Belka, Why Don't You Bark? (4 page)

At first, the pilot kept Kita in the post office kennel. There was a lot going on
there. The same pen held a setter, a borzoi, a malamute, a Siberian husky, a Greenland
dog, and a bull mastiff. Other dogs were constantly threatening him, sniffing him.
Little by little, Kita began to notice the world. Still, during the next three months
he didn’t make much progress.

On July 22, in Fairbanks, the pilot was shot dead by a robber.

The night before he was shot, the pilot had been at a bar with an old friend, urging
him to come see his dogs. “You gotta come and see these boys,” he said. “C’mon, make
a trip up to Anchorage! You’d understand what they’re worth.” The friend’s father
was a legend in Alaskan mail circles, a pioneer in dog-sled mail delivery. For forty
years, ever since the gold rush had turned this land into a madhouse, he had been
carrying mail to isolated villages scattered in the interior, so remote that neither
trains nor any other motored vehicle could possibly reach them. The pilot had gone
to pay his respects to this living legend several times and got to know his son, who
was about the same age he was. The son had grown up watching his father ride off with
his dogs, he had played on sleds and cuddled up with the dogs in their kennel—he
knew
dogs. It seemed only natural that he become a musher himself when he got older, and
he had taken first prize in a few local races. He lived off prize money and by trapping.

A week after the pilot’s death, this musher friend came to Anchorage as he had promised.
He visited the post office kennel. The pilot’s prize collection was, truth be told,
more than his colleagues could handle. Two or three dogs were all they could use,
either at work or as pets. That was how things stood when this close friend of the
deceased, a musher, turned up. They asked for his help.

“Sure thing,” he told them. “I’ll take any dogs that can pull a sled.”

In August, Kita was taken, as part of the pilot’s “estate,” to a place far from any
other human habitation, a few dozen miles northwest of Fairbanks.

Six months had passed since Kita left Kiska. The latitude here was even higher. The
Arctic Circle was near. Kita, Kita, what are you feeling? You’re living in the north
now, in the real north, as though your name marked your destiny. Kita. North. The
musher trained you. Taught you how a sled dog was supposed to run, how to pull the
flat practice sled known as a
pulk
.
THIS IS TRAINING
—
I HAVEN
’
T DONE THIS IN A WHILE
, you thought.
I
’
M BEING TAUGHT
,
I
’
M LEARNING TO DO MY DUTY
. Somewhere inside you, a switch was flipped. The mail dogs your master had brought
back couldn’t keep up, but you didn’t stop. You felt no pain. No, not you. The strictness
of this training agreed with you.

And then it happened. Winter came. You were harnessed and you ran. Before your master’s
sled, perfectly in sync with the other dogs, your stride the same as theirs…you ran.
You had gone from being a sled dog in training to a real, bona fide sled dog. You
grasped the hierarchy that structured the team, followed the lead dog, ran. This,
this was your duty. You felt it.

The musher had his sights set on first place in the next race. There was a war on,
but the government wasn’t dumb enough to cancel an event with such a long tradition
in Alaska. It wasn’t going to risk alienating the populace. If the musher was going
to win, he had to practice like it was the real thing. He never took a day off. And
so neither did his dogs. He was running them as hard as he could by February 1945.
The master and his dogs were hardly ever at home. They must have covered half of Alaska—half
a universe of white. Kita was on the move. He devoured the colorless scenery. The
spruce trees, his own white breath and that of the other dogs, the great rivers now
frozen solid—everything was perfect. An ideal sled route.

On February 17 there was an incident. The whole area was buried in snow. Suddenly
the sled capsized. The dogs were baying. Something had scared them out of their wits.
A moose. It hadn’t eaten in ages because of the snow. It had lunged wildly at the
dogs. From their flank. The dogs were harnessed, of course. The moose was a female;
she weighed more than seventeen hundred pounds. She was a beast, starved to the limit,
aggressive. The lead dog was killed, then another two. All of a sudden, somewhere
inside Kita, another switch was flipped. Just like that. While the other dogs darted
back and forth in terror, Kita awoke.

Attack!

His instincts called to him. Now, now, he remembered the lessons that had been beaten
into him when he belonged to the military—he remembered how to attack.
THIS IS IT
, he realized in this midst of his extreme agitation.
THIS IS WHAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO ON THAT ISLAND
,
THIS IS MY DUTY
! Kita tensed, then barked.
NOW IS THE TIME
.
I
’
LL LIVE
.
YES
,
I
’
M LIVING
!

