STANDING ON DECK, OFFICER GENRIKH DUVAKIN used the tips of his teeth to pull off his coarse mittens. His fingers were icy numb, slow to respond. He blew on them, rubbing his hands together, trying to restore circulation. Exposed to the biting wind, his face was deadened — his lips bloodless and blue. The outermost hairs in his nose had frozen, and when he pinched his nostrils, brittle hairs broke like miniature icicles snapping. He could tolerate such minor discomforts because his hat was a miracle of warmth, lined with reindeer fur and stitched with the care of someone who appreciated that the wearer’s life might depend on the quality of their work. Three long flaps covered his ears and the back of his neck. The earflaps, tied tight under his chin, gave him the appearance of a child wrapped up against the cold, an effect compounded by his soft, boyish features. The pounding salt air had failed to crack his smooth complexion, while his plump cheeks had proved resilient to poor diet and lack of sleep. Twenty-seven years old, he was often mistaken for younger: a physical immaturity that did not serve him well. Supposed to be intimidating and fierce, he a daydreamer, an unlikely guard on board a prison ship as notorious as the Stary Bolshevik.
Roughly the size of an industrial barge, the Stary Bolshevik was a workhorse vessel. Once a sea-battered Dutch steamer, it had been bought in the nineteen thirties, renamed and customized by the Soviet secret police. Originally intended for colonial exports — ivory, pungent spices, and exotic fruits — it now ferried men destined for the deadliest labor camps in the Gulag enterprise. Toward the bow there was a central tower four stories high that included living quarters for the guards and crew. At the top of the tower was the bridge where the captain and crew navigated, a close-knit group autonomous from the prison guards themselves, willfully blind to the business of this ship, pretending that it was no responsibility of theirs.
Opening the door, the captain stepped out from the bridge, surveying the stretch of sea they were leaving behind. He gestured down to Genrikh on deck, giving him a nod and announcing:
— All clear!
They’d passed through La Pérouse Strait, the only point on the journey where they neared Japanese islands and risked international contact. Precautions were taken to ensure that the vessel appeared to be nothing more than a civilian cargo ship. The heavy machine gun rigged to the center deck was dismantled. Uniforms were hidden beneath long coats. Genrikh had never been entirely sure why they took such efforts to conceal their true nature from the glance of Japanese fishermen. In idle moments, he wondered if there were similar prison boats in Japan with similar men to him.
Genrikh reassembled the machine gun, screwing it back together. Rather than the gun pointing outward, he directed the barrel downward at the reinforced steel hatch that led to the hold. Belowdeck, in the darkness, cramped on bunks like matches in a box, was a cargo of five hundred men — the first convict-laden voyage of the year from transit camp Buchta Nakhodka on the south of the Pacific coastline to Kolyma in the north. Though both ports were located on the same stretch of coastline, the distance between them was vast. There was no way to reach Kolyma by land: it was accessible only by plane or ship. The northern port of Magadan served as the entry point for a network of labor camps that had spread like fungal spores up along the Kolyma highway into the mountains, forests, and mines.
Five hundred was the smallest prisoner cargo Genrikh had ever supervised. At this point in the year under Stalin’s rule the ship would have held four times as many in an attempt to ease the backlog at the transit camps built up over the winter as the zek trains, the prisoner-filled wagons, continued to deliver but the ships remained docked. The Sea of Okhotsk was only passable when the ice floes melted. By October it was frozen again. A mistimed voyage meant being encased in ice. Genrikh had heard of ships that had ventured too late in winter or left too early in the spring. Unable to turn back or reach their destination, the guards had made good their escape, trekking across the ice, dragging sleighs loaded with canned meats and bread while the abandoned prisoners were left in the hold to starve or freeze, whichever came first.
Today no prisoners would be allowed to starve, or freeze, nor would they be summarily executed, their bodies tossed overboard. Genrikh hadn’t read Khrushchev’s Secret Speech condemning Stalin and the excesses of the Gulags. He’d been too scared. There were rumors that it was designed to flush out counterrevolutionaries, a ploy so that people might let their defenses slip and join in the criticism, only to be arrested. Genrikh wasn’t convinced by this theory: the changes seemed real. The long-established practice of brutality and indifference with no accountability had been replaced by confused compassion. At the transit camp prisoners’ sentences were hastily reviewed. Thousands destined for Kolyma had been suddenly granted their freedom, returned to civilization as abruptly as they’d been taken from it. These free men — since most of the women had been granted freedom in the amnesty of 1953—had sat on the shore, staring out at the sea, each clutching a five-hundred-gram chunk of black rye bread, a freedom ration, intended to sustain them until they reached home. For most, home was thousands of miles away. With no possessions, no money, just their rags and their freedom bread, they’d stared out at the sea, unable to comprehend that they could walk away and not be shot. Genrikh had shooed them from the shoreline, as if they were pesky birds, encouraging them to make the journey home but unable to tell them how that journey was possible.
Genrikh’s superiors had spent the weeks panicking that they were going to be brought before a tribunal. In an attempt to show how much they’d changed, they had issued extensive reviews and overhauls of regulations, frantic signals to Moscow that they were synchronized with this new fashion for fairness. Genrikh had kept his head down, doing as ordered, never questioning and never offering an opinion. If he were told to be tough with prisoners he’d be tough. If he were told to be nice he’d be nice. As it happened, with his baby face, he’d always been better at being nice than tough.
After years of shipping thousands of political prisoners convicted under Article 58, men and women who’d said the wrong thing, or been in the wrong place, or known the wrong people, the Stary Bolshevik had a new role — to carry a more select cargo, only the most violent and dangerous criminals, men for whom everyone could agree: there was no question of them ever being released.
IN THE PITCH-BLACK BELLY of the Stary Bolshevik, among the stinking bodies of five hundred murderers and rapists and thieves, Leo lay on his back, resting on the narrow, rickety top bunk — his shoulder pressed against the hull. On the other side was a vast expanse of sea, a mass of freezing water held back by a steel plate no thicker than his thumbnail.
THE AIR WAS STALE AND PUTRID, boiled by the shuddering coal engine secured in an adjacent compartment. The convicts had no access to the engine, but its heat seeped through the timber partition wall, a crude addition to the ship’s original design. At the beginning of the journey, when the hold had been freezing cold, prisoners had fought for the bunks nearest the engine. Within days, as temperatures soared, those same prisoners were fighting for bunks farther away. Divided into a grid of narrow passageways, with high rows of wooden bunks on either side, the subdeck cargo hold had been transformed into an insect hive, infested with prisoners. Leo had a top bunk, a space he’d fought for and defended, prized for its elevation from the vomit and shit slopping on the floor. The weaker you were, the lower you were — as if they’d been shaken through a filtering process, separating into Darwinian layers. Lanterns that had for the past week emitted a dim, sooty glow — like stars seen through city smog — were now out of kerosene, creating darkness so complete that Leo couldn’t see his hands even as they scratched his face.
Tonight was the seventh day at sea. Leo had counted the days as carefully as he could, making the most of infrequently permitted toilet visits in order to regain some sense of time. On deck, with a mounted machine gun directed at them, prisoners queued to use the hole intended for the anchor, a drop straight into the ocean. Trying to maintain balance on the choppy seas, whipped by icy winds, squatting and shuffling, the process became an awful pantomime. Some inmates, unable to queue, lost control of their bowels, soiling themselves, lying in their own excrement, waiting until it was crust before they started moving again. The psychological importance of cleanliness was self-evident. A person could lose their sanity after only seven days down here. Leo comforted himself that these conditions were temporary. His primary concern was maintaining his edge. Many prisoners had been weakened by months in transit, their muscles softened by inactivity and poor food, their minds softened by the prospect of ten years working in the mines. Leo exercised regularly, keeping his body taut and his mind focused on the task at hand.
After Leo’s encounter with Fraera on the excavated grounds of the Church of Sancta Sophia he’d returned to the hospital to discover that Raisa had survived surgery and that the doctors were confident of a full recovery. Waking up, her first question had been about Zoya and Elena. Seeing how pale and weak she was, Leo had promised that he was concentrated entirely on his kidnapped daughter. Listening to him explain Fraera’s demands, Raisa had merely said:
Do whatever it takes.
FRAER A HAD GAINED CONTROL of a criminal gang. As far as Leo could tell she was no torpedy, no mere foot soldier — she was the avtoritet, the leader. Members of a criminal gang, the vory, were typically contemptuous of women. They wrote songs about their love for their mother, they killed each other over insults to their mothers, but nurtured no belief in women being equals. Somehow the wife of a priest, a woman who’d spent her life in her husband’s shadow, assisting his career, had managed to penetrate the vorovskoi mir. Even more astounding was that she had risen to the top. Fraera was integrated into their rituals: her body covered with tattoos, her birth name tossed aside and replaced with a klikukha, a vory nickname. Sheltered within the highly secretive vorovskoi mir, her operations were probably funded by pickpockets and black market trade. If revenge had been her intention from the outset then she’d chosen her allies well. The vory gangs were the only organizations the State had no control over. There was no chance of infiltrating their ranks: it would take too much time— requiring an officer to spend years undercover, to murder and rape in order to prove themselves. It wasn’t that the State couldn’t find a suitable candidate but rather that they had always considered the vory an irrelevance. These gangs were motivated by their own internal, closed system of loyalty and reward. None of the gangs had ever shown any interest in politics, until now, until Fraera.
Had Fraera’s demand — the release of her husband — come before her murders, it might have been achievable. The penal system was in upheaval following Khrushchev’s speech. Regarding Lazar’s twenty-five-year sentence, Leo could have applied for a special dispensation, a dismissal or an early parole. The complication would have been Khrushchev’s renewed antireligious campaign. However, after the murders there was no chance of negotiating for Lazar’s release. No deal would be struck. Fraera was a terrorist, to be hunted down and killed irrespective of whether or not Zoya had been taken hostage. Fraera’s gang had been classified as a counterrevolutionary cell. To make matters worse, she’d made no attempt to curtail her bloodlust. In the days directly after Zoya’s kidnapping Fraera’s men had murdered several officials — men and women who’d served under Stalin. Some had been tortured as they’d tortured others. Faced with a reflection of their own crimes, the upper echelons of power were terrified. They were demanding the execution of every member of Fraera’s cell and every man and woman who aided them.
Fortunately Leo’s boss, Frol Panin, was an ambitious man. Despite the KGB and the militia launching the largest manhunt Moscow had ever seen, they’d found no trace of Fraera and her gang. Clamorous calls for their capture were answered with failure. The press reported nothing of these events, opting for celebrations of industrial statistics on the days after the most shocking of executions, as if these numbers might dampen the rumors sweeping the streets. Officials were moving their families out of the city. A surge in holiday requests had been submitted. The situation was intolerable. Coveting the glory of being the one who snared Fraera, the mantle of a heroic monster slayer, Panin saw Lazar as bait. Since they couldn’t arrange for him to be released through normal channels, without admitting the State could be held to ransom, the only option was to break him out. Panin had hinted that their project had powerful supporters and was proceeding with the tacit consent of those in charge.
Lazar was a convict in the Kolyma region, Gulag 57. Escape was considered impossible. No one had ever succeeded. Security at many of the Gulags was little more than their location: there was no means of surviving outside the compound. The chances of traversing the vast and unforgiving terrain on foot were negligible. If Lazar went missing he would be declared dead. With Panin’s help, it was a simple matter to get into the Gulag, fabricating the necessary paperwork, positioning Leo as a prisoner. Getting out, however, would not be so easy.
Vibrations raced through the hull. The ship’s bow veered to the side. Leo sat bolt upright. They’d hit ice.
GENRIKH RUSHED FORWARD, peering over the side. A sunken mass of ice slowly passed by, its pinnacle no larger than a car, the majority of its bulk underwater appearing as a vast dark blue shadow. The hull appeared intact. There was no shouting from the prisoners down below. No water was leaking in. Feeling sweat under his reindeer fur, he signaled to the captain that the danger had passed.
In the first voyages of the year the bow occasionally knocked against remnants of the ice mass, collisions that made an ominous noise against the aging hull. In the past these collisions used to terrify Genrikh. The Stary Bolshevik was a sickly vessel: no good for trade or commerce, suitable only for convicts — barely able to cut a path through water let alone brush aside ice. Built for a speed of eleven knots, the coal-fired steamer never managed much above eight, puffing like a lame mule. Over the years the smoke coming from the single funnel, located toward the stern, had turned darker and thicker, the vessel moved slower while the creaking had become louder. Yet despite the ship’s worsening health Genrikh had gradually lost his fear of the sea. He could sleep through storms and hold down meals even when plates and cutlery clattered from side to side. It wasn’t that he’d grown brave. Another more pressing fear had taken its place — a fear of his fellow guards.
On his first voyage he’d made a mistake that he’d never been able to put right, one that his comrades had never forgiven. During Stalin’s reign the guards frequently colluded with the urki—the career criminals. The guards would organize a transfer of one or two female prisoners into the male hold. Sometimes the women’s cooperation was bought with false promises of food. Sometimes they were drugged. Sometimes they were dragged, fighting and screaming and shouting. It depended on the tastes of the urki, many of whom enjoyed snuffing out a fight as much as sex. Payment for this transaction was information on the politicals — convicts sentenced for crimes against the State. Reports of things said, conversations overheard, information that the guards could translate into valuable written denunciations when the ship reached land. As a small bonus the guards took final turns with the unconscious women, consummating an allegiance as old as the Gulag system itself. Genrikh had politely declined to join in. He hadn’t threatened to report them or shown any disapproval. He’d merely smiled and said:
Not for me.
Words that he’d come to regret more bitterly than anything he’d ever done. From that moment he’d been shunned. He’d thought it would last a week. It had lasted seven years. At times, trapped on board, surrounded by ocean, he’d been mad with loneliness. Not every guard joined in the rapes all of the time, but every guard joined in some of the time. However, he was never offered the chance to put good his mistake. The initial insult stood uncorrected since it didn’t express a preference such as: he didn’t feel like it today but a gut reaction: this is wrong. On occasion, pacing the deck at night, longing for someone to talk to, he’d turned to see the other guards gathered away from him. In the darkness all he could make out were their smoldering cigarettes, red butts glowering at him like hate-filled eyes.
He’d stopped worrying that the sea might0 swallow this ship or that ice might rip the hull. His fear had been that one night he’d fall asleep only to wake, his arms and feet held fast by the other guards, dragged, as those women were dragged, fighting, screaming, thrown over the side, falling into the black, freezing ocean where he would splash helplessly for a minute or two, watching the lights of the ship grow smaller and smaller.
For the first time in seven years those fears no longer troubled him. The entire guard contingent of the ship had been replaced. Perhaps their removal had something to do with the reforms sweeping the camps. He didn’t know. It didn’t matter: they were gone, all of them, except for him. He’d been left behind, excluded from their change in fortune. For once, exclusion suited him just fine. He found himself among a new group of guards none of whom hated him, none of whom knew anything about him. He was a stranger again. Anonymity felt wonderful, as if he’d been miraculously cured of a terminal sickness. Presented with an opportunity to start afresh, he intended to do everything in his power to make sure he was part of the team.
He turned to see one of the new guards smoking on the other side of the deck, staring at the dusk skyline, no doubt brought outside by the noise of the collision. A tall, broad-shouldered man in his late thirties, he had the poise of a leader. The man — Iakov Messing — had said very little during the journey. He’d volunteered no information about himself and Genrikh still had no idea if Iakov was staying aboard the ship or whether he was merely en route to another camp. Tough with the prisoners, reticent with the other guards, a brilliant card player and physically strong, there was little doubt that if a new group were going to form, as it had done on the last ship, it would form with Iakov at its center.
Genrikh crossed the deck, greeting Iakov with a nod of his head and gesturing at his pack of cheap cigarettes.
— May I?
Iakov offered the pack and a lighter. Nervous, Genrikh took a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled deeply. The smoke was coarse on his throat. He smoked infrequently and tried his best to pretend that he was enjoying the experience, sharing a mutual pleasure. It was imperative he made a good impression. However, he had nothing to say. Iakov had almost finished his cigarette. He’d soon be going back inside. The opportunity might not arise again, the two of them alone — this was the time to speak.
— It’s been a quiet voyage.
Iakov said nothing. Genrikh flicked ash at the sea, continuing:
— This your first time? On board, I mean? I know it’s your first time on board this ship, but I was wondering if, maybe, you’ve… been on other ships. Like this.
Iakov answered with a question:
— How long have you been on board?
Genrikh smiled, relieved to have solicited a response:
— Seven years. And things have changed. I don’t know if they’ve changed for the better. These voyages used to be something…
— How so?
— You know… all kinds of… good times. You know what I mean? Genrikh smiled to underscore the oblique innuendo. Iakov’s face was impassive:
— No. What do you mean?
Genrikh was forced to explain. He lowered his voice, whispering, trying to coax Iakov into his conspiracy:
— Normally, around day two or three, the guards—
— The guards? You’re a guard.
A careless slip: he’d implied he was outside the group and now he was being asked whether that was the case. He clarified:
— I mean me, us. We.
Emphasizing the word—we—and then saying it again for good measure.
— We talk to the urki, to see if they’re willing to make us an offer, a list of names, a list of the politicals, someone who’d said something stupid. We ask what they’d want in return for this information: alcohol, tobacco… women.
— Women?
— You heard of “taking the train”?
— Remind me.
— The line of men who take their turn, with the female convicts. I was always the last carriage, so to speak. You know, of the train of men, who took their turn.
He laughed:
— Last was better than nothing, that’s what I say.
He paused, looking out at sea, hands on his hips, longing to scrutinize Iakov’s reaction. He repeated, nervously:
— Better than nothing.
Squinting in the dim dusk light, Timur Nesterov studied the face of this young man as he boasted about his history of rape. The man wanted to be patted on the back, congratulated and assured that those times were the good times. Timur’s cover as a prison guard, as officer Iakov Messing, depended upon remaining invisible. He couldn’t stand out. He couldn’t kick up a fuss. He was not here to judge this man or to avenge those women. Yet it was difficult not to imagine his wife as a convict aboard this ship. In the past she’d come very close to being arrested. She was beautiful and she would’ve ended up at the mercy of this young man’s desire.
Timur tossed the cigarette into the sea, moving indoors. He was almost at the tower door when the guard called out after him:
— Thanks for the smoke!
Timur stopped, wondering at this muddle of manners and flippant savagery. To his eye, Genrikh was more like a child than a man. Just as a child might try to impress an adult, the young officer pointed up to the sky:
— Going to be a storm.
Night was closing, and in the distance flashes of lightning silhouetted black clouds — clouds shaped like the knuckles of a giant fist.
LYING ON HIS BACK IN THE DARKNESS, Leo listened to the heavy rain pummeling the deck. The ship had begun to roll and pitch, lumbering from side to side. He traced the vessel in his mind, picturing how it might hold in a storm. Stubby, like a gigantic steel thumb, it was wide and slow and stable. The only section — aside from the steam funnel — that rose above deck was the tower where the guards and crew quarters were located. Leo took reassurance from the vessel’s age: it must have survived many storms in its lifetime.
His bunk shook as a wave thumped the side, breaking over the deck — a sloshing noise that carried with it a visual imprint — the deck briefly merging with the sea. Leo sat up. The storm was growing. He was forced to grip the sides of the bunk as the ship lurched violently. Prisoners began crying out as they were shaken off the bunks, cries echoing around the darkness. It had become a disadvantage to be so high. The wooden frame was unstable. The structure wasn’t secured to the hull. The bunks might fall, tipping their occupants to the floor. Leo was about to climb down when a hand grabbed his face.
With the wind and the waves, the commotion, he hadn’t heard anyone approach. The man’s breath smelled like decay. His voice was gruff:
— Who are you?
Sounding authoritative, he was almost certainly a gang leader. Leo was sure the man wasn’t alone: his men must be nearby, on the other bunks, to the sides, underneath. It was impossible to fight: he couldn’t see the man he was fighting.
— My name is—
The man cut him off:
— I’m not interested in your name. I want to know who you are. Why are you here, among us? You’re not a vory. Not a man like me. Maybe you’re a political. But then, I see you doing sit-ups, I see you exercising and I know you’re not a political. They hide in the corner and cry like babies about never seeing their families again. You’re something else. Makes me nervous, not knowing what’s in a person’s heart. I don’t mind if it’s murder and stealing, I don’t even mind if it’s hymns and prayers and goodness, I just like to know. So, I say again, who are you?
The man seemed entirely indifferent to the fact that the ship was now being tossed like a toy by the storm. The entire bunk was rocking: the only thing keeping it fixed was the weight of the people on it. Prisoners were jumping to the floor, scrambling over each other. Leo tried to reason with the man:
— How about we talk when this storm’s over?
— Why? There something you need to do?
— I need to get off this bunk.
— You feel that?
The tip of a knife touched Leo’s stomach.
Abruptly, the ship lifted up, a movement so sudden and powerful it felt as though the hand of a sea-god were underneath them, pushing them out of the ocean and racing them toward the sky. As suddenly the movement stopped, the velocity vaporized, the watery hand turning to spray, and the Stary Bolshevik fell, plunging straight down.
The bow smacked into the water. With the force of a detonation, the impact cracked through the ship. With a synchronized snap every bunk splintered and collapsed. For a second Leo was suspended in darkness, falling, with no idea what lay beneath him. He rotated so that he’d land facedown, pushing his hands out toward the floor. There was a crunch of bones breaking. Unsure whether he was injured, whether his bones had broken, he lay still, breathless and dazed. He didn’t feel any pain. Patting the ground underneath him he realized he had landed on another prisoner, across a man’s chest. The noise had been the man’s ribs fracturing. Leo searched for a pulse, only to find a splintered fragment of wood jutting out of the man’s neck.
As he staggered to his feet, the ship rolled to the side, then back the other way. Someone grabbed his ankles. Worried that it was the nameless, faceless gang leader, he kicked them away, only to realize that it was more likely someone desperate for help. With no time to put right that wrong, the ship rose up again, at an even sharper angle than before, rocketing toward the sky. The smashed bunks, now free to move, slid toward him, piling up. Sharp, lethal fragments pressed against his arms and legs. Prisoners unable to maintain their grip on the sloping floor tumbled down, knocking into Leo, an avalanche of wood and bodies.
Pushed down by the ragged wall of people and timber, Leo tried blindly, hopelessly, to find something to steady himself, something to grab on to. The ship was at a forty-five-degree angle. Something metallic caught him in the side of the face, Leo fell, tumbling, rolling, until he arrived against the back wall, against the hot timber planks that separated the convicts from the roaring coal engine. The wall was four deep with prisoners tipped from their beds, waiting for the ship’s climb to reverse and slip into the inevitable fall. Groping for anything fixed that they could hold on to, they feared being tossed forward into the unknown. Leo clasped the hull — it was smooth and cold. There was nothing to grip. The ship stopped its upward climb, perched on the crest of a wave.
Leo was about to be thrown forward. He’d be helpless, everyone behind him landing on top of him, crushing him. Unable to see anything, he tried to remember the layout of the hold. The steps up to the deck hatch were his only chance. The ship tipped into a freefall, accelerating down. Leo threw himself in the direction where he guessed the steps were located. He collapsed into something hard — the metal steps — and managed to clasp an arm around them just as the ship’s bow thumped into the water.
A second detonation-like impact, the force was tremendous. Leo was convinced the entire ship had split apart, a nutshell smashing under the head of a hammer. Waiting for a wall of water, instead he heard the sound of breaking wood, like tree trunks splitting in half. There were screams. Leo’s arm, locked around the step, was yanked so hard, he was sure it had been dislocated. Yet there was no wall of water rushing in. The hull was intact.
Leo looked behind him and saw smoke. He couldn’t just smell the smoke, he could see it. Where was the light coming from? The noise of the ship’s engine seemed to have intensified. The timber partition separating the convicts from the coal engine had broken apart. The engine room was exposed. At its center was a red, glowing hub surrounded by the smashed debris of bunks and twisted bodies.
Leo squinted, his eyes adjusting from permanent darkness. The hold was no longer secure: the prisoners — the most dangerous men in the penal system — now had access to the crew quarters and the captain’s deck, which could be reached from the engine room. The officer in charge of keeping the engine running, covered in coal dust, raised his hands, indicating surrender. A convict leapt at him, flinging him against the red-hot engine. The officer screamed: the stink of burning flesh filled the air. He tried to push himself free from the metal but the convict held him fast, gloating as the man was cooked alive, his eyes rolling, gurgling on spit. The jubilant prisoner called out:
— Take the ship!
Leo recognized that voice. It was the man on his bunk, the gang leader with the knife, the man who’d wanted him dead.
FLUNG FROM SIDE TO SIDE, Timur zigzagged down the Stary Bolshevik’s narrow corridors, colliding with walls, scrambling to secure the two access doors that led up from the engine room. He’d been in the bridge when the ship had dropped from the crest of a wave, as though it had sailed off a crumbling water-cliff, the bow falling for thirty meters before smashing into the base of an ocean-trough. Timur had been thrown forward, catapulted over the navigation equipment, tumbling to the floor. The vessel’s steel panels reverberated with the frequency of a tuning fork, humming with the impact’s energy. Standing up, looking out the window, all he could see was foaming water rushing toward him — churning gray and white and black — convinced that the ship was sinking, plunging straight down to the bottom, only for the bow to be lifted once again, angled toward the sky.
Attempting to ascertain the damage, the captain had rung down to the engine room. There was no response — calls went unanswered. There was still power, the engine was still working, the hull couldn’t have been breached. The upward movement of the ship discounted extensive flooding. If the outer hull was intact the only other explanation for the loss of communication was that the timber partition wall must have snapped like a twig. The convicts were no longer secure: they could enter the engine room and climb the stairs, accessing the main tower. If the prisoners reached the upper levels they’d kill everyone and plot a new course for international waters where they’d claim asylum in exchange for anti-Communist propaganda. Five hundred convicts against a crew of thirty of which only twenty were guards.
Control of the lower levels, those belowdeck, was lost. They couldn’t recapture the engine room or save the crew working in there. However, it was still possible to seal those compartments, trapping the convicts in the lower levels of the ship. From the engine room there were two separate access points. Timur was heading toward the first of the doors. Another group of guards had been dispatched to the second. If either door were open, if either fell into the convicts’ hands, the ship would be lost.
Turning right and left, hurtling down the last flight of stairs, he was at the base of the tower. He could see the first access door straight ahead: at the end of the corridor. It was unlocked, swinging backward and forward, clanging against the steel walls. The ship veered upward, tilting sharply, throwing Timur forward to his hands and knees. The heavy steel door swung open, revealing a horde of convicts climbing up from the engine room, as many as thirty or forty faces. They saw each other at the same time: the door being the midway point between them, both sides staring at each other across the divide between freedom and captivity.
The convicts exploded forward. Timur countered, launching himself off the floor, running, leaping into the door just as a mass of hands pressed against the other side, pushing in the opposite direction. There was no way he could hold them for long: his feet were sliding back. They were almost through. He reached for his gun.
The storm jerked the ship to the side, tipping the convicts off the door while throwing Timur’s weight against it. The door slammed shut. He spun the lock, clamping it tight. Had the storm tilted the ship the other way, Timur would have been thrown to the floor and the convicts would have spilled out over him like a stampeding herd, overwhelming him. Denied freedom, their fists pounded against the door, banging and cursing. But their voices were faint and their blows hopeless. The thick steel door was secure.
Timur’s relief was temporary, interrupted by the sound of machine-gun fire from the other side of the ship. The convicts must have passed through the second door.
