War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 959 The Tragedy and Peace Created by War
On the second floor of the souvenir shop, Wei Ran was holding the Kancha dagger in his hand. After waiting for a while, a woman in her 50s and [-]s limped in with a cane that looked extraordinarily luxurious. living room.

Unlike the Chechen women I saw along the way, the person walking towards me was not wearing a turban, but was wearing a smart suit and short hair that was close to that of a man.

Of course, even so, Wei Ran recognized at a glance that this woman was the girl Gan Na who hid together in the school's underground air-raid shelter back then!
Someone actually survived.
While muttering to himself, Wei Ran put the short sword he just bought in his hand on the side of the table, smiled and shook hands with the other party lightly.

"I heard that you want to see me?" Gan Na, who has changed her name to Alamat, asked with a smile, and at the same time raised her hand to signal Wei Ran to sit down on the sofa in the living room.

"I really want to meet with you and ask you something about what happened in the past."

Wei Ran took a symbolic sip of the coffee offered by a young girl, but he was not in a hurry to continue talking, just looked around.

Seeing this, Ms. Alamat smiled gently after a moment of silence, stood up again and said, "It seems to be a very important matter, come with me."

"Thank you." Wei Ran thanked him again, and followed the other party into a room covered with a big red wool carpet.

"Click"

Ms. Alamat closed the door, first beckoned Wei Ran to sit on the sofa, then sat limping behind the desk, gently placed the cane on the table, and asked patiently, "Can we talk now?"

"So they're still buried inside?" Wei Ran asked in surprise, "So that's the basement of that house?"

Karp lit a cigarette and explained, "She has been looking for her son all these years. Unfortunately, just yesterday, she passed away from a heart attack."

Seeing this, Wei Ran wisely kept quiet, and drove the car straight into the alley near the house.

There was a trace of remorse in Alamat's dismal smile, "In the summer of 2009, shortly after the Second Chechen War ended, my husband and I returned with our daughter.

"I found an opportunity to hide in the cellar of the school cafeteria with Uncle Malikov, and I hid there until the end of the war."

As for Ganna's father Lamin and Malikov's son Alyosha, they lost their lives on the spot when the ceiling above them collapsed.

“Sadly bad news”

"On this matter, Darya can't stand another blow." While speaking, Anna broke open the apple in her hand and handed half of it to Karp.

Wei Ran paused, and asked extra politely, "Ms. Alamat, is there anything I can do for you?"

After a long time, she asked in a hoarse voice, "Who are you?"

"no offence?"

"This kind of assurance, I heard from those Russian soldiers more than 20 years ago.

"What's wrong?" Karp asked on the other end of the phone.

"

Taking advantage of the fact that everything was not perfect at the time, we asked my husband to use the identity of Alyosha to spend a lot of savings to buy the land where the school's teaching building was located, and then borrowed the money to build the house. Chance, dug the basement there. "

"Historian? Director of Time Library?"

"I have nothing to ask." Wei Ran slightly increased the speed of the car, "It's your turn, what do you want to ask?"

Just as he guessed, there was indeed an escape passage under the iron frame bed on the second floor of the basement of the teaching building.

The brand-new Grozny in front of me is clean and beautiful. The various buildings and street scenes and the surrounding Chechens whose living conditions are significantly higher than those in the Russian "inland" rely on the hundreds of billions of rubles paid by the emperor every year. blood transfusion.

But even so, when the air raid came, among the four pairs of father and son, Ganna and Malikov were the only ones who finally escaped alive.

As each question was asked, the expression on Ms. Alamat's face began to change.

"I really should be more sincere about this matter." Karp paused, "Is there anything you want to know?"

"Mr. Culp"

However, the business, including that yard, was taken by others a long time ago.Now I just want to guard this store and raise those poor children and that's enough. "

"We're leaving immediately." Karp decisively chose to trust Wei Ran.

"Then wait for you to come, and then satisfy my curiosity." After finishing speaking, Wei Ran took the initiative to hang up the phone.

Wei Ran pointed to the detonator on the table not far away, "Tomorrow in the daytime, your people will arrange for a truck to be parked on the road outside, and then his tires will explode. Cover and we can."

