Beneath the Darkest Sky

  Also by Jason Overstreet

  The Strivers’ Row Spy

  BENEATH THE DARKEST SKY

  JASON OVERSTREET

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by Jason Overstreet

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  BENEATH THE DARKEST SKY

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  DAFINA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Jason Overstreet

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2017951326

  Dafina and the Dafina logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-0178-7

  First Kensington Hardcover Edition: February 2018

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0179-4

  eISBN-10: 1-4967-0179-8

  First Kensington Electronic Edition: February 2018

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Lovett Fort-Whiteman.

  “An American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

  —W.E.B. Du Bois

  Acknowledgments

  To my family: I love y’all! Thanks, Frank Weimann, Selena James, Lulu Martinez, James Fugate, Ben Jealous, Vanny Nguyen, Deborah Burton-Johnson, Anne Saller, Gabby Gruen, and Ryan Herr. All of you have been so kind and supportive.

  Thanks to the helpful folks at UCLA’s Charles E. Young Research Library. A writer has never felt so at home. I’d be remiss not to mention how indebted I am to Professor Mark Hamilton for setting me on my creative path. And finally, I want to acknowledge the passing of a dear friend and artist, Deanna Hamro, who we lost in 2016. All of us love and miss you so much, DD!

  1

  Moscow, Russia

  August 1937

  I SAT AT THE DINING ROOM TABLE WITH MY FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD TWINS, James and Ginger, waiting for my wife to come home for dinner. Six o’clock turned to seven and then eight. No sight of her and no telephone call either.

  I’d asked the children to go ahead and eat their pot roast and vegetables from the Torgsin grocery, but they couldn’t muster up an appetite, consumed with worry over their absent mother. In the twenty-plus years we’d been together, she’d never been late for a planned dinner. I knew something was wrong.

  When the clock struck nine, I sent the children to bed. Shortly thereafter was a hard knock on the door, and I rushed to answer. Two large NKVD policemen, “blue tops” we called them, stood there stone-faced. Both mustached, one five-eleven and stocky, the other six-three and broad shouldered.

  “Is your name Prescott Sweet, and is this your residence?” the stocky one asked in Russian, which I spoke fluently.

  “Yes, Prescott Sweet. That is me. What is the problem, officers?”

  They looked at each other, obviously a bit surprised that I’d responded in the Russian tongue, something they hadn’t expected from a colored American.

  “Come with us,” the tall one said, reaching out and grabbing my arm.

  I flung it free and stepped back into the living room. “Tell me what this is about,” I said. “Where is my wife? Loretta Sweet! What have you done to her?”

  “She has been jailed for being a counterrevolutionary,” he said. “Now . . . come with us.”

  “She is no such thing!” I said.

  They both rushed me, and I swung at the stocky one, connecting to his jaw and dropping him, his hat rolling across the floor. The other took his baton and rapped me on the side of my head, cutting my left ear open. Before I could move again, both were on top of me, cuffing my wrists behind my back within seconds.

  “This is a fucking strong black baboon,” said one, digging his knee into my spine. These were two of the most physically imposing and robust men I’d ever encountered. Two of Stalin’s finest.

  “Daddy!” cried Ginger from the front hallway.

  “I’m fine, sweetheart,” I said, still speaking Russian, as both of my children were also fluent. “They’ve made a terrible mistake and I’ll clear it all up. Daddy will be right back. Wait here with your brother.”

  James came storming down the hallway from his back room and tackled the tall one.

  “Stop, son!” I yelled, as the blue top grabbed him around the neck and threw him to the floor so easily it was as if he were throwing a sack of potatoes. Then he cuffed him, yanked him up, and led him outside.

  “Don’t you dare hurt my boy!” I groaned.

  The stocky one, still on top of me, jumped up and grabbed Ginger by the arm, leading her out as well.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart!” I shouted, rocking back and forth on my belly, wrists cutting at the metal cuffs, chin held up from the floor, blood pouring out of my ear. “Daddy will be there to get you right away. You hear me?”

  As I lay there on the floor alone listening to the painful sound of car doors slamming outside, my instinct still had me trying to break free from the cuffs. But this was only causing more injury.

  “Come!” said the returning tall blue top, yanking me up by my extended arms, damn near dislocating my shoulders.

  “You sons of bitches!” I screamed. “Don’t you lay a finger on my daughter!”

  “Come!” he repeated, leading me outside and to the backseat of his parked black vehicle. With my son sitting next to me, I turned and watched the other blue top get in the car behind us, where Ginger had been placed. I was numb. I was helpless.

  “Where are your passports?” said the tall one, so quickly his Russian was hard to pick up. He stood there holding my door open. “All of your family’s passports! Where?”

