Wick - The Omnibus Edition

by Bunker, Michael

  He knew that both he and Volkhov had been on a long journey that had led them here. His own journey had not started on the steps of that Brooklyn brownstone the day after Sandy. He’d been traveling all of his life. Clay thought of friends and loved ones—the ones still alive, and the ones he’d lost—and he imagined telling them the story of this journey. Would they believe it? Who knows. Everyone carries their own baggage into a story.

  Some people would hate the things that they’d heard and would reject this old man and his ramblings, and would curse the things that Clay now thought about the world and his countrymen and this life and the way of it. Some might want to lock Volkhov up and others would want to embrace him or stone him or ignore him with the hope that he would just go away. After all, the dialecticians had done their work. Journeys, in the end, are individual things no matter how many people come along on them. His journey had led him to this place and time, and he accepted where he was despite the danger, and he saw in Volkhov a fellow pilgrim on the pilgrimage of truth. Perhaps they had just started too late. Procrastination tends to be the genesis of almost every journey.

  This old man with him in his cell had carried burdens and had walked a path that, prior to meeting him, Clay had only read about in books. He’d lived a life of adventure and danger. More importantly, perhaps, the man had lived a life of the mind. He had lived within himself and within his worlds, whichever one he found himself in, in a search for knowledge and truth. His face was lined with intrigue and despair and excitement and frightful loss. He wore a beard that most, even those who lived in a Russian village today, would consider “unkempt” or wild. Despite his higher learning and his brilliant mind he could easily be mistaken for a homeless drunk or an insane philosopher-poet.

  Clay could imagine Volkhov as Diogenes lying in the sun when Alexander the Great rode up and said something akin to “I am the great King Alexander!” to which Diogenes had replied, “I am the great dog Diogenes.” Alexander had promised Diogenes anything he wished in the whole world, to which Diogenes had only replied, “I wish you’d get out of my sun.”

  He had the look of that. The face of Lev Volkhov aged in wisdom and worry and want, had had enough of king’s shadows.

  ****

  In the fullness of time, Volkhov wanted to talk, so Clay let him.

  “Clay, what I said in that gymnasium was the truth, but it didn’t matter. In the grand scheme of things it was just an old man railing against the darkness of a life lived by lies. Solzhenitsyn, my honored countryman, said ‘Live Not By Lies’ and it took me way too long to heed him. I should have read more Solzhenitsyn and Tolstoy and less Marx and Lenin.

  Had Clay been in the other world he would have thought about the books in his backpack, of his own influences, of the writers who gave him hope, but he was not, and he didn’t.

  “America is more divided than it was before the Civil War… why? Because the third side has presided over a century’s long plan to dumb down the people and to colonize them into thinking that the only answer to every problem must come from government. In my last ditch effort to save a system that really doesn’t want… no more… it doesn’t need saving, I tried to tell the Americans the truth of what is coming. But, like Golitsyn before me—”

  “Stop.” Clay interrupted. “There’s that name. I don’t know who he is…”

  The old man waved him off and kept talking.

  “The Americans believed everything—bought the whole story—except the most important part! They claimed not to believe what is called The Long-Term Deception Strategy. I told my new masters that the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960’s had been faked. I told them that the Perestroika and Glasnost were faked. I told them that the plan was—” he stopped, as if searching for a word, “—that the plan had always been, to break up the Soviet Union and feign a collapse in order to rake in Western aid, weaken the capitalist west, and to eventually destroy America.

  “Golitsyn told them this in his book New Lies for Old, written before the collapse in ‘92, and they believed everything but that. So many other defectors told them this, but they would not believe it.”

  The old man looked at him, sadly and spread his hands, holding them palms upward as if in prayer.

  “Volkhov told them this too, and they could not accept it.”

  Clay looked at him and continued to listen.

  “But I’ve learned that there are some in the halls of power who are one with those who are in the halls of power everywhere. They are the ones who forced America’s leaders to disbelieve the truth. Because the third side wants the war.

  “They want the planet to lose six and a half billion of its inhabitants. They want to save the environment by destroying it, or they want all of the gold, or they want to continue to be the masters of history… I don’t pretend to understand the why completely. I don’t understand why, but in just a couple of decades from now what once was America will be a collection of independent fiefdoms, a balkanized mess of warring kingdoms like medieval Europe. That is what comes next.”

  As Volkhov paused, the door opened and Vasily came in slowly with another case of bottled water. Though this cell had a sink, the water system was not currently operating due to the power outages. Clay smiled at him, and Vasily smiled back weakly.

  ****

  Just before Volkhov and Clay were ushered into the cell they’d been standing in the cluster day room when Mikail came in to give instructions on their care. Mikail, speaking in English, probably out of habit more than anything, had ordered Vladimir to have Vasily oversee the two prisoners as their caretaker. He had given Vladimir specific instructions that no one else should be admitted to the room to see them.

  “Vasily is young and stupid and doesn’t speak English,” Mikail had told Vladimir.

