A Convoy Heads for Gori to Investigate Rumors of Plunder

"Look," Lomaia said. "They said cease-fire yesterday morning. Those fires aren't of yesterday." He shook his head. "My worst dream."

Lomaia's meeting with the local leader, a Russian major general named Vyachislav Borisov, took place on the dusty road as the sun set, with the smell of smoke in the air. The two men shook hands. Lomaia told the general about the calls he had received, hundreds of them, from terrified Gori residents.

The general, a beefy man in fatigues, had the same relaxed manner as his men. "Everything is calm," he said in Russian. "We're not planning any looting, any bombarding." The troops would stay only until Aug. 15, he said, long enough to secure the armaments they had found there -- American armaments, he said, low-quality ones that he called "trash." As for the people of Gori, he told Lomaia, they were not disturbed by the Russians' presence.

"No," the general said. "People are saying, 'Please help us. The Georgian government has left us. Protect us.' "

The town no longer had an administration, he said, adding that the people who remained were "all Russian-speaking."

When someone in the group mentioned that most Georgians speak Russian, the general acknowledged that there were, in fact, Georgians remaining, but they were "simple Georgians," such as farmers.

The burning fields? A farming technique, he said.

The general began talking about his own past, as a soldier in the Chechnya war. Lomaia listened. Then the general said that only Lomaia would be allowed into the town of Gori, and the two of them drove off.

In the dimming light, Levy, a tall, spectral figure with a mane of dark, wavy hair and a well-tailored black suit, stood beside the tank where a blond Russian soldier sat, and expounded on his latest war.

He had been struck, Levy said, by the lack of protection around Tbilisi. No soldiers, no defenders. "It is a very strange strategy of Saakashvili," he said of Georgia's president. "To tell to the world, 'It's your problem. We are not able, small as we are, to confront the big bear. So it is your job. We wash our hands; it is up to you.' " The Russians, for their part, had decided upon a "panic strategy."

"They spread all over the world the news that they are going to Tbilisi, and then they go left, they go right, they don't go," Levy said. The sky turned black. A column of tanks rumbled loudly by. The lighted tip of a Russian soldier's cigarette glowed.

Lomaia returned. The town, he said, was nearly abandoned. In a hospital where two doctors remained, he had spoken to a lone local man, Ramazi Baliashvili, who said irregulars had shot him that morning.

Lomaia had not seen Gori's Georgian military base, now occupied by the Russians. He had not asked the Russian general to remove his men. "I was trying not to challenge him," he said, adding that he wanted to focus on rescuing the wounded man, and had arranged to bring him back to Tbilisi. Now, he said, was not the time for demands.

"I said, 'Okay, okay, you do whatever you want. And then we'll leave.' " At the checkpoint, Lomaia waited for the wounded man. He gave instructions for Levy and the others to return to the capital without him. As they pulled away, he was standing in the darkness.