Tatiana and Alexander (58 page)

“I must see the commandant!” he yelled. “I must see him now! It’s a matter of great urgency, believe me, great urgency!”

“Easy now,” the guard said calmly, pushing him away. “What’s so urgent all of a sudden?”

“One of their prisoners is about to escape! Tell Commandant Brestov that Captain Alexander Belov is about to escape!”

“What are you talking about? Belov? The one who is shackled in isolation until the trains come?”

“I’m telling you, one of the Red Cross nurses is not an American. She is his Russian wife, and she is about to help him escape!”

Tatiana drove for a minute, two, three. Time and distance suddenly stood still. She could not drive fast enough, nor get enough time to pass before they needed to make their move. She couldn’t remember if there was a checkpoint at Oranienburg, and didn’t know if she should chance it. Could Special Camp communicate with the checkpoint? Was there a phone? What if someone came into the cell block? What if Karolich came to and started screaming? What if Perdov fell off his chair and became revived by the fall? What if, what if, what if.

“Tania, we’re talking to you, did you hear us?” Martin said.

“No, sorry, what?”

They reached Oranienburg and made a left onto a paved road. As soon as the dim lights of the small town were behind them, Tatiana rapped her knuckles twice on the cabin. Penny and Martin were talking and didn’t notice.

Ouspensky was brought before Brestov at 8:15.

“What is this all about?” Brestov said, inebriated and smiling. “Who did you say is escaping?”

“Alexander Belov, sir. The Red Cross nurse is his wife.”

“What Red Cross nurse?”

“The black-haired one.”

“I thought they both had…dark hair.”

Ouspensky through his teeth said, “The small one.”

“They were both small.”

“The thin one! She was a Russian nurse by the name of Tatiana Metanova, and she escaped from the Soviet Union some years back.”

“And you’re saying she came back for him?”

“Yes.”

“How did she know he was here?”

“I don’t know that, but sir…”

Brestov laughed and shrugged. “Where is Karolich?” he said to the guard at the door of his quarters. “Ask him to join us, will you?”

“I haven’t seen him, sir.”

“Well, find him.”

“Why don’t you talk to the nurse?” said Ouspensky. “She’s his wife, why don’t you talk to her?”

“I’ll have to do that tomorrow, prisoner.”

“Tomorrow will be too late!” Ouspensky nearly screeched.

“Well, tonight is not possible. They’ve left.”

He gasped. “Left where?”

“Back to Berlin. Ran out of supplies. They’ll be back tomorrow. We’ll talk to her then.”

Ouspensky took one step back. “Sir, she won’t be coming back tomorrow.”

“Of course she will.”

“Yes. But though I am not a betting man, I will bet that Alexander Belov is no longer in your custody.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brestov said, rubbing his head. “Belov is in the camp brig. We’ll wait for Karolich and then look into it.”

“Call the next checkpoint on the road,” said Ouspensky. “Have them at least stop the truck until you know Belov is still here.”

“I’m not doing anything until my lieutenant gets here.” When Brestov tried to get up, he sloppily knocked a number of papers off his table. “Besides, I liked that nurse. I don’t think she is capable of what you say.”

“Just check on your prisoner,” said Ouspensky. “But if I am right, perhaps the commandant could do me a small service and speak to Moscow on my behalf? I’m supposed to be getting shipped out tomorrow. Perhaps a commutation of some sort?” He smiled thinly and beseechingly.

“Let’s stop counting the eggs until they’ve hatched, shall we?”

They waited for Karolich.

There was the sound of doors banging hard against the sides of the truck and then a loud thump as if something fell or was run over.

“Geez, what was that?” exclaimed Penny. “Tania, oh my, did you run over a dog?”

They stopped the jeep and all got out onto the empty road and hurried to the back. The doors of the jeep were swinging open. They stared at them mutely.

“What in heaven’s name happened here?” Penny asked.

“I think I must have forgotten to lock them all the way,” replied Tatiana. She looked deeper inside the truck. Her backpack was gone.

“Yes, but what did you run over?”

“Nothing.”

“Then what was that noise?”

She turned around. A bulky form was lying some twenty meters back. She ran to it.

It was her backpack.

“Your backpack fell out?”

“We must have hit a nasty bump in the road. Look, everything is all right.”

“Well, let’s get back in,” said Martin. “No use standing idly on a dark highway.”

