The Secret Speech

Malysh considered:

— That’s not your problem. We’re going to walk back. If you try and run, I’ll slit your throat. If you let go of my hand, just to pick your nose…

Pleased that, at last, she knew the identity of her secret admirer, Zoya finished his sentence:

— You’ll slit my throat?

Malysh cocked his head to the side, regarding her with suspicion— no doubt wondering if she was mocking him. To put him at ease, Zoya reached out and took hold of his hand.

PACIFIC COAST KOLYMA

THE PORT OF MAGADAN

STARY BOLSHEVIKPRISON SHIP

SAME DAY

THE STEPS AND STAIRWAYS were the only solid structures offering elevation from the floodwater and were consequently crowded with prisoners, squeezed together, perched like crows on a power line. Those less lucky were huddled on the wreckage of collapsed bunks — broken planks piled high to create a makeshift timber island surrounded by lapping, icy water. The bodies of those who’d died had been pushed away and were bobbing on the surface. Leo was one of the privileged few high above the water, on the steel steps that led up to the bullet-ridden and cloth-stuffed hatch.

Once the holes in the hatch had been plugged, Leo had been forced to keep the coal engine burning, his chest and face roasted by the fire while his legs, knee-deep in water, went numb with cold — his body sliced into opposite sensations. Shaking with exhaustion, barely able to lift the shovel, he’d worked without help. The other convicts had sat in the damp darkness like cave creatures, motionless and dumb. Facing a lifetime of hard labor, why add another day? If the engine died and the ship ceased to move, drifting in the open sea, that was an issue the guards needed to address. They could shovel their own coal. These men weren’t about to help in their transportation to prison. Leo didn’t have the energy to convince them of the dangers of doing nothing. He knew that if the guards were forced to descend into the hold, after the attempted uprising, they’d shoot indiscriminately as a method of control.

Alone, he’d continued for as long as he could. Not until he’d dropped an entire load, the shovel slipping from his hands, did another man emerge from the gloom to take his place. Leo had mumbled inaudible thanks, climbing the steps — the prisoners making space for him — and slumping at the very top. If it could be called sleeping, he’d slept, shivering and delirious with thirst and hunger.

* * *

LEO OPENED HIS EYES. There were people on deck. He could hear footsteps overhead. The ship had come to a stop. Trying to move, he found his body was stiff — his limbs calcified into a fetal shape. He stretched his fingers, then his neck: joints cracking in quick succession. The hatch was thrown open. Leo looked up, squinting at the bright light. The sky seemed as dazzling as molten metal. His eyes adjusting slowly, he accepted that it was, in fact, a dull gray.

Guards appeared around him: machine guns pointing down. One man shouted, addressing the hold:

— Try anything and we’ll scuttle the ship with you all locked in. We’ll drown the lot of you.

The convicts could barely move, let alone mount a serious challenge to their authority. There was no gratitude that they’d kept the engine running, no appreciation that they’d saved the ship, just the muzzle of a machine gun. A different voice called out:

— On deck! Now!

Leo recognized the voice. It was Timur. The sound of his friend revived him. Moving slowly, he sat upright. Like a creaky wood puppet he stood, yanked up by its strings, climbing from the steps to the deck.

The battered steamer was listing, askew in the water. The gun turret was gone. All that remained of it were threads of twisted steel jutting out. It was hard to imagine that the sea, now still and smooth and calm, could have been so ferocious. Making only the briefest eye contact with Timur, Leo observed his friend’s face, the dark lines under his eyes. The storm had been grueling for him too. They’d have to compare stories at a later date.

Moving past, Leo made his way to the edge of the deck, pressing his hands against the rail and taking his first look at the port of Magadan, gateway to the most remote of regions, a part of his country that he was both intimately connected with and a stranger to at the same time. He’d never been here before yet he’d sent hundreds of men and women here. He hadn’t allocated them to any particular Gulag, that hadn’t been his responsibility. But it was inevitable that many had ended up on board this boat, or one like it, shuffling forward in single file, as he was now, ready for processing.

Considering the region’s notoriety he’d expected more obvious and sinister drama in the landscape. But the port, developed some twenty years ago, was small and hushed. Wood shacks mingled with the occasional angular concrete municipal building, the sides of which were decorated with slogans and propaganda, an awkward glimpse of color in an otherwise muted palette. Beyond the port, in the distance, lay a network of Gulags spread among the folds of snow-tipped hills. The hills, gentle near the coast, grew in size farther inland, their vast curved tops merging with the clouds. Tranquil and menacing in equal measure, it was a terrain that made no allowances for frailty, smoothing weakness off its arctic-blasted slopes.

Leo climbed down to the dock where there were small fishing boats: evidence of life other than the imprisonment system. The Chukchi, the local people who’d lived off this land long before it was colonized by Gulags, carried baskets of walrus tusk and the first cod catches of the year. They spared Leo only a cursory, unsympathetic glance, as if the convicts were to blame for their land’s transformation into a prison empire. Guards were stationed on the dock, herding the new arrivals. They were dressed in thick furs and felt, layered over their uniforms — they wore a mixture of Chukchi handcrafted clothes and meanly cut, mass-produced, standard-issue uniforms.

Behind the guards, gathered for the delayed voyage home, were prisoners being released. They’d either served their term or had their sentence quashed. They were free men, except by the looks of them their bodies didn’t know it yet — their shoulders were hunched and their eyes sunken. Leo searched for some sign of triumph, some malicious yet understandable pleasure in seeing others about to set off for the camps that they were leaving behind. Instead, he saw missing fingers, cracked skin, sores, and wasted muscles. Freedom might rejuvenate some, restoring them to a semblance of their former selves, but it would not save all of them. This was what had become of the men and women he’d sent away.

* * *

ON DECK TIMUR WATCHED as the prisoners were marched toward a warehouse. Leo was indistinguishable from the others. Their assumed identities were intact. Despite the storm, they’d arrived unharmed. The journey by boat had been a necessary part of their cover. Although it was possible to fly into Magadan, organizing such a flight would have prevented them from slipping into the system unobserved. No prisoners were ever flown in. Fortunately, stealth was unnecessary on the return journey. A cargo plane was standing by at Magadan airstrip. If all went as planned, in two days’ time, he and Leo would be returning to Moscow with Lazar. What had just passed on the ship had been the easiest part of their plan.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Standing behind him was the captain of the Stary Bolshevik and a man Timur had never seen before — a high-ranking official judging from the quality of his attire. Surprisingly for a man of power, he was exceptionally thin, prisoner thin, an unlikely solidarity with the men he oversaw. Timur’s first thought was that he must be sick. The official spoke, the captain nodding obsequiously before the man had even finished his sentence:

— My name is Abel Prezent, regional director. Officer Genrikh…

He turned to the captain:

— What was his name?

— Genrikh Duvakin.

— Is dead, I’m told.

At the mention of that name, the young man he’d left to die on deck, Timur felt a knot tighten inside