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On Dec. 31, a powerful bomb exploded in a seedy motel room on the outskirts of Moscow, not far from Domodedovo airport. Nobody took much notice. Most people were busy celebrating New Year's Eve. Besides, the only person killed that night was a middle-aged Chechen woman, with a tight headscarf and a thick accent, whom the motel's staff describe as dowdy and cold. She had three associates who vanished. But is it possible that those missing accomplices may have then regrouped to build a much bigger bomb, detonating it on Jan. 24 in the arrivals hall of the Domodedovo and killing 35 people? If so, that New Year's explosion would seem like a premonition, one that the police may have failed to fully grasp.
So far, Russian officials have firmly denied being aware of any plot leading up to the airport bombing. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Jan. 26 that the investigation had found no Chechen link in the case. But it seems likely that the terrorists, Chechen or not, made their presence felt a first time and, despite police being aware of it, the plotters were then still able to proceed.
The story seems to have begun at Moscow's SSK shooting range on Dec. 28, when two Chechen women checked into a room in one of the five dingy motel-cottages available for rent on the rundown grounds, located by a forest on the southeastern edge of Moscow. According to an employee at the facility who was there for their arrival, one of the women was named Zeynap Suyunova, 24, well-dressed and easy-going — "like a European" — and spoke Russian with no accent.
The other woman was the 50-year-old Chechen whose remains would later be found in the motel room. The employee could not remember her name. In an interview with TIME on Thursday, the employee (who asked to remain anonymous) said the women were accompanied by two men from the North Caucasus, the home of Russia's Islamist insurgency, and over the next three days the men came back several times to bring the women food and supplies. "They never allowed housekeeping inside the room, which was strange," the employee says. "But about 90% percent of our clientele are men from the Caucasus, and a lot of them house prostitutes here and visit them once in a while to party. So I didn't think much of it."
Then, on Dec. 31, at around 8:00 p.m., a massive explosion shook the entire complex, a far louder clap than the sound of the shotguns that usually carries over from the firing range. The blast was so powerful that it blew out all of the windows in Cottage No. 1, scorched the interior and left only its brick carcass standing. A maid who was in her small room at the cottage at the time got away with scrapes and a concussion. All that was left of the 50-year-old Chechen was a leg and her head, says the employee who was on duty that night. "The cops told us later that she had been making a suicide vest and accidentally triggered it," the employee says. The younger Chechen woman, who had stepped out of the cottage just before the explosion, escaped before police arrived. "They took a while to get here, I guess because it was New Year's Eve." But according to Russia's leading daily, Kommersant, police caught up with Zeynap Suyunova on Jan. 6 in the Russian city of Volgograd, where she was arrested and taken back to Moscow to stand trial for possession of explosives.
After a series of interrogations, the staff of the shooting range then went back to business as usual, assuming that the investigation had been closed after police stopped coming by. But on the morning of Jan. 25, the day after the bombing at Domodedovo airport, the shooting range got another call from the authorities. "They suggested we close up shop immediately, so we were closed for all of the following day while police came back to question us again and look around," the employee says. "That's when we realized there must be some connection [to the airport bombing]."
That connection has since started coming into focus through reports in the Russian press. In the past two days, media reports have suggested that the women who rented that motel room had strong links to a terrorist cell called the Nogaisky Djamaat, which now appears to be at the center of the airport bombing investigation. On Thursday, news reports identified the still unnamed older woman whose remains were found at the shooting range as the widow of Temerlan Gadzhiyev, the radical Islamist leader of the Nogaisky Djamaat.
Gadzhiyev was killed in an October 2010 shootout with police in the North Caucasus, and investigators quoted in the Russian media said his wife may have been plotting to avenge his death with a suicide attack when she accidentally blew herself up in the motel room. This would be in keeping with an old tradition among Russian terrorist groups. Since 2000, a series of so-called Black Widow bombers have used suicide attacks as revenge for the imprisonment or death of their relatives at the hands of Russia's antiterrorism forces. Most recently, their handiwork has included the bombings that killed 40 people in the Moscow subway in March and that downed two airplanes taking off from Domodedovo airport in 2004, killing 88 people.
The younger woman who checked into that motel also seems to fit this profile — and she also has reported links to the Nogaisky Djamaat. On Thursday, Kommersant identified Suyunova as the wife of Anverbek Amangaziyev, a leading member of the cell. He was arrested in October after the North Caucasus shootout that killed Gadzhiyev, and he is now in a Moscow prison awaiting terrorism charges.
It is yet unclear whether the two women holed up in that motel room were planning a revenge attack in the tradition of the Black Widows. Suyunova has not been charged with anything other than possession of explosives. In any case, it now appears that other members of Nogaisky Djamaat may have finished the job. Russian media, citing police sources, say there are two main suspects in the airport bombing plot who are members of that terrorist cell — Vitaly Razdobudko and Nazir Batyrov. Both men have been fugitives for some time.
Asked by TIME why the police the investigation into bombed-out cottage did not lead to the arrest of suspected plotters before the Domodedovo attack, Aslambek Aslakhanov, the president of the Association of Law Enforcement and Special Forces Workers says it is none of the public's business. "Of course, sometimes we are not able to prevent crimes before they happen," Aslakhanov says. "But you're asking about secretive organizations... To reveal the results [of our crime prevention efforts] and to bang the drum about it, this is not the way the special forces work, not in Russia or anywhere in the world."
An even more blunt response came from Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee, known as NAK. "The investigation is ongoing, and only the [investigators] can say what's what. Everyone else needs to shut up," a NAK official, Andrei Przhezdomsky, said in the organization's first public statement about the bombing. He added that the police had not known of any plot to attack the airport.
Meanwhile, the only thing keeping visitors from entering the cottage where the explosion took place is a red and white strip of police tape. There is no one guarding the scene of the crime, which reverberates with the noise from the firing range. From the blown-out window of the maid's room, a few pieces of colorful tinsel flap in the wind.
"We were going to have a little New Year's party in that room," the shooting range employee says, pointing to the streamers. "I remember when I went in there for a few minutes to leave some champagne, I brushed passed the Chechen [woman] who escaped. Just think about it. If I had gone in a little while later I would have been in the explosion." It was a lucky break that people at the airport would not share 24 days later.
- Simon Shuster / Moscow