They were staying with a wealthy Chechen businessman named Alimur and his Russian wife, Rosa. Alimur had many connections with the Chechen rebel leadership and knew the commander of the first camp in which Oleg had been held. He persuaded that commander to write a letter asking his colleagues to release Oleg. He gave that letter to an emissary named Ruslan and sent him into the Chechen hills with a command: do not return until you have solid information.
For three days Lydia and Mikhail waited; then Ruslan returned. The following morning my driver, David, muttered cryptically that he had “‘heard that the news was not good.’’ After dissembling, he eventually said Rosa had told him that Ruslan had concrete information: Oleg had not survived a recent Russian bombing campaign while being held by the Chechens. No ambiguity? I asked. According to Rosa, said David, none. We returned to the house around noon. Ruslan still had not shown. To sit and chat with Mikhail and Lydia at that point was excruciating.
Ruslan never did show up, and neither Rosa nor Alimur could summon the courage to tell the parents. It was, as best I could tell, the human instinct for conflict avoidance at its worst. We didn’t tell them either, both because I didn’t have the heart to do so and because I felt it was not our place. This was between the two couples; for us to interfere would have been wrong.
The next day I left to accompany a group of mothers to the city of Rostov, where they were going to identify bodies at a morgue. The day after I left, so did Lydia and Mikhail–still unaware of what had happened. It was to be weeks before they would learn that their handsome son was dead.
