The Zero Option

by David Rollins

  Occasional wind gusts swept up the valley, blowing clouds of dry snow into shapes that reminded Ben of giant jellyfish. Oleg led the way through the village. He pulled up in the lee of one of the larger buildings and directed Ben to park close beside him. The Russian went to the trailer, lifted out a tarpaulin, shook it, and then threw it over both machines.

  ‘You want to meet people. We go to bar,’ said Oleg.

  The bar was a brick building Ben and Akiko hadn’t noticed. It was lit, a portable Honda generator humming away outside.

  ‘Old commissar building,’ Oleg explained as he opened the door.

  A wall of human odor and alcohol sweat rushed toward them with the force of a body block. They walked into a room lit by several bare bulbs and a promotional sign for a brand of Russian vodka. More than twenty people sat at low tables. Some talked quietly among themselves. Most spoke only to the drinks in their hands, slumped forward on their tables. Heads that were sober enough to register their presence turned toward them with hooded, exhausted eyes.

  ‘Drink?’ Oleg asked.

  Ben nodded.

  Their guide went off to place the order with the barkeep, a short, stocky man wearing a filthy apron.

  ‘No women here,’ Akiko whispered to Ben.

  ‘I noticed. Coyote Ugly it ain’t.’

  Akiko took off a glove and unzipped the front of her parka. From an inside pocket she retrieved a small scrapbook and took out a photo, a copy of the one on the altar in her home back in Tokyo, and held it in front of a drunk attempting to pour himself a drink. The man ignored her and the photo, circling his dirty glass with the lip of the empty bottle. The glass sat in a puddle of clear liquid that dribbled away off the edge of the table.

  Akiko surveyed the room, then walked over to a table occupied by a man on his own who was writing in a journal. She sat opposite him. The man glanced up.

  Ben took the remaining chair. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked.

  The man, in his mid-thirties, was wearing a new North Face ski jacket. He mumbled something in Russian and went back to his writing.

  ‘Hello,’ Akiko said, speaking in Russian.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, looking up again.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’

  ‘Why do you want to ask me a question?’

  ‘Do you live here?’

  ‘No. My family did. My grandfather died here.’

  ‘Were they Korean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are you writing?’

  ‘I’m a journalist documenting this place—researching my family history. And you? Why have you come here?’

  ‘I’m searching for my mother.’

  ‘And she was held here?’

  ‘I’m not sure. We were told that there was a good chance she would have been sent to a camp in this area.’ Akiko showed him the photo. ‘Her name was Nami.’

  He gave it a cursory glance. ‘She was pretty. Looks like you.’ He went back to his journal.

  ‘She is Japanese.’

  He looked up, eyes widened. ‘Japanese!’

  The door opened and an older thick-set man lumbered in, brushing light snow from his bare brown head.

  The journalist stiffened. ‘FSB,’ he mouthed.

  He closed his book, stood and walked out of the bar without looking back.

  Akiko scoped the room. There was no one else conscious enough to show the photo to.

  Oleg returned with three shot glasses and a half bottle of vodka. ‘Did something happen?’ he asked Akiko in Russian.

  ‘This is my mother,’ Akiko replied in English, passing him the photo. ‘I think she was held here.’

  Oleg slid the photo off the table and out of sight. ‘Vih shumashetshi? Are you crazy?’ he whispered. ‘Follow me now.’

  He got up from the table and moved quickly to the door, just as the journalist had done moments earlier. Outside, he handed back the photograph and said, ‘You come to find her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are not from the university,’ he accused.

  ‘No,’ she said as Ben joined them.

  ‘I should charge you more for lying to me.’

  ‘We’ve given you enough already.’

  ‘What were you hoping for?’ Oleg asked, speaking Russian, his anger flushing his cheeks livid. ‘The people here, they are all trying to forget, not remember. I wondered why you paid me so much, why such a big hurry. This is a fool’s errand, and a dangerous one.’ He switched to English to include Ben. ‘We leave.’

