in command watched the small boy as he clambered back over the rubble, pieces of an unexploded Russian rocket tucked under one arm. Then they returned to their vehicle. With a grunt of disgust, Hasan slammed shut the armor-plated door on the world outside, Aznor's world. "Doesn't it bother you that you're sending a child to his death?"
Murat glanced at him. The snow had melted to trembling droplets on his beard, making him seem in Arsenov's eyes more like a liturgical imam than a military commander. "I've given this child - who must feed and clothe and, most important, protect the rest of his family as if he were an adult - I have given him hope, a specific objective. In short, I've provided him with a reason to live."
Bitterness had turned Arsenov's face hard and pale; his eyes had a baleful look. "Russian bullets will tear him to ribbons."
"Is that what you truly think, Hasan? That Aznor is stupid or, worse, careless?"
"He's but one child."
"When the seed is planted, the shoots will rise out of even the most inhospitable ground. It's always been this way, Hasan. The belief and courage of one inevitably grows and spreads, and soon that one is ten, twenty a hundred, a thousand!"
"And all the while our people are being murdered, raped, beaten, starved and penned like cattle.
It's not enough, Khalid. Not nearly enough!"
"The impatience of youth hasn't yet left you, Hasan." He gripped the other's shoulder. "Well, I shouldn't be surprised, yes?"
Arsenov, catching the look of pity in Murat's eyes, clenched his jaw and turned his face away.
Curls of snow made visible wind devils along the street, whirling like Chechen dervishes in ecstatic trance. Murat took this as a sign of the import of what he had just done, of what he was about to say. "Have faith," he said in hushed, sacramental tones, "in Allah and in that courageous boy."
Ten minutes later, the convoy stopped in front of Hospital Number Nine. Arsenov looked at his wristwatch. "Almost time," he said. The two of them were riding in the same vehicle, against standard security precautions owing to the extreme importance of the call they were about to receive.
Murat leaned over, pressed a button, and the soundproof barrier rose into place, cutting them off from the driver and four bodyguards sitting forward. Well-trained, they stared straight ahead through the bullet-proof windshield.
"Tell me, Khalid, as the moment of truth is upon us, what reservations you have."
Murat raised his bristling eyebrows in a display of incomprehension that Arsenov thought rather transparent. "Reservations?"
"Don't you want what's rightfully ours, Khalid, what Allah decrees we should have?"
"The blood runs high in you, my friend. I know this only too well. We've fought side by side many times - we've killed together and we owe each other our very lives, yes? Now, listen to me. I bleed for our people. Their pain fills me with a rage I can barely contain. You know this better, perhaps, than anyone. But history warns that one should beware what one wants the most.
The consequences of what's being proposed - "
"What we've been planning for!"
"Yes, planning for," Khalid Murat said. "But the consequences must be considered."
"Caution," Arsenov said bitterly. "Always caution."
"My friend." Khalid Murat smiled as he gripped the other's shoulder. "I don't want to be misled.
The reckless foe is easiest to destroy. You must learn to make patience a virtue."
"Patience!" Arsenov spat. "You didn't tell the boy back there to be patient. You gave him money, told him where to buy ammunition. You set him against the Russians. Each day we delay is another day that boy and thousands like him risk being killed. It's the very future of Chechnya that will be decided by our choice here?'
Murat pressed his thumbs into his eyes, rubbing with a circular motion. "There are other ways, 8
Hasan. There are always other ways. Perhaps we should consider - "
"There's no time. The announcement has been made, the date set. The Shaykh is right."
"The Shaykh, yes." Khalid Murat shook his head. "Always the Shaykh."
At that moment, the car phone rang. Khalid Murat glanced at his trusted companion and calmly clicked on the speakerphone. "Yes, Shaykh," he said in a deferential tone of voice. "Hasan and I are both here. We await your instructions."
High above the street where the convoy was idling, a figure crouched on a flat rooftop, elbows atop the low parapet. Lying along the parapet was a Finnish Sako TRG-41 bolt-action sniper rifle, one of many he