Finally snapping back into reality, Kita sprang into action. His harness was loose,
almost falling off. He leapt. He wasn’t intimidated by the enemy, despite the tremendous
difference in their weight. The fight was on. Slipping through the moose’s hooves,
he sank his teeth into its windpipe. The moose bled. The moose bellowed. The struggle
continued for thirty minutes, until at last Kita emerged victorious, practically unscathed.

The team had lost three dogs. Six more were wounded. One had tried to flee. The sled
was halfway destroyed.

Then a blizzard blew up. The musher was almost dead, and Kita warmed his body with
his own. Gave his master his own warmth to keep him from freezing. The surviving dogs
gathered around him.

Dogs, you other dogs from Kiska, where are you now?

By the end of the war, Kita had won himself a position as a sled dog on the snowfields
of Alaska. But what happened to the dogs that had parted with Kita at Dutch Harbor?
They continued to serve as military dogs. During the war, of course, and even after
it. Except that only one of them was still alive when it ended. The others fell in
action, here and there, across the Pacific. On the Marianas, in the Philippines, on
Iwo Jima, on Okinawa.

From February 1944, the six dogs who had been sent to the American mainland via Dutch
Harbor—Masao as a “prisoner” dog and the five four-month-old purebred German shepherds
as “candidate” military dogs—were housed in the spacious training center at Camp Lejeune.
All six went on to become American military dogs—following, as it were, the script
that had been written for them. Explosion’s unplanned union with a Japanese dog (Masao)
had, as it happened, yielded an outstanding litter. It was hardly a surprise that
the pups exhibited all the usual traits of the breed and were free from imperfections.
Indeed, the superiority of their bloodline had come to an even fuller fruition in
them. They seemed to have inherited only the best aspects of the latest breeding as
it was practiced by the Japanese and American militaries. Having been tested in any
number of areas, all five placed in the A class. Masao, too, exceeded expectations.
The pups’ father adapted immediately to the commands his new American masters taught
him. He made it abundantly clear how much he could do, almost as though he knew that
this was an inspection, to see if he was fit to be admitted as an immigrant, to become
an American. Within two months, the father and his pups were reunited, allowed to
live together.

In order to be recognized as a full-fledged military dog, a pup must have reached
a certain age. Military dogs can’t be too young. So it wasn’t until the fall, when
the five pups were about a year old, that they were finally shipped off to the front
lines. By then they had been thoroughly trained. They had learned how to carry out
various tasks: guarding, reconnaissance, attacking, transport. They were sent onto
mock battlefields where they were inured to bomb blasts, smoke, flames. They learned
to crawl under barbed wire. All five were certified as A-class dogs and sent to various
islands in the Pacific. Masao had gone off to war months earlier. He no longer felt
any compunction about attacking the Japanese.

During the latter half of 1943, American forces were engaged in a vast campaign across
the Pacific Ocean. On November 1, troops landed on Bougainville Island, at the northern
edge of the Solomon Islands; shortly thereafter they took Rabaul on New Britain, the
site of a Japanese naval and air base, and the fighting shifted north of the equator.
February 1944 saw the inauguration of a fierce campaign against the Marshall and the
Chuuk island group; on June 15, the Americans landed on Saipan; two months later they
had captured the Marianas. And then they advanced on the Philippines. The Japanese
sustained a disastrous defeat in a land battle on Leyte. A war of attrition was being
fought on Luzon. And then it was 1945. A land battle of incredible scale broke out
on Iwo Jima, and the fighting moved to Okinawa.

How many people died in all?

And how many dogs?

Tens of thousands. Literally tens of thousands, all across the Pacific. And those
dogs were among the casualties. One after another, they were killed in battle. Only
one of their number was still alive when, in August 1945, two atom bombs—one made
of uranium that was called Little Boy, one made of plutonium that was called Fat Man—flashed
within the space of a few days over the Japanese islands of Honshū and Kyūshū.

That dog wasn’t Masao. It was one of Masao’s children. Four puppies in that litter
of nine, four of the little ones that had come into this world alive after Masao and
Explosion mated, were dead now. Only one returned unscathed.

Returned to the American mainland. From the west side of the Pacific to the east.
A German shepherd named Bad News. A male.

America, having emerged victorious, continued to expand its military dog population.
The kennels were maintained. Because the dogs remained useful. Their numbers had to
be increased in preparation
for the next war
. Stronger dogs, better dogs. Some of the active dogs were selected for breeding.
Bad News, an A-class male, was given the right to mate.

The right to straddle beautiful female dogs.