  ‘You okay?’ Ben asked Akiko, clearly sensing her anxiety. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  They walked through the refrozen slush, their boots crunching the ice, back to the quad bikes. Angry and frustrated, Akiko had nothing to say.

  Oleg flicked back the tarp and handed out the helmets without saying a word. As they climbed onto the machines, a man stepped from the shadows—the journalist. He glanced around nervously and beckoned Akiko. She got off the quad and hurried over to him. He pulled her into the shadows.

  ‘We must talk quickly,’ he said. ‘There were foreign nationals, besides North Koreans, held here. Seven people were brought. All were Asian—South Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese. There was something about a spy plane. It caused a stir in the camp.’

  The news electrified Akiko. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I heard my grandfather talking to my father.’

  ‘When? What year?’

  ‘I was ten. That would make it 1983. That’s all I know.’

  Excitement surged through her. ‘Are any of them still here?’

  ‘No. All were dispersed before the Soviets fell.’

  ‘Do you know where they were sent?’

  ‘The rumor was to another camp—somewhere north of Ulan-Ude.’

  The cover offered by the tree line was good. They were watching from the dark into the light, with an unobstructed view of the back of the village. Vlahd Bykovski lowered his glasses.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  Grisha Soloyov, his eyeball nestled against the rubber cup of the telescopic sight, moved the crosshairs from one head to the other, and settled them in the middle of the Japanese woman’s face when she reappeared. The tip of his finger massaged the front of the trigger guard.

  ‘I think Comrade Korolenko is going as soft as milk cakes. Two bullets would end it here. The line of sight is perfect. Pak. Pak,’ he said, mimicking the sound of the suppressed Nikonov ‘Abakan’ assault rifle, its sling wrapped around his right arm to brace it. ‘Half a day trudging through the Siberian snow and we have nothing to show for it.’

  ‘We are being paid by the hour. Rushing this will cost us good money.’

  ‘What do you think they have found down there, apart from human waste?’

  ‘I know as much as you. What I would like to know, however, is as much as their guide.’

  Soloyov pulled his eye from the sight and grinned at his partner. ‘Yes, me too.’

  April 6, 1986

  Lefortovo Prison, Moscow. The guard and two Fifth Directorate transport officers accompanied General Korolenko down the dank corridor, past the anonymity of a hundred closed concrete and steel doors bleeding rust stains, homes to murderers, arsonists and other common criminals. The sound of Korolenko’s polished boot heels cracked and echoed off the walls like hammer strikes. There was no need for silence. The prisoners in this wing were here to rot. The state required nothing further from them other than their eventual deaths.

  As he walked, Korolenko reflected on his first meeting with prisoner 98987. The arrival of the Korean plane had proved to be a bonanza for his career and a living hell for the congressman, who had spent the years since in a box no bigger than the general’s closet. During that time, McDonald had endured having every moment of his adult life dissected, probed and documented.

  Korolenko’s interest in the American had waned once he’d been broken and emptied of everything of worth. The
interrogation had stopped some time ago, after the man’s mind had gone, blown like an overloaded fuse. Apparently, these days the congressman had a ten-minute memory.

  ‘Walk out of the room, return eleven minutes later, and 98987 will see you as a complete stranger,’ the prison commandant had told Korolenko recently when the general had called.

  So Lawrence McDonald’s mind was mush. Korolenko had come to see it for himself a month ago and it was true. The congressman hadn’t recognized him. They had talked in Russian about prison food, the comfort of the mattress, the fleas. Korolenko had then stepped out for twenty minutes before re-entering the six walls of McDonald’s world and it was clear that the American didn’t recall a single detail of their earlier meeting. That a man could be cored of his whole life had seemed to Korolenko a hell worse than any torture.