Running, staggering, past abandoned crew quarters, Timur turned the corner, seeing two officers crouched, firing. Reaching their position, he drew his gun, aiming in the same direction. There were bodies on the floor between them and the second access door, prisoners shot, some alive, motioning for help. The critical door down to the subdeck levels — now the only remaining access point for the convicts — had been wedged open by a plank of wood, protruding from the middle. Even if Timur made a run for the door there was no way to shut it. The officers, panicking, were firing aimlessly, bullets sparking off steel, pinging with lethal randomness around the corridor. Timur gestured for the officers to lower their weapons.
Pools of water on the floor mimicked the wild movements of the sea, sweeping from one side to the other. The prisoners weren’t pushing forward, remaining safe behind the door. No doubt they were finding it difficult, among their cutthroat team, to conjure up the twenty or so willing to sacrifice their lives by surging forward to seize control of the corridor. At least that many would die before the guards were overpowered.
Timur took possession of one of the machine guns, aiming at the protruding wood stump. He fired, splintering the wood — walking forward at the same time. The stump was disintegrating under a barrage of steady gunfire. Maintaining the volley of bullets, the wood fragmented. The door could be shut, locked, the final access point closed. Timur sprang forward. Before he could reach the handle, three more stumps of wood were pushed through. There was no way to shut the door. Out of bullets, Timur pulled back.
Four additional guards had arrived, stationed at the end of the corridor, making seven in total — a pitiful force to hold off five hundred. Since their early losses, the prisoners hadn’t attempted a second advance. If a proportion weren’t prepared to sacrifice their lives, there was no way to progress. They were almost certainly devising another means of attack. One of the officers whispered:
— We stick our guns in the gap in the door! They don’t have weapons! They’ll drop the wood: we’ll shut the door.
Three officers nodded, running forward.
They hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps when the door was flung open. Panicked, the officers opened fire — to no avail. The foremost prisoners were using the injured crew as a human shield: burnt bodies carried like battering rams, skinless, charred faces screaming.
The officer nearest the advance tried to backtrack, his weapon firing uselessly into his colleague. The convict launched the body at him, knocking the officer to the floor. The guards redirected their bullets toward the prisoners’ feet. Several fell, but there were too many of them, moving too fast. The column of prisoners continued to advance. In minutes they would control the corridor, from which point they would spread to the rest of the ship. Timur would be lynched. Paralyzed, he couldn’t even fire his handgun. What use were six shots against five hundred? It was as pointless as shooting at the sea.
Struck by an idea, he turned, hurrying to the outer door, the door that opened onto the deck. He threw it wide open, exposing the wild sea, a dizzy mass of water. Each of the guards wore a safety belt. He clipped his hook to the wire that ran around the tower, a system designed to prevent men from being washed overboard.
Glancing back at the gunfight, there were only two officers remaining. Scores of prisoners were dead but a seemingly inexhaustible number were packed behind them. Timur called out to the sea, challenging it, rallying it:
— Come on!
The ship plunged down, pointing Timur into a deep trough. Then, slowly, the ship rose up. A mountain of water was rolling straight toward him, the crumbling white surf high above, blotting out the sky. It crashed into the side of the ship, flooding the corridor. Timur was swept back, immersed in the sea. Water filled the space entirely. The cold stunned him. He was helpless — unable to move, or think, washed down the corridor.
His safety hook saved him, pulled him to a standstill. The wave had broken over the ship. The ship countered the movement, tipping back the other way. The water drained away as quickly as it had swept in. Timur fell to the floor, gasping, surveying the results of the flood. The wall of prisoners had been smashed back, some to the floor, most down the steps. Before they were able to recover, he unclipped himself, ran forward, his clothes soaked and heavy, his boots squelching over the shot-up bodies of guards and prisoners, victims of the skirmish. He slammed the door shut, locking it. The subdeck levels were secure.
There was no time to waste. The door to the sea was wide open: another mountain of water might flood the interior, toppling the entire ship, Timur moved back toward the outer deck door. A hand grabbed him. One of the prisoners was alive, tripping him. The prisoner clambered on top of him, pointing a machine gun at his head. There was no chance he’d miss. The prisoner pulled the trigger. Out of ammunition, or ruined by the sea, the gun didn’t fire.
Granted a reprieve, Timur sparked back into life, smashing the prisoner’s nose with a punch, spinning him onto his front and forcing his face into a puddle of water. Once more the ship began to tilt down, this time to Timur’s disadvantage, the water draining away, saving the prisoner, who could now breathe. Dead bodies slid down the corridor, out onto the deck. Timur and the injured prisoner were slipping in the same direction, wrestling with each other, only meters from tumbling into the sea.
As they passed through the door Timur reached up and grabbed hold of the safety line, kicking the injured prisoner, sending him out onto the deck. A second wave was racing toward them. Timur pulled himself inside, shutting the door. As he stared through the small plate glass window, directly into the eyes of the prisoner, the wave hit. The vibrations rippled through his hands. When the water had cleared, the prisoner was gone.
LEO WATCHED FROM THE BOTTOM of the stairs as the newly appointed leader of their uprising tugged the steel door, trying to pull it open. They were trapped, with no way of getting to the bridge. He’d lost many of his vory gang in the attempt to break free. Needless to say, he’d commanded from the back, avoiding the bullets. The surge of water had swept him downstairs. Leo glanced at the floor — he was ankle deep, a mass that was rolling from side to side, destabilizing the vessel. There was no way to pump it out, not in the midst of the current hostilities. There was no chance of cooperation. If any more water came in, the ship would capsize. They’d sink, in the darkness, unable to break out, locked in a steel prison as freezing seawater seeped in. Yet the ship’s precarious condition was of little interest to their newly self-appointed leader. A convict revolutionary, he was determined to succeed or die.
The coal engine began to splutter. Leo turned back to assess the damage. The engine had to be kept running. Addressing the remaining prisoners, he called out for help:
— We have to keep the coal dry and the fire fed.
The convict leader reentered the engine room, snarling:
— If they don’t free us we’ll smash the engine.
Leo shook his head:
— If we lose power the ship can’t navigate, it will sink. We need the engine to keep working. Our lives depend upon it.
— So do theirs. If we cut the power, they’ve got to talk to us— they’ve got to negotiate.
— They will never open those doors. We smash the engine: they’ll abandon ship. They’ve got life rafts, enough for them and none of us. They’d rather let us drown.
— How do you know?
— They’ve done it before! Aboard the Dzhurma! Prisoners broke into the store, stole food, and set fire to the rest, the rice sacks, the wood shelves, expecting the guards to come rushing down. They didn’t. They let it burn. All the prisoners suffocated.
Leo picked up a shovel. The convict leader shook his head:
— Put it down!
Leo ignored him, shoveling the coal, feeding the engine. Neglected, it was already markedly cooler. None of the other men were helping, waiting to see how the conflict played out. Assessing his opponent, Leo wasn’t convinced he could overpower him. It had been a long time since he’d fought anyone. He tightened his grip on the shovel, preparing himself. To his surprise, the convict smiled:
— Go ahead. Shovel the coal like a slave. There’s another way out.
The convict grabbed a second shovel and climbed through the smashed partition wall into the prisoner hold. Leo stood, uncertain whether to continue shoveling or follow the man. Within moments the clamor of steel smashing against steel rang out. Leo rushed through the gap in the partition wall, returning to the gloom of the hold. Squinting, he saw that the vory was at the top of the stairs, using the shovel to land blows against the deck hatch. To an ordinary man such a task would be futile. But his strength was such that the hatch was beginning to buckle upward, arching under the pressure. Eventually the steel would tear. Leo called out:
— You break the hatch and water will flood in. There’s no way to close it again. If the hold fills up the ship will capsize!
Standing at the top of the steps, pounding the hatch with colossal force, the convict sang out to his fellow inmates:
— Before I die, I’m going to be free! I’m going to die a free man!
Seemingly tireless, he was denting the metal hatch, targeting each blow where the previous blow had landed.
There was no way of knowing how much longer until the hatch was broken. Once broken, it couldn’t be repaired. Leo had to act now. Fighting him alone would be an impossible task. He needed to enlist the help of the other prisoners. He turned to them, ready to rally them:
— Our lives depend on…
Leo’s voice failed to rise over the clanging steel blows and the storm. No one was going to help him.
Compensating for the rocking of the ship, Leo lunged for the bottom step, steadying himself. The convict had twisted his legs around the steel frame of the stairs, fixing himself in position as he continued to thunder blows against the hatch. Seeing Leo climbing toward him he pointed his mangled shovel at him. Leo’s opponent had the higher position. The only chance would be to take out his legs, bringing him down. The prisoner took up a defensive position, angling the shovel back.
Before Leo could reposition himself bullets punched through the hatch into the convict’s back. His mouth full of blood, the vory looked down at his chest, perplexed. The storm shook him free from the top step, throwing him down. Leo dodged out of the way, letting the man crash into the water. More bullets punctured the hatch, zipping past Leo’s face. He jumped, landing in the water, out of the line of fire.
Leo peered across. The vory was dead, lying facedown. A new danger had been created. The hatch was crisscrossed with bullet holes. Water was pouring in, a dense shower every time a wave broke over the deck. If they couldn’t fill those holes, the water level would rise and the ship would capsize. It was essential that Leo climb the steps in order to plug the holes. The ship continued to be tossed from side to side, water gushing in through the hatch. The water level in the hold was rising, splashing onto the cooling coal engine. Leo couldn’t wait any longer. The ship was already struggling to right itself. He had to act now.
Leo stripped the clothes from the dead convict, ripping them into rags. With thick streams of water soaking him from the damaged hatch he tentatively put his foot on the bottom step, ready to climb up. His life depended on the intelligence of the unseen guard.
EUPHORIC, GENRIKH CLUNG to the gun turret, waves breaking around him, as though he were riding the back of a monstrous whale. Because of his bravery the convicts’ attempted escape had failed. He’d saved the ship. From a coward to a hero in one night! Earlier, inside the tower, hearing the battle erupt between the guards and the prisoners, he’d taken refuge in the crew quarters, cowering. He’d seen his friend Iakov run past and he’d done nothing, remaining hidden. Only once he was certain that the convicts had lost, that they’d been beaten back and the ship was secure, did he emerge, belatedly understanding the different kind of danger he was in. The surviving crew would accuse him of being a deserter. They’d hate him as the previous crew had hated him. He’d be condemned to another seven years of isolation. Bleak with despair, redemption had landed in his lap — the clang of steel against steel. He’d been the only crew member to hear the convicts smashing the hatch. They were trying to seize the ship from the deck. The hatch had not been constructed to withstand sustained attacks. Normally no prisoner would dare touch it for fear of being shot. In the storm, however, the gun turret was unmanned. This was his opportunity to prove himself. Rejuvenated by the prospect, he’d run across the deck from the base of the tower to the gun turret. He’d taken aim and fired at the hatch. Giddy with excitement he’d cried out, firing a second and third volley of bullets through the hatch. He’d stay out here for as long as the storm lasted. Everyone in the tower would witness his extraordinary courage. If any convict tried to break through, if any convict even came near the hatch, he’d kill them.
STANDING IN THE BRIDGE, choked with rage at Genrikh’s stupidity, Timur couldn’t allow him to fire another volley into the hatch. The ship was low in the water, the captain barely able to pull up over the waves. If they took on any more water they’d sink. The storm showed no sign of abating. Timur knew, as the others did not, how much water had already flooded the vessel when he’d opened the outer doors. Having saved the ship from the convicts, he now had to save it from a guard.
Running down the flights of stairs, he braced himself before throwing open the door to the deck. Wind and rain whipped around him as if personally insulted by his presence. He closed the door behind him, hooking himself onto the safety wire. The distance between the base of the tower and the gun turret was perhaps fifteen meters, a clear stretch of deck — if he was caught by a wave crossing that space he’d either be slammed into the side of the deck or taken out to sea. His safety cord would count for little, dragging him along in the sea like fishing bait until the line snapped. He glanced at the bullet holes in the hatch. Something caught his eye: a rag pushed up — plugging the hole. Genrikh was lining up another shot.
Timur darted across the deck just as a wave began to sweep over the side, rushing toward him. He dived forward, grabbing the side of the turret and pushing the gun up into the air. Genrikh fired. The wave hit. For a split second Timur’s legs were lifted up. Had he not been holding on he would’ve been swept out to sea. The water cleared, his legs fell back down. With a mouth and nose full of salt water, Timur spluttered. Recovering, he grabbed hold of Genrikh by the scruff of the neck, losing control, furious, shaking him like a rag doll. He pushed him back, pulling the ammunition clip out of the gun and tossing it into the sea.
With the gun disarmed Timur staggered back toward the tower, checking the hatch as he passed. More rags were being stuffed into the holes. Almost at the tower, he felt the impact of another wave. Turning around, he saw water rushing at him. Smacked off his feet, he was pounded against the deck. Silence, all he could see was a million bubbles. Then the water drained from the deck, the sounds of the storm returned. He sat up, looking out. The machine-gun turret was gone: ripped out like a rotten tooth. The wreckage had been swept to the bow of the ship. Genrikh was caught up in the twisted steel.
Timur had enough slack in his cord to pull himself along the side and grab hold of the young guard. Pitiful, Genrikh tried to free himself from the metal. He was stuck. If the wreckage went overboard it would take him with it. Timur could save him. Yet he hadn’t moved. He glanced out at the sea. They were climbing another wave, soon they’d be plunging down, into the trough, and the force that had swept a bolted machine-gun turret off the deck would sweep them out too.
Turning his back on Genrikh, Timur took hold of the cord and pulled himself toward the tower. The ship’s angle reversed, plunging down. He reached the door, climbing inside, sealing it shut.
GENRIKH ROSE WITH A WAVE, splashing to keep afloat. The water was so cold he couldn’t feel anything below his waist. Washed overboard, there’d been intense pain when the steel had ripped him. Numb with shock, it was as if the icy waves had bitten him in half. For a second he saw the lights of the ship, and then it was gone.
ZOYA’S WRISTS AND ANKLES WERE BOUND with thin steel wire, coiled so tight that when she tried to adjust position it cut into her skin. She was blindfolded and gagged, lying on her side. There was no blanket underneath her — nothing to cushion the bumps in the road. Judging by the noise of the engine and the amount of space around her, she was in the back of a truck. She could feel the accelerations and vibrations through the steel floor. Each abrupt stop rolled her backward and then forward, more like a carcass than a living person. Once she’d recovered from the disorientation she began to visualize her journey. At the outset they’d made frequent turns, negotiating traffic. They’d been in a city — Moscow, although she couldn’t be sure of that. Right now they were traveling straight, at a constant speed. They must have left the city. Except for the truck’s gruff engine there was no other noise, no traffic. She was being taken somewhere remote. Based on this and the disregard for her safety — a rag stuffed so far down her throat she almost choked — she was certain that she was about to die.
How long had she been a captive? She had no way to know — the passing of time had become difficult to judge. After being snatched from the apartment she’d been drugged. Bundled into the car, she’d seen Raisa fall. That was the last thing she remembered before waking up, her head thumping, her mouth as dry as dust, sprawled on the floor of a windowless brick chamber. Even though she’d been unconscious when she’d been brought in, she’d had an acute sense that she was deep underground. The air was always cool and damp: the bricks never grew warm, giving no clue as to the cycles of day and night. The stench strongly suggested a sewer system. She’d often heard the sound of water. Sometimes the vibrations had been so strong it felt as if there were rivers rushing through adjacent tunnels. She’d been given food and bedding, her captors making no attempt to conceal their identities. They hadn’t spoken to her except for a series of curt commands and questions, showing little interest in her beyond the bare necessities of keeping her alive. Yet from time to time she’d been vaguely aware of someone watching her, hiding in the gloom of the corridor outside her cell. As soon as she moved closer, trying to catch a glimpse of them, they’d slip away into the darkness.
Over these past couple of weeks she’d thought about death, turning the subject over and over like sucking a boiled sweet. What exactly was she living for? She nurtured no dreams of being rescued. The idea of freedom did not bring tears of joy to her eyes. Freedom had been life as an unpopular, unhappy schoolgirl — hated and hateful. She felt no more alone in captivity than she had done in Leo’s home. She felt no more like a prisoner now than she had before. The setting had changed. Her captors had changed. Life was the same. She didn’t cry at the memory of her bedroom, or of a hot meal eaten together around the kitchen table. She didn’t even cry at the memory of her sister. Maybe Elena would be happier without her — maybe she was holding her little sister back, stopping her from leading a normal life and growing close to Leo and Raisa.
Why can’t I cry?
She’d pinch herself. But it was no good. She couldn’t cry.
She hoped Raisa had survived the fall. She hoped Elena was safe. Yet even these hopes, sincere though they were, felt detached, as if they were other people’s ideas of what she should be feeling rather than deeply held emotions. A crucial cog in her internal machinery was missing — instead of connecting emotions to experiences, wheels spun aimlessly. She should be afraid. But instead she felt as if she were floating in a bath of lukewarm resignation. If they wanted to kill her, they could. If they wanted to free her, they could. Bravado aside, it was honestly all the same to her.
THE TRUCK TURNED OFF THE FREEWAY, rattling over a dirt track. After some time, slowing down, it made several further turns before coming to a stop. The front doors opened and shut. Feet crunched across the ground, approaching the back. The tarpaulin was pulled aside. Like freight, Zoya was lifted up and placed on her feet, barely able to stand, the wire lashed around her ankles making it difficult to balance. The ground consisted of coarse mud and small stones. Queasy from the journey, she wondered if she was going to be sick. She didn’t want her captors thinking she was weak and afraid. Her gag was removed. She breathed deeply. A man began to laugh, condescending laughter, smug and deep and slow, as the steel wire was unwound and the blindfold was removed.
Zoya squinted at the daylight that seemed as bright as if she was only a hand’s length away from the surface of the sun. Like a subterranean ghoul caught outside its lair, she turned her back on the sky. Her eyes adjusting, the surroundings slowly came into focus. She was standing on a dirt track. In front of her, on the shoulder, were tiny white flowers, spread unevenly like splashes of spilled milk. Looking up, she saw woodland. Deprived of stimuli, her eyes behaved like a desiccated sponge dropped into water, widening, expanding — absorbing every drop of color before her.
Remembering her captors, she turned around. There were two of them — a squat man with thick arms and a thick neck, an oversized muscular torso. Everything about him was stout and squashed, as though he’d been grown in a box too small. In contrast, standing beside him was a boy, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old, her age. He was lean and sinewy. His eyes were sly. He regarded her with open disdain, as if she were beneath him, as if he were an adult and she was nothing but a little girl. She disliked him intensely.
The squat man gestured at the trees:
— Walk. Stretch your legs. Fraera doesn’t want you getting weak.
She’d heard that name before—Fraera—catching fragments of conversations when the vory were drunk and boisterous. Fraera was their leader. Zoya had met with her only once. She’d swept into her cell. She hadn’t introduced herself. She didn’t need to. Power hung around her like a robe. While Zoya hadn’t been afraid of the other thuggish men, whose strength could be measured by the thickness of their arms, she had been afraid of this woman. Fraera had studied her with cool calculation, a master craftsman examining the intricacies of a second-rate watch. Though it had been an opportunity to ask the question—what are your plans for me? — Zoya had been unable to speak, stupefied into silence. Fraera had spent no more than a minute in the cell before leaving, having not said a word.
Free to walk, Zoya stepped off the dirt track, entering the woods, her toes sinking into the damp soil and vegetation. Maybe they’d kill her as she walked toward the trees. Maybe the guns were already raised. She glanced back. The man was smoking. The boy was following her every move. Misunderstanding her glance, he called out:
— Run and I’ll catch you.
She prickled at his superior attitude. He shouldn’t be so sure of himself. If there was one thing she could do, it was run.
Twenty paces into the forest, she stopped, pressing her hand against a tree trunk, eager for sensations different from the monotony of cool, damp bricks. Despite being watched she quickly lost her self-consciousness and crouched down, squeezing a fistful of earth. Trickles of dirty water ran down the sides of her hand. As a child brought up on the kolkhoz, she’d worked alongside her parents. From time to time, tending the fields, her father would bend down and take a handful of soil, rubbing it through his fingers, breaking up clods, squeezing the earth as she was squeezing it now. She’d never asked him why. What did it tell him? Or was it just habit? She regretted not finding out. She regretted many things, every wasted second, sulking and playing silly games and not listening when he wanted to talk and misbehaving and causing her parents to lose their tempers. Now they were gone and she would never speak to them again.
Zoya unclenched her fist, hastily brushing the soil off. She didn’t want to remember anymore. If she couldn’t see the point of life, she could certainly see the point of death. Death would mean the end of all these sad memories, the end of regrets. Death would feel less empty than life. She was sure of it. She stood up. These woods were too much like the woods in Kimov, near the kolkhoz. Better the monotony of cool, damp bricks — they reminded her of nothing. She was ready to go.
Zoya turned back to the truck. She jumped, startled to find the squat muscular man standing directly behind her. She hadn’t heard him approach. Looking down at her, he grinned, revealing a mostly toothless smile. He’d tossed a cigarette aside and she watched where it landed, smoldering on the damp ground. He’d already taken off his coat. Now he rolled up his shirtsleeves:
— Fraera’s orders were for you to get some exercise. And you haven’t had any.
He reached out, touching the top of her shirt, running his finger over her face as though wiping away a tear. His nails were coarse, bitten down. He lowered his voice:
— We’re not tamed, like you. We’re not polite, like you. If we want, we take.
Zoya struggled to maintain her brave façade, stepping away as he stepped forward.
— Taking is what we do best. Submission is what young girls do best. You might call it rape. I call it… exercise.
Fear was what this man desired — fear and domination. She would give him nothing:
— If you touch me, I’ll kick you. If you pin me down, I’ll scratch your eyes. If you break my fingers, I’ll bite your face.
The man laughed out loud:
— And how will you do that, little girl, if I knock you unconscious first?
Every step Zoya took, he matched, his wide body caging her, until she was pressed against a tree, unable to move any farther. Out of sight, her hands patted the tree trunk, searching for something she could use to defend herself. Breaking off a small branch, she rubbed her fingertip over the end. It would have to do. She looked to the boy. He was idling near the truck. Following the direction of her glance, the man turned to the boy:
— She thinks you’re going to save her!
Zoya swung the stick with all her strength, smashing the jagged end into his face. She expected blood. But the stick merely broke apart, crumbling in her hand. Blinking in surprise, the man stared at her hand, at the remains of the stick, and, realizing what had happened, he laughed.
Zoya sprang forward. The man lunged at her. She ducked out of reach. Heading in the direction of the truck, running as fast as she could, she sensed the man was close behind. Surely the boy would cut her off, but she couldn’t see him. Grabbing the door to the driver’s cabin, she opened it and threw herself inside. Her pursuer was only meters away, no longer smiling. Taking hold of the handle, she slammed the door shut just as he crashed against it. She pushed down the lock, hoping he didn’t have the keys. He didn’t — they were in the ignition. Scrambling across to the driver’s seat, she turned the key. The engine spluttered into life.
With only a vague idea of what to do she took hold of the gearshift, scratching it forward — the sound of metal scraping. Nothing seemed to happen. The man had taken off his shirt, wrapping it round his fist: he swung his arm back, shattering the side window, showering the cabin with glass. Unable to reach the gas pedal, Zoya slid off the seat, pressing her foot down, revving the engine. The truck rolled forward as the man opened the door, leaning across the passenger seat. She sank down as far as she could. He grabbed her hair, pulling her up. She cried out, scratching his hands.
Inexplicably, he let go.
Zoya fell back to the floor of the cabin, crouching, breathing fast. The engine chugged. The truck was no longer moving. The man was gone. The door was open. She cautiously stood up, glancing over the passenger seat. She could hear the man. He was swearing. Peering further forward, she saw him lying on the ground.
Confused, Zoya noticed the boy standing close by. There was a knife in the boy’s hand. The blade was smeared with blood. The man was clutching the back of his ankle. It was bleeding heavily: his fingers were red. The boy stared at her, saying nothing. Unable to stand, the man snatched at the boy’s legs. The boy sidestepped out of reach. The man tried to stand, quickly falling, rolling onto his back. The tendons in the back of his ankle had been sliced. His left foot hung uselessly. His face scrunched up, he shouted out terrible threats. Yet he was unable to implement any of them, limping along the ground, a peculiar sight — lethal yet pathetic at the same time.
Ignoring the man entirely, the boy turned to Zoya:
— Get out of the truck.
Zoya stepped out of the cabin, keeping her distance from the injured man. He was using his shirt to bind his foot, tying it around his ankle. The boy wiped the blade of his knife and it seemed to disappear into the folds of his clothes. Keeping one eye on the man, Zoya said:
— Thank you.
The boy frowned:
— Had Fraera ordered me to kill you, I would’ve.
She waited before asking:
— What is your name?
He hesitated, unsure whether or not to answer. Finally he mumbled:
— Malysh.
Zoya repeated the name:
— Malysh.
Zoya peered down at the injured man and then at the truck. She’d driven it off the track. The man pounded the ground, crying out:
— Wait till the others hear what you’ve done. They’ll kill you!
Zoya looked at the boy, concern passing across her face:
— Is that true?
Malysh considered:
— That’s not your problem. We’re going to walk back. If you try and run, I’ll slit your throat. If you let go of my hand, just to pick your nose…
Pleased that, at last, she knew the identity of her secret admirer, Zoya finished his sentence:
— You’ll slit my throat?
Malysh cocked his head to the side, regarding her with suspicion— no doubt wondering if she was mocking him. To put him at ease, Zoya reached out and took hold of his hand.
THE STEPS AND STAIRWAYS were the only solid structures offering elevation from the floodwater and were consequently crowded with prisoners, squeezed together, perched like crows on a power line. Those less lucky were huddled on the wreckage of collapsed bunks — broken planks piled high to create a makeshift timber island surrounded by lapping, icy water. The bodies of those who’d died had been pushed away and were bobbing on the surface. Leo was one of the privileged few high above the water, on the steel steps that led up to the bullet-ridden and cloth-stuffed hatch.
Once the holes in the hatch had been plugged, Leo had been forced to keep the coal engine burning, his chest and face roasted by the fire while his legs, knee-deep in water, went numb with cold — his body sliced into opposite sensations. Shaking with exhaustion, barely able to lift the shovel, he’d worked without help. The other convicts had sat in the damp darkness like cave creatures, motionless and dumb. Facing a lifetime of hard labor, why add another day? If the engine died and the ship ceased to move, drifting in the open sea, that was an issue the guards needed to address. They could shovel their own coal. These men weren’t about to help in their transportation to prison. Leo didn’t have the energy to convince them of the dangers of doing nothing. He knew that if the guards were forced to descend into the hold, after the attempted uprising, they’d shoot indiscriminately as a method of control.
Alone, he’d continued for as long as he could. Not until he’d dropped an entire load, the shovel slipping from his hands, did another man emerge from the gloom to take his place. Leo had mumbled inaudible thanks, climbing the steps — the prisoners making space for him — and slumping at the very top. If it could be called sleeping, he’d slept, shivering and delirious with thirst and hunger.
LEO OPENED HIS EYES. There were people on deck. He could hear footsteps overhead. The ship had come to a stop. Trying to move, he found his body was stiff — his limbs calcified into a fetal shape. He stretched his fingers, then his neck: joints cracking in quick succession. The hatch was thrown open. Leo looked up, squinting at the bright light. The sky seemed as dazzling as molten metal. His eyes adjusting slowly, he accepted that it was, in fact, a dull gray.