  They smiled and nodded but Clay had seen a change in Vasily’s face. It was subtle, so subtle that no one else noticed it. His jaw had tightened and his eyes had narrowed only slightly and his gaze had met Clay’s. There had been an invisible communication between them. Vasily understood English. He was a book that had been judged by his cover, but they had misread him. He was not stupid, although he was indeed young. Clay had decided that perhaps he had an ally.

  ****

  Now, in the cell, as Vasily dropped off the water, Clay looked at him and pointed to the ceiling and then to his ear asking Vasily silently if the room was being monitored. Vasily shook his head ‘no’ then spoke in perfect English, “The whole electronic security apparatus is down right now. The entire facility is on minimum power, and since you two are the only prisoners, they have shut down everything but the emergency lighting.”

  His words hit Clay like a rocket. What is this place, where even those who seem the meekest are so competent? To the two adults in the cell, the boy had just summed up a mountain of information in the most efficient way possible. He was like a co-conspirator or… a spy.

  He went on. “They’ve ‘appropriated’ several homes in town for themselves, and there are only four guards placed at the entrances of this building for security.”

  Volkhov looked at Vasily with concern and care on his face and asked, “What will you do, Vasily Romanovich?”

  “What would you have me do, grandfather?” Vasily asked affectionately.

  Clay wondered whether this term was a sign of respect or an indication of lineage. He was finding it hard to see, in the big picture, who was on which side in this vast game of chess, but he knew in his heart, as well as he had ever known anything, that the three of them in this cell were of one mind in that moment.

  “You must escape here, Vasily. The attack, if it comes as planned, will start in three days and if you are still here, things will get very bad very fast.”

  Volkov turned to the cinder-block wall and drew a map of the east coast with his finger. “It will start in the areas currently blacked out, and the attack will focus first on Washington D.C. and the rest of the eastern seaboard. News will be sketchy, and any government
information will be lies. The rest of the country will just hear about the continually plummeting stock market, and the major power outages. They will say that information is unreliable because of the lack of power and fuel.”

  He paused and looked at them. “Turmoil and confusion.”

  “It’s already gotten pretty bad out there, grandfather. It has been bad since the first storm hit, but in the last two days everything has just gone haywire. You haven’t heard the news. We’ve been listening in on the radio pretty much whenever we have free time. The world is spiraling into chaos even now.”

  The boy paused. Clay heard in the pause, as the old man did, the boy asking, “How will I escape? And where will I go?”

  Volkhov offered a way out.

  “Clay here says that the fence is destroyed on the south side of the facility. If you can get out that way, you could escape. I don’t know where you can go in the long-run. Go to the Amish, if you can. We’ve talked about that.”

  Clay looked at him, surprised.

  “Or just find someplace away from the cities to hide out. There may not be a good solution out there, but being in here would be the worst solution of all,”

  Volkhov shook his head. He tried to be secretive about it, but Clay saw him wipe away a single tear that had welled up in his eyes.

  “They have guards posted on all of the exits,” Vasily said. “If I leave through the north door, towards Warwick, I will not be noticed, but if I attempt to leave out of any of the other doors, they won’t open them to me and they’ll ask questions. Besides, what about you grandfather? And Clay? What should we all do?”

  Clay looked at Vasily intensely. He really did hope that the boy would escape, but Vasily didn’t seem to have much hope for himself. Clay grabbed a bottle of water and took a long drink, and then he handed one to Volkhov.

  The old man received it with a nod, as a way of thanks. Clay offered one to Vasily, who refused, saying that he had plenty and that he didn’t want to drink theirs.

  “Where are you staying, Vasily?” Clay asked.

  “Most of us who are considered ‘worthless’—we who do not have homes and families to go to—are sleeping on cots in the gymnasium.”

  Clay looked at Vasily and decided that he had to trust him. “Vasily, I need to tell you that I have a backpack hidden in the Tank. They never thought to look for it, at least as far as I know. I think mostly because they killed the only man who ever saw it. Why they never searched the Tank for the camera is beyond me, but with so much going on, I think—once they realized that I was just a lost hiker—they just forgot about it.

  “Anyway, the backpack is stowed under the bunk in the Tank, hidden under a blanket.”

  “What should I do with it?” Vasily asked.

  “Do you think you can get it out of here?”

  “I can. I can walk it out the north entrance and tell the guard there, if he asks, that I am taking it to Mikail. They all think I’m stupid, so they don’t suspect me of anything. They don’t think I’m capable of trickery, lying, or subterfuge.”

  “That makes you the best spy ever in a whole town of spies, Vasily,” Clay said, smiling.

  “They could eventually figure it out if the guard thinks to ask Mikail about it later, but that won’t happen for some time, if it happens at all. Most of the people think of me as an ignorant automaton and I do my best not to rid them of the notion.”

  He smiled at Clay. “It made my life easier in here for them to think that I was stupid and that I didn’t speak English.”

  “What in the world were you locked up in here for, Vasily?” Clay asked.

  “I got drunk,” Vasily replied. “I was tired of all of the abuse and I stole some vodka from the store and sat out behind the church in the cemetery drinking. Some students from school came by and started in on me, so I set into them like a windmill in a hurricane. It’s the first time I ever did such a thing, but I think it had built up in me for a long time.”

