Nazar Kallistratovich. Would you like me to order you something to eat?”

  “I have already eaten,” Nazar declined and, in spite of himself, glanced at his watch. Stepankov frowned and looked for a cigarette. He busied himself with lighting it.

  Zaporoshchenko laughed, “Don’t you worry, Nazar Kallistratovich, we have enough time. As you can imagine, I have already found out about the investigation you’re conducting, and what you have been able to come up with so far. It appears that during the interrogations neither Polad-zade nor Dyakonov have explicitly mentioned the… shall we call him your friend.”

  “That is the case,” Nazar confirmed reluctantly. “But it could not have been otherwise. Polad-zade, I believe, knew nothing about this business; he had a different role: he had to support some business transactions here in Moscow – apparently legitimate business, tenders to be precise. As for Dyakonov, he didn’t say a word. He didn’t deny anything and he didn’t confirm anything. He simply refused to admit to what was put to him. He’s not stupid…”

  “In other times,” Zaporoshchenko laughed, “an investigating judge who came out of two days of interrogations with such meagre results would certainly not have received a pat on the back.”

  Nazar barely smiled. “But the point is that we have a mountain of evidence, all the Accountant’s books, which are written in his hand. And as for… the friend, as you say, we have irrefutable proof. He has allowed Dyakonov to bring drugs into the country across the Iranian border.”

  “And where is this irrefutable proof? Help me to understand,” asked Zaporoshchenko.

  “Here, I took the opportunity… before coming here, I prepared a summary of what I have already found out from the confiscated accounts, and please note that these are just provisional conclusions. I haven’t had time to examine them all. The diaries and ledgers are all in the office, but I have brought one to show you… Here, take a look,” he said as he opened his briefcase and took out the purple notebook, “this records all the drugs transactions from December of last year until June of this one…”

  “And the summary?” Stepankov wanted to hurry him up.

  “Here it is,” Nazar replied, producing a piece of squared paper covered with columns of figures. “First of all, you have to understand how the system works. There were what you might call routine payments… By this I mean payments made not in exchange for particular favours, but just to guarantee indulgence on a yearly basis and sometimes monthly… Luckily this Dyakonov wrote everything down, including forenames and surnames. They don’t call him the Accountant for nothing. The general… our friend was not the only one on the payroll, but we’re not interested in that… Look, here are all the payments against his name over the last five years, and in this column I have also noted the bottles of whisky and cognac. It might seem a trifle, but over the long term it comes to quite a sum. They weren’t coming in one bottle at a time! Well, then there are payments in return for something specific. Here, we come across our friend only in relation to the drugs traffic. And only in the later period, let’s say from January of this year. Before there were other channels that could guarantee the consignments got through the border checks undetected.”

  “And what were they?” Zaporoshchenko interrupted.

  “Well,” Nazar explained, “the ones I have identified so far were mainly officers in the border guards. I haven’t told you yet that the Accountant was more prudent in the accounts he kept for the drug deals; instead of forenames and surnames, he used pseudonyms… Yes, I know why you’re smiling, Marlen Yefimovich, I thought about that too… Here they are, the pseudonyms. You see them?” he showed them the purple notebook. “Thrush, Rock, Philosopher…

  Fortunately there is a key to the pseudonyms on the last page; not the real names, of course, but there is the telephone number, and we have used these to identify every one of them… Rock, for example, is the commander of the border guards, General Mikhail Marov… Right, this notebook shows that from January, a new character appears: Philosopher, and he starts to guarantee the deliveries of opium and heroin, and instead of money, he is paid with the arms deliveries, crates of AK 74 machine guns; ten or twenty at a time… And the Philosopher’s phone number, look, that’s it here, and it corresponds to the private line to the office of General Yusuf-zade…”

  “That’s enough, Nazar Kallistratych,” said Zaporoshchenko.

  “Your investigations seem to me to be more than convincing. You must understand that we too have done a few checks and we were persuaded that there was some truth in what you have uncovered… Anyway, even without this gunrunning, the mere fact that this man was accepting bribes is more than enough to have him arrested. It’s one thing if they accept them in the police; this, you’ve got to admit it, is common knowledge… Look, our dear Valentin Maksimovich is frowning… Come off it, don’t let’s deceive ourselves when it’s just between us! But in our organisation, these things simply cannot be tolerated. And for this reason I want to ask you, Nazar Kallistratovich: apart from our friend, who else in the company is mentioned in these accounts? Not just in relation to the weapons, let’s get this straight, but in general: who was taking bribes and who was keeping company with this Dyakonov and his rabble?”

  “I thought you might ask me that,” said Nazar and he took another sheet of paper out of his case. “I have the list here. Shall I read out the names?” “Better not, Nazar Kallistratych, nowadays there’s some incredible technology for intercepting conversations. You wouldn’t believe what they’re capable of. The equipment set up by Major Ogodayev is child’s play in comparison. Let me see the list.”

  Zaporoshchenko reached for the paper and studied it. He was leaning over it and blocking the light that came from the window.