Guards appeared around him: machine guns pointing down. One man shouted, addressing the hold:
— Try anything and we’ll scuttle the ship with you all locked in. We’ll drown the lot of you.
The convicts could barely move, let alone mount a serious challenge to their authority. There was no gratitude that they’d kept the engine running, no appreciation that they’d saved the ship, just the muzzle of a machine gun. A different voice called out:
— On deck! Now!
Leo recognized the voice. It was Timur. The sound of his friend revived him. Moving slowly, he sat upright. Like a creaky wood puppet he stood, yanked up by its strings, climbing from the steps to the deck.
The battered steamer was listing, askew in the water. The gun turret was gone. All that remained of it were threads of twisted steel jutting out. It was hard to imagine that the sea, now still and smooth and calm, could have been so ferocious. Making only the briefest eye contact with Timur, Leo observed his friend’s face, the dark lines under his eyes. The storm had been grueling for him too. They’d have to compare stories at a later date.
Moving past, Leo made his way to the edge of the deck, pressing his hands against the rail and taking his first look at the port of Magadan, gateway to the most remote of regions, a part of his country that he was both intimately connected with and a stranger to at the same time. He’d never been here before yet he’d sent hundreds of men and women here. He hadn’t allocated them to any particular Gulag, that hadn’t been his responsibility. But it was inevitable that many had ended up on board this boat, or one like it, shuffling forward in single file, as he was now, ready for processing.
Considering the region’s notoriety he’d expected more obvious and sinister drama in the landscape. But the port, developed some twenty years ago, was small and hushed. Wood shacks mingled with the occasional angular concrete municipal building, the sides of which were decorated with slogans and propaganda, an awkward glimpse of color in an otherwise muted palette. Beyond the port, in the distance, lay a network of Gulags spread among the folds of snow-tipped hills. The hills, gentle near the coast, grew in size farther inland, their vast curved tops merging with the clouds. Tranquil and menacing in equal measure, it was a terrain that made no allowances for frailty, smoothing weakness off its arctic-blasted slopes.
Leo climbed down to the dock where there were small fishing boats: evidence of life other than the imprisonment system. The Chukchi, the local people who’d lived off this land long before it was colonized by Gulags, carried baskets of walrus tusk and the first cod catches of the year. They spared Leo only a cursory, unsympathetic glance, as if the convicts were to blame for their land’s transformation into a prison empire. Guards were stationed on the dock, herding the new arrivals. They were dressed in thick furs and felt, layered over their uniforms — they wore a mixture of Chukchi handcrafted clothes and meanly cut, mass-produced, standard-issue uniforms.
Behind the guards, gathered for the delayed voyage home, were prisoners being released. They’d either served their term or had their sentence quashed. They were free men, except by the looks of them their bodies didn’t know it yet — their shoulders were hunched and their eyes sunken. Leo searched for some sign of triumph, some malicious yet understandable pleasure in seeing others about to set off for the camps that they were leaving behind. Instead, he saw missing fingers, cracked skin, sores, and wasted muscles. Freedom might rejuvenate some, restoring them to a semblance of their former selves, but it would not save all of them. This was what had become of the men and women he’d sent away.
ON DECK TIMUR WATCHED as the prisoners were marched toward a warehouse. Leo was indistinguishable from the others. Their assumed identities were intact. Despite the storm, they’d arrived unharmed. The journey by boat had been a necessary part of their cover. Although it was possible to fly into Magadan, organizing such a flight would have prevented them from slipping into the system unobserved. No prisoners were ever flown in. Fortunately, stealth was unnecessary on the return journey. A cargo plane was standing by at Magadan airstrip. If all went as planned, in two days’ time, he and Leo would be returning to Moscow with Lazar. What had just passed on the ship had been the easiest part of their plan.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. Standing behind him was the captain of the Stary Bolshevik and a man Timur had never seen before — a high-ranking official judging from the quality of his attire. Surprisingly for a man of power, he was exceptionally thin, prisoner thin, an unlikely solidarity with the men he oversaw. Timur’s first thought was that he must be sick. The official spoke, the captain nodding obsequiously before the man had even finished his sentence:
— My name is Abel Prezent, regional director. Officer Genrikh…
He turned to the captain:
— What was his name?
— Genrikh Duvakin.
— Is dead, I’m told.
At the mention of that name, the young man he’d left to die on deck, Timur felt a knot tighten inside him.
— Yes. He was lost at sea.
— Genrikh was a permanent post on the ship. The captain now has need of guards for the return voyage. We have a chronic shortage. The captain remarks that you did a fine job on board with the attempted mutiny. He’s personally requested that you become Genrikh’s replacement.
The captain smiled, expecting Timur to be warmed by the compliment. Timur flushed with panic:
— I don’t understand.
— You’re to remain on board the Stary Bolshevik for the return journey.
— But I’ve been ordered to Gulag 57. I’m to become the second in charge of the camp. I have new directives from Moscow to implement.
— I appreciate that. And you will be stationed at 57 as designated. It will take seven days to Buchta Nakhodka if the weather allows, and then another seven days back here. You’ll be at your post in two or three weeks, at the most.
— Sir, I must insist that my orders be followed and that you find someone else.
Prezent became impatient, his veins protruding like a warning sign:
— Genrikh is dead. The captain has requested you replace him. I will explain to your superiors my decision. The matter is settled. You will remain on the ship.
MALYSH WAS STANDING BESIDE his accuser Likhoi, the vory whose tendon he’d cut. Likhoi’s ankle was heavily bandaged, and having lost a lot of blood he was pale and feverish. Despite his injuries he’d insisted that the skhodka, a trial to mediate between disputing gang members, go ahead:
— Fraera, what of our code? One vory may never harm another? He has shamed you by injuring me. He has shamed all of us.
Supported with the aid of a crutch, Likhoi refused to sit since it would have been a sign of weakness. There was froth on the corners of his lips, tiny bubbles of spit that he hadn’t bothered to wipe away:
— I wanted sex. Is that a crime? Not for a criminal!
The other vory smiled. Confident he had their support, he returned his attention to Fraera, dropping his head in respect, lowering his voice:
— I ask for Malysh’s death.
Fraera turned to Malysh:
— Your reply?
Glancing at the hostile faces surrounding him, he answered:
— I was told to keep her safe. They were your orders. I did as I was told.
Not even the prospect of death made him more articulate. Though Malysh was convinced that Fraera did not want to sanction his death, his actions had left her little room to maneuver. It was undeniable— he’d breached their code. It was forbidden for a vory to harm another vory without authorization from Fraera. They were supposed to protect each other as if their lives were interwoven. In clear violation, he’d acted impulsively, siding with the daughter of their enemy.
Malysh watched as Fraera paced within the circle of her followers, judging the mood of her gang. Popular opinion was against him. In moments such as these power became ambiguous. Did Fraera have the authority to overrule the majority? Or did she have to side with the majority in order to preserve her authority? Malysh’s position was weakened by the fact that his accuser was a popular figure. The man’s klikukha — Likhoi—referred to his vaunted sexual prowess. In contrast Malysh was a lowly klikukha, meaning young one, referring to his inexperience, both sexual and criminal. His membership in the gang had been recent. Whereas the other vory had met in the labor camps, Malysh had joined their ranks by chance. From the age of five years old he’d worked as a pickpocket at the Leningrad’s Baltiysky Rail Terminal. A street child, he’d quickly earned a reputation as the most skillful of thieves. One of the people that he’d robbed was Fraera. Unlike many, she’d noticed her loss immediately and given chase. Surprised by her speed and determination, he’d needed all his skill and knowledge of the terminal building to escape, scrambling out a window barely big enough for a cat. Even so, Fraera had still managed to grab hold of one of his shoes. Expecting that to be the end of the matter, Malysh had returned to work the next day, at a different rail station, only to find Fraera waiting for him, holding his shoe. Instead of a confrontation, she’d offered him the opportunity to leave his union of pickpockets and join her. He’d been the only pickpocket who’d ever managed to give her the slip.
Despite his skills as a thief his appointment to vory status had been controversial. The others looked down on his background of petty crime. It didn’t seem worthy of entry into their ranks. He’d never murdered, he’d never spent time in a Gulag. Fraera brushed these concerns aside. She’d taken a liking to him even though he was solemn and withdrawn, rarely speaking more than a couple of words. The others accepted, reluctantly, that he was now one of them. He accepted, reluctantly, that he was one of them. In reality, he was hers and everyone knew it. In return for her patronage Malysh loved Fraera in the same way that a fierce fighting dog would love its owner, circling her feet, snapping at anyone who came too close. All the same, he was not naïve. With her authority under scrutiny their history counted for nothing. Fraera was determinedly unsentimental. Malysh had not only drawn the blood of another vory, he’d jeopardized her plans. Unable to drive the truck, he and the girl had been forced to walk back into the city, a journey on foot that had taken almost eight hours. They could’ve been stopped and arrested. He’d explained to the girl that if she screamed for help, or let go of his hand, he’d slit her throat. She’d obeyed. She hadn’t complained about being tired, never asking to rest. Even in crowded streets where she could have caused him problems, she’d never let go of his hand.
Fraera spoke:
— The facts are not in dispute. According to our laws, the punishment for harming another vory is death.
Death wasn’t meant in the ordinary sense of the word. He wouldn’t be shot or hung. Death meant exile from the gang. A tattoo would be forced upon him in a visible place — his forehead or the tops of his hands — a tattoo of an open vagina or anus. Such a tattoo was a signal for all vory, no matter what allegiance they held, that the bearer of the tattoo was deserving of any kind of physical and sexual torment, which could be delivered without fear of recourse from the other gang. Malysh loved Fraera. But he would not accept this punishment. Moving his leg, his hand slipped into position. There was a knife secreted in the folds of his trousers. He freed it from the fabric, his finger ready on the spring mechanism, as he calculated his escape.
Fraera stepped forward. She’d come to a decision.
FRAERA STUDIED THE FACES OF HER MEN, expressions of intense concentration fixed upon her, as if this alone would deliver the verdict they desired. She’d spent years earning their loyalty, generously rewarding obedience and ruthlessly striking at dissent. Despite this, so much now hinged on so slight an incident. An uprising needed a unifying cause. Popular, dumb — Likhoi had rallied her men. They saw him as the epitome of a vory. They understood his urges as their urges. If he was on trial, so were they. Trivial though the disagreement was, the problems this skhodka created were far from simple. To their minds, there was only one acceptable verdict: she would have to authorize Malysh’s death.
Listening to them quote vory law as though it were sacred, she marveled at their lack of self-awareness. Her rule was founded upon transgressions of traditional vory structures as much as abidance by them. Most obviously, they were men led by a woman, unprecedented in vory history. In contrast to other derzhat mast—the leader of a community of thieves — Fraera wasn’t motivated by a desire to exist apart from the State. She sought revenge upon it and those who served it. She described that revenge to them in terms that they could understand, claiming that the State was nothing other than a larger, rival gang, with which she was in the most bitter of blood feuds. Yet at heart she knew vory were conservative. They would prefer a male leader. They would prefer to be concerned only with money and sex and drink. Her agenda of revenge was something they tolerated, as indeed was her gender — tolerated only because she was brilliant and they were not. She funded them, protected them, and they depended on her. Without her, the center would fall apart and the gang would break into squabbling, irrelevant factions.
Their unlikely alliance had been formed in Minlag Gulag, a northern camp southeast of Arkhangelsk. Originally a political prisoner convicted under Article 58, at that time Anisya, as she’d been known, had no interest in the vory. They existed within separate social spheres, layers like water and oil. The focus of her life had been her newly born son — Aleksy. He’d been something to live for, a child to love and protect. After three months of nursing him, three months of loving him more than she’d ever imagined she was capable of loving, the child had been taken from her. She’d woken in the middle of the night to find that he was gone. At first the nurse had claimed that Aleksy had died in his sleep. Anisya had grabbed the nurse, shaking her, demanding her child back until being beaten off by a guard. The nurse had spat at her that no woman convicted under Article 58 deserved to bring up a child:
You’ll never be a mother.
The State was Aleksy’s parents now.
Anisya had fallen ill, sick with grief. She’d lain in bed, refusing food, delirious with dreams that she was still pregnant. She’d felt it kicking and moving and screaming for her help. The nurses and feldshers had impatiently waited for her to die. The world had arranged every possible reason for her to die and given her every opportunity. However, something inside of her resisted. She’d examined this resistance to death forensically, like an archaeologist carefully sweeping away fine desert dust, wanting to know what lay beneath it. She’d unearthed not the face of her son, or the face of her husband. She’d found Leo, the sound of his voice, the feel of his hand on hers, the deceit and betrayal, and, like a magical elixir, she drank these memories in one long gulp. Hatred had brought her back from the brink. Hatred had rejuvenated her.
The idea of seeking revenge on an MGB officer, a man hundreds of miles away, would have been laughable had she spoken it aloud. Far from depressing her, her powerlessness was a source of inspiration— she would start from nothing. She would build her revenge from nothing. While other patients slept, doped on doses of codeine, she spat her pills out, collecting them. She’d stayed in the infirmary, feigning sickness while secretly regaining her strength and accumulating dose after dose of medicine, pills that she hid in the lining of her trousers. Once she’d accumulated a significant quantity she’d left the infirmary, much to the nurses’ surprise, returning to the camp with nothing except her wits and trousers lined with pills.
Until her arrest Anisya had always been defined in relation to someone else: one man’s daughter, another man’s wife. On her own, she’d set about redefining herself. Each of her weaknesses she’d appointed to the character of Anisya. Each of her strengths were gathered together and knitted into a new identity — the woman she was about to become. Overhearing the vory, familiarizing herself with their slang, she’d selected a new name for herself. She would be known as Fraera, the outsider. A vory term of contempt, she would take that insult and make it her strength. She’d traded the codeine with the leader of a gang, seeking his favor, asking permission to join them. The vory leader had scoffed, agreeing to her suggestion only if she proved herself by executing a known informer. He’d taken all the codeine as a nonrefundable down payment, setting her a challenge he considered beyond her skills. Only three months previously she’d been nursing her baby. Even if she dared to make some attempt on the informer’s life, she would be caught and sent to an isolation unit, or executed. The derzhat mast had never expected that he would need to honor his promise. Three days later the informer had started to cough during dinner, falling to the floor, his mouth full of blood. His stew of cabbage and potato had been laced with slivers of razor blade. The derzhat mast had been unable to go back on his agreement — the vory code forbade him. Fraera had become the first female member of his gang.
Fraera had no intention of remaining a subordinate. Her plans required that she be in charge. Using the education they’d given her, she’d sought her independence. They had taught her to see her body as a commodity to be traded like any other, a resource to which they attached no concept of shame. She’d set about seducing the Gulag commander. Since he could order any woman to his office for sexual gratification, Fraera had needed him to fall in love with her. She’d viewed her revulsion as merely another obstacle to overcome. Within five months, at her request, he’d transferred the entire vory gang to another camp, leaving Fraera free to start her own.
Since no self-respecting vory would accept a woman’s patronage, Fraera had turned to the outcasts, the outsiders — the vory scavenging on scrapheaps, sucking on fish bones and munching rotten root vegetables. They’d been shunned due to a disagreement, or a betrayal, or some act of incompetence. Some had fallen to the level of a chuskhi, so disgraced that it was forbidden for another vory to even touch them. According to their laws such disgrace was irreversible. Despite this, she’d offered them a second chance when no other vory would condescend to utter their name. Some had been terminally weakened, mentally or physically. Some had repaid the debt by attempting to overthrow her as soon as they’d regained their strength. Most had accepted her patronage.
With Stalin’s death freedom had come early — women and children granted an amnesty. The members of her gang were already on shorter sentences since they were not political criminals. Fraera had no intention of hunting Leo down: plunging a knife in his back or putting a bullet in his head. He needed to suffer as she had suffered. Her ambitions required time and resources. Many gangs traded in black market goods. The opportunities such a market presented were limited since there was already in place a highly developed system. She had no interest in being a small-time trader, cutting a modest profit from imported groceries, not when she had access to a far more precious commodity.
During the persecution of the Church, at the high-water mark of the antireligious movement, many artifacts had been hidden. Icons, books, and silverware, all of which would’ve have been burnt or melted down. Most priests had resisted, taking action to save the Church’s heritage. They’d buried items in fields, stashed silver in chimneys, and even wrapped paintings in waterproof leather, hiding them inside the engine of a disused, rusting tractor. No maps were drawn. Only a few knew the locations, whispered from one to another, beginning with the words:
In case I die…
Most of the guardians of these secrets had been arrested, shot, starved in the Gulags or worked to death. Of those who knew, Fraera had been among the first to be released. She’d unearthed the treasures one by one. Using her vory’s knowledge of the black market infrastructure, the people who needed to be bribed, she’d shipped items out of the country, negotiating sales to Western religious organizations as well as private buyers and international museums. Some had balked at the idea of purchasing another Church’s treasures. Yet Fraera’s sales technique had been savagely effective: were her prices not met the safety of the items could no longer be assured. She’d sent her buyers a seventeenth-century icon of Saint Nikolas of Mozaisk. Once painted in bright colors, the egg tempera had discolored, and to recapture the brilliance it had been covered in gold and silver sheet. She’d imagined the priests weeping as they’d opened the parcel to find the icon smashed into fragments, the saint’s face scratched off except for the eyes. Fraera had not confessed to her role in this vandalism. In the interests of maintaining a functioning business relationship, she’d blamed overzealous Party members. After that, she’d been able to name her price, depicting herself as a savior rather than a profiteer.
Paid in gold, she’d brought in the riches that she’d always promised her vory, unearthing each treasure one by one in case any should consider her leadership redundant. Cautious, trusting no one, the first thing she’d spent money on was a cyanide tooth which she’d proudly displayed to her men, assuring them if they thought she could be tortured for the locations of the missing artifacts they were wrong. She would die to spite them. Judging from the reactions of the gang, two men had been thinking along those lines. She’d killed them before the week was out.
One final loose end had been the Minlag camp commander, who’d come seeking a life with Fraera, as they’d dreamed, and to collect his share of her profits:
Here’s your share.
A knife dragged up through his stomach, it hadn’t been fair — she owed him her life. It had taken him a little less than an hour to die, wriggling on the floor, wondering how he’d been so wrong. Up until the moment the blade tip had entered his stomach he’d been sure that she loved him.
THE ROOM WAS HEAVY WITH ANTICIPATION. Fraera raised her hand:
— We do not follow ordinary vory laws. You once had nothing. You could not feed yourselves. I saved you when the law said I should let you die. When you have fallen sick, I have provided you with medicine. When you are well, I have provided you with opium and drink. My only demand has been obedience. That is our only law. In this regard, Likhoi has failed me.
No one moved. Their eyes flicked from side to side, each man trying to figure out what the next man was thinking. Leaning on his crutch, Likhoi’s mouth twisted into a snarl:
— Let us kill the bitch! Let us be governed by a man! Not some woman who thinks fucking is a crime.
Fraera stepped closer to Likhoi:
— Who would run this new gang, you, Likhoi? You who once licked my boot for a crust of bread? You are governed by impulse, and made stupid by them. You would lead a gang to ruin.
Likhoi turned to the men:
— Let us make her our whore. Let us live like men!
Fraera could have stepped forward and slashed Likhoi’s throat, ending his challenge. Understanding that she needed to win this argument by consent, she countered with the statement:
— He has insulted me.
It was now up to her vory to decide.
No one did anything. Then, a hand grabbed Likhoi and another— his crutch was kicked away. Pushed to the ground, his clothes were ripped from him. Naked, he was pinned down: one man crouched on each arm and leg. The remaining men turned to the stove, taking a red-hot coal from the fire. Fraera looked down at Likhoi.
— You are no longer one of us.
The coal was pressed against his tattoos, the skin bubbling. His skin would be rendered blank, disfigured so no new tattoos could take their place. According to practice, he should then be let go, exiled. But Fraera — who knew the pull of vengeance too well — would make sure his injuries left him no chance of survival. She glanced at Malysh, communicating her desire. He drew his knife, flicking open the blade. He would cut the tattoos off.
IN HER CELL ZOYA GRIPPED THE BARS, listening to the screams as they echoed through the corridor. Her heart beating fast, she concentrated on the sounds. They were the screams of a man, not a young boy. She felt relief.
THEY WERE STANDING SIDE BY SIDE, staring at the next man’s shoulder, rocking with the motion of the freight truck. Although there was no guard stopping them from sitting down, there were no benches and the floor was so cold that they’d taken a collective decision to stand, shuffling to keep warm, like a captured herd of animals. Leo occupied a space closest to the tarpaulin sheet. It had come loose, rendering the compartment’s temperature subzero but offering, by way of exchange, a partial view of the landscape as the material flapped open. The convoy was climbing into the mountains following the Kolyma highway — a surface that unrolled meekly across the landscape as though conscious it was trespassing across a wilderness. In the convoy, there were three trucks in total. Not even a car bothered to follow behind to make sure prisoners didn’t jump down and try to escape. There was nowhere to escape to.
Abruptly the highway steepened, the rear of the truck tilting down, angled toward the snow-covered valley to such an acute degree that Leo was forced to grip the steel frame, the other prisoners pressing against him as they slid down. Unable to make the climb, the truck remained stationary, teetering and ready to roll back. The handbrake was yanked up. The engine stopped. The guards unlocked the back, spilling the prisoners onto the road:
— Walk!
The first two trucks had managed to climb over the crest of the hill, disappearing from view. The remaining truck — without the weight of the prisoners — started its engine and accelerated up the hill. Left behind, the convicts trundled, huffing like old men, the guards at the back, guns ready. Set against the terrain, the guards’ swagger seemed slight and absurd — an insect strutting. Observing them through a convict’s eyes, Leo marveled at how different the guards believed themselves to be — men marshaling cattle. He wanted to say, just to see their surprise:
I am one of you.
The idea caught him short. Was he one of them? Smug with power, stupefied by State-allocated importance: he was certain that he had been.
At the crest the highway flattened out. Leo paused, catching his breath, surveying the landscape before him. Blasted by cold air, his eyes watering, he was confronted by the surface of a moon — a sprawling plateau as wide as a city, smoothed with ice and permafrost, pock-marked with craters. The lonely highway sliced an uncertain diagonal, heading toward a mountain larger than any they’d encountered so far: rising out of the plateau like a monstrous camel’s hump. Somewhere at the base was Gulag 57.
As the convicts climbed back into the truck, Leo glanced at the other two vehicles. He had to face up to the fact that Timur wasn’t in the convoy. There was no chance that his friend would’ve gotten into one of those vehicles without making contact with him, even if it was nothing more than a glance across a crowd. Leo hadn’t seen him since yesterday, passing him on the deck of the Stary Bolshevik. After that he’d been shepherded into the transit camp at Magadan where he’d been deloused, inspected by a doctor who’d declared him fully fit, assigned to TFT, tyazoly fezichesky trud, heavy labor, no limitations placed on work duties. Duly processed, he’d waited in one of the large tents erected for the arrivals, the smell of canvas reminding him of makeshift medical facilities during the Great Patriotic War, hundreds of beds crammed together. They’d agreed to find each other that night. Timur hadn’t appeared. Leo had reassured himself with various explanations: there had been some delay and they’d find each other in the morning. It was too risky to ask after him — aside from jeopardizing their cover, Leo might be mistaken for an informer. Unable to sleep, he’d risen early, expecting to see his friend. When they’d been loaded into the trucks, Leo had held back. Comforting explanations for Timur’s absence had become harder to concoct.
Leo was about to meet Lazar for the first time in seven years. Their first encounter, the moment they laid eyes on each other, was perhaps the most dangerous moment in the entire plan. There could be no question of Lazar’s hatred being eroded by time. If he didn’t try and kill Leo outright, he’d announce that Leo was a Chekist, an interrogator, a man responsible for the incarceration of hundreds of innocent men and women. How long could he survive surrounded by those who had been tortured and interrogated? This was why Timur’s presence was essential. They’d predicted a violent reunion. More than that, they’d factored it into their calculations. As a guard Timur could intervene and stop any altercation. Regulations stipulated that Leo and Lazar would be pulled out of the conflict and ordered to the isolator, individual punishment cells. In adjacent cells, Leo would have an opportunity to explain that he was here to free him, that his wife was alive, and that there was no chance he’d ever be released by ordinary means. He either accepted Leo’s help or died a slave.
Running his icy fingers across his newly shaven head, Leo frantically improvised a solution. There was only one option — he’d have to postpone meeting Lazar until Timur caught up. Hiding wouldn’t be easy. Gulag 57 had contracted in size since Stalin’s death both in prisoner numbers and geographical sprawl. Previously it had been composed of many lagpunkts scattered over the mountainside, sub-colonies within a colony, some positioned in such exposed topography and in such poor mining yields that their purpose could only have been death. Gulag 57 had closed all of these smaller barracks, a prison empire whittled back to the main base at the foot of the mountain, the only place where the gold mine had ever produced a viable return. From Leo’s assessment of the blueprints even this central complex was rudimentary. The zona, the controlled area, was rectangular in shape. Although a curved design would have suited the terrain better, law dictated that the zona must be of regular design. There were to be no rounded edges in a Gulag except for the barbed wire, coiled across poles six meters high, sunk two meters deep, forming an outer perimeter. Inside the perimeter there were several sleeping barracks, a communal eating barracks, closed off from the administration center by an inner rectangle of barbed-wire fencing, divisions within divisions, zones within zones. Security was provided by six small guard towers, two substantial vakhta towers — one on either side of the main gate with mounted, heavy machine guns and log-panel protective walls. At each corner of the zona was a smaller tower where officers surveyed the ground through telescopic sights. If the guards fell asleep, or passed out drunk — freedom depended upon scaling the mountain or crossing kilometers of exposed plateau.
Upon arrival Leo would be herded into the inner prisoner zone. Since there were three barracks he could in theory remain inconspicuous, at least for another twenty-four hours. That might give Timur enough time to catch up.
The truck slowed. Wary of being picked off by a zealous sniper in the vakhta, Leo glanced out, his eye drawn to the mountain. The slopes were perilously steep. Against the mountain’s colossal bulk the mine, a series of trenches and man-made streams where clods of earth were washed and sifted for gold, appeared insignificant.
There were shadows in the tops of the two vakhta: guards watching the new arrivals. The towers were fifteen meters high, accessed by a series of rickety ladders that could be pulled up at any time. In between the towers the gates were opened by hand. Guards pushed the timber frames, scratching them across the snow. The trucks entered the compound. From the back of the truck Leo watched as the gates closed behind him.
STEPPING DOWN FROM THE BACK OF THE TRUCK, Leo was ushered into a single line by the guards. Side by side, single file, the convicts stood shivering, ready for inspection. With no scarf and an ill-fitting hat, Leo had stuffed rags around his jacket collar to insulate himself against the cold. Despite his best efforts he was unable to stop his teeth tapping. His eyes roamed the zona. The simple timber barracks were raised off frozen soil, supported on squat stilts. The horizon was barbed wire and white sky. The buildings and structures were so rudimentary, it was as if a once mighty civilization had de-evolved, skyscrapers replaced with huts. This was where they died: the men and women he’d arrested, the men and women whose names he’d forgotten. This was where they’d stood. This was what they saw. Except he did not feel how they’d felt. They would have had no plans to escape. They would have had no plans at all.
