I met the photographer on the platform at Belorusskaya, a metro station decorated with black floor tiles, plaster sheaves of wheat and rare pink marble from Birobidzhan, capital of the Jewish Autonomous Region Stalin established in Russia’s far east. Dmitri was a big guy with a beard and a long ponytail, who had covered the wars in Tadjikistan and Chechnya. We took the escalator to the surface and then I guided him through the tunnels beneath Leningradsky Prospekt to Digger HQ. I had never met a war photographer before and was keen to hear some stories. Unfortunately he insisted on talking to me in impenetrable English, and he told me some wild story about commandeering a Russian army helicopter so he could take a shit in a nice toilet on an airbase. ‘I was tired of shitting in forests,’ he said. Or at least that’s what I think he said, but I could be wrong. The story, I will admit, makes no sense whatsoever.
Vadim opened the door.
‘Vadim Mikhailov, hero of Nord Ost,’ he said, extending his hand to Dmitri.
‘Dmitri. I was there too.’
Vadim continued. ‘I mean Nord Ost, man, I went there and helped and nobody thanked me or anything, damn Luzhkov –’
‘I know. I was there too.’
Vadim halted, startled. ‘Doing what?’
‘I was the only photographer to enter the building when the Special Forces raided it.’
Vadim stood there, just nodding. After all, Dmitri’s claim was no less bold than his, his claim to bravery even greater.
‘Well, I wasn’t the only photographer. My best friend got in too. But I got out. He didn’t.’
Vadim warmed to Dmitri immediately. He invited him in, and showed him a piece of tank that was sitting in the hall, praising its many fine qualities. Dmitri nodded. Then Vadim turned to me.
‘We’ll have to wait until it gets fully dark. As dark as possible.’
It was four o’clock.
Vadim excused himself. Some guy was sitting in the kitchen, hunched over a radio, listening to a crackling signal. Digger business, no doubt.
‘I’ve got stuff to do. Just hang out on the landing for a while.’
We hung out.
‘This is typical,’ I said to Dmitri, half-apologising. ‘Vadim’s not easy to work with. He’s a little strange.’
Dmitri laughed. He was mixing Russian words in with his English now and was a lot easier to understand. ‘Strange? Maybe crazy!’ But then his face grew thoughtful. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘he isn’t crazy at all. You know, I have many friends in my country’s security services. Now, few people know this, but in the waters around the Kremlin, there is a crack squad of frogmen. Do you know what a frogman is?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘These are underwater security guards, keeping an eye on the River Moskva and all the underground passages beneath the Kremlin. I heard that one day Vadim went too far on one of his expeditions and he ran into them. You understand that these are very serious men; you do not mess around with them. Our Digger was very frightened. He never even went near that place again. So you see, he knows his limits, and he never goes beyond them. A truly crazy man, on the other hand cannot make these judgements.’
Yes, I thought. As much as Vadim raged against Mayor Luzhkov, and as much as most people considered him utterly cracked, still he knew his limits. Dmitri was onto something here. I’d need to think about it. But suddenly Dmitri changed the subject:
‘Did you hear about the suicide bombing at Rizhskaya Ploschad two days ago?’
I had. One woman’s head had been blown clean off her body; the other had been ripped in half at the gut. I can’t remember now, but I think she might have gone on living for a while after her bomb exploded – in excruciating agony, of course.
‘I live there. I was the first photographer on the scene. Before that I’d been in London for two years. It was my first day back in Moscow.’
He raised his eyebrows, as if to say pretty convenient.
Dmitri’s stories were very interesting. But after three hours we were still hanging out on the landing and I was growing more and more frustrated. It was then that I remembered: the first time I had spoken to Vadim he had suggested going underground at around two in the morning, to make sure we weren’t seen.
Shit.
I hadn’t eaten. My feet were sore. I was very bored. Vadim’s mum arrived, climbing up the stairs, huffing and puffing. She said hello, then bustled into the kitchen, where she removed a jar of pills from her bag, swallowed one, then filled a cup of water and passed another to Vadim, who necked it. Suddenly Dmitri was right in there, photographing the curious mother/son relationship. He got a good picture of Vadim’s mum placing a loving hand on her son’s cheek as she encouraged him to take his medicine. Miraculously, neither of them seemed to notice that this six-foot-plus bearded giant was zipping around them, snapping the intimate scene. It was a remarkable talent of his, this ability to somehow vanish, as he stood right in front of you sticking a camera lens up your nose. And indeed, Vadim’s mum ignored him and turned to me.
‘Have you been out yet?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re still waiting.’
‘Vadim!’
‘We can’t go yet, Mum,’ he replied. ‘We have to wait until after dark.’
She took her coat off and set about making a cup of tea. Dmitri and I went back out onto the landing.
‘That was perfect,’ he said. ‘I got some really good shots. And did you see what she gave him?’
‘No,’ I replied.