  “These match our own findings to some extent, my dear boys,” he declared as he stood up. “And fortunately there are not many of them… No, I’ll keep this copy; you’ll have another one, won’t you? Good, Nazar Kallistratych, it looks like you’ll have to arrest your friend. And all these others, mind; just go ahead and arrest the lot of them. There’s no room for such bastards amongst us… Right, it’s time for the game, Valentin Maksimovich; we’ll finish our vodka and then go and see if our opponents have arrived!”

  XXX

  A dead man beckons

  Baku, November 1988

  Not many days have passed since the conversation we have just listened into. It is a clear autumn morning in Baku. The morning sun is assertively pushing its way through the curtains that should be keeping it out of the study, and as always after the exhaustion and nightmares of a sleepless night, the light, for some reason, takes on a different hue.

  The head of the household is standing in front of one of those windows; with his hand he pulls it just a fraction to one side, as though he doesn’t want to be noticed, and he allows his gaze to wander as far as the horizon, where derricks stab the sky beyond the bay. What he’s thinking we do not know, but we can try to imagine… It is the first day of the second month of Rabi, in year 1409 of the Hijra, or 11 November 1988, according to the Christian calendar, which not by accident we still continue to observe in this Godless country. Throughout the republic, demonstrations of mourning, which usually take up the months of Muharram and Safar, are continuing uninterrupted and are now in their fourth consecutive month. The faithful are crowding thousands of streets and squares, and invoking the names of martyrs and promising to avenge their blood. I, Zia Yusufzade, general in the KGB and disciple of my teacher Hadji Muhammad, may God preserve His benevolence, have heard that I will be arrested today before midnight. Or rather, I should be arrested, but won’t be, because God in His wisdom will not permit it. Indeed it is written, ‘Remember how they plotted against you, but God plotted against them, and God is the most profound in His machinations’ (Koran, VIII, 30). Th
e order to arrest me, so I am told, came directly from Moscow to the garrison commander, General Romanchuk.

  We’ll see about this too! In a Soviet city, the army is arresting people without going through the police and without the authorisation of the KGB! Yes, our country is now in such a state that the military commander is acting as though he were the governor of the city and the republic, and they’ve already started arresting people, even though they’re not mentioning it in the newspapers and on television. And yet the Russians – from the first to the last – speak of nothing else but TRANSPARENCY, but we know how much store we should put by their words. A few days ago, CNN did a special feature on Gorbachev and all his achievements, in which they claimed that under his rule no one had been shot for political crimes: we’ll see how long this leniency lasts, now that it is Muslims and not Jews who are challenging them…

  The order from Moscow to arrest me did not come as any surprise. Even though I am still the Commander of the KGB in this republic, I have detected more than enough signals that I would not be keeping my office in the Boulevard of the Petroleum Workers for very long. After all, I have to answer for what is happening at the moment in Azerbaijan! Just think: since the mourning for the martyrs Ali and Hussein started, tens of thousands of men have been going into the streets dressed in black; for the first time since Soviet power was established, you can see women wearing the veil in the streets of Baku; the symbol of the lion and the sun has appeared on the walls, put there at night by courageous hands that defy the curfew. And even more serious: the portrait of Imam Khomeini has been carried in triumph by demonstrators in the city’s outer districts, as is confirmed beyond doubt by the reports that are now crossing my desk: before being dispersed by soldiers, a few groups of youths were waving green flags of the Prophet down at the seafront.

  Those flags have not been reflected in the water since the time when the infidels slaughtered the kapudan pasha’s fleet off Baku, while the grandfathers of our grandfathers tore their hair on the beach. Should I be surprised if the military authorities don’t trust me and don’t believe me when I say that I can do nothing to stop this scandal, as they like to call it? For some time, General Romanchuk has not been inviting me to the meetings at his headquarters, and I have to suffer the humiliation of knowing that my deputy, Anisimov, is meeting him every day and doesn’t even make a secret of the fact that he is preparing to take my place. Yet I didn’t think that they would go as far as arresting me. The papers belonging to the Accountant, an untrustworthy ally if ever there was one, were supposed to have been buried where no judge would ever find them. But I was wrong, and he wrote down enough evidence to ruin me. The time has come to act and act quickly.

  If my teacher was here, I would ask for his assistance.

  Not to escape arrest, of course; I learnt enough about that at the KGB training school, and although many years have passed, I haven’t forgotten some things. No, I need of him a very different kind of help; Hadji, I would say, what does it mean when God sends a man a premonition of a terrible fate, and that terrible fate comes true? Because that is what happened to me last night, and since then I feel crushed by a fearful doubt – a weight on my whole existence – even though yesterday evening I was ready to swear that my conscience was clear. I must be honest, I have dirtied my hands with the blood of many people during my life, and not always did I do it justly, but now I am born again and I no longer have to answer to God for those crimes, just like someone who was brought up with a false faith and sinned before having their eyes opened. This is as clear as the light of day – and perhaps that is why sometimes during the night when I cannot sleep, God forgive me, my faith begins to crumble and that certainty no longer feels so convincing…

  That is when THEY appear to me not in a dream but in my waking hours, so real and so tangible that they could be alive rather than dead and buried some forty years since.

