Again they all nodded.
“I’m sure you can understand that I am willing to do anything to get them out. I would rather be dead than live without them. And I can’t sit idly by while they die a slow death. How old is your son?”
“He is thirty-two,” said Zigfrid.
“And yet your daughters are so much younger,” I said.
“They were a surprise,” said Zigfrid. “My wife got pregnant at forty-two. We had already seen our son grow to be twenty-six years old at that point.”
I walked over to Xavier, unbuttoned his backpack, and removed a pen and file. I took a blank sheet of paper from it.
“Which neighbors are your closest friends?” I said.
“The Krols,” said Zigfrid. “They are downstairs in number three.”
“Good,” I said, setting the paper and pen on the coffee table in front of his wife. “I want you to write a letter to them explaining that your family has been invited to Leningrad to stay at your son’s new big house. Tell them in the letter that your son is very sick. Tell them that because you may be gone for several months, you would like for them to collect your mail for you. Tell them you received a telephone call early this morning and didn’t want to wake them, hence the reason for leaving the letter and mailbox key under their door. That’s all.”
Karina sniffled, nodded, and began to write, her hands shaking in the process.
“When you are finished writing that letter,” I said, “I want you all to go pack a suitcase. We will be taking you to a different location here in Riga. My plan is for you to be there no longer than two months. Don’t worry. You will be fed and taken care of. Meanwhile, I have to return to Berlin. You see… I have to send a briefcase to your son on May 1st. He’s expecting some spy information. But this briefcase will have no such thing inside. It will have letters and photographs and instructions, telling Ivan’s young assistant to meet me in Leningrad on May the 10th. When did your son first fall in love with Stalin?”
“He didn’t fall in love with Stalin,” said Zigfrid, his daughters still lightly crying. “He fell in love with Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution when he was a ten-year-old boy. He swore he would leave as soon as he was sixteen to live in Moscow and join the Red Army. And he did.”
“Well, this son of yours, Colonel Ivan Zorin, has shown himself to be ruthless. I am not going to belittle him any more than that in front of you, but you would not be proud of his actions. He has taken very much after Stalin.”
“Maybe he lost his way,” said Zigfrid, making a cross on his chest and looking upward.
“I first found out about your son while I was in a labor camp on the far northeast side of Russia. A good man named Commander Koskinen said he knew your son, this after he’d just told me where my wife and daughter were. He then proceeded to tell me that they might have gotten pregnant from one of the guards or commanders or zeks. With my head ringing, I asked him to tell me more about your son. Koskinen said he’d met him in 1933 at a Dalstroi training academy in Moscow. He also told me that your son was from Riga, Latvia. And right then and there I began to hatch this plan.”
With all of them having attentively listed to my story, I walked over to the front door and removed the camera from the leather bag. I handed it to Xavier. Then I walked over to the mother and picked up the written letter.
“Thank you, Karina,” I said, reading her Russian words. “When we get to the other location, I am going to need you to write a detailed letter to your son, explaining the terrible situation you four find yourselves in. You will lie and tell him that I almost killed your husband. You will lie and tell him that it is only a matter of time before I do the unthinkable to all of you. You will write about his childhood, telling him only things that you, his mother, could know. And you will mention each of my family member’s names, pleading with your son to do exactly as I say immediately. Understand?”
“Da!” said Karina.
“I need you all to scoot over and make room for me,” I said, waiting for them and then sitting next to Karina. “Luc over there has his pistol loaded and ready, so none of you should try anything stupid.”
I began taking the bullets out of my pistol and setting them on the coffee table.
“I want you to all look,” I said, holding up my empty gun. “This is only a pistol for show now. Xavier is going to take a few photographs of the five of us. Again, let me reiterate, I have no intentions of harming you. But I have to do everything I can to make your son believe I will. So, when we are finished with this group picture, I am going to sit with each one of you individually. I am going to hold this empty pistol next to your head. And Xavier is going to photograph it. I am sorry. But I have to put the fear of God in your son. Now, look at the camera.”
25
MR4 Labor Camp - Kirovsk, Russia
May 11, 1939
COLONEL ZORIN’S YOUNG ASSISTANT, OSIP, HAD PICKED ME UP AT the Leningrad station right on time. From there we had gotten into a white Ford Coupe. And now, with the long drive behind us, we approached MR4 Labor Camp once again.
Seven days earlier, Stalin had actually replaced Maxim Litvinov with Vyacheslav Molotov. Bobby had rushed to tell me, reiterating that it had been done for the very reason we’d suspected, Litvinov being Jewish. Now it was surely only a matter of time before Germany and the Soviet Union had their important sit-down. My work had paid off, and in Stalin’s eyes, this single piece of information had probably warranted my having been used.
Osip drove me up to Zorin’s barracks and the two of us entered. We found him sitting at his desk doing nothing but staring down as if he were daydreaming. Another young guard was sitting in a chair against the wall to his left.
“The Interpreter is here,” said Osip.
“Come and sit,” said Zorin. “Both of you.”
“How is my family?” I bravely asked as we sat.
“How is mine?” he said, his Russian words filled with anger, his jaw clinched.
“They are fine, Colonel Zorin. So far!”
“I will just say that yours haven’t died yet,” he said.
“And they better not, Colonel.”
“Your son is in the hospital as we speak. He is having the same problems with his lungs.”
“I figured as much,” I said.
“They are giving him lots of strong syrup.”
“Keeping him knocked out is not treatment,” I said.
His look suggested he wanted to stand and slap me.
“This is my other assistant, Roman,” said Zorin, looking to his left at the young guard. “Only myself, Osip, and Roman are privy to this sensitive undertaking.”
“What would the Kremlin do if they knew you were being blackmailed?” I said.
“They can’t know,” he said.
“They’d execute you and you know it.”
“Let me worry about that.”
I looked at Osip and Roman. “And you trust these two?”
“They have been with me since they were sixteen. I trust them more than anyone on this planet. They understand my predicament. Besides, you filthy blacks aren’t worth losing my precious family over.”
“Just know that if they try anything stupid, hurt any of us, my men in Riga will even the score. They are far less compassionate than I. More like you!”
He shuffled around in his chair, uncomfortable with the pinch he was in.
“Your instructions were very clear,” he said. “I immediately cabled the Kremlin when I received your last briefcase and told them that you were demanding to return to MR4 in order to see your sick son before continuing to spy in Berlin. Of course they cabled back and said it was okay.”