Condemned (6 page)

The guard read the papers, angled his head, bent, to get a better look into the car. Vasily put his hand in his coat and discretely lifted a packet of currency from his pocket.

Tatiana noticed that there were now two guards standing with Vasily. They were both studying the car.

Tatiana saw light dimly cut into the night behind them. “They are coming, they are coming,” she whispered to Inga. Inga moaned, cried, heaved with constrained coughing as she tried to look out the back window. Her eyes terrified, the cloth hanging out of her mouth, Inga struggled in her heavy coat to shift herself back into the driver's seat of the Lada. She would be ready again if it was necessary to crush these two guards as well. Vasily glanced only for a moment into the air behind the car. Vasily and the two guards walked closely together toward the fence. Steam from their mouths disappeared into the cold night. Tatiana could distinctly see two headlights now. They were some distance off, but not very far.

Vasily turned, began to walk toward the car, saw Inga in the driver's seat, and waved her to drive forward. One of the guards pushed down on the end of the weighted barrier, lifting the iron gate high into the air. The other guard was smiling as he stuffed a packet Vasily had given him into his great coat. Inga ground the gears as she tried to put the car into first gear. Tatiana could feel her mother shaking with fear and spasms of restrained coughing as the car moved forward slowly. Tatiana pulled Bim, who was under her sweater, closer. She suddenly had to pee as they passed very close to the two guards. One of them bent down. Tatiana squeezed Bim tighter. Her underpants were now wet. Her legs were shaking. The guard had a black beard and dark eyes. Vasily still stood with the guards as Inga moved the car past the lifted barrier. Immediately as their car cleared the barrier, there was a loud noise as the barrier dropped heavily back into place behind them. Vasily waved Inga into the passenger seat as he moved back behind the steering wheel, driving the car forward. He waved to the guards as he looked into the rear view mirror. The other car was less than a kilometer back.

Vasily drove the car slowly. He didn't want to make the guards lift their Kalikovs from their shoulders. He made the left at the first cement barrier, then the right at the second, and started across the open area between the borders.

“Take packages out of my pocket,” he said to Inga.

“Where?”

“In the pocket, right there,” he inclined his head toward his right side. Inga went into his pockets, searching, frightened, looking behind them at the Russian guards and at the lights of a car that was only three hundred meters away.

“How many?” Inga asked.

“Two.”

Tatiana saw the buildings and fences ahead were not exactly the same as the ones that they had just come through, but their purpose was no less obvious. A guard came toward their car. Vasily rolled down the window in advance to talk to the man. Another guard came out of the building. Like the others, the guards had automatic rifles slung up-side down on their shoulders. Tatiana could feel Inga shaking violently beneath her heavy coat. She rubbed a mittened glove over Inga's back. Vasily said soothing words to Inga, assuring her that they would be through these fences and away from the guards in moments.

Tatiana could see the clock on the dashboard. It was 6:15AM.

“What if they don't let us through?” wheezed Inga. “Vasily. What if they don't let us through?” There was panic close beneath the surface of her voice.

“It's going to be all right, Mom,” soothed Tatiana, who was close to panic herself. “It is all right. Don't worry. Dad will take care of things.” She felt her loyal Bim against her chest. “Yes, yes, everything is all right,” said Vasily, turning again to Inga, soothing her. He glanced out the back window. The other car was just a hundred meters back.

“Vasily! They're there,” Inga said, staring out the back window. “What are we going to do?” Inga's panic was rising.

Vasily opened his window. He handed their papers, wrapped around two packages of rubles, to the first guard. The guard opened the papers and stared. He turned to the other guard and said something in Finnish.

“Ohh, Vasily, Vasily.”

“Shhhh.”

The two guards now laughed together. The first guard handed the papers back to Vasily as the second guard opened the gate. “Perfect order, perfect order,” said the guard in Russian. “Everyone should have such papers.” He laughed as he waved Vasily to start moving forward.

“Da, da,” Vasily said abstractly as he moved the car forward.

“What's going on, Vasily? What is the delay?”

“No delay. We are going. Be calm. It is okay.”

“What about the other car, Vasily?”

Vasily saw a car, the American's car, stop on the other side of the Russian fence. No one exited the car. The Russian guards walked toward that car.

