The Thin Wall: A POW/MIA Truth Novel

by R. Cyril West

  He finished his cigarette, flicked it onto the cobble and stepped away from the tank.

  So everything──the rejection, the cold shoulder, refusing to accompany him on a picnic──everything made sense. The lovestruck physician had outmaneuvered him. Dal groaned, walking toward them. He had not seen it coming. Then again, how could he? He had no idea the man was interested in Ayna. They were an improbable match──she the artist and he the scientist. Now he understood why she had rejected his advances.

  He approached them mid-sentence, overhearing something about a picnic. “Doctor,” he said, without looking at Ayna. “I apologize for the interruption . . .”

  “What is it?” Milan asked.

  “We seem to be on the cusp of a minor health crisis at the villa,” Dal lied.

  “Crisis?”

  “My men are complaining about stomach cramps.” Dal’s face showed deep concern. “I am worried it could be something serious.”

  “Yes, well, a summer virus is going around. A particularly bad one. They’ll survive.”

  “I’m sure they will. But there is more to this.”

  “Oh?”

  “I have an ugly feeling. That it is something else. Spoiled meat. Or maybe . . .” He gave the physician a long stare. “Intentional food poisoning.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I understand the nature of civil disobedience,” Dal went on. “It is the duty of a population to resist the presence of a foreign army. While the Warsaw Pact troops are not here as an occupational force, as you people seem to believe, I appreciate how uncomfortable the citizens must feel given the circumstances. That said, you might mention to everyone that food poisoning is a serious crime where I come from.”

  Ayna gripped the cello case handle. “What about murder?” she asked sharply. “Is that a serious crime where you come from?”

  Dal ignored the comment. The girl had justification to be angry. Even so, her hawkish body posture annoyed him and he had grown immensely irritated with her attitude over the weeks. “Your comrades might find it humorous tearing down road signs. They’ve managed to misdirect a few tanks. I say, good for them. It must be quite a comedy to witness confused soldiers driving in the wrong direction. I applaud them for how they have resorted to peaceful means to unleash their anger. However I warn you, if my men are sickened because of poisoning, it won’t end on a good note for anyone.”

  “If the folks are tainting your food,” Milan said, “I will personally make sure it stops.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “However I highly doubt─”

  “At the very least, could you check on Horbachsky? He has been stuck to the toilet since yesterday.”

  “He’s that ill?”

  “Apparently so.”

  Milan rubbed the back of his neck. “These viruses have a life of their own. They run their course, then go away. It’s nothing worse than a common cold.”

  “What I am hearing,” Dal said, “is that he’s not worth medical attention. Why? Because he is Ukrainian?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You are not racist, are you? Anti-Ukrainian, maybe?”

  “No. Why do you─”

  “So you will not take a moment for my own peace of mind.”

  “Okay.” Milan was frustrated. “You win. I’ll head out there this moment.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Horbachsky, you say?”

  Dal nodded. “I know this request is inconvenient. I promise you, I will make up for the trouble. I will buy you a pint at the tavern one of these nights. We can swap war stories.”

  “I’m too busy to socialize.”

  “Well then, good day,” Dal said, walking away.

  MILAN DROVE straight to the villa and parked on the side of the road. Something did not add up. Dal’s attitude. The drama in his voice. Something. He grabbed his medical bag and approached the gate. Gurko was there. “The colonel told me,” Milan said, “about Horbachsky. How sick is he?”

  “There must be a mistake,” Gurko said, letting him into the compound. “He’s perfectly fine. See for yourself.” He pointed. The Ukrainian was cleaning his rifle near the flagpole. “Not even a runny nose.”

  Milan suspected Dal had made a fuss over nothing. Damn him. “Since I’m here, I should check on the mayor.”

  Gurko led the way to the garden where he instructed him to sit on a slated bench and wait. This was the pattern for his visits. Ever since Milan had stumbled upon the body in the parlor, even in the rain, he was forced to conduct check-ups outside under umbrellas.

