[b]Gyumri, Armenia[/b]

	“So what happened to this guy? He looks pretty fucked up.”

	Four policemen crowded over the body of a dead teenager. His white shirt was riddled with three bullet holes and stained with blood. A pained, shocked expression and wide open eyes had frozen on his face. The rest of his body was splayed out, spread-eagled, on the sidewalk. A pool of blood, now dry, had formed beneath the corpse. It was obvious that he had been shot just an hour or two ago. Behind him, the brick wall bore several more bullet holes. In the streets, a junior policeman had picked up a dozen shells and dropped them on top of a hood of his car. One of the other officers had just finished calling an ambulance to pick the body up, and was now smoking a cigarette while leaning against the vehicle. One hand rested on the service revolver in his leather holster attached to his duty belt as he eyed a curious passersby on the other side of the street. The rest of the police were busy checking the dead body.

	“He looks Russian, that’s for sure,” an older officer said as he gently tilted the head and gestured to the back of it. “See? Russians have that flat part on the back of their heads.”

	“Yep, it’s from when they got dropped on their heads of children. Probably explains why most of them are fucking retards,” chimed in the policeman smoking next to the patrol car. The man took a deep drag from the cigarette, exhaled through his nose, and flicked the butt into a nearby gutter. Adjusting his belt, he came back over to the body.

	“Actually, I want a cigarette as well,” admitted the third cop. He bent down and patted the body with the back of his hand, careful not to get his palm bloodied. “Does this guy have any on him?”

	“Go ahead, and I might want to get one off of you as well,” his friend replied.

	The third officer rolled the body over and found his prize: a slightly crushed pack of cheap cigarettes in the teenager’s back pocket. He extracted them and began distributing them out to the patrolmen. “Hey kid!” he said to the junior officer, duly counting the shells on the hood on the patrol car. “Want a cigarette?”

	With a chuckle, he added: “Are you even old enough to smoke?”

	The junior officer froze, unsure of what the right answer is. After hesitating a moment, he stuttered: “Should we be taking those? I mean, it’s evidence, right? What happens if they figure out we’re tampering with the investigation?”

	The older officer, who had previously remained silent during the exchange, laughed without looking up from his notepad. “Nobody is going to care about a pack of smokes. Don’t worry about it, I know that training teaches you this stuff. Half of that doesn’t fly in the real world.”

	The junior officer, cowed into submission by his superiors, reluctantly accepted a cigarette. He fumbled with an offered lighter, taking several tries to get the cigarette burning. Obviously suppressing a cough, he went back to work sorting the spent shells into a cardboard box marked for evidence. “There are an awful lot of rounds that were fired,” he remarked, looking at them. “Someone didn’t like him.”

	“Well this is a Russian kid, probably no older than twenty,” the older officer said, finishing up his notes. “Remember that robbery last week? A group of kids speaking Russian broke into a drugstore and stole a bunch of junk. They didn’t hurt the owner but they for sure vandalized his livelihood. Davit, you responded to that one, right?”

	Davit, the chainsmoker, nodded and adjusted his rather loose duty belt again. “Bunch of kids threw some rocks at the windows and knocked everything down. Stole a couple hundred [i]dram[/i] and some painkillers or something. The damages report wasn’t pretty, but we arrested at least one of the kids.”

	“I’ve seen some shit like this before. If I were a betting man, I’d say it’s a retaliation for the attack,” the oldest officer sagely concluded. “It’s also most definitely racially motivated. Russian kids knocking down an Armenian store? What with this atmosphere, I guarantee you it was someone from that community. I can call up some people once we get back to the station, including our dear shopkeeper friend.”

	Davit threw his cigarette into the same gutter, just as his friend cracked a joke: “Maybe it was Davit, since he’s a big fan of Russians.”

	Although Davit appeared mildly frustrated by the comment, his posture never shifted. Eventually, the older officer called for them to settle down and finish collecting the evidence. A camera was brought out to take pictures for later, since most day-to-day crime was handled by the patrolmen instead of rarer specialized detectives. One picture of the body, one of the street, and one of the wall were snapped. Davit and the junior officer soon left to get the photos developed and drop the evidence off at the station, while the oldest patrolman stayed behind with his partner to wait for the ambulance. A corpse didn’t warrant too much expediency on the part of the medical services in Gyumri. It took another hour for the ambulance to arrive, driving up to the curb lazily with no lights or sirens. Both of the officers helped the ambulance driver with the body, finally closing the doors on the back of the van and watching it drive off to the morgue. The night had gotten darker, and the crime scene was now lit by the orange flow of a streetlamp. It would be another hour before the city services arrived to hose down the blood.