“What are they going to say to Russian guards?” said Inga, her teeth chattering.

“I don't wait to listen.” Vasily put the car in gear and started forward. He rolled the window up as he drove. The car neared the Finn at the gate. He bent down to look into the steamed windows as their car drove past him. Tatiana saw he was young, blonde, with a moustache; he was smiling. Inga had stopped breathing and shaking.

“Dad, Mom has stopped breathing!,” Tatiana said desperately to her father.

“Shake her, rub her, do something,” Vasily said quickly. “I cannot stop.” They were only half way through the barriers. The guards were looking in the direction of the Russian guardhouse.

Tatiana pulled Bim out from under her sweater so she could get closer to her mother. She twisted her mother's body. Inga's head flopped backward onto the seat back. She opened her mother's coat, and felt in her neck for a pulse.

“I am almost through,” said Vasily. “Rub her, warm her, Tatiana, do anything. Do anything. There is cognac. Give her cognac. In the pocket behind the seat. Cognac. Give her.”

Tatiana felt the car pick up speed. Heard the gates closing. She put her finger into the cognac bottle she found in the seat pocket, and rubbed some on her mother's lips. She lifted the bottle to Inga's nose so she would get the pungent smell into her body. Vasily stopped the car, taking Inga by her two shoulders. He shook her, watching her face. He eased her back into the seat and hit the flat of his palm against her chest three times, very hard. Tatiana felt a light pulse in her mother's neck. “I can feel something, Dad. I can feel her pulse. She's alive!” Tatiana lifted the bottle of cognac to her mother's lips, letting the liquid touch them.

Vasily turned and began the car forward again. “What's happening? Tell me what's happening.” shouted Vasily, staring ahead.

“Her eyes are still closed, but she's breathing.”

“I can't stop again,” said Vasily, his eyes staring straight ahead.

Inga, eyes closed, began to moan. Her eyelids fluttered, although she did not open them. “I think she just fainted from the fright,” said Tatiana.

“Here's the highway. I have to turn left here,” said Vasily. “Is she awake? Inga, we are through. We are in Finland. Inga, we are free. Can you hear me, my love? Everything is all right. Is she awake, kotyonok?”

“She is coming to,” said Tatiana. “Oh, Daddy. I am so scared.”

“It is all right now, melinki kotyonok. We are through. It is all going to be all right now. Inga. Inga?”

“I hear you, Vasily, my life,” Inga murmured. “I hear you, my life. You saved us.”

“Oh, Mom, Mom. You scared me,” said Tatiana, clinging to her mother, hugging her, kissing her face.

The family spent a month in Vienna as they waited for the agency that handled Jewish Refugees to process them. Inga's health was deteriorating rapidly. When Vasily advised the doctors that she had been taking medicine regularly for three weeks, every day, and what she had been taking, they knew Inga was in serious trouble. The doctors doubted that there was much that they could do to save Inga.

At the end of a month, the family traveled by rail through Italy to the port city of Ostia, just south of Rome, where the breakwater in the harbor had been formed by the engineers of Emperor Claudius filling with cement and sinking the great barge on which Cesar Augustus brought the Flaminian obelisk from Heliopolis. Now in that historic site, an entire community of Russian Jews breathed the warm, mild sea air of the Mediterranean. There were palm trees near the shore not far from the stucco house with orange tile roof in which the family had rented rooms.

Italy and freedom should have been wonderful for Tatiana and her family. But it was not. In fact, in later years, Tatiana hardly remembered living there, or anything about it, except that her mother weakened daily, for three and a half months. Only prayer formed the major bulwark between Inga and the grave. And the foundation of that bulwark eroded steadily.

On a beautiful, cloudless day, under a vast, perfect, blue Italian sky, on a rolling hillside over which victorious Roman legions, centuries before, had marched from the sea to Imperial Rome, in the Spring of 1983, Inga Marcovich was buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Tatiana prayed as she stood at her mother's grave. Then she glanced across the Italian hills, Bim dangling from her hand, viewing the dark cypress trees standing like thin sentinels on the entrance road of an estate on the far hillside. She prayed both for her mother's soul and that the man, that American with the hooked nose, the thin face, the red hair, who attempted to kill them in the freezing night, the one who caused her mother such fright and fear, would find his way to the deepest, darkest, hottest part of hell, very soon. Tatiana wept into Bim's scraggly side, bitter, angry tears, that day.

