The Secret Speech (21 page)

Fraera had no intention of remaining a subordinate. Her plans required that she be in charge. Using the education they’d given her, she’d sought her independence. They had taught her to see her body as a commodity to be traded like any other, a resource to which they attached no concept of shame. She’d set about seducing the Gulag commander. Since he could order any woman to his office for sexual gratification, Fraera had needed him to fall in love with her. She’d viewed her revulsion as merely another obstacle to overcome. Within five months, at her request, he’d transferred the entire vory gang to another camp, leaving Fraera free to start her own.

Since no self-respecting vory would accept a woman’s patronage, Fraera had turned to the outcasts, the outsiders-the vory scavenging on scrapheaps, sucking on fish bones and munching rotten root vegetables. They’d been shunned due to a disagreement, or a betrayal, or some act of incompetence. Some had fallen to the level of a chuskhi, so disgraced that it was forbidden for another vory to even touch them. According to their laws such disgrace was irreversible. Despite this, she’d offered them a second chance when no other vory would condescend to utter their name. Some had been terminally weakened, mentally or physically. Some had repaid the debt by attempting to overthrow her as soon as they’d regained their strength. Most had accepted her patronage.

With Stalin’s death freedom had come early-women and children granted an amnesty. The members of her gang were already on shorter sentences since they were not political criminals. Fraera had no intention of hunting Leo down: plunging a knife in his back or putting a bullet in his head. He needed to suffer as she had suffered. Her ambitions required time and resources. Many gangs traded in black market goods. The opportunities such a market presented were limited since there was already in place a highly developed system. She had no interest in being a small-time trader, cutting a modest profit from imported groceries, not when she had access to a far more precious commodity.

During the persecution of the Church, at the high-water mark of the antireligious movement, many artifacts had been hidden. Icons, books, and silverware, all of which would’ve have been burnt or melted down. Most priests had resisted, taking action to save the Church’s heritage. They’d buried items in fields, stashed silver in chimneys, and even wrapped paintings in waterproof leather, hiding them inside the engine of a disused, rusting tractor. No maps were drawn. Only a few knew the locations, whispered from one to another, beginning with the words:

In case I die…

Most of the guardians of these secrets had been arrested, shot, starved in the Gulags or worked to death. Of those who knew, Fraera had been among the first to be released. She’d unearthed the treasures one by one. Using her vory ’s knowledge of the black market infrastructure, the people who needed to be bribed, she’d shipped items out of the country, negotiating sales to Western religious organizations as well as private buyers and international museums. Some had balked at the idea of purchasing another Church’s treasures. Yet Fraera’s sales technique had been savagely effective: were her prices not met the safety of the items could no longer be assured. She’d sent her buyers a seventeenth-century icon of Saint Nikolas of Mozaisk. Once painted in bright colors, the egg tempera had discolored, and to recapture the brilliance it had been covered in gold and silver sheet. She’d imagined the priests weeping as they’d opened the parcel to find the icon smashed into fragments, the saint’s face scratched off except for the eyes. Fraera had not confessed to her role in this vandalism. In the interests of maintaining a functioning business relationship, she’d blamed overzealous Party members. After that, she’d been able to name her price, depicting herself as a savior rather than a profiteer.

Paid in gold, she’d brought in the riches that she’d always promised her vory, unearthing each treasure one by one in case any should consider her leadership redundant. Cautious, trusting no one, the first thing she’d spent money on was a cyanide tooth which she’d proudly displayed to her men, assuring them if they thought she could be tortured for the locations of the missing artifacts they were wrong. She would die to spite them. Judging from the reactions of the gang, two men had been thinking along those lines. She’d killed them before the week was out.

One final loose end had been the Minlag camp commander, who’d come seeking a life with Fraera, as they’d dreamed, and to collect his share of her profits:

Here’s your share.

A knife dragged up through his stomach, it hadn’t been fair-she owed him her life. It had taken him a little less than an hour to die, wriggling on the floor, wondering how he’d been so wrong. Up until the moment the blade tip had entered his stomach he’d been sure that she loved him.

