“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You still have one very important reason to go to Berlin and keep your promise to the Kremlin, though. Your son will be here working in the mines waiting for you. And if you do a good job, I’m sure our Great Stalin will eventually release him.”
“The agreement,” I said, “was for me to gather intelligence for up to one year and then have my entire family released, along with my comrade, Lovett Fort-Whiteman.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I have it written down right here. The Kremlin did agree to release this Fort-Whiteman after your mission is complete. So, yes, it would be him and your boy.”
“And my daughter and wife?”
“I told you, your spy plan should have been thought of sooner. They both died within the last week.”
“What did you say?”
“Your wife and daughter are dead,” he said. “Your wife died four days ago, and your daughter gave up shortly thereafter. She passed two days ago, too sad after seeing her mother go. But we haven’t touched them. We stored them in the meat freezer room at the NKVD food barracks to preserve their bodies for you.”
I must have sat there for twenty seconds before what he’d said actually penetrated my inner ear, at which point, all of the blood in my body rushed to my feet, feeling as though it were spilling all over the floor. With each passing second, I felt myself sinking into this now vast pool of blood, then slowly drowning in it. I could not breathe. The visual of this Colonel Zorin before me grew blurry, my eyes watering, my heart beating as if I’d sprinted up a mountain, chill bumps covering my clammy skin. I tried to form a word but could not. I couldn’t even lift my hand to wipe at my tears. I was paralyzed.
As the seconds continued ticking by, I could see the image of Colonel Zorin mouthing something to me. But I couldn’t hear him. All I could hear was the sound of my arms splashing at the blood all around me. Then, as if the hand of God had reached deep into this pool and yanked me back up onto my chair, I took one big gasp, begging in air like a man who’d just been held underwater.
“Can you hear me, Perevodchik?” I finally heard Colonel Zorin saying.
I nodded and wiped the tears from my face.
“Come with me,” he said.
We both stood and I followed him outside into the cold night and across the way to another barracks, Osip remaining behind, standing guard on Zorin’s deck. I was floating behind Zorin, my footsteps not under my control, no feeling of my boots actually contacting the ground. I was moving forward, but some force beyond me was orchestrating it.
We entered the large barracks, and I realized we were in the camp hospital, beds full of sick zeks throughout, only a few nurses here to attend to what looked like a hundred men. We made our way to the back of the large barracks and entered a hallway, with several medical staff offices located along the sides. We finally reached the last room on the left and he opened the door.
Facing a dark room, he flipped on the lights and we stepped forward. The inside was quite cold. It appeared to be nothing more than a storage room—mops, buckets, brooms, and cleaning supplies having been shoved against the walls. In the middle of the room lay two wooden boxes, both the size of caskets. For some reason, I was expecting to see two people lying inside who were not Loretta and Ginger. I still had hope.
“I know,” said Zorin, “that you had asked to see your wife and daughter before going to Berlin. This is the hospital for male zeks, but I had your wife’s and daughter’s bodies hauled over here from the freezer room when you arrived.”
He approached both boxes and lifted the lids off. Inside one lay Loretta. Inside the other lay Ginger. The hair had been shaved off and their bodies looked stiff. They were so frail, so colorless, their lips parched and cracked.
“Their eyes were open,” said Zorin, “even after they took their last breaths, but I had the nurses close them.”
I stepped closer and looked down at them. Flashes of the guard who I’d killed and buried under the punishment isolator ran through my head. The same rage was boiling up in me, and I forced myself not to look over at Zorin, afraid I might kill him the same way. I tried to think of James and the life he’d have to live alone if I, too, were taken from him now.
More tears ran down my face as I stared at my lifeless sweethearts. Then the nightmare overtook me like a gust of wind. I looked up at the ceiling, closed my eyes, and screamed to the heavens. And I couldn’t stop. Two guards rushed in and took me by the arms. I didn’t fight them off, but continued crying at the top of my lungs while they escorted me out of the room and past the beds of zeks and busy nurses. I was absolutely inconsolable and the guards knew it.
“Put him on the bed at the end over there and administer the sedative!” said Zorin, who was walking just behind us.
The guards laid me down and two nurses approached, one holding a needle, the other, a cup of water. I was kicking and began repeatedly shouting, “MY LORETTA! MY GINGER!” But the guards were able to control my movements enough for one nurse to roll up my sleeve before the other injected me. As the drug began to calm me down, one nurse held my head up enough for the other to pour water into my mouth. By the time I had swallowed it all, light had turned to dark, and the nightmare had been temporarily put to sleep.
Eighteen days later, on December 15, 1938, I sat with James in our private barracks room and we ate lunch together with Osip watching our every move. We were finishing off our plates of baked salmon, boiled potatoes, and cabbage. Neither of us had found it easy to eat after learning of Loretta’s and Ginger’s deaths, but it was Osip’s job to make sure the plates didn’t leave the room until they were empty.
“There is something I need to tell you, Interpreter,” said Osip. “Colonel Zorin has instructed me to inform you that you will be leaving in two days for Leningrad. You weren’t supposed to leave until late December, but that has changed.”
Before Osip could say another word, Colonel Zorin entered the room carrying two brown briefcases. He looked down at James and me sitting in our chairs like we had stolen something. He always appeared angry, but this was an even more pronounced frown.
“The Kremlin has just notified me that you will be leaving in the morning, Interpreter,” said Zorin. “It had been changed to two days from now, but now it is even sooner. Tomorrow morning is also when your boy here will begin working in the mines.”
“Okay,” I said, no longer even able to summon up any words of resistance to these Soviet animals.
“Don’t think for a second, Interpreter, that your son is no longer a fucking zek,” said Zorin, setting the briefcases next to Osip. “The Kremlin may have ordered me to feed him well over the next year, but he will work like all the others while you are in Berlin.”
“Excuse me, Colonel Zorin,” I said, “but I have been asking for days that my son here get treatment for his breathing problem. James has told me that his brief visits to the hospital have only resulted in him receiving cough syrup, which is hardly considered treatment. He needs to see a proper doctor, not a nurse.”
“What did you say, black zek?” said Zorin, angrily.
“I said my son needs treatment. He is having trouble breathing, particularly at night. I would think the Kremlin would like to see him stay alive while I’m gone. He is their… you know… leverage after all.”