Cyril watched Anickin leave, his only consolation the fact that whatever else Anickin was, he was indeed the best man for the job. Gapon did not stand a chance with such a lunatic stalking him. Cyril tried to smile at that prospect, but he was still quaking too much from the disconcerting meeting to find much humor within himself.
He was more certain than ever that the moment Gapon was gone, Cyril would need to take steps to eliminate Anickin. It was simply in everyone’s best interests that such a dangerously insane person be removed from society.
55
Despite all Viktor had been through over the years, he was still not one to feel entirely comfortable asking others for help. Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky, the Minister of the Interior, had been sympathetic enough on their first meeting almost two weeks ago, but not encouraging. But, after watching Sergei’s health decline since his imprisonment sixteen days ago, Viktor determined to make another attempt. The minister was again sympathetic, but still not hopeful.
“The tsar is weighed down with such difficulties at the moment,” he told Viktor. “And, to be perfectly frank, this is not exactly the best time to be requesting favors of him. Perhaps if the war takes a turn for the better . . .”
But that final statement was made with little enthusiasm. Though the spring campaign was still ahead, no one had any confidence it would go any better than in the past.
“He is still hearing petitions, is he not?” Viktor asked with one final flicker of hope.
“The barest minimum. Since the birth of the heir, the family has been in all but seclusion at Tsarskoe Selo. Although your son’s plight is a grave matter, I do not feel at liberty to approach the tsar about it. Besides, your son’s initial offense was against the tsar’s grandfather, in whom he placed great store. Thus, I doubt he will look favorably upon a reprieve. Your best hope is to apply for another trial—”
“We are looking into that, of course,” said Viktor a bit impatiently. In spite of everything, he hadn’t been prepared for such a negative response. “But that process could take months, perhaps years, and my son’s health is not good. Every day spent in the Fortress depletes him more and more.”
“I can’t promise anything, Prince Fedorcenko, but I will keep this matter under consideration. If there is an opportunity to assist, I will do what I can.”
“I suppose that is all I can ask.”
“I can supply you with arrest reports and other documents pertaining to the past case. Your lawyer will want such papers, I am sure.” The Minister jotted a note on a sheet of paper and handed it to Viktor. “Take this to Count Cyril Vlasenko’s office; his secretary will make you a copy of the report. I will have my secretary get the other papers—however that may take longer, since they are by now buried in the archives.”
“What is Vlasenko’s part in this matter?” This was the first he’d heard Cyril’s name in connection to the arrest.
“I only know he asked to see the report several days ago, and to my knowledge, he still has it. He did mention to me he was related to your son in some way.”
“A distant cousin.”
“That must be it, then.”
Viktor nodded and rolled his eyes. “His concern is touching.”
As he left Svyatopolk-Mirsky’s office, Viktor wondered about Cyril’s association with all this. Four years ago Viktor had suspected Vlasenko of involvement in the sudden financial collapse that had led to the confiscation of the St. Petersburg estate, but he’d had no proof—and he no longer had the means to investigate. Now Cyril’s name was associated with another Fedorcenko calamity.
Viktor did not believe it was coincidence.
He was tempted to go that moment to Cyril’s office; it was just down the hall. But what good would it do to vent his suspicions and anger? Cyril was now such a powerful man that confronting him might only cause more of his wrath to fall upon Sergei. Why the man was so vindictive and hateful, Viktor could not grasp. This was carrying a family vendetta too far; but then, Cyril was that kind of man, with insatiable desires, unlimited greed. Such things drove him—in fact, Viktor would not be surprised to learn that Cyril Vlasenko actually received a good deal of pleasure from the demise of others.
Someday perhaps Vlasenko would pay for his evil deeds, but Viktor wasn’t going to live for such a day—that would make him no better than Cyril. He had more important matters that required his energy.
Viktor turned a corner and looked up to see Sergei Witte coming toward him.
“Ah, Viktor Fedorcenko!” he boomed as he reached out to shake Viktor’s hand.
“Mr. Witte, how good to see you.”
“Don’t tell me you have taken my advice and returned to government service?”
This brought an ironic smile to Viktor’s lips. “Hardly. I’m afraid I’m here on a rather unpleasant errand.” He briefly explained what had happened to Sergei.
“That is a shame. You have my deepest sympathy. Can I help in any way?”
“Only if you could get me an audience with the tsar.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t seen him in some time myself. He was not too pleased with my censure of the war. Since things have been going so poorly, however, I’m looking less and less the fool. Count Plehve’s ‘small victorious war’ is turning into a nightmare. Rumor has it, though, that the tsar—how shall I say?—has more of an ear toward the voice of reason. My name has been suggested to lead the peace delegation.”
“Then it is close to an end?”
“We can only hope.” They had been walking together and now Witte paused. “Why don’t you join me in my little office for a brandy?”
Viktor agreed. He wasn’t in the mood for socializing but understood the importance of nourishing a friendship with such a man as Witte. The office was in the opposite wing, and as they entered Witte apologized.