The room was heavy with anticipation. Fraera raised her hand:

– We do not follow ordinary vory laws. You once had nothing. You could not feed yourselves. I saved you when the law said I should let you die. When you have fallen sick, I have provided you with medicine. When you are well, I have provided you with opium and drink. My only demand has been obedience. That is our only law. In this regard, Likhoi has failed me.

No one moved. Their eyes flicked from side to side, each man trying to figure out what the next man was thinking. Leaning on his crutch, Likhoi’s mouth twisted into a snarl:

– Let us kill the bitch! Let us be governed by a man! Not some woman who thinks fucking is a crime.

Fraera stepped closer to Likhoi:

– Who would run this new gang, you, Likhoi? You who once licked my boot for a crust of bread? You are governed by impulse, and made stupid by them. You would lead a gang to ruin.

Likhoi turned to the men:

– Let us make her our whore. Let us live like men!

Fraera could have stepped forward and slashed Likhoi’s throat, ending his challenge. Understanding that she needed to win this argument by consent, she countered with the statement:

– He has insulted me.

It was now up to her vory to decide.

No one did anything. Then, a hand grabbed Likhoi and another- his crutch was kicked away. Pushed to the ground, his clothes were ripped from him. Naked, he was pinned down: one man crouched on each arm and leg. The remaining men turned to the stove, taking a red-hot coal from the fire. Fraera looked down at Likhoi.

– You are no longer one of us.

The coal was pressed against his tattoos, the skin bubbling. His skin would be rendered blank, disfigured so no new tattoos could take their place. According to practice, he should then be let go, exiled. But Fraera-who knew the pull of vengeance too well-would make sure his injuries left him no chance of survival. She glanced at Malysh, communicating her desire. He drew his knife, flicking open the blade. He would cut the tattoos off.

In her cell Zoya gripped the bars, listening to the screams as they echoed through the corridor. Her heart beating fast, she concentrated on the sounds. They were the screams of a man, not a young boy. She felt relief.

They were standing side by side, staring at the next man’s shoulder, rocking with the motion of the freight truck. Although there was no guard stopping them from sitting down, there were no benches and the floor was so cold that they’d taken a collective decision to stand, shuffling to keep warm, like a captured herd of animals. Leo occupied a space closest to the tarpaulin sheet. It had come loose, rendering the compartment’s temperature subzero but offering, by way of exchange, a partial view of the landscape as the material flapped open. The convoy was climbing into the mountains following the Kolyma highway-a surface that unrolled meekly across the landscape as though conscious it was trespassing across a wilderness. In the convoy, there were three trucks in total. Not even a car bothered to follow behind to make sure prisoners didn’t jump down and try to escape. There was nowhere to escape to.

Abruptly the highway steepened, the rear of the truck tilting down, angled toward the snow-covered valley to such an acute degree that Leo was forced to grip the steel frame, the other prisoners pressing against him as they slid down. Unable to make the climb, the truck remained stationary, teetering and ready to roll back. The handbrake was yanked up. The engine stopped. The guards unlocked the back, spilling the prisoners onto the road:

– Walk!

The first two trucks had managed to climb over the crest of the hill, disappearing from view. The remaining truck-without the weight of the prisoners-started its engine and accelerated up the hill. Left behind, the convicts trundled, huffing like old men, the guards at the back, guns ready. Set against the terrain, the guards’ swagger seemed slight and absurd-an insect strutting. Observing them through a convict’s eyes, Leo marveled at how different the guards believed themselves to be-men marshaling cattle. He wanted to say, just to see their surprise:

I am one of you.

The idea caught him short. Was he one of them? Smug with power, stupefied by State-allocated importance: he was certain that he had been.

At the crest the highway flattened out. Leo paused, catching his breath, surveying the landscape before him. Blasted by cold air, his eyes watering, he was confronted by the surface of a moon-a sprawling plateau as wide as a city, smoothed with ice and permafrost, pock-marked with craters. The lonely highway sliced an uncertain diagonal, heading toward a mountain larger than any they’d encountered so far: rising out of the plateau like a monstrous camel’s hump. Somewhere at the base was Gulag 57.

