The Thin Wall: A POW/MIA Truth Novel

by R. Cyril West

  “Back off,” Johnston said. “And tell your Gestapo sidekick that I’ve had enough of his crap.”

  “Be careful,” Potapov warned, stepping next to the bed. “Even chained-up, the Yankee has a quick right hand.”

  Dal lit a cigarette and offered a smoke to the prisoner, who refused by turning his head. “Soon you will leave this villa. Off to a new adventure. To where, I am not authorized to say. In the meantime, tonight is cause for celebration. Tonight you will have lamb and good Russian vodka.”

  “Lamb?” Johnston said. “Is that supposed to excite me? Hell, your goons are pissing on my food.”

  Dal ignored the comment, though made a mental note to look into the claim. Urinating on the prisoner’s food was a sign of undisciplined behavior. It was unacceptable conduct. If true, he would reprimand the Ukrainians.

  He saw a book resting on the blanket: Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. “Critics say that particular novel is an American classic, penned by a war hero. It was the only novel written in English that I could find in the mayor’s library. Though Hemingway has been censored by the Party, I have granted you special reading privileges.”

  Johnston glared into the colonel’s eyes.

  “He is unpredictable,” Potapov warned in Russian. “Be careful.”

  “I have always been fascinated by your American culture,” Dal went on, leaning carefully into Johnston. “In particular with the motion picture industry. It’s true. Against my father’s best wishes, I aspired for the stage as a youth and as an advanced student dreamed of making a silent movie with the famous actor and socialist Charlie Chaplin. However at seventeen years old, and with the onset of the Great Patriotic War, the Motherland called . . .” Dal relished the opportunity to explain himself to the American, regardless of the man’s defiant I-want-to-kill-you eyes drilling into him. “She asked of me, ‘Grigori, will you serve in this holy duty? Will you set aside your aspirations for the stage and answer this call to defend the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?’ I did. In all its glory, I served.”

  “Glory?” Johnston said doubtfully.

  “You beg to differ?”

  “You starve your people.”

  “Propaganda.”

  “And treat them like slaves.”

  “Propaganda.”

  “Brezhnev is a mass murderer.”

  “Again, propaganda. You are boring me with your false textbook accusations.” Aside from spitting out insults and harassing Horbachsky, which Johnston seemed to take great pleasure in doing, the POW had been unwilling to have any real dialogue over the previous weeks. This unexpected spat intrigued Dal.

  “We have liberty in the United States,” Johnston said, rattling the heavy chain attached to the leg iron. “The people make the laws, not a dictator. Unlike in your backward country, Americans are free to govern themselves.”

  “And govern as they may. Unfortunately for you, your leaders have likely chosen to abandon you. Your status as missing in action will eventually be labeled killed in action to save certain politicians from the headache of having to account for your whereabouts.”

  “That’s a lie.” Johnston leaned forward. “The Corps won’t stop looking for me.”

  “I admire your patriotism,” Dal admitted. “But you should not confuse the loyalty of your comrades in the Marine Corps with the greed of the politics in Washington D.C.” Johnston tightened his fists. “Ah, this Cold War between our nations is a horrendous little war.”

  “. . . they won’t stop searching for the other Marines, either.”

  Dal shook his head. “You Americans are an interesting bag of extremes. I have met quite a few of you over the years. Mostly my contemporaries, CIA operatives pretending to be businessmen or politicians in places like Warsaw and Berlin. Always so damn confident. Just like the Germans. Honestly, I am not unlike you, Sergeant Johnston. I, too, am confident. And a patriot.” Dal ashed his cigarette. “Now then, I am curious. Have you read Marx?”

  “Marx is an idiot,” Johnston said. “The things done in the name of Marxism far outstrip anything out of the Third Reich.”

  Dal frowned. There was no use in attempting to educate the American. “In the end, this liberty you speak about will be your country’s undoing. Too much opinion, in particular students with an abundance of freedom to speak out against the government, has a way of derailing things.”

  “Screw you.”