“His Majesty doesn’t want to cut me off completely, so he keeps me in a corner to call up at need. And, of course, I won’t refuse his call. I could save this country if he’d let me, but—” He paused and shook his head. “Enough about me. Let’s talk about your son. But some brandy first.”
He poured out two glasses and they sat in leather chairs. Witte asked questions and Viktor filled in some of the details of the past. Viktor tried not to let his hope rise at Witte’s interest—after all, if the Minister of the Interior couldn’t help, what could Witte do? He might have known great political power in the past, but at the moment, he was almost as ineffectual as Viktor. Still, Witte was a smart man, extremely savvy in the ways of the government. Perhaps he might suggest some loophole.
“Well,” Witte said at length, “if those revolutionaries could hear your story, they would see it is not only the masses who suffer injustice at the hands of the government.”
“And I suppose the real irony is that I am even now not a revolutionary. I gave the better part of my life in service to the tsar, and though I saw great Imperial fallibility, I would not want to destroy it all. Too much of what Russia is is wrapped up in her monarchy. It’s a proud heritage and a rich history we have. We don’t need to burn down the whole building in order to get rid of a little dry rot.”
“It’s more than a little dry rot, I’m afraid. Your own situation points that out only too dramatically. If a man of your standing could be so fouled by the government, then there is truly something amiss.”
“I can’t argue there. Still, I’ve always believed we could have the best of two worlds in a constitutional monarchy.”
“But our august leader may end up losing everything if he continues to refuse to give a little. I suppose that’s why I don’t wash my hands of the whole mess—I want to see our world salvaged somehow, and I believe if Nicholas will only listen to me, we will be saved.”
“You have my support, for what it’s worth these days.”
They fell silent for a moment, Witte thoughtfully stroking his graying goatee. He drained off the last of his brandy, then said, “I wish I could do something for you, Viktor. Bo
th for your son, and in restoring you to your former place in government. I know by rights you deserve your retirement. But for a man of—sixty-five?”
“Sixty-nine, to be exact—almost seventy.”
“Well, you appear remarkably fit for your age. When I come back into power, I’m going to see to it you receive a post.”
Viktor noted how Witte used the word when, not if, he returned to power. No one could accuse Witte of modesty or lack of self-confidence. He was perhaps the most brilliant man in government, and he well knew it.
“Now,” Witte continued, “I have a suggestion regarding your son. As I’m sure you understand, the tsar, even if he were favorably disposed toward your case, is in a difficult political position. This war has lowered his esteem even among the masses. If he should make a point of exonerating the son of a nobleman, it would not make him look good. He must do everything he can right now to improve his image, and that would never help him. But you mentioned that your son has, during his years as a fugitive, lived as a peasant and among peasants. I take it he was well esteemed by them?”
“Very much so.”
“And he has for some time now been tutoring men of the working class?”
“Yes, and I’ve spoken to some of these men. They think the world of Sergei and are distressed at his plight.”
“He was involved in this Workers’ Assembly?”
“To some extent. More on the periphery, I believe.”
“Then here’s what I suggest. An appeal to the tsar should not come from you, my dear prince, but rather from these workers. You see the beauty of it, I’m sure.”
Viktor grinned. For the first time since Sergei’s arrest, he felt some hope.
56
Lack of hope had been Daniel’s biggest difficulty during those first weeks of his imprisonment. Long after he passed the point where he feared being executed as a spy, he continued to be dogged by despair and misery. What did it matter if he lived, if Mariana was lost to him?
At last he truly understood how two lives could be so intertwined that one was almost useless without the other. It wasn’t easy for him to admit to such a mawkish sentiment, he who had always prided himself on his hardheaded, cut-to-the-chase, eminently practical qualities. But in the weeks since his capture, he’d had the time to thoroughly dissect his values, to scrutinize the man he’d always thought he was. At first, he had been so despondent that the result of his introspection hadn’t been very pretty.
Daniel Trent was nothing but a selfish, self-serving reprobate who deserved to rot in a Japanese prison camp. He could see no reason why Mariana could have possibly loved him. Even at the end—
“Oh, God, please, don’t let that moment on the ship be the end!”
She had never condemned him, or held his foolishness against him. He thought of her final words:
“God be with you . . . and I love you so!”
He didn’t deserve such love; he didn’t deserve her.
For the first two weeks of his confinement in a dingy POW camp in the south of Japan, he had thought of little else but how miserable his life was, and how deserving he was of just such a life. Even if Mariana was still alive, he was determined to do her a huge favor and never see her again.
In addition, he was burdened with the fact that he was once more in deep trouble and in need of God. But he stubbornly refused to pray or even think of God. He’d thought he had gotten over that kind of pride, but he still detested being such a “foul-weather” Christian. He had hoped he would have a chance to test out his new spiritual insights in normal, untroubled waters; but that apparently was not to be. Many times, in spite of himself, his thoughts would stray to things he had read in the Bible, or something Mariana had said. But he tried to shut those thoughts down immediately.
Mariana had said, “What better time to turn to God than when you are in trouble?”
Still he could not shake the sense that this was wrong, at least that it was hypocritical. But the harder he tried to turn his mind from spiritual paths, the more it would wander in those directions. It was uncanny. Crazy.
