Beneath the Darkest Sky Read online

  “Audra!” the woman said.

  As soon as she realized I wasn’t Audra, that I was a stranger who had a pistol pointed at them, she let out a single scream, but the man stayed quiet, holding his arm up in front of her, signaling for her to shut up. I could tell this wasn’t the first time he’d stared at a pointed gun. According to Xavier, both were in their late fifties.

  “Do not scream again or I will shoot you!” I said in Russian. “Ne krichi! YA budu strelyat’ v vas!”

  The woman pressed her back against the headboard and tried to hold back another scream, all the while moaning and beginning to weep. I stayed calm and kept my eyes on him. He knew I was serious.

  “Good,” I said. “Just stay quiet like that and no one will get hurt. I am not here to kill you. I am not even here to lay a finger on you. All you have to do to stay alive is stay calm and do exactly what I tell you to do. Do you understand?”

  They both nodded.

  “Now, I want you to both get out of bed and get dressed. Then I want you to walk down the hallway and sit on the couch in the living room. That is all. I will stand right here and wait.”

  Minutes later, the man, woman, and their two twin daughters sat on the living room couch, Luc and Xavier sitting in chairs while I stood. Both girls were crying. I focused my attention on the father.

  “Do you love your son?” I said.

  “Da,” said the salt-and-pepper-haired man, Zigfrid.

  “Very much!” said his wife, Karina, her dingy red hair pulled back in a ponytail, her Russian barely audible.

  “And Xavier has reason to believe that your son loves you all, too,” I said. “Is this true?”

  They all nodded.

  “I read in Xavier’s report that you young women are sixteen,” I said, looking at the plain-looking blond daughters. “And do you love your older brother?”

  “Da,” said Audra.

  “Da,” said Jana.

  “I have a wife, a daughter, and a son,” I said. “And ironically, they are twins just like you. I love them dearly. But they are in Joseph Stalin’s prison camps. I’m sure you can understand how painful this must be for me.”

  Again they all nodded.

  “I’m sure you can understand that I am willing to do anything to get them out. I would rather be dead than live without them. And I can’t sit idly by while they die a slow death. How old is your son?”

  “He is thirty-two,” said Zigfrid.

  “And yet your daughters are so much younger,” I said.

  “They were a surprise,” said Zigfrid. “My wife got pregnant at forty-two. We had already seen our son grow to be twenty-six years old at that point.”

  I walked over to Xavier, unbuttoned his backpack, and removed a pen and file. I took a blank sheet of paper from it.

  “Which neighbors are your closest friends?” I said.

  “The Krols,” said Zigfrid. “They are downstairs in number three.”

  “Good,” I said, setting the paper and pen on the coffee table in front of his wife. “I want you to write a letter to them explaining that your family has been invited to Leningrad to stay at your son’s new big house. Tell them in the letter that your son is very sick. Tell them that because you may be gone for several months, you would like for them to collect your mail for you. Tell them you received a telephone call early this morning and didn’t want to wake them, hence the reason for leaving the letter and mailbox key under their door. That’s all.”

  Karina sniffled, nodded, and began to write, her hands shaking in the process.

  “When you are finished writing that letter,” I said, “I want you all to go pack a suitcase. We will be taking you to a different location here in Riga. My plan is for you to be there no longer than two months. Don’t worry. You will be fed and taken care of. Meanwhile, I have to return to Berlin. You see . . . I have to send a briefcase to your son on May 1st. He’s expecting some spy information. But this briefcase will have no such thing inside. It will have letters and photographs and instructions, telling Ivan’s young assistant to meet me in Leningrad on May the 10th. When did your son first fall in love with Stalin?”

  “He didn’t fall in love with Stalin,” said Zigfrid, his daughters still lightly crying. “He fell in love with Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution when he was a ten-year-old boy. He swore he would leave as soon as he was sixteen to live in Moscow and join the Red Army. And he did.”