“No, you’re right,” said Tatiana, and then she rushed over to the side of the road and retched, pretending to throw up. They gave her a flask of water to clean her mouth, and stood solicitously by her side. She said, “I’m sorry, I guess I’m not feeling as well as I thought. Martin, would you mind driving the rest of the way? I think I’ll lie down in the back.”

“Of course, of course.”

They helped her in. Before Martin closed the doors, Tatiana looked at them fondly. “Thank you both. For everything.”

“Not to worry,” said Penny.

Martin, being most careful, locked the doors from the outside. Before he was in the driver’s seat, Tatiana opened the hatch to the litter compartment. Alexander was looking at her. The truck pulled away from the roadside.

Martin was driving cautiously—at some thirty kilometers per hour. She knew he wasn’t comfortable driving on foreign roads in the dark.

Tatiana heard the muffled talking in the cabin through the small pane of glass. Alexander got out of the compartment and pulled out Karolich’s sub-machine gun.

“You should have left the backpack on the road,” he whispered, nearly inaudibly. “Now we’ll have to throw it and it will be harder to find.”

“We’ll find it.”

“We should leave it.”

“All our things are in it. We also have to take this.” She pointed to the smaller canvas bag and the ruck.

“No. We will have to make do with one backpack.”

“This one has pistols, grenades, a revolver, and rounds for all your weapons.”

“Ah.”

He stood on his tiptoes, reaching for the latch that kept closed the hatch in the roof.

“Let me get out first,” he whispered, “you’ll hand me our things, I’ll throw them down, and then I’ll pull you up.”

Once he threw down the backpack, her nurse’s bag, the weapons, and pulled her up onto the roof of a moving vehicle from which they were going to jump down a black slope, Tatiana nearly reconsidered. The slope looked like a bottomless pit, but in less than seventy minutes of comfortable driving they could be in the French sector.

The wind was ripping through her hair and she could hardly hear him, but she heard him well enough. “We
have
to jump, Tania. Push off as hard as you can, land in the grass. I go first.”

Alexander didn’t even take a breath or count or look back. He just sprang off from a crouching position and jumped, the bag of ammo on his back. He was down the slope and she couldn’t see him.

Holding her breath and tensing her body, she crouched and jumped. She fell awkwardly and hard. But she fell onto the grassy slope, into bushes, and rolled down underbrush, not concrete. Because it had rained, the ground was soft and muddy. Clambering up to the side of the road, she saw that the truck had not stopped. It continued moving down the highway. Something hurt. She didn’t have time to think what it was or where. She began to run back, every once in a while stopping and whispering, “Alexander? Alexander?”

It was 8:30. Karolich was nowhere to be found. The guard who reported this was unconcerned, and so was Brestov. He asked that Ouspensky be taken back to his barracks. “We’ll check this out tomorrow morning, Comrade Ouspensky.”

“Couldn’t you just check Belov’s cell, Commandant? Just to make sure. It will take two minutes. We can check the jail as you’re walking me back to barracks.”

Brestov shrugged. “Go ahead, Corporal, walk by the jail, if you want.”

Ouspensky and the guard walked back to the gatehouse.

“Have
they
seen Karolich?” asked Ouspensky, motioning to the sentries.

“Yes, they said they saw him and a Red Cross nurse get into the jeep and head for the commandant’s house about forty-five minutes ago.”

“But he’s not at the commandant’s house.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

The guard pushed open the door of the jail and walked inside the cell block corridor. Perdov was sprawled out on the floor, unconscious. He reeked of vodka. “Oh, just great,” muttered the guard. “Some fucking sentry you are, Perdov.” He grabbed the master key from him and unlocked cell number seven.

Ouspensky and the guard stood in the doorway. The man on the straw was chained and was wearing a bloodied white shirt and dark slacks. His head was tilted back. He wasn’t moving.

“Well?” said the guard. “Satisfied?”

Ouspensky walked down to the prisoner and looked into his face. Then he turned around. “I’m satisfied,” he said. “Come look for yourself.”

The guard stepped down. Dumbly he stared into the open eyes of Ivan Karolich.

“Tania!” She heard his voice.

“Where are you?”

“Down here, come.”

She ran down the slope to him. He was waiting for her by the trees. He had already found the weapons and her backpacks. In his hands he was holding the nurse’s bag. She wanted to come closer, but he was holding too many bags.