  Zdenek Seifert arrived a short while later, just as the sun appeared from behind a cloud and brightened his face. As soon as Gurko walked away, the mayor shielded his eyes, and said, “I have something important to tell you.”

  Milan had never seen him so worked up. “Slow down,” he insisted, moving his satchel for him to sit. “Let’s pretend to have a look under the hood, just in case we’re being watched. Then we’ll talk.”

  “It can’t wait.”

  “What could be so urgent?”

  “Remember the mystery man? The stranger I overheard being interrogated?”

  Milan leaned back in the bench and looked at Zdenek Seifert in a lingering and deceitful manner. He had no idea who was held in the hallway near the mayor. Dal had claimed one set of circumstances concerning the man in captivity and the dead body in the parlor, Frank had presented another version of the story. Trying to explain all this to Zdenek Seifert would only confuse him. It would expose Milan as an American spy. How would the mayor respond to his deceitful past? Probably not in a positive way.

  “I already asked,” Milan said, sticking with Dal’s explanation, which he believed was a convenient lie to hide behind. “He’s Czech. From out of town.”

  “What has he done?”

  “He shot a Russian soldier.”

  “It must have been in self-defense.”

  “I’m sure it was. But if we ask too many questions, it will only make things worse for you.”

  Zdenek Seifert sighed. “He’ll be sent to Siberia for this.”

  “The occupation has been tragic.”

  “Too bad this fellow in detention doesn’t know his freedom is only a few steps away.”

  “What do you mean his freedom?”

  “It’s what I wanted to tell you. How we can help.”

  “Go on . . .”

  “The room where they are keeping this poor fellow is exceptionally large, larger than my own bedroom suite. It’s an artist studio. Comrade Dubček has slept in that room. The secretary loves to water paint.”

  “Your point being?”

  “Inside the dressing room closet is a passageway. A trap door in the floor leads to a shaft inside the walls of the villa. If you follow it, the passageway takes you to a tunnel, eventually to the sewer beneath the bridge.” Zdenek Seifert grinned. “A frequent and paranoid political guest of mine feared the secret police. He insisted upon having an escape route.”

  Milan looked doubtfully at the mayor. Was he telling the truth?

  The stone bridge was down the road from the villa, beyond a snag that marked the beginning of fence and pasture and innumerable strips of tilled soil. It was originally constructed in 1535, having been rebuilt many times since then, most recently during the war when it crumbled beneath the weight of a German Panzer.

  Milan parked the car on the side of the road and grabbed his flashlight. The smaller things he was willing to cast aside, the mayor complaining about the tasteless food, about the colonel’s condescending tone of voice, about the soldiers’ loud music in the hallway──but a secret passageway?

  He climbed down the rocky embankment and walked along the creek. He had to verify for himself that Zdenek Seifert was not lying about the existence of an escape route . . . that he had not lost his mind.

  He followed the shallow water, stepping from one slippery rock to another, swatting at mosquitoes. After a short w
alk, he stood beneath the bridge’s stone arch, at the opening of a sewer duct that emptied into the creek. A horrible smell came over him. He buried his nose in his forearm and pointed the flashlight into the dark tunnel. Could someone really reach the villa from here?

  He squashed a mosquito on his hand, before having a final peek into the tunnel. Even though the mayor’s story seemed plausible, Milan decided against exploring further. What difference did it make if the sewer led to a passageway beneath the villa? After all, he was not going to do anything to help the imprisoned man──whoever he was. Milan just wanted to bide his time until the Soviets left. That’s all.