  Clay smiled at Vasily and replied, “Well, I’ve been there, brother. Got locked up for it too! Ok? So listen, the backpack isn’t immediately critical, but if any one of us can escape, it has things in it that might keep us alive,” Clay said. “There is at least one clean change of clothes in there too. I think Todd stole my other clothes, thinking they were the only ones I had. But there are some other things in there that might be useful as well.”

  Volkhov stood up and took a long swig from his bottle of water. He looked at the bottle intently.

  “This reminds me, both of you, starting tomorrow, if we are still alive, do not drink any municipal or public water supply,” he said.

  “Why?” Vasily asked.

  “Just don’t.”

  “Ok.”

  Volkhov continued, “Vasily, when you leave here you need to find Pyotr Alexandrovitch, my nephew. He knows the whole story. There is another way out that he will show you.”

  “Yes, grandfather, I’ll do it, but what about you two?”

  “Well—”

  Clay interjected. “All I can think of is that we can try to make a break for it. This place has never been weaker than it is right now. It has almost no security and only four guards. Mikail carries the keys. We can just jump him or something and try to make a break through the south fence.”

  “It won’t work, Clay,” Vasily responded. “I have the room key, which also fits the cluster doors, but it only fits the rooms in this cluster. Vladimir is head of security now, and I think only he carries the external door master keys. I have to knock on the door to get out, so that means the guards carry a door key as well.”

  Clay paused and thought. He trailed his hand along the cold concrete before slapping it in delight. “That’s it! So you have a key to this cluster, and the guards at the exits have a key to the external doors?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “And if you were to try to exit the south door, which is only a brisk run from the collapsed fence, they wouldn’t let you out because you’re not authorized to go out that exit, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Beautiful! And they’d never let you through, because you only speak Russian. Right? At least that is what they think! Right?”

  The boy looked at him, waiting.

  “Right now there is only one man with a key and a gun between us and freedom! So you could speak in perfect English and they would assume that it was either Vladimir or Mikail! They’d open the door to either of them, would they not?”

  “They would!”

  Clay and Vasily smiled broadly and started to give one another a high-five, but then they looked over at Volkhov who was frowning. “We shouldn’t try to all get out the same way,” he said, “What if something goes wrong? They’d kill us all.” He looked at Clay. “You and I, we are as good as dead already to Mikail and his people. Not Vasily. He can get out cleanly.”

  “What do you recommend, grandfather?” Vasily asked.

  “We mustn’t underestimate Mikail. He is a brilliant young man, and I don’t mean that he is just ‘smart’. He tested off the charts in every category. He is a phenomenon.”

  Volkhov looked at Clay as if to ask if he knew what they were up against. Clay nodded his head and took another drink from his bottle.

  “Why wasn’t he sent to Russia to spy? He’s old enough isn’t he?” Clay asked.

  “Some people are not sent because they fail the tests, or because they are not adept at being dishonest, or because they have a skill or ability that is valuable for the village here. Some people are not sent because they lack some critical mode of thinking that is required for the job they are being sent to do. Mikail was not sent because he has a gloriously beautiful mind and is a completely unpredictable sociopath.”

  “You’d think that would be a plus in the spy game,” Clay said, smiling.

  “They don’t mind ‘sociopath’ so much, but ‘unpredictable’ is what gets you disqualified. His whole attitude—his anger, bravado, and even his dang
er—comes from being rejected for service by the Americans. The Russians accepted him, because they had nothing to lose. He is expendable if he fails, and if he doesn’t…” Volkhov said, sighing.

  “Ok, so back to this plan. So you and I bust out the back, Volkhov, while Vasily goes out the front. Then he can meet up with—what is your nephew’s name, Pyotr?”

  “That’s it,” Volkhov said, nodding his head.

  The old man took Vasily by the shoulders and smiled at him affectionately for a moment. “Vasily, you will take the bag because you can surely get it out without being stopped. You must get to Pyotr. Whatever the cost. Tell him what we are doing. If we get out, tell him we will meet you at the pumping station. He’ll know what that means.”

  Vasily nodded, and gave the old man a hug. When the embrace was broken, Volkhov added, “Let me tell both of you something. If anything goes wrong during this ill-advised and quixotic jailbreak, anything at all, you are to leave me behind. I will not go with you unless you promise me that. I am an old man, and I really don’t want to live through what is coming anyway. If the attack comes, it will be on Tuesday. That was the plan from the beginning. It will begin on the evening of the election.”

  Both Clay and Vasily nodded. Something in the back of Clay’s mind should have noted that he was making a plan for escape with a young boy and an old man who had just stated that there was to be some sort of apocalyptic attack due on the day of an election, but he did not make that connection in that moment. The tension between his old world and this new world had snapped. He was simply a man fighting for his life in a cell with two other men who were doing the same, and who were offering to watch his back.

  ****

  The excitement of making a decision had trailed off and an aura of sadness now permeated the cell. They stood silently for several moments before Volkhov again broke the quiet. “Come Tuesday, you guys have to really step it up a notch. Everything will change dramatically, even as it has already begun to change.