  “You doubt me?”

  “I’ve heard enough.”

  “Oh, it’s happening. Look at the left-leaning American students who travel to Moscow. While soldiers die in Vietnam, they flock to the Soviet Union on a pilgrimage for answers. We, of course, welcome them. They will find truth. Truth in Marx. Then someday they will become the leaders of your country, doctors, lawyers, judges, senators. Who knows, maybe even a president, eh?”

  “Do you always talk so much?”

  “Their politics are the seedlings of socialism. From there communism. Then the downfall of America is only a harvest season away.”

  “Shut up.”

  “And so we wait.”

  “Jesus.”

  “The protests in your country . . . the antiwar crowd . . . most of the American people are not behind you in Vietnam. Their stomachs are weak. Why else would they call it a conflict, and not a war? It’s only a matter of time before the protests turn violent. The war will end in failure.”

  “That’s where you have it wrong. The military won’t allow that to happen. We know how to win a war.”

  Dal reached into the briefcase and extracted a folder. “Speaking of Vietnam, there were other soldiers like you. In total, nine American sons. Nine fighting men whisked quietly away from the soggy battlefields of Que Son, en route to the Soviet Union.” He flashed Devil Dog before Sergeant Johnston’s disbelieving eyes. “The contents of these files could start an international upheaval, capable of regime change. Your brothers . . . snatched from rice patties and secretly transported to Siberia for medical experimentation.” Dal patted him kindly on the shoulder, expressing his sympathy, even commiserating over his role in the scandal. “You should consider yourself lucky. I had orders to execute you. Instead, tonight I offer you a decent meal. How is that for a fair exchange?”

  Johnston said, “First of all, idiot, I’m a Marine, not a soldier.”

  “My mistake . . .” Dal was amused by the American’s piss-poor attitude. In some ways, Johnston reminded him of his brother Alex, killed on the German front in 1943. He missed his brother and his offbeat sarcasm.

  “There were three of us. What happened to the others? Williams? Thomas?”

  “I imagine you have many questions.”

  “Were they sent to Prague?”

  “To Novosibirsk,” Dal said matter-of-factly. “In Siberia. It’s all here, in this file we call Devil Dog.”

  Johnston started to say something, then suddenly swung on him.

  Dal had seen the fist coming and with the agility of a professional boxer bobbed out of the way. At the same time, Potapov grabbed and threw Johnston against the mattress, then began to pummel him with jabs to the stomach.

  Dal quickly held up a hand to stop the beating. “Enough,” he barked. The American lacked understanding. Soviet scientists delving into the minds of their foes was crucial for the war, and ultimately for the peace. He recognized how the typical man might think it was cruel, perhaps unethical to experiment on living humans. Nevertheless he agreed with the army scientists who performed the tests on the abducted servicemen; any incidental or unintended cruelty was best for the advancement of science and for the future of the Soviet Union.

  “He is strong again,” Potopov said.

  “Shorten the length of his chain,” Dal responded in Russian, lighting a cigarette with glossy, bloodshot eyes.

  He stood motionless, without any expression on his face.

  There was nothing more to say.

  Again, he remembered his brother, poor, poor Alex, his life cut so t
ragically short.

  Dal left the prisoner and returned to the library. He opened the mayor’s liquor cabinet and found a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, a vintage from the coast of Crimea in the Ukraine.

  Questions, he thought. Why had he told Johnston his life had been spared? Why had he shared the secrets of Devil Dog? Perhaps it was a sense of camaraderie from one military man to another, an unwritten soldier’s code. Or maybe it was the alcohol speaking. Either way, Dal felt godlike prevailing over the POW with life and death authority. Something about the exchange of words had reminded him of the dialogue in William Shakespeare’s play, The Life and Death of King John, where a dizzying change of alliances had prevailed, building toward the slow death of the King. Life was music, but death was poetry. Sweet, delicate poetry. If only he could find the play at the village library. He would love to read it again.