	The pair returned to the station, wordlessly driving through the emptied streets with only sighs to break the silence. The patrol car turned the corner onto the station’s street, before the older officer suggested a stop: “Alex, do you want coffee? We can stop by and get a cup at the coffeehouse before we file the report.”

	His partner nodded, and the car drove past the station. Nearby was an all-day coffeehouse popular with the Gyumri police. Alex and the older officer, whose name was Tigran, pulled up by the curb and walked in to a small table in the corner. Two simple, black coffees were ordered alongside pastries. They chatted for a little bit about their families and what they were going to do once they got home. Tigran lived only with his wife in a modest apartment, his four children had since gone to university. Alex wanted to marry his girlfriend, and had plans to propose the next month. Unfortunately, he was worried how the long work hours would affect them and was hesitating until he could transfer to a department with a more regular schedule. He was thinking about taking a stint doing clerical work for the force, instead of patrolling. Armenian police forces operated on a points-system for personnel: he had racked up enough points for performance and time-in-service to transfer, but not yet enough to promote. Tigran advised that he talk to his girlfriend, and figure out what they were both good with.

	“A lot of this stress in your personal life isn’t really worth it,” Tigran added as he finished the coffee. He slid a few [i]dram[/i] under the cup for the waiter. “Me and my wife have gotten along fine.”

	Tigran and Alex returned to the station a few minutes later. Tigran, as the senior patrolman on shift that evening, opened the door to his office and hung his hat and jacket on the coatrack. Armenian police uniforms were dark blue, with light blue shirts bearing token insignia for department and rank. An orange band encircled his service cap, matching the identically-colored stripe down his pants. With his jacket put away, he signed and untucked his shirt before sitting down on a well-worn wooden chair. At his desk, a typewriter sat and several copied forms were prepared for him. Under his desk, in a drawer marked “forms”, was a bottle of vodka and a shot glass. The rest of the office was bare, with only a window behind him and no other decoration. Not even a rug adorned the floor, and it was lit by a sole lightbulb. Like most of the Gyumri police office, it was strictly utilitarian. Tigran often thought about buying a carpet or some paintings, something just to liven up the place. His sister wove carpets in Hrazdan, maybe he could ask about one next time they met. It would be an excellent gift, after all.

	The problem about the murder was not the crime itself, but the implications. Tigran had seen plenty of murders, but racial ones had been rare. He was born just after the Great War, and had only heard stories of the time where Armenians killed Turks just for being Turkish and vice versa. The last few years had been troubling to him: thousands of migrants, fleeing the collapsing Russian Empire, had swarmed across the then-loosely-guarded border. Many settled in Gyumri, establishing huge ghettoes. Most worked blue-collar jobs in the factories or as part of the Armenian construction boom, and these jobs were notorious for low pay and highly dangerous conditions. Tigran felt bad for the Russians, who were forced to become more and more insular as Armenians denied them services. A then-popular law was passed in the late 1950s that made it legal for landlords to offer different prices based on different people. The public explanation was that this was supposed to enable more leeway in terms of poorer people haggling for a better price. In practice, most landlords raised rent prices on Russians. Curiously enough, Tigran had noticed less ethnic Armenian homeless in Gyumri as well: perhaps the law was working, but just only for the natives.

	The implications on this murder were clear. Tit for tat attacks were going to continue unless the Gyumri police made it clear that the killer was going to be arrested. There was a simmering attitude in the department to “let it go” and sweep such a comparatively minor crime under the rug, but Tigran knew better. Even though he personally didn’t care for the Russian teen, a burglar who had destroyed a fellow Armenian citizen’s drugstore, he knew that things could get worse. The last thing he wanted in Gyumri was a race riot. Another thing that concerned the senior patrolman was the apparent usage of automatic weapons. There were simply too many shells for it to have been a hunting rifle or civilian weapon. Davit, a member of the military reserves in addition to the police force, had left a note on Tigran’s desk with an analysis of the shells: they were 9mm military casings used in a standard-issue handgun or submachinegun. Someone was running around with a submachinegun, shooting down Russians. The potential for this to become disastrous was obvious: most police were armed with chunky six-shooter, break-action revolvers. Shotguns and semi-automatic rifles were kept in the armory, but only for extreme situations.

