Ramsey handed back the piece of paper and said in barely a whisper: "It's not a poem, you blessed idiot. It's a message in code."
Whitlock studied it again. "How do you figure?"
"Icarus was a pilot of sorts who escaped the island of Crete," Ramsey explained in hushed tones. In a Gulag barracks, you never knew who was pretending not to know English, but being paid to listen to the American prisoners. "I didn't go to Harvard like some people here, but I know that much. Well, he escaped for a little while. He did crash into the sea.”
“How is it in code?”
“The first word of each line.”
Once he saw that, it seemed so obvious that he wondered how he had overlooked it in the first place. Whitlock strung the first words together: Escape gate three midnight tomorrow.
Gate three was the one closest to the barracks. He didn't need Ramsey's help to figure out the line about the scarf. The muse in the poem was Inna. Inna's scarf. It was to be the signal.
"Pack your bags, Ramsey. This is our last night in the Gulag Hotel."
Then he crumpled up the paper and fed it into the fire, making certain that this time, only ashes remained.
CHAPTER 19
Inna’s heart pounded as she approached Gate 3. She wore a cheap wristwatch made by Pobeda — a Soviet attempt at a fashion label of sorts — that showed that it was getting close to midnight. Harry would be expecting her signal. The team of Americans would be in place beyond the Gulag walls.
Everything now depended upon her.
In her ears, her pounding heart now sounded loud as a kettle drum; she was sure that someone else must hear it. She forced herself to walk calmly.
Since her last encounter with Barkov, Inna had taken to carrying a tiny pistol tucked into her boot. Her father had brought the .22 caliber pistol from America all those years ago, and the five shots left in the magazine were the only ammunition she had for it. She felt the weight of it there now, reassuring her.
Although she was afraid, it surprised her how easily she had learned to live this deceptive life. In Stalinist Russia, one had to be good at hiding one's true thoughts and actions. Then again, secretly planning the escape of an American prisoner from the Gulag was an entirely different level of deception.
In her pockets were the tools of her new-found trade, starting with a flask of vodka to help distract Dmitri, the young guard at the gate. The poor boy was drunk most of the time. Who could blame him in this place? He had gotten used to her coming and going at all hours of the night to help the sick people of the village. They had even flirted in the meaningless way that young people did. He was a young man — of course he was interested in her. Many of the guards coerced female inmates into being their “prison wives,” but Dmitri was still too young and naive for that.
Her other pocket hid a bright red scarf, which she would tie to the gate once she had dealt with Dmitri.
But as she approached the gate, she sensed that something was wrong. The man there did not have Dmitri's tall, slim build. As usual, a single bare bulb struggled to light the darkness around the gate. The gate itself was somewhat larger than a normal-sized door so that two men could easily pass through it, shoulder to shoulder. The guard stood just outside the circle of light. As she approached, however, the guard stepped closer, and she saw at once that it was not Dmitri.
Her heart, thrumming now like a hummingbird, skipped several beats in panic. She managed to keep her face carefully blank.
"Where is Dmitri?" she demanded, a bit too quickly.
The guard shrugged. He was an older man that Inna recognized, but had never talked to before. She didn't know a thing about him — she wasn't about to risk her plan by attempting to flirt with him, only to be turned down, or worse yet, raise his suspicions.
Her thoughts went to the pistol in her boot. Maybe she could wrap it in her scarf to muffle and gunshot, and then shoot the guard.
"They put Dmitri in the guard tower,” the guard said. “The poor fool who was normally there was sick — vodka flu, most likely. Barkov will skin him with that whip of his if he finds out that he was drunk." Then a thought came to the older guard and he raised his eyebrows. "So, you were hoping for Dmitri? You’re the girl from the infirmary. Lucky boy, though he wouldn't know what to do with you, ha, ha. The poor dumb devstvennitsa. If you want a man with some experience, come see me."
Despite what the guard said, she doubted that Dmitri was still a virgin. Inna looked away demurely and lowered her eyes, not wanting to encourage his flirting, but not wanting to make him angry. There was still time to shoot him, but she could not bring herself to reach for the pistol. “Mmm, I will keep that in mind. Listen, I am going into the village to help Anna Korkovna. Her child is due any day now and she has been having—"
"Go ahead then," the guard said, waving toward the village. He was not really interested in discussing the particulars of childbirth. "Watch out for wolves, though. They have been seen prowling around the village at night. If you see any, give me a shout.”
"Yes, I will."
The guard closed the gate behind her.
She glanced up at the watchtower, but it was too dark to see Dmitri up there. She hoped Harry didn't make a run for it tonight without seeing her signal. If he did, it might very well be Dmitri who would shoot him with the machine gun.
Inna made her way along the path toward the village. Halfway there, a shadow appeared from the darkness. She gasped, remembering the guard’s warning about wolves.
"It's me." She recognized the voice as Cole's. She was still startled — he had moved with utter silence. "Where's Whitlock?"
"There has been a problem," she said.
Midnight came and went in the barracks. The barracks did not have proper glass-covered windows, but only wooden slats over the opening to let in fresh air. Whitlock didn't want to be too obvious about it, but from time to time he peered out the ventilation slats toward the dimly lit gate just beyond the barracks.
No sign of a scarf.
"What do you think?" he whispered to Ramsey. "Should we make a run for it?"
"Not unless you want to provide these Ivans with some target practice. Inna is going to tie her scarf to the gate, as she put it so poetically. Until we see that scarf, I think we should sit tight."
After a while, Whitlock's eyes grew heavier. No one in the barracks owned a watch, but it must have been approaching two or three in the morning. Still, Inna had given them no sign. Exhausted from the day's labors on the railroad, Whitlock could no longer stop sleep anymore than a canoe can keep itself from being swept over Niagara Falls.
"Inna," he mumbled as he drifted off. "Inna…"
The American team was forced to wait another day in the secret room within Vaska's house. The four men could barely move without bumping into one another in the dark space.The room was intended to hide smuggled goods, not four men. In particular, whenever Samson fidgeted he jostled the others, making Cole feel like he was trapped in a milking stall with a clumsy cow. They did have flashlights, but there was no point in wasting their limited supply of batteries. Instead, they made themselves as comfortable as they could and waited out the day by dozing shoulder to shoulder in the confined space.
"This is getting old," Vaccaro muttered.
"Sshh."
In building the secret room, Vaska had carefully sealed all the gaps between the planks, but they were thin all the same, most of the wood having been salvaged from packing crates. Beyond the walls, they could hear the business of the village taking place: old men and women conversing in Russian, children at play, laughter, the squeak of a passing cart.