“Um… no,” He responded, trying to push himself up with his hands. He felt his body ache at this new demand, but he grimaced through the pain and sat up to look into the faces of his captors. The three young men all had sheepish looks on their faces, almost as if they were embarrassed. It was something in their manner. He couldn’t decide exactly what it was.
They were dressed in standard prison garb, and their faces looked wan and thin. They looked hungry and they smelled of sweat, fear, and elation. The lack of depth perception caused him to see them only partially. He wasn’t sure how to size them up. They looked almost familiar.
“So… ok, good,” one of the faces said in a friendly and almost apologetic way, nodding toward him. He was the short, stocky one with close-cropped hair, black. He had the look of a bulldog. He was small, but muscular, with a barrel chest, despite the evident loss in weight he had suffered. His voice was surprisingly high for a man, soft-spoken, gentle, and airy. After a pause, he continued, “good that you can communicate and that you’re not dead.”
Clay looked up into the young men’s faces and then, unconsciously, his hand rose up to his lips and examined them to make sure they were not badly split or swollen. He didn’t think that he’d lost any teeth. For the most part, his mouth was fine, but as his hand withdrew it migrated to the lump above and to the right of his right eye, and he noticed the eye was closed and that the lump stuck out far enough that the skin over it seemed foreign and unconnected to his face.
“You broke my face,” Clay said, trying to open his right eye unsuccessfully.
The bulldog shook his head, sadly. “Well… technically it wasn’t us who broke your face,” he indicated with his hand to the three young men in the room. “In fact, we tried to warn you off, or at least I did, when I saw you looking down the hallway.” That was why the face looked familiar, Clay thought.
“You could have tried holding up a sign that said ‘get out of here now’ or ‘run for your life’,” Clay said, with not a little bit of hostility in his voice. He looked down at his feet and noticed that the bridge of his foot had a large, blue welt.
“We’d have gotten it far worse than you did if we tried to alert you in any way,” Bulldog said. “But I did try to warn you as best as I could under the situation.”
“And what was the situation?” Clay asked.
“Well, no one in that cell block has eaten anything in a week, and we were on half-rations before that,” Bulldog replied, matter-of-factly. “The leaders in there decided, when they saw you walk in, that maybe you’d be of some help, but instead you took pictures. After they couldn’t get you to help them, they decided to do just what they did. To be truthful, I didn’t think they’d do it. But, as you can imagine, they aren’t particularly… pleased… with your participation or help. Frankly,” he said almost sorrowfully, “I’m surprised you aren’t dead.”
Clay hung his head down and felt the tightness in his neck. “I was going to show those pictures to somebody in order to get you help, you know? I came in out of the blizzard half dead myself, and was trying to figure out how best to handle it.”
“Ahh, yes. Well, they couldn’t have known that, I guess.”
It occurred to Clay that these men—at least Bulldog here—spoke absolutely perfect English. Not a trace of any accent. Not from Russia, not even from New England. Not from anywhere. He spoke perfect accentless English.
“Anybody want to tell me what’s going on here?” Clay asked, painfully arching his back and testing to see if he felt any serious organ or bone injuries. He was pretty sure he had a couple of broken ribs. Couldn’t know if there was bleeding somewhere on the inside.
“Well,” Bulldog said, hanging his head and shuffling his right foot against the concrete floor and pushing on the mattress, “I just told you. It seems you got caught up in a riot.”
“That part I had figured… ummm…. what is your name?” Clay asked.
“I am Mikhail. This tall one here is Vladimir Nikitich and the other one by the door is Sergei Dimitrivich. You can just call us Mikail, Vladimir, and Sergei.”
“Your English is impeccable,” Clay responded, icily.
“Why wouldn’t it be? We’re Americans,” Mikail shot back.
“None of this makes any sense,” Clay said, continuing to feel with his hands down the length of his legs, engaging in an extended medical self-examination as they talked.
“You don’t know the half of it, Comrade,” Sergei sneered, looking toward Vladimir and laughing.
“Listen,” Mikail interjected, “what’s your name, anyway?”
Clay looked up to Mikail, straining to see anything—any light at all—through his swollen right eye.
“Clay.”
“Well, listen, Clay. For the three of us, I am really sorry that this has happened to you. I know that you may not believe that, or you may not care, but it is true. I really didn’t want any innocents to get caught up in what’s going down here right now.” As he talked, his right hand found his own rib cage, and he seemed to unconsciously press against his ribs one at a time as though he was counting them. “You’re in a bad spot. So are we. None of us asked for this.”
“Ok, so you’re sorry,” Clay said, looking Mikail in the face with his one good eye. “So, why don’t you guys let me out of here and I’ll just be on my way.”
Mikail shook his head. “That’s impossible, for two reasons. One,” he held up one finger to illustrate his point, “is that there is one hellacious blizzard going on out there. No one could go anywhere even if they wanted to. Two,” another finger popped up, “is because we’re not in charge. In fact, we’re probably the worst allies you could have right now… except, of course, for all of the other maniacs in this place.”
Mikail turned and began to tap the wall with his hand, then looked back at Clay with a worried look on his face.
“It’s not possible for you to understand the politics of this place, Clay. You don’t even know where you are. But,” he indicated ‘out’ by making a circular motion with his hand, “the rest of these guys are real criminals. Some of them are the worst kind of criminals. Whereas we,” he indicated the three there in the room with Clay, “are political criminals. They think we’re spies. Listen.” He stopped and walked toward the cell door, looking out for a moment before poking his head back in. “Forget all of that. None of that is going to make sense to you. I just say all of that to tell you that we are not your enemies, and those guys out there are not your friends. They’re rifling through the place as we speak, looking for food. That’s all they can deal with right now. Todd is dead, and if they find any other guards around here, those guys will be dead, too. I’m thinking that the back to back storms basically doomed the place. I’m not sure that any of the other guards even made it out here after the Hurricane. I’m thinking Todd’s been manning this place by himself. So, when no food showed up and things ran low in the cafeteria, he just decided that no one would care if we starved to death.”
Clay stared for a moment, trying to take it all in. Mikail looked at Sergei and Vladimir, “Well, I think that’s about it, Clay. An unnecessary chain of unfortunate events and now, shall we say, things have gone a little haywire.”
Clay just looked at Mikail, not sure what to think about anything he was hearing. He slipped off the bunk onto the mattress on the ground and sat there, pulling his legs up to his chest. Mikail crouched down, looking at Clay face to face. He whispered conspiratorially, “The new bosses, those thugs out there, they sent us in here because we speak good English, which is exactly why they hate us. That is why they suspect us of being spies. They don’t trust us. But they use us, you see, because our English is good. We’re here to find out if you can help them. To find out what you know.”