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market. The local Chechen tribe, who were Muslim, were great traders. The Russian area contained all the modern stores, because the Russians living in Grozny had never become comfortable with the lengthy bickering required to make a purchase in the Muslim market.
    Here in the lowland capital, Russian soldiers massed at street corners and held the city to a grim semblance of order. Armored personnel carriers, their flat metal roofs sprouting machine-gun turrets, guarded major intersections. The key thoroughfares leading to and from the central city were defended round the clock by tanks, always in pairs, always with soldiers camped on neighboring verges.
    With this show of force, and with more soldiers pouring into the city every day, peace reigned in the lowlands with the deceptive calm of a caged tiger. But at night, startling flashes of orange and yellow and red lit the outlying hills, and man-made thunder rolled down from cloudless, star-flecked skies.
    â€œHold it a second,” Robards said. He halted before a rickety street stall. The trader, a bearded hill tribesman, wore the traditional black knit cap with a little top button. The tribesman did not need girth to look imposing. A knife scar slashed down from a mutilated ear to his dark and scraggly beard. An empty bandolier crossed over his shoulder and fell to his waist, hanging with ease on the man who was obviously accustomed to its presence.
    Robards asked, “You speak the lingo?”
    â€œSome,” Wade admitted. “Russian mostly. I only know a few words of the hill dialects.”
    Robards eyed him anew. “How long did you say you’ve been here?”
    â€œA little over a year.”
    â€œYou study Russian before you came?”
    Wade shook his head. “I’ve been taking lessons here, though. Every day.”
    The big man nodded his approval. Once. “Well, ask the fellow here if he understands the tongue of his oppressors—or whatever’s the right way to go about it.”
    â€œHe probably speaks it fairly well. Most city traders do.”
    â€œGood stuff. Okay, then ask what his tribe is.”
    â€œChechen,” Wade answered instantly.
    Robards looked down on him. “You gonna let me talk to the man or not?”
    â€œI can tell the tribe from his clothing,” Wade explained. “If you ask questions that you should already know the answer to, he’ll assume you won’t know the proper price of anything and charge you more. He will anyway, since we’re foreigners, but this would raise them even higher.”
    â€œYou know something?” Robards said. “I’m beginning to think that parson of yours is a purebred fool. How do you know all these things?”
    Wade covered his embarrassed confusion with a glance at the stall’s wares. The splintered boards were covered with a vast array of tools. “I listen.”
    â€œThen maybe you can tell me whether the Chechen is one of the tribes at war.”
    â€œYes. With the Ossetians and the Ingush. That’s why the Russian soldiers are here. The Chechen control a lot of the Caucasus highland south of here, and they are battling with the Ingush, the other hill tribe of that region. Then both the Chechen and the Ingush are fighting with the Ossetians, who are the only Christian tribe in the north Caucasus.”
    Wade motioned toward the southern mountains rising through the afternoon dust. “Some of the Muslim tribesmen are fighting with the Abkhazi farther to the southwest. A couple of the bigger Chechen warlords have decided to join with the Abkhazian and Svaneti to fight for independence from Georgia.”
    â€œThe Chechen are Muslim, right?”
    â€œSunni,” Wade agreed. “And one of the most militant tribes.”
    Robards turned his attention to the stallkeeper. The bearded man had followed the incomprehensible conversation with glittering black eyes. He was accustomed to long and bickering