A Place Far Away

by Vahan Zanoyan

  Laurian didn’t say anything but studied the last several pictures in the set. Then he zoomed in further on the edge of the curtain, and moved between twenty-one and twenty a few times.

  “You are brilliant, Hayk jan!” he exclaimed at last. “Just brilliant! Of course there was someone else who came from her left and jerked her around. Look here and focus strictly on the edge of the curtain. We are on number twenty-one. See this? That is where she is holding the curtain ajar. That little indentation in the edge of the curtain is caused by her hand. Now look at twenty-two. There is a bigger bunching up of the curtain, about thirty centimeters above the indentation in twenty-one. Do you see this?”

  “Very clearly!” Hayk almost yelled. “And Paron Edik, look, it looks like the woman is still holding the curtain too, but the upper bunch-up has moved to the left.”

  “Exactly, and great observation, Hayk,” said Laurian almost as excited as the teenage boy. “You got it all, my friend. No more questions about what’s going on in these two pictures. The horrified woman opened the curtain and looked out, and a taller person, most probably one of the bodyguards, noticed and came rushing to close the curtain and pulled her back in.”

  Of course Laurian knew that all the real questions would start here. He was very glad to shower Hayk with praise and reward his hard work with full recognition of his achievement. The kid had done very well, staying up several nights, not getting much sleep on a pile of hay in the barn, and following instructions to the letter. And all that he expected was recognition, especially from Laurian, and also from his grandfather.

  “Hayk jan,” he said, “you deserve a good bath and a very good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed, not in the barn. Do you know if your father is at the guardhouse?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hayk, “but Paron Edik, I really should return to the barn. What if they come back?”

  “We’ve learned what we can from watching them, Hayk. In fact, we’ve learned a lot more than I had ever hoped for, thanks to your expert photography. You can take the rest of today off, and maybe we can even call off the stakeout. I’m still worried about you missing so much school. What do you say we take a walk to the guardhouse to see who’s there, and if they’re all asleep, you can take the small room next to mine and sleep here today?”

  The invitation to sleep in Paron Edik’s house was the ultimate sign of recognition to an elated Hayk. Laurian noticed his reaction and decided to have him sleep in his house even if his father and grandfather were waiting for him at the guardhouse.

  They put on their coats and hats and left the house from the back door. Laurian grabbed his twelve gauge shotgun from the cabinet, along with the belt of shells; it was his habit not to leave the house late at night without the gun. One never knew what could get in your way in these mountains. Hayk reached for the camera. “Leave that here,” said Laurian, “I have a feeling you’ll return here with me after the walk.”

  It was a cold but spectacular night. The half moon was in the middle of the sky directly over their heads, and a slight breeze was playing among the bare branches of trees. The outside light above the front door of the guardhouse was on, but there were no lights inside. Alice, the half-Alaskan puppy, was sleeping on the doormat. When she heard them she jumped to her feet and started running towards them. But she suddenly stopped half way, her hackles raised, frozen in her tracks, and popped her ears sharply upward and started barking.

  “She’s smelled something,” said Hayk.

  “Call her,” said Laurian, loading the gun with two buckshot shells. “I don’t want her chasing after whatever it is and getting chewed up.” Wolves were known to strangle and eat younger dogs in the region. Alice didn’t change the direction of her gaze as she reluctantly approached them. They met halfway, and Hayk grabbed her collar. But she was totally focused in the direction of the wild pear tree a few hundred meters down in the field.

  “Don’t let go of her collar,” said Laurian, and started walking very slowly toward the wild pear tree. He had barely taken twenty paces when he noticed them.

  “Hold on to her tight, Hayk. Come, you’re going to see an amazing resident of these mountains!”