  “They are in a brown leather bag,” I said, grimacing, blood streaming down my cheek. “In the back room on the left. They’re inside the closet.”

  * * *

  “Podozhdite!” he said, slamming the door.

  Forty-eight hours later, having spent them in an eight-by-eight dark closet of a jail cell at Taganka Prison with my son, James, hugging me and crying nonstop, we were escorted to a train in the cover of darkness. We had already stood in front of a three-person panel of Soviet officials, a “troika” the guard who’d opened our jail cell had called them. They’d informed us that we’d been officially sentenced to ten years of prison for our involvement in counterrevolutionary activities. A complete fabrication!

  The lights streaming above and along the tracks were bright, and the line facing our train car was made up of distraught and petrified men, all of them white, perhaps a few of them foreign like us, but most probably
Russian. Not a woman in sight.

  “ON YOUR KNEES!” shouted a blue top policeman, his vicious canine growling up and down the line. “And keep your heads down.”

  All of us did as he said. On our knees we remained for a good hour, waiting for God knows what. With my blue suit pants digging into the rocky dirt, I noticed the bloodstains on the sleeves of my white dress shirt from the cutting cuffs that night. Staying still, I could see in my periphery that there were hundreds of men in both directions waiting to board the other cars as the NKVD surveyed all of us like animals about to be herded into a slaughterhouse. NKVD was simply the joint law enforcement agency for all of the Soviet Union. Whether policemen, military soldiers, intelligence agents, traffic directors, border and prison guards, firefighters, etcetera, they all fell under the NKVD umbrella. Most people just referred to any and all officials as NKVD, mainly because, regardless of title, they each acted without limitation and were part of this mysterious authority machine.

  We could hear the blue tops roaming about, perhaps inspecting the train and checking individuals for weapons. I figured if anyone even hinted at trying to stand they’d shoot him. Perhaps this was a simple test. Finally, the officers began poking individuals with their guns one by one and telling them to stand and get in line.

  “You . . . give me your papers, zek!” he said, the tip of his rifle digging into my shoulder.

  The troika had given me a document, so I reached into my pants pocket and handed it to him.

  “You’re an American! Do you have your passport?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give it to me!”

  Again I dug in my pocket and handed it over.

  “Is this your son, zek?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Give him your passport and papers, son.”

  James did as I said and the officer read.

  “Both of you, stand . . . now!”

  James and I got up and rushed to get in line. At least the blue tops had some kernel of humanity within them, because I hadn’t been certain they’d allow the two of us to stay together. Still, I kept my fingers crossed, hoping this would remain the case.

  As we stood in line, a guard walked the line and checked all of our passports once more. He wrote each of our names down on a list. I assumed it was for later roll calls.

  I made quick observations as I boarded the car. To the right was a compartment with a regular wooden door. It was open and inside was a bunk bed, an NKDV uniform hanging on the wall, and two cushioned seats, obviously the living quarters for this car’s guards.

  Returning my focus straight ahead, it was fairly dark, the windows to my left along the corridor covered with heavy curtains. It stank of sweat and tobacco throughout. A few lit lanterns hung along the corridor wall, but most remained off. There were compartments to our right, six wooden seats in each—sets of three facing one another.

  I counted ten compartments total, or cages, if you will, as the only thing separating them were heavy, black chain-mail curtains. As we continued down the corridor, the smell of urine and feces became intense. Just as I began to cover my nose, an officer far ahead in front yelled for us to stop. I had been so consumed with studying how they’d reconstructed the car for the sole purpose of transporting prisoners that I bumped hard into the man in front of me. James and I were now standing in front of compartment eight, and the corridor was completely full.

  “SIX TO A COMPARTMENT!” yelled the blue top. “QUICK!”

  I held James’s arm and led him to the far seat on the right next to the curtain-covered window. I sat next to him in the middle seat. It wasn’t long before the two officers began sliding shut the ceiling-high metal fences that separated all of the compartments from the corridor. They then locked them with bolts. This entire setup was obviously designed to make sure the guards could see us at all times.

  “LISTEN!” yelled a blue top. “You hold in your shit! You hold in your urine! When it is time, you can use the hole at the end. We will let you go once in the morning and once at night. You go on yourself and you will get this hammer on the head!”

  He began banging it against the fencing.

  “Don’t ask for food!” he said. “We will give you your ration when it is available. The less you eat, the less you will have to shit. The less you drink, the less you will have to urinate. You are all lousy wreckers and pigs and saboteurs, so sit in your seats and keep your mouths closed. If you talk, I will use this to knock the teeth out of your mouth and give you a pretty pig smile.”