Waiting in silence, there was no sign of Gulag 57’s commander, Zhores Sinyavksy, a man whose reputation had spread beyond the Gulags, carried out by the survivors and cursed across the country. Fifty-five years old, Sinyavksy was a veteran of the Glavnoe upravlenie lagerei—Gulag for short — his entire adult life dedicated to enforcing lethal servitude. He’d overseen convict construction projects including the Fergana Canal and the aborted railway at the mouth of the Ob River, a set of tracks that never connected with their intended destination, the Yenisei River, falling many hundreds of kilometers short, rotting in the ground like the remains of a prehistoric steel beast. Yet the failure of that project, costing many thousands of lives and billions of rubles, hadn’t damaged his career. While other supervisors gave in to demands that prisoners rest and eat and sleep, he’d always met his targets. He’d forced prisoners to work in the dead of winter and at the height of summer. He hadn’t been building a railway. He’d been building his reputation, chiseling his name into other men’s bones. It didn’t matter if the steel railway sleepers hadn’t been strengthened, if they cracked in the July sun and buckled in the January ice. It didn’t matter if workers collapsed. On paper his quota had been fulfilled. On paper he was a man to trust.
Flicking through his file, it was self-evident that for Sinyavksy this was more than a job. He didn’t crave privileges. He wasn’t motivated by money. When he’d been offered comfortable administrative posts in temperate climates, overseeing camps not far from cities, he’d refused. Fifty-five years old, he desired to rule over the most hostile terrain ever colonized. He’d volunteered to work in Kolyma. He’d seen the desolation and decided this was the place for him.
Hearing the creak of wood, Leo looked up. At the top of the stairs Sinyavksy stepped out of the command barracks, wrapped in reindeer furs so thick they doubled his size. The coat was as decorative as it was practical, hung across his shoulders with such aplomb the implication was that he’d killed the animals in a heroic battle. The theatricality of his appearance would surely have been ludicrous in any other man and in any other place. Yet here, on him, it seemed appropriate. He was emperor of this place.
Unlike the other prisoners, whose survival instincts were more sharply tuned, having spent several months on trains and in transit camps, Leo stared openly at the commander with reckless fascination. Belatedly remembering that he was not a militia officer anymore, he turned away, redirecting his gaze down at the ground. A convict could be shot for making eye contact with a guard. Though regulations had changed in theory, there was no way of knowing if those changes had been implemented.
Sinyavksy called out:
— You!
Leo kept his eyes fixed down. He could hear the stairs creaking as the commander descended from the elevated platform, reaching the ground, footsteps crunching across snow and ice. Two beautifully tailored felt boots stepped into his frame of view. Even now Leo kept his eyes down like a scolded dog. A hand gripped his chin, forcing him to look up. The commander’s face was lined with thick dark grooves, skin like cured meat. His pupils were tinged with an iodine yellow. Leo had made a rudimentary mistake. He’d stood out. He’d been noticed. A common technique was to make an example out of a convict upon arrival to show the others what they could expect.
— Why do you look away?
Silence, Leo could feel the other prisoners’ relief emanating from them like heat. He’d been picked, not them. Sinyavksy’s voice was peculiarly soft:
— Answer.
Leo replied:
— I did not wish to insult you.
Sinyavksy let go of Leo’s chin, stepping back and reaching into his pocket.
Anticipating the barrel of a gun, it took Leo several seconds to adjust. Sinyavksy’s arm was outstretched — yes — but his palm was turned up to the sky. On the flat of his hand were small purple flowers, each no bigger than a shirt button. Leo wondered if this was a moment’s insanity as a bullet passed through his brain, a confusion of images, memories smashed together. But time passed, the delicate flowers were fluttering in the wind. This was real.
— Take one.
Was it a poison? Was he to writhe in pain in front of the others? Leo didn’t move, arms flat by his side.
— Take one.
Obedient, powerless, Leo reached out, his thumb and forefinger trembling, stumbling across Sinyavksy’s palm as if they were the legs of a drunken man, almost knocking the flowers off. Finally, he took hold of one. It was dried, the petals brittle.
— Smell it.
Once again, Leo did nothing, unable to comprehend his instructions. They were repeated:
— Smell it.
Leo lifted it to his nose, sniffing the tiny flower, smelling nothing. There was no scent. Sinyavksy smiled:
— Lovely, yes?
Leo considered, unsure if this was a peculiar trap:
— Yes.
— You love it?
— I love it.
He patted Leo on the shoulder:
— You shall be a flower grower. This landscape looks barren. But it is full of opportunities. There are only twenty weeks in the year when the topsoil thaws. During those weeks I allow all prisoners to cultivate the land. You can grow whatever you like. Most grow vegetables. But the flowers that grow here are quite beautiful, in their modest way. Modest flowers are often the prettiest, don’t you agree?
— I agree.
— Do you think you will grow flowers? I don’t want to force it upon you. There are other things you can do.
— Flowers… are… nice.
— Yes they are. They are nice. And modest flowers are the nicest.
The commander leaned close to Leo, whispering:
— I shall save you a good patch of soil. Our secret…
He squeezed Leo’s arm affectionately.
Sinyavksy stepped away, addressing the entire line of prisoners, his hand outstretched, displaying the small purple flowers:
— Take one!
The prisoners hesitated. He repeated the order:
— Take! Take! Take!
Frustrated with their sluggish response, he threw the flowers into the air: purple petals fluttering around their shaven heads. Reaching into his pocket, taking another handful he threw them again, over and over, showering them. Some men looked up, tiny purple petals catching in their lashes. A few men were still looking at the ground, no doubt convinced this was a trick of the most devious kind that only they had passed.
Still holding his flower, balanced in the cup of his hand, Leo didn’t understand, he couldn’t make sense of it — had he read the wrong file? This man with pockets full of flowers couldn’t be the same man who had ordered prisoners to work while their comrades’ bodies rotted beside them, couldn’t be the commander who’d supervised the Fergana Canal and the Ob River railway. His supply of flowers finished, the last petals spinning to the snow, Sinyavksy continued his introduction speech:
— These flowers grew out from the meanest, cruelest soil in the world! Beauty from ugliness: that is our belief here! You are not here to suffer. You are here to work just as I am here to work. We are not so different, you and I. It is true that we will do different kinds of work. Perhaps your work is harder. Yet we will work hard together, for our country. We will improve ourselves. We will become better people, here, in this place where no one expects to find goodness.
The words seemed heartfelt. They were uttered with genuine emotion. Whether because the commander was racked with guilt, or remorse, or fear at being judged by the new regime, it was quite obvious that he’d gone insane.
Sinyavksy gestured to the guards; one hurried toward the mess hall barracks, returning moments later with several prisoners, each carrying a bottle and a tray of small tin cups. They poured a thick, dark liquid into the cups, offering one to each convict. Sinyavksy explained:
— The drink, khvoya, is an extract of pine needle combined with rose water. Both are rich in vitamins. They will keep you healthy. When you are healthy you are productive. You will lead a more productive life here than you did outside the camp. My job is to help you become a more productive citizen. In so doing, I become a more productive citizen. Your welfare is my welfare. As you improve, so do I.
Leo hadn’t moved. He hadn’t changed position. His hand was still outstretched. A breeze caught the flower and blew it to the ground. He bent down and picked it up. When he stood up, the prisoner with the pine needle concentrate had arrived. Leo took hold of the small tin cup, his fingers briefly touching the fingers of the prisoner. For a split second they were strangers, and then recognition sparked.
LAZAR’S EYES APPEARED ENORMOUS, black-rock moons with a red sun blazing behind them. He was thin, his body boiled down to a concentrate of its former self — his features starker, more pronounced, skin stretched tight except for the left side of his face where his jaw and cheek had slipped, as though they’d been made from wax and left too close to the fire. Leo reasoned he must have suffered a stroke before remembering the night of the arrest. His fist clenched involuntarily — the same fist he’d used to punch Lazar again and again until his jaw had turned soft. Surely seven years was long enough to heal, long enough for any injury to heal. But Lazar would have received no medical treatment in the Lubyanka. The interrogators might even have made use of the injury, twisting the broken bone whenever his answers were unsatisfactory. He would’ve received limited treatment in the camps, no reconstructive surgery — the idea was fanciful. That impulsive, senseless act of violence, a crime Leo had forgotten about as soon as his knuckles ceased being sore, had been immortalized in bone.
Lazar made no discernible reaction to their reunion except to pause from his duties as their eyes cracked against each other like flints. His face was inscrutable, the left side of his mouth dragged into a permanent grimace. Without saying a word, he moved away, down the line of prisoners, pouring small cups of pine needle extract for the new arrivals, not glancing back, as though nothing were amiss, as though they were strangers again.
Leo clutched his small tin cup, fingers clamped tight around it, remaining in the exact same position. The gelatinous surface of the pine needle and rose syrup quivered as his hand trembled. He’d lost the ability to think or strategize. The camp commander called out, in good humor:
— You there! Friend! Flower lover! Drink! It will make you strong!
Leo brought the cup to his lips, tipping the thick black liquid down his neck. Intensely bitter, it lined his throat like tar, making him want to cough it up. He closed his eyes, forcing it down.
Opening his eyes, he watched Lazar finish his duties, returning to the barracks, walking at an unhurried pace. Even as he passed by he didn’t look back, showing no sign of agitation or excitement. Commander Sinyavksy continued to speak for some time. But Leo had stopped listening. Inside his clammy fist, he’d crushed the dried purple flower to powder. The prisoner standing to his right hissed:
— Pay attention! We’re moving!
The commander had finished talking. Introductions were over; the convicts were being shepherded from the administration zone into the prisoner zone. Leo was near the back of the line. Evening had set, extinguishing the horizon. Lights flickered in the guard towers. No powerful spotlights searched the ground. Except for the dull glow of the hut windows, the zona was completely dark.
They passed through the second barbed-wire fence. The guards remained at the border of the two zones, guns ready, ushering them toward the barracks. No officer entered this zone at night. It was too dangerous, too easy for a prisoner to smash their skull and disappear. They were only concerned with maintaining the perimeter, sealing the convicts in and leaving them to their own devices.
Leo was the last to enter the barracks — Lazar’s barracks. He would have to face him alone, without Timur. He’d reason with him, talk to him. The man was a priest: he would hear his confession. Leo had much to tell. He had changed. He’d spent three years trying to make amends. Like a man walking to his execution, he climbed the flight of steps with heavy legs. He pushed on the door, breathing deeply, inhaling the stench of an overcrowded barracks and revealing a panorama of hate-filled faces.
LEO HAD BLACKED OUT. Coming around, he found that he was on the floor, dragged by his ankles, submerged beneath waves of kicking prisoners. His fingers touched his scalp, finding the skin sticky with blood. Unable to focus, unable to fight, helpless at the epicenter of this ferocity, he couldn’t survive for long. A glob of spit hit his eye. A boot slammed into the side of his head. His jaw hit the floor, his teeth scratching against each other. Abruptly, the kicking and spitting and shouting abated. In unison the mob pulled away, leaving him spluttering, as though washed up by a storm. From roaring hatred to silence, someone must have intervened.
Leo remained where he was, afraid that these precious seconds of calm would end as soon as he dared to look up. A voice sounded out:
— Get up.
Not Lazar’s voice, but a younger man. Leo unraveled from his fetal position, peering up at the figures looming over him — there were two, Lazar and, standing beside him, perhaps thirty years old, a man with red hair and a red beard.
Wiping the phlegm from his face, the blood from his lips and nose, Leo awkwardly rotated himself into a sitting position. Some two hundred or so convicts were watching, perched on the top bunks, standing close by, as though attending a theatrical performance with different grades of seating. The new arrivals were in the corner: relieved that attention wasn’t focused on them.
Leo got to his feet, hunched like a cripple. Lazar stepped forward, examining him, circling, before returning to the spot directly in front, eye to eye. His expression flickered with tremendous energy, taut skin trembling. Slowly he opened his mouth, closing his eyes as he did, clearly in terrible pain. The word he uttered was less than a whisper, a tiny exhalation of air, carrying on it the faintest sound:
— Max… im.
Everything Leo had planned to say, the story of how he’d changed, tales of his enlightenment, the entire edifice of his transformation, disintegrated like snow on hot coal. He’d always comforted himself that he was a better man than most of the agents he’d worked alongside, men who fashioned themselves a set of gold teeth from the mouths of their interrogated suspects. He had not been the worst: not by far. He was in the middle, perhaps even lower, hiding in the shadows of the monsters that had murdered above him. He had done wrong, a modest kind of wrong — he was at best a mediocre villain. Hearing that name, the alias he’d chosen himself, he began to cry. He tried to stop, but to no avail. Lazar reached out and touched one of these tears, collecting it, holding the drop on the end of his finger. Peering at it for some time, he returned it to the exact spot he’d taken it from — pressing his finger hard against Leo’s cheek and smearing it down contemptuously, as if to say:
Keep your tears. They count for nothing.
He took hold of Leo’s hand — palm scarred from the chase through the sewers — and placed it against the left side of his face. His cheek felt uneven, like rubble, a mouth full of gravel. He opened his mouth again, wincing, closing his eyes. As though the laws of physics had been reversed, smell traveling faster than light, an odor of decay struck Leo first, teeth rotten and diseased. Many were missing altogether: the gum deformed, black streaks with patchy, bloody stubs. Here was transformation, here was change: a brilliant orator, thirty years of speeches and sermons, turned into a stinking mute.
Lazar closed his mouth, stepping back. The red-haired man offered Lazar the side of his face as though it were a canvas to be painted upon. Lazar leaned so close that his lips were almost touching the man’s ear. As he spoke his lips hardly seemed to move, tiny movements. The red-haired man delivered his words:
— I treated you as a son. I opened my home to you. I trusted you. I loved you.
The man didn’t translate first person into third, speaking as though he were Lazar. Leo replied:
— Lazar, I have no defense. All the same, I beg you to listen. Your wife is alive. She has sent me here to free you.
Leo and Timur had speculated as to whether Lazar might have already been sent a coded letter containing Fraera’s plans. However, Lazar’s surprise was genuine. He knew nothing of his wife. He knew nothing of how she’d changed. With a gesture of irritation he waved at the red-haired man, who sprang forward, kicking Leo to his knees:
— You’re lying!
Leo addressed Lazar:
— Your wife is alive. She is the reason I’m here. It’s the truth!
The red-haired man glanced over his shoulder, awaiting instructions. Lazar shook his head. Taking his cue, the red-haired man translated:
— What do you know of the truth? You’re a Chekist! Nothing you say can be trusted!
— Anisya was freed from the Gulags three years ago. She’s changed, Lazar. She has become a vory.
Several of the vory watching laughed, ridiculing the notion that the wife of a dissident priest could enter their ranks. Leo pressed on regardless:
— Not only is she vory, she’s a leader. She no longer goes by the name Anisya. Her klikukha is Fraera.
The cries of incredulity soared. Men were shouting, pushing forward, insulted at the notion that a woman could rule them. Leo raised his voice:
— She’s in charge of a gang, sworn upon revenge. She is not the woman you remember, Lazar. She has kidnapped my daughter. If I cannot secure your release she’ll kill her. There’s no chance of you ever being released. You will die here, unless you accept my help. All our lives depend upon your escape.
Outraged by his story, the crowd fermented into a second fury of abuse, standing up and closing around him, ready to attack again. However, Lazar raised his hands, ushering them back. He evidently had some standing among them, for they obeyed without question, returning to their bunks. Lazar ushered the red-haired man to his side, speaking into his ear. The man nodded, approving. Once Lazar had finished, the red-haired man spoke with an air of self-importance:
— You are a desperate man. You would say anything. You are a liar. You always have been. You have fooled me before. You will not fool me again.
If Timur had arrived he would’ve offered Fraera’s letter as proof that she was alive. She’d written it to answer these exact doubts. Without the letter, Leo was helpless. He said, desperate:
— Lazar, you have a son.
The room fell silent. Lazar shook, as if something inside him was trying to break out. He opened his mouth, a twisted motion, and despite his outrage, the word he muttered was almost inaudible:
— No!
His voice was as deformed as his cheek, a cracked sound. The pain of projecting even that one word had left him weak. A chair was brought and Lazar sat down, wiping the perspiration from his pale face. Unable to speak anymore, he gestured at the red-haired man, who, for the first time, spoke as himself:
— Lazar is our priest. Many of us are his congregation. I am his voice. Here he can speak about God and not worry that he’s saying the wrong thing. The State cannot send him to prison if he is already here. In prison, he has found the freedom they would not give him outside. My name is Georgi Vavilov. Lazar is my mentor, as he once tried to be yours. Except that I would rather die than betray him. I despise you.
— I can get you out too, Georgi.
The red-haired man shook his head:
— You thrive on men’s weaknesses. I have no desire to be anywhere but by my master’s side. Lazar believes that it is a divine justice that you have been sent to him. Judgment shall be passed upon you and by men you once passed judgment on.
Lazar turned to an elderly man standing at the back of the barracks, so far uninvolved in the proceedings. Lazar indicated that the man should step forward. He did so, slowly, walking crookedly. The elderly man addressed Leo:
— Three years ago I met the man who’d interrogated me. Like you, he had been sent into the prisons, a place where he’d sent so many. We devised a punishment for him. We composed a list of every torture we, as a group, had ever suffered. The list details over one hundred methods. Every night we inflicted one of those tortures on the interrogator, working our way down the list, torture by torture. If he could survive them all, we would allow him to live. We did not want him to die. We wanted him to experience every method. To this end, we stopped him from hanging himself. We fed him. We kept him strong so that he might suffer more. He reached the number thirty before he deliberately ran toward the edge of the zona and was shot by the guards for attempting to escape. The torture that he inflicted upon me was the first torture on the list. It is the torture you will face tonight.
The elderly convict rolled up his trouser legs, revealing knees that were purple, blackened, and deformed.
THE CLOUD LEVEL HAD SUNK a thousand meters, obliterating the view. Silver-gilded droplets hung in the air — a mist part ice, part water, part magic — out of which the drab highway appeared meter by meter, a gray, lumpish carpet unraveling in front of them. The truck was making slow progress. Frustrated with the additional delay, Timur checked his watch, forgetting that it was broken, smashed in the storm. It clung uselessly to his wrist, the glass cracked, the mechanism jammed with salt water. He wondered how badly it had been damaged. His father had claimed it to be a family heirloom. Timur suspected this was a lie and the way in which his father, a proud man, had disguised giving his son a battered secondhand watch for his eighteenth birthday. It was because of the lie, rather than despite it, that the watch had become Timur’s most treasured possession. When his eldest son turned eighteen he intended to hand it down to him, although he’d not yet decided whether to explain the sentimental importance of the lie or merely perpetuate the mythology of its origins.
Despite the delay, Timur took great comfort from the fact that at least he’d avoided being sent back across the Sea of Okhotsk on the return voyage to Buchta Nakhodka. Yesterday evening he’d been on board the Stary Bolshevik, the ship had been ready to depart: repairs had been made to the hold, the water pumped out, and the newly released prisoners loaded in, their faces knotted in contemplation of freedom. Unable to see a way out of his predicament, Timur had stood on deck, paralyzed, watching as the harbor crew unfastened the ropes. In another couple of minutes the ship would’ve been at sea and he would’ve had no prospect of reaching Gulag 57 for another month.
In desperation, Timur had walked into the captain’s bridge, hoping sheer force of circumstance would compel him to come up with a plausible excuse. As the captain had turned to him he’d blurted out:
— There is something I have to tell you.
An inept liar, he’d remembered it was always easier to tell a version of the truth.
— I’m not actually a guard. I work for the MVD. I’ve been sent here to review the changes being implemented into the system following Khrushchev’s speech. I’ve seen enough of the way in which this ship is managed.
At the mere mention of the speech, the captain had paled:
— Have I done wrong?
— I’m afraid the contents of my report are secret.
— But the journey here, the things that happened, that wasn’t my fault. Please, if you file a report describing how I lost control of the ship.
Timur had marveled at the power of his excuse. The captain had moved closer, his voice imploring:
— None of us could’ve foreseen the partition wall would smash. Don’t let me lose my job. I can’t find another. Who would work with me? Knowing what I’d done for a living? Running a prison ship? I would be hated. This is the only place for me. This is where I belong. Please, I have nowhere else to go.
The captain’s desperation had become embarrassing. Timur had stepped away:
— The only reason I’m telling you is because I can’t make the return voyage. I need to talk to Abel Prezent, regional director. You’ll have to manage the ship without me. You can offer some excuse to the crew for my absence.
The captain had smiled obsequiously, bowing his head.
Stepping off ship onto the harbor, Timur had congratulated himself on chancing across such a potent excuse. Confident, he’d entered the administrative section of the prisoner processing center, climbing the stairs to the office of regional director Abel Prezent, the man who’d assigned him to the Stary Bolshevik. As he knocked and entered, Prezent’s face had scrunched up with irritation:
— Is there a problem?
— I’ve seen enough of the ship in order to write my report.
Like a cat sensing danger, Prezent’s body language had changed:
— What report?
— I’ve been sent by the MVD to collect information about how the reforms are being implemented since Khrushchev’s speech. The intention was for me to remain unknown, unidentified, so that I might more accurately judge the way in which the camps are being managed. However, since you reassigned me to the Stary Bolshevik, against my orders, it has forced me to come forward. Needless to say, I’m not carrying identification. We did not think it necessary. We did not anticipate that my duties would be challenged. However, if you need proof, I know the exact details of your employment record.
Timur and Leo had carefully studied the files of all the key figures in the region:
— You worked at Karlag, Kazakhstan, for five years, and before that—
Prezent had interrupted politely, raising a finger, his voice constricted, as though invisible hands were squeezing his thin, pale throat:
— Yes, I see.
He’d stood up, considering, his hands behind his back:
— You are here to write a report?
— That is correct.
— I suspected something like this would happen.
Timur had nodded, pleased with the credibility of his improvised cover story:
— Moscow requires regular evaluations.
— Evaluations… that is a lethal word.
Timur had not anticipated this meditative and melancholic reaction. He’d tried to soften the implied threat:
— This is fact-gathering and nothing more.
Prezent had replied:
— I work hard for the State. I live in a place where no one else wants to live. I work with the most dangerous prisoners in the world. I have done things no one else wanted to do. I was taught how to be a leader. Then I was told those lessons were wrong. One minute it is law to do a certain kind of thing. The next minute, it is a crime. The law says I should be strict. The law says I should be lenient.
Timur’s lie had been swallowed whole. Mere reference to the Secret Speech had them cowering. Unlike the captain, Prezent did not implore, or beg for a favorable report. He’d become nostalgic for a time gone by, a time where his place and purpose had been clear. Timur had pressed his advantage:
— I need immediate transport to Gulag 57.
Prezent had said:
— Of course.
— I must leave right now.
— The journey into the mountains can’t be made at night. — Hazardous or not, I would prefer to make it now.
— I understand. I’ve delayed you. And I apologize. But it’s simply not possible. The first thing tomorrow, that is the earliest. There is nothing I can do about the darkness.
TIMUR TURNED TO THE DRIVER:
— How long till we’re there?
— Two, three hours — the mist is bad, three hours, I say.
The driver laughed, before adding:
— I never heard of anyone being in a hurry to get to a Gulag before.
Timur ignored the joke, channeling his impatient energy into reassessing his plans. Success required several elements to slot into place. Out of their control was Lazar’s cooperation. Timur had in his possession a letter written by Fraera, the contents of which had been read and reread, checking for a warning or some secret instruction. They’d found none. As an additional persuasive measure, unbeknownst to Fraera, Leo had insisted they bring a photo of a seven-year-old boy. The child in the photo wasn’t Lazar’s son, but he had no way of knowing that. The apparent sight of him might prove more powerful than the mere idea of him. Should this fail then Timur had in his possession a bottle of chloroform.
The truck slowed to a stop. Up ahead was a timber bridge, simple in design. It spanned a deep faultline, a crack in the landscape. The driver made a snaking movement with his hand:
— When the mountain snow melts, it flows fast…
Timur strained forward in his seat, peering at the rickety bridge, the far side of which disappeared into the mist. The driver frowned:
— That bridge was built by prisoners. You can’t trust it!
There was one other guard traveling with them, a man who up until this point had been asleep. Judging from the smell of his clothes, he’d been drunk last night, probably drunk every night of his life. The driver shook him:
— Wake up! Useless… lazy… wake up!
The guard opened his eyes, blinking at the bridge. He wiped his eyes, scrambled out of the cabin, jumping down to the ground. He belched loudly and began waving the truck forward. Timur shook his head:
— Wait.
He stepped out the cabin, climbing down to the ground and stretching his legs. Shutting the door, he walked to the beginning of the bridge. The driver was right to be concerned: the bridge wasn’t much wider than the truck. There was maybe thirty centimeters to spare on either side, nothing to stop the tires slipping off if the approach wasn’t exactly aligned. Glancing down, Timur saw the river some ten meters below. Tongues of smooth, dripping ice jutted out from either side of the bank. They’d begun to melt, rapid drips feeding a narrow undulating flow. In a matter of weeks, when the snows melted, there’d be a torrent.
The truck crept forward. The hungover guard lit a cigarette, content to shirk responsibility. Timur gestured for the driver to align the truck to the right: it was edging off course. He gestured again. Visibility was poor but he could see the driver, the driver must be able to see him. Timur called out:
— To the right!
Even though it hadn’t made the necessary adjustments the truck accelerated. At the same time, its headlights flared up, a bright sulfur yellow blinding him. The truck was coming straight toward him.
Timur dived out of the way, but too late: the steel bumper smashing into him while he was midair, crushing his body, before spitting him out over the ravine. Briefly suspended in the air, upturned toward the shimmering sky, then falling, his body spun, twisting toward the river, directly above one of the ice lips. He crashed facedown: bone and ice splintering simultaneously.
Timur lay with his ear flat to the ice, like a safecracker. He couldn’t move his fingers or his legs. He couldn’t move his neck. He felt no pain.
Up above, someone shouted down:
— Traitor! You’d spy on your own kind! We stick together! Us against them!
Timur couldn’t turn his neck to look up. But he recognized the voice as the driver’s:
— There will be no reports, no blame, and no guilt — not in Kolyma, maybe in Moscow, but not here. We did what we had to do! We did what we were told to do! Fuck Khrushchev’s speech! Fuck your report! Let’s see you write it from down there.
The hungover guard chuckled. The driver addressed him:
— Go down.
— Why?
— Otherwise everyone will see his body.
— Who will? There’s no one here.
— I don’t know, someone like him, if they send another.
— I don’t need to go down there. The ice will melt.
— In three weeks it will, who knows who’ll drive by in that time. Just go down there and push him in the river. Do this right.
— I can’t swim.
— He’s on the ice.
— But if the ice breaks?
— You’ll get your feet wet. Just get down! No mistakes.
Staring into the river, his breathing ragged and rasping, Timur listened as the reluctant executioner, whining like a lazy teenager, clambered down the steep bank — the clumsy sound of his approaching murderer.
For as long as he could remember Timur’s greatest fear had been a member of his family dying in the Gulags. He’d never worried about himself. He’d always been sure he could cope and that somehow, no matter what, he’d find a way home.
These were the last minutes of his life. He thought of his wife. He thought of his sons.
ANNOYED AT BEING BOSSED AROUND, his head pounding from a hangover, forced to slip and slide down the ravine wall, risking spraining his ankle, the guard finally reached the riverbank. His heavy boots touched the ice sheet tentatively, testing its strength. In an attempt to distribute his weight evenly, he lowered himself to his hands and knees, crawling to the body of the guy sent from Moscow. He tapped the traitor with the barrel of his gun. He didn’t move.
— He’s dead!
The driver called out:
— Check his pockets.
He pushed his hand into the man’s pockets, finding a letter, some money, and a knife — odds and ends.