  They approached another ten paces and sat down behind the cluster of poplar trees. In the moonlight, they could see the mama bear and her two cubs clearly. Alice was struggling to break free, but Hayk was restraining not only her movements, but also held her snout tightly so she wouldn’t bark. The bears picked the wild pears and ate, absolutely undisturbed by anything. The cubs could easily reach the lower branches, standing upright on their hind legs and imitating the mama bear by grabbing a branch and wiping it clean with their mouths and claws, pears, leaves and all. Laurian knew that the mama bear had sensed their presence. She sniffed the air a few times, in long noisy sniffs, raising her head upward and looking in their direction, and then calmly continued to eat and watch the cubs. These were large brown bears, indigenous to the region, just a little shorter than the American grizzly, with huge heads and arms, which looked disproportionately large compared to their bodies. Hayk watched breathlessly, as the bears grew tired of the tree and calmly walked down the path to the next cluster of wild fruit trees.

  “Paron Edik,” he whispered, “aren’t you going to shoot?”

  “Shshsh…” said Laurian. “Watch. You don’t get to see something like this every day.”

  “Then I should have brought the camera,” whispered Hayk again.

  “Hayk,” whispered Laurian, “this was just for you and me to enjoy and to keep in our memories. This was not for shooting, either with a gun or with a camera. This is a gift for us to share for all the great work we’ve done today.”

  When the meaning of Laurian’s words sunk in, Hayk’s heart was about to burst with pride and joy. This was true bonding with Paron Edik. For the fifteen-year-old boy from Shatin, there could not have been a greater reward for his unstinting efforts of the past few days.

  They sat under the poplars quietly for a long time after the bears had gone. Hayk let go of Alice’s snout, but held on to her collar. He petted her head gently to calm her down. The moon had made headway towards the Western mountains. But there was no sign of daybreak yet. They heard the barking of a dog way off in the distance, and Alice stirred, but remained under Hayk’s reassuring arm.

  “Paron Edik?” said Hayk after a long silence.

  “Yes?”

  “Did they know we were here?”

  “Who?” Laurian’s mind was already way past the bears.

  “The bears.”

  “The mother knew for sure,” said Laurian. “The cubs may not have noticed.”

  “But they were so calm.”

  “She did not sense danger, Hayk. Here I am with a loaded gun, and she smelled us, but she did not sense danger. We have a lot to learn from the bears.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “When I was young, my father used to tell me that once in a while I needed to rely on my instincts. We could not answer all the riddles of life by logic alone, he would say. Unfortunately, when we learned to rely on logic, we lost the sharpness of our instincts. That mama bear did not lose it, see. She just did not sense danger, that’s all. And she was right. I would never have turned a gun on a scene like that. And you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “If I had any intentions of hurting them, she would have sensed it. She would have rushed out of here with her cubs. And if she had sensed more imminent danger, she would have attacked us herself, to protect her cubs.”

  Hayk was silent for a long time.

  “Let’s go see what your folks are up to,” said Laurian, finally standing up.

  “You know,” said Hayk as they started walking back toward the guardhouse, “my father once tried to hunt a bear. For one full week, he and his friends kept watch all night at the mouth of a path not too far from here where bears were known to pass. Imagine, Paron Edik, one whole week, every night keeping watch until dawn! A
nd they did not see a single bear! Not one. And here we are, taking a casual walk, and we run into a whole family!”

  “I told you this was a special gift just for us, didn’t I?” chuckled Laurian. “To get something you really want, you don’t have to necessarily chase it blindly. You have to know when to let it come to you instead. And that too is a matter of trusting your instincts.” When he saw Hayk’s somewhat cynical look, he added, “And of course a little luck never hurts.”

  Hayk laughed and was walking very tall indeed as he knocked on the door of the guardhouse. Agassi opened the door after the second knock.

  “Hey, grandpa,” yelled Hayk, “while the guard was asleep, the bears came and went, the wolves came and went, the thieves came and went…”

  “Ha, ha, balés, sure they did,” laughed Agassi, kissing Hayk on the forehead. “That was all? No tigers? No foxes, boars? So it was a quiet night all in all, no?”

  “This young man and I will be heading back to the house to get some well-deserved sleep,” said Laurian to Agassi. “Your watch now. Tell Saro we need a meeting, but not before noon. I will call him to arrange the time later. Also, Gabriel is coming in the early afternoon to check some of the repairs we need to finish before winter.”

