“Oh, Georg! Oh, my god!” exclaimed a young, feminine voice from the cot. Grisha grinned despite himself and moved quietly off to the left.
He had hidden the money in his file cabinet. Just a few more steps.
His foot hit a can of nails and knocked it over like a thunderclap in a hospital ward.
The woman gasped, and a male voice boomed out, “Who’s there? Identify yourself. I’m armed!”
“Sorry, friend,” Grisha said in a normal tone of voice. “I didn’t realize there was anyone in here until after I had shut the door. Then I just tried to get my property without bothering you.”
“I didn’t hear anyone come in!” the man said.
The woman giggled. “I wonder why!”
Now Grisha could smell sex overlaying the sawdust. He thought of Valari and felt urgency.
“Well, just stay there, and I’ll be out of your life in a moment.”
“Wait,” the man said. “Who are you? Our hostess said this was her husband’s shop.”
“I’m the husband,” he said.
“But then you have just returned from New Archangel, yes?”
“Yes,” Grisha echoed, surprised that Kazina had even remembered his destination, and more surprised she told anyone else. “Why do you ask?”
“What is the celebration like over there?”
“Celebration? What celebration?”
“Haven’t you heard, man? The New Openness Treaty!”
“New what?”
“Openness!” the man and woman said together.
Finally his eyes adjusted, and he could see them in the dim light. They obviously believed themselves cloaked by darkness, as they made no effort to cover themselves.
Very nice breasts.
“I don’t understand.”
“New France, California, British Canada, and the First People’s Nation have signed a treaty with us that drops political barriers and most trade and travel restrictions. The Cold War is over! We have true peace on this continent for the first time in over two hundred years.”
Grisha felt numb. Not now. Please, not yet! “But what about New Spain, Texas? And Deseret?”
“Who cares? All are impossibly far away and none could conquer the rest of North America by themselves, or even in tandem. Peace! Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Yes. Yes it is.” He had the money bag in his hand, he edged toward the door. New Spain lay two thousand kilometers to the south. “I must have been in transit when this happened.”
“Ah, your wife, sir,” the woman said, “she and the kommander…”
“Never mind. I know. It’s nice to see you two beginning a relationship that might go somewhere.”
“Oh, we know where we will be going,” the man said, laughing.
“Yes,” the woman said with a giggle, “right back to our spouses!”
Grisha suddenly wanted to be anywhere but here.
He slipped out the door and into the dark night, jogging the four blocks to the boat harbor before slowing. The harbor lay quiet and dark.
He stopped, weighing possible actions. There might not be political asylum anymore. Perhaps the thing to do is throw ourselves on the mercy of the crown. Karpov did start the whole thing, and wouldn’t stop until he was killed.
But Valari was right; they had disposed of the body. Honest citizens wouldn’t do that. How would they explain that away? Tell them he fell over the side?
Valari would know, she understood the international political world. She owed him.
Grisha hurried down the dark dock to his boat. No sound or movement broke the stillness around Pravda. Concern enveloped him as he slipped aboard.
“Valari, are you here?” he whispered.
“Yes.” Her voice sounded flat, official, disinterested.
Bright light stabbed out of the night and blinded him. Strong, rough hands seized his arms; he sensed many people around him.
“Are you Grigoriy Grigorievich?” an authoritative voice boomed.
“Yes, why?” He tried squinting to see past the glare.
“Is this the man, Lieutenant Kominskiya?”
“Yes,” Valari said with a quaver in her voice. “He’s the murderer.”
Lieutenant? “Valari!” he screamed, cold fear tightening his guts. “What have you told them—”
The fist materialized out of the darkness and smashed into the side of his head. Dimly he felt them drag him off the boat. The smell of salt and tar flooded his nose.
“Time to hang a fuckin’ Creole!” someone shouted.
Fireworks exploded in the air over Russian Amerika.
4
Akku
Consciousness brought pain on a level new to him. A small voice in the back of his mind noted that he must still be alive unless everything the priests taught him was a lie. He wondered if they were going to kill him.
Opening his eyes brought fresh anguish and it took three attempts before he could focus his squint at the gray expanse above him. Rock, or concrete, he decided. Slowly he turned his aching head and saw a wall of bars. So it hadn’t been a nightmare, it was real.
Grisha felt so bereft and unanchored that he knew he had to be hollow. There was no more of himself to spend. His father, the Russian Army, his wife, his lover… all had used what they wanted and then discarded him.
The pain of the bruises, cuts, and scrapes covering his body abruptly lessened and he didn’t need to wonder why. Could this profound detachment he felt actually be death? It didn’t matter, he didn’t care.
“Ah, our guest is back from the land of Winken and Nod!” an ear splittingly loud voice bellowed. “We must take him to breakfast.”
Large, rough hands grabbed him by the arms and pulled him up onto his feet. If they hadn’t continued to hold him, Grisha would have fallen on his face. Strength had fled his body and it took all his will to lift his head.
His squint functioned more smoothly this time and he beheld a small man dressed completely in black whose shaved head seemed to gleam. The bright grin under even brighter eyes gave the man an elfin cast.
