Generals – they are also different:
Those in trenches with fighters – beautiful,
Those in offices – hideous.

Then I went down, under the armor. I remember two SOBR officers, pressed to their machine guns at the embrasures. Some sparse woodland with trees severed by shells...

Then "Severny." One security checkpoint, then a second, a third... We asked a general, dressed in brand new camouflage, if there was anything going to Mozdok? He, it seemed to me, glanced disdainfully at Yura's dirty camouflage and my mud-blackened jeans and snapped: "Check over there... The general is over there" — and nodded importantly in the direction of the airport terminal.

I remember some poster on the bullet-scarred wall of the airport terminal: either "Peace to the World," or something about the unbreakable friendship of peoples.

It turned out that Anatoly Shkirko, the Deputy Commander of the Internal Troops, with whom we had spent half the night at the Mozdok base, was supposed to fly.

Then — the flight. Also a machine gunner in the tail of the An. Then — Mozdok. A long wait — will there be a flight to Chkalovsk or not. The flight — with "Cargo 200" and the wounded. Meeting with San Sanych, about whom I will tell separately. Chkalovsk, the editorial office, the guys were waiting with a bottle of vodka. At night, I wrote the article and soaked my jeans clean of mud.

A few days later, in the editorial accounting department, I was asked if I had a hotel receipt. I looked at that old woman as if she were crazy.

Thus ended the first Chechen assignment.

Notebook Two

Year 1996

What to call you now,
Those who remained in captivity.
Memory cannot be cut short,
Conscience cannot be deceived.
They couldn't defeat you,
It was easier to betray and sell.

Three mothers of three sons of this monstrous war. I can inform you that your children, who were presumed missing, are alive. A field commander of Dudayev's forces asked me to convey that they are in captivity and can be found in Novogroznenskoye by contacting Umar Saydiev, head of the special department of the North-Eastern Front. Their names are: Alexey Vaterkov (from Karelia), Alexey Prokofiev (from Leningrad region), and Eduard Pritchin (from Kurgan). Forgive me, mothers of other victims of this war, that I could not bring news of your captive children.

Sunday. We are going to negotiations with Aslan Maskhadov. I don't know what we hope for, but a person cannot live without hope. Just like humanity.

A day ago, we crossed the border between Dagestan and Chechnya. A field commander in Gerzel village tells us:

"Tell me, why are they bombing our villages? Let them bomb the militants, but what do peaceful residents have to do with it?" And he adds: "Inform Yeltsin, he doesn't need to give a billion dollars for the restoration of Chechnya. Let him rather give that money for miners' salaries, and leave us alone."

Then a boy appears with three "Shmels" — a deadly weapon against Russian military vehicles. He smiles:

"You hit three tanks from a column, and the rest stop immediately and the soldiers scatter."

He smiles, and I am scared. No, not because he will now see an enemy in me and, mistaking me for a tank or APC, will fire this "Shmel." It's just that this boy grew up this way. And we made him this way. We. All of us together.

Now, as we go to negotiate the fate of prisoners — no, not only the Novosibirsk OMON officers, but all those who became "Caucasian prisoners" three months, six months, a year ago and were forgotten by the callous Pavel Grachev (in the list that the guys from "Memorial" handed me, there are one hundred twenty-nine of them) — yes, now I recall this image and the smiling boy with the "Shmel."