When the door to the shed at last crashed open, it was completely dark outside. She heard the chugging idle of a large truck engine, but could see little out the doorway because of the immensity of the man who stood in it. Though he was in silhouette, she could see that he wore a long, sleeveless coat over a heavy, old-fashioned jacket. His fur hat was high and thick, almost the headdress of some wild tribesman. He seemed altogether out of another century, a caravan man, or an overseer of serfs.
“You are woman who wants to go to Minsk?” His voice boomed like Ivan Rebroff’s at its lowest octave.
“Yes,” she said, rising.
“Give me five hundred rubles now or I leave you here for police to find, and kick in your head before I go.”
“But …”
“Do not be stupid!”
She stepped to the doorway and its light, assembling the sum from her pockets. He snatched the money from her with one hand and shoved her out into the yard with the other, with such force she almost fell sprawling.
“Hurry! Is space for you in compartment under seat. Keep feet off battery or you will get shock.”
It was the space of a coffin, for a small person.
“How long will I—”
“Shut up! Get in! You will get to Minsk.”
She did, barely able to arrange herself comfortably before he slammed the seat bottom back into position again. Slamming the doors with equal violence, he heaved himself inside, causing one of the springs to press down against her scalp. With much clashing of gears and gunning of the engine, he got the big rig underway. By the time, as best Tatty could tell, they were out of the city, he had all that weight hurtling along quite rapidly.
Her comfort lasted only a few minutes. Pain began to gnaw at the bones and muscles of her shoulders, neck, and hip. She was beset by oily fumes from beneath and flatulence from the big man above. She was fiercely hungry. She was enraged. But she was learning to endure. She wept, but only with tears. No sound.
She could not calculate how much time or distance had passed when he finally liberated her and let her sit up on the seat beside him. Since leaving Smolensk they had made two brief stops, with only a few words exchanged between the driver and what Tatty had assumed were local militia. A third time, he had been compelled to shut down the engine and leave the truck. There had been a number of voices and people banging about in the cargo section of the truck. The passenger door had been opened and someone had carried out an examination of the glove compartment and cab. Tatty, biting her lip, had held her hand over her mouth to muffle her breathing. If she were religious, she wondered what she would have promised God to be spared. She promised nothing, but she had been spared.
“Where are we?” she asked, as the driver rumbled the truck back onto the highway again from where he had pulled off to free her from the compartment.
“We have passed from Moscow Military District to Byelorussia Military District,” he said, gruffly. “We are on Warsaw-Moscow highway. Soon we cross Leningrad-Kiev highway at place called Orsha. There is hostelry there where we stay overnight.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. In the dim light of the dashboard she could see that he had a face as massive as his body, with features in hugely similar porportion, but he seemed to have no eyes. She looked more closely. Though he otherwise appeared a European Russian, his eyes were oriental, two long slits.
“What is your name?” she asked. He became angry.
“Never mind my name! I do not want to know your name. You are only baggage. Special cargo. Big trouble. You pay me for trouble. I take you to Minsk. Now be quiet. Do not irritate me any further.”
He smelled terribly, but by then, Tatty supposed, so did she.
There were a number of trucks parked around the hostelry at Orsha. The establishment consisted of a small refueling facility, a restaurant, and a long, sorry-looking barracks building. Tatty was thankful for the darkness. The place would look even more forbidding in daylight.
After dealing with the formalities in the office, the driver took her from the truck and through the shadows to the rear of the barracks building, yanking her along like a led calf. The door opened to a rude staircase and a dimly lit corridor above.
“Here no questions asked,” he said, in what was as close as he could come to a whisper. “But you don’t exist. Ponimayu? You are not to be seen.”
She nodded. He enveloped her with his great arm and its overpowering odors, as though to persuade his fellow drivers she was merely some road tramp he had snatched up, and half dragged her up the stairs, not releasing her until they came to a door at the end of the hall.