  Finishing his glass of wine, Dal went to the restroom and looked in the mirror at the bloodstained bandage. With an agonizing moan, he stripped the adhesive strip from his skin and exposed the mosquito bite with its ugly infection. Repulsive, he thought with horror. He used his fingers to pinch the gruesome lump, savagely draining the puss into the sink, letting it squirt and drip on the chipped porcelain. Even with the numbing alcohol in his blood, the pain was unbearable. “Ah──I wish that your children will spit in your soup,” he shouted into the mirror. “Yobany stos.”

  He returned to the desk and reaching into the bottom drawer, pulled out a can of white spray paint. He had asked Ota Janus to do the dirty work. The man had obeyed by painting the swastika on the tank with the cunning of the deadly assailant who had assassinated Leon Trotsky with an ice pick in Mexico City. It was the first step in an important relationship he planned to foster with the teacher. Today a vandal. Tomorrow perhaps the mayor of Mersk. For now, framing Ayna Sahhat for the tank’s defacement had been brilliant──even Janus had agreed. With the doctor away, it was the perfect timing to apprehend the rebellious woman and strip her by force of any lingering hatred toward Moscow.

  All this devious scheming aside, Dal had recognized the importance of the Smetana recital from the start, for local pride, in maintaining civil obedience across the valley. Keeping their attention focused on entertainment and other trivialities made them happy, ensuring complacency, and for the most part, upheld the peace. As Lenin had preached, it was important to prevent discontent from dipping to that dangerous point where a fledging anarchist blossomed into an unshakable counter-revolutionary, inciting others, family, friends, neighbors. While Ota Janus had suggested he cancel the recital, he decided otherwise. “The show must go on,” he had informed the schoolteacher. “For the good of this community.”

  He buried the can of paint in the drawer, lit a cigarette, and sat in deep thought. Was Ayna Sahhat really cursed? Or was she simply an anarchist? A troublemaker. And if he let her go free, what then?

  At midnight he left the library and walked down the hall. She was locked in Zdenek Seifert’s bedroom a few doors away. While she had rejected him, Dal held on to slim hope that she might reconsider his offer to picnic; at the very least he wanted her to accept his hand of comradeship because he believed it would put an end to her rebellious ways. Seemed to him she might want to confess some regret for having challenged his authority. It was all he asked.

  Entering from the dark of the hallway, Dal stood near the bed and gazed unsympathetically at the young woman. She wore a short black dress and sat on the edge of the mattress, her head down, her body bathed in dim lamplight. Even in melancholy, with her spirit broken, she was as lovely as ever. If only she had welcomed his romantic advances, things might have turned out much, much better for her and Jiri. He would have set them up with a modest flat in Prague. A better job. A life. Could she have asked for more?

  “This incident was avoidable,” he said. “Unfortunately you had to challenge my authority.”

  “I heard voices. Outside. At the gate.”

  “Ah, yes. The voice of anarchy in its final stage of life.” He paused to reflect. “It’s that tragic point in the road where passion meets disillusionment.”

  “Who were they?” Her eyes were hidden behind the strands of long hair that fell in her face.

  “Your mother. The priest. The baker. And a hundred more.”

  “A hundred?”

  “Quite a crowd rallied. As I might have expected, they view me as the villain, not a man in pursuit of the community’s well-being.”

  “They were concerned about me?”

  “They came to demand your release.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected it. Not in a million years.”

  “Don’t let their unforeseen behavior be so encouraging. I sense nothing has really changed from their point of view.”

  “Why are you so cruel?”

  He sighed. “The people are ignorant. You know that. I know that. Many see you as their Dark Ages witch. Why? Because to them, you reflect everything that is bad in this forsaken village. You are their bug stuck in a web. See, it’s easier to blame your Azeri roots and the curse, than to admit to their own shortcomings in life. To their own miserable existence.”

  “It’s between me and the citizens of Mersk, not an outsider like you.”

