Inna shivered as much from fear as from the cold. It was almost midnight as she approached the gate, hoping against hope that she would find Dmitri on duty tonight. She had a rapport with him. He was young and naive — which was important for the success of her plan. The guard last night had called him a virgin. Even better.
She felt a spark of relief when she saw his familiar figure.
He greeted her with a smile. In the dim light, she could see that he was heavily bundled against the late autumn chill. He really wasn't a bad-looking boy, and not unkind. She felt bad about what she was going to do to him, but then pushed the thought from her mind. If this plan was going to succeed, she needed to be single-minded of purpose.
"Inna," he said, obviously glad to see her.
As she stepped closer, she could smell the vodka on his breath, but he didn’t seem to be drunk. It was likely that he’d been taking a few nips to stay warm. Out here, who could blame him?
"You were not here last night," she said.
He shrugged. "I was in the guard tower. You were on another mission of mercy?"
"Anna Korkovna is expecting and she is having a difficult time."
"You are good to the people of the village," Dmitri said. "I hope that they appreciate you."
"They do," she said. She produced a flask of vodka from her coat pocket. She knew, from observing him, that his own coat pocket held the key to the gate. "One of them gave me this in thanks, but I do not care for vodka. Let me give it to you for the many times you have opened the gate for me."
He took the vodka gladly. "This will keep me warm tonight," he said.
"I know something else that will keep you warm," she said, stepping closer. "Dmitri, I do not know how to say this…"
"What is it?"
"Leave your post for a few minutes," she said, touching his arm. “You look so cold. Let me warm you up a bit.”
Dmitri grinned. He could not seem to believe his good luck. “You want me to go with you? Right now?”
“I was hoping you could.” Inna stood quite close to him as she said it, smiling up at him.
“I suppose one will notice if I am gone for just a few minutes," he said, as if reassuring himself.
“Come on," she said. She slipped her arm around his waist. “I know just the place where we can go.”
Dmitri needed no more encouragement. Inna had planned this next step carefully. She led him to the infirmary, then inside to one of the supply rooms. She kissed him deeply, which sent the boy reeling.
"Inna!" he said in surprise.
"Hurry," she said. She tugged at his coat. "We don't have much time."
Getting undressed was no small matter. There were coats, scarves, belt buckles, trousers, boots—
Mostly, Inna helped him get out of all that while only tugging perfunctorily at her own clothes. In between, when they could, they kissed. Virgin or not, he seemed to have a good grasp of kissing. Soon enough, there was a pile of clothes on the floor, and Dmitri stood in just his undershorts, with his anticipation of a passionate interlude made all too clear.
Inna, trying not to stare, put a finger to her lips. "Shh! I think I hear someone in the hall. Wait here. I will send them away."
She picked up his coat and slipped it on as if to keep off the chill, then bundled up his other clothes and moved into the hallway. It was empty; she had only pretended to hear someone outside the door. Inna took a moment to pat down the coat pocket to make sure that Dmitri's ring of keys was there. She had brought the other clothes in case the key was in his pants. Then she locked the door behind her, trapping Dmitri inside.
Inna walked quickly out of the infirmary and toward Gate 3. It was almost midnight.
At the gate, she took out the key ring and selected the bright silver one that unlocked the padlock. The gate was secured by a length of chain, which she undid.
Then Inna tied her scarf to the gate and slipped outside the Gulag’s walls.
She had done her part. The rest was up to Harry and Ramsey.
No more than a couple hundred feet away, Whitlock lay in his cot listening to the fitful sleeping of the other prisoners around him. Inna had not come to visit and had not risked another note, but as far as he knew, the escape attempt was still on. He and Ramsey had no choice but to hope for Inna's signal.
He had struggled to stay awake until midnight. The barracks was no place for night owls. The Soviets rousted everyone before dawn to set them to work on the railroad to nowhere, or on a hundred other tasks around the camp itself. At the end of the day, exhausted and hungry, sleep was a welcome escape.
He felt a lot like he had as a kid on Christmas Eve, hoping to stay awake for some sign of Santa Claus.
The hammering of his heart kept him from drifting off. His belly rumbled. He and Ramsey had saved half of their bread ration these last three days. It wasn't much, but it might help them survive beyond the Gulag walls.