— There’s nothing!
— What about his watch?
He unclipped it from the man’s wrist.
— It’s broken!
— Push the body into the water.
Sitting on the ice, using his boots, he kicked out, pushing the body toward the river. The man was heavy but his body slid across the smooth ice without too much trouble. On the edge of the ice lip, he saw the man’s eyes were open. They blinked — the man, the Moscow spy, was still alive.
— He’s alive!
— Not for long. Push him in. I’m getting cold.
He watched the man blink once more before kicking him off the edge of the ice into the river. There was a splash. The body rocked up and down before being taken away, downstream, into a wilderness where no one would ever see him again.
Still sitting on the ice, the guard studied the watch. Cheap and smashed, it was worthless. But something stopped him from tossing it into the water. Cracked glass or not, it seemed a shame to throw it away.
ELENA ASKED:
— When is Zoya coming home?
Raisa replied:
— Soon.
— When I get back from the shops?
— No, not that soon.
— How soon?
— When Leo returns, he’ll bring Zoya with him. I can’t say when that will be, exactly, but it will be soon.
— You promise?
— Leo’s doing everything he can. We have to be patient for a little longer. Can you do that for me?
— If you promise that Zoya’s okay.
It was a promise Raisa had no choice but to make:
— I promise.
Elena asked the same questions every day. On each occasion it was as if she’d never asked them before. She wasn’t necessarily seeking new information, rather that she was attuned to the tone of the response, listening for minute variations. Any hint of impatience or irritation, any suggestion of doubt, and she’d slip back into the catatonic despondency which had struck her down immediately after Zoya’s capture. She’d refused to leave her room, crying until she was unable to cry anymore. Leo had refused the doctor’s instructions that she be sedated, sitting with her every night, hour after hour. Only when Raisa had returned from hospital did Elena begin to improve. The most dramatic progress had occurred when Leo left Moscow, and not because she wanted him gone: it was the first concrete evidence that action was being taken to bring Zoya back. Her mind easily digested the concept that when Leo returned Zoya would return with him. Elena didn’t need to know where her sister was, or what she was doing, just that she was coming home, and coming home soon.
Leo’s parents were waiting by the front door. Still weak from her injuries, Raisa depended upon their help. They’d moved into the gated ministerial complex, cooking and cleaning, creating a sense of domestic normality. Ready to leave, Elena paused:
— Can’t you come with us? We’ll walk very slowly.
Raisa smiled:
— I’m not feeling strong enough. Give me a day or two, then we’ll go out together.
— With Zoya? We can go to the zoo. Zoya liked that. She pretended that she didn’t but I know she did. It was her secret. I’d like Leo to come too. And Anna, and Stepan.
— We’ll all go.
Elena smiled as she shut the door, the first smile that Raisa had seen from her in a long time.
Alone, Raisa lay down on Zoya’s bed. She’d moved into the girls’ room. Elena would fall asleep only when she was by her side. Security had been increased at the ministerial complex, as it had across the city. Agents, retired and active, were reviewing their living arrangements, putting additional locks on the door, bars on windows. Though the State had tried to stop the release of information, there had been too many murders for rumors not to circulate. Everyone who’d ever denounced their friend or colleague took additional precautions. The profiteers of fear were afraid exactly as Fraera had promised.
RAISA OPENED HER EYES, unsure how long she’d been asleep. Though she was facing the wall and unable to see behind her, she was certain that there was someone else in the room. Turning onto her back and lifting her head, she saw the outline of an officer in the doorway, an androgynous silhouette. There was a dreamlike quality to the experience. Raisa felt no fear or surprise. This was their first encounter and yet there was a peculiar familiarity between them, an immediate intimacy.
Fraera took off her cap, revealing cropped hair. She stepped into the room, remarking:
— You can scream. Or we can talk.
Raisa sat up:
— I’m not going to scream.
— No, I didn’t think so.
Raisa had heard that tone many times: as a man might patronize a woman, peculiar from the lips of another woman only a couple of years her elder. Fraera noticed her irritation:
— Don’t be offended. I had to be sure. It hasn’t been easy, getting in to see you. I’ve tried many times. It would be a shame to cut this visit short.
Fraera sat on the opposite bed, Elena’s bed — her back against the wall, her legs crossed, unbuttoning her uniform jacket. Raisa asked:
— Is Zoya safe?
— She’s safe.
— Unharmed?
— Yes.
Raisa had no reason to believe her. Yet she did.
Fraera picked up Elena’s pillow, squeezing it, in no particular rush:
— This is a nice room, filled with nice things for two nice girls, given to them by two nice parents. How many nice things does it take to compensate for a murdered mother and father? How soft do the sheets have to be for a child to forgive that crime?
— We’ve never tried to buy their affections.
— Hard to believe, looking around.
Raisa struggled to control her anger:
— Would we have been more of a family if we’d bought them nothing?
— But you’re not a family. Sure, if someone didn’t know the truth they might mistake you for a family. I wonder if that was what Leo had in mind: the illusion of normality. It wouldn’t be real, he’d know that, but he could enjoy it, reflected in other people’s eyes. Leo is good at believing in lies. That would make the girls little more than props, dressed up in pretty outfits, so he can play at being a father.
— The girls were in an orphanage. We offered them a choice.
— A choice between sickness, impoverishment, and malnutrition, or living with the man who murdered their parents… that’s not much of a choice.
Raisa paused, uncertain, unable to disagree:
— Neither Leo nor I were ever under the impression that the adoption would be straightforward.
— You didn’t correct me when I said the man who murdered their parents. I expected you to say: Leo didn’t shoot them. He tried to save them. He was a good man among bad. But you don’t believe that, do you?
— He was an MGB officer. He’s done terrible things.
— Yet you love him?
— I didn’t always.
— You love him now?
— He has changed.
Fraera leaned forward:
— Why can’t you answer? Do you love him?
— Yes.
— I want to hear you say it: I love him.
— I love him.
Fraera sat back, considering. Raisa added by way of explanation:
— He’s not the man who arrested you. He’s not the same.
— You are right. He is not. There is one crucial difference. In the past he was unloved. Today he is loved. You love him.
Fraera unbuttoned her shirt, restricted by the collar, revealing the top of her tattoos that unraveled across her body like the symbols of an ancient witchcraft:
— Raisa, how much do you know about him? How much do you know about his past?
— He infiltrated your husband’s church. He betrayed you, he betrayed your congregation, and he betrayed Lazar.
— And for those things alone, he deserves to die. However, did you know that before he revealed his betrayal, he proposed to me? Like a young lover under a full moon?
Raisa dropped her head and nodded:
— Yes, he asked you to leave Lazar. At the time I’m sure he believed you would want to become his wife. He was deluded. He has been deluded about many things, love included. Love, particularly.
Fraera seemed disappointed, wanting to pick open a secret. She continued, her enthusiasm notably diminished:
— He thought he was trying to save me. In fact, he was trying to save himself. Had I accepted his offer, he would’ve tricked himself into believing that he was, at heart, a decent man. I would not excuse his crimes so easily. I made him a promise. I swore that he would never be loved. I was sure that I was right because how could such a monster be loved? Who would love him?
Raisa felt flustered under Fraera’s stare:
— I will not defend the things he did.
— But you must. You love him. I’ve seen the two of you together. I’ve watched you, spied on you, as Leo once spied me. You make him happy. What’s worse, he makes you happy. Your love for him is everything. That is why I am placing it on trial. That is why I am here.I want to find out, how it is possible that you can live with him. Sleep with him. I thought at first you might be stupid: an officer’s trophy, beautiful and unquestioning. I thought you didn’t care about the crimes Leo has committed.
Fraera stood up, crossing the divide and sitting on the same bed as Raisa, positioned like two best friends sharing secrets in the middle of the night:
— Yet you exhibit no mindless loyalty to the State. There were even rumors of you being a dissident. Your love for Leo became an even greater mystery, one that I had to solve at all costs. I was forced to delve into your past. May I share my findings?
— You have my daughter. You may do as you please.
— Your family was killed during the war. You lived as a refugee.
Raisa was paralyzed as Fraera wielded information like a knife:
— During those years you were raped.
Raisa’s mouth opened, a fraction, enough to serve as confirmation. She didn’t try to deny it, sensing there was more to follow:
— How did you know?
— Because I visited the orphanage where you abandoned your child.
Raisa felt something far more powerful than surprise. The most intimate secrets from her past, events that she’d carefully buried and laid to rest, were being dug up and brandished before her. Scrutinizing Raisa’s reaction, Fraera took hold of her hand:
— Leo doesn’t know?
Raisa held Fraera’s hopeful stare, answering:
— He knows.
Once again Fraera looked disappointed:
— I don’t believe you.
— It took many years for me to tell him but I did. He knows, Fraera: he knows it all. He knows I can’t have children, he knows why, he knows that the only child I will ever give birth to I gave away. He knows my shame. I know his.
Fraera touched Raisa’s face:
— That is why you married Leo? You sensed how desperate he was to be loved. He would gladly have accepted the opportunity to be father to your child. You saw him as an opportunity. You would bring your child back from the orphanage.
— No, I knew my child had died before I met Leo. I went to the orphanage as soon as I was strong enough, as soon as I’d found a home, as soon as I was able to be a mother again. They told me that my son had died of typhus.
— So why did you marry Leo? What reason was there for saying yes to him?
— Since I’d already given up my son in order to survive, in comparison it didn’t seem too much of a compromise to marry a man I feared rather than loved.
Fraera leaned forward and kissed Raisa. Pulling back, she said:
— I can taste your love for him. And your hatred of me…
— You have taken my child.
Fraera stood up, walking to the door, buttoning up her shirt:
— She is not yours. As long as you love Leo you leave me no choice. Your love for him is the reason he can live with himself. He has committed unspeakable crimes and yet, despite this, he is loved. He has murdered and he is loved. And by a woman any man would admire, by a woman I admire. Your love excuses him. It is his redemption.
Fraera fastened her jacket, returning the cap to her head, disappearing into her disguise.
— I spoke to Zoya before I came to see you. I wanted to hear what life was like in this sham of a family. She is intelligent, broken, messed up. I like her very much. She told me that she made you an offer. Leave Leo and she could be happy.
Raisa was appalled. Zoya was supposed to be a hostage. Yet she was confiding in Fraera, talking about Raisa, equipping their enemy with all the family secrets she needed. Fraera continued:
— I’m surprised you could be so cruel as to dismiss her request with a declaration of love for Leo. This is a girl so disturbed that she takes a knife from your kitchen and stands over Leo while he sleeps, planning to cut his throat.
Raisa’s guard fell. She didn’t know what Fraera was referring to — what knife? A knife held over Leo? After several attempts Fraera had finally landed upon a weakness — a lie, a secret. She smiled:
— It seems there is something Leo hasn’t told you. It’s true, Zoya used to stand by his side of the bed, holding a knife. Leo caught her. And he didn’t tell you?
In an instant Raisa fitted together the discrepancies. When she’d found Leo sitting at the kitchen table, brooding, he hadn’t been concerned about Nikolai, he’d been thinking about Zoya. She’d asked him what was wrong. He’d said nothing. He’d lied to her.
Fraera was now in control:
— Bearing that incident in mind, think about what I’m about to say carefully. I will repeat Zoya’s offer. I will return Zoya to your care, unharmed. In exchange you and the girls must never see Leo again. Love the girls, or love Leo, that has been the reality of your situation for the past three years. And Raisa, now you must choose.
LEO COULD BARELY STAND, let alone dig. Working in a crude system of trenches three meters below the topsoil, his pickaxe pinged uselessly against the permafrost. There were vast smoldering fires, like the funeral pyres of fallen heroes, slow-burning to soften the frozen ground. But Leo was near none of them, deliberately located by the leader of his work brigade in the coldest and most remote corner of the gold mines, in the least-developed trench system where, even had he been at full strength, it would’ve been impossible to fulfill his norm, the mininum amount of rocks he needed to break in order to be fed a standard ration.
Exhausted, his legs quivered, unable to support his weight. Swollen and bubbled, his kneecaps were sunk behind sacs of fluid, swirls of purple and blue. Last night Leo had been forced onto his knees, his hands tied behind his back, his ankles lifted and bound to his wrists so that his entire body weight was supported on his kneecaps. To keep him from falling over he’d been secured to the steps of a bunk. Hour after hour he’d been unable to relieve the pressure: skin stretched tight, bone grinding against wood, sandpapering his skin. At each shift in position he’d cried out and consequently been gagged in order that the prisoners might go to bed. They’d slept while he’d remained on his knees, teeth chomping like a mad horse against the filthy rag, which the prisoners had prepared by rubbing it across their weeping boils. While snores had crisscrossed the barracks one man had remained awake — Lazar. He’d watched over Leo the entire night, removing the gag when he’d needed to vomit, retying it after he’d finished, displaying a paternal dedication: a father tending to a sickly son, a son that needed to be taught a lesson.
At dawn Leo had spluttered back into consciousness as ice-cold water had been poured over his head. Untied, his gag removed, he’d slumped, unable to feel his feet, as though his legs had been amputated below the knees. It had taken several excruciating minutes before he’d been able to stretch them and several minutes more before he’d been able to heave himself up — hobbling — aged a hundred years. His fellow prisoners had allowed him to take breakfast, to sit at a table, to eat his ration, his hands shaking. They wanted him to live. They wanted him to suffer. As a man wandering in a desert might dream of an oasis, Leo’s mind concentrated on the shimmering mirage of Timur. Since it was impossible to make the journey from Magadan at night there was only a narrow window, in the early evening, when his friend, his savior, might arrive.
Arms shaking with fatigue, Leo lifted the pickaxe above his head, only for his legs to give way. Falling forward, his puffy knees slammed into the ground. On impact the fluid sacs burst, popping like ripe adolescent pimples. He opened his mouth, a silent scream, his eyes streaming as he toppled onto his side, taking the pressure off his knees and lying at the bottom of a trench. Exhaustion smothered any sense of self-preservation. For a brief moment, he would’ve been content to shut his eyes and go to sleep. In these temperatures he’d never have woken up.
Remembering Zoya, remembering Raisa and Elena — his family— he sat up, placing his hands on the ground, slowly pushing himself up. He was struggling to his feet when someone grabbed him, hissing in his ear:
— No rest, Chekist!
No rest, no mercy either — that had been Lazar’s verdict. The sentence was being carried out with vigor. The voice in his ear didn’t belong to a guard: it was a fellow prisoner, the leader of his brigade, driven by an intense personal hatred, refusing to allow Leo a single minute where he didn’t experience pain or hunger or exhaustion, or all these things together. Leo hadn’t arrested this man or his family. He didn’t even know the man’s name. That didn’t matter. He’d become a talisman for every prisoner: an ambassador for injustice. Chekist had become his name, his entire identity, and seen in that way, everyone’s hatred was personal.
A bell was rung. Tools were downed. Leo had survived his first day at the mine, a modest ordeal compared to the upcoming night — a second as yet unannounced torture. Dragging his legs up the ramp, limping out of the trench, following the others back, his only source of strength was the prospect of Timur’s arrival.
Approaching the camp, the dim daylight, diffuse among the sunken cloud cover, had almost completely disappeared. Emerging out of the darkness, he saw the headlights of a truck on the plateau. Two fists of yellow light, fireflies in the distance. Were it not for his knees, Leo would have dropped to the ground and wept with relief, prostrate before a merciful deity. Pushed and shoved by the guards, who dared curse him only out of earshot of their reformed, enlightened commander, Leo was herded back inside the zona, his eyes constantly thrown over his shoulder, watching as the truck grew closer. Failing to keep his emotions under control, his lip trembling, he returned to the barracks. No matter what torture they’d planned, he’d be saved. He stood by the window — eyes and nose pressed up against the glass, like an impoverished child outside a sweet shop. The truck entered the camp. A guard stepped down from the truck’s cabin, then the driver. Leo waited, fingernails digging into the window frame. Surely Timur was among their number, perhaps seated in the back. Minutes passed, no one else stepped out. He continued to stare, desperation overwhelming logic, until he finally accepted that no matter how long he watched the truck, there was no one else on board.
Timur hadn’t arrived.
Leo couldn’t eat, his hunger displaced by disappointment so strong it filled his stomach. In the dining barracks he remained at the table long after the other prisoners had left, lingering until the guards angrily ordered him out. Better to be punished by them than by his fellow inmates, better to spend the night in the isolator — the freezing punishment cells — than to go through another torture. After all, weren’t these guards operating under the changed Commander Sinyavksy? Hadn’t he spoken about justice and fairness and opportunity? As the guards pushed him toward the door, in a deliberate act of provocation, Leo lashed out, swinging a punch. He was slow and weak: his fist was caught. A rifle butt smashed into his face.
Dragged by his arms, legs trailing in the snow, Leo wasn’t taken to the isolator. He was dumped in the barracks — left sprawled in the middle of the room. He heard the guards leave. His eyes focused on the timber beams. His nose and lips were wet with blood. Lazar looked down at him.
He was stripped bare and wet towels were wrapped tight around his chest, tied behind his back. They rendered him unable to move, arms pinned by his side. He felt no pain. Although he’d never served as an official interrogator, he had firsthand knowledge of their methods. From time to time he’d been forced to watch. Yet this technique was new to him. He was lifted up and left lying on his back. The prisoners continued with their evening activities. His stomach was cold and wet with the towels. But he was too exhausted to care and, seizing the opportunity, he shut his eyes.
He woke, partly due to the sound of prisoners getting into bed, mostly because of the tension around his chest. Slowly he began to understand the torture. As the towels dried they became tighter, constricting incrementally, steadily crushing his ribs together. The subtle dynamic of the punishment was the knowledge that the pain would only get worse. While the other men readied for bed, Lazar took his regular place on a chair beside Leo. The red-haired man, Lazar’s voice, approached:
— Do you need me?
Lazar shook his head, ushering him to bed. The man glared at Leo like a sulking, jealous lover, before retreating as ordered.
By the time the prisoners were asleep the pain was so intense that had he not been gagged Leo would’ve cried out for mercy. Watching his face slowly contort, as if screws were being tightened, Lazar knelt beside Leo in a gesture of prayer, lowering his mouth to his ear, his bottom lip touching Leo’s lobe as he spoke. His voice was as faint as the shuffle of autumn leaves:
— It is hard… to watch another suffer… no matter what they have done… It changes you… no matter how right you are… to desire revenge…
Lazar paused, recovering from the exertion of these words. His pain had never stopped, he lived with it as a companion, knowing that it would never get better and that he would never know another moment without it.
— I have asked the others… Was there one Chekist who helped you? Was there one good man…? Everyone… said… no.
He paused again, wiping the sweat from his brow, before returning his lips to Leo’s ear:
— The State chose you… to betray me… Because you have a heart… I would’ve spotted a man without one… That is your tragedy… Maxim, I cannot spare you… There is so little justice… We must take what we can get…
Pain became delirium, so intense the sensation took on euphoric properties. Leo was no longer aware of the barracks: the timber walls were dissolving, leaving him alone in the middle of an icy white plateau — a different plateau, whiter and softer and brighter and not at all awful or cold. Water fell from the sky, freezing rain, directly above him. He blinked, shaking his head. He was in the barracks, on the floor. Water had been poured over him. The gag had been removed. The towels were untied. Even so, he could inhale only the tiniest gulps of air: his lungs had grown accustomed to their constriction. He sat up, making slow, shallow gasps. It was morning. He’d survived another night.
Prisoners trudged past him, snorting disdain, on their way to breakfast. Leo’s gasps began to slow, his breathing returning to normal. He was alone in the barracks and he wondered if he had ever felt this alone in his life. He stood up, needing to lean against the bedframe to support his weight. A guard called out to him, furious at his lingering behind. He dropped his head, shunting forward, unable to lift his feet, sliding them along the smooth wood like an infirm ice skater.
Entering the administration zone, Leo stopped. He couldn’t endure a second day of work. He couldn’t endure a third night. His imagination crackled with the memory of the various tortures he’d witnessed. What would come next? The mirage of Timur was too faint to sustain him. Their plans had gone wrong. Nearby a guard called out:
— Keep moving!
Leo had to improvise. He was on his own. Facing in the direction of the camp commander’s office, he called out:
— Commander!
At the violation in etiquette, guards ran toward him. From the dining barracks Lazar watched. Leo needed to catch the commander’s attention quickly:
— Commander! I know about Khrushchev’s speech!
The guards arrived by his side. Before he could say any more Leo was struck across his back. A second blow struck him in the stomach. He crouched, huddling, as more blows landed.
— Stop!
The guards froze. Unraveling himself, Leo glanced up at the administration barracks. Commander Sinyavksy was standing at the top of the steps.
— Bring him to me.
GUARDS HUSTLED LEO UP THE STAIRS and into the office. The commander had retreated to the corner beside a squat, fat-bellied stove. The log-lined room had been decorated with maps of the region, framed photos of the commander with prisoners at work — Sinyavksy smiling, as if in the company of friends, the prisoners’ faces impassive. There were shadows around the photo frames indicating that other photos, of different shapes and sizes, had recently been taken down and these ones put up in their place.
Dressed in tattered clothes, his body beaten, Leo stood hunched, trembling like a bezprizornik, a ragged street child. Sinyavksy ushered the guards away:
— I wish to speak to the prisoner alone.
The guards glanced at each other. One uttered:
— This man attacked us last night. We should stay with you.
Sinyavksy shook his head:
— Nonsense.
— You are not safe with him.
Considering their rank, their tone was inappropriately threatening. Evidently the commander’s power was being questioned. Addressing Leo:
— You will not attack me, will you?
Leo shook his head:
— No, sir.
— No, sir! He’s even being polite. Now, all of you: leave, I insist.
The guards retreated, reluctantly, making no attempt to conceal their contempt for this softness.
Once they were gone, Sinyavksy moved to the door, checking that they weren’t standing outside. He listened to the creak of the guards’ footsteps as they descended the stairs. Certain of privacy, he bolted the door shut and turned to Leo:
— Please, sit.
Leo sat in the chair, positioned in front of the desk. The air was warm and smelled of woodchips. Leo wanted to sleep. The commander smiled:
— You must be cold.
Without waiting for an answer Sinyavksy walked to the stove. A small iron pan was on the top and he picked it up by the handle, pouring a measure of amber liquid into a small tin cup, the same sort of cups that had been used for the pine needle extract. Holding the cup by the rim, he offered it to Leo:
— Careful.
Leo glanced down at the steaming surface. He raised it to his lips. The smell was sweet. The liquid tasted like melted honey and wild-flowers. None of it made it to the back of his throat: like the first rains falling on a desiccated, cracked-mud riverbed, the warm sugars and alcohol absorbed instantaneously. Blood rushed to his head. His cheeks flushed red. The room began to swirl. The feeling subsided into a gentle, intoxicated mellowness, a lullaby sensation, as if he had swallowed happiness in nectar form.
Sinyavksy sat down opposite, unlocking a drawer, taking out a cardboard box. He placed it on the desk in front of them. The top was stamped:
NOT FOR PRESS
The commander tapped the top:
— You know what’s inside?
Leo nodded:
— Yes.
— You’re a spy, aren’t you?
Leo shouldn’t have taken that drink. Starved suspects were routinely rendered drunk, their tongues loosened. He needed his wits. It was a mistake of the most obvious kind to trust in this man’s benevolence. Entering the room he’d intended to reveal his true identity, detailing his intimate knowledge of the commander’s career, supported with the names of his superiors. This allegation, coming from nowhere, caught him flat-footed. The commander cut across his silence:
— Don’t try to think of a lie. I know the truth. You’re here to report back on the progress of our reforms? Like your friend?
Leo’s heart rose in his chest:
— My friend?
— While I am committed to change, many here in this region are not.
— You know about my friend?
— They are looking for you, the two officers who arrived last night. They are convinced more than one man has come to spy on them.
— What has happened to him?
— Your friend? They executed him.
Leo’s grip loosened around the rim of the tin cup but he did not let it fall to the floor. The strength seeped out of his back: his spine turned soft. He leaned forward, his head dropped, staring down at the floor. The commander continued to speak:
— I fear they will kill us too. Your outburst about the Secret Speech has revealed your identity. They will not allow you to leave. As you saw, it was difficult even getting a moment alone with you.
Leo shook his head. He and Timur had survived impossible situations. He couldn’t be dead. There was some mistake. Leo sat up:
— He’s not dead.
— The man I’m referring to arrived on board the Stary Bolshevik. He was due to come here as my second in command. That was a cover story. He was sent here to write a report. He admitted as much. He claimed he was here to assess us. So they killed him. They will not allow themselves to be judged. They will never allow it.
Timur must have invented that story in order to reach the camp and save him. Leo should never have asked for Timur’s help. He had been so preoccupied with rescuing Zoya he’d only briefly considered the risks to Timur. He’d seen them as small, so convinced was he of his plans and their abilities. He’d broken a loving family in the attempt to piece back together an unhappy one, ruining something wonderful in the pursuit of Zoya’s affections. He began to cry as the realization sank in that Timur, his friend, his only friend, a man adored by his wife and sons, decent and loyal, a man who Leo loved very much, was dead.
When Leo eventually looked up, he saw that Zhores Sinyavksy was crying too. Leo stared in disbelief at the old man’s red eyes and tear-glistening, leathery cheeks and wondered how a man who’d built an incomplete railway out of innocent lives could cry at the death of a man he didn’t even know, a man whose death he wasn’t responsible for. Perhaps he was crying for every death he’d never cried for, every victim who’d passed away in the snow, or the sun, or the mud, while he smoked a cigarette, satisified that his quota had been achieved. Leo wiped his eyes, remembering Lazar’s contempt for them. He was right. Tears were worthless. Leo owed Timur more. If Leo didn’t survive, Timur’s wife and sons would not even know how he’d died. And Leo would never have the chance to say sorry.
The guards were intent that he should never make it back to Moscow. They were protecting their fiefdom. Leo was a spy, hated by both sides — prisoners and guards alike, alone except for the commander, a man whose mind seemed warped by guilt. He was at best an unpredictable ally and no longer in control of the camp. Like wolves, the guards were circling the administration barracks, waiting for Leo to emerge.
Looking around the room, his mind spinning through ideas, Leo saw the PA system on the desk. It was connected to speakers set up around the zona.
— You can address the entire camp?
— Yes.
Leo stood up, taking the tin cup and filling it to the brim with the warm amber alcohol. He handed it to the commander:
— Drink with me.
— But—
— Drink to the memory of my friend.
The commander swallowed it in one gulp. Leo filled the cup again:
— Drink to the memory of all who have died here.
The commander nodded, finishing the cup. Leo filled it again:
— And all those innocent deaths across our country.
The commander tossed back the last of the spirit, wiping his lips. Leo pointed to the speaker:
— Turn it on.
IN THE MESS HALL, Lazar contemplated Leo’s decision to throw himself at the commander’s mercy. A recent convert to compassion, Zhores Sinyavksy might protect him. The other prisoners were furious at the prospect of justice being snatched from them. They’d already planned the third torture, the fourth, fifth — each man eagerly anticipating the night on which Leo would suffer as they’d suffered, when they would see in his face the pain they’d experienced and he’d cry out for mercy and they’d have the long-dreamed-of chance to say:
No
As for Leo’s story about his wife — Anisya — it nagged at him. But the vory in the barracks had assured him it was impossible that a woman who once sang hymns and cleaned and cooked could rise to lead her own gang. Leo was a liar. This time Lazar would not be fooled.