“No, wait. Let’s try him first and then decide whether to waste the cost of a meal on a condemned man. Bring him along.”
The man turned and walked away. The strong hands dragged Grisha along in the man’s wake and he idly wondered where they were taking him. He knew there would be more pain.
Through a doorway and suddenly the concrete floor yielded to wood and then carpet. Other people formed on the periphery but none moved to his aid. Abruptly he realized he was whimpering and he forced himself to stop.
To be frightened was to care. No reason to care, not anymore. He didn’t even pity himself, he just moved further away.
Movement had stopped for some time and it took him long moments to focus on the words enough to comprehend.
“… do you understand me?” a large man in black said in a calm voice.
Grisha tried to form the words but his scabbed lips, dry throat and aching jaw could only elicit, “Hnnn?”
“You are in the high court of His Majesty, Czar Nicholas IV, and accused of murdering one of his servants. How do you plead?”
Grisha again tried to speak; this time he did care. He hadn’t killed anyone, he was guilty only of silence.
“Wad’r,” he croaked.
“Give the prisoner some water,” the big man said in his soothing voice.
The hands didn’t slacken on his arms and a cup pressed against his lips and he gulped avidly as water poured down the front of him.
“How do you plead?” the calm man asked again.
“Not guilty,” Grisha rasped. He couldn’t tell if the man felt a flicker of disdain or mirth, but the corners of his mouth slightly twitched.
“Call the witness,” the calm man said.
Grisha fell into the silence of waiting and his mind wandered far and fast. Noise turned into words.
“… the man who cudgeled your superior officer, Kommander Nicholas Karpov of the Imper
ial Cavalry, to death on the Charter Vessel Pravda four days ago?”
“Yes, your honor, that is the man.”
The sound of Valari’s voice suddenly made him care, and hate suffused him, canceling all pain.
“She lies!” he rasped, willing his voice stronger. “She hit him in the back of the head with a halibut club while he was choking me on the deck.”
The calm voice rolled over them again. “Lieutenant Kominskiya has a sterling record in the Imperial Cavalry. She was also prescient enough to predict your charge against her, even though she was also your victim.”
“What?” Grisha croaked. “Victim? Of what?”
“Rape. Even the most casual examination of your berthing space condemns you.”
“She—”
“The prisoner will maintain his silence while judgment is passed.” His voice remained as calm as when he began the farce.
“Grigoriy Grigorievich, the High Court of His Majesty, Czar Nicholas IV, hereby condemns you to death for the murder of Kommander Nicholas Karpov, and the rape of Lieutenant Valari Kominskiya.”
Grisha wilted and the hands struggled to keep him upright.
“However,” the soothing voice revived the flickering flame of hope in Grisha’s core, “His Imperial Majesty has decreed that in honor of the new Openness Treaty, for the period of one month, all capital sentences are commuted to thirty years at hard labor on the Russia-Canada Highway.”
Grisha wilted again; it was still a death sentence. He glared at the impassive face of Valari Kominskiya as the guards pulled him from the courtroom and back into hell.
5
Akku
They beat him in his cell. Hours later they revived him by dumping cold water on his naked body and told him to dress; he had been deloused. The thin cotton prison uniform crawled with vermin but he pulled it on as quickly as he could.
Nothing of his former life remained, not even his boots. He pulled on shoes made of felt and the guards threw him into the back of a truck. Ten minutes later he was shackled to a long chain, the last in a coffle of twenty prisoners.
Different guards herded them up a ramp and into the cold, steel bowels of a transport ship. Grisha felt grateful for the straw on which they were allowed to sleep. After what must have been thirty hours, long past the fouling of the straw by all present, they were herded back into open air.
One glance of the Chilkat Range told Grisha they were on their way to Klukwan and the Czar’s prison camp. They were all beaten upon arrival. Grisha thought he really might die, and the lassitude of surrender enveloped him once again.
When he woke the next morning, his hands were free of iron and one of the guards kicked his foot again.
“Get up, or you’ll miss breakfast.”
Grisha’s stomach groaned loudly. He hadn’t eaten since his last day on Pravda. His ribs looked like those of a corpse.
He staggered behind them, willing himself to take each step and not fall, knowing if he did he would never rise again. The aroma of hot, cooked food enveloped him and he dropped onto a bench where a steaming wooden bowl of gruel waited. Between burning his fingers, face, and lips, and the already raw condition of same, it took him almost ten minutes to empty the bowl.
He still felt ravenous.
He looked up at the guard.
“We’ll feed you again in four hours. If you eat more now you’ll just spew it all over the floor and have to clean it up.”
For the first time since his trial he had the strength to look at the other prisoners. Men and women both were dressed in the same flimsy uniform. No attempt was made to segregate the sexes.
He pulled away from the women in gender hatred. First Kazina and then Valari had violated his trust. After supervising his anguished metamorphosis from cashiered officer to charter captain, his wife made him a cuckold.
Valari used him as a scapegoat for murder and exacerbated her infamy by claiming rape. Everything he attempted in his life had started with great promise, then ended in the most humiliating manner possible. And except for being cashiered, there had been a woman involved.