And then there was Kita, in Alaska.

In 1945, Kita became a lead dog. His authority in the team could not be challenged.
The musher who was his master treated him as his best friend, trusted him implicitly.
After all, Kita had saved his life. They were bound now by a powerful tie; each understood
what the other was thinking. Kita’s master had always been a talented and energetic
musher, but now that he had Kita as his lead dog he began winning even more races.
Kita wasn’t a standard breed for a sled dog, of course. But he was
strong
. Four times a day, before and after practice, his master rubbed his body down with
alcohol; his energy was never exhausted, and he poured it all into doing his duty.
That winter, and the next, Kita led his team to more than one record-breaking victory.
His master was a star, and Kita came to be known as
the
dog, not only in Alaska but across the entire Arctic. Kita was the most famous sled
dog there was.

Naturally, his master encouraged him to sire as many children as he could. The pups
in his bloodline, inheriting his traits, became a sought-after breed of their own.
The bitches all came from fine stock too. Only they weren’t the same breed as Kita.
They were Siberian huskies, malamutes. Mushers had been selectively breeding sled
dogs for some time, and they knew the power of guided mongrelization. Eventually,
Alaska would produce its own breed of Alaskan husky, bred specially for racing. It
was only natural that Kita became a breeding dog.

Puppies from famous dogs weren’t cheap. Sewing his seed, Kita earned his master a
living. And the other dogs too. He became their benefactor.

Sled racing continued to develop as a sport in Alaska in the wake of the Second World
War. The establishment in 1948 of the Alaska Dog Mushers Association was followed
in 1949 by the creation of the Alaska Sled Dog and Racing Association, and races began
to be held on an unprecedented scale. The number of applicants increased and with
it the demand for pedigree sled dogs.

Already by 1949, Kita had sired 124 puppies.

And the other dog?

By the same year, Bad News had fathered 277 puppies. He had long since retired from
life as an active military dog, but he went on planting his seed.

“That was an interesting article you ran.”

“That one last week, you mean? ‘The Chechen Train of Death’?
Ha ha ha!
Yes, indeed—that drew quite a response.”

“Yes. It was truly…truly
masterfully
done.”

“Of course. It was the truth.”

“The truth of the situation.”

“Those Chechens have been springing one surprise after another on us, since before
the establishment of the Soviet system. Such ardent separatists! Such fierce anti-Russian
sentiment! Yes—that, in short, is the
situation
. The North Caucasus is in turmoil. Our dear president has cut off all funding from
the Russian Federation, recalled the engineers who were teaching them to drill and
refine their oil. They’ve been left with no means of preserving their identity as
a so-called ‘independent state’—apart, that is, from illegitimate business activities.
And,
voilà
! The bloody Train of Death, set upon out of the blue by a band of robbers!
Ha ha ha!
”

“You seem pleased.”

“I’m just a regular Russian, same as everyone else.”

“Hence your popular appeal. I see…just what an editor needs.”

“You said it!”

“It’s a glorious age we live in.”

“Yes, a glorious age—for me, at least. I’m flabbergasted by these heretical Chechens,
with their unyielding moral vision. And our readers love it when I’m flabbergasted!
They love how ‘true’ it is!”

“So it seems.”

“It’s astonishing. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude. The numbers talk. Yes, this, my
friend, is what capitalism is all about! And liberalism, the market economy!
Numbers
!”

“Anticommunism.”

“Precisely. And anti-‘red totalitarianism’ too. While we’re on the topic of heretics,
though…You’ve heard about the Islamic prophet being killed? Guy with tattoos, quite
high up?”

“Is that true?”

“It’s true.”

“Then I guess I’ve just heard about it.”

“He was part of the inner circle of the Chechen mafia’s boss in the Far East. The
boss’s right-hand man. What I wouldn’t give to run a photo of the scene…ideally with
the body.”

“In your paper?”

“That’s right.”

“In
Freedom Daily
? The tabloid?”

“Right smack on the front page.”

“In place of the usual satirical cartoon, occult scoop, or alien corpse?”

“Our new readership doesn’t go for that stuff.”

“That’s encouraging.”

“Isn’t it?”

“A photo would boost sales,” the old man said.

“On another note, this restaurant…rather loud, isn’t it?”

“Very. I like it loud.”

“Salted herring in oil! Smoked eel! Cow tongue in sea salt! These appetizers are as
good as it gets. You like it…because there’s no fear of being overheard?”

