“Zek!” I said, pointing the flashlight at the curled-up prisoner, trying my best to sound like the dead guard.
“Da!” he slurred, his eyes closed, my light illuminating his filthy face in the dark. “Da!” he continued. “It’s me, Goran! Is that you, Officer Anosov, or is it Officer Divac?”
“It’s Divac,” I said. “Come, you can get some fresh air!”
He slowly stood and approached. Taking him by the arm, I led him down the dark hallway, then stopped, just before the front door.”
“Wait!” I said. “I must vomit. You can get air later.”
I turned him back around and steered him toward his chamber on the right, except I passed it and led him into the chamber we’d been working in. He couldn’t know the difference. Leaving him inside and closing the door, I grabbed James from the guard’s office before entering Goran’s chamber, the light switch inside now turned on. For the next hour we feverishly proceeded to remove enough slats of wood and joists to create a space large enough for us to dig a hole. It had to be wide and deep enough for us to dump the guard’s body in along with his rifle.
“The shovels and wheel barrels are out behind the punishment isolator, right?” I said to James, realizing how fortunate we were that Koskinen had suggested we remove the top dirt underneath the slats.
“Yeah,” said James.
At some point deep into the night, we had managed to bury him and replace the joists and slats. I then repeated my “fresh air” routine with Goran, this time effectively returning him to his proper chamber, the one with the guard now buried underneath him. If the NKVD ever suspected we’d buried him under our worksite, they’d be sadly mistaken. He’d be in the adjacent chamber, the one where their only plausible witness, Goran, resided. And he’d say he never left his chamber, save for one minute, when the guard walked him outside. He might also mention the guard’s vomit comment.
James and I returned all of our tools to the original work chamber and finished removing the slats, frantically yanking up the ones stained in Vladimir’s fresh blood. Once finished, we used our filthy, wool rags to wipe away any fresh splatterings of blood from the log walls, but it didn’t actually matter, because old bloodstains were all over the chamber walls. Still, we were now ready for our two coworkers to join us in the morning.
On our way back to Lagpunkt Seventy-Nine, I dropped the keys inside the sewage hole. Then we returned to our barracks, got into our bunks, and waited for dawn. When the sun rose we’d be ready to return and finish the job as originally planned. I already had my response prepared for when the morning shift’s guard asked me where Officer Divac was. I’d say nothing more than, “He approached us looking sick last night with a bottle of whiskey in his hand and said he was heading for the big hole to empty his bucket.”
16
Moscow, Russia
April 1935
AMBASSADOR BULLITT HAD BEEN OUT OF THE COUNTRY FOR SIX months but had finally returned in time for the enormous party to be held at Spaso House. It would be called the Spring Festival, and every important person in Moscow had been invited.
With the party still nearly two weeks away, as it was to be held on April 24, I was waiting in the office that I shared with Bobby at the chancery. For some reason he was running late. We were due to meet a very important man at the Kremlin, one Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov. He held the title of Premier. I was to attend the meeting only to interpret for Bobby, of course. But I was excited to see the Kremlin.
I was still spending half of my days at Spaso House, but that would soon be ending, as the ballroom construction was finished and ready to host guests. Yet, Bullitt wanted me around until the very last Russian worker finished doing touch-up work. I still hadn’t had my meeting with him, so I hadn’t told him what I’d seen nearly four months earlier in Sergei, the caretaker’s, basement apartment. It had shocked the living hell out of me.
After I’d secured the ring of ten keys from a passed-out Sergei, his wife knocked out on his lap, I’d headed straight for his apartment, past the still-packed house of guests and down the stairway toward the basement. His door had three separate locks on it. It took me a while to find the correct ones for each, but I’d managed.
I opened the heavy door and flipped the light switch on, only to find what looked like a normal, small living room—a couch, table and chairs, a lamp, bookshelves, etcetera. It was very clean and appeared to have wooden floors throughout. Closing the door behind me, I made my way through and entered a short hallway, the end of which was part of the underground back wall of the mansion. Flipping on its lights, I noticed a bedroom on the left and a large toilet room on the right.
Continuing down the hallway, I found a small closet on the left, a kitchen on the right. That was all there was to the place—a living room, kitchen, bedroom, closet, and toilet room. I began to fear my quest to find something mysterious would be met with nothing but grave disappointment.
I flipped all of the light switches on and entered the bedroom first. Searching every inch of it, including under and behind the bed and dresser, I found nothing—same with the hallway closet and toilet room. I even tried to move the tub, but it was mounted. I walked to the kitchen and began opening cabinets and trying to move the stove, which was mounted, too. The back wall of the mansion was behind it. I opened its four doors to find nothing. Then I fiddled with the burners and panel on top. No luck. I opened the refrigerator and tilted it to see if a small hatch might be under. Only wooden floor.
Reentering the living room, I began moving furniture around, lifting rugs, and looking behind framed art and pictures on the wall, including a large one of Stalin. I looked up at the low ceiling for grooves that might suggest a hatch of some sort, as the ceiling was made of square black tiles with braille-looking shamrock designs on them. I walked the entire place again, looking up this time to see if one of the tile’s borders might appear different. No such luck.
I sat on Sergei’s bed, thinking. I was blank. Then I thought of an oddity. Why is the green stove so large? It was big enough for a family of eight.
I reentered the kitchen and began examining the big green thing. It had two front oven doors and two smaller ones for grilling below. I opened them all and looked inside, pressing my hand at the back walls. A normal stove.
I headed back toward the toilet room and actually decided to relieve myself of all the champagne I’d had. As I stood there listening to water hit water, I heard a tinkering sound coming from the back hallway. Cutting off my stream, I headed down and stopped at the kitchen entry. The tinkering was louder. I approached the stove and realized the sound was emanating from it. As if it were a door, the entire appliance began to move, its back right side pushing away from the wall. The back left side was on a hinge.
I turned and headed for the bedroom. God forbid this was where the intruder was heading, but I slid under the bed and waited. I could hear footsteps passing, heading toward the living room. The footsteps continued back toward the end of the hallway. The sound of something sliding could be heard, then the sound of feet stepping up.
I slid out from under the bed and crawled to the doorway. Peeking left, I could see a small boy standing beside one of the dining chairs at the end of the hallway. Next to it, a wooden ladder extended up through the open ceiling where they’d removed two tiles. The boy picked up what looked like a toaster. Two arms reached down and the boy stepped up a few rungs, handing over the device. He turned toward me, still looking down at the floor, however, and I suddenly realized he wasn’t a boy. He was a grown man, but a dwarf, beard and all. Picking up a few tools, he climbed up and disappeared, too.