Chapter Thirty-Eight
Do you know what it’s like crossing the border between two states? Not borders like those between European countries, when you drive along in a car and suddenly find yourself in a different country, but the Tajik-Afghan border, which is guarded by Russian border guards. Where they shoot without warning, and not into the air, but to bring you down.
I have been told of so many ways to cross, from bribing the border guards, especially those of Tajik nationality – the method that the “commanders” mostly used when they didn’t cross by air in a state helicopter – to an armed skirmish, when a group of marksmen draws the border guards’ fire and the spies take advantage of the shooting to crawl or swim across while the darkness is split by the bright tracerywork of flying bul
