In Pskov, Alexey learned that a criminal case had been opened against him. For desertion. A year and a half ago. Based on a letter from the military prosecutor of the North Caucasian district.

"They've gone mad!" Yu. A. Shmatov called me on Friday.

Thank God, I thought, that one of the regional leaders managed to get him out of captivity.

The most terrible and most mysterious thing for me in this war is the children.

I spend the night in Sleptsovsk at Lecha Idigov's place.

His house was in the village of Orekhovo. The house is gone. As is the village, as it once was.

He left the burning village with his wife and two children.

Ten-year-old Rita is afraid of planes and, after what happened there, talks very little.

She looks at a person, never taking her eyes off them. It's hard not to respond to that gaze. She always smiles.

In the morning, she takes my bag and carries it to the car.

"Don't, you don't have to," I whisper to her.

She shakes her head negatively.

Forgive me, girl...

As I wrote at the beginning — I don't want to change anything: from a line and a comma — to my personal assessments of the events of 1997.

But I need to explain a lot.

In order. First. What kind of assignment was this?

In January '97, a young Internal Troops officer showed me a map of Chechnya with marked villages where captive officers and soldiers were held. It was roughly indicated how many guys, "forgotten" by our generals, remained there. It amounted to several thousand people. An entire regiment left to its own devices.

We decided to publish this map in the newspaper. That's how our "Forgotten Regiment" campaign began.

Before the trip, I contacted Aslan Maskhadov and told him I had a list of Chechen citizens in Russian prisons. Remembering our conversation in Novogroznenskoye during the first war, when he told me he wouldn't exchange prisoners for Chechen criminals, this time I asked: let your people look at the list and determine who are criminals and who are fighters. He replied that his representative would be waiting for me in Nazran.

I flew to Nazran in the middle of the day.

That's how I met Lecha Idigov, with whom both I and my newspaper colleagues would later have a very significant connection.

And here again, the same road...

Traffic police post at the turn to Sleptsovskaya. Further—a blockpost with a white Ingush flag. Another one, another. The border. Finally, a green flag over the Chechen Republic blockpost. The road leads further—to the ruined, "Grad"-scarred Grozny.

Everything just as it was two and a half weeks ago, when we traveled with hope and fear that our expectations would not be met, to negotiate the release of Private Alexey Anisimov of the 205th brigade from captivity.

Everything is the same and not the same.

The day before our arrival, another tragedy occurred at the Ingush blockpost—a shootout that claimed two more human lives. Two more...

And that's why there are more people at the blockposts, conversations are tenser, document checks are stricter.

Because of this, in Ingushetia, a Volga with Azamat Nalgiev, a member of the Ingush parliament, drives ahead of us, and when we cross the border into Chechnya, a red Moskvich with Lecha Idigov, the representative of the Chechen Republic in Ingushetia, speeds ahead.

We are cautious. We cannot but be cautious. The boys we were promised to bring back are waiting for us. They are being given their freedom, and therefore nothing must happen to us.

Just two and a half weeks ago, I stood near the shattered building of the auto repair shop, waiting for Said's decision. Would he return Lesha Anisimov, as he promised the Pskov delegation? Would he hand over three more, as he hinted to me? Or would he hand over no one?

Then he returned only Lesha. The others—upon presentation of the guarantees we promised him: the removal of himself and his brother from the federal wanted list.

We kept our word: we had with us a decision from the Samara Prosecutor's Office, stamped and signed, to drop the criminal prosecution.

Will he keep his? Will he impose any more conditions? Will he make new demands?

Come on, road, faster... Come on, Grozny, get closer...

Suddenly, I catch myself thinking about the wrong things.