Pyotr nodded back at Vasily. “Ok. If that’s your decision. Do not be deceived though. If it comes to the point that I think you’re dead, I’m gone.”
Vasily nodded and wondered when such a moment might come.
Together they made plans, and then Pyotr took Vasily down into the basement under the house. To be accurate, it wasn’t really a basement, but more of a root cellar that Lev and Pyotr had dug out by hand, many years ago.
Pyotr showed him that along the west wall, which had been concreted using trowels and coated with some kind of plaster or whitewash, there was a large, antique bureau that, upon very close examination, seemed to be attached to the wall. Pyotr pulled out the drawers of the bureau—all six of them—and then removed the wooden uprights and separators. As he worked, the dismantling of the bureau revealed an open space behind the wall. The entire piece of furniture was just an elaborate covering to a narrow entrance that led straight down into a tunnel.
Vasily stared, dumbfounded. Pyotr explained that the tunnel had been dug painstakingly over many years, and that it had remained a secret precisely because it had been known to no one. “Do you understand the significance of that statement?” he asked. “Uncle and I were the only ones who knew about it. The dirt was removed a bucket at a time, hauled up the stairs, and dumped into the multitude of steps and raised gardens and landscaping that surround this house. Uncle Lev had the idea, believing gardens were the perfect hiding place for dirt. Make no mistake though, Vasily. We didn’t even let our left hands know what our right hands were doing. And we told no one else about this. You need to know that the moment you ask others to come here, the secret will be out and we will have a very short time to act.”
Vasily pictured the gardens he’d just walked through as he climbed the stone walkway to the door, their boxed shapes and raised concentric circles now formed over with snow drifts and rounded to make it seem as if the house sat on a hill. He considered the truth in what Pyotr was telling him. Even if he remained intentionally blurry about the details when asking others to leave with them, it would not take long for them to figure out the truth. He nodded.
“The tunnel leads under the west perimeter wire and then comes up in a small copse of trees only meters outside the fence. From there it’s a couple of miles straight through the forest to the old water treatment plant,” Pyotr explained. He smiled at the young man’s amazement.
A cold wind whooshed through the tunnel and hit the two men in the face. It sounded like a mechanical nothing, a low audial hum, an ocean crashing endlessly upon a gasping needy shore.
Vasily and the older man stood in the cold and listened. The waves on the other side sounded like freedom.
Standing in the sparsely drawn cellar, Vasily remembered the backpack that he’d brought with him, and he ran back upstairs to retrieve it where he’d dropped it near the chair by the fire.
Grabbing the pack and an extra candle he found on the table, he returned to the tiny subterranean room and placed the pack down on the floor. He told the older man how he’d come into possession of the pack, and that it was supposed to have useful items, but that he did not yet know its contents.
As he kneeled to open the pack, he thought of the man who’d given it to him, the one called Clay, and he remembered the fear behind Clay’s eyes when he’d first met him, but how, when he saw him last in the prison cell, ready to escape, those eyes had become peaceful and resolved, as if something important had been settled in the man’s soul.
“This was given to me by a man who loved your uncle,” Vasily said.
Even as he said the words, they surprised him a little, but he remembered the way that Clay and Volkhov were talking together in the cell when he’d entered as their keeper. Although the two men had not known one another long, Vasily knew that his own words were true… Clay had loved Lev Volkhov as one loves his own flesh and blood. He knelt in the darkness of the cellar and turned the pack on its side, all the while thinking how it was all that was left of the man who had made such an impression on him.
Vasily and Pyotr opened the backpack and carefully examined what was in it, cataloging the items they found, and talking about the things they would still need. Pyotr removed a camera and a radio. If Volkhov was right that an EMP would be coming soon, these items would need to be protected from the pulse. Pyotr put both electronic items into an ammo can and left them on the bureau by the tunnel so that they could take them when it was time to leave.
They looked at the other items, including a knife, a few books, some clothes, a small blue box, a fishing kit, some blankets, and sundry other things. Vasily wondered at these personal effects, just as one does when finding some item that has been used by another life — maybe in another historical era. He felt like an archeologist, or anthropologist, searching through the lost tools of another culture. It felt peculiar, rifling through someone else’s property so soon after their owner had died. Vasily remembered something Clay told him in the prison cell before they’d attempted their breakout. He’d said that Vasily was the best spy in a whole town of spies. That was a kindness that had not been offered by many of the townsfolk—his own people. Warwickians had generally treated him like an idiot because he had not impressed them in the ways that they had demanded. It had taken this stranger to see his potential. He smiled and went back to his work.
After a short discussion, they agreed that Pyotr would continue to sort the items and work on their preparedness, while Vasily would return to the gym. The older man said that he would busy himself devising plans for escape and making sure the tunnel was secured and cleared and ready to be used. They could not know how many people might be willing to leave with them. The more that decided to come, the more difficult would be their escape.
In order to prepare for all contingencies, Pyotr said that he would put together some “go bags”—that’s what he called them. These consisted, he explained, of packs with some food, water, and other needful supplies in them, ready to take with you in case of emergency.
When he was ready to walk back to the gym, Vasily thanked Pyotr for waiting, and told him again how sorry he was about Lev.
“Perhaps,” Vasily said, “I can find out more about what happened.”
“Perhaps,” was all that Pyotr could say in response.
“I’ll be back, Pyotr.”
“I hope you will, Vasily.”
“I have to do this.”
“I know.”
They shook hands, and Pyotr promised to pray for Vasily, and with that, they headed back upstairs.
Vasily left Pyotr’s house, and as he walked, an omnipresent darkness seemed to sit upon him. It was brooding and heavy like the weight of ages. He was terrified and sad and angry all at the same time. He felt his rapid heartbeat in his throat, and he had the beginnings of a headache from the stress. The pain lay just behind the eyes and radiated outward to his temples. He felt as if he might be walking toward his own death, but then that thought was overwhelmed by his anger at what had happened to Lev and Clay, and what the gang had done to his town. He felt a sudden surge of adrenaline and a desire to fight. His emotions shifted with each step he took toward the gymnasium. Now he was curious and hopeful. Now he was angry. Now he was overcome by the terror of facing Mikail and Vladimir and Sergei and those Spetznaz troops and their machine guns.
He kept walking forward, because that is what he had to do, resolving to do what was before him despite his feelings. Heroism is sometimes an accident of circumstance more than it is a product of design.