He soon became nearly obsessed with this battle. One afternoon he collapsed on his bunk, exhausted, when he hadn’t done a bit of physical work all day. He fell asleep and began dreaming—weird, nonsensical dreams, bits and pieces of his whole life, but in a surrealistic milieu. He awoke a few hours later in a cold sweat.
He could remember only one part of the dream collage—the strangest part of all. He was in the desert, surrounded by tents, and seated with a particularly thick, heavy piece of canvas, which he was trying to sew. The “needle” he was using was a huge, unwieldy thing that looked like some animal bone. He tried to push it through the canvas, but it wouldn’t go in because the tip was so blunt. He kept at it, grunting and groaning, sweating with the labor, but his attempts always proved unsuccessful. Then suddenly Mariana appeared, dressed as an Arabian princess, dancing around him, singing in a sweet cheerful tone, oblivious to his struggles. Her words were almost taunting in their singsong sweetness:
“It’s not easy to kick against the pricks, Daniel. It’s not easy . . .”
She repeated the words over and over again. He finally started to scream at her, but the dream abruptly ended and he jerked awake, trembling and sweating. He thought he might have screamed in reality, too.
Mariana’s words in the dream kept coming back to him. They sounded familiar, though he was almost certain he had never actually heard her say them. Why were they so familiar, then? And why did he keep thinking about it? Why couldn’t that part of the dream just go away like all other dreams?
While exercising in the prison yard the next day, he struck up a conversation with some of the other POWs. They all agreed that they hadn’t slept well since coming to the camp and had experienced many bad dreams.
One fellow said, “It’s that stinking Jap food. I think the fish they give us is raw.”
“As if Russian food is any better,” Daniel countered.
“Bah! What do you Americans know about food? Everything you have is from other countries, anyway.”
One man spoke with more sincerity. “My father believes dreams are from God. He’s a village priest, so he should know.”
“All dreams?” asked Daniel.
“Hmmm, I dreamed about my sweetheart the other night,” said another.
“Well, maybe not all,” said the priest’s son.
“What do you think of this one?” Daniel proceeded to describe his dream.
“Oh, yes, yours definitely is of a spiritual nature, because it has Scripture in it.”
“Scripture?”
“A man sewing tents and the verse: ‘It’s not easy to kick against the pricks.’ The apostle Paul was a tentmaker, you know, and when he was converted to Christianity—”
“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Daniel. “Now I remember where I heard it. The story about the road to Damascus.” Daniel shook his head, incredulous. “You don’t think . . .” But he couldn’t verbalize the rest of his thought.
Other men began telling about strange dreams they’d had, urging the priest’s son to try to interpret them. He quipped that he felt like Joseph in the Egyptian prison, but he made a sincere attempt to expound on each dream.
Wrapped up in his own musings, Daniel wandered back to his barracks; it was too cold to be hanging about outside for long, anyway. He lay on his bunk and tried to digest what the priest’s son had said. A dream from God? It was unbelievable! But he couldn’t deny that his dream was uncannily related to Scripture he had once read. And even stranger was the fact that it so obviously related to his present struggles.
Once he decided to accept the dream as it was, he had to deal with the message. What was God trying to tell him? He didn’t have to search far for the answer to that question. It was almost as clear as that blinding light the apostle Paul had seen on his way to Damascus. The more he fought God, the more miserable he was. Daniel realized that the most contented he had been in his lif
e was during that time right after his father’s death when he had been seeking and not fighting. Mariana was right when she told him that God wasn’t going to hold his human weaknesses against him.
The most incredible aspect of this entire dream incident was that God had never given up on him, pursuing him even in his sleep! Such a God could not possibly mind his failures as much as He appreciated Daniel’s successes. He didn’t expect Daniel to be perfect, or, at least, He knew it wasn’t going to happen this side of eternity.
Daniel stopped fighting that day.
Sometimes he berated himself for forgetting to pray and think about God. But many times he remembered. Sometimes he struggled; sometimes he didn’t. But he accepted his humanity as God had, and he discovered peace.
Taking advantage of the next days of inner calm, Daniel interviewed several of his fellow prisoners—no sense letting this POW experience go to waste. He believed there was a story angle in every aspect of life. Perhaps one day he’d even write for the religion editor of the paper, but he didn’t feel nearly competent for such an undertaking yet.
Three days later, he was transferred to Tokyo. No one told him the reason, and he sat in a Tokyo jail for three more days before anyone finally communicated with him. At last a guard unlocked his cell and escorted him out of the prison, into a waiting wagon and to a building about a mile away—a military the look of the many men there dressed in uniforms. They ascended a flight of stairs to a rather nicely appointed office, where a small man in his early forties, dressed in the uniform of a colonel, greeted Daniel in crisp English.
“Have a seat, Mr. Trent, please. I am Colonel Shiamura.”
“Thank you, Colonel.” Daniel sat in a straight-backed chair facing Shiamura’s desk.
The colonel smiled, and Daniel thought he detected an ingratiating aspect in the man’s expression. “You must be wondering what your disposition is with the Japanese government.”
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