“Come in and sit, Comrade Sweet. I will call you that when it’s just the two of us. Yes?”
“Yes,” I said, sitting across from him, the frost on my eyelashes already melting.
“The men from Lagpunkt Seventy-Nine will be leaving next week for the mines. You will be staying here with your son. You have pleased me. I want you to take these drawings.” He picked up the roll from his desk and handed it to me. “And I want to give you this cost sheet.” He put it in my other hand. “I want you to determine how much lumber, steel, cement, tar, etcetera, will be needed based on those measurements, and then I want you to cost it out. Yes?”
“Yes, Commander Koskinen,” I said, surveying the books covering the shelves along the right and left walls, a large picture of Stalin hanging directly behind him.
“Then I want to meet with you and the other engineers and compare your estimates. Maybe you zeks will give better estimates than the free hires.” He gave a wry smile. “We are all just Dalstroi employees waiting to be zeks!” He put his finger to his mouth. “Shh! It is only between you and me. Many of my comrades have disappeared. None of us can do the right thing for too long. Please! You can speak. Please!”
“Thank you.” His demeanor confused me because it felt genuine, like he was sure he would die, perhaps sooner than later. I carefully continued. “When I was at a place called Camp Z in the forest well north of Vladivostok, I was told my sentence would be reduced.”
“I can find out more about that. Continue.”
“My wife and daughter are in the prisons.”
He picked up a pencil. “When and where were you all arrested, and what are their names?”
“Just back in August, in Moscow. My wife’s name is Loretta Sweet, my daughter, Ginger Sweet.”
“Is your wife a Negro, too?” he said, writing down their names.
“Yes.”
“My sister is married to a Negro from Nairobi, Kenya. They live in Toronto, Canada. He is a medical doctor. I have not seen her in five years.”
“That’s a long time.”
“The five months you’ve been away from your wife and daughter feels much longer, I’m sure.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t speak of any of this. You would be shot. I will look into it.” He leaned in over his desk. “Of course,” he whispered, “it would be easier to predict how my request might be received if my beloved Trotsky were our leader and not Stalin. Like Lenin before him, Trotsky is a brilliant man with much foresight and creativity. He would most certainly be able to outsmart this Hitler. We are all going to be zeks when that powerful man takes over the world. I know such things. Do I sound like it?”
“Yes, Commander Koskinen.”
“Stalin believes it is all about exporting food to the West and importing machinery into the Soviet Union. As Stalin has said about his continuing Five Year Plans, ‘Technical skills and machines will decide everything.’ So… you see… you zeks are nothing to him. I am nothing to him. If only my Trotsky would return from exile. A dream!” He sat back. “Well, Comrade Sweet, anything else?”
“I… I must ask. Two other comrades of mine in the camp here, Yury—”
“I cannot help them. You are trying to see if they can stay here?”
I nodded.
“I cannot do that. It is logical regarding your boy. Your comrades… no.”
“Yes, Commander Koskinen.”
“Your Russian is excellent, Comrade Sweet. But how do you feel about your America?”
I was guessing that my answer would carry significant weight. And I was certain that he, like most Soviet brass, detested my country. Even if he didn’t, I couldn’t afford to say something positive.
“I hate America,” I said. “That is why I moved to Moscow and learned your language. They treated me like trash back in America. It was only when I got to Moscow that I felt like a human being for the first time. I was all too surprised when I was arrested, for I love the Soviet Union.”
“Good,” he said. “Me too!”
Later that night I lay in my bunk talking to Yury. I was devastated that he and Boris would be leaving soon, much earlier than I’d previously guessed. But I could do nothing about it.
“Koskinen says it will remain Lagpunkt Seventy-Nine when you all leave,” I whispered to Yury in barely audible Russian. “But a freshly shipped-in batch of zeks will replace you. This cycle will continue until Seventy-Nine is full of a thousand highly skilled laborers. Zeks who know contracting! How is Boris?”
“I don’t know,” said Yury. “I hope he is holding up. I could see the bones in his back too much when I last saw him. I could see far too many bones.”
“Once you all depart, you’ve got to maybe figure out an escape. Maybe after you stop and set up camp—”
“There is no way out. They have guns. And Drugov told us that no one has ever escaped the Sevvostlag prison system in this area. You know this! And even if we can manage to escape the camp, the bears will kill us. Many have met such fates.”
“Don’t talk about bears,” I whispered.
“It’s true, Prescott. I would rather work all day and even sleep in a big ice pit at night if need be. The old man said he’d heard of such sleeping conditions.”
“What!”
“I’m just telling you what he said. Maybe it was a form of punishment. Maybe it was because they ran out of tents.”
“I don’t believe that, Yury. Sounds like an old wives’ tale.”
“Believe it! I’m sure they do such things.”
“Or not!”
“I’m just thinking of the worst-case scenario, Prescott. The old man said to start from thinking the worst and then work your way back from there. No surprises!”
“Makes sense.”
“I am no longer afraid to die, Prescott. The old man is with God. I am not afraid because I can go see God, too. I am happy for you and James. But I am not afraid to go see God now. I have accepted my fate. No one survives the Road of Bones.”
14
Moscow, Russia
December 1934
SINCE THE TIME I’D FIRST MET LOVETT FORT-WHITEMAN BACK IN September, I’d gotten to know him much better. Loretta and I had attended the shindig at his apartment and had been introduced to several interesting people, many of them colored.
Perhaps the most fascinating was not colored, however. His name was Karl Radek, a friend of Lovett’s, and a close associate of Stalin’s. Radek wrote for Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and he was actually helping to write the Soviet Constitution. Much controversy surrounded him, as many wondered, especially Stalin, if Radek had lied his way back into the Soviet Union by swearing he was no longer loyal to Leon Trotsky. Meeting the editor had been fascinating, as this was a politico who not only conversed with Lovett and Stalin, but also Bullitt. According to Lovett, the ambassador had been trying to get Radek to help him convince Litvinov and Stalin to make good on the debt issue.
I’d still been trying like hell to make progress on finding the hidden microphones in the bowels of Spaso House, but to no avail. Luckily, I wasn’t getting constant pressure from the ambassador, as he was back in the U.S. and might not be back until April. Nevertheless, much to Bobby’s dismay, Bullitt had assigned me to remain at Spaso and help with technical issues until the new ballroom was complete. And he’d made me swear I’d do my best to locate the hidden microphones. So, I’d had my hands full trying to figure out a way to get the keys away from Sergei.