As the convicts climbed back into the truck, Leo glanced at the other two vehicles. He had to face up to the fact that Timur wasn’t in the convoy. There was no chance that his friend would’ve gotten into one of those vehicles without making contact with him, even if it was nothing more than a glance across a crowd. Leo hadn’t seen him since yesterday, passing him on the deck of the Stary Bolshevik. After that he’d been shepherded into the transit camp at Magadan where he’d been deloused, inspected by a doctor who’d declared him fully fit, assigned to TFT, tyazoly fezichesky trud, heavy labor, no limitations placed on work duties. Duly processed, he’d waited in one of the large tents erected for the arrivals, the smell of canvas reminding him of makeshift medical facilities during the Great Patriotic War, hundreds of beds crammed together. They’d agreed to find each other that night. Timur hadn’t appeared. Leo had reassured himself with various explanations: there had been some delay and they’d find each other in the morning. It was too risky to ask after him-aside from jeopardizing their cover, Leo might be mistaken for an informer. Unable to sleep, he’d risen early, expecting to see his friend. When they’d been loaded into the trucks, Leo had held back. Comforting explanations for Timur’s absence had become harder to concoct.

Leo was about to meet Lazar for the first time in seven years. Their first encounter, the moment they laid eyes on each other, was perhaps the most dangerous moment in the entire plan. There could be no question of Lazar’s hatred being eroded by time. If he didn’t try and kill Leo outright, he’d announce that Leo was a Chekist, an interrogator, a man responsible for the incarceration of hundreds of innocent men and women. How long could he survive surrounded by those who had been tortured and interrogated? This was why Timur’s presence was essential. They’d predicted a violent reunion. More than that, they’d factored it into their calculations. As a guard Timur could intervene and stop any altercation. Regulations stipulated that Leo and Lazar would be pulled out of the conflict and ordered to the isolator, individual punishment cells. In adjacent cells, Leo would have an opportunity to explain that he was here to free him, that his wife was alive, and that there was no chance he’d ever be released by ordinary means. He either accepted Leo’s help or died a slave.

Running his icy fingers across his newly shaven head, Leo frantically improvised a solution. There was only one option-he’d have to postpone meeting Lazar until Timur caught up. Hiding wouldn’t be easy. Gulag 57 had contracted in size since Stalin’s death both in prisoner numbers and geographical sprawl. Previously it had been composed of many lagpunkts scattered over the mountainside, sub-colonies within a colony, some positioned in such exposed topography and in such poor mining yields that their purpose could only have been death. Gulag 57 had closed all of these smaller barracks, a prison empire whittled back to the main base at the foot of the mountain, the only place where the gold mine had ever produced a viable return. From Leo’s assessment of the blueprints even this central complex was rudimentary. The zona, the controlled area, was rectangular in shape. Although a curved design would have suited the terrain better, law dictated that the zona must be of regular design. There were to be no rounded edges in a Gulag except for the barbed wire, coiled across poles six meters high, sunk two meters deep, forming an outer perimeter. Inside the perimeter there were several sleeping barracks, a communal eating barracks, closed off from the administration center by an inner rectangle of barbed-wire fencing, divisions within divisions, zones within zones. Security was provided by six small guard towers, two substantial vakhta towers-one on either side of the main gate with mounted, heavy machine guns and log-panel protective walls. At each corner of the zona was a smaller tower where officers surveyed the ground through telescopic sights. If the guards fell asleep, or passed out drunk-freedom depended upon scaling the mountain or crossing kilometers of exposed plateau.

Upon arrival Leo would be herded into the inner prisoner zone. Since there were three barracks he could in theory remain inconspicuous, at least for another twenty-four hours. That might give Timur enough time to catch up.

The truck slowed. Wary of being picked off by a zealous sniper in the vakhta, Leo glanced out, his eye drawn to the mountain. The slopes were perilously steep. Against the mountain’s colossal bulk the mine, a series of trenches and man-made streams where clods of earth were washed and sifted for gold, appeared insignificant.