  He drove home to Ceske Budejovice with a heavy foot. The switch from soldier to medical student to spy had transitioned like clockwork. How convenient for things to have played out this way. Looking back, he sensed it had been planned long before the war ended. Frank and his manipulative OSS operatives had orchestrated everything from the day he first set foot on English soil. Clever of them. But how did they do it? How did they know he would stay in Europe after the war and not go home to his family and friends? On paper it must have added up: Czech-speaking son, plus only child, plus proud American, not to mention the sheer excitement of espionage. Did the sum of those pieces equate to Milan spying for the United States government? Likely. If anything, he knew the effort to get him to remain in Czechoslovakia was not a reaction to post-war events as initially presented to him. His recruitment had been methodical, planned well in advance of Germany’s surrender and the Soviet intervention into East European affairs. The pieces were put in place with the cunning of an experienced fisherman. Hook. Line. Sinker. Medical school had simply been the bait. And Milan, spiritually wounded and looking for some sort of salvation at the time, had taken it.

  Arriving at the housing estate, he climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and walked to his flat. He went inside and pulled the curtains. He needed shelter. He needed protection from the outside world. He needed . . . Milan rubbed his temples. And then it came to him: he had lived behind curtains his entire adult life, especially after the communists seized control of the political offices in February of 1948. At that point, concealing his American roots became an act of survival. The pro-Stalinist regime of Klement Gottwald had gone on a witch hunt, ordering the secret police to run profiles on suspicious citizens, making sure no one slipped through the cracks.

  Milan poured himself a stiff drink and sat at the kitchen table.

  They were looking for spies, he remembered. Political opponents. Fifth Columnists. So-called “hooligans.” When the police confronted him and asked about his childhood and the days leading up to the German invasion, he charmed them, cooperating to the fullest extent. Who did you know? What did you know? When did you know it? He kept his answers to their questions short and to the point. With the sleight of hand, he pulled the curtains over his American past and lied with confidence, speaking of the good ol’ days in Humsova, the beer festivals, the feast day, and harvesting in the land of milk, honey and wine. While many of his colleagues were sent to prison or to reeducation camps, Milan managed to deflect the questions and gained the trust of the new leadership, advancing quickly in the Soviet-style health care system. Looking back, this had surprised him the most; had they fully investigated his childhood, they would have discovered he was an imposter. No one would remember him in Humsova. Or maybe they had investigated? Maybe Frank had that covered, too?

  Milan glanced at the kitchen counter. The dirty plates and stained coffee cups had piled up over the weeks. For someone who kept a messy home, how had he been so organized when it came to deceiving everyone? After all, there had been no step-by-step handbook on ways to outsmart the communists. And Frank, who in typical fashion was conveniently nowhere to be found, had offered little advice, aside from an effortless use your best judgment──your instinct.

  Instinct, he thought. What kind of advice was that? Though somehow it had worked. Milan relied on his gut feelings during the early months when he began to mold a new identity and make the choices that would ultimately change his life. Good decisions? Bad decisions? It was complicated. He simply rolled with it, with his intuition.

  . . . and he knew right away . . . he knew that he had to erase his past. So he did. The reinvented Milan Husak had never been west of Paris. Capitalism is a farce, he told his colleagues. Plagued by greed and corruption. He pretended to have limited knowledge of American culture. Hollywood? Baseball? Apple pie? These iconic images were no longer part of his culture. And though it went against his moral fiber, every bit of who he was politically, he convincingly played the part of a staunch socialist, shrewdly armed with a good Marxist quote for any occasion.

  Milan heard footsteps and rushed to the door. He put an eye to the peephole. Who was it? Just a neighbor. Just a woman walking down the corridor with a bag of groceries. Nothing to worry about.