  “And the episode with Janus? Rape or sex?” He rubbed his chin. He was not trying to provoke, he was speaking from the head, attempting to help make sense of her life, why and how things had come to be. “Tragic, really. Like most arguments, there are varying points of view──he said, she said. I guess we will never really know the truth, will we?”

  “Are you totally devoid of compassion for others?”

  “I’m merely telling you that which you choose to ignore.”

  “You’re a monster.” She scowled at him, her hands fixing her messy hair to one side of her face, where it fell over her collarbone and onto her chest.

  “Monster? Such a harsh word.”

  “No. Not really.”

  “If you set aside your resentment of me for a moment, you might see that I simply want to help you find your way through the weeds.” He rubbed his chin. “As well, I am worried about Jiri. In particular, his future.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can’t seem to stay out of trouble.”

  “What is it to you?”

  “The jails are overflowing with rebellious people. Some of them mothers. I know you would not want to leave Jiri alone, without a parent.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Mmm.”

  He appraised her untamable face, her red-lidded eyes were dark and full of venom. She had pushed his buttons. Pushed them like no woman had ever pushed them before. This power she had both perplexed and aggravated him. He had never met anyone like Ayna Sahhat. He moaned, feeling himself swept up in the undertow of madness. What were his next steps? How would he keep her from becoming more of a problem? Locking her up in a prison would be the easy thing to do.

  Dal would consider his options.

  For now, he left the room without saying another word.

  At 4:00 am, he was woken by the alarm clock. He sat up and switched it off, then got dressed. He was exhausted, but not sleepy. Within the hour, he had instructed his soldiers to send the girl home.

  As she passed through the gate, where streetlamps lit the road, he stood broodingly at the library window with his black tea and watched her leave. Even with her courage to stand against his authority, Dal began to sense her spirit was slowly dwindling. The fear of losing her son had hit home. She had flinched when he mentioned the boy’s name, then recoiled in terror when he threatened jail time.

  Though something troubled him.

  A small thing.

  Not Ayna’s rebelliousness, rather Bedrich’s loyalty.

  The imbecile had stayed outside the gate all night, keeping a vigil while the others went home to sleep. For the first time, he wondered: just how trouble free was the village idiot?

  After he showered and dressed for t
he 9:00 a.m. recital, Dal placed a blanket over his shoulders and went for a stroll in the garden. Circling around the villa, he arrived to the driveway and stopped at the GAZ truck. The military vehicle had a new dent and scrapes on the front bumper. He sneezed, and then wiped his nose. The damage was good news. It could mean only one thing: Gurko had taken care of business.

  Milan was driving near the monastery when he saw the police car parked on the road, and braked. The last thing he had patience for was another delay. He had a busy morning planned, mostly centered on clinic renovations: an electrician was already waiting for him at the clinic; then there was the recital.

  A police officer held up a hand, forcing him to a stop. Milan rolled down his window and flashed his identification.

  “There was a bad accident,” the officer said.

  “I am a physician. I can─”

  “Have you seen any suspicious vehicles on the road, perhaps a car with body damage speeding away?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary. It’s all been pretty typical of late. Tanks. Soldiers. Roadblocks. You know, considering the Soviets and company.”

  “Yes, damn them.”

  Milan caught a glimpse of the crash through the windshield. “Any serious injuries?”

  Before the policeman could answer, he realized it was Frank Steven’s farm truck nosed straight into a fir. The hood was shot up against the shattered windshield and the driver’s door was open.

  “No need for doctors,” the officer said. “Poor guy skidded off the road. Head trauma. Died on impact.”

  “Jesus.” Frank Stevens dead? “But the road isn’t even wet.”

  “There were conflicting tread marks on the pavement. Plus a dent in the rear panel on the truck. Maybe someone bumped him off the road. An accident, of course.”

  Milan watched Frank’s body being led away on a stretcher, before thumping his hand against the dashboard. Accident? Or murder?

  He waited ten or fifteen minutes for the ambulance to pull away. Then with a firm grip on the steering wheel, he drove straight for Mersk. By the time he passed the monastery, he concluded someone had intentionally run Frank off the road.