RYAZAN, Russia — On a chilly night last September, bus driver Alexei Kartofelnikov saw a suspicious car parked outside the 13-story apartment building where he lives in this working-class city. He called the police, who discovered three sacks of powder and a timing device in the basement.
The sacks tested positive for explosives. The building's residents were evacuated and, haunted by the knowledge that 300 sleeping Russians had been killed in recent weeks in a wave of early-morning apartment bombings, spent the night dozing fitfully in a nearby movie theater.
Late the next day, security officials in Moscow, about 100 miles away, announced that it had all been a civil defense drill. The sacks, they said, contained nothing but sugar.
Since then, Kartofelnikov and the other residents have kept asking themselves: Was it really just an exercise to test their vigilance? Or were they nearly the next victims of the bombers--whoever they might be?
The government has yet to find the bombers. Security officials insist the culprits are linked to fighters in the separatist republic of Chechnya but have produced no conclusive evidence. For the most part, Russians buy the explanation: They have little love for the rebellious Chechens and believe that their new war against them is just payback to the "terrorists."
But some Russians fear that the truth is darker, and the 250 residents of Kartofelnikov's building are among them. At a minimum, they believe that the government is covering up something. At a maximum, they fear that the government might itself have played a role in the bombings.
Kartofelnikov, 47, considers himself a sensible man. He is not prone to suspicions or conspiracy theories. He tends to give people the benefit of the doubt. But at this point, he has too much doubt.
"Somebody tried to blow us up," he says. "I have no doubt about that. But as for who did it, or why--I don't know what to think."
But he does know what came next. The government, citing the attacks, went to war against Chechnya.
"The government started bombing Chechnya the next day," Kartofelnikov says quietly. "I know Chechens. I served with them in the army. They are good people. How can one suspect them of such a thing? How can one suspect it of anybody?"
Ivan Kirilin, a scrappy 67-year-old who talks through a cigarette, also has his suspicions.