Whitlock had worried that someone might steal the bread, which they had to leave in their bunks, but no one had touched it. Petty theft was a problem in the barracks — almost any item would be snatched up the second you took your eye off it — except when it came to food. Food was the only thing of real value in the Gulag compound, and it could be a matter of life and death, of survival or starvation. Stealing another man's food was severely punished by a group beating. Even the worst bullies and thugs in the Gulag knew better than to suffer mob justice. This was a rule that crossed all boundaries of nationality and faction within the Gulag’s population. Whitlock had witnessed one such beating, so maybe it wasn't all that surprising that their bread supply had gone untouched.
His thoughts drifted to food: Thanksgiving dinners with mountains of mashed potatoes and gravy, hamburgers on the grill, a clambake on the beach at Cape Cod with corn on the cob and lobster… playing as a boy on the beach… that time he got so sunburned that everyone called him lobster boy…
His mind drifted lazily as summer sunshine —
He jerked awake. Just a little longer, he promised his exhausted mind and body. Got to stay awake.
If he fell asleep, they might miss their opportunity to escape this place.
He glanced over at Ramsey, who was sound asleep. Maybe he had tried to stay awake, but poor Ramsey was really suffering from the work, and the growing cold of the autumn days had not helped his cough. Whitlock wasn't sure how much longer Ramsey would last in this place. There might not be another chance.
Whitlock shifted on the bunk so that he could look out the ventilation slats in the barracks. When he moved, the thin blanket fell away, and he was surprised by how cold he immediately felt. Winter was just around the corner.
He looked toward the gate. Was it midnight yet? If not, then it was goddamn close. Gate 3 nearest the barracks was lighted by a single dim bulb. Usually, he could see a guard standing there. He squinted, searching for the familiar bulk of the Russian's uniform.
No one there.
Whitlock stared. As a pilot, he had excellent vision. His eyes could just make out something fluttering on the fence beside the gate.
The scarf.
Inna had said in her message that she would tie her scarf to the gate as a signal. How in the world had she gotten rid of the guard?
There would be time later to ask her about that, he thought. Right now, it was time to go.
He reached toward Ramsey, then paused. Maybe he should just let the poor bastard sleep. Even after his sojourn in the infirmary, Ramsey was getting weaker by the day. How long would he last on the run?
The mere thought of abandoning Ramsey was too much. To have left him behind would be the ultimate cruelty. Whitlock shook him gently by the shoulder and Ramsey startled awake.
“Damnit, I was just getting to the good part," he muttered. “I think her name was Betty.”
“You can dream about Betty later,” Whitlock said. "It's now or never if we want to get out of this place."
Not long after the stars had come out, Honaker and his team, Cole included, moved into position beyond the Gulag walls. It was Vaska who placed them, hidden beside the dirt road that connected the Gulag to the village. Crouched in the darkness with their guns and knives, they could have been setting up an ambush rather than a rescue.
For the umpteenth time, Cole considered how indebted they were to Vaska. Without the Russian’s help, they would literally have been stumbling around in the dark. It was against Cole's nature to trust anyone easily, and it still worried him that Vaska could betray them with a simple word to this Barkov character, or to the Gulag commandant. Maybe Vaska was all right, but if Mrs. Vaska ever got tired of fish pie and wanted something a little better, there might be in trouble.
There was something slow and steady about Vaska that Cole trusted. Vaska was a hunter and a trapper, after all, so Cole had formed an immediate connection with the Russian.
It was hard to tell how long they crouched there in the darkness. At one point, someone came along the road, but it was only one of the villagers who worked at the prison. They could hear him singing. He sounded a little drunk. Oblivious, the villager passed within a few feet of the hidden Americans.
Another hour went by. No one else passed on the road. At night, the road between the Gulag and the village was hardly a thoroughfare. For such a large facility, the Gulag in the distance was oddly quiet. The only sounds came from the village that lay maybe a quarter of a mile away. They heard barking dogs, some shouting between a husband and wife, the sound of someone chopping wood.
"You must have patience," Vaska said. "She is coming."
Cole had to hand it to Vaska, because he himself hadn't seen a thing. He reckoned it helped that Vaska was on his home turf. Also, Vaska had brought along his dog, whose ears were about a hundred times better than their own. From where he was standing, Cole could hear the dog growl. He tightened his grip on the rifle.