“Not, at any rate, so long as we’re just talking. Take a look at us, my friend. We
look like an elderly uncle and his nephew, dining together for the first time in ages.
The nephew has made it big in the great capitalist city. And here I am, straight out
of the forest, being treated to a magnificent meal.”

“Straight out of the forest?”

“Yes. Your old uncle used to be…a hunter, shall we say. Deep in the forest.”

“Splendid. A
hunter
! Cheers, then! Once again—to us!”

“Cheers.”

“
Mmmnnmm
. Paper-thin slices of salted fatback! Exquisite!”

“A nephew I can be proud of. Taking me to such a classy restaurant.”

“
Ha ha ha!
Hats off to the restaurant! But to continue
just talking
…last month, a guy with an eagle tattoo was murdered. The month before, someone else.
A cat tattoo. A nasty cat.”

“Russians.”

“Yes, the Russian mafia. Members of the Vor. For seven months now, the tension has
been escalating, the fighting growing steadily worse and worse.”

“Tension sparked by a certain newspaper. A scoop.”

“Yes, indeed! A tabloid exposé. It must be said, however, that no lies were printed
in that article. Speculation, yes, but the evidence itself, advanced in support of
the conclusion—that was pure
truth
! How else could it have been so persuasive?”

“No doubt.”

“None whatsoever. Hence the public’s enthusiasm for our current investigative series
on the Chechens. It’s been like this from the start, you know. From the first installment.”

“It was that immediate?”

“How can gangsters emerge as ‘hometown heroes’—or rather, as they’d put it, ‘homeland
heroes’? How can one account for this peculiarly Chechen structure? See here, just
look at me. I get all flabbergasted just thinking about it. Glorious, glorious! Another
glass!”

“Here, drink up.”

“Thank you, dear Uncle!
Ha ha ha!
The point is, it was their
homeland
, you see. As long as the funds furthered the movement—independence, separation from
the Russian Federation!—no one cared where they came from. Kill the outsiders, take
their wealth! That was good, that was heroism. Anyone in the Chechen mafia was a righteous
bandit struggling to liberate his people. It didn’t matter where—in Moscow, St. Petersburg,
Yekaterinburg. Flawless ‘homeland heroes’ of the North Caucasus, one and all! What
a moral sense! What a vision!”

“Flabbergasted again?”

“Stunned. Absolutely. These people…leaping, just like that, beyond our comprehension.
That’s what made them such a potent force, here in our Russia—that’s how they made
waves in the criminal world. And in just a decade! The Chechen mafia enters Moscow,
they set up in…damn, it’s on the tip of my tongue. That port, on the Moscow River.
Yuzhny Port, that’s it. They come in, and in a decade they’ve captured the market
for stolen cars in Yuzhny Port. Just ten short years! Even less!”

“It’s impressive. I give them that.”

“Do you?”

“I do,” says the old man.

“They brought down the old system, after all. The Soviet underworld. Impressive indeed.
Not only to me, but to you—even you, Uncle. The old system was very solid, of course.
It had lasted since the 1930s. Vors running everything from the slammer. There they
were in prison, in camps. Precisely where all the political criminals wind up. The
state used them to keep an eye on anti-Soviet elements, it actually
relied
on the mafia’s organizational capabilities!”

“On the traditional Russian criminal organizations, that is.”

“Precisely! From then on, the Communist Party and the Russian mafia became subtly
and inextricably entwined. And that’s how the Soviet social structure was preserved.
Front and back. Witness the birth of a bureaucratic mafia rife with corruption.
Ha ha ha!
Sturdy as a prison—no exit! Naturally, back then—I was young then, working as a reporter
for
Trud
, the labor union newspaper—I assumed that the Russian mafia would control the underground
economy forever.”

“As did I.”

“You too? Well, then! Another drink!
Na zdorovye
!”

“Cheers.”

“Ah, the rich flavor of aged liquor! Delicious! But…where was I? Don’t tell me, I
know! The emergence of the Chechen mafia. With extraordinary speed—no more than a
decade or so. They were a veritable army with all that equipment. Right from the beginning.
Marching into Moscow with grenades, bazookas. And armed, moreover, with the ferocity
of their loathing for Russia! How do you deal with that? How, that is to say, were
the Vors supposed to deal with that? Shock waves ran through the old mafia world.
Conventional underworld ways, notions of benevolence and justice, meant nothing to
them! The headaches they caused, these fighters! And then…Act II. In Moscow, in St.
Petersburg—Leningrad, just given its old name back—the Vors started hunting down the
Chechen mafia bosses. Just like that, they drove the Chechens from their turf. But
wait! It’s not over!
Not yet!
Because the Chechens have their ways. Their customs.
Krovnaya mest
—blood revenge. Oh, the horror! One by one, the leaders of the Russian mafia began
to be assassinated…sprayed full of holes with machine guns, blown to bits with bombs…and
then, at last—the incident.”