  “Well, this son of yours, Colonel Ivan Zorin, has shown himself to be ruthless. I am not going to belittle him any more than that in front of you, but you would not be proud of his actions. He has taken very much after Stalin.”

  “Maybe he lost his way,” said Zigfrid, making a cross on his chest and looking upward.

  “I first found out about your son while I was in a labor camp on the far northeast side of Russia. A good man named Commander Koskinen said he knew your son, this after he’d just told me where my wife and daughter were. He then proceeded to tell me that they might have gotten pregnant from one of the guards or commanders or zeks. With my head ringing, I asked him to tell me more about your son. Koskinen said he’d met him in 1933 at a Dalstroi training academy in Moscow. He also told me that your son was from Riga, Latvia. And right then and there I began to hatch this plan.”

  With all of them having attentively listed to my story, I walked over to the front door and removed the camera from the leather bag. I handed it to Xavier. Then I walked over to the mother and picked up the written letter.

  “Thank you, Karina,” I said, reading her Russian words. “When we get to the other location, I am going to need you to write a detailed letter to your son, explaining the terrible situation you four find yourselves in. You will lie and tell him that I almost killed your husband. You will lie and tell him that it is only a matter of time before I do the unthinkable to all of you. You will write about his childhood, telling him only things that you, his mother, could know. And you will mention each of my family member’s names, pleading with your son to do exactly as I say immediately. Understand?”

  “Da!” said Karina.

  “I need you all to scoot over and make room for me,” I said, waiting for them and then sitting next to Karina. “Luc over there has his pistol loaded and ready, so none of you should try anything stupid.”

  I began taking the bullets out of my pistol and setting them on the coffee table.

  “I want you to all look,” I said, holding up my empty gun. “This is only a pistol for show now. Xavier is going to take a few photographs of the five of us. Again, let me reiterate, I have no intentions of harming you. But I have to do everything I can to make your son believe I will. So, when we are finished with this group picture, I am going to sit with each one of you individually. I am going to hold this empty pistol next to your head. And Xavier is going to photograph it. I am sorry. But I have to put the fear of God in your son. Now, look at the camera.”

  25

  MR4 Labor Camp - Kirovsk, Russia

  May 11, 1939

  COLONEL ZORIN’S YOUNG ASSISTANT, OSIP, HAD PICKED ME UP AT the Leningrad station right on time. From there we had gotten into a white Ford Coupe. And now, with the long drive behind us, we approached MR4 Labor Camp once again.

  Seven days earlier, Stalin had actually replaced Maxim Litvinov with Vyacheslav Molotov. Bobby had rushed to tell me, reiterating that it had been done for the very reason we’d suspected, Litvinov being Jewish. Now it was surely only a matter of time before Germany and the Soviet Union had their important sit-down. My work had paid off, and in Stalin’s eyes, this single piece of information had probably warranted my having been used.

  Osip drove me up to Zorin’s barracks and the two of us entered. We found him sitting at his desk doing nothing but staring down as if he were daydreaming. Another young guard was sitting in a chair against the wall to his left.

  “The Interpreter is here,” said Osip.

  “Come and sit,” said Zorin. “Both of you.”

 
; “How is my family?” I bravely asked as we sat.

  “How is mine?” he said, his Russian words filled with anger, his jaw clinched.

  “They are fine, Colonel Zorin. So far!”

  “I will just say that yours haven’t died yet,” he said.

  “And they better not, Colonel.”

  “Your son is in the hospital as we speak. He is having the same problems with his lungs.”

  “I figured as much,” I said.

  “They are giving him lots of strong syrup.”

  “Keeping him knocked out is not treatment,” I said.

  His look suggested he wanted to stand and slap me.

  “This is my other assistant, Roman,” said Zorin, looking to his left at the young guard. “Only myself, Osip, and Roman are privy to this sensitive undertaking.”

  “What would the Kremlin do if they knew you were being blackmailed?” I said.

  “They can’t know,” he said.

