The Secret Speech

down, doing as ordered, never questioning and never offering an opinion. If he were told to be tough with prisoners he’d be tough. If he were told to be nice he’d be nice. As it happened, with his baby face, he’d always been better at being nice than tough.

After years of shipping thousands of political prisoners convicted under Article 58, men and women who’d said the wrong thing, or been in the wrong place, or known the wrong people, the Stary Bolshevik had a new role — to carry a more select cargo, only the most violent and dangerous criminals, men for whom everyone could agree: there was no question of them ever being released.

* * *

IN THE PITCH-BLACK BELLY of the Stary Bolshevik, among the stinking bodies of five hundred murderers and rapists and thieves, Leo lay on his back, resting on the narrow, rickety top bunk — his shoulder pressed against the hull. On the other side was a vast expanse of sea, a mass of freezing water held back by a steel plate no thicker than his thumbnail.

SAME DAY

THE AIR WAS STALE AND PUTRID, boiled by the shuddering coal engine secured in an adjacent compartment. The convicts had no access to the engine, but its heat seeped through the timber partition wall, a crude addition to the ship’s original design. At the beginning of the journey, when the hold had been freezing cold, prisoners had fought for the bunks nearest the engine. Within days, as temperatures soared, those same prisoners were fighting for bunks farther away. Divided into a grid of narrow passageways, with high rows of wooden bunks on either side, the subdeck cargo hold had been transformed into an insect hive, infested with prisoners. Leo had a top bunk, a space he’d fought for and defended, prized for its elevation from the vomit and shit slopping on the floor. The weaker you were, the lower you were — as if they’d been shaken through a filtering process, separating into Darwinian layers. Lanterns that had for the past week emitted a dim, sooty glow — like stars seen through city smog — were now out of kerosene, creating darkness so complete that Leo couldn’t see his hands even as they scratched his face.

Tonight was the seventh day at sea. Leo had counted the days as carefully as he could, making the most of infrequently permitted toilet visits in order to regain some sense of time. On deck, with a mounted machine gun directed at them, prisoners queued to use the hole intended for the anchor, a drop straight into the ocean. Trying to maintain balance on the choppy seas, whipped by icy winds, squatting and shuffling, the process became an awful pantomime. Some inmates, unable to queue, lost control of their bowels, soiling themselves, lying in their own excrement, waiting until it was crust before they started moving again. The psychological importance of cleanliness was self-evident. A person could lose their sanity after only seven days down here. Leo comforted himself that these conditions were temporary. His primary concern was maintaining his edge. Many prisoners had been weakened by months in transit, their muscles softened by inactivity and poor food, their minds softened by the prospect of ten years working in the mines. Leo exercised regularly, keeping his body taut and his mind focused on the task at hand.

After Leo’s encounter with Fraera on the excavated grounds of the Church of Sancta Sophia he’d returned to the hospital to discover that Raisa had survived surgery and that the doctors were confident of a full recovery. Waking up, her first question had been about Zoya and Elena. Seeing how pale and weak she was, Leo had promised that he was concentrated entirely on his kidnapped daughter. Listening to him explain Fraera’s demands, Raisa had merely said:

Do whatever it takes.

* * *

FRAER A HAD GAINED CONTROL of a criminal gang. As far as Leo could tell she was no torpedy, no mere foot soldier — she was the avtoritet, the leader. Members of a criminal gang, the vory, were typically contemptuous of women. They wrote songs about their love for their mother, they killed each other over insults to their mothers, but nurtured no belief in women being equals. Somehow the wife of a priest, a woman who’d spent her life in her husband’s shadow, assisting his career, had managed to penetrate the vorovskoi mir. Even more astounding was that she had risen to the top. Fraera was integrated into their rituals: her body covered with tattoos, her birth name tossed aside and replaced with a klikukha, a vory nickname. Sheltered within the highly secretive vorovskoi mir, her operations were probably funded by pickpockets and black market trade. If revenge had been her intention from the outset then she’d chosen her allies well. The vory gangs were the only organizations the State had no control over. There was no chance of infiltrating their ranks: it would take too much time— requiring an officer to spend years undercover, to murder and rape in order to prove themselves. It wasn’t that the State couldn’t find a suitable candidate but rather that they had always considered the vory an irrelevance. These gangs were motivated by their own internal, closed system of loyalty and reward. None of the gangs had ever shown any interest in politics, until now, until Fraera.

Had Fraera’s demand — the release of her husband — come before her murders, it might have been achievable. The penal system was in upheaval following Khrushchev’s speech. Regarding Lazar’s twenty-five-year sentence, Leo could have applied for a special dispensation, a dismissal or an early parole. The complication would have been Khrushchev’s renewed antireligious campaign. However, after the murders there was no chance of negotiating for Lazar’s release. No deal would be struck. Fraera was a terrorist, to be hunted down and killed irrespective of whether or not Zoya had been taken hostage. Fraera’s gang had been classified as a counterrevolutionary cell. To make matters worse, she’d made no attempt to curtail her bloodlust. In the days directly after Zoya’s kidnapping Fraera’s men had murdered several officials — men and women who’d served under Stalin. Some had been tortured as they’d tortured others. Faced with a reflection of their own crimes, the upper echelons of power were terrified. They were demanding the execution of every member of Fraera’s cell and every man and woman who aided them.

Fortunately Leo’s boss, Frol Panin, was an ambitious man. Despite the KGB and the militia launching the largest manhunt Moscow had ever seen, they’d found no trace of Fraera and her gang. Clamorous calls for their capture were answered with failure. The press reported nothing of these events, opting for celebrations of industrial statistics on the days after the most shocking of executions, as if these numbers might dampen the rumors sweeping the streets. Officials were moving their families out of the city. A surge in holiday requests had been submitted. The situation was intolerable. Coveting the glory of being the one who snared Fraera, the mantle of a heroic monster slayer, Panin saw Lazar as bait. Since they couldn’t arrange for him to be released through normal channels, without admitting the State could be held to ransom, the only option was to break him out. Panin had hinted that their project had powerful supporters and was proceeding with the tacit consent of those in charge.

Lazar was a convict in the Kolyma region, Gulag 57. Escape was considered impossible. No one had ever succeeded. Security at many of the Gulags was little more than their location: there was no means of surviving outside the compound. The chances of traversing the vast and unforgiving terrain on foot were negligible. If Lazar went missing he would be declared dead. With Panin’s help, it was a simple matter to get into the Gulag, fabricating the necessary paperwork, positioning Leo as a prisoner. Getting out, however, would not be so easy.

Vibrations raced through the hull. The ship’s bow veered to the side. Leo sat bolt upright. They’d hit ice.

SAME DAY

GENRIKH RUSHED FORWARD, peering over the side. A sunken mass of ice slowly passed by, its pinnacle no larger than a car, the majority of its bulk underwater appearing as a vast dark blue shadow. The hull appeared