The Last Paradise

by Antonio Garrido

  “You’ve got what you want. Now let her go.”

  “Not so fast, Jack. There are two more things to take care of.” He pointed the revolver at Jack.

  “Wait!” Jack dipped his hand in his overcoat and pulled out a roll of green bills. “Look! There’s a thousand dollars. You and Sue can buy whatever you want. Take it, it’s yours.”

  Walter hesitated. “I don’t need your capitalist money,” he sputtered.

  “Nobody will ever know, Walter. You and Sue deserve it after so many years of suffering. Come on. If you don’t take it, someone else will.” The flashlight trembled in his hand. Jack was running out of options.

  “All right. Leave the money on the floor. No tricks.”

  “Sure. But first let her go.” Jack slowly moved toward the fireplace.

  “I said leave it on the floor!” Walter bellowed.

  “And I said let her go.” Jack took a couple more steps until he was right beside the embers, which he revived with some pieces of wood.

  A gunshot rang out in the room. Jack felt the bullet shatter the tiling at his feet, the fragments hitting his pants. The smell caught in his throat. He had to cough before he could speak again. “Let her go, or the money goes up in flames. Even if you shoot me, I swear I’ll burn it.” He waved the bills over the embers.

  “Filthy capitalist! All right. I’ll let her go.” He aimed his gun directly at Jack’s head. “I’ll let her go!” he repeated as Elizabeth walked slowly toward Jack. “No! Not to him. To the side, where I can see you. Now give me the money.”

  “OK, Walter. It’s yours. Here.” Jack hurled it at him.

  Just as he tossed the roll of bills, he turned off the flashlight and threw himself forward. Walter fired twice.

  “Sons of bitches! I’m going to finish you!” He fired again. Several flashes lit up the room.

  Suddenly, there was silence.

  Jack lay waiting in the darkness, his body protecting Elizabeth and his heart thumping. He didn’t know what had happened, but Elizabeth was motionless. He was about to get up, when the flashlight illuminated him. He thought he was about to die.

  “Are you all right?”

  Jack was unable to identify the voice that emerged from behind the blinding beam of light. He slowly got to his feet and helped Elizabeth up. Then the beam changed direction and lit Walter’s lifeless body. When he approached the newcomer, Jack saw that it was Yuri.

  “We arranged to meet here, remember? That bastard was about to make you burn my money,” muttered Ivan Zarko’s nephew. “I found Joe Brown outside. We were waiting for you, but you were taking too long, so I decided to come and see what was keeping you. Come on. We have to get out of here before the Chekisty show up.”

  On the way to the car, Jack asked about the outbreak of violence in the Avtozavod.

  “It was just a matter of time. The famine’s decimating the Soviet people. They’re desperate, and Stalin’s presence here incited them. Several groups of armed dissidents have dug themselves in at the Avtozavod and burned some of the buildings; the army will be here soon.”

  They reached the car and climbed in. Joe Brown revved the Ford into life, and they drove at full speed in the direction of the cabin where Miquel and the Daniels family had taken refuge. Seeing that they were going away from the city, Elizabeth protested. “We can’t leave!”

  “Staying in the city would be suicide,” Yuri promised her. An explosion in the distance supported his argument.

  They drove on.

  Before long, they turned off down the hidden track that led to the cabin. They stopped the car nearby. The entire place was silent. They cautiously got out and gave the door three quick knocks and two slower ones. The door opened, and they quickly went in. Once inside in the dark, Jack told his companions everything that had happened.

  “Sergei Loban! It’s that tyrant’s fault that we’re in this situation,” Elizabeth said, cursing him.

  “Sergei? I doubt he has anything to do with tonight,” Yuri declared.

  “How could you defend him? The man’s a monster.”

  Yuri raised an eyebrow, as if surprised by the young woman’s opinion.

  “Elizabeth’s right. Sergei’s behind all of this,” said Jack.

  Yuri scratched his chin and spat. “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. Sergei might be a harsh man, but we know him to be fair. Anyone will say the same thing. If not for him, the OGPU would run rife in Gorky.”