"How many can guess"

"As long as the wall is blown open, the inside should be the underground air defense of the year. Maybe it should be called the basement to be more accurate."

"I have nothing to ask"

"It was just a misunderstanding"

"maybe"

"Should I call you Ms. Alamat, or should I call you Ganna?" Wei Ran asked with a smile.

After a little hesitation, Alamat reminded, "Anyway, you have to be careful, there are a lot of explosives inside."

Alamat took out a few tissue papers and tried to dry the surging tears, but this big quiet room was gradually filled with mournful crying.

"Is there anything you want to ask?"

Alamat couldn't help laughing after finishing speaking, "Unless you can ensure the safety of me and my children, I can't help it."

Wei Ran said apologetically, "Regardless of whether you can get an answer or not, the matter in that yard will not involve you in the end. There is only so much I can guarantee. As for your loss, I will find a way to compensate you."

Perhaps this is the peace created by war.
Wei Ran muttered to himself, rubbed his face vigorously to calm himself down, took out his cell phone and dialed Karp again.

"That house has been taken," Alamat reminded again.

Nowadays, this city has no direct connection with those two bloody wars. The most visible place, except for the iconic black beard of the Nahejo people, can be seen everywhere in the streets and alleys. The promotional avatars of the Great Emperor and Xiaoka.

Karp said while fastening his seat belt, "It was accepted by the little girl named Lola. Is there anything else I want to ask?"

Wei Ran dumped the blame on Ji Ma without any pressure, "Ji Ma reminded me about half a month ago, he said that you seem to want me to do something, and then Boss Kajik came to me and wanted to promote me Education, aren’t these clues obvious enough?”

Alamat said helplessly, "I can only choose to protect the business and the children downstairs."

"What's the matter with Mrs. Margot?" Wei Ran asked quite seriously, "She is."

"I'll look for it carefully, then, goodbye, Ms. Alamat."

I don't know how much time passed, Alamat with red eyes opened the door and waved to Wei Ran.

"Come with me"

"Can you come?"

Alamat compared the only two titles on the business card, then looked up at Wei Ran and asked again, "Are you a Chinese?"

"yes"

With Alamat's sighs from time to time, Wei Ran also knew what he experienced in that basement from another perspective.

Alamat sighed noncommittally, "After the war was over, Uncle Malikov and I took the opportunity to leave Grozny and fled to Sochi, where we started a new life. He started the business with the money he and my father had bought and studied together. I went to a bar that wasn’t too big. During that time, I also met my husband, who was also a refugee Nahecho, and we had our daughter in 2004.”

"Snatched?" Wei Ran raised his eyebrows.

In addition, Alamat still clearly remembered that before they escaped from the school, he saw two armored vehicles firing at the wreckage of the helicopter from a long distance away, completely blowing up the helicopter and the remaining building wreckage And a fire started.

"Goodbye"

"In 2008, Uncle Malikov died of lung disease."

"He will be sad if you betray Ji Ma like this," Karp teased with a hint of joyful smile.

Almost at the same time as they got into the car, Wei Ran and Karp asked the same question in unison.

Wei Ran smiled, "He told me that all the unique products he needed back then were bought from firefighters, and a kid named Alyosha delivered them to the door through the underground system of sewers and thermal wells."

"This time your tone is much more sincere than last time." Wei Ran, who is more courageous than others, carefully joked with Karp.

"Spirits are highly profitable in Chechnya"

"You found them?"

"Are you sure?"

"I will have a good talk with him." Wei Ran stood up with a smile, "The ruins of the teaching building"

When the latter entered the room again, she had already wrapped herself in a light gauze to cover her face.

When they returned to the ground at the mouth of a sewer well near the school playground, they saw the collapsed teaching building and two helicopters crashing on the wreckage of the teaching building from a distance.

As soon as he said this, Alamat subconsciously grabbed the cane on the table.

"go by yourself?"

"It's behind the wall on the east side of the second floor of the basement, or you can dig directly down from the lawn in the yard."

"So you're back?" Wei Ran asked softly.

