He gave his name as Titus Waal. He was a spidery man with a bony face and deep-set, serious eyes. He sat down on the park bench beside Victor and his Fanta bottle — exactly as Koos van der Laan had done at the previous meeting.
“I was surprised to receive your call,” said Victor.
“I need your help,” Titus said.
“Myhelp?” Victor exclaimed.
“It’s about Katherine Sears.”
“What about her?” Victor asked anxiously.
“She’s in trouble.”
“I know. I readIzvestiya. ”
“You don’t know howmuch trouble. Someone has tried to kill her — twice — and she only narrowly escaped. She can’t hold out for long.”
“How do you know this?”
“She’s in regular telephone contact with an American diplomat. Her father has been working to get the Soviets to waive her arrest warrant, but he has hit a stone wall. Katherine can’t be helped from the outside. She needs someoneinside. ”
Victor frowned. “How do I know this isn’t a trap? The Dutch Embassy thinks I’m cooperating with the KGB.”
“I’m not with the Dutch Embassy.”
“What!”
Titus gazed anxiously into the forest. “Listen carefully, because we don’t have a lot of time. Last year, after you contacted Katherine in Helsinki, she came to me for help in finding out what happened to your brother. I told her you would never have wanted her to get personally involved. Your message that day in Stockmann’s department store, the plea for help you embedded in friendly chatter, was intended for your old colleague Vladimir Ryzhkov.”
“That’s right!”
“But you know Katherine — she insisted. I told her it was a long shot, but I put her in touch with all the usual human-rights groups — Helsinki Watch, Amnesty International, the Red Cross and others — including Soviet Psychiatry Watch. When Pavel Danilov sent a special action request to Amsterdam saying he had located your brother, no one was more surprised than me. But Pavel was terrified because of your family name, and Koos van der Laan considered it too dangerous to try to make contact. I convinced him that Katherine could be trusted, and he agreed to reveal Pavel’s contact code name, “Sigmund,” only if Katherine herself went in. I became her coach for the mission, and a pretty poor coach I turned out to be. This is all my fault.”
Titus looked miserable.
“You mean you’re here as a private citizen?” Victor asked, astounded. “You don’t have diplomatic immunity?”
Titus nodded.
Victor grimaced. “But if you’re not a diplomat, then how did you get the code word, ‘Yuri Nikolayevich’?”
“From Koos.”
“Why would he give it to you? He thinks I’m a spy.”
“I convinced him you are not.”
“How did you do that?”
Titus looked hard at Victor. “Katherine showed me the ring, Victor.”
Victor stiffened. Katherine wouldn’t have told anyone but a true confidant about that. “Give me the name of the American diplomat. I’ll call him.”
“His name is Cameron Abbott. He has a secure telephone line, just make sure you call from someplace safe.”
“Understood.”
Titus gave Victor the number.
“Katherine’s an amazing woman,” said Titus.
Victor nodded slowly.
Titus took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Victor.
Victor unfolded it and read. On the paper were the names of six special psychiatric hospitals scattered throughout the U.S.S.R.
“What’s this?” Victor asked.
“It’s the list you asked Koos for.”
Victor gaped at it. This was the list of asylums mentioned in Pavel Danilov’s final report to Soviet Psychiatry Watch! If Victor’s theory was right, Anton was in one of these six asylums.
Victor looked up. “How . . .”
Titus smiled grimly. “If Koos seems like a bastard, it’s because he’s a soldier in a war. In truth, he cares deeply about the victims of punitive medicine. Why do you think he has devoted so much of his life to it? Did you know Koos is a communist?”
“What!”
Titus chuckled. “He hates the Soviets almost as much as he hates the Americans. He’s a troubled man, but I will say this about him: He cares deeply about justice. And that’s all Pavel Danilov was looking for when he submitted his special action request about your brother. He knew the risks yet he took them because he was moved by your brother’s plight. Koos doesn’t want Pavel’s death to be in vain. This list is a gift from both of them. The rest is up to you.”
“What about you?”
“Me? I’m just a simple academic. I’m doing this for Katherine.”
Victor shook his head in awe. “Katherine Sears has some amazing friends.”
Titus smiled thinly. “That’s what I’m counting on. At this moment, friends are all she’s got.”
26
Katherine Sears was in the stairwell that morning, a textbook under her arm, when the director of the Bolshevichka Institute for the Improvement of the Qualifications of Farmers came through the fire door.
“Thereyou are,” she said as though Katherine had been hiding.
Maya Timofeyeva was an officious, self-important woman of fifty. Sergei had warned Katherine to avoid contact with her. “She’s dangerous,” he had said. “She’s the sort of woman who makes everyone’s business her own. Unfortunately, our country is filled with such people.”
Katherine tried to sound busy. “I was just on my way to class.”
“I know. I need you to stop by my office after class, Yekatarina. There’s something I really must talk to you about.”
Katherine