  “And that’s why he’s overseeing this indiscriminate killing, is it?”

  “I’m telling you, he has nothing to do with it.”

  “And how can you be so sure?”

  “I see you haven’t heard,” Yuri said, giving a long sigh. “Sergei Loban was arrested early this afternoon and accused of high treason. They’ve removed him from his post and sent him to the ispravdom. Viktor Smirnov is responsible for the massacre. He’s in charge of the OGPU now.”

  39

  Jack decided to return to Gorky the moment he understood that Natasha Lobanova’s life was in grave danger. Perhaps the photograph in which she appeared with Smirnov had clouded his judgment, but something inside him made him believe in her. Yuri tried to make him see that what he was about to do was madness, but Jack wouldn’t budge. For the first time in his life, he didn’t care what happened to him.

  “All right. I’ll come with you, then.”

  Outside the cabin, Yuri stopped Jack.

  “I didn’t want to ask you before, but what do you plan to do with all these people? You only asked for three passports, plus the one for the Russian girl.”

  Jack had no answer. In fact, he hadn’t thought about it. At that moment, all he cared about was Natasha. “We’ll figure something out,” he said, starting the car again.

  With Yuri giving directions, they reached Natasha’s neighborhood without being intercepted. On the way, they had agreed that Jack would wait in the vehicle while Yuri tried to find out where she was. The Russian was convinced that if Natasha was still free, she would have hidden in a nearby house. She knew almost every neighbor, and if she asked, they wouldn’t hesitate to help her.

  Jack watched Yuri set off into the darkness. When the Russian was out of sight, he kept low while he tried to gather his thoughts, his mind exhausted from so many revelations.

  He still didn’t know exactly what role both Sergei and Hewitt had played in all that had happened, but that the true criminal was Viktor Smirnov was an irrefutable truth. His false evidence implicating Hewitt in McMillan’s murder was just one element in an intricate plot in which Walter had been a pawn.

  He thought of Natasha and Smirnov. He struggled to imagine what connection there was between them and why Viktor kept a photograph of the two of them in his study. But the fact was that Natasha had warned him against Viktor, and he hadn’t listened.

  He wanted to believe that she still had the same feelings for him as he did for her, feelings that tormented him; he wanted to believe that he’d be able to enjoy her skin and her kisses again. He couldn’t understand what kind of spell it was that had made him feel so captivated by a woman who was so different from those he’d always dreamed of. Natasha wasn’t conventionally beautiful; she didn’t enjoy luxury or care about status; she didn’t give a damn about mansions, or appearances, or money. She lived her life with no ambition to climb in society; she seemed happy to do her job with honesty, and the gratitude of her patients was, to her, more important than any fee. And yet, when he was close to her, her smile bewitched him, her conversation drew him in, her sighs touched him, and her jokes disarmed him. He knew that he loved her because her mere presence made him a better person, someone different. And because in her absence, the old Jack Beilis, with all his ambitions and frustrations, always returned.

  He prayed that Yuri would find her. However, when the Russian’s solitary silhouette appeared at the end of the street, he felt his stomach turn. Yuri was still climbing into the car when Jack, fearing the worst, ask
ed him what he had found out.

  “She’s safe in a neighbor’s apartment.”

  Jack sighed with relief.

  In the first light of dawn, the two men made their way through some newly built and still unpainted apartment blocks, and up a dark staircase with chipped walls. As they climbed, they crossed paths with a couple abandoning their home, loaded down with bundles. Yuri urged Jack to keep climbing. On the fifth floor, Yuri approached a door on which the lock had been forced, and he knocked. They could hear whispering. Yuri identified himself, and the groan of a heavy piece of furniture told them that the entrance had been cleared. The door squeaked on its hinges and opened very slowly, revealing Natasha’s bloodied face. Jack didn’t wait for an invitation. Anguished, he kissed her, and she responded. When they separated, it became clear that the blood that covered her face and hands wasn’t hers. Going into the house, he saw several families huddled together at the back of the room. Natasha, without a word, quickly guided him to a little kitchen, where Jack was appalled by the scene he encountered. On the wooden table a young girl with a terrible wound in her stomach was in the throes of death, while a woman who might have been her mother was trying to stop the bleeding with some dirty bandages.