He noticed there were at least two men older than himself, and with the women there was no way of telling. Nobody talked except for one twitchy fellow who constantly murmured in conversation with something over his right shoulder.
The midday meal had flesh mixed in with potatoes and carrots. Grisha ate all they gave him. For a week they were fed and allowed to regain their strength. Toward the end of July Grisha and nineteen others were chained together in two coffles and herded into two army lorries.
The trucks growled north and east until they hit the Russia-Canada Highway and turned northwest.
The Russia-Canada enjoyed the term “highway” only by consent. Broken rock in fist-sized chunks formed the surface as well as the roadbed. In many places the top sank into the muskeg deep enough for narrow streams to traverse the roadway.
Leaving Klukwan and regular meals made all of them apprehensive.
“I don’t think they are going to kill us,” the oldest man said. “Else they wouldn’t have wasted food on us.”
“I agree,” Grisha said, scratching at his beard. “I was sentenced to thirty years hard labor on the RustyCan, I think that’s where they are taking us.”
“Thirty years!” the old man exclaimed. “What was your crime?”
“They convicted me of killing a Cossack. But I am innocent.”
The other nine all laughed until they gasped.
“What’s so fucking funny about that?”
The old man grinned at him. “Thank you, I haven’t laughed since they sentenced me to ten years. We don’t laugh at you, we laugh at ourselves. I doubt there are even two guilty persons in this truck.”
“Why are you here?”
“My politics didn’t hew closely enough to prescribed lines. I was the lucky one; they hanged three of my friends for treason.”
I thought they were commuting all capital offenses for a month. They did that to me.”
“Which only points to your true innocence. What is your name, young man?”
“Grigoriy Grigorievich,” he said with a laugh.
“And you laugh why?”
“I haven’t been called ‘young man’ for a very long time.”
“I am Andreivich, and I have sixty years. You are younger than I am.”
“By a third of your years, sir.”
“You both talk too much,” a burly, wild-haired man growled in a deep voice. “You should be trying to sleep.”
“What is your name, woodsman?” Grisha asked.
“My mother called me Basil, after the saint. She may as well have named me Satan, now that I am in hell.”
Grisha nodded in agreement.
“Thank your saint you are not a woman,” a large woman with a gap between her front teeth said with disdain.
Grisha noticed the women had pulled as far away from the men as the chains would allow.
“We won’t hurt you,” Andreivich said. “Nor can we help you.”
The woman pulled her haunted stare away from them, and looked out the back of the open truck at the cloud of dust billowing over the second truck. Equally great clouds of mosquitoes descended on them whenever the trucks stopped.
They arrived at Tetlin Redoubt and were pushed into a vast holding pen. The next morning they were fed and herded back into the trucks. Grisha found himself wondering where they would end their journey.
He was surprised that he cared.
A Zukhov K-28 tank followed the three trucks, one for army personnel and two for convicts, and Grisha wondered at the military decision behind its presence. Wherever they were going, a potential enemy lurked. Grisha smiled; it couldn’t be all bad.
After traveling half the day the truck jolted to a stop and the engine died. Grisha stirred from his semiconscious nap.
“Get out here, you scum!” a deep voice shouted. “Quickly, or you’ll miss dinner.”
They all heaved to
their feet and followed the woman at the head of the chain.
“She’s mine, first,” the deep voice roared.
“No matter what else comes out that truck?” a second harsh voice asked.
“Yes!”
The next three women were also claimed by unseen men.
Then Grisha jumped down to the ground and turned to help Andreivich. A stunning blow knocked him into the dust.
“You don’t ever turn your back on me, slave, unless I tell you to!”
Holding his head so it wouldn’t split, Grisha staggered to his feet and stared at the burly, bearded man in front of him.
The Cossack sergeant grabbed him by the shoulder and thrust him away from the truck. “Keep moving, you dung-eater.”
In moments Grisha took in his surroundings. They were in deep woods but the glint of moving water could be seen through the far trees. Pravda‚
flashed through his mind but he wouldn’t hold on to the memory.
Two rough cabins sat at the edge of a large clearing where most of the trees still lay after harvest. A coffle of nine emaciated prisoners sat in the dust at roadside. Grisha decided they were being taken back to Tetlin to be strengthened.
“How many were you in the beginning?” Grisha whispered to the closest one.
“Thirty,” the man whispered back without moving his head. “The rest are dead.”
“Move out!” the Cossack sergeant bellowed.
The women shuffled toward the cabins.
Another Cossack screamed, “Not that way! That’s where we live.”
They were halted at a wide trench floored with packed wood rounds. A ladder was the only way down or up. Two of the Cossacks opened the heavy locks on each prisoner’s shackles.
The men were ordered into the trench and the women were led away by the crowing Cossacks. The soldiers who had traveled in the lead truck threw the men some food. They could hear the cries and moans of the women all night.
6
Outside Construction Camp 4, Mid August, 1987
Ten meters above the ground, Slayer-of-Men shifted slightly to take the pressure off his left foot. The tree limb remained motionless as the tall man smoothly transferred weight to his right foot so he could flex the numbness from his sleeping leg.
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