“Is best they have,” he said, opening the door to what looked like a furnished cell in Lubyanka. He pushed her inside and closed door behind them. “You sleep in corner. Bed is for me.”
She had no interest in his bed. The only furnishing that attracted her was the chamber pot. She had come a long way from the Hamptons. The only self-indulgence allowed her now was going to the bathroom.
“I am going to restaurant,” said the giant. “I bring you back food later.” She nodded, meekly.
He was gone for two hours or more, and returned quite drunk. She wondered what volume of vodka it would take to make such a man that drunk. He had brought back a large bottle, but it didn’t have much in it. She grimaced when she opened the crumpled paper parcel he dropped on the floor beside her. It contained a round of black bread and a lump of greasy, soiled cheese.
“I’m thirsty,” she said, cautiously eyeing the vodka.
“I get you mineral water in morning,” he said, going to the bed and lowering himself onto it with a great creak. He reached and turned out the small lamp on the table, the only light in the room. She could hear him drink. As her eyes adjusted, she could see him.
“You are sick?” he asked, after belching.
“What?”
“Bolna. Woman’s trouble. Pavl said you have woman’s trouble.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
He drank and belched again, then set the vodka on the table. In a moment, he was snoring, as grotesquely as he did everything else. She had been aching for vodka for hours, but putting the slimy mouth of that bottle to her lips would be more than she could bear even now.
In the middle of the night, though, shivering and shaking in her wretched coat, she went up to the bottle and drank. She couldn’t help it.
In the morning, he refused to buy her vodka from the restaurant, saying a drunken woman was trouble. But he did bring her a large bottle of mineral water and some decent food. She ate it with fingers revoltingly filthy, but ate it all.
He allowed her to ride on the seat instead of beneath it, but warned her to keep down. Traffic on the highway had increased. It occurred to Tatty that she could not recall the day of the week. His face had softened in daylight, making him seem almost human, but she was not going to provoke him with any question about the calendar. She would remain silent, as he wished.
Then she had to speak. Nature had inconvenienced her again.
He pulled off onto the gravel shoulder near some trees. She hurried off deep within them; leafless, they didn’t provide much cover. She went about her business quickly, rising and turning to discover the giant not twenty feet distant, blithefully pissing all over a bush. Looking away, she hurried past him.
“Where in Minsk do you go?” he asked, after they had passed through a town called Borisov. She could not tell how much of his dark expression was hangover.
“I’m not sure.”
“I have no time for driving all over Minsk. I have long drive yet to go after Minsk. I drop you at city center and go. Good riddance.”
“Where are you going after Minsk?”
“I go to Warsaw.” He smiled, proudly, revealing a missing molar. “I am long-haul driver. I once drive to Vladivostok.”
“I’m going beyond Minsk also. I would like to go to Warsaw. May I go with you?”
He scowled. “Nyet. Impossible. Transport p
erson without passport across Soviet frontier? I am in very big trouble. They take driver’s license, send me to work camp. Depending on who you are, I could get shot.”
“Warsaw is where I’m going. I’m Polish.”
“You are not Polish. You are not Russian, but you are not Polish.” She froze. “I think you are maybe Lithuanian. Not Polish.”
“How close can you get me to Poland?”
He scowled, but this time in thought. “Brest. Is at Soviet-Polish border. I could take you to Brest. But I want more money. Taking you so close to border is very dangerous. I want much more money.”
“Another five hundred rubles?”
“More than that. How much have you?”
“I will pay you five hundred more rubles and one hundred in American currency.”
“You have American dollars?”
“I have one one-hundred-dollar American bill.”
He beamed, and slapped her leg. “For that, Viktor Feodorovich Kolshov will take you to Brest. I also buy you vodka.”
In his new amiable phase, he proved worthy of his word. He bought her Stolichnaya, got them through Minsk without pause or incident, and pursued the highway beyond with great enthusiasm. She thought she might yet persuade him to take her across the border to Warsaw. Certainly she was not feeling the spurious elation she had upon escaping the Kremlin walls, but her dread and anxiety were easing. Unlike the Romanov girls as they were dragged off into the hostile vastness of Siberia, it was her sense at last that she was actually moving nearer to safety, that she might actually succeed.
