“Maybe not,” Clayton said.
Clayton told him that he’d invented the story of Anna’s execution, but that he’d done so with the best of intentions. He’d never suspected that Danforth would return to Europe and certainly not that he would stumble upon what he called “the truth about Anna Klein.”
“But we’ll talk about all that in a few days,” he added, bringing the subject to a close. “After you’ve gotten your strength back. We can’t get transport out of Magadan right away, so just relax, walk around, enjoy the weather.” He smiled. “It’s summer in Siberia.”
And so it was, with temperate days and chilly nights that reminded Danforth of the country house he’d not seen for over twenty years and whose memory now filled him with a tragic nostalgia. “Winterset,” he said, as if it were a place he had only dreamed.
“Which you will see again very soon,” Clayton told him.
Clayton had booked them into a crumbling hotel in Magadan, and once there, Danforth shaved and bathed; these were luxuries whose pleasure astonished him. Simply to be clean. How few people knew such joy.
During the daylight hours, he took leisurely walks through the town streets, always followed, as he noticed and reported to Clayton.
“Me too,” Clayton said. “But we’re used to spies, aren’t we?”
They were short, Danforth’s first walks, and followed by hours of rest. He ate in the hotel’s spare dining room, always with Clayton, who carefully eased him away from any further discussion of his abrupt release.
As he gained strength, Danforth walked farther from the hotel, and eventually as far as the docks, where he watched fishermen at their nets and followed the slow drift of the barges and steamers as they came into port. More than once, he saw a shuffling cargo of newly arrived
Thus the days passed, and as they passed, Danforth grew stronger, though he remained thin and would often be overcome by sudden bouts of exhaustion. From out of nowhere, a great weight would fall upon him, heavy as the logs he’d carried on his shoulders, and he would drop into a chair or onto the bed and feel this same weight press him down and down until he flattened into sleep.
Nearly two weeks passed and Danforth made no further inquiry into why he’d been released. Captivity, it seemed, had taught him patience. And so he simply listened as Clayton brought him up to date on the events of his missing years. During these talks, he was surprised to learn of a young president’s assassination but even more surprised to learn that he had been a Catholic.
Then one evening, Clayton appeared at Danforth’s door. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.
They left the hotel, walked several blocks, then turned toward the bay and continued on.
“Tom, you’ve been released because the Soviets want to find out about Rache,” Clayton said quite suddenly.
“I don’t know anything about Rache,” Danforth said.
“They believe you were looking for him,” Clayton told him. He drew in a breath that was short and struck Danforth as somewhat labored. “They don’t believe it was ever Anna.”
“But it was always Anna,” Danforth told him. “Because I believe she betrayed me.”
“And was in league with Rache all along,” Clayton said.
“In league with Rache,” Danforth repeated softly.
He felt it rise again, rise then hang like a foul odor in the air around him, Anna’s treachery. He thought of her veiled past, the Gray Wolf Society of Ankara, her inexplicable familiarity with the environs of Baku and the German settlements of Azerbaijan, along with other less fully elaborated clues to a life whose coordinates he still could not determine.
Clayton seemed aware that Danforth’s mind was swirling with memories of Anna, and for a time he allowed his old friend to lose himself in that swirl, then said, “The Russians have long memories,” he said. “They’re still looking for Rache because they want to kill him. They think you can help them.”
“How?”
“By interrogating Anna,” Clayton said.
“Anna?” Danforth whispered.
They had reached the banks of the Sea of Okhotsk, its docks inexpressibly dreary, and which Danforth now recalled was the place he’d disembarked from a steamship all those many years before. It had been a late-night arrival and an immediate departure, and so he’d seen only a few lights as he’d been led down the boat’s snow- covered gangplank and into the back of the truck that had taken him up the Road of Skulls.
“Anna’s here, Tom,” Clayton said. He peered into Danforth’s emaciated face. “Here in Magadan,” he added. “They brought her to the hotel last night. She’s in room three-oh-four.”
Danforth realized that his mind had been so long numbed and disengaged it now had to struggle for pathways by which it might absorb so profound a revelation.
“It’s the price for letting you go,” Clayton added.
Danforth stared at him unbelievingly. “I thought I was already let go.”
Clayton shook his head. “They wanted you to have a taste of freedom,” he said. “So you’d know what you’re missing.”
“What will they do with Anna?” Danforth asked.
“Nothing they haven’t already done,” Clayton answered. He let this settle into Danforth’s brain before he spoke again. “But who cares, Tom? She was nothing but a little Nazi.”