  It was then that the general had made up his mind to release the American. Mikhail Gorbachev, the new Premier, was backing up his talk for change and renewal with action, and this madness was even reaching into the KGB. Charity had nothing to do with it, Korolenko assured himself. Setting a few harmless prisoners free would look agreeable to his superiors in the Politburo. He could be a man of the future as much as anyone.

  And so, it had been arranged.

  The guard paused outside one of the iron doors and reached for his keys. A card with the familiar number 98987 was held in a slot. Korolenko stopped the guard and the man stepped back from the door. Korolenko leaned forward and peered through the judas hole. He was startled to see a bloodshot eye as cold as a bird’s staring back at him. A lid slid over the orb and the eye moved back into the recesses of the cell.

  Korolenko motioned at the guard to open the door. The key rattled heavily in the lock and turned with a rusty grind. Korolenko ducked his head and walked in, by which time Congressman McDonald was seated on his bunk with his knees drawn up under his chin, rocking slowly. Korolenko was amazed at what a few short years had done to the American. He was thin now, his muscles wasted and his joints swollen with misuse. Clumps of his hair had fallen out and patches of gray scalp showed through the close-cropped white bristle that remained. His face had shrunk, too, all the fat gone from cheeks that had taken on the green pallor of the long-term inmate. His own children probably wouldn’t recognize him, Korolenko thought.

  McDonald looked up and, in Russian, said, ‘What do you want? I cannot be disturbed.’

  ‘Today you’re going on a trip,’ said Korolenko.

  ‘I don’t know you. Get out.’

  ‘You want to see the sun, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why would I want to see it?’

  ‘I am setting you free, Lawrence.’

  ‘Free? What’s free? I don’t want to be free.’ The man looked around his cell, his head darting as his eyes flicked from one corner to the next.

  ‘You’ll like Kazakhstan. There is a little village. You can sit in the sun and spend your last years chasing women, eating and drinking.’

  Terror filled the congressman’s face. Korolenko realized all of a sudden that freedom—even the little freedom an old forced-labor camp town in the desert plains of Kazakhstan might provide—was the last thing the man wanted. But there was nothing Korolenko could do, not now. The papers had been submitted and the wheels were in motion. He nodded at the transport detail to prepare the prisoner. They stepped forward and Congressman McDonald began to kick and scream, his mind unable to cope with the enormous emptiness brought on by the prospect of the complete unknown.

  February 9, 2012

  Khabarovsk, Siberia. ‘Get up.’

  Half conscious, Ben thought the demand and the pushing were part of a dream that he wasn’t aware he was having. Exhaustion won and he slipped back into a comatose sleep, his body worn out from the previous day’s trek to the gulag.

  ‘Come on, damn you . . . get up!’

  The pushing became slaps and suddenly Ben knew the voice wasn’t in his subconscious. There was a stranger in the room.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, snapping out of the fog of sleep. The lights flicked on, hurting his eyes.

  The woman stepped back from his bed and threw something at him. His clothes.

  ‘Get dressed.’ She turned to Akiko. ‘You, too.’

  ‘W-what . . . ?’ Akiko stammered, pushing herself up and out of bed, confused.

  ‘You must get up. There is something you must see with your own eyes.’

  ‘Hey . . .’ Recognition dawned on Ben. It was the woman from the hotel in Moscow. ‘What the hell are you doing in our room? Get out before I throw you out.’

  ‘That would be unwise. Now, hurry. I want to show you something. Perhaps then you will understand why you must leave.’

  ‘Lady, we’re going nowhere until you tell us what’s going on. And you’d damn well better hurry.’ Ben was out of bed, his hands clenched into fists by his sides. ‘I meant it when I said I’d throw you out.’

  ‘And I meant it when I said that would be a mistake.’

  The woman’s vehicle was a 7 Series Beemer that smelled of leather, walnut and the showroom. A new luxury rental. Ben leaned forward between the woman and Akiko, who was riding in the front passenger seat.

  ‘What did you say your name was?’ he asked.