Moments later, Inna emerged as a shadow on the road from the Gulag.
She gasped when Cole emerged from the shadows.
"I have done it," she said excitedly. "The gate is unlocked, and I left Harry the signal. He should be here any minute."
"If he ain't here in thirty minutes, we've got to call it off," Cole said. "We need a head start on whoever is gonna chase us, and the closer we get to morning roll call, the less time we have."
"He will be here," Inna said.
"I sure as hell hope so," Cole said. "For his sake — and ours.”
By previous arrangement, it had been decided that Cole would be the one to step out of the shadows while the others still waited, hidden, with weapons drawn, just in case Inna or Whitlock, when he showed up, had accidentally brought along any Russians.
Inna crouched beside Cole, struggling to remain calm. She seemed to be holding her breath. Once or twice she fidgeted or cleared her throat as if to speak, but Cole quieted her with a touch. It was better not to call any attention to themselves. Anyone else might be concealed in the darkness nearby.
She had mentioned this thug named Barkov. What if he had followed along behind Inna, unseen?
Fortunately, Vaska's laika had much keener senses than any of the men. He had told them the dog’s name was Buka, which translated roughly to surly. The name fit.
Buka began to growl.
Whitlock and Ramsey had both had slept in their boots. Other than their tattered coats and their supply of bread, which barely filled a single pocket, they had nothing else to pack or carry.
No one seemed to pay any attention to Whitlock and Ramsey. It wasn’t unusual for men to get up during the night to relieve themselves. The door of the barracks was not watched, although the compound itself was guarded. They slipped out into the night.
"I have to tell you, Harry, I don't think I can make a run for it if it comes to that," Ramsey whispered. "You'll need to leave me behind."
"We'll walk," Whitlock whispered back. "If we run, we'll only attract attention to ourselves."
Side by side, they took their time crossing the distance to the gate. They expected at any moment for someone to shout at them to halt. Nobody seemed to be around. Inna definitely was nowhere to be seen. There were a couple of figures moving through the gloom in another part of the compound, but those guards were too far away to identify them as escaping prisoners. They reached the gate, found it unlocked, and walked beyond the Gulag walls.
They had escaped.
Ahead of them, about half a mile away, they could see a few twinkling lights from the village. Those lights seemed swallowed up by the vast darkness of the taiga beyond. The wind was blowing, and Whitlock found himself shivering. It was late October, but it felt cold as a December night back home in New England. The ground felt frozen under his feet.
Ramsey looked at him and said, "Now what?"
Whitlock didn't have a quick answer for that, but as it turned out, he didn't need one. A figure stepped out of the darkness and said in a twangy Southern drawl, "I reckon you must be Whitlock. It's about goddamn time you done showed up. Who the hell have you got with you?”
Whitlock was so overcome with emotion at the sound of another American voice that he couldn’t even speak.
Beside him, Ramsey spoke up. "Lieutenant William Ramsey, Army Air Corps.”
Ramsey seemed to be struggling for breath, even while just standing there. Moments later, he was overcome with a coughing fit, doubling over from the spasms that racked his lungs.
“Where’s Whitlock?” the man in the road asked.
“That’s me.”
Another man emerged from the shadows. "We can't take him," he said angrily, pointing at Ramsey. "Just you, Whitlock. That's the deal.”
“Who are you?”
“Lieutenant Honaker.”
“Listen, Honaker, I’m not leaving without him."
The Southerner spoke up. "We ain't leavin' nobody behind for these Ruskie bastards. Now let's get a move on, or we'll all end up in that there Gulag, or worse."
"I like this guy," Ramsey said. "We ought to listen to him."
Inna approached and threw her arms around Whitlock. "Thank God, Harry. I wasn't sure that you were going to make it."
Their reunion was cut short by Honaker. "Listen up, people. I'm in charge here," he said. "We can't take another prisoner with us. This is a rescue operation, not a two for one sale."
"And this ain't Montgomery Ward," Cole said. "If we leave this poor bastard, the Ruskies will kill him — after he tells them about us. We either have to kill him, or take him with us, and I sure as hell ain't gonna kill him."
It was impossible to make out any details of the surrounding faces in the darkness, but it didn't take much imagination to guess the expressions on them as they glared at Honaker.
"Goddamnit," Honaker said.