The general glanced briefly at Arbatov and me. "It's certainly not our guys, it's the army," and then immediately to the old men: "Exactly, I tell you, not our guys. We tear off the heads of our men for that," and to someone in his entourage: "Run, go sort it out!"

And when the old men left, he repeated to us: "We really tear off heads for that..."

We didn't answer anything, as during our Chechen assignments, we had already grown accustomed to the sight of tanks covered with carpets... There, in the staff tent, one of the officers showed me a stack of brand new Russian foreign passports found on killed militants: all Arabic names, and on one of the photos—even a completely black face.

"I wish I could find that bastard in Moscow who supplied them with Russian passports!" the colonel snapped angrily.

Later, in Moscow, I tried to find these "bastards." And from a high-ranking official in the MVD, I heard a completely fantastic explanation: "Yes, thirty thousand blank Russian foreign passports were transferred to the Chechen Republic! Just like to other subjects of the federation: you won't deny that the Chechen Republic is part of Russia, or have you already separated it?"

(This conversation was exactly like a conversation with another government official, which happened much earlier, in August '96, at the height of the first Chechen campaign. I got a document indicating that two hundred million rubles from the state budget were being transferred to Chechnya under only two headings: "for ecology and fisheries." Furious, I went to the White House: "At least turn on the TV! There's a war going on! What ecology, what fisheries, if corpses are floating in the Sunzha River, not fish!" And in response, I heard: "Chechnya is part of the Russian Federation, or do you disagree with that?")

Oh, holy naivety! And the money wasn't small either...

Was the attack by Basayev's and Khattab's gangs on Dagestan really out of the blue? Why were the Dagestani police and local militias forced to resist them alone? Where were our internal troops? Why did no one know or suspect—where was our intelligence?—that something was about to begin here?

But, as I already said, the special services year after year reported on the danger hanging over Dagestan due to the cunning work of Islamic emissaries with local youth. This information was either not believed or not given importance. Sergey Stepashin himself, even as Minister of Internal Affairs, visited the scene and publicly stated that there was nothing terrible about Wahhabis—people are people. He even accepted a burqa as a gift from them, which, as he later told me, he handed over to the MVD museum. But even more interesting is something else!

On the way from Makhachkala to Karamakhi, approaching the combat zones, we stopped at a mortar crew positioned under a small hill.

"Khattab drove past in a car; I wanted to open fire—I was forbidden," a young senior lieutenant recounted.

"Who forbade you? Rank, position, surname?!" we demanded.

"Well, I can't say that! I have commanders!" the guy replied glumly...

I spoke with many participants in these battles—and all of them unanimously recounted: "They left calmly, as if on parade. Khattab in a Land Rover, Basayev in a jeep... With them, the militants—in KamAZ trucks..."

I repeat, I heard this from many. And I can no longer help but believe the story I was told quite recently: on the day they withdrew from Dagestan, the planes in Rostov, as if on purpose, ran out of fuel, and Russian helicopters calmly hovered over Khattab's and Basayev's convoy.

I can believe that too. Just as I am very skeptical of theories about certain "goat trails" by which Khattab and Basayev escaped into Chechnya (as various Moscow officials with big epaulets explain to me).

Yes, they left Dagestan safe and sound. The counter-terrorism operation was completed—and the mechanism for a new, big war was launched.

Who turned that key? Why did they not listen not only to Grigory Yavlinsky, who repeatedly stated that we should reach the Terek, to the foothills (where the population loyal to Russia lives) and stop there, but also to many combat generals who also argued that the slogan "Forward, to Grozny!" would lead to too many casualties and too protracted a war?

It's very difficult to find out how this decision was made in the secret corridors of the Kremlin: everyone who could give such advice is still in office and position.