Our Game (39 page)

"Only with Larry," I replied, hoping I might draw him.

But his reply was another sad smile, which neither acknowledged Larry's existence nor denied it. He asked how I was getting along with my Murids.

"They are polite?"

"Perfectly."

"They are the sons of martyrs." The sad smile again. "Perhaps they think you are the instrument of God's will.”

“Why should they think that?"

"There is a prophecy, widely believed in Sufist circles ever since the nineteenth century when the Imam Shamyl sent letters to your Queen Victoria, that the Russian Empire will one day collapse and the North Caucasus, including Ingushetia and Chechenia, will come under the rule of the British sovereign."

I received this information gravely, which was how he had imparted it.

"Many of our elders are speaking of the English prophecy," he went on. "If the collapse of the Russian Empire has now come about, they ask, when will be the second sign?"

A fluke of memory reminded me of something Larry had once told me: "And did I not read," I said artfully, in phrases as carefully weighed as his, "that Queen Victoria provided the Imam Shamyl with weapons in order to help him vanquish the Russian oppressor?"

"It is possible," Magomed conceded, without much interest. "The Imam Shamyl was not of our people and is consequently not the greatest of our heroes." He passed his thick palm first across his brow and then his beard, as if he wished to cleanse himself of an unfortunate association. "There is also a legend that the founders of the Chechen and Ingush nations were suckled by a she-wolf. The story may perhaps be familiar to you in a different context."

"It is," I said, remembering the wolves engraved on Issa's gold cuff links.

"More practically, there has always been a view among us that Great Britain could moderate the Russian determination to enslave us. Do you consider this to be another of our empty dreams, or may we hope that you will speak for us in the councils from which we are excluded? I ask you this in all seriousness, Mr. Timothy."

I had no reason to doubt him, but I was hard put to provide him with an answer.

"If Russia breached her treaties with her neighbours...," I began awkwardly.

"Yes?"

"If the tanks ever rolled into Nazran as they rolled into Prague in '68—"

"They have already done so, Mr. Timothy. Perhaps you were asleep at the time. Ingushetia is a country under Russian occupation. And here in Moscow we are pariahs. We are neither trusted nor liked. We are the victims of the same prejudices that prevailed in tsarist times. Communism brought us nothing but the same. Now Yeltsin's government is full of Cossacks, and the Cossacks have hated us since the dawning of the earth. He has Cossack generals, Cossack spies, Cossacks in the committees charged with deciding our new frontiers. You may be sure they will trick us at every turn. The world has not altered for us one centimetre in the last two hundred years. We are oppressed, we are stigmatised, we resist. We strenuously resist. Perhaps you should tell this to your queen."

"Where's Larry? When can I see him? When will you let me out of here?"

He was already rising to leave, and at first I thought he had decided to ignore my questions, which to my regret had a note of desperation not consistent with good bearing. Relenting, he gave me a solemn embrace and gazed fiercely into my eyes and muttered something I could not understand, though I feared it was a prayer for my protection.

"Magomed is the master wrestler of all Ingushetia," said the elder Murid proudly. "He is a great Sufi and a doctor of philosophy. He is a great warrior and spiritual master. He has killed many Russians. In prison they tortured him, and when he came out he couldn't walk. Now he has the strongest legs in all the Caucasus."

"Is Magomed your spiritual master?" I asked.

"No."

"Is Bashir Haji?"

I had foundered against the wall of forbidden topics. They fell quiet, then withdrew to their cubicle across the corridor. Thereafter I heard a deep silence, broken only by the occasional murmur. I assumed that the sons of martyrs were at prayer.

Issa appeared, looking vast in a brand-new bulky leather jacket, very shiny, and bearing my suitcase and attaché case from the hotel. He was accompanied by two of his armed boys. Like Magomed, he was unshaven and wore a harrowed, serious expression.

"You have a complaint?" he demanded, bearing in upon me so fiercely I assumed he was going to slap me again.

"I am being treated with honour and respect," I returned, equally aggressively.