  “What is this? What’s happening?”

  Natasha barely looked at him. She moved the woman aside and tried again to stop the bleeding. The girl, her eyes wide with horror, was shaking and gasping. The floor was a pool of blood. Natasha worked with determination.

  “There was an explosion, and these people came to find me. It’s madness, Jack,” she cried. “Everything we’ve fought for seems to be crumbling. For pity’s sake, help me!”

  Jack held the girl to keep her still, while Natasha’s hands disappeared into the rush of red liquid coming from the child’s belly. Suddenly, the girl called to her mother and gripped her hand. A second later she stopped moving. For a moment there was absolute silence, until it was interrupted by her mother’s heartrending scream. Natasha kept bandaging the child, who lay pale and motionless. Jack understood that, though aware of the truth of the situation, Natasha was refusing to accept the girl’s death.

  “Leave her. She’s gone,” Jack whispered, and gently tried to move her away.

  Natasha sobbed. Jack held her in his arms until she slowly separated herself from him. “Let’s go outside,” she suggested.

  Jack followed her. They left the apartment and headed into the corridor. Natasha, her eyes red, looked through a little window at the columns of smoke rising up from the Avtozavod.

  “My father . . .”

  “I know. Yuri told me he’s been arrested. I’m sorry. I . . .”

  “He’s dead, Jack. My father’s dead.” She burst into tears, heartbroken.

  Jack felt the blood freeze in his veins. Yuri had only mentioned that he’d been imprisoned. He thought she must be mistaken. However, when Natasha gazed up at him, looking more helpless than he’d ever seen her, he understood the truth of her words. “What . . . what happened?”

  “A colleague from the hospital told me. He showed up at my house to tell me that he’d killed himself. That my father admitted his involvement and shot himself at the ispravdom. The bastards! They killed him, Jack! They murdered him . . .” The tears stopped her from continuing.

  Jack held her again. When her sobbing subsided, he squeezed her hands between his.

  “Come with me to America.”

  She looked at him, as if unable to comprehend his words. “With you?”

  “We’ll escape this place and start a new life. I’ve ordered you a passport. I just need a photo of you, and—”

  “And abandon them?” She gestured at the room where she’d tended to the girl. “Leave behind everything that my father fought for?”

  “It’s not safe for you here. Yuri thinks they’ll come after you.”

  “No, Jack. I’m not going to allow those people to sully my father’s name. I’ll find out what happened. I’ll find the evidence and make the culprits pay for their crimes.”

  “But don’t you see? Nothing you do will stop them.”

  “I don’t care!” She freed herself from Jack. “Damn them, Jack! Damn them!”

  Jack took a long, deep breath. He saw Yuri’s silhouette waiting impatiently on the landing and gestured to him to wait. “They might not be of any use, but I found some documents,” he finally said. “Some reports that show the transactions that the supposed traitor made to Hewitt.”

  “The transactions they’re accusing my father of making? That was the lie they used to arrest him. They said he was the one who transferred the funds to Hewitt so they could split the profits later. But it’s not true, Jack! I knew my father. As a girl, I saw him go hungry to share his rations with his men. I saw his scars, the ones caused by the explosion when he shielded a teenage soldier. He sweated blood for the revolution. He dreamed of a fair society. A better world. He instilled it in me. My father was . . .” She cried again. “He was a great man, Jack . . . a great man.”

  Jack remained silent. He looked at Yuri again, who shook his head in disapproval. “The reports I’m talking about, the documents I had access to, they were official records. From the Vesenkha. But with one important detail: the account number didn’t match the one they gave in the trial.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They proved that the issuer wasn’t your father. I don’t know who it was, but the money definitely came from another account.”

  “And where are these reports?” Her eyes lit up with hope.

  Jack shook his head. “They snatched them from me and burned them.” He didn’t tell her about the copies he’d made. Giving them to her would only make her put herself at risk.