  The Beemer rumbled and bumped across a set of tram tracks no longer embedded in the road and then turned left. Ben was sure this part of town looked familiar.

  ‘I did not say. My name is Luydmila Pozlov. I told you in Moscow that I was married to Vlahd Bykovski, the pig who killed Sergei, my friend. Bykovski is the man I warned about—tall, thin and bald, remember? He is FSB. He is also sociopath. He will kill you while he thinks about what to have for lunch. His partner, Grisha Soloyov—he is worse. Bykovski and Sergei were Fifth Directorate guards at Lubyanka prison. I was in First Directorate—counterintelligence.’

  Luydmila moved the Beemer to the side of the road as two cop cars came up behind them, sirens and lights blazing.

  ‘You and Sergei were having an affair,’ said Ben, watching the cops speed past, ‘and this Bykovski didn’t like it.’

  ‘Da.’

  ‘Are you telling us that we’ve walked into some kind of fatal love-revenge story? Because, you know, that puts me back on familiar ground.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Luydmila snapped.

  She turned hard right, tires squealing, into a street and slowed. A police vehicle half blocked the road. A man in uniform with a torch waved at them to stop. Down the far end was a collection of cop cars and fire engines, the night pierced with their flashing blue, red and yellow lights. Luydmila pulled to the curb.

  ‘What is going on?’ Akiko asked.

  ‘Hey, I know where we are,’ said Ben. ‘Down there—isn’t that where Siberian Winter Safaris is?’

  ‘Not any more,’ said Luydmila. ‘Bykovski and Soloyov, they murdered your guide, the man who took you to old labor camp yesterday. They torture first, pour petrol down his throat. Then they lit him.’

  ‘They w-what?’ Ben stammered.

  Luydmila lowered the window to speak with the cop. They exchanged a few words and then she backed up the car and did a U-turn.

  Another cop car sped past, on its way to the crime scene.

  ‘Your guide lived in apartment building above the garage. They took him downstairs. They torture to get information—about you.’

  Ben was stunned. He wanted to say something but nothing came out.

  ‘My friend Sergei was killed helping you, and now this man is dead because of you. More people will die unless you leave, and I think now you will both die. I have brought you here to show you. This will happen to you. It will be bad. You must leave.’

  ‘No!’ Akiko snapped at her. ‘We’re here for my mother. She was on that Korean plane. We will find her and then we will leave.’

  Ben was now familiar with this tone in Akiko’s voice. He had decided that she was probably the most stubborn person he’d ever met.

  ‘Flight 007. Still you
do not understand,’ Luydmila said with a sneer, throwing her head back. ‘And neither did Soviet intelligence service until it was too late. Your government wanted this. They wanted zero option—no one was supposed to live. Everyone was supposed to die to embarrass Soviets. Aircraft was not meant to land, but it did. It was meant to crash. And that is secret that must not be known. Do you not comprehend? It would embarrass your government, my government.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Ben.

  ‘You don’t believe your government would lie to you?’

  ‘They wouldn’t have sent 269 people to their deaths. That’s just cold-blooded murder.’

  ‘You are naïve fool. Governments have always killed their own people for good of country. That is what governments do. Between them, Lenin and Stalin kill 35 millions of Russians for this reason. What is one plane full of people?’

  ‘My country is different,’ said Ben.

  Luydmila laughed mirthlessly and shook her head as she turned the car toward their hotel.

  ‘Sergei, your friend,’ said Akiko, ‘he died helping us. And so did Oleg. If we give up, they died for nothing.’

  ‘That is foolish. When you are also dead, what will it matter? Who will care? Sergei? Guide? They are not caring. Not now.’

  Luydmila stopped just beyond the lights flooding the hotel’s fore-court. She took a large envelope from the door pocket beside her, removed a handful of photographs and passed them around. ‘This is Bykovski and this is Soloyov. They work for this man.’

  ‘I thought you said they were FSB,’ said Ben.