Authors: Kenneth Cran
“There’s no footprints in the snow,” said Nick as they reentered the cellblock.
“Nick, lack of prints doesn’t prove-” Talia started.
“There are no absolutes,” said Radchek. “We should take this chance while we can.” He turned to Ormskovo. “Private, you and mister-” He looked at Nick.
“Just Nick,” he said.
“Take Mr. Nick with you to the camp’s vehicles, do whatever it takes to get one started.”
“That’s outrageous,” said Barkov. “He’ll drive away and leave us all here.”
“No, he won’t,” said Radchek, and then he stared at Nick. “Because Jovaravich and I are going to the main building for weapons.”
Everyone looked at Nick, but he just shrugged innocently. He hugged and kissed Talia. “Be right back,” he said, then winked at her. She was the only one who saw it.
Ormskovo buttoned his coat to the top and slid his cap over his red-coiffed head. Before they left, he looked at Talia and said, “You think they’re gone?” His tone screamed for reassurance.
“I think the captain’s correct,” she said. “There are no absolutes.”
Talia watched Nick and Private Ormskovo fade into the darkness of the hallway, then listened to the telltale opening and closing of the outside door. In the little office annex, Jovaravich knelt and unlatched the trap door in the floor and lifted it open with his good arm. Radchek descended first, but before he did, he looked at Talia and opened his mouth. No words came out, for there was nothing to say. He melted away in the black tunnel, and Jovaravich soon followed. Talia closed the trap door behind them.
Barkov shook his head. “I don’t agree with this at all.”
Talia glanced over at him, but said nothing. A moment passed, then Barkov said, “Do you think they’ll be safe?”
His tone was genuine, but the look in his eyes was something else, and it made Talia feel cold. She sat on the edge of the desk and wrapped the canvas around her shoulders. “I hope so,” she managed.
Barkov sat on the wood bed, taking a deep breath. “Despite what you might think, I’m not deranged.” Talia ignored him and turned away from the cell. Barkov persisted. “I simply want to see my family again.”
Nick opened the door a crack and peeked outside. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and at the moment it shone on the snow like a spotlight on a reflector. He shielded his eyes and opened the door a little wider. Nothing but undisturbed white greeted his gaze. “Looks okay,” he said, and then left the cellblock. The air was cold and crisp, a welcome respite from the cellblock. He would not be returning there if he could help it.
Ormskovo exited, glancing here and there before joining Nick on the cement porch. “You sure?” he said.
Nick waved his arm in a sweeping gesture. “Does it look dangerous?” he said.
“It always looks dangerous to me,” said Ormskovo. “I don’t like fighting.”
“You picked a hell of a career, then” said Nick.
“It wasn’t my choice,” Ormskovo said, but didn’t offer anything further. Nick understood. The Second World War had decimated the Red Army, and Stalin had instituted mandatory military service for many boys when they came of age. “Shouldn’t there be bodies?”
Nick scanned the area. It was smooth- no lumps, humps or bumps anywhere. “Blizzard covered everything,” he said, although he wasn’t so sure. He remembered what Talia said about the Smilodon’s hibernating. Didn’t some animals stockpile food for the winter? He knew that squirrels stored nuts, but that was it. Despite Talia’s belief that the cats didn’t eat people, he shuddered at the thought of human beings, even Soviet soldiers, being stored as a winter snack.
A snowdrift peaked down the short staircase, and Nick and Ormskovo plowed through it to the yard. To their left was the fallen tower and the remains of the convoy. To the right, the second block house, deserted and boarded up. A hundred yards in front of them, the main administration building. And near the far end of the building, they could just make out the vague shapes of the camp’s vehicles beneath camouflage netting and piled snow.
Nick turned around and said to Ormskovo “I assume the keys are inside-”
Then he saw it.
Behind the scrawny private, the door to the cellblock displayed familiar markings. A ragged number 11 stretched from the little window to the bottom of the door. Ormskovo looked at them, his chest thumping with sudden fear.
“What is that?” he said, but Nick wasn’t in the mood to explain.
“Just keep your eyes open,” he said. They were now officially in siberius territory.
Through snow three feet deep, they began the long walk to the vehicles.
The black tunnel stretched to a fine pinpoint of light. Jovaravich lead the way, keeping his eye on it the whole time. Radchek brought up the rear, blind in the darkness as Jovaravich’s body blocked what little light there was. The tunnel was a straight shot beneath the yard, and Radchek wondered what use it could have served. He wasn’t complaining, but it was an extravagant bit of engineering for Angara or any other gulag. He ran his hands across the narrow walls, his fingers finding the regular pattern of brick and mortar. Built by the inmates, he reasoned. In a labor camp without a mine or factory nearby, there had to be something for the prisoners to do.
As they made their way through, they were overcome by an odor so powerful that it stopped them dead.
“Holy Christ,” said Jovaravich as he cupped his hand over his nose and mouth. The instinct was to use both hands, but the sharp pain in his broken arm reminded him otherwise.
Radchek buried his nose in his coat sleeve but gagged anyway. “Keep moving,” he said in a muffled voice, and then pushed on Jovaravich’s back.
They jogged the rest of the way through the tunnel.
“It’s very cold,” Barkov said. He had now taken a more casual position on the bed, leaning against the wall with his feet up. Talia ignored him, pulling the canvas tighter over her shoulders. “Do you have a family?”
She turned and glared at the colonel. “Stalin killed them,” she said.