  “God!” She let herself fall, despondent.

  “Natasha, now that you know that your father’s innocent, there’s nothing to keep you here. I can get you out. Let’s escape while we can!”

  “Don’t you understand, Jack? Before I only suspected it, but now there’s proof. We can show them that—”

  “We can’t show them anything! I’m telling you they burned those reports! Who do you think is going to believe you?”

  “But you could give a statement saying what you’ve just told me.”

  “If I did, all I’d do is get us both killed.”

  “How can you be such a coward? You can’t hide now!”

  He knew that Natasha wasn’t thinking straight, but Jack couldn’t help feeling like he’d been stabbed in the stomach. “Hide? Me? And what’ve you done all this time? Hide because you’re ashamed of me. And hidden me from everyone: your friends, your own father. And you ask me to come out and sacrifice myself to defend the honor of the man to whom you never even admitted we were together? Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why?”

  Natasha looked at Jack as if she didn’t know him. “I . . . I was never ashamed of you, Jack.”

  “That’s what you say now.” His expression was bitter. “Do you know what? There’ve been times when I’ve dreamed I could be happy by your side. All you had to do was trust me, instead of hiding how you felt.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Jack . . . You don’t know—”

  “Yeah, there’re a lot of things I don’t know.” He remembered the photograph of her and Viktor Smirnov, an engagement ring on her finger.

  “Jack!” Yuri broke in. “We have to get out of here! Soldiers are coming!”

  “Look. This has all been a big mistake.” Natasha was trembling. “I thought I knew you, but really you were always a stranger.”

  “Yes. That’s what I’ve been.” Jack’s eyes filled with tears.

  “We have to go!” Yuri urged him.

  Jack nodded. He was about to go with Yuri, when suddenly he remembered something and stopped. “Hold on. There’s one thing I forgot.” He looked at her. “There was a Soviet engineer who traveled to the United States for training; he was the one who I believe carried out the sabotage. I never managed to find him, but if it helps, his n
ame was Mamayev.”

  “Mamayev? Vladimir Mamayev?”

  “Yes. You know him?”

  Natasha’s head dropped, and it remained there while a gut-wrenching sob shook her body. When she looked up again, her face was twisted with pain. “I had a relationship with that man, and God knows I regret it.” She looked at Jack, seeking his understanding. “Vladimir Mamayev was the name that Viktor Smirnov used so my father wouldn’t recognize him when he called for me. If I didn’t make our relationship—yours and mine—public, it was to protect you.”

  “Jack! They’re coming up the stairs!”

  “Shit! I’m coming!” Jack yelled, and he turned to Natasha again. “For God’s sake, come with me. There’s a new life waiting for us.”

  “I’m sorry, Jack. I can’t.”

  “Can’t you see that if you stay here, you’re sealing your fate?”

  “No, Jack. It’s you who’s forgetting that, even if fate leads us into the abyss, there’s always hope.”

  A gunshot rang out on the landing below them.

  “Natasha!”

  “Use the roof. Go. Go and save yourself. You may not understand it now, but when you’re far away and can no longer hear my voice, close your eyes and listen to your heart.”

  40

  Jack drove at full speed. Yuri had gotten out of the car near his uncle Ivan’s house to see if more false passports could be supplied, and they’d agreed to meet again at nightfall at the cabin where the Americans were hiding.

  When Jack arrived at the cabin, he parked the vehicle in the granary and knocked as agreed. They were all inside waiting, afraid: Elizabeth, the four members of the Daniels family, Miquel Agramunt, and Joe Brown. Eight in all, including Jack. If Natasha came, there would be nine of them. It was a lot of people. Too many.

  He updated them on the situation. They would have to stay hidden in the cabin until Yuri returned with news, and they’d remain there until he could provide passports. They didn’t ask, so Jack didn’t mention how difficult it would be to obtain the documents or what they would cost. They counted their provisions and shared some stale cookies. Four cookies each. They ate with no appetite and sat down to wait, huddled together. Outside, the morning wind roared.