Hissing static emitted from the outside PA speakers. Although nothing more than a background noise, their daily routine was so rigid and unchanging that Lazar flinched at this out-of-the-ordinary occurrence. Standing up, moving around the crowd of prisoners eating their breakfast, he opened the door.
The speakers were set up on tall timber poles, one overhanging each of the prisoner barracks and one in the administration zone, positioned outside the kitchen and dining barracks. They were rarely used. A handful of curious prisoners gathered behind him, including Georgi, his voice, who never left his side. Their eyes fixed on the nearest lame speaker, battered by the winds, hanging crooked. A wire snaked around the pole, reaching the icy ground where it ran to the commander’s office. Static hissed again, modulating into the tinny voice of their commander. He sounded uncertain:
— Special report…
He paused, then began again, louder this time:
— Special report to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Closed session. Twenty-five February 1956. By Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, First Secretary.
Lazar descended the steps, walking toward the speaker. The guards had stopped what they were doing. After a moment’s confusion they whispered among themselves, evidently uninformed of the commander’s intention. A small group of them broke off, pacing to the administration barracks. Meanwhile the commander continued to read aloud. The more he read, the more agitated the guards became.
— … What took place during the life of Stalin, who practiced brutal violence, not only toward everything which opposed him, but also toward that which seemed, to his capricious and despotic character, contrary to his concepts…
Hurrying, the guards climbed the stairs, banging against the door, urgently calling out to the commander, trying to ascertain if he was acting under duress. One shouted out, with simple-minded earnestness:
— Are you a hostage?
The door remained shut. It didn’t sound to Lazar as if the commander were reading under duress. His voice was growing into the role:
— Stalin created the concept Enemy of the People. The term made possible the use of the cruelest repression, violating all norms of revolutionary legality, against anyone who disagreed with Stalin…
Lazar’s head angled upward toward the speaker, his mouth open in awe, as if a celestial miracle were being performed in the sky.
The entire prison population abandoned their breakfast, or carried the bowl with them, gathering around the single speaker, a vast human knot, staring up, hypnotized by the crackling words. These were criticisms of the State. These were criticisms of Stalin. Lazar had never heard anything like them before, not in this form, words that weren’t muttered between two lovers, or by two prisoners across bunks. These words were from their leader, words that had been spoken aloud in Congress, transcribed and printed and bound, distributed to the farthest reaches of their country:
— How is it that a person confesses to crimes that he has not committed? Only in one way: the application of torture, bringing him to a state of unconsciousness, deprivation of his judgment, taking away his human dignity…
The man beside Lazar put an arm around him. The prisoner beside him did the same, and soon every prisoner was linked together, arm across shoulder.
Lazar tried not to pay the guards any attention, concentrating on the speech, but he was distracted by their dilemma — they were grappling with the decision of whether to stop the commander from reading, or to stop the prisoners from listening. Deciding it was easier to deal with one man, rather than one thousand, they banged their fists against the door, ordering their commander to cease immediately. Intended to protect against arctic conditions, the door had been constructed out of thick logs. The small windows were fitted with shutters. There was no easy way in. Desperate, one guard fired his machine gun, bullets splintering uselessly up and down the wood. It didn’t open the door but it achieved the desired result. The reading stopped.
Lazar felt the silence like a loss. He was not alone. Angry at having the speech cut short, prisoners to the left and right began to stamp their feet, quickly joined by others, by everyone, a thousand legs up and down, beating against the frozen ground:
— More! More! More!
The energy was irresistible. Before long his foot was also pounding the ground.
LEO AND THE COMMANDER LISTENED to the commotion outside. Unable to risk opening the shutters, for fear of the guards shooting them, they couldn’t see what was going on. The vibrations from the stamping traveled through the floorboards. The sound of the chanting traveled through the thick walls:
— More! More! More!
Sinyavksy smiled, placing a hand to his chest, seeming to interpret their response as an affirmation of his reformed character.
The mood in the camp was volatile, exactly as Leo desired. He gestured at the pages of the speech that he’d been hastily editing, condensing the document, compressing it to a series of shocking admissions. He handed the commander the next page. Sinyavksy shook his head:
— No.
Leo was taken aback:
— Why stop now?
— I want to give my own speech. I’ve been… inspired.
— What are you going to say?
Sinyavksy raised the speaker to his mouth, addressing Gulag 57:
— My name is Zhores Sinyavksy. You know me as the commander of this Gulag where I have worked for many years. Those who arrived recently will think me a good man, fair and just and generous.
Leo doubted that. However, he tried to appear convinced by these declarations. The commander was treating his speech with absolute seriousness.
— Those who have been here longer will not think upon me so kindly. You have just listened to Khrushchev admitting mistakes made by the State, admitting Stalin’s acts of cruelty. I wish to follow the example of our leader. I wish to admit my own mistakes.
Hearing the word—follow—Leo wondered if the commander was driven by guilt or by a life of unquestioning obedience. Was this redemption or imitation? If the State reverted to terror, could Sinyavksy return to brutality with the same suddenness that he’d embraced leniency?
— I have done things of which I am not proud. It is time I asked for your forgiveness.
Leo realized that the potency of his confession might be even greater than the admissions made by Khrushchev. The prisoners knew this man. They knew the prisoners that he’d killed. The chanting and stamping stopped. They were waiting for his confession.
LAZAR NOTICED that even the guards were no longer trying to break down the door, waiting for the commander’s next words. After a pause, the tinny voice of Sinyavksy sounded out across the camp:
— Arkhangelsk, my first posting: I was tasked with supervising prisoners working in the forest. They would cut down trees, readying the timber for transportation. I was new to the job. I was nervous. My orders were to collect a fixed amount of timber each month. Nothing else mattered. I had norms just like all of you. After the first week I discovered a prisoner had been cheating in order to fulfill his norm. Had I not caught him, my count would have been short and I would’ve been accused of sabotage. So you see… it was about survival, nothing else. I had no choice. I made an example of him. He was stripped naked, tied to a tree. It was summer. At sunset his body was black with mosquitoes. By the morning he was unconscious. By the third day he was dead. I ordered his body to remain in the forests as a warning. For twenty years, I didn’t think about that man. Recently, I think about him every day. I do not remember his name. I don’t know if I ever knew his name. I remember that he was the same age as me at the time. I was twenty-one years old.
Lazar noted how the commander moderated honesty with qualifications:
I had no choice.
With those words thousands died, not with bullets but with perverse logic and careful reasoning. When Lazar returned his attention to the speech, the commander was no longer talking about his career in the forests of Arkhangelsk. He was discussing his promotion to the salt mines of Solikamsk:
— In the salt mines, as an efficiency measure, I ordered men to sleep underground. By not moving the men up and down at the end of each shift, I saved thousands of precious work hours, benefiting our State.
The prisoners shook their heads, imagining the conditions of that underground hell:
— My purpose was to discover new ways of bringing benefit to our State! What could I say? Had I not thought of this, my junior officer might have proposed it and I would’ve been punished. Did these men need daylight more than the State needed salt? Who had the authority to make that argument? Who dared to speak up for them?
One of the guards, a man Lazar had never seen before, strode toward them, brandishing a knife. They were going to cut the wire and kill the speech. The guard was smiling, pleased with his solution:
— Out of my way.
The foremost prisoner stepped forward, standing on the wire, blocking the guard. A second prisoner joined him, and a third, a fourth, keeping the wire out of reach. Smiling threateningly, as if to say he would remember this for later, the guard moved to another exposed stretch of wire. Responding, the prisoners quickly pushed forward, filling the space, protecting the wire. The knot of prisoners reshaped until there was a dense line of prisoners standing side by side stretching from the timber pole supporting the speaker to the base of the administration barracks. The only way the guard could get to the wire was by crawling under the barracks, something his pride stopped him from doing.
— Get out of my way.
The prisoners didn’t move. The guard turned to face the two vakhta, the fortified towers overlooking the camp. He waved at the gunners, pointing toward the prisoners before hurrying away.
There was a burst of gunfire. In unison the prisoners dropped to their knees. Lazar looked around, expecting to see dead and injured. No one seemed to be hurt. The volley must have been targeted over their heads, hitting the side of the barracks, a warning shot. Slowly everyone stood up. Voices from the back cried out:
— We need help!
— Bring the feldsher!
Out of sight, Lazar couldn’t see what was going on. The calls for medical assistance continued. But no one came. The guards did nothing. Soon the cries stopped — there were no more calls for help. Explanations rippled through the crowd. A prisoner had died.
Sensing the mood darken, the guard put away his knife and drew his gun. He fired at the speaker, missing several times, until finally it sparked and crackled, falling silent. The other four speakers in the prisoner zone were still working, but they were some distance away: the commander’s voice reduced to an inaudible background sound. Keeping his gun drawn, the guard announced:
— Back to the barracks! And no one else will die!
The threat was misjudged.
Picking up the wire from the ground, a prisoner darted forward, wrapping it around the guard’s neck, throttling him. The prisoners surrounded the fight. Other guards ran to intervene. A prisoner grabbed the officer’s gun, firing at the approaching guards. One man fell, wounded. The others drew their weapons, firing at will.
The prisoners scattered. An understanding flashed through them instantaneously. If the guards regained control, the reprisals would be savage, no matter what speeches were being given in Moscow. At this point, both towers opened fire.
THE COMMANDER WAS STILL TALKING, recounting bloody confession after bloody confession, seemingly oblivious to the gunfire. His mind had snapped: under Stalin his character had been pulled with such extreme force in one direction. Now he was being pulled in the exact opposite direction. He had no resistance, no idea who he really was, neither a good man nor a bad man but a weak one.
Allowing the commander to carry on, Leo opened the shutter, cautiously looking out. Rioting prisoners were running in every direction. There were bodies on the snow. Calculating the forces on both sides, Leo guessed a ratio of one guard for every forty inmates, a high ratio, in part explaining why the camps were so expensive to run — the forced labor failing to earn back the cost of keeping the convicts fed, housed, transported, and enslaved. A central expense was the guards, paid a premium for working in such remote conditions. This was the reason they were killing to cling on to authority. They had no lives to go back to, no families or neighborhoods that wanted them. No factory floor community would accept them. Their prosperity depended upon the prisoners. The fight would be equally desperate on both sides.
There was a flash of gunfire from the towers — the window shattered. Leo dropped, glass falling around him, bullets hitting the floor-boards. Safe behind the thick log walls, he slowly reached up, trying to close the shutters. The wood broke apart in a shower of splinters. The room was exposed. On the desk the PA equipment, kicked around by the bullets, was lifted up, spinning in the air before clattering to the floor. Sinyavksy fell back, curling into a ball. Over the noise Leo cried out:
— Do you have a gun?
Sinyavksy’s eyes flicked to the side. Leo followed them to a wood crate tucked in the corner, padlocked. He stood up, running toward it, only to find the commander running to block him, putting his hands up:
— No!
Leo knocked the commander aside, picking up the steel desk lamp and bringing the heavy base crashing down against the lock. With a second blow the lock smashed off and he pulled it free. The commander once again leapt forward, throwing himself over the crate:
— I beg you…
Leo pulled him off, opening the lid.
Inside there was nothing more than a collection of odds and ends. There were framed photos. They showed the commander standing proudly beside a canal: emaciated prisoners toiled in the background. Leo guessed they were the photos that had originally hung on the office wall. He tossed them aside, rooting through files, certificates, awards, and letters congratulating Sinyavksy on meeting a quota — the detritus of his great career. There was a hunting rifle at the bottom. On the handle were notches, twenty-three kills. Certain that these notches didn’t refer to wolves or bears, Leo loaded the rifle with the fat, finger-length bullets, moving back to the window.
The two primary towers, the vakhta, were strategically crucial, constructed on high wooden stilts. The guards had already pulled up the ladders, making it impossible to scale their positions. Protected behind thick log walls, the top of each tower housed podium-mounted machine guns capable of firing hundreds of rounds a minute, a collective firepower far greater than anything on the ground. Leo had to draw their fire away from the prisoners. He took aim at the guard tower directly ahead. There was little chance his shot would be accurate enough to penetrate the gap in the log walls. He fired twice, shuddering under the massive recoil of the rifle. They stopped firing at the prisoners, redirecting their volley of bullets at him.
Ducking down, crouched against the floor, Leo glanced at Sinyavksy. He was in the corner, reading the remaining pages of the Secret Speech, calmly, as if nothing were amiss while his office was torn apart by gunfire. He looked up at Leo, reading:
— Let my cry of horror reach your ears: do not remain deaf, take me under your protection; please, help remove the nightmare of interrogations and show that this is all a mistake!
Sinyavksy stood up:
— This is all a terrible mistake! This should never have happened!
Leo shouted at him:
— Get down!
A bullet hit the commander in the shoulder. Unable to watch him die, Leo jumped up, knocking him flat. Landing on his injured knees, Leo almost passed out with the pain. Sinyavksy whispered:
— That speech has saved my life.
Leo smelled smoke. He rolled onto his back, taking the pressure off his knees. He stood up awkwardly, moving to the window. There was no more heavy gunfire. Through the smashed window he cautiously surveyed the zona and saw the source of the smoke. Directly underneath the base of the cabin was a fire, flames climbing the structure. Barrels of fuel had been rolled underneath and set alight, the cabin roasting like a chunk of meat at the end of a skewer. For the men inside there was no escape. Unable to climb down the ladder, the guards tried to squeeze out through the gap in the log walls. The gap was too narrow: one man was stuck, wedged in, unable to go forward or back as the fire took hold. He began to scream.
The second tower was trying to protect itself from a similar fate: shooting at the prisoners carrying materials to build a fire. But there were too many convicts, coming from too many sides. Once they were underneath, there was nothing the guards in the tower could do except wait. A new fire was started. Both towers had been defeated. The balance of power had shifted. The prisoners now had control of the camp.
An axe cracked into the commander’s door, a second blow, a third, the steel end jutting through the timber. Before they had a chance to break through Leo put the rifle down and unlocked the door, stepping back, arms up, indicating surrender. A small force of prisoners stormed the room, brandishing knives and guns and steel bars. The man in charge regarded his captives:
— Bring them outside.
The prisoners grabbed Leo by his arms, hurrying him down the steps, herding him together with the guards that had been captured— their roles reversed. Battered and bloody, they sat on the snow watching the vakhta burn. Columns of smoke rose up, blocking out a wide streak of sky, announcing their revolution to the entire region.
SCRUNCHING HIS FACE IN CONCENTRATION, Malysh studied the handwritten list. He’d been told it was composed of the names of the men and women Fraera planned to murder. Since he was unable to read, the list appeared to his eye as nothing more than a collection of unintelligible symbols. Up until recently it had never troubled him that he couldn’t read or write, able only to recognize the letters of his klikukha, making him little more literate than a dog recognizing the call of its name. For this reason, during his initiation he’d been savvy enough to insist that none of his tattoos contain words for fear that his fellow vory might exploit his ignorance and print something insulting. Though it was forbidden under penalty of death to create a false tattoo, an outright lie, that rule might not prevent them making a joke at his expense, calling him Little Prick, instead of Little One.
He was smart and he didn’t need a certificate or a diploma to prove it. He didn’t need to read or write. What good were those skills to him? He didn’t expect a teacher to pick a lock or throw a knife. Why should anyone expect a thief to read? While that reasoning still made sense to him, something had changed. Embarrassment was inside him and it had begun to grow since the moment Zoya had taken hold of his hand.
She couldn’t know that he was illiterate. Maybe she presumed the worst, seeing him as little more than a chiffir-addicted thug. He didn’t care. She should be more worried about whether he was going to slit her throat rather than pass judgment on him. He was winding himself up. Breathing deeply, he returned his attention to the names in front of him — the retired Chekists. He knew from listening to Fraera that the list contained names, addresses, and a description of each individual’s crimes — whether they were an investigator, an interrogator, or an informer. Running a dirty thumbnail over each line, he could identify which column contained their names: that was the column with the fewest words. The column with numbers in it: that was their address. And by deduction the final column, which contained the most words, must be the description of their crimes. Who was he trying to fool? This wasn’t reading. This wasn’t even close. He threw the list down, pacing the sewer tunnel. It was her fault — that girl, she was the reason that he felt like this. He wished he’d never seen her.
Unsure what he was going to do, he ran along the tunnel, entering their stinking lair. Fraera claimed they were living in the remains of an ancient library, the lost library of Ivan the Terrible which once held a priceless collection of Byzantine and Hebrew scrolls. Illiterate and hiding in a library — the irony had never occurred to him before, not until Zoya arrived. Ancient library or not, he considered their base little more than a network of ugly, damp stone chambers. Avoiding the others, who were drinking as always, he made his way silently toward Zoya’s cell.
He retrieved the footstool and stood on it, looking through the bars. Zoya was asleep in the corner, curled up on her mattress. There was a lantern hanging from the ceiling — out of reach, always lit so that she was under constant scrutiny. Immediately Malysh’s anger changed. His eyes drifted over her body, watching her sleep, the slow rhythm of her chest rising and falling. Though he was a vory he was also a virgin. He’d murdered but he’d never had sex, a source of great amusement to the others. They teased him, saying if he didn’t use his prick soon it would get infected and fall off and he’d be nothing more than a girl. After his initiation they’d taken him to a prostitute, pushing him into the room and closing the door, ordering him to grow up. The woman had been sitting on the bed, bored, naked, goosebumps on her arms and legs. She’d been smoking a cigarette — a long stub of ash arching off the end — and all Malysh could think about was whether the hot ash was going to fall on her breasts. She’d tapped it onto the floor and asked what he was waiting for, nodding at his crotch. He’d fumbled at his belt, taking it off and then putting it back on again, telling her he didn’t want to have sex, she could keep the money just so long as she said nothing to the others. She’d shrugged, told him to sit down, they’d wait five minutes and then he could go, no one would believe he could last longer than that anyway. They’d waited five minutes. He’d sat on the bed and then he’d left. As he’d walked down the corridor, preparing his lie, she’d called out to the others that they’d been right. He’d chickened out. The vory had cackled like witches. Even Fraera had seemed disappointed in him.
Hearing someone behind him, Malysh spun around, drawing his knife. His hand was caught, fingers gripped, the knife taken from him. Closing the blade and handing him the knife back, Fraera leaned over his shoulder, looking into the cell:
— Beautiful, isn’t she?
Malysh didn’t reply. Fraera looked down at him:
— It’s rare that anyone is able to sneak up on you, Malysh.
— I was checking on the prisoner.
— Checking?
He blushed. Fraera put her arm around him, adding:
— I want her to accompany you on your next job.
Malysh looked up at Fraera:
— The prisoner?
— Use her name.
— Zoya.
— She has more reason than most to hate Chekists. They murdered her parents.
— She can’t fight. She’d be useless. She’s just a girl.
— I was just a girl, once.
— You’re different.
— So is she.
— She might try and run away. She’d shout for help.
— Why don’t you ask her? She’s listening.
There was a silence. Fraera called into the cell:
— I know you’re awake.
Zoya sat up, turning to face them. She spoke out:
— I didn’t claim that I wasn’t.
— You are brave. I have a proposition for a brave young girl. Do you want to accompany Malysh on his next assignment?
Zoya stared at him:
— To do what?
Fraera answered:
— To murder a Chekist.
THE TWO VAKHTA HAD COLLAPSED into smoldering heaps, the bulk of the timber burnt through, reduced to red embers and occasional flickering flames. Wisps of smoke trailed the night sky, carrying up the ashes of at least eight guards: their final act on earth to block out a streak of stars before being scattered across the plateau. Fallen Gulag guards, those killed outside the firetrap of the vakhta, lay where they’d died, dotted across the camp. One body hung out of a window. The ferocity with which he’d been killed suggested that he’d been particularly vicious in his duties — chased by angry prisoners, eventually caught, beaten and stabbed as he’d desperately tried to clamber out. His body had been left, draped over the windowsill, the flag of their newly formed empire.
The surviving guards and Gulag personnel, some fifty in total, had been gathered in the center of the administration zone. Most were injured. Without blankets or medical care, huddled on the snow, their discomfort was met with indifference, a lesson well learned by the prisoners. In evaluation of Leo’s ambiguous status he’d been classified as a guard rather than a prisoner, forced to sit, shaking with cold, observing the old power structures collapse and new ones form.
As far as he could ascertain there were three unelected leaders, men whose authority had been established within the microcosm of their barracks. Each man had his own band of followers, distinctly defined. Lazar was one leader. Those who followed him were older prisoners, the arrested intellectuals, craftsmen — the chess players. The second leader was a younger man, athletic, handsome, perhaps a former factory worker — the perfect Soviet, and yet imprisoned all the same. His followers were younger, men of action. The third leader was a vory. He was perhaps forty, with thin eyes and jagged teeth, a shark’s smile. He’d taken possession of the commander’s coat. Too long for him, it dragged across the snow. His followers were the other vory: thieves and murderers. Three groups, each represented by their leader, each with competing points of view. The clashes of opinion were immediate. Lazar, voiced by red-haired Georgi, counseled caution and order:
— We must establish lookouts. We must take up arms along the perimeter.
After many years of practice Georgi was able to speak at the same time as listening to Lazar:
— Furthermore, we must protect and ration our food supplies. We cannot run amok.
The square-jawed worker, clipped from a reel of a propaganda movie, disagreed:
— We are entitled to as much food as we can get our hands on and any drink we can find as compensation for lost wages, as a reward for winning our freedom!
The reindeer-coat vory made only one demand:
— After a lifetime of rules, disobedience must be tolerated.
There was a fourth group of prisoners, or rather a nongroup, individuals who followed no leader, intoxicated on liberty, some running like wild horses, bolting from barrack to barrack, exploring, whooping at unidentifiable pleasures, either turned mad by the violence or mad all along and able to express it at last. Some were asleep in the guards’ comfortable beds: freedom being the ability to close their eyes when they were tired. Others were doped up on morphine, or drunk on their former captors’ vodka. Laughing, these men cut strips out of the wire fences, turning the hated barbed wire into ornamental trinkets with which they decorated the guards who once commanded them, pressing barbed-wire crowns onto their heads, mockingly referring to them as the sons of God and calling out:
— Crucify the fuckers!
Witnessing the anarchy orbiting them, Lazar pressed his argument, whispering to Georgi, who repeated:
— We must protect supplies as a matter of urgency. A starving man will eat himself to death. We must stop cutting the wire. It is protection from the forces that will inevitably arrive. We cannot counsel absolute freedom. We will not survive.
Judging from the reindeer-coat vory’s muted reaction, much of the looting had already been done. The most precious resources were already in his group’s hands.
The square-jawed worker, whose name Leo didn’t know, agreed to take some of the steps proposed, practical measures, as long as they dealt with the pressing matter of punishments for the captured guards:
— My men must have justice! They have waited years! They have suffered! They cannot wait a moment longer!
He spoke in slogans, every sentence ending in an exclamation mark. Though Lazar was reluctant to postpone the practical measures, he compromised in order to win support. The guards were to be placed on trial. Leo was to be placed on trial.
ONE OF LAZAR’S FOLLOWERS had once been a lawyer, in his former life, as he referred to it, and took a prominent role in setting up the tribunal by which Leo and the others were to be judged. He devised his system with relish. After years of submissive groveling, the lawyer delighted in returning to a tone of authority and expertise, a tone that he considered naturally his:
— We agree that only the guards will be tried. The medical staff and the former prisoners who now work for the Gulag administration are exempt.
This proposal was agreed. The lawyer continued:
— The steps to the commander’s office will serve as the court’s stage. The guard will be led to the bottom step. We, the free men, will call out examples of their brutality. If an incident is considered valid the guard will take a step up. If the guard reaches the top they will be executed. If they do not, even if they reach the penultimate step and no more crimes can be found against them, the guard will be allowed to descend the stairs and sit down.
Leo counted the steps. There were thirteen in total. Since they started on the bottom step, that meant twelve crimes to reach the top: twelve to die, eleven or less to live.
Dropping his voice, striking a note of deliberate gravitas, the lawyer called out:
— Commander Zhores Sinyavksy.
Led to the first step, Sinyavksy faced his court. His shoulder had been crudely bandaged, the bleeding stopped in order to keep him alive long enough that he might face justice. His arm hung uselessly. Despite this, he was smiling like a child in a school play, searching for a friendly face among the gathered prisoners. There was no single representative for defense or the prosecution: both sides were to be debated by the assembled prisoners. Judgment was collective.
Almost immediately a chorus of voices called out. There were insults, examples of his crimes, overlapping, unintelligible. The lawyer raised his arms, calling for silence:
— One at a time! You raise your hand, I will point, and then you will speak. Everyone will have a say.
He pointed at a prisoner, an older man. The prisoner’s hand remained raised. The lawyer remarked:
— You can lower your hand. You’re free to speak.
— My hand is the proof of his crime.
Two fingers were cut off at the knuckles, blackened stumps.
— Frostbite. No gloves. Minus fifty degrees: so cold that when you spit, the spit turns to ice before it hits the ground. He still sent us out, in conditions not suitable for spit! He sent us out! Day after day after day! Two fingers, two steps!
Everyone cheered in agreement. The lawyer straightened his gray prison-issue cotton coat, as if it were a formal frock:
— It is not about the number of fingers you lost. You cite inhumane work conditions. The crime has been agreed. But that is one example and therefore one step.
A voice from the crowd:
— I lost a toe! Why doesn’t my toe count for a step?
There were more than enough deformed and blackened fingers and toes to force the commander to the top. The lawyer was losing control, unable to scramble enough rules into place to sedate the animated crowd.
Cutting across the debate, the commander called out:
— You are right! Your injury is a crime. Each of the injuries you have suffered is a crime.
The commander took another step up. The interjections faded, the arguments silenced as they listened:
— The truth is that I have committed more crimes than there are steps. Were there steps up to the mountaintop, I would have to climb them all.
Aggrieved that his system had been bypassed by this confession, the lawyer responded:
— You accept that you deserve to die?
The commander answered indirectly:
— If you can take a step up, can you not also take a step down? If you can do wrong can you not also do good? Can I not try and put right the wrongs that I have done?
He pointed at the prisoner who lost his toe:
— You lost your toe to frostbite and for that I have taken a step up. But last year, you wanted to send your wages to your family. When I told you that, because our system has not been fair, you hadn’t earned as much as they needed, didn’t I take from my own salary to make up the difference? Didn’t I personally ensure your wife received the money in time?
The prisoner glanced around, saying nothing. The lawyer asked:
— Is it true?
The prisoner reluctantly nodded:
— It is true.
The commander took a step down:
— For that act, can I not take a step down? I accept that I have not yet done enough good to offset my wrongs. So why not allow me to live? Allow me to spend the rest of my life trying to make amends? Is that not better than dying?
— What about the people you killed?
— What about the people I saved? Since Stalin’s death, the mortality rate in this camp is the lowest in Kolyma. That is the result of my changes. I increased food rations. I have given you longer rest periods and shorter working days. I have improved medical care. The sick no longer die! The sick recover. You know this to be true! The reason you were able to overpower the guards is because you are better fed, better rested, and stronger than you have ever been before! I am the reason this uprising is even possible!
The lawyer stepped up to the commander, flustered that his system was in disarray:
— We said nothing about being able to take a step down.
The lawyer turned to the triptych of convict leaders:
— Do we wish to change the system?
The square-jawed leader turned to his comrades:
— The commander asks for a second chance. Do we grant it?
It began as a murmur, the answer growing louder and louder as more joined in.
— No second chance! No second chance! No second chance!
The commander’s face dropped. He genuinely believed he’d done enough to be spared. The lawyer turned to the condemned man. Clearly they hadn’t thought the process through. No one had been designated the role of executioner. The commander took from his pocket one of the small, dried purple flowers, clutching it in his fist. He climbed to the top of the stairs, staring up at the night sky. The lawyer spoke, his voice quivering under the pressure:
— We offer a collective judgment. We must perform a collective punishment.