  He took a breath, then found himself gazing at a bookshelf stacked with books lined vertically and horizontally. Not just medical books, but books on philosophy and political theory. He had been hungry for knowledge. Very hungry. He did not know much about government or communism prior to the war. But somehow he found the time to read during medical school when he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He attended lectures and went to political rallies at the universities in Prague, where he studied the philosophies of upstarts Mao and Castro. He found an edge, even some sanity, by knowing more about Marxism than most who professed to being Marxist. In the same way that anatomy meant everything to a surgeon, words meant everything to a liar. With this in mind, he memorized communist principles and important dates in Soviet history, like the events of 22 January 1905, when unarmed demonstrators marching to present a petition to Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II were fired upon by soldiers of the Imperial Guard. Historical trivia, especially the events surrounding the Bolshevik Revolution, made for convenient discussion, allowing him to divert any awkward conversations that began to border on his dubious past.

  Still, some things were not explained in books. Like how to be a spy. Fortunately survival came naturally to him. Frank had been right to advise using his instinct. Throwing him feet first into the fire was probably the best thing Frank could have done, because it forced Milan to survive. And survival, when everything was stripped away, meant relying on his personality. Making buddies. Getting on the good side of his superiors. Sucking up to the pro-Moscow communists by going on hunting trips and skiing with the Party elite. He attended concerts and accepted invitations to events at foreign embassies, impressing everyone with his knowledge of medicine and commitment to socialized planning. He had been to Moscow several times and was well known in East Berlin. Everyone loved him, foreigner and Czech alike.

  These social events were the rare times when he actually bathed in his wartime heroics, mingling with the elitists he despised most. Indeed, like his knowledge of Marxist history, his actions on the battlefield had helped to thwart any anti-communist suspicions. By the time he quietly celebrated his tenth anniversary of living as a forgotten expatriate, he had mastered the art of changing the subject and pressed on with his life. He was the definitive CIA mole. And yet, after Frank Stevens fled the country, he never had contact with American faces or figures again.

  Milan sat in the recliner and closed his eyes. Forgotten. That was one hell of a word. He pictured the dead POW Johnston, and other POWs, and he wondered, had they been forgotten, too?

  Fourth Act: Interlude

  A BRIEFING FOR THE ASCENT

  It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

  WINSTON CHURCHILL

  Aman could find almost anything in Prague: weapons, contraband prostitutes, even safe passage to the West. After working his contacts, Dal finally tracked down a hard-to-find American baseball with its tightly sewn stitches. Located at a college athletic department in Pilsen, he sent Horbachsky on an overnight mission to collect it.

  In the morning, Dal brought th
e baseball to the café and sat at his personal table beneath a patio umbrella. After sticking the ball into the pocket of his rain jacket, he ate his toast and skimmed a few pages from the Chicago Tribune sports section he had found in the trash can. Someone, presumably the doctor, had circled the score for a baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals. This was oddly suspicious. Baseball? Few European men understood the rules of the American game played with a bat and ball. What did Milan know?

  Dal was familiar with America’s favorite pastime. He had studied his capitalist adversary over the years by reading the sports sections of its newspapers. Familiarizing himself with athletic heroes offered keen insight into how the American mind worked. Babe Ruth. Mickey Mantle. Willie Mays. They worshipped these baseball players like gods.

  When the doctor parked his Škoda across the street, Dal tucked the paper beneath an edition of Rude Pravo and waved a hand. “Excuse me. Can I have a word with you, comrade?”

  The physician was dressed in khaki pants and a button down shirt. Without his physician’s white coat, he looked surprisingly fit. Perhaps he lifted weights in his spare time. After leaving a bouquet of flowers on the hood of the car, Milan crossed the street and stood defensively at the table.

  “I’m running late,” Milan said. “Can we make this quick?”

  “Pretty flowers for the lady?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are a romantic.” Dal flashed a grin. “I had no idea.”

  “Well now you know.”

  Dal thought briefly about the relationship with his wife. Looking back, it had taken him years to fall in love with Olga, an ex-army nurse and champion backstroke swimmer. Their marriage, he would claim openly, was a union made with the sole purpose of having a family. What better mother could there be than a Soviet Army nurse? Even now, as he thought of the woman in Stalingrad, he wondered if he really loved her. Or did he mostly respect her for being the mother of his children?