Kolshov seemed happy, too. He sang, and picked at his ears.
The early Russian dusk had come and turned to night when he finally pulled off the road. They had just passed a sign saying BREST, 18 KM, making Tatty fearful he was going to dump her here in these woods and make her walk the rest of the way, but he kept driving, arriving finally at another hostelry. Their quarters this time were much less crude and shabby, but similar in dimension and furnishings. She would spend another night on the floor.
He invited her to share the bed. He had brought her back hot food and another bottle of vodka from the restaurant. Both had made her feel fairly cheery and cozy, but not that cozy. She declined sweetly, reminding him in her best Russian of her woman’s problem. Her Russian had come back to her so fully that she could speak in subtleties now. This language that had for so long been only an unwanted vestige of her childhood had become a vital resource. After this, she must cherish it and speak it often, in gratitude, for it was saving her life.
Leaving him to grunt and stare at her from the bed, she rolled over on the floor and closed her eyes. As she had the last two nights, she pretended she was lying in the hard sand of the beach at East Hampton. She could almost hear the waves. Other sounds intruded, Kolshov taking off his clothes for the night. Soon he would be asleep. Soon it would be morning. Soon she would be in Poland, then home. The warmth of spring and summer would come, and we shall all go to the seashore.
He pulled her up and threw her onto the bed as he might a log into a fire. He was completely naked, glistening with sweat, his face half angry, half calculating. He hit her a numbing blow on the side of the face and yanked up her skirt, tearing back her pantyhose.
“You lie, gospozha! You have no woman’s sickness. I watch you in trees this morning. You lie!”
Swearing, he struck her again, and ripped open her blouse. She tore at his face, ripping flesh with her fingernails. Once more he bashed her, nearly knocking her out. She lay reeling, as he pulled at her coat, finally jerking it, her suit jacket, and her blouse off in a single violent motion and throwing her over onto her stomach. As he reached to roll her back again, she turned and hit him hard in the nose with the flat of her hand. He paused, startled, as blood flowed down over his mouth, then went after her again, hitting her ribs, seizing the waistband of her skirt and pulling, ripping, falling back against the wall as it came free. He seemed dazed. Her brassiere had somehow come loose in the struggle and, except for her boots and the shredded remnants of her pantyhose, she was entirely naked. She had a moment’s chance to get past him and out the door, but to what end? Where could she go like this?
He regained his senses, and stood over her now. Despite the pain she had inflicted, the great slavering beast was beginning to have an erection. She thought of poor wretched Jack Spencer, and his pain. Spreading her legs now, bending her knees as though she was submitting and preparing to receive him, she waited until Kolshov moved closer, then shot out her right leg, smashing into his genitals with her boot. He shrieked thunderously and stumbled backward. Sitting up, she kicked at him again, this time striking a less wounding blow. He slid to the floor, clutching himself, his face full of fury. She hurried from the bed back to the table on the other side of the room. There were angry shouts somewhere in the building, but no one seemed to be coming to the door.
The lout was sitting atop all of her clothes. The pistol was in the pocket of her coat. If she had it in her hand she would kill him, notwithstanding that the gunshot would bring everyone in the hostelry at a run.
Groaning, whimpering like some injured animal, he got to his knees, and then staggered to his feet.
“You will suffer for what you have done to Viktor Feodorovich Kolshov!” he said. “You think you are hurt now, zhenshchina? I am going to smash your pretty face to bloody garbage! You will not live much longer, zhenshchina.” He gathered up her clothes and dropped them on the bed. “But first we must find out things about you. I think you are very rich woman. You wear expensive ring, Western clothes. You give me hundred-dollar American bill. I think you have much money, zhenshchina.” He stuck a hand into a pocket of her coat. As he bent over to look at the wad of currency he thus retrieved, she did as instinct commanded and snatched up one of the vodka bottles, rushing up and cracking it so hard over his skull that it broke.