	He figured that there must be something else going on. Tigran finished the incident report, stowed his bottle of vodka after a final swig, and reached for his telephone. A folder with a list of numbers laid next to it, and he fingered through the sheets until he found one of the more-frequently-used ones: the Military Police at the Gyumri base. Usually, they would call when they found a drunk soldier belligerent in the streets, and Tigran knew most of the duty personnel well by now. He rang the number, and waited for someone to pick up. A familiar voice came over the speaker: “Army Military Police, Gyumri. This is Sergeant Kavalian, how may I help you?”

	“Ivan, how are you?” Tigran asked cordially. Sergeant Ivan Kavalian was a frequent duty NCO, after his last divorce left him with not much else to do. He was a good man, willing to take one for the team so his other friends could go home to their much more faithful wives.

	“I’m pretty alright,” Sergeant Kavalian answered. “I just bought a new book, actually. Pretty interesting. I’ve been reading it tonight.”

	“Excellent, excellent. Maybe you can tell me about it later. Right now, I have a question for you. Are you aware of any missing weapons?”

	“Missing weapons?” exclaimed Sergeant Kavalian.

	“Well, we’ve got a murder and my reservist told me he thinks it was committed with a submachinegun.”

	“Well, truth be told, last month a truck went missing transporting some equipment to a field training exercise,” Sergeant Kavalian said after a slight pause. “It was reported up to us and we went looking, but couldn’t find anything. The two truck drivers went AWOL as well, probably drove off with the truck. We have warrants out for them but we have been scouring the nearby area for a while now.”

	“Why didn’t we hear about this, Ivan?” Tigran said, a hint of frustration in his usually-calm voice. “These weapons are starting to turn up in Gyumri. This was a revenge killing near a Russian ghetto, this is not good for our security situation.”

	“This was being handled as an internal issue. AWOL soldiers are our area of responsibility,” Sergeant Kavalian replied matter-of-factly.

	“This is no longer an internal issue. I want everything you have on this case, since I know more is going to come out of it.”

	“Can I send a runner to your office tomorrow with the files? The night shift is bare-bones, like usual.”

	“That’s fine, but we’re going to start looking for this guy. I’ll expect your runner tomorrow. Goodnight, Sergeant.”

	Tigran hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. A quick thought about another shot of vodka was silenced by the rational need to drive home and not crash his car. The senior patrolman sighed deeply, then ran a hand through his greying hair. Without another word, he stood up from his creaking chair and tucked his shirt into his pants. The light was clicked off with a yank on its chain, right as Tigran thought again about putting a painting up. As he left the office, he said goodnight to another officer working on some last-minute paperwork. Tigran’s week was not close to being finished.

[b]Armenian-Georgian Border[/b]

	Military funerals at remote outposts were not the festivities of heroes. Caskets had been fabricated from wood in a storeroom, crosses and names painted atop them in simple white paint. They were buried in a line in an area atop a small hill near the border station. A chest-high chickenwire fence surrounded the makeshift cemetery, already populated with two other soldiers who died in a vehicle crash six months ago. Until real gravestones could be carved and sent in with the next supply shipment, a soldier’s grave would have to do: their rifle, stuck into the ground with a bayonet, with two boots at the base of it. A helmet sat on the buttstock, while each soldier’s dog tags hung from the triggerwell. In white paint on the front of the helmet was their last name. In front of the graves stood the base platoon commander, flanked by his senior NCO. Those who were available came out for the funeral. It was the largest one to be conducted at the small post. A bugler stood at attention nearby.