  “They’d execute you and you know it.”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  I looked at Osip and Roman. “And you trust these two?”

  “They have been with me since they were sixteen. I trust them more than anyone on this planet. They understand my predicament. Besides, you filthy blacks aren’t worth losing my precious family over.”

  “Just know that if they try anything stupid, hurt any of us, my men in Riga will even the score. They are far less compassionate than I. More like you!”

  He shuffled around in his chair, uncomfortable with the pinch he was in.

  “Your instructions were very clear,” he said. “I immediately cabled the Kremlin when I received your last briefcase and told them that you were demanding to return to MR4 in order to see your sick son before continuing to spy in Berlin. Of course they cabled back and said it was okay.”

  “Even if they hadn’t,” I said, “you still would have sent Osip. We just would have had to work the plan differently. But this makes it cleaner. I’m assuming you informed the Kremlin that I intend to return in three days, on the fourteenth?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then that is when you will tell them how sick my boy has become. That is when you will tell them that I am unwilling to return without my entire family. They will balk at that and then you will offer to execute us.”

  “Yes,” he said. “They love for me to execute people, especially ones who make impossible demands, and in your case, especially someone who they’ve already used up. I mean, I’m certain they would love to squeeze some more out of you, but once they know you are serious about demanding your family’s release, they’ll give me the go-ahead to put all four of you in the graves.”

  “I’m assuming you will be informing your briefcase man, Dieter, that I’ve been executed.”

  “He will come to know this soon enough. Yes.”

  “I’m also guessing that Lovett Fort-Whiteman is here now,” I said. “He was due to be transferred in early May.”

  Zorin stuck out his lower lip and then cracked a bit of an evil-looking smile.

  “Not everything the Kremlin has been telling you is true,” he said. “When they told you that they’d tracked your comrade down in Magadan, and that he was alive, they lied. He was sent to the Kolyma gold mines right after you left back in November. But he only lasted a little over a month. He died on January 13th of this year. According to his official death certificate, he had apparently starved to death and was found frozen with no teeth. But . . . I have no more details other than those I’m afraid.”

  Learning that Lovett was dead came as a massive slug to my gut. But I sat up straight and glared back at him. I just swallowed deep and didn’t allow myself to feel anything yet. I had to stay present and focused and strong. I couldn’t let him see an ounce of weakness. He was trying to hurt me one last time, his constant smile signaling how much he was delighting in this news.

  “So, you see, Interpreter,” he said, putting his hands together at his chin and tapping his fingers together, “your good comrade has been dead the entire time you’ve been in Berlin. He was only alive in your mind.”

  He looked at Roman and Osip, and they all half smiled.

  “Let’s just hope,” I said, “that your lovely mother stays alive . . . both in your mind and in reality.”

  He paused. I could sense him trying to figure out one last possible way of getting out of this trap I had him in. But in talking to his mother, I’d been able to sense how much he loved her. All of these men like Zorin and Stalin exhibited no feelings when it came to murdering people, unless, of course, it was their own family members.

  “I want you to know,” he said, “that both Osip and Roman will be with you the entire time and will have guns on them. You and your family will be searched and have no way of defending yourselves during the trip.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I brought my suitcase and have my suits, but did you have the fine clothes made for my family like I asked for in the letter?”

  “Yes. When you arrive at the hotel in Riga and check into a room, only then are you to phone your men. And Osip will be listening. What hotel will it be?”

  “That part you don’t get to know. That’s part of the deal. Your men get to pick a room and check in under a name I won’t be privy to, but I get to select the hotel.”

  * * *

  Three days later, at around 10:00 p.m., my family stood near a freshly dug pit. It was the latest in a long line of others that had been covered up already, thousands of dead zeks having been buried underneath them. This pit was large enough for several people. All four of us stood there knowing what the plan was. Zorin was going to be the man who shot each of us. He would do so while two guards and another high-ranking officer bore witness. The only other witnesses would be Osip and Roman, and they were also the only two people besides Zorin and my family who knew that Zorin would be using blank cartridges.