If it had contained more vodka, it might have killed him. He slid to his knees but, struggling, rose again. She clawed at the side of his face with the broken remains, but he rose too quickly and she caught him instead in the chest. Raging, he knocked the bottle out of her hand and sent it crashing against the wall. As he recovered his balance for a final lunge, she kicked him again in the groin with the fullest possible swing of her leg. He fell forward, wailing. She needed a final weapon, but not the gun. She went to the small chair and, finding a strength in her arms she could not possibly have imagined there, hit him over the head with it—once, twice, three times. His body flattened, and he fell silent. Whether she had killed him or only rendered him unconscious, she did not know, or care.
She could not wait now even to catch her breath. Amazed to find buttons still on her suit jacket and coat, she dressed as best she could, tearing off the strips of pantyhose that hung from her boot tops. Making certain of all her belongings, she took one of the bottles of vodka and left. The corridor, for all that shouting, was empty. The night outside was very cold.
The vodka kept her going. Exhausted again, hungry again, in increasing pain from the truck driver’s beating, suffering bitterly from her lack of underwear, she plodded along the Brest highway as though through a terrible dream. Occasionally, a tiny set of headlights would prick the darkness in the distance, or she’d hear the dull rumble of a vehicle far behind her. Each time, she’d stumble off into the brush, woods, or frozen fields to the side, then stumble back. The Polish border was not much further away. Thoughts of Jack Spencer forced her ahead, because he had cast her adrift, because she was going to survive despite him. Thoughts of Ramsey Saylor kept her moving as well.
Because she was going to kill him.
The grand duchesses were put away each night with armed Cheka seated just outside their open door. Here was Tatty, alone in the dead of night, still free.
When dawn came quickly, her pace increased, but it became more difficult to detect the approach of vehicles in time. Woods were sparse here, and one could see seemingly for miles. She took to scurrying
twenty or thirty yards off the road and just dropping in the snow.
As she did so for perhaps the twentieth time, something disturbed her about the sound of the truck that approached from behind. It was too familiar. She lifted her head from the snow just in time to see Kolshov’s huge rig come slowly by and stop on the shoulder, idling with cloudy spasms of exhaust. She reached into her pocket for her pistol.
He rolled down the passenger window. His face looked discolored and there was a bandage around his massive head.
“You will die very soon now, zhenshchina! Viktor Feodorovich Kolshov will see to it!”
As he pulled away, she got to her feet and began to run from the road. She would follow the line of the highway into Brest, but at a distance. It was slower going in the snow, but it could not be helped.
A stream too wide to cross halted her three or four kilometers later, making her turn back toward the road. She had not gone five steps when she saw that it made no difference, that nothing could make any difference to her now. There were two trucks stopped on the highway, brownish-green with military markings. Men with rifles were moving toward her through the snow. She took a drink of vodka. It would be her last.
They took her to what appeared to be a country militia or military police station not far from the outskirts of Brest. Two other small military trucks were parked in the graveled yard, plus Kolshov’s rig. He stood by the entrance of the building with a sergeant and spat on her as they dragged her inside.
She was thrust into a wooden chair by a desk, her head snapping back against the wall. A young officer behind the desk asked her several questions—what was her name, where was she going, where had she come from? She only glared sullenly. When she refused to respond to the third round of the questions, the young man gestured to the two who had brought her in. She was taken to the rear, stripped of all her clothing, and made to stand with hands against the brick wall while they searched her vaginal and anal cavities, using a flashlight. Then she was dragged into a small cell and dumped on the bare cot that was its only furnishing. Speaking her first words to them, she asked for a blanket. They brought her instead a towel. It was grimy and damp, and too small to do anything with but drape over her shoulders.
Blood of the Czars Page 21