  Gabriel was the builder of the house who took care of seasonal maintenance tasks as well.

  “Eghav, Edik jan. You mean you two have been up all night?”

  “It is a long story, but yes, we have. See you around noon.”

  “You want Hayk to sleep in the big house?”

  “Absolutely. He’ll be in the small room next to mine. I just hope he doesn’t snore,” laughed Laurian. “And, Agassi, when daylight comes, go check the newly planted pine saplings at the border over there, next to the wild fruit trees. I bet most of them are trampled by the thieves Hayk spoke about. Some guard you are!”

  And Agassi watched with some bafflement as the two walked away toward the main house, laughing as if they were old friends of the same age, teasing an older man with an inside joke.

  Laurian called Mayor Saro around noon.

  “Can we meet in about an hour?” he asked.

  “Ha, Edik jan, I’m in the village. I’ll come over.”

  “Could you call Nerses and see if he can come up too?”

  “I’ll call, but it is not easy for him to leave the restaurant,” said Saro.

  “If he can find a way, it would be great. We can cover everything all at once.”

  “I heard you had a late night,” said Saro. “Anything interesting?”

  “I’d say so,” said Laurian. “I believe we can now draw some solid conclusions. The big question, as you keep reminding me, is what can we do about all this.”

  “Okay, Edik jan, let’s talk in person in an hour. I’ll see if we can get Nerses up here. Maybe I can arrange to send someone from the village to relieve him for a few hours.”

  Vartiter set the table on the back terrace and Agassi started the fire for khorovadz. While Hayk helped Agassi with the fire, he told him the story of the bears with such enthusiasm that Vartiter stopped to listen as well.

  “I saw their traces this morning,” said Agassi. “And Paron Edik was right; they had destroyed around ten pine saplings. Some of them may survive; I’ve straightened them and tied them upright again. But a few are totally uprooted and broken in half under their feet.”

  “Paron Edik says we can always replant pine trees, but watching the bear family on its pre-dawn stroll is a rare pleasure he wouldn’t change for anything,” said Hayk, “and grandpa, I agree with him. It was really great. And when they were calmly walking away, the cubs looked so funny from behind, following their mother, their huge behinds moving right and left so clumsily, I could barely control my laughter.”

  “That is a great sight, balés,” said Agassi. “You’re lucky.”

  The fire was burning and while they waited for the coals to form in the bottom of the pit, Agassi and Hayk took on the job of lining the khorovadz over the long, wide skewers.

  Laurian went over the key pictures one more time: Number twelve, twenty-one and twenty-two from the sequence last night, and the three photos taken a day earlier, showing the movement of the girl from the car into the house in Sevajayr. He copied the six photos into a separate file, and named them—fourth, fifth, sixth, twelfth, twenty-first, twenty-second. That was all they needed to focus on. I need to print these at a decent photo shop, he thought, and decided that would be worth a trip to Yerevan. He also had decided to go back to Saralandj, and would have to pass by Yerevan anyway. The circumstances of Samvel Galian’s death, a month before his daughter’s employment by Ayvazian, were still a major unresolved issue for Laurian, and the revelations of the past couple of days had added a lot of troubling dimensions to his speculation on the story.

  The group was finally seated around Vartiter’s superbly set table.

  “Nerses jan, thanks so much for coming,” said Laurian. “We all know it is not easy for you to leave the restaurant on such short notice.”

  “No problem,” said Nerses. “My brother stops by a lot these days from Yeghegnadzor. His work is very slow; they’re not getting any new orders at the carpentry shop. He’ll stay as long as I’m here.”

  Saro and Agassi were anxious to hear the latest news. They had gathered a few bits and pieces but not the whole picture. Laurian himself had not yet heard Nerses’s story, nor seen his pictures. Hayk, who according to custom kept quiet until asked a question, was happy keeping busy with what was on the table—khorovadz, roasted potatoes, a few types of cheese and various sausages, salads, yogurt, and pickles.