	Upon receipt of the order, the personnel stood still as the bugler played the national anthem. The sole musician, a regular soldier who happened to be able to bugle, reminded Corporal Yaglian of himself. Yaglian was a pianist, playing regularly in his barracks with a piano he had bought from a widow in the nearby town. He carted it back on the back of his jeep alongside cigarettes and alcohol, earning a talking-to from his platoon commander. Ultimately, a case of beer kept Yaglian in good standing with his superior. He hadn’t been called out for any funerals or ceremonies, but his music was usually well appreciated in the desolate outpost. The bugler played his lonely, mournful tone until it finished, and he dropped his instrument to his side. The platoon commander looked to his left, nodded at the sergeant who commanded the twenty-one-gun salute, and pulled a list from his pocket. He read the first name:

	“Sergeant George Hazerian.”

	The seven riflemen fired their shots, three apiece. Yaglian flinched each time, while the senior personnel stood stoically still. The platoon commander read the next names: Corporal David Petrosian. Private First Class Ivan Sarkisian. Private Igor Rahmonov. Private Leon Abadjian. Each time, the riflemen fired their three shots. They were aimed over the border, perhaps intentionally by the platoon commander.

	The next team, a team just like Yaglian’s, was read out. Corporal Abraham Hovanesian. Private Petyr Jamgochian. Private Ilya Kargarian. Private Ilholm Bagruntian. The final shots were fired and the riflemen stood back at attention. The platoon commander wrapped up his final remarks, short and simply, before dismissing the attendees. The soldiers bowed their heads again before turning back to the patrol base. It was getting late, and the next shift was due to return soon. Once the vehicles were gassed up and given a quick check, it was time to go out again. Yaglian’s section was staying at this patrol base for another few days until they could make the long trip back to their home installation. They had been offered food, beds, and time to rest while their own vehicles were repaired. One sustained damage from the sniper attack and needed to be patched up. The other had nearly ruined its suspension driving quickly over the barely-defined mountain paths. Yaglian’s platoon commander had already been notified on the event, and was expecting them back in the next few days.

	There was talk of retaliation amongst the troops. Since the attack, the platoon commander had spent a lot of time in his office on the phone: the troops were beginning to speculate that he was discussing plans with the company commander located a few kilometers to the rear. Perhaps he was requesting assets for use: an airbase nearby staffed with attack planes was well-known by Georgian militias by now. Whatever the situation was, the soldiers were on edge. Every patrol was nervously watched by the others, as they drove their patrol shifts across the border. Only two more attacks had happened in the days since, both of them minor sniper incidents that ended with superior firepower driving the militias back into the mountains. Nothing compared to the death of an entire patrol, at least not yet.

	For now, the soldiers didn’t know much more than that. Yaglian ate in the mess tent and heard only snippets of new developments. He talked little to the other platoon besides this, and often just read a borrowed book while he slept on the floor under a field blanket, using his rucksack as a pillow. The days were long and filled with nothing besides waiting. Most of the section just napped the time away, eager to get some sort of rest if they weren’t patrolling for hours every day. After three days, Yaglian’s vehicle was repaired and his section was to return to their home station with the next outgoing patrol. They met with the vehicle, inspecting the green-painted scrap metal used to patch the bullet holes. After they deemed the job good enough, they grabbed their rifles and gear and piled into the sturdy jeeps. Saying goodbye to their comrades, they left the next morning at six, departing across the bumpy roads. The sun peaked up from behind the notoriously tough Caucasian mountains as the four-car convoy drove through dirt roads. The rough terrain continued to be an enemy: one of the vehicles popped a tire and required a change.

	Yaglian’s section was reunited with a patrol from their home station: Second Section, led by Corporal Melkonian, was there to take them home. Corporal Melkonian was a conscript that filled in for his wounded section leader after a jeep crash left him with a broken neck. The stereotypical uncaring draftee, Melkonian refused to cut his hair or shave and often wore a large chain outside of a uniform that was buttoned too low for regulation. This was not the man Yaglian necessarily trusted to take him back to the home patrol base, but it was the man he had. And evidently, Corporal Melkonian was a fierce fighter. It’s probably the only reason he was allowed to do what he did. His section, also mostly comprised of conscripts, was just as motley. They did the job, however, and that was what counted those days. There was simply too much to do to care about disciplining men who didn’t shave. Yaglian’s section leader had a few words with Corporal Melkonian at the rendezvous point, shared a cigarette with him, and ordered a mount-up. Another patrol completed uneventfully for both sides. The section of stragglers joined Melkonian and his men on the road back home, and back to the mission at hand.