Guns were drawn. The lawyer stepped clear. The commander cried out:
— One last thing…
Handguns, rifles, and bursts from a machine gun — the commander fell back, as if flicked over by a giant finger. Villainous in life, in the face of death he had achieved a kind of dignity. The prisoners resented him for it. They would allow him no more words.
The mood in the makeshift court transitioned from excitement to solemnity. Clearing his throat, the lawyer asked:
— What shall we do with the body?
Someone said:
— Leave it there, for the next one to see.
It was agreed. The body would be left.
— Who is next?
Leo tensed. Georgi declared:
— Leo Stepanovich Demidov.
The lawyer peered out over the guards:
— Who is this? Who is Leo?
Leo didn’t move. The lawyer called out:
— Stand up or you will forfeit your trial and we will execute you immediately!
Slowly, not entirely sure that his legs wouldn’t give way, Leo stood up. The lawyer ushered him to the bottom step, where he turned to face his court. The lawyer asked:
— Are you a guard?
— No.
— What are you?
— I am a member of the Moscow militia. I was sent here undercover.
Georgi called out:
— He’s a Chekist!
The crowd, his jury and judge, burst into a flurry of anger. Leo glanced at his accuser. Georgi was acting independently. Lazar was reading a sheet of paper, a list of Leo’s crimes perhaps. The lawyer asked:
— Is this true? Are you a Chekist?
— In the past, I was a member of the MGB.
The lawyer called out:
— Examples of his crimes!
Georgi replied:
— He denounced Lazar!
The prisoners jeered. Leo took a step up. Georgi continued:
— He beat Lazar! Smashed his jaw!
Leo was guided up the next step.
— He arrested Lazar’s wife!
Leo was now standing on the fourth step.
— He arrested members of Lazar’s congregation!
As Leo stood on the fifth step, Georgi had run out of things to say. No one else in the compound knew Leo. No one else could name his crimes. The lawyer declared:
— We need more examples! Seven more!
Frustrated, Georgi called out:
— He’s a Chekist!
The lawyer shook his head:
— That is not an example.
According to the rules of their system, no one knew him well enough to convict him, no one, that is, except Leo himself. The prisoners were dissatisfied. They were rightly certain that, as a Chekist, there must be many more examples unknown to them. Leo sensed that the system would not protect him. Had he not witnessed the commander’s execution, he might have climbed to the top and admitted his wrongdoings. But he had no speech more eloquent than the commander’s. His life depended upon the rules of their system. They would need seven more examples. They did not have them.
Georgi, refusing to give up, cried out:
— How many years were you a Chekist?
After serving in the army, Leo had been recruited into the secret police. He had been a Chekist for five years.
— Five years.
Addressing the assembled convicts, Georgi asked:
— Is it not easy to believe that he wronged at least two people each year? Is that so hard to believe of a Chekist?
The crowd agreed: two steps for each year. Leo turned to the lawyer, hoping he would overrule this amendment. The lawyer shrugged, the suggestion became law. He ushered Leo to the top. He had been sentenced to death.
Unable to comprehend that this was the end, Leo didn’t move. A voice cried out:
— To the top or we’ll shoot you where you stand!
Lightheaded, Leo climbed to the top, standing over the commander’s bullet-ridden body, an array of guns pointed at him.
A voice, the man who hated him, Georgi, cried out:
— Wait!
Leo watched as Lazar spoke into Georgi’s ear. Unusually, Georgi wasn’t translating simultaneously. When Lazar had finished Georgi looked at him, questioning. Lazar indicated that he repeat his words. Georgi turned to Leo, asking:
— My wife is alive?
Georgi took the paper from Lazar’s hand, carrying it to Leo and offering it to him. Leo crouched down, recognizing the letter written by Fraera, proof that she was alive and containing information only she could’ve known. Timur had been carrying it. Before he’d been killed, the guards must have stripped him of all his belongings:
— It was found in the pocket of a guard. You were not lying.
— No.
— She is alive?
— Yes.
Lazar indicated that Georgi return, whispering into his ear. With reluctant obedience Georgi announced:
— I request that he be spared.
LIKE TWO MONGREL CATS, Zoya and Malysh sat side by side on the roof of Apartment Block 424. Zoya remained close to Malysh, keen to reassure him that she didn’t want to escape. After the exertion of traveling several kilometers through sewer systems, climbing ladders, sidestepping slime-thick walls, both of them were damp with sweat and it was pleasant being on the rooftop, fanned by a cool night breeze. Zoya felt invigorated. Partly that was due to the exercise after many sedentary days and nights. Mostly it was because she was with him. This felt like the childhood stolen from her — mischievous adventure with a kindred spirit.
Zoya glanced at the photo pinched between Malysh’s fingers:
— What is her name?
— Marina Niurina.
Zoya took the photo from him. Niurina was a woman in her thirties, stern and prim. She was wearing a uniform. Zoya returned the photo, asking:
— You’re going to kill her?
Malysh gave a small nod of his head, as if someone had asked him if they could have a cigarette. Zoya wasn’t sure whether she believed him or not. She’d seen him attack the vory who’d tried to rape her. He was skilled with a knife. Reticent and moody, he didn’t seem like someone who made idle brags.
— Why?
— She’s a Chekist.
— What did she do?
Malysh looked at her quizzically, not understanding. Zoya expanded the question:
— Did she arrest people? Did she interrogate them?
— I don’t know.
— You’re going to kill her but you don’t know what she did?
— I told you. She’s a Chekist.
Zoya wondered how much he knew about the secret police. She remarked, cautiously:
— You don’t know much about them, do you, the secret police? Not really, I mean?
— I know what they did.
Malysh thought about this for a while before adding:
— They arrested people.
— Don’t you need to know a little more about a person before you kill them?
— Fraera has given me orders. I don’t need any other reason.
— That’s what they would say, the Chekists, about the things they did: that they were just following orders.
Malysh became irritated:
— Fraera has said you can help. So you can help. She didn’t say anything about asking a lot of stupid questions. I can take you back to your cell, if that’s what you want.
— Don’t get angry. I would’ve asked why, that’s all. Why are we killing this woman?
Malysh folded the photo in half and put it back in his pocket. Zoya had pushed him too far. She’d been excited and she’d stepped over the line, her brashness getting the better of her. She remained silent, hoping she hadn’t ruined everything. Expecting peevish irritation, she was surprised when Malysh spoke in an almost apologetic tone:
— Her crimes were written down on a list. I didn’t want to ask anyone to read it aloud.
— You can’t read?
Scrutinizing her reaction, he shook his head. She was careful to keep her face blank, alert to his insecurity:
— Didn’t you go to school?
— No.
— What happened to your parents?
— They died. I grew up in train terminals, mostly, until Fraera came along.
Malysh asked:
— You think it’s bad that I can’t read?
— You’ve never had the opportunity to learn.
— I’m not proud of it.
— I know.
— I’d like to read, and write too. I’m going to learn, someday.
— You’ll learn quickly, I’m sure.
They sat in silence for the next hour or so, watching as the lights in the surrounding buildings around went dark, one by one, the occupants turning in to bed. Malysh stood up, stretching, a nocturnal creature that only stirred when everyone else slept. Out of the pockets of his baggy trousers, he took a reel of stiff wire, unfolding it. At the end of the wire he fastened a shard of mirror, wrapping the wire round and round until it was secure. He carefully tilted the mirror so that it was at a forty-five-degree angle. Walking to the edge of the building, he lay on his stomach and lowered the wire until the mirror was in line with the bedroom window. Zoya joined him, lying by his side and glancing down. The curtain was closed but there was a small gap. In the dark room he could make out a figure in bed. Malysh pulled the wire up, taking the mirror off the end, folding the wire up and putting the items back in his pocket.
— We enter the other side.
Zoya nodded. He paused, muttering:
— You can stay here.
— On my own?
— I trust you not to run away.
— Malysh, I hate Chekists as much as Fraera. I’m with you.
Taking off their shoes, leaving them neatly side by side on the roof, they scaled down the brickwork, holding on to the drainpipe for support. It was a short descent: a meter or so. Malysh reached the windowsill as easily as if there’d been a ladder. Zoya followed tentatively, trying not to look down. They were on the sixth floor and any fall would be fatal. Flicking out a knife, Malysh lifted the catch, opening the window and entering the apartment. Wary of Zoya making a noise, he turned around, offering his hand. She waved it aside, gingerly lowering herself to the floorboards.
They’d broken into the living room, a large room. Zoya whispered in Malysh’s ear:
— Does she live alone?
He nodded curtly, not appreciating the question — any question. He wanted silence. The size of the apartment was remarkable. By adding up the square meters of empty floor space, Zoya could guess the scale of this woman’s crimes.
Up ahead the bedroom door was closed. Malysh reached out, taking hold of the handle. Before he opened the door, he indicated that Zoya stay behind, out of sight, in the living room. Although she wanted to follow, he wasn’t going to allow her any farther. She nodded, pulling back, waiting while Malysh opened the door.
MALYSH STEPPED INTO THE DARK ROOM. Marina Niurina was in bed, lying on her side. Readying his knife, stepping up to her, he paused, as though balancing on the brink of a cliff. The woman in bed was much older than the woman in the photograph — she had gray hair, a wrinkled face, she was at least sixty years old. He hesitated, wondering if he had the wrong address. No, the address was correct. Perhaps the photo had been taken many years ago. He leaned closer, taking out the folded photo to compare. The old lady’s face was in shadow. He just couldn’t be sure. Sleep made everyone seem innocent.
Suddenly Niurina opened her eyes and lifted her arm from under the covers. She was holding a gun, leveling it between Malysh’s eyes. Her legs swung out of bed, revealing a floral nightgown.
— Step back.
Malysh obeyed, arms raised, knife in one hand, photo in the other, calculating if he was fast enough to disarm her. She guessed his thoughts, cocking the gun and firing at the knife in his hand, taking off the tip of his finger. He cried out, clutching the injury as the knife clattered across the floor. Niurina said:
— That gunshot will bring up the guards. I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to let them torture you. I might even join in myself. I’m going to find out where your companions are. Then we’re going to kill them too. Did you really think we were going to roll over and let you and your mob kill us one by one?
Malysh pulled back. She stood up, off the bed:
— If you suppose that by running away you’ll have an easy death, a bullet in the back, think again. I’ll shoot your foot off. In fact, better to shoot your foot off now, just to be sure.
HER HEART THUMPING, barely able to breathe, Zoya had to act quickly, not stand in the middle of the room, dumbstruck like a stupid child. The old woman couldn’t possibly have seen her. Looking around, there was nowhere to hide except under the writing desk. Wounded, Malysh was retreating from the bedroom toward her, his hand dripping blood. He was careful not to look at her, not to give her away. She was his only chance. The woman was almost at the door. Zoya darted under the desk.
From her hiding place Zoya caught sight of the woman for the first time. She was much older than the photograph but it was the same woman. She was smiling, or sneering, enjoying the power of her gun, following Malysh closely. If Zoya did nothing, if she remained under the desk, the guards would come, Malysh would be arrested — she would be saved, reunited with Elena and Raisa, reunited with Leo. If she did nothing, her life would return to normal.
Zoya leapt up, crying out, charging for the gun. Taken by surprise, Marina Niurina turned the gun in her direction. Zoya grabbed the woman’s wrist, sinking her teeth as far in as they would go. A shot was fired, defeaningly loud beside her ear, the bullet smashing into the wall — Zoya felt the vibrations of the recoil through her teeth. Using her free hand, the woman struck Zoya and struck her again, knocking her to the floor.
Helpless, Zoya looked up as the woman aimed the gun at her. Before she could fire, Malysh scampered up her back, sinking his fingers into her eyes. She screamed, dropping the gun, scratching at his hands, only causing him to press harder. Malysh looked down at Zoya:
— The door!
With the woman screaming, spinning round and round, Zoya ran to the front door, locking it at the same time as the guard thumped up the stairs. When Zoya turned, Niurina dropped to her hands and knees, Malysh still riding her back. He pulled his fingers free, leaving a bloody mess where her eyes had once been. Malysh picked up the gun, gesturing for Zoya to follow him, running to the window.
Behind them the guards kicked at the door. Malysh fired through the wood, halting their progress. With the chamber empty, he dropped the gun, following Zoya out onto the window ledge. Using a spread of machine-gun fire, the guards replied in kind, bullets hitting all sides of the living room. They began climbing the outside wall. Zoya reached the roof first, pulling herself up. She heard the door to the living room being smashed down, the guards exclaiming at the bloody scene before them.
Zoya leaned down, helping Malysh up. With both of them on top of the roof, she grabbed her shoes, about to run off. Malysh caught hold of her wrist:
— Wait!
Hearing the guards on the window below, Malysh picked a slate from the roof, readying himself. A guard’s hand grabbed the ledge. As the guard lifted himself up, Malysh smashed the slate into his face. The guard let go, falling to the side street below. Malysh cried out:
— Run!
They ran across the roof, jumping the gap to the adjacent building. Looking down, they saw swarms of officers in the street below. Malysh remarked:
— It was a trap. They were watching the apartment.
They’d expected Niurina to be a target.
With their original escape route blocked, they were forced to enter the new apartment block, climbing into a bedroom. Malysh called out:
— Fire!
In the overcrowded buildings, ancient timber structures, with faulty electrics, fire was a constant fear. Grabbing Zoya’s hand, he ran out into the corridor, both of them now shouting:
— Fire!
Even without smoke, the corridor was crowded within seconds. Panic quickly spread through the building, feeding off itself. On the stairs Zoya and Malysh dropped to their hands and knees, crawling between people’s legs.
Outside, on the street, inhabitants surged out of the building, merging with the KGB and the militia. Zoya grabbed hold of the arm of a man, pretending to be distraught. Malysh did the same and the man, sympathetic, guided the two of them past the officials, who presumed them to be a family. As soon as they were free, they let go of the man’s arm, slipping off.
Reaching the nearest manhole, they pulled the steel cover back, climbing down into the sewers. At the bottom of the ladder Zoya ripped off a portion of her shirt, wrapping it around Malysh’s bleeding finger, round and round, until it became as thick as a sausage. Catching their breath, both of them began to laugh.
THE MORNING LIGHT WAS AS CLEAR and sharp as Leo had ever seen — a perfect blue sky and white plateau. Standing on the roof of the administration barracks, he raised the burnt, twisted remains of the binoculars to his eyes. Salvaged from the fire, only one cracked lens was usable. Searching the horizon, like a pirate at the bow of his ship, Leo saw movement at the far end of the plateau. There were trucks, tanks, and tents — a temporary military encampment. Alerted by yesterday’s flaming towers, beacons of dissent, overnight the regional administration had established a rival base for its counteroperations. There were at least five hundred soldiers. Though the prisoners were not outnumbered they were vastly outgunned, having only collected together two or three heavy machine guns, several clips of ammunition, an assortment of rifles and handguns. Against long-range weaponry, Gulag 57 was hopelessly exposed, while the wire fence would offer no protection against advancing armor. Completing his bleak assessment, Leo lowered the binoculars, handing them back to Lazar.
A cluster of prisoners had gathered on the roof. Since the destruction of the towers, it had become one of the highest vantage points in the camp. Aside from Lazar and Georgi there were the two other leaders and their closest supporters: ten men in all.
The vory leader asked Leo:
— You’re one of them. What will they do? Will they negotiate?
— Yes, but you can trust nothing they say.
The younger convict leader stepped forward:
— What about the speech? We are not under Stalin’s rule anymore. Our country has changed. We can make our case. We were being treated unfairly. Many of our convictions should be reviewed. We should be released!
— That speech might force them to negotiate in earnest. However, we are a long way from Moscow. The Kolyma administration may have decided to deal with this insurrection in secret, to prevent moderate Moscow influences becoming involved.
— They want to kill us?
— This uprising is a threat to their way of life.
On the ground a prisoner shouted:
— They’re calling!
The prisoners hurried to the ladder, bottlenecking in their haste to clamber down. Leo was last to descend, unable to hurry since bending his legs caused a sharp pain in both knees, the damaged skin stretching. By the time he reached the bottom of the ladder, he was sweating, short of breath. The others were already by the radio.
A radio transceiver was the sole means of communication between the various camps and the administrative headquarters in Magadan. One of the prisoners with some rudimentary knowledge of the equipment had taken charge. He was wearing earphones and repeated the words he could hear:
— Regional Director Abel Prezent… He wants to speak to whoever is in charge.
Without discussion the young leader took the microphone, launching into a rhetorical outburst:
— Gulag 57 is in the hands of the prisoners! We have risen up against the guards! They beat us and killed at their whim! No more…
Leo said:
— Mention that the guards are alive.
The man waved Leo aside, swollen on his own importance:
— We embrace our leader Khrushchev’s speech. In his name, we want every prisoner’s sentence reviewed. We want those who should be free, granted freedom. We want those who have done wrong, treated humanely. We demand this in the name of our revolutionary forefathers. That glorious cause has been corrupted by your crimes. We are the true heirs of the revolution! We demand you apologize! And send us food, good food, not convict gruel!
Unable to conceal his disbelief Leo shook his head, commenting:
— If you want to get everyone killed, ask for caviar and prostitutes. If you want to live, tell them the guards are alive.
The man added, peevishly:
— I should tell you that the guards are alive. We are holding them in humane conditions, treating them far better than they treated us. They will remain alive as long as you do not attack us. If you attack, we have taken precautions to ensure every last guard will die!
The voice on the radio crackled in reply, words that the man repeated:
— He requests proof of life. Once that is given he will listen to our demands.
Leo moved close to Lazar, petitioning him as the voice of reason:
— The injured guards should be sent over. Without medical attention they will die.
The vory leader, annoyed at being sidelined, interjected:
— We shouldn’t give them anything. It is a sign of weakness.
Leo countered:
— When those guards die of their injuries they will be worthless to you. This way you gain some value from them.
The vory sneered:
— And no doubt you want to be included in the truck that carries them out?
He’d guessed Leo’s intention exactly. Leo nodded:
— Yes.
Lazar whispered in Georgi’s ear, words that he announced with his own note of surprise:
— … And I want to go with him.
Everyone turned to Lazar. He continued, whispering to Georgi:
— Before I die I would like to see my wife and son. Leo took them from me. He is the only person who can reunite us.
THE FREIGHT TRUCK WAS LOADED with the most severely injured guards, six in total, none of whom would survive another twenty-four hours without medical attention. They were lifted on planks of wood, improvised stretchers, Leo assisting in the transfer of the final guard from the barracks. Laying him down in the back of the truck, they were ready to go.
As they were about to leave, Leo caught a glimpse of the guard’s watch. It was cheap plate gold, unremarkable except for the fact that it was Timur’s. There was no doubt: he’d seen that watch countless times. He’d listened to Timur’s story of how his father had passed it off as a family heirloom despite it being worthless. Crouching down, Leo ran his fingertip across the cracked glass. He looked at the injured officer. The man’s eyes were nervous. He understood its significance. Leo asked:
— You took this from my friend?
The officer said nothing.
— This belonged to my friend.
Leo felt anger rising through his body:
— This was his watch.
The officer began to shake. Leo tapped the watch, commenting:
— I’m going to have to take it back.
Leo tried to unclip the worthless watch. As he did, he lifted his leg, pressing his knee against the man’s injured, bloody chest, pushing down hard:
— You see… this is a family heirloom… it now belongs to Timur’s wife… and his sons… his two sons… two wonderful sons… two wonderful boys… It belongs to them because you murdered their father… you murdered my friend…
The officer began to bleed from his mouth and nose, his arms feebly patting Leo’s leg, trying to push it away. Leo kept his knee steady, maintaining pressure on the injured torso. The pain from his bruised knee caused his eyes to water. They weren’t tears for Timur. This was hatred, revenge, the force of which made him push down harder and harder. The material of his trousers was soaked with the officer’s blood.
The strap unclipped, coming free from the officer’s limp wrist. Leo put it in his pocket. The remaining five men in the back of the truck were looking at him, terrified. He walked past them, calling out to the prisoners on the ground:
— One of these officers is dead. We have space for another.
While they offloaded the body, an event which none of the prisoners questioned, Leo examined the watch. As the rage began to seep away, he felt weak, not out of regret or shame, but tiredness as the most powerful of stimulants — revenge — flushed out of his system. That depth of anger must be how Fraera felt about him.
Leo peered at the injured guard walking to the truck, the replacement for the officer he’d just killed. His arm was wrapped in bloody bandages. Something was wrong. The man was nervous. Perhaps he’d also been involved in Timur’s murder. Leo reached out, stopping him, taking hold of the bandages and pulling them back, revealing a long, superficial cut stretching from his elbow to his hand, self-inflicted. The same was true for the injuries to his head. The man whispered:
— Please…
If caught he’d be shot. If the prisoners thought the guards were exploiting their kindness, a kindness they’d never been shown, the entire operation would be at risk. After the execution of the other guard, Leo hesitated only briefly before allowing him into the back of the truck.
Lazar, speaking through Georgi, was addressing the other prisoners, explaining to his followers his reasons for wanting to leave:
— I do not expect to live much longer. I am too weak to fight. I thank you for letting me go home.
The young leader responded:
— Lazar, you have helped many men. You have helped me. You have earned this request.
The other prisoners chimed in agreement.
Leo approached Lazar, assessing his appearance:
— We need to dress as guards.
Leo, Lazar, and Georgi stripped three dead guards of their uniforms. They hastily got changed, hurrying, fearful the prisoners would change their minds. Dressed in an ill-fitting uniform, Leo took the wheel, Georgi in the middle, Lazar on the other side. Prisoners opened the gates.
Suddenly the young leader banged his hand on the truck door. Leo was ready to accelerate off, should he need to. But the man said:
— They’ve agreed to accept the wounded as a sign of good faith. Good luck, Lazar, I hope you find your wife and son.
He stepped away from the truck. Leo put the vehicle into gear, driving past the remains of the two guard towers, through the perimeter gates, and onto the highway, heading directly to the military encampment on the other side of the plateau.
RUNNING AS FAST AS HE COULD, the radio operator arrived at the outer gates. The prisoners were watching as the truck set off along the highway. Out of breath, the operator exclaimed:
— They’re leaving already? But we haven’t told the regional commander. We haven’t told him we’re sending the sick and injured. Should I run back and tell them?
The young leader grabbed the man’s arm, stopping him:
— We’re not going to tell them. We cannot fight a revolution with men who want to run away. We must make a lesson out of Lazar. The others must learn that there is no option but to fight. If the soldiers open fire on their own injured guards, so be it.
LEO DROVE SLOWLY, edging along the highway toward the temporary encampment. With only two kilometers remaining, midway between rival camps, his eye was caught by a single puff of smoke on the horizon.
The view disappeared, engulfed in a cloud of dust. An explosion dug up the highway, only meters in front of the truck. Dirt and ice and shrapnel cracked against the windshield. Leo swerved, avoiding the crater. The right tire slipped off the tarmac. The truck almost rolled over, shaking as it passed through the smoke, lopsided. Heaving the steering wheel, he pulled the truck level, skidding back into the middle of the highway. He checked his rearview mirror, staring at the scooped-out portion of tarmac.
Another puff of smoke appeared on the horizon, then a second and a third; they were mortar rounds fired one after the other. Leo slammed his foot on the gas pedal. The truck surged forward, trying to accelerate under their trajectory, exploiting the fractional lag time between firing and impact. The engine growled, its speed slowly building. Only now did Lazar and Georgi turn to Leo for an explanation. Before they could speak, the first shell landed directly behind — so close the rear of the truck lifted up. For a fraction of a second only the front tires were touching the highway and Leo could no longer see anything except the road, the cabin facing directly down, angled toward the tarmac. Convinced the truck was going to flip over and land upside down, he felt more surprised than relieved when the rear sat back with a jolt, knocking them out of their seats. Leo struggled with the wheel, trying to regain control. The second shell landed wide, missing the highway, showering the truck with ragged chunks from the plateau, shattering the side window.
Leo swerved, abandoning the highway just as the third shell landed — a perfect shot, detonating exactly where the truck had been. The tarmac was ripped up, the remains thrown into the air.
Crashing across the uneven icy tundra, bumping up and down, Georgi cried out:
— Why are they firing?
— Your comrades lied! They haven’t called us in!
In the side mirrors Leo saw the injured guards, confused and panicked and bloody, peering around the canvas, trying to work out why they were under fire. Using his elbow, Leo knocked out the cracked side window, sticking his head through and shouting at the guards:
— Your uniforms! Wave them!
Two of the guards stripped off their jackets, waving them like flags.
Four puffs of smoke appeared on the horizon.
Unable to accelerate across the tundra, Leo had no other option except to hold the truck steady and hope. He imagined the shells arcing in the air, rushing up, then whistling down toward them. Time seemed to stretch — a second becoming a minute — and then the explosions sounded out.
The truck was still bumping along. Glancing in the mirror, Leo saw four columns of dust rising behind the truck. He smiled:
— We’re under their range!
He hammered the steering wheel in relief:
— We’re too close!
The relief melted away. Up ahead, at the edge of the temporary encampment, two tanks rotated their turrets toward them.
The nearest tank fired, an orange burst. Leo’s body involuntarily tensed, the air sucked out of his lungs. But there was no explosion — in the side mirror he saw the shell had ripped through the truck’s tarpaulin and exited the other side. The gunner would not make the same mistake twice, directing the next shell at the steel cabin where it was sure to detonate. Leo punched the brakes. The truck stopped. He threw open the door, climbing up onto the roof of the cabin, taking off his jacket, waving, shouting:
— I’m one of you!
Simultaneously both tanks lurched forward, their caterpillar tracks splintering across the tundra. Leo remained on the top of the cabin, waving his uniform from side to side. Less than a hundred meters away one tank came to a halt. The hatch opened. The tank operator peered out, mounted machine gun at the ready. He called out:
— Who are you?
— I’m a guard. I’ve got wounded officers in the back.
— Why didn’t you radio?
— The prisoners told us they had. They told us they’d spoken to you. They tricked us! They tricked you! They wanted you to kill your own men.
The second tank circled the rear of the truck, its turret aimed squarely at the occupants. The wounded guards pointed to their uniforms. The hatch of the second tank opened, the operator calling out:
— All clear!
AT THE PERIMETER of the temporary military encampment Leo stopped the truck. The injured were unloaded, carried to a medical tent. Once the last man was helped off, Leo would start the engine and drive down the highway, back toward the port of Magadan. The back of the truck was empty. They were ready to go. Georgi tapped his arm. A soldier was approaching:
— Are you the ranking officer?
— Yes.
— The director wants to speak with you. Come with me.
Leo indicated that Lazar and Georgi remain in the truck.
The command center was under a snow-camouflage canopy. Senior officers surveyed the plateau with binoculars. Detailed maps of the region were spread out, blueprints of the camp. A gaunt, sick-looking man greeted Leo:
— You were driving the truck?
— Yes, sir.
— I’m Abel Prezent. Have we met?
Leo couldn’t be sure that every officer didn’t meet Prezent at one stage or another, but he was unlikely to remember every guard:
— Briefly, sir.
They shook hands.
— I apologize for firing on you. But with no communication, we were forced to consider you a threat.
Leo didn’t need to fake his indignation:
— The prisoners lied. They claimed to have spoken to you.
— They’ll soon get their comeuppance.