Watkins Glen Race Track : June 18, 1996 : 10:20 A.M.

The nose of Blue 2 was drafting right behind the open motor and exhausts of Green 9. The two single-seater Formula Fords hurtled as one down the long back straight at Watkins Glen, high above the Finger Lakes of Northern New York State.

Sandro Luca, surrounded by, yet totally oblivious to the blast from the exhaust in front of him, the squeaking, shaking, rattling of the cockpit into which he was squeezed, peered intently through the tinted lexan visor of his crash helmet. His brake point for the sweeping right at the end of the straight—a tilted post in the catch fence—loomed close. Sandro continued to grind the accelerator hard to the floorboard. His brake point whipped past. Green 9 braked as it turned toward the apex. This was the moment; Sandro clenched his teeth, turning his steering wheel deftly, diving between Green 9 and the apex. In his peripheral vision, he saw the blur of the other driver's black helmet turn toward him. “Out of nowhere, baby, out of nowhere,” Sandro muttered as he fought the jiggling steering wheel through the turn, drifting left as he exited just ahead of Green 9. In his rear view mirror, the driver of Green 9 was shaking an orange fire-proof mitten in the air.

Inside the echo chamber of his crash helmet, Sandro laughed. So it was a little pushy! So it was a little dangerous! So what?

Glancing ahead, past the upcoming left, Sandro sighted a black car beginning to ascend into the pine forest.

“Next!” he muttered, his foot pressing harder against the metal floorboard. For an instant, Sandro was conscious of hurtling into shadows of dark green pines. He began to set up for the uphill right hander that led to a short straight. He had already closed some of the gap to the black car.

“Deeper, deeper,” he said aloud, guiding his car into the turn. The car bounced, jiggled, rattled, the wheel fought his grip; his body was pressed hard against the inside of the cockpit tub. Sandro could no longer see the black car, just the swirling kaleidoscope of trees, track, and flaggers, as his car powered through the turn. Sandro eased the steering wheel back a notch; the car quieted a bit, then smoothed as he drifted to the outside of the turn.

“Perfectemundo,” he said, smiling. He had gained a lot of ground through that turn. He was practically up the ass of Black 6 as they hurtled along the short straight, toward the 90 degree left. Sandro eased slowly into Black 6's slipstream, the towing effect letting him back off the throttle slightly.

He knew, after the left turn, there was the sharp right into the front straight. The two cars drifted together to the right edge, setting up for the left ninety. Black 6 would expect a move on the second turn, the one into the straight. Sandro held his breath, cautioning himself.
Careful, careful …
He turned the steering wheel left suddenly, at the same instant, pressing his foot to the floor, demanding the power to slingshot out of the black car's slipstream. For an instant, Sandro saw a portion of the other driver's yellow helmet.

Deeper, deeper, Momma
! Sandro muttered, his arms and hands quickly adjusting the steering wheel of the jouncing car. Black 6 was directly next to him, fading. As he pulled past, some part of Black 6 touched Sandro's rear wheels. He bounced roughly, canting toward the right. Sandro fought the wheel left, easing the car back toward the outside of the track. He glanced in the mirror. Black 6 wasn't there.

That was hairy
, thought Sandro, rifting left, setting up for the right into the long front straight.
Hairy, my ass
! he murmured to himself. He was here to race. He laughed at the thought that the only way to know if you were going fast enough is if you were scaring the hell out of yourself. Then again, he thought, what could happen—I kill myself? For a flashing instant Sandro weighed the alternatives: whining clients, conniving adversaries, authoritarian judges in black dresses running his life. Sandro tried to press his foot through the floorboard.

When not dressed in fire-proof clothing from head to toe, including a balaclava under his crash helmet, through which only eye holes were cut, Alessandro Luca was an elegant, handsome, thirty-nine year old lawyer, who had long ago won his spurs in the coterie known as the best criminal trial lawyers in New York City—which, as far as he was concerned, meant the best in the world.