  “I think we have enough to conclude that Ayvazian is up to no good,” said Laurian once they had made the first toast. “What I mean is that he’s involved in illegal and criminal human trafficking. That is a crime everywhere in the world, including in Armenia. I am basing this strictly on a few photos that were taken at the house in Sevajayr, mind you, but we’re not here to prepare for a court case; just to figure out what he’s up to.”

  “That’s good,” said Saro, “because chances are that whatever we have will not stand up in any court in this country if it is against Ayvazian.”

  Laurian had a separate discussion in mind about destroying Ayvazian’s operations altogether, but, given Saro’s comments, he did not want to stir up the deep-rooted fears of challenging authority. He turned to Nerses instead.

  “Nerses, we haven’t heard from you yet, and I don’t know if what you have to say corroborates my conclusion. I’ll show the pictures I’m talking about after lunch. Tell us what you have.”

  “I’m afraid what I have is a lot of details of who and where, but not much in terms of what. We have pictures of the drivers and bodyguards; we know exactly where they went after they left the restaurant; we have details on all the cars that passed by us. But we can say next to nothing as to what they are up to.”

  “Did any of the cars go to Martashen?” asked Saro.

  “Both of them did. We delayed them by thirty minutes or so with our fallen tree, gave them some tea, took pictures, etc., and warned all three posts to watch for the cars. We had pictures of their license plates on our phones and SMSed them to our people, so they could check for sure. Both went straight to Ayvazian’s house in Martashen.”

  “Any passengers aside from the drivers?” asked Laurian.

  “None that we could see, either here or in Martashen. Around an hour ago the cars were still parked in front of Ayvazian’s house.”

  “All the information and pictures that you’ve gathered will be very useful,” said Laurian. “As far as I can tell, there are three drivers/bodyguards who are actively involved. Viktor may have come here in person once at the beginning to inspect the area and the houses, but I don’t think he’s been back since. I think the three are managing the two houses in Vardahovit and Sevajayr. There is at least one woman in the Sevajayr house, maybe two. I’ll show the pictures of the one they brought in a couple of nights ago. W
e have no proof of a second, but I wonder why they were guarding the place before if there was no one there. Also, I think there is at least one captive in the house in Vardahovit; otherwise they wouldn’t be guarding it either. But we simply cannot organize a stakeout there to take pictures. The position of the house does not allow it. There is nowhere to hide or watch from.”

  “Pardon, me, Edik jan,” said Nerses, after listening patiently. “Maybe I’ve missed out on some meetings the rest of you have had. But what are we trying to do with all this? It is clear that you have watched these movements on this side of Getap, just like we have from the other side. But to what end?”

  “Good question,” said Laurian, very much aware that what they had done so far in terms of surveillance was entirely uncommon for these people. One simply did not take on the likes of Ayvazian. That was the incredible vicious circle of dealing with the oligarchs: they got away with murder because no one dared to question them, and no one questioned them because they always got away with murder. It was precisely this vicious circle that Laurian wanted to break. It could so easily be turned into a virtuous circle of accountability and crime control, he thought. We question them, they get caught, and because they get caught, more people question them and hold them accountable. It could all start with just one case. One major scandal that would shake the country and wake it up.

  But Laurian knew that this was not the audience for his large-scale reform dreams. These folks were honest, hard working, but rightly scared and truly powerless. They could not share his vision on a grand scale, but they understood dangers close to home. They all understood that getting rid of Ayvazian’s operation from Sevajayr was important for the security and safety of their own families. That was much easier to sell than a fancy story of vicious and virtuous circles.

  “Good question,” he repeated, looking at Nerses. “Look, Nerses jan, we never intended to keep you in the dark about what we’re doing on this side of Getap, and that’s why I’m glad you could make it today. The problem is, the local nest of this beast is right here in Vardahovit and Sevajayr. It’s not in Getap. This is where they have set up a base and are keeping captives. This is what makes none of us safe here. None of us. Especially those of us with families.”