The colonel shook his head. “I’m sorry.” His tone was flat yet somehow caring. He paused before saying “How did they die?”
“In a gulag. Perhaps this very one.” She turned away from him and felt overwhelming grief. Tears welled in her eyes and she tried to brush them away. Barkov could hear here sniffling.
“Stalin is a monster.” Barkov stood up and crossed the cell to the bars. “It’s his fault so many suffered. Please, don’t cry. We’ll talk about something else, yes?”
Talia dabbed away the tears, sniffled and glanced over at his cell. “I’d rather not talk at all, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course,” Barkov said. “I suppose I’m just homesick. My family is in St. Peters- excuse me, Leningrad. I hate that name. They’re waiting for me to come home.” His gaze drifted to some far-off place and time. “We used to visit the Moscow zoo in the spring. My son, Anitoliy, he loves flamingos. Isn’t that strange for a boy? Oh, he liked the elephants and giraffes, but it was the flamingos that captured him. The color I think. Like-” He searched for the closest approximation. “Like the color of a sunset in late autumn. Oh, not the purple clouds, but the faint outline of pink-orange surrounding them, a color so brilliant that God uses it sparingly so as not to drive men mad by its beauty.”
Talia saw zoos and flamingos and sunsets and little boys astride the shoulders of their fathers. But she soon snapped out of it and, caught up in an uncomfortable pause, said, “Why are you locked up?” As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. She didn’t want to be drawn into a conversation. Not with him.
“Because I’m tired of the military,” said Barkov, then he sighed and sat back down on the bed. “I want to go home. I wanted to turn your American friend over to my superiors, hoping they would see fit to reassign me. I miss my family.” He waited before saying, “And I don’t like Siberia.”
Talia understood. She wasn’t too fond of it lately, either.
“I pushed my men too hard.” He rubbed his eyes. “I now think Captain Radchek may have done the right thing, under the circumstances. I would have done the same in his position.”
“
I suppose.”
“
I’m just tired,” he said. “So tired.”
In the dim light, she watched as he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
Jovaravich ascended the narrow stairs to the open doorway, took a deep breath and peeked around the corner. The room was frosty and open to the elements. It smelled like a meat locker, an icy freezer-burned scent that somehow made him miss the permeating sourness of an alcoholic’s escape. Regardless, the radio room was pretty much as he remembered it, but with a snowdrift piling through the smashed-in outside door. And though it was four feet off the floor, the radio set lay buried within the crested swell of snow. “It looks clear, captain,” he called down. Radchek climbed the stairs and joined Jovaravich.
Like church mice, they entered the radio room. Eyes darted to every creak and crack the settling building made, but there was no sign of life. Navigating around the snowdrift, Radchek went to the radio table and began digging it out. Jovaravich made his way over to the gun rack and searched through the rusted keys. In a moment, he had two dangling from his index finger. “I found the master key to the cell block,” he said. “Do you want it?”
Radchek wondered if he did. Not having it was a good excuse to leave Barkov locked up. Still, it might be wise to hold onto it. At least he knew where it was. He nodded and Jovaravich tossed it to him. Radchek slipped it into his greatcoat pocket.
“Do you need help with the radio, sir?” the private asked, but it was a hollow gesture. His desire was to get up to the weapons, to get his hands on a rifle or pistol.
“No,” said Radchek. “Go and start gathering weapons. I’ll be there shortly.” Jovaravich nodded and then jogged down the short hallway to the stairs. He bounded up two steps at a time.
Scooping snow away from the radio, Radchek lifted it from the table and set it up on a dry wall shelf. Reaching around, he found where the microphone cable plugged into the back of the radio, then followed the cable with his fingers.
It was the sudden sound that stopped him. He held his breath, his eyes darted around the room, searching. A faint but constant rumble, like distant thunder, caught his ear. It was muffled, yet obvious. Perhaps it was another convoy? Or a plane? He stood as still as a corpse, trying to pinpoint the source.
Then, as quick as it came, the sound vanished. Had he imagined it? He had not had a proper night’s rest in a week. Sleep deprivation could do that to a person. One just had to look at Colonel Barkov for proof. He hadn’t eaten or slept at all. Of course, he was
already
crazy.
Radchek followed a cable back to the buried table, dug away the snow and found the handset. It was right where shot-dead Nierbanski had left it 12 hours before. It felt like 12 days. Radchek had not allowed himself to think about the men under his charge; not of his friend Gavrila Vukarin, not of Nierbanski. Not of Corovich back at the wreck, or Parnichev, both of who’s MIA status was now suspect. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, but at the moment he had survival on his mind. If he were to grieve, it would have to wait.
Radchek blew away the snow covering the microphone, then depressed the button. He’d try Yenisey one more time. Just to be sure. “Angara to Yenisey Zero-One,” he said. “Do you read?”
Jovaravich opened a door marked
Bal’nitsa
and entered the hospital. Squared shafts of light from outside fought through windows covered with years of grime, lighting the dingy room in warm yellow tones. Against the two longest walls, rows of rusted steel bed frames sans mattresses played host to a myriad of spider webs. At the ends of frayed cords and stretching the length of the room, light sockets with broken or missing bulbs dangled like spent stars.
At one point in Angara Labor Camp’s history, this room had served as the hospital. Now it was the one maintained room on the second floor, kept dry and heated so as to preserve the single most valuable asset the camp now owned: its weapons.