Alamat responded with a little tiredness, watched Wei Ran leave the room, and moved to the French window to watch him leave the store.

"I believe Teacher Karp will help me keep this secret." Wei Ran also responded with a smile.

Alamat sighed, and finally said, "That house was snatched by Besarov, a fruit merchant in the northern suburbs market, about 10 years ago. I don't know who owns it now. . "

"You know?" There didn't seem to be any surprises in Karp's tone.

Speaking of this, Alamat's tone began to tremble uncontrollably, "Just before the end of the war, Uncle Malikov and I saw foreign mercenaries looking for something around the bombed teaching building more than once. Those people even drove several bulldozers and excavators to dig up the bombed-down teaching building in an attempt to find something.”

"An errand runner." Wei Ran said indifferently, "Of course, I don't have any malice."

"Ganna?" Ms. Alamat played with her cane and asked in a dazed manner, "Did you recognize the wrong person?"

Hearing this, Alamat shook his head helplessly, "Who are you? Most people won't find out about these things."

Putting away the business card, Alamat sighed, "I didn't expect that there would be someone else who knew what happened there, and it was a young man."

At the same time, Karp, who was far away on the second floor of the Kazan Hongqi Forest Farm Consultation Center, also exchanged glances with Anna behind him.

"I'm helping some people go home, and I'm helping a mother find her missing son." Wei Ran replied ambiguously, and at the same time took out a business card and handed it over with both hands.

Sighing secretly, Wei Ran didn't say anything, just gently opened the door and walked out. After helping to close the door, he walked to the living room outside and sat down again, waiting patiently for the room The poor woman in the house calmed down.

"Do you want to continue?" Alamat sat back on the seat behind the desk and asked hoarsely.

"If they weren't poached by those foreign mercenaries back then, they must still be inside."

Wei Ran smiled and said solemnly, "So I need you to tell me the location of the real school building ruins and the real owner of that house now, I want to talk to him."

"maybe"

"found it"

When he led them back to the second floor of the basement along the narrow culvert, the wall on the east side had been cut by a concrete saw to open a two-meter-square opening, exposing another concrete wall inside.

"We dug up the bodies of Alyosha and my father, and buried them and Uncle Malikov's and my husband's bodies outside the city. But the other bodies, I didn't It was not dug out, there were too many explosives in there."

"Civil Defense Maintenance Records of the Grozny Fire Station, and Soviet Civil Air Defense Construction Records."

Alamat shook his head noncommittally, picked up his cane again, limped to the French window, looked at the bustling commercial street outside and asked, "How did you find it?"

When Alamat said this, his bean-sized eyes were streaming down uncontrollably, "But there are a lot of explosives in those ruins. My husband was killed by those explosives, and my leg was also killed by those explosives. Injured."

"now that."

"Give me five minutes," Culp responded, looking out the car window at the night-shrouded street.

While speaking, Wei Ran took out two pairs of gloves and two bright flashlights and distributed them to Karp. After taking him out of the car, he pulled out an iron hook from the trunk and opened the manhole cover at the rear of the car.

"I'll have a professional clean it up"

"That's because the construction of the air defense system there was substandard, and the person in charge embezzled a large part of the construction costs."

Alamat swung his cane, "What else do you know?"

"Of course it can be guaranteed," Wei Ran said subconsciously.

Almost at the same time he stopped and turned off the engine, two police vans belonging to Omo also stopped at both ends of the alley, completely blocking all sight.

At this time, a circle of holes had been opened on the wall, and Wei Ran had stuffed a small amount of plastic explosives into these holes, ready to explode at any time.

"Thank you"

"Sorry, please continue," Wei Ran said hard-heartedly.

Wei Ran, who had been prepared for a long time, sat on the sofa and replied with a normal expression, "Grozny's underground system is very complicated, but after comparing it, I found that in the center of the battlefield, only the school's underground air defense system was not included in the maintenance of the fire station. The scope of management, but how could a school not build an underground air defense system?"

"Can you really ask anything?" Wei Ran asked tentatively.

"Ms. Alamat." Wei Ran stood up very formally, "We want to dig out the people who are still buried there."