“The incident?”

“Twelve dead, in one fell swoop.”

“Twelve…?”

“Twelve Vors, all prominent figures in the current Russian Federation, had gathered
for a conference. When the Soviet system collapsed, the Federation was split up into
twelve regions. The mafia divvied up its turf. Each of these twelve Vors controlled
a region. They’d gathered to brainstorm strategies for dealing with the Chechens.
Someone attacked the conference, and all twelve Vors were killed.
Ha ha ha!
A remarkably
efficient
massacre! The attacker was a professional, obviously. And of course the Chechens
must have hired him. I wasn’t much of a reporter at the time, just a kid with a pen
and a pad of paper, but I managed to learn, not his name, no—but his nickname. They
called him
the Archbishop
.”

“The…Archbishop?”

“Yes. Somehow just hearing that makes you sober up a bit, doesn’t it? I don’t know
why. I wonder why.
Ha ha ha!
What next? Things get interesting—as soon as he killed the twelve Vors, he immediately
betrayed the Chechens. The two groups were decapitated, and their struggle, this feud
between the Russian and the Chechen mafia, grew messier, more ferocious. All these
little Vors trying to fight their way to the top, all sorts of people like that—and
to make it worse, you’ve got these ethnic groups, Ukrainians and Kazakhs and so on,
now they’re joining the fray too. They’ve turned the western regions of our great
Russia into a bloodbath. It’s gone on this way for years, groups competing for profits
that swell day by day, week after week, month after month. And now, at last, this
year, the struggle between the two main forces has spread, leaping like a spark, to
the Far East.”

“So the
Freedom Daily
reported. Seven months ago.”

“So we reported. It was a tremendous scoop. And what fun we’ve had since! Of course,
it was unfortunate that a hundred blameless civilians had to get mixed up in it all.
That was too bad. But it’s a fact—it is the
truth
—that the Chechen mafia has started moving into the Far East, hoping to further its
business interests in used cars, gasoline, and firearms. They’re serving themselves
nice fat pieces from the Russian mafia’s pie. That, too, is the
truth
. So you see, Uncle, I never wrote any lies! I never asked my reporters to lie! I
don’t publish lies!”

“Just speculation,” the old man said.

“Yes, speculation. We do that.”

“And that created this situation. This world we’re in. Gangsters all over the place,
riding around in heavily armored cars—not that this keeps the gangsters from being
blown sky-high, along with their bodyguards.”

“We’ll keep the speculations coming.
Ha ha ha!
”

“Not long ago
Freedom Daily
reported that they’ve started targeting rigs?”

“The Chechen mafia? Trying to get control of the rigs? Hell yes! Of course! That seems
to have irritated the Russians. Still, it’s not a lie. The information may not have
come from you, Uncle, but even so. On another note…”

“What is it, Nephew?”

“You don’t belong to either side.”

“Let us drink a fourth time.”

“
Na zdorovye
!”

“Delicious.”

“Delicious indeed.”

“It’s best not to probe too deeply, wouldn’t you say? I’m helping you, yes, but only
because you’re valuable to me. Those articles you print stir things up. I would advise
you, for instance, not to call me inappropriate nicknames. That would be dangerous.
You mustn’t ask me what sort of nickname I have in mind. You understand? Take care.
I’m warning you. I’ve bought you. Don’t ever forget that.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“And why not?”

“Because I value my life.”

“And?”

“And?”

“It boosts sales.”

“It certainly does! Good ol’ capitalism!
Ha ha ha!
”

“You have a charming smile.”

“And this is a marvelous restaurant, isn’t it?”

“Nice and loud?”

“Conveniently loud. So conveniently.”

“Sometimes it’s quiet.”

“Quiet? Is it?”

“A rumor for you.”

“Yes?”

“People have seen
yakuza
here.”

“Yakuza? The Japanese mafia?”

“Yes. They’re here to foster international cooperation. The Russian mafia is stronger
at the moment, right? This month they’re pushing back at the Chechens. What do you
make of that? Balance is more important than anything, right? And then—this is simply
a rumor, of course—the yakuza turn up. What happens next? Here’s a prophecy for you.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole Far East turns into an enormous powder keg.”