  We had been driven to the massive graveyard in the white Ford Coupe, Osip behind the wheel. Roman had driven an identical beige Coupe behind us, while Zorin and his witnesses had been in a black sedan leading the way. The graveyard was situated about a mile from the main camp. More zeks than we could even begin to imagine had been driven out here and executed by Zorin on far too many occasions. We could smell death all around us.

  I had been able to be with Loretta and the children the entire time since I’d arrived from Berlin. Zorin had put us all in a private room. The emotions had been overwhelming to say the least. They looked terrible, their spirits completely broken, their bodies even more withered—Loretta and Ginger’s hair having grown back only a bit. And they had barely said a word, too tired and broken to even imagine that my plan might work. We must have spent that entire first day together just holding one another and crying and resting, particularly James, whose breathing issue wouldn’t relent.

  It was in this private room that I’d explained to them what the escape plan was. I had reiterated how important it was for them to drop to the dirt as soon as the gun was fired. I’d even demonstrated how they needed to fall. “Don’t jerk backward,” I’d said. “Just fall straight to the ground and come to rest wherever your body’s natural movement stops. If you’re still on your knees and slumped over, fine . . . just stay there.”

  “I will have no problem falling, Daddy,” Ginger had said. “I’ve been wanting to drop to my knees and rest for almost two years.”

  The feeling of guilt I felt for not having kept my daughter safe was uncontrollable. She and James were sixteen now, she as tall as her mother, and James only an inch shorter than I. They were all grown up, but with real-life educations that were far too advanced.

  Our rehearsal had gone well, but I also knew that the darkness would aid in our dangerous skit, making it difficult for Zorin’s witnesses to see details. I spent most of my time telling Loretta and the children not to scream or react when Zorin fired his gun. “He’s going to shoot at me first,” I’d said. “Just stand there and wai
t for your turn, as if you’ve completely accepted your fates. Trust me! This is our only chance!”

  I’d also made it very clear to Zorin that his family would be killed on May 21st if I didn’t confirm our release with Xavier sometime between now and then. And I’d gotten the sense that the colonel knew I wasn’t bluffing. Still, as Zorin raised the gun and pointed it at me, I couldn’t help but fear that he had decided to use real bullets.

  We were lined up almost shoulder-to-shoulder, me to our far right next to Loretta, James on the far left next to Ginger, the only light emanating from the white Ford Coupe’s headlights that had been left on in the distance. Zorin pulled the trigger and bang! Then another bang! I dropped to the dirt like a sack of potatoes and lay there on my left side about five feet in front of the pit, relieved that the bastard had actually kept his word. I was alive and well.

  I listened to the next two shots ring out and then felt Loretta’s arm slap against my shoulder. And as the next four blanks were fired, we listed to our babies fall to the ground, doing everything in their power to act out the scene like seasoned thespians. God bless them!

  “PROSHCHAY!” yelled Zorin, which meant, “Good-bye, Americans!”

  “PROSHCHAY AMERIKANTSEV!” yelled the other men.

  “OSIP!” yelled Zorin. “You and Roman take their pictures and then throw them in the graves and bury them!” He turned and began walking toward his car. “We have some steak and potatoes to eat!”

  “Da!” said the other high-ranking officer, following him. “And some good vodka!”

  The two nameless guards joined them, the four getting into Zorin’s black vehicle and driving away. As soon as they were out of sight, Osip approached us.

  “Stay lying there,” he said, as I opened my eyes a bit and watched him take the small can of animal blood from his bag. “Go get the camera and lamp from the white Ford, Roman.”

  Roman nodded and walked away, while Osip continued rummaging through the bag. When Roman returned with the brightly lit lamp and set it near our bodies, Osip dipped a paintbrush into the can and let a drop of blood fall to my forehead. Then he let another one drop to my chest. After he’d done the same to the others, he took the camera from Roman.