  That primary-school teacher, what was her name? Akhundova?

  I put handcuffs on her and attached them to a nail high up on the wall: I’ll not take you down until you confess or croak! We didn’t give her anything to eat and we didn’t let her go to the lavatory, so after a bit she began to smell. In the end she had swollen up horribly and was delirious, but she still wouldn’t testify against her husband. She died one morning, around five or six o’clock. I remember it only too well… And then that other guy. Alikhanov? We kept him standing for two or three days, and we only gave him salty broth, just to keep him from fainting, and when he begged for something to drink, I opened my trousers and said, Go on, you can drink from this tap… But the night brings no comfort; it is a time inhabited by ghosts. The night has no certainties, but of one thing we can be certain: God cannot order me to answer for those crimes, because at that time I did not know him. No, the anguish that clutches at my soul is quite another; it is the fear that I sinned precisely when my conscience was most clear, when I was certain that the blood to be spilt would meet with God’s approval. Last night at a meeting of the Central Committee, it was decided that the first secretary, Abdurrakhman Vezirov, would meet the leaders of the Islamic Council of Transcaucasia to negotiate a compromise to end the demonstrations and the attacks on soldiers with stones and Molotov cocktails, and I could not help thinking about Pashayev, who will not be able to lead any delegation. You have to imagine the scene: it was late into the night, the city was in the darkness of the curfew and only the lights of the Central Committee building were on – such was the fear. One after another the members of the Presidium spoke of their dismay and distress at the recent turn of events, and I could only see Pashayev, exactly as I last saw him lying on the table in the mortuary, obscene in his nudity, his body white and swollen like bread dough rising, and his beard caked with dry blood. And I was overcome by an irrational torment. It was dawn when I finally got home; the meeting had lasted the entire night and I had smoked two packets of Marlboro but I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol – the last time I had enjoyed the blessing of speaking to him, the teacher told me that although God is forbearing, it is however the duty of every believer to attempt to obey all His commands, and since then I have not drunk any whisky or cognac, though God knows what a penance this is for me. There I was, a man heavy with tiredness and nerves overexcited by nicotine and high blood pressure, which I have had for some time and no medicine can cure.

  The only thing my doctor does is prescribe me useless drops – merely water – and continually tell me to smoke less, the bastard! The beautiful silence and cold air of dawn is broken by the muezzin’s cry, and in all the city the faithful have replied with their laments and tears over spilt blood. They call for vengeance and yes, I thought the dead man was calling to me and crying out for his own.

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have had him killed? But Pashayev was a traitor and met the end he merited. Besides, I did not kill him with my own hand. I am too old to do that now.

  Another brother was given that task; he had a steadier hand, and can no longer answer for that act in this world, because he has already redeemed all his sins, for he fell fighting for our faith in the mountains. And I repeat, it was not our hand that struck Pashayev, but God’s; for it is written, “It was not you but God who slew them” (Koran, VIII, 17). We did not take the decision lightly and we did not take it in an hour, nor even in a day, and during our discussions I quoted that verse to the others. Later, once the deed was done, the brother who was charged with carrying it out came to me and said that he was not sure that he had not sinned by raising his hand against a man of God. Once more I quoted that verse, and now here I am repeating it to myself – and grasping onto its fragile certainty. I cannot deny it; this morning I feared that dead man, and not just him: I remembered that investigating judge, may God damn his soul; he came here with his cunning and stuck his inquisitive nose just about everywhere. I didn’t know that the rat was still rooting about in the dirt once he got back to Moscow, and that with his filthy whiskers vibrating with excitement, he had discover
ed those sacks of corn hidden underground. News of the arrest warrant issued against me, which General Romanchuk is supposed to execute tonight, not having the courage to do so by day, had not yet reached me, and the premonition of its arrival already afflicted me.

  So I took the Koran down from the bookshelf and opened it randomly to take advice of Him who better than any other knows how to give counsel. Although I am not a man who gives in to his emotions, and the sight of blood, which revolts so many people, leaves me entirely unmoved, my sight became blurred and my ears began to hum when I saw that the Book had opened at Sura II and I read this verse, “And when you slew a man and then fell out with one another concerning him, God made known what you concealed.” On more than one occasion have I been able to witness the extraordinary correspondence between the Book’s response and my momentary apprehensions, but this time the Word did not uplift me or bring me solace, as it had done so many times before – even revealing that God is endowed with a sense of humour. As the anguish welled up within me, I sinned: I close the Book violently and then I immediately reopened it, almost challenging God to repeat His premonition. And He, in his infinite wisdom, slapped me full on the face, as the Book had opened this time at Sura LXXVIII and my eyes started to read Verse 27, which says, “Surely they never feared that they would be held to account.” A shiver ran through my guts.

  At that very moment, someone rang the door, and I had to goad myself to move and open it. It was Musayev, as pale as death. I had not slept, but he had the air of a man who had woken with a start on the arrival of bad news, without having had time to finish his sleep, and that is even worse.

  He came to tell me that another disaster had occurred following the arrest of Dyakonov and Deputy Minister Polad-zade.