The Secret Speech

— I can touch you, Maxim. Yet if you lay a finger on me, you will be killed. My skin is the same as my authority. For you to touch me would be a violation, an insult.

She pressed against him, whispering:

— Seven years later, it is my turn to make you an offer. Lazar is still in Kolyma, working in a gold mine. They refuse to release him. He’s a priest. Priests are hated again, now that there are no wars the State needs them to promote. He’s been told that he’ll have to serve his full sentence — twenty-five years. I want you to get him out. I want you to put right that wrong.

— I have no such power.

— You have connections.

— Fraera, you murdered the patriarch. They blame you for the murder of two agents, Nikolai and Moskvin. They will never negotiate with you. They will never release Lazar.

— Then you must find another way to get him out.

— Fraera, please — if you had asked me a week ago, perhaps it would’ve been feasible. But after what you have done, it is impossible. Listen to my voice. I would do anything for Zoya, anything within my power. However, I cannot free Lazar.

Fraera leaned forward, whispering:

— Remember, I can touch you, but you must not touch me.

With that warning she kissed him on the cheek. Tender at first before her teeth gripped his skin, closing tight, digging in, increasing in pressure — drawing blood. The pain was intense. Leo wanted to push her away, but if he touched her, he would be killed. He could do nothing except suffer the pain. Finally, she opened her mouth, stepping back and admiring the bite marks.

— Maxim, you have your first tattoo.

With his blood on her lips, she concluded:

— Free my husband, or I will murder your daughter.

THREE WEEKS LATER

WESTERN PACIFIC OCEAN SOVIET TERRITORIAL WATERS

SEA OF OKHOTSK

STARY BOLSHEVIK PRISON SHIP

7 APRIL 1956

STANDING ON DECK, OFFICER GENRIKH DUVAKIN used the tips of his teeth to pull off his coarse mittens. His fingers were icy numb, slow to respond. He blew on them, rubbing his hands together, trying to restore circulation. Exposed to the biting wind, his face was deadened — his lips bloodless and blue. The outermost hairs in his nose had frozen, and when he pinched his nostrils, brittle hairs broke like miniature icicles snapping. He could tolerate such minor discomforts because his hat was a miracle of warmth, lined with reindeer fur and stitched with the care of someone who appreciated that the wearer’s life might depend on the quality of their work. Three long flaps covered his ears and the back of his neck. The earflaps, tied tight under his chin, gave him the appearance of a child wrapped up against the cold, an effect compounded by his soft, boyish features. The pounding salt air had failed to crack his smooth complexion, while his plump cheeks had proved resilient to poor diet and lack of sleep. Twenty-seven years old, he was often mistaken for younger: a physical immaturity that did not serve him well. Supposed to be intimidating and fierce, he a daydreamer, an unlikely guard on board a prison ship as notorious as the Stary Bolshevik.

Roughly the size of an industrial barge, the Stary Bolshevik was a workhorse vessel. Once a sea-battered Dutch steamer, it had been bought in the nineteen thirties, renamed and customized by the Soviet secret police. Originally intended for colonial exports — ivory, pungent spices, and exotic fruits — it now ferried men destined for the deadliest labor camps in the Gulag enterprise. Toward the bow there was a central tower four stories high that included living quarters for the guards and crew. At the top of the tower was the bridge where the captain and crew navigated, a close-knit group autonomous from the prison guards themselves, willfully blind to the business of this ship, pretending that it was no responsibility of theirs.

Opening the door, the captain stepped out from the bridge, surveying the stretch of sea they were leaving behind. He gestured down to Genrikh on deck, giving him a nod and announcing:

— All clear!

They’d passed through La Perouse Strait, the only point on the journey where they neared Japanese islands and risked international contact. Precautions were taken to ensure that the vessel appeared to be nothing more than a civilian cargo ship. The heavy machine gun rigged to the center deck was dismantled. Uniforms were hidden beneath long coats. Genrikh had never been entirely sure why they took such efforts to conceal their true nature from the glance of Japanese fishermen. In idle moments, he wondered if there were similar prison boats in Japan with similar men to him.

Genrikh reassembled the machine gun, screwing it back together. Rather than the gun pointing outward, he directed the barrel downward at the reinforced steel hatch that led to the hold. Belowdeck, in the darkness, cramped on bunks like matches in a box, was a cargo of five hundred men — the first convict-laden voyage of the year from transit camp Buchta Nakhodka on the south of the Pacific coastline to Kolyma in the north. Though both ports were located on the same stretch of coastline, the distance between them was vast. There was no way to reach Kolyma by land: it was accessible only by plane or ship. The northern port of Magadan served as the entry point for a network of labor camps that had spread like fungal spores up along the Kolyma highway into the mountains, forests, and mines.

Five hundred was the smallest prisoner cargo Genrikh had ever supervised. At this point in the year under Stalin’s rule the ship would have held four times as many in an attempt to ease the backlog at the transit camps built up over the winter as the zek trains, the prisoner-filled wagons, continued to deliver but the ships remained docked. The Sea of Okhotsk was only passable when the ice floes melted. By October it was frozen again. A mistimed voyage meant being encased in ice. Genrikh had heard of ships that had ventured too late in winter or left too early in the spring. Unable to turn back or reach their destination, the guards had made good their escape, trekking across the ice, dragging sleighs loaded with canned meats and bread while the abandoned prisoners were left in the hold to starve or freeze, whichever came first.

Today no prisoners would be allowed to starve, or freeze, nor would they be summarily executed, their bodies tossed overboard. Genrikh hadn’t read Khrushchev’s Secret Speech condemning Stalin and the excesses of the Gulags. He’d been too scared. There were rumors that it was designed to flush out counterrevolutionaries, a ploy so that people might let their defenses slip and join in the criticism, only to be arrested. Genrikh wasn’t convinced by this theory: the changes seemed real. The long-established practice of brutality and indifference with no accountability had been replaced by confused compassion. At the transit camp prisoners’ sentences were hastily reviewed. Thousands destined for Kolyma had been suddenly granted their freedom, returned to civilization as abruptly as they’d been taken from it. These free men — since most of the women had been granted freedom in the amnesty of 1953—had sat on the shore, staring out at the sea, each clutching a five-hundred-gram chunk of black rye bread, a freedom ration, intended to sustain them until they reached home. For most, home was thousands of miles away. With no possessions, no money, just their rags and their freedom bread, they’d stared out at the sea, unable to comprehend that they could walk away and not be shot. Genrikh had shooed them from the shoreline, as if they were pesky birds, encouraging them to make the journey home but unable to tell them how that journey was possible.

Genrikh’s superiors had spent the weeks panicking that they were going to be brought before a tribunal. In an attempt to show how much they’d changed, they had issued extensive reviews and overhauls of regulations, frantic signals to Moscow that they were synchronized with this new fashion for fairness. Genrikh had kept his head