— If it’s of any use, I can detail the prisoners’ defenses. I can mark their positions…
The prisoners hadn’t made any defenses, but Leo thought it prudent to seem helpful. However, the regional director shook his head:
— That won’t be necessary.
He checked his watch.
— Come with me.
Unable to get away, Leo had no choice but to follow.
Leaving the cover of the canopy, Abel Prezent looked up to the sky. Leo followed the direction of his gaze. The sky was empty. After a moment Leo heard a distant humming noise. Prezent explained:
— There was never any question of negotiating. We risk anarchy if their demands were met. Every camp would start a revolution of its own. No matter what they say in Moscow, we must not allow ourselves to become soft.
The humming grew louder and louder until a plane roared over the plateau, flying low, the numbers on its steel belly visible as it passed directly overhead, leveling out on a course toward Gulag 57. It was a Tupolev Tu-4, an aging bomber reverse-engineered from the American Superfortress planes — four propeller engines, a forty-meter wingspan, and a fat silver cylindrical frame. On a direct approach, the underside hatch opened. They were going to bomb the base.
Before Leo had a chance to question the decision, a large rectangular object fell from the hatch, a parachute opening immediately. The Tu-4 veered up, climbing sharply to clear the mountain while the bomb swung through the sky, rocking on its parachute, perfectly positioned, guided into the center of the camp. It drifted out of sight, landing, the parachute spreading across the roof of a barracks. There was no explosion, no firestorm: something had gone wrong. The bomb hadn’t detonated. Relieved, Leo checked on the regional director, expecting him to be furious. Instead he seemed smug:
— They requested food. We have given them a crate containing the kind of food they haven’t seen in years, tinned fruit, meats, sweets. They will eat like pigs. Except we have added a little something…
— The food is poisoned? They’ll make the guards eat it first.
— The food is laced with a toxin. In six hours they’ll fall unconscious. In ten hours they’ll be dead. It doesn’t matter if they test it on the guards. There are no immediate symptoms. In eight hours we’ll storm the camp, injecting our fellow guards with the antidote and leaving the rioters to die. Even if every prisoner doesn’t try the food, most will and the number of prisoners will be heavily depleted. We must resolve this revolution before Moscow and her spies start to interfere.
There was no doubt in Leo’s mind: this was the man who had ordered Timur’s death. Barely containing his anger, he remarked:
— An excellent plan, sir.
Prezent nodded, smirking at his murderous ingenuity. He thought so too.
Dismissed, Leo returned through the command headquarters to the truck. He reached the cabin, climbing in, feeling the same rage he’d experienced upon seeing Timur’s watch. He looked out of the smashed window in the direction of Abel Prezent. They had to leave now. This was their only chance. Everyone was preoccupied with the plane. Yet he couldn’t — he couldn’t allow Prezent to get away with it. He opened the cabin door. Georgi grabbed his arm:
— Where are you going?
— There’s something I have to take care of.
Georgi shook his head:
— We need to go now, while they’re distracted.
— This won’t take long.
— What do you have to do?
— That’s my concern.
— It is ours too.
— That man murdered my friend.
Leo pulled free. But Lazar leaned across, taking Leo’s arm, indicating that he wanted to speak. Leo lowered his ear, Lazar whispered:
— People don’t always get… what they deserve…
With those faint words, Leo’s indignation was extinguished. He dropped his head, accepting this truth. He hadn’t come here for revenge. He’d come here for Zoya. Timur had died for Zoya. They had to leave now. Abel Prezent would get away with murder.
THE SHADOW CAST BY THE MOUNTAIN enveloped Gulag 57, stretching across the plateau, reaching out toward the temporary military encampment. Abel Prezent checked his watch: the toxin would be taking effect very soon; prisoners would be falling unconscious. They’d timed it carefully. At night, no one in the camp would think it odd that prisoners were tired. Before their suspicions were aroused the ground troops would advance, unseen, cutting through the fence and regaining control. The prisoners would be killed, except for a token number necessary to fend off accusations of a massacre. News of the success would spread through the region. Every other camp would receive the clear message that the riot had failed and that the Gulags were here to stay, that they were not the past — that they were part of the future, that they would always be part of their future.
— Excuse me, sir?
A bedraggled guard stood before him.
— I was on the truck, from Gulag 57. I’m one of the injured officers they released.
The man’s arm was bandaged. Abel smiled condescendingly:
— Why aren’t you in the medical tent?
— I faked my injuries to get on board the truck. I’m not seriously hurt. The doctor says I’m fit to report for duty.
— You needn’t worry about your comrades. We’ll be launching our rescue soon.
Abel was about to move away. The man persisted:
— Sir, it wasn’t about them. It was about the three men driving the truck.
DRIVING ALONG THE HIGHWAY at night, guided by dim headlights, Leo strained forward, clutching the steering wheel, peering into the darkness. Nothing more than adrenaline was holding back exhaustion. The journey toward Magadan had been made possible by the monotonous simplicity of the descent, with only the narrow timber bridge proving difficult. Now, for the first time, the lights of Magadan could be seen at the foot of the hills on the edge of the sea — a vast black expanse. The airstrip was close, just north of the port.
There was a whistling noise. Ahead of their position an orange flare hung in the night sky, fizzling phosphorus light. Launched from the edge of the town, a second flare was fired, then a third, a fourth — orange stars along the highway. Leo slammed on the brakes:
— They’re searching for us.
He killed the headlights. Leaning out of the smashed window, he looked behind them. In the distance were numerous sets of headlights, snaking down the mountain:
— They’re coming from both directions. I’m going to have to drive off-road.
Georgi shook his head:
— No.
— If we stay on the highway they’ll find us in minutes.
— Off-road, how long then? You need more time.
Georgi turned to Lazar:
— I’ve accepted that I will never leave Kolyma. I accepted that fact a long time ago.
Lazar shook his head. But Georgi, the man who’d served as his voice, was adamant:
— For once, Lazar, listen to me. I was never going with you to Moscow. Let me do this.
Lazar whispered to Georgi, words that for once he didn’t have to voice out loud, words that were for him alone.
A second wave of flares was launched, sweeping light up the highway, moving ever closer. Leo got out of the truck, Lazar followed. Georgi took the steering wheel. He paused, glancing through the smashed window at Lazar, before uncertainly driving off, toward Magadan. Lazar had lost a part of himself — he’d lost his voice.
On foot, Leo and Lazar stumbled in the dark over uneven icy terrain toward the flickering lights of the airstrip. Georgi had been right. The ground was so uneven the truck would’ve become stuck within a matter of minutes. Spasms of pain shot through Leo’s legs, causing him to fall. Lazar helped him up, supporting him. Arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, they were an unlikely team.
Another barrage of flares was launched into the sky, their orange Cyclops eyes concentrated on the highway. There was gunfire. Leo and Lazar paused, turning around. The truck had been found. It accelerated toward a roadblock. Under heavy fire, the truck seemed to veer left and right, out of control, continuing briefly along the highway before skidding off and rolling onto its side. The authorities would find only one body. They would quickly widen the search. Leo observed:
— We don’t have long.
Approaching the perimeter of the airstrip, Leo paused, studying its primitive layout. There were three parked planes. The only one that could make the journey across the Soviet Union was the twin-engine, Ilyushin Il-12.
— We walk to the Ilyushin, the largest plane — we walk slowly, like nothing is wrong, like we’re supposed to be here.
They stepped out into the open. There was a handful of ground crew and soldiers. There were no patrols, no sense of urgency. Leo knocked on the plane’s door. He’d been promised they would be ready to fly at a moment’s notice. Since there’d always been a chance that the escape might be delayed, Panin had assured Leo that there would always be someone on board no matter what time they arrived.
Leo knocked again, a frantic impatience building as each second passed. The door opened. A young man, not much more than twenty years old, peered out. He’d evidently been dozing. A faint smell of alcohol leaked from the cabin. Leo said:
— You’re here under Frol Panin’s orders?
The young man rubbed his eyes.
— That’s right.
— We need to fly back to Moscow.
— There are supposed to be three of you.
— Things have changed. We need to go now.
Without waiting for an answer, Leo climbed up into the plane, helping Lazar in, shutting the door. The young man was puzzled:
— We can’t fly.
— Why not?
— The pilot and copilot aren’t here.
— Where are they?
— Having dinner, in town. It will only take thirty minutes to bring them back.
Leo estimated they had about five minutes at the most. He concentrated on the young man:
— What is your name?
— Konstantin.
— Is the plane ready to fly?
— If we had a pilot.
— How many times have you flown?
— This plane? Never.
— But you’re a pilot?
— I’m training. I’ve flown smaller planes.
— But not this plane?
— I’ve watched them pilot it.
That would have to do.
— Konstantin, listen to me very carefully. They’re going to kill us, you as well, unless we take off right now. We can either die here or we can try and fly this plane. I’m not threatening you. These are our options.
The young man stared at the cabin. Leo took hold of him:
— I believe in you. You can do this. Ready the plane.
Leo took the copilot’s seat, an incomprehensible panel of gauges and buttons before him. His knowledge of planes was rudimentary. Konstantin’s hands were shaking.
— I’m starting the engine.
The propellers shuddered and began to spin. Leo glanced out the window. They’d attracted the soldiers’ attention. Officers were moving toward them.
— We need to hurry.
The plane taxied onto the airstrip. The radio crackled into life but before the control hut could address them Leo turned it off. He didn’t need the young pilot hearing their threats. Lazar, seated behind, tapped Leo on the shoulder, pointing out of the window. The soldiers were running for the plane. Their guns were drawn.
— Konstantin, we have to take off.
The plane began to build up speed.
The soldiers were sprinting, running parallel with the cabin. As the plane accelerated, leaving them behind, they began to fire, bullets ricocheting off the engine. Ready for takeoff, they were going to get away and Leo looked up. The Tupolev Tu-4 bomber was descending directly toward them.
The young pilot shook his head, slowing down. Leo said:
— Don’t slow down. This is our only chance!
— What chance!
— We have to take off!
— We’ll crash! We can’t get over the bomber!
— Fly at the Tupolev. They’ll pull up. Do it!
They were coming toward the end of the runway.
The Ilyushin took off, on course for a midair collision with the bomber. Either the Tupolev abandoned its descent or the two planes would crash. Konstantin called out:
— They’re not moving! We’ve got to land!
Leo gripped Konstantin’s hand, holding their course steady: if they crash-landed they’d be caught and shot. They had nothing to lose. The bomber crew did.
The Tupolev veered upward, a steep climb, just as the Ilyushin flew underneath, the tail fin skimming the bomber’s underbelly as the two planes passed each other. Ahead of them for the first time was clear sky. Konstantin smiled, the confounded smile of a man who couldn’t believe that he was alive.
Leo climbed out of his seat, joining Lazar in the back. Magadan was nothing more than a collection of lights in a vast darkness. This was the world that Leo had banished Lazar to — a wilderness that had been his home for the past seven years.
RAISA SAT ON ELENA’S BED, watching her sleep. Since Fraera’s visit, Elena’s questioning had become more assertive, as if she sensed the situation had changed. Promises that Zoya’s return was imminent were no longer enough. She’d become immune to assurances, content for an hour or so before the effect faded and a deep unease returned.
The phone rang. Raisa hurried out, rushing to the receiver:
— Hello?
— Raisa, it’s Frol Panin. We’ve made radio contact with Leo. The plane is on its way. He’ll be in the city in less than five hours. Lazar is with him.
— You’ve contacted Fraera?
— Yes, we’re waiting to receive instructions for the exchange. You’ll want to meet Leo at the airport?
— Of course.
— I’ll have a car sent over when his plane is nearing. We’re almost there, Raisa. We almost have her.
Raisa hung up the receiver. She remained by the phone, pondering those words.
We almost have her.
Panin was talking about catching Fraera: he had little interest in her daughter. Despite Panin’s considerable charms, Raisa agreed with Leo’s assessment of his character: there was something cold about him.
Elena was standing in the hallway. Raisa stretched out her hand. Elena stepped forward. Guided into the kitchen, Raisa sat her down at the table. She warmed milk at the stove, tipping it into a mug. She put the mug down in front of Elena.
— Is Zoya coming home tonight?
— Yes.
Elena picked up the mug and took a satisfied sip.
There was no more time to consider Fraera’s offer. Raisa no longer believed in Leo’s plan. Having met Fraera for herself, having listened to her anger, it didn’t make sense to hand Zoya over to Leo and make him a hero. He would achieve in that prisoner exchange everything Fraera was determined he should never have — a daughter, happiness, a family reunited. The premise was wrong. Leo’s belief in it was naïve. Zoya was in danger. Leo was not the one to save her.
Raisa opened a drawer, taking out a tall red candle. Placing it on the windowsill, in clear view of the street below, she struck a match and lit the wick. Elena asked:
— What are you doing?
— Lighting a candle so that Zoya can find her way home.
Raisa glanced out into the street. The candle was lit. The signal was given. She would accept Fraera’s offer. She would leave Leo.
MALYSH SAT ON A LEDGE, listening to the racing sewer water. Two months ago the world had made sense. Now he was confused. Someone liked him, not because he could handle a knife, not because he was useful, someone liked him because… he couldn’t exactly say. Why did Zoya like him? He’d never been liked before. There was no logic to it. She’d saved his life for no reason. Presented with an opportunity to escape, she’d not only turned it down, she’d risked her life for him.
Fraera approached, sitting beside him, their legs dangling side by side like friends on a riverbank, except instead of fish and fallen leaves passing them by, the city’s waste flowed beneath their feet. Fraera asked:
— Why are you hiding here?
Malysh wanted to remain silent, petulant, but it was an unforgivable insult not to reply, so he muttered:
— I don’t feel well.
To his surprise Fraera laughed:
— Two months ago you would’ve killed that girl and not thought anything of it.
Fraera rested a hand on his shoulder:
— I need to know if you will do anything I order, without question.
— I have never disobeyed you.
— You have never disagreed with anything I’ve ordered you to do.
Malysh couldn’t counter — it was true, he’d never had a contrary opinion, until now. She’d pushed him together with Zoya in order to test him. She’d manufactured his relationship with Zoya in order to measure it against her relationship with him.
— Malysh, when I was imprisoned, I heard a story, told by a Chechen convict. It comes from a Nartian epic, about a hero called Soslan. It is the custom of Narts to avenge not only wrongs committed against them but any committed against their family or ancestors, no matter how ancient the crime. Quarrels last for hundreds of years. Soslan spent his entire life in pursuit of revenge. When you come of age, Malysh, you will need a new name. I had hoped it would be Soslan.
Though her voice hadn’t changed, Malysh sensed danger. Fraera stood up:
— Follow me.
Malysh followed Fraera through the tunnels and chambers to Zoya’s cell. She unlocked the door. Zoya was standing in the corner, having heard them approach. She sought confirmation in Malysh’s eyes that something was wrong. Fraera took hold of Zoya’s wrist, pulling her toward the door. Confused, Malysh didn’t know whether to obey or protest. Before he could make up his mind, Fraera slammed the door, locking him in.
HAVING FLOWN ACROSS THE WIDTH of the Soviet Union from the Pacific coast to the capital, the fuel gauge of the Ilyushin was tapping empty. They had one chance to put down. A storm had closed over them: the plane burrowing through furious black clouds. Lazar was in the back, chewing biscuits with the good side of his mouth. Leo was strapped into the copilot’s chair, trying to keep Konstantin’s confidence from crumbling. Flying toward Stupino military airstrip on the outskirts of Moscow, the plane made its final descent. Panic in his voice, Konstantin declared:
— I should be able to see the lights by now!
Passing through the cloud’s base, instead of lights being stretched out in the distance they were coming up directly underneath. The plane was too high. Panicking, Konstantin lurched into a steeper drop: a catastrophic gradient. Frantically adjusting, he leveled out, belly-flopping the plane onto the runway. The wheels smashed down, spinning briefly before snapping off, the steel stubs scratching along the tarmac, ripping the plane open as if it were being unzipped. The wingtip hit the ground, swinging the disemboweled plane on its torn stomach one hundred and eighty degrees, slingshotting it off the edge of the runway, propellers digging up mud.
Dazed, his forehead bleeding, Leo unbuckled himself, standing up, pushing open the cockpit door and revealing a cabin torn in half. Lazar had survived, positioned on the opposite side to the damage, a halo of the plane’s shell intact around him. Still in his seat, the young pilot started to laugh, hysterical whoops of delight — turned quite mad— rain streaming onto his face through the cracked window.
Leo doubted the plane would catch on fire: there was no fuel and the rain was intense, dousing the smoking engines. With it being safe to leave the pilot behind, he helped Lazar out of the torn midriff, clambering through the wreckage, using the detritus of the wing to step down onto the mud. Emergency vehicles raced toward them, paramedics approached. Leo waved aside medical assistance:
— We’re okay.
He was Lazar’s voice now. Frol Panin stepped out of his executive limousine, a guard moving in perfect synchronization, opening an umbrella above him. He offered his hand to Lazar:
— My name is Frol Panin. I’m sorry I couldn’t arrange your freedom more conveniently. Your wife’s actions made any official release impossible. Come, we must hurry. We can speak in the car.
In the back of the ZIL limousine Lazar studied the soft leather upholstery and walnut panels with an infantlike fascination. There were ice cubes in a small silver jug, a bowl of fresh fruit. Lazar picked up an orange, cupping it in his hands, squeezing it. Panin politely ignored the behavior: the bewilderment of a convict surrounded by luxury. He handed Leo a map of Moscow.
— That’s all we received from Fraera.
Leo examined the map. A central location was marked with an ink crucifix:
— What’s there?
— We couldn’t find anything.
The car began to move.
— Where is Raisa?
— I spoke to her earlier. She was going to wait for the car. When the car arrived, they found your parents looking after Elena. Raisa had gone out.
Alarmed, Leo sat forward:
— She’s supposed to be under protective custody.
— We can’t protect someone who doesn’t want to be protected.
— You don’t know where she is?
— I’m sorry, Leo.
Leo sat back. There was no doubt in his mind that Fraera was involved in Raisa’s disappearance.
IT WAS TWO IN THE MORNING by the time they arrived in the city center. The contrast to the wilderness of Kolyma was so pronounced that Leo felt sick with disorientation, a sensation exacerbated by sleep deprivation and drumming anxiety. They stopped in the middle of Moskvoretskaya Naberezhnaya, the main road that followed the Moskva, at the point marked on the map. The driver got out. Panin’s bodyguard joined him. The two officers checked the area, returning to the car.
— There’s nothing here!
Leo stepped out. The rain was heavy: he was soaked through in a matter of seconds. The street was empty. He could hear the rain running down the drain. He crouched down. The manhole cover was under the car.
— Drive forward!
The limousine moved forward, exposing the cover. Leo wrenched it open, pushing it aside. The guards were on either side of him, guns ready. The drop was deep. There was no one on the ladder.
Leo returned to the car:
— Do you have flashlights?
Panin nodded:
— In the trunk.
Leo opened the trunk, checking the flashlights, handing one to Lazar.
Leo took the lead, climbing down first, gripping the ladder, the shudder-inducing memory of torn skin combining with the real-time pain he felt in his knees. Sheets of rain spilled over the edge, splashing his hands, neck, and face. Lazar followed. Panin called down:
— Good luck.
As soon as they were both below street level the manhole was closed, the steel lid clattering shut, cutting off the streams of rainwater and the streetlight. In the pitch-black darkness they paused, turning on their flashlights before continuing down.
Reaching the bottom of the ladder, Leo surveyed the main tunnel. It was filled with a torrent of white, swirling water. The heavy rain had caused an overflow. Instead of modest, filthy streams, cascades of crashing water were channeling across the city. Unsure whether it was possible to proceed, Leo was forced to suppose the existence of some kind of ledge. Testing his theory, he hung down, tentatively exploring with his boot. The narrow ledge was submerged underwater.
Leo shouted to Lazar, projecting his voice above the noise:
— Stay close to the wall!
Lazar climbed down, Leo guiding him. Pressed flat against the wall, the two of them crisscrossed their flashlights in every direction searching for some instruction. In the distance, a hundred or so meters down the tunnel, there was a light.
Setting off toward the light, along the narrow ledge, the water level in the tunnel was rising, splashing around their knees. Each step required ferocious concentration. Only meters away, Leo saw a lantern fixed to the wall above the outline of a door. Scraping at the thick slime that covered the walls, he pushed the door open. Water poured in, down a flight of concrete stairs descending farther underground. They hurried, closing the door behind them, cutting the water off— relieved to be clear of the perilous ledge.
Inside the narrow spiral staircase the air was dank and hot. They descended in silence, their breathing echoing around the closed chamber. After fifty or so steps they came across another door. Leo pushed hard on the steel frame, the hinges creaking. There was no stench of sewage, no flowing water, just silence. He turned to Lazar:
— Stay here.
Leo entered the new tunnel, exploring it with his flashlight. The walls were dry. His foot kicked a steel track — they were in a metro tunnel.
Like an underground sunrise a soft yellow light appeared, emanating from an old-fashioned mining lantern, a flickering gas flame held by a man. He was alone, his proportions grotesquely muscular, tattoos stretched across his hands and neck.
— Don’t move.
The vory searched Leo and Lazar. Finished, he shut the steel door that led up to the sewers, locking it. He swung around, indicating the direction they were going to walk. They set off, Leo in front, Lazar just behind, the vory at the back, commenting as they went:
— This metro line isn’t on any map. After it was completed the workers were executed so that its existence could remain a secret. It’s called the spetztunnel and it runs from Kremlin to Ramenkoye, an underground town fifty kilometers away. If the West attacks our leaders will descend here, sitting on silk cushions while Moscow burns.
After some distance the vory stopped walking.
— Here.
There was a steel door in the wall. Leo opened it, shining his flash-light up at the concrete stairway, thankful that it climbed upward. The vory closed the door on them. Seconds later there was a hissing sound: the lock was rendered useless with acid. No one could follow them.
Damp with sweat, they reached the top of the steps, finding the door unlocked and exiting into Taganskaya metro station. Leo walked out of the station into the middle of Taganskaya Square, exasperated, searching for what to do next. Lazar raised his arm, pointing in the direction of the river some two hundred meters away. There was a woman standing in the middle of Bolshoy Krasnokholmskiy Bridge.
Leo hurried, Lazar by his side. As they reached the riverbank, without the protection of the buildings, the wind doubled in strength. The bridge was a stark concrete arch, and swirling below, the Moskva was tumultuous with the night’s downpour. The woman remained in the middle of the bridge, waiting for them, rain sloshing off her jacket. Drawing close, Leo recognized that jacket. It belonged to him.
Raisa lowered her hood.
Running forward, reaching her side, taking her hands, he was befuddled with emotions — concern and relief. Raisa shook her hands free of his grip.
— Why didn’t you tell me about Zoya? She held a knife over you. You told me nothing was wrong. You lied to me, about something like that? What did we promise? No more lies! No more secrets! We promised, Leo!
— Raisa, I panicked. I wanted a chance to put things right before telling you. After you came out of hospital, I was preparing to go to Kolyma. You were still weak.
— Leo, I wasn’t weak. You were! This isn’t about being a hero. It’s about what’s best for Zoya and Elena. I met Fraera. She came to me. There’s no way she’s going to hand Zoya over to you. It’s never going to happen.
On the south side of the bridge car headlights appeared, beams of light blurred by the downpour. The car accelerated toward them, causing Leo to raise his hand, shielding his eyes from the powerful headlights. The car braked. Doors opened. The driver was a vory. Fraera stepped out of the passenger side, indifferent to the rain. She glanced at Leo, then at Raisa, before concentrating her attention on Lazar, her husband.
Lazar walked toward her, uncertain, evidently shocked, despite Leo’s warnings, at her transformation. They stood opposite each other. Exploring his appearance, she touched the side of his face, feeling the shape of his injured jaw. He winced at her touch but didn’t pull away. She said:
— You have suffered.
Leo watched as Lazar mouthed the words:
— We have… a son?
— Our son is dead. Your wife is dead.
A gunshot, a flash of light — Lazar fell to his knees, clutching his stomach.
Leo ran forward, catching Lazar as he fell. His teeth were red with blood. Stunned by the senseless execution, Leo turned to Fraera:
— Why?
She didn’t reply, looming over him, offering no explanation. He looked down at Lazar’s body, cradled in his arms. The man he’d betrayed, and rescued, the man who’d saved his life, was dead. Leo lowered his body, laying him down on the road.
Fraera grabbed Leo by the shirt:
— Get in the front of the car.
She waved her gun at Raisa:
— You too!
Leo stood up, climbing into the driver’s seat. Raisa was in the passenger seat. Zoya was in the back, her wrists and ankles bound. Her mouth was gagged — her eyes were terrified. The car had been modified. There was a grate between them. Raisa and Leo simultaneously pressed their hands up against the wire.
— Zoya!
Zoya pressed her face against the other side, pleading through the gag for help. Their fingers touched. Leo shook the grate but it held fast.
The back door was opened: Fraera leaned in, grabbing Zoya, pulling her, lifting her out. Leo spun around, trying to open the door. It was locked. It couldn’t be opened from the inside. Raisa tried her door, to no avail. Fraera and the vory carried Zoya to the trunk. The vory picked up a grain sack, opening it while Fraera lowered Zoya in.
Leo swiveled round, aiming his boots squarely at the side window. Like a mule, he kicked out again and again, his soles bouncing off, the plate glass remaining intact. Raisa cried out:
— Leo!
Leo scrambled across to Raisa’s side of the car, the side nearest to the river. The vory and Fraera were carrying the sack, Zoya was struggling to break out, thrashing and twisting, fighting for her life. The vory slapped her across the face, knocking the resistance out of her for long enough to push her down and secure the sack. The pair of them together lifted the sack. It was weighted. The unconscious Zoya was heaved up onto the ledge. Leo’s face was flat against the plate glass as he watched the sack being pushed off the bridge. He caught a glimpse of it plummeting toward the river.
Fraera perched on the hood of the car, squatting, her face close to the windscreen, eyes on fire, lapping up their pain like a cat licking cream. Exploding with rage, Leo pummeled the windscreen, uselessly banging his fists, trapped behind reinforced glass. Fraera watched, delighting in his helplessness, before jumping down and mounting the back of a bike. Leo hadn’t even noticed that two motorcycles had pulled up alongside them.
Trapped in the car, Leo kicked the ignition, exposing the wiring. Sparking the connections, he put his foot down on the accelerator, revving the engine, driving as if in pursuit of Fraera. Raisa called out:
— Leo! Zoya!
Leo wasn’t chasing Fraera. Picking up enough speed, he swung the car violently left, toward the barricade. The car smashed against the edge of the bridge, ripping the side off, tearing it open. With the engine smoking, the wheels spinning on the curb, Leo turned to his wife. Raisa had cut her head, but she was already out of her seat, climbing out the smashed side. He staggered after her, reaching the point where Zoya had been dropped.
Raisa jumped first, Leo after her. Falling, he saw Raisa enter the water, shortly before his legs crashed through the surface. Underwater, the current pulled him down. Sucked deeper, he resisted his impulse to return to the surface and kicked down with the force of the current, directing himself to the bottom where Zoya would’ve come to rest. He didn’t know how deep the river was, kicking harder and harder — his lungs burning, fighting his way down. His hands touched the thick silt at the bottom. He looked around, unable to see anything. The water was black. Pulled upward, he tried to search, spinning round, but it was no good — he couldn’t see anything. Desperate for air, forced back to the surface, he gasped. Glancing around, the bridge was already in the distance behind him.
Leo breathed deeply, preparing to dive again. He heard Raisa cry out:
— Zoya!
It was a hopeless cry.