‘Those were nerve pills. To calm you down. I know. My mum takes them.’
There was a gleam in Dmitri’s eye. He wasn’t bothered by the delay. On the contrary, he was clearly getting into the chaos, and was happily surfing the sluggish waves of absurdity and boredom. The photographic agency had chosen well. He was definitely the man for this job.
At last Vadim opened a closet in the hall and started pulling out olive green suits. ‘These are anti-radiation suits’ he said, ‘so you won’t be affected by any of the deadly toxins below the city.’
He had been given them years earlier, for free, when the authorities were more kindly disposed towards him. Now they were old and dirty. He would need new suits soon. Even so, we were lucky: these were officers’ anti-radiation suits, which had both a top part and a bottom part. Ordinary soldiers didn’t get the trousers, just a big green poncho. Their legs went unprotected.
Vadim sorted through the suits, filling them up with air and pressing down on them. If they didn’t deflate with a hiss, it meant the trousers were without leaks.
He found three pairs. It didn’t mean we were ready, though. It just meant we got to wait on the landing some more, next to our anti-radiation suits and boots.
We had been there four and a half hours when Vadim finally emerged from the flat.
‘OK,’ he said, turning to me. ‘I’m ready. Do you have a car?’
I looked at him. ‘No.’
‘Hm. That’s a problem. My jeep doesn’t work any more. And we can hardly go on the metro with all this equipment… We need a car.’
‘I don’t have a car.’
‘Hm. That’s a problem. It’s a long walk to Tverskoi Bulvar. Over an hour…’
‘We could get a taxi,’ said Dmitri.
It was now night, and thousands of cars were hurtling past. But there was real beauty out there: Leningradsky Prospekt was dazzling, a rushing river of light and sound, as the black tarmac at our feet reflected headlights and neon in the icy rain, the miserable stars in the sky so dim in comparison to this man-made wonder…
Vadim strode right into the middle of the highway as if he was the Emperor of Moscow, and it was the business of the cars to avoid him. Then he extended his arm, ready to flag down any car willing to take us for a fee we would negotiate when it stopped.*
But no luck: car after car zoomed past, without slowing down to inspect the possible fare. Why? Well, maybe because Vadim was already in his helmet and radiation suit and had an enormous steel crowbar in his hands. So we just stood there in the rain for a few minutes, as Mercedes and Ladas alike ignored us, until Dmitri took over. He managed to get an Audi to stop, but as soon as the driver saw Vadim, he shook his head, slammed the door shut and got the fuck away as fast as his wheels could propel him.
This happened again and again. Then, after about ten minutes had passed, Dmitri had a cunning plan. He walked to another part of the road where it split off, and where no one could see Vadim. Et voilá! The next car agreed to take us. Vadim rushed forward from the darkness and was already half-inside before the driver realised what was going on.
‘Hey! What’s this? That guy is clean, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Dmitri assured him.
‘What’s that weird suit he wearing?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Dmitri. ‘It’s safe.’
‘Why’s he got that crowbar?’
‘Don’t worry. He’s not a robber.’
The driver wasn’t happy, but it was too late: we were all in the car now, Dmitri in the front, Vadim and me in the back. As we drove, Vadim grew more and more excited. He started talking about guns, comparing Russian automatics to American ones, discussing their different capacities, how many bullets a minute they could fire etc., etc.
‘Who the fuck are you guys?’ asked the driver.
‘I am the Lord of the Diggers,’ said Vadim. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
The driver dropped us off at an intersection of two roads near the Old Circus, at the start of a stretch of the boulevard that followed the route of the old city walls. This particular stretch resembled the scene of a particularly awful terrorist atrocity: the earth had been ripped open, and massive pipes and lengths of cable lay around us in the dirt. Of course, it was just that this was a very prestigious neighbourhood and the city was working on making the infrastructure better for the nice rich people who lived nearby.
But there was no time to take in the beauty of it all: Vadim was moving fast, and we had to follow. He led us to a bench, between blue builders’ Portakabins, beyond which lay heaps of mud, filth, and bricks. Vadim dumped his bag on the bench.
‘Get into your anti-radiation suits! I’m going down to reconnoitre the area!’
Vadim ran onto the road, and as car after car after car hurtled past, barely missing him, he heaved off the cover of a manhole with his crowbar.
Meanwhile, Dmitri and I clambered into our suits. There was a technique involved and it took me a few minutes. Finally the top part was over my head, and I looked up and saw a man watching us from the other side of the road. Something told me he had been watching the whole time, from the moment of our arrival. He had watched as Vadim went underground, and then turned his gaze upon us, just watching, not speaking, not trying to hail us, or to find out what we were doing. He made me nervous. I was doing something illegal, after all. It was better to get down now, before the police arrived. But Vadim was taking a long, long time.
‘What did he say he was looking for?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Dmitri. ‘Monsters, I think.’