  After he’d given his orders, the lanterns were turned off, and we sat on the train in silent darkness for two hours. Finally, as we began to move, the faint sound of sighs and whimpering from a few men could be heard throughout. I wondered if the officers considered that “talking.”

  I wrapped my arm around James. He had no tears left and was motionless. All I could do was be strong for him. Where we were heading was beyond all of us.

  2

  Port-au-Prince, Haiti

  Four years earlier

  IT WAS GOOD NOT LIVING A LIE WITH MY WIFE ANY LONGER. A DECADE of truth can do wonders for a man’s sanity. And our ten-year-old twins knew only a father of complete transparency.

  The cause behind the spy work I had done in Harlem, ostensibly for J. Edgar Hoover, still pulled at my soul, but I had to find another way to seek equality for my colored brethren. Nine years in Paris teaching college engineering courses to French students part-time had hardly been the answer. But it appeared I was destined for a life of lecturing, at least until my good friend Bobby Ellington came to Paris in 1929 to serve as the U.S. Embassy’s First Secretary. He’d brought with him his new wife, Dorene, and their son and daughter. The family was delightful and a joy to spend time with.

  During his three-year post, we’d reconnected, discussing everything—from our past Bureau days dealing with J. Edgar Hoover and my killing of the four British Intelligence men—to Marcus Garvey’s arrest, Adolf Hitler’s rise, the spread of global communism, etcetera. He also tried to convince me to come work alongside him as an embassy consultant whenever his promotion and new post came about.

  As fate would have it, his call from Haiti to be U.S. Counselor came in 1932, shortly after Momma passed away. The loss of her, Loretta’s need for a new cultural experience, and my desire to do politically centered U.S. Government work was all the reason we needed to join the Ellingtons in Port-au-Prince. I also had this burning desire, a yearning, to somehow be a part of my America, even if from afar.

  I was hired under a personal service contract as a safety engineer consultant for the embassy, and Bobby had also arranged for me to work as his interpreter. “You can have a lifelong career as a diplomatic interpreter,” Bobby had said back in Paris, “and it will allow you and your family to see the world.” I’d become obsessed with languages the moment we’d arrived in France, so I was now fluent in French, Spanish, Italian, and German. It had all been born out of paranoia and a fear of having to move my family out of Paris if British Intelligence ever discovered my whereabouts.

  It felt like a lifetime ago that my name was Sidney Temple. I was now comfortable with my relatively new one—Prescott Sweet—and having been posted in Port-au-Prince for a year at this point, I realized how freeing it could feel getting lost in a sea of black faces, a luxury Paris hadn’t provided. I was the perfect embassy employee for Haiti, a colored American who spoke French and was well-educated. Most of the people, especially in rural areas, actually spoke Haitian Creole, a language based largely on eighteenth-century French, so I’d quickly mastered it, too.

  Unlike the white embassy staff, Bobby included, the Haitian people accepted me, and I was determined to help them cope with being subjugated to an American occupation that was now eighteen years in the making. It was a bit ironic, considering I, too, was a U.S. Government employee, but still, I was not working as an “official” Foreign Service officer like Bobby.

  Save for a gentleman named Clifton Wharton, I didn’t k
now of any American coloreds in the world who were actual FSOs. Every other who’d served abroad, men like Frederick Douglass and James Weldon Johnson, had been appointed directly by a sitting president. As for me, all I knew was that Bobby insisted he’d keep me employed for as long as he continued to rise through the ranks.

  The social climate in Port-au-Prince was volatile to say the least. The U.S. controlled the customs, collected taxes, and ran many governmental institutions, all of which benefited America. There was reason to believe that U.S. soldiers would soon be ordered home by President Roosevelt, but part of my job was to go out into the streets and convince the angry locals of such, to assuage feelings between those willing to accept employment from us and those who’d rather stick a knife in us. I was a peacemaker. Luckily, our twins attended the private American school, which kept them insulated and oblivious to all of the surrounding cultural noise.

  Loretta had grown comfortable with Port-au-Prince. So much of the strife and upheaval in the area was feeding her artistic appetite. Remnants of Africa, in terms of color, clothing, musical rhythms, food, and art, were very present throughout Haiti, so she anxiously soaked it all up. She was much tougher these days, and had many friends who enthusiastically shared their stories with her, most of which involved violence and unrest, along with diatribes about “puppet presidents” from years past.

  Between 1911 and 1915 alone, seven presidents were assassinated or overthrown, one having been beaten, his limp body thrown over the French embassy’s iron fence before an angry mob ripped his body to pieces and paraded the parts through the streets.

  These horror stories, and how they’d shaped these women, made Loretta more invested in the community. She was becoming somewhat of a political artist, less concerned about the fact that her career hadn’t taken off in Paris, and she had also found some joy and extra income leading painting workshops.