"Thank you"

After a short pause, the woman started to recall abruptly, "It was Christmas in 1995, the Orthodox Christmas. My brother Alyosha, my father and Alyosha's father and I were in the With the help of a group of Russian soldiers, he escaped from the hiding place.

Alamat sighed, "If there are still corpses in there, just bury them properly, that's my only request."

Wei Ran paused for a moment, and simply clarified the matter thoroughly, "If your time is convenient, please come here. Take Teacher Dalia with you."

During the few days when Wei Ran was waiting to pick up Mr. Karp's plane, those Omo hooligans who had worked with him for a short time also successfully destroyed an illegal sales force with the information provided by Wei Ran. Liquor gang, and secretly sent some people to protect around the souvenir shop in Alamat.Even that house was cordoned off, and there were even two police loaves parked in the yard.

Alamat took a few deep breaths, "I just built a double-storey basement next to it, similar to what I remembered, and while adopting those orphans who lost their parents in the war, I used that basement to secretly do some alcohol business make money.

We all thought it was a precious opportunity to start a new life again, but we didn't expect that it was just a full stop ahead of time."

"At least [-]% sure."

He didn't finish his sentence here, but Karp, who had already walked to the edge of the table, directly pressed the detonator!
"Tom!"

"I found an addict who survived two wars"

Karp finished half of the apple in his hand in two or three bites, and walked out of this room that was also shrouded in sunlight.

Karp took a bite of the apple, chewed it, swallowed the pulp and juice into his stomach, and said vaguely, "You stay with her."

Or to put it this way, those firefighters who were studying in those days deliberately placed the iron canopy bed directly above the escape route.

When Grozny above the surface was making a fuss because of the arrest of a gang selling illegal spirits, Wei Ran also received Karp who flew in alone that night.

"Someone will contact you later," Karp said bluntly.

Wei Ran opened his mouth, finally got up silently, picked up the tissue box on the desk, and handed it to Alamat who was standing by the French window and was crying.

"Other buried corpses?" Wei Ran asked subconsciously.

While walking out of the commercial street, Wei Ran squinted his eyes, looked up at the dazzling sunlight and the blue sky, and felt that his originally cold heart was gradually warming up.

Wei Ran Tanshou joked, "Except for wondering when Mrs. Margot will bring me fifty thousand euros in cash and a teacup full of diamonds."

"What else do you want to ask?" Karp looked at Wei Ran and asked.

"Those things were delivered to your house before I left"

After Karp finished speaking, he fell into complete silence. He didn't seem to be curious about how Wei Ran found it there, let alone how much Wei Ran found out.

"I am enough"

"It's still the same yard, I plan to dig there." Wei Ran paused, "But there should be a lot of explosives underground."

Wei Ran spread his hands indifferently, and said almost straight to the point, "I'm not here to spy on and expose your secrets, I just want to know what happened in the underground air defense system of the middle school during the first Chechen war?
Want to know if the people who hid there survived? And where are those who didn't survive buried? "

Alamat glanced at the scenery outside the window, and after pondering for a moment, he asked, almost as if identifying himself, "Which yard was created by you?"

Wei Ran twitched the corners of his mouth. Obviously, if Mrs. Margot hadn't needed to find her son Asol as a cover, that woman would have died long ago.

"right"

After a not-so-big explosion, the directional blast arranged by Wei Ran successfully blasted the concrete wall less than half a meter thick.

"She is really the mother of the mercenary Athor"

Alamat wiped the corners of his eyes with the back of his finger and said, "Before he died, he said that he regretted not being able to bring my father and his Alyosha out. He hoped that after the war in Chechnya was completely over, I could take him out." Reburied with them."

"Let your Omo friend talk?"

“Nothing to ask”

"Yes." Wei Ran nodded calmly.

"What did you just say?" Karp said while throwing the detonator that finished the work ahead of time on the table.

"nothing"

Wei Ran patted his forehead helplessly, and followed Karp to the edge of the blasted wall.

Through the remaining steel bars, when the beam of the flashlight shone through, they could clearly see the remains of the original second-floor ceiling of the basement after the collapse, as well as the small triangular space that remained next to the wall.

(End of this chapter)