But instead of hitting me, he took my hand and drew me to him in the same single embrace that Magomed had bestowed on me, and gave me the same confiding pat across the shoulder.

"When will I leave here?" I asked.

"We shall see. One, three days. It will depend."

"What on? What are we waiting for?" My conversations with the Murids had emboldened me. "I have no argument with you. I have no evil designs. I am here on an errand of honour to see my friend."

His glower unsettled me. His stubble, his ravaged eyes, gave him the appearance of someone who had seen dreadful things. But he offered me no answer. Instead he turned on his heel and left, followed by his fighters. I opened my suitcase. Aitken May's papers were missing, so was Emma's pop-up address book. I wondered whether Issa had paid my hotel bill and, if so, whether they had used Bairstow's cancelled credit card.

I am hearing Pettifer on the long-distance loneliness of the spy. Half of him is complaining, half content. He is comparing his existence with rock climbing, which he loves.

"It's one bloody great overhang in the dark. One minute you're proud to be on your own. The next you'd give anything for a couple more blokes on the rope. Other times you just want to pull your knife out, reach up, cut the rope, and get some sleep."

As each day passed, my most diverting hours—and most informative—were those I spent in dialogue with my Murids.

Sometimes without embarrassment they would pray before me, after they had prayed alone. They would come into my room wearing their skullcaps, sit down, and, turning away from me, close their eyes and pass each bead reverently from hand to hand. A Murid, they explained, never took a bead in his fingers without invoking the name of God. And since God had ninety-nine names, there were ninety-nine beads, which meant that ninety-nine was the minimum number of invocations. But certain Sufi orders—they implied their own—required the invocation to be repeated many times. A Murid had his loyalty tried and tested in many different ways before he was accepted. The Murid hierarchy was intricate and decentralised. Each village was divided into several quarters, each quarter had its own small ring, headed by a Turqh, or ringleader, who was in turn subordinate to a Thamada, who was in turn subordinate to a vekil, or deputy sheikh.... Listening to them, I felt a certain kindred sympathy for the wretched Russian intelligence officer charged with the impossible task of penetrating their organisation. My Murid guards performed their five obligatory prayers of the day, on the prayer mats they kept in the cubicle. The prayers they offered in my presence were supplementary prayers, addressed to certain holy men and special causes.

"Is Issa a Murid?" I asked, and my question produced hilarious laughter.

Issa is very secular, they replied amid renewed laughter. Issa is an excellent crook for our cause! He is providing us with financial support from his rackets! Without Issa we would have no guns! Issa has many good friends in mafia; Issa is from our village; he is the best shot with a rifle in the whole valley, the best at judo and football and ...

Then the quiet again, while I contemplated Issa in his new persona as Checheyev's accomplice and perhaps mastermind behind the theft of thirty-seven million Russian pounds .

My urge to question them was nothing beside their intense curiosity about myself. Scarcely had they set my tray before me than they were seated at my table, firing their latest batch of questions:

Who were the bravest of all the English? they wished to know. Who were the best warriors, wrestlers, fighters? Was Elvis Presley English or American? Was the Queen absolute? Could she destroy villages, order executions, dissolve Parliament? Were English mountains high? Was Parliament only for elders? Did Christians have secret orders and sects, holy men, sheikhs, and imams? Who trained them to fight? What weapons did they have? Did Christians slaughter their animals without first bleeding them? And—since I had told them that I lived a country life—how many hectares did I own, how many head of cattle, sheep?

My personal situation perplexed them endlessly. If I was a man like a man, why did I have no wife, no children to bless me in my old age? In vain I explained to them that I was divorced. Divorce for them was a detail, the adjustment of a few hours. Why had I no new wife to give me sons?

Wishing to be repaid by a similar frankness, I answered them with the greatest care.

"So what brings you both to Moscow? Surely you should be in Nazran, studying?" I asked them one evening over endless cups of black tea.

They consulted each other, debating who should have the honour of the first reply.

"We were selected by our spiritual leader to guard an important English prisoner," the boy from the valley declared in a rush of pride.

"We are the two best warriors in Ingushetia," said the boy from the mountains. "We are without rivals, the bravest and best fighters, the hardiest, and most loyal!"