“Will you be all right carrying the smaller bag with the ammo and your nurse’s bag?” he asked. “I’ll take the rest of the ammo, the weapons and the large backpack. What did you put in here, rocks?”

“Food. Wait. I have clothes for you. Once you change into them, it’ll be lighter.”

“I’ll wash first, then change.” Alexander led the way, carrying the flashlight.

“What river is this?” he asked.

“Havel.”

“How far south does it run?”

“To Berlin, but it runs along the highway nearly the whole way.”

“Ah, too bad.” He undressed. “I’ll be happy to get out of the uniform of that motherfucking bastard. And just a lieutenant, too. Do you have any soap? Did you get hurt?”

“No,” she said, her head slightly leaden. She handed him the soap.

He walked naked into the water. Sitting down on the embankment she shined the light on him.

“Turn it off,” he said. “You can see light for miles in the dark.”

She wanted to look at him. But she turned it off and listened to him instead, splashing, lathering, diving under.

She was facing his dark form in the river. He was facing her and the incline to the road. Suddenly he stopped moving. All she heard was his breath.

“Tatiana,” he said.

She didn’t have to be told anything. When she turned around and looked up, she already knew what she would be seeing. Bright lights, moving down the highway, engine noise getting closer, the sound of men shouting, and dogs barking.

“How could they have found out so quickly?” she whispered.

Quickly she handed him his clothes. He got dressed. He kept Karolich’s boots, because otherwise he would have been barefoot. (“I can’t think of everything,” she said.)

“We have to lose our scent. The Alsatians will find us. The Soviets are really enjoying the fruits of Hitler’s superior military machine.”

“But they passed us.”

“Yes. Where do you think they’re going?” he asked.

“To the truck.”

“Are we in that truck?”

Ah. “But where can we go?” she asked. “We’re stuck between the river and the road. They’ll smell us here for sure.”

“Yes, the dogs will find us. It’s a windy night.”

“Let’s cross the river and head west.”

“Where’s the nearest river crossing?”

“Forget about a crossing” she replied. “There may be one five miles down. Let’s just cross here. We’ll swim across and then move west, away from Berlin, before we turn south and return back east into the British sector.”

“Where’s the American sector?”

“All the way south. But all four zones in the city have open borders, so the sooner we leave Soviet-occupied territory the better.”

“You think?” he said. “The river is not that deep, maybe eight feet.”

She was already undressed down to her vest and underwear. “That’s fine. We’ll swim to the other side. Let’s go.”

“We can’t swim,” he said. “If our weapons and ammo get wet, they’ll be no good to us until they dry.” They stood for a moment, their eyes on each other. “Get on top of my back,” Alexander said, quickly taking off the clothes he had just put on. “I’ll swim across and you hold all our things on your back.”

Tatiana climbed onto Alexander. The feel of his naked back against her vest produced such a peculiar aching inside, such a sense of familiarity and loss—and not temporal but permanent loss—that she couldn’t help it, she groaned, and he misunderstood and said, “Hey,” and she, to keep from breaking down, bit down on the strap of the backpack.

With the packs and the machine gun on her back, and her on his back, Alexander waded into the river and began to swim. The river was less than half the size of the Kama. Did he notice? She couldn’t say for sure, but she knew one thing for sure—he was having trouble. She could almost feel him sinking. He kept upright, but he wasn’t able to speak. All she heard was his bubbling breath, in from the air, out into the water. When they reached the other side, he lay for a minute on the ground, panting. She sat down next to him, pulling off the backpacks. “You did great,” she said. “Is it hard for you?”

“Not hard, just…” He jumped up. “Six months in a cell will do that to you.”

“Well, let’s rest. Lie back down.” She touched his leg, looking up at him.

“Do you have a towel? Hurry.”

She had one small towel. “Tania,” he said, drying off quickly. “You’re not thinking this through. What do you think that posse is going to do five miles down the road when they stop the Red Cross truck and when your friends open the back and find you not there? Do you think everybody will just go on as before? Your friends, being unprepared and not knowing they have anything to hide, will say, ‘Oh, but we just saw her right down the road.’ And they will lead the guards to the spot from where we just swam. They’ll get an armored vehicle across to here in forty seconds. Ten men, two dogs, ten machine guns, ten pistols. Now—can we go, please? Let’s put as much distance between us and them as possible. Do you have a compass, a map?”