"And the most dedicated!" said his friend.

But here they seemed to remember that boasting was against their teaching, for they put on serious faces and spoke softly.

"We came to Moscow to accompany a great sum of cash for an acquaintance of my uncle," said the first boy.

"The money was stuffed inside two beautifully embroidered cushions," said the second. "This was because Caucasians are searched at airports. But the foolish Russians did not suspect our cushions."

"We believe that the cash we escorted was counterfeit, but we cannot be sure of this," said the first earnestly. "Ingushetians are fine forgers. At the airport a man identified himself to us and drove our cushions away in a jeep."

For a while they lost themselves in a tense discussion about what they would buy with the money they had earned by this service: a stereo, some clothes, more gold rings, or a stolen Mercedes car smuggled in from Germany. But I was in no hurry. I could wait my chance all night.

"Magomed tells me you are the sons of martyrs," I said, when this topic had run its course.

The mountain boy became very still. "My father was blind," he said. "He earned his living by reciting the Koran by heart. The Ossetians tortured him in front of the whole village, then the Russian soldiers tied his hands and feet and crushed him with a tank. When the villagers tried to retrieve his body, the Russian soldiers fired their guns at them."

"My father and my two brothers are also with God," said the valley boy quietly.

''When we die we shall be ready," said his friend, with the same stillness with which he had spoken of his father. "We will avenge our fathers and brothers and friends, and we shall die."

"We are sworn to fight the gazavat," said his comrade, with similar intensity. "It is the holy war that will free our homeland from the Russians."

"We must rescue our people from the injustice," said the mountain boy. "We must make our people strong and devout so that they cannot be preyed upon by infidels." He stood up and, reaching behind him, drew out a curved dagger, which he offered me to hold. "Here is my kinjal. If I have no other weapon and I am surrounded and I have no ammunition, I shall run out of my house and strike dead the first Russian I see."

It was some while before the fervour passed. But the word infidel had given me the chance I had been waiting for all evening.

"Can an infidel ever be the subject of a Murid's prayers?" I asked.

The boy from the valley clearly regarded himself as the more dependable spiritual authority. "If the infidel is a man of high esteem and morals, and this man is serving our cause, a Murid will pray for him. A Murid will pray for any man who is the instrument of God."

"Could an infidel of high esteem and morals make his life among you?" I enquired, privately wondering how Larry would take to this description.

"If an infidel is a guest in our household he is called hashah. A hashah is a sacred trust. If he is harmed, the offence will be the same as if the tribe that protected him was harmed. A blood feud will be called to avenge the hashah's death and clear the honour of the tribe."

"Does such a hashah live among you now?" I asked—and while I waited for their answer—"an Englishman perhaps? A man who serves your cause and speaks your language?"

For a wonderful moment I really believed that my patient strategy had paid off. They glanced excitedly at each other, their eyes fired; they spoke back and forth in hushed, breathless sentences filled with unintelligible promise. Then gradually I realised that what the mountain boy would love to tell me, his friend from the valley was ordering him to keep to himself.

The same night I dreamed of Larry as a latter-day Lord Jim, the enthroned monarch of all the Caucasus, and Emma as his somewhat startled consort.

They came for me at dawn, when executioners come. First I dreamed them, then they were true. Magomed, his gaunt companion, and two of the boys who had watched me being slapped at the nightclub. My Murids had disappeared. Perhaps they had been recalled to Nazran. Perhaps they wished to distance themselves from what was about to happen. An astrakhan hat and a kinjal lay on the foot of my bed. and they must have put them there while I slept. Magomed's stubble had become a full beard. He wore a mink hat.

"We shall leave at once, please, Mr. Timothy," he announced. "Please prepare yourself for a discreet departure."

Then he spread himself expansively in my armchair like a master of ceremonies, the aerial of a cell phone poking from his padded waistcoat, while he watched his boys hasten me through my packing—the kinjal to my suitcase, the astrakhan hat to my head—and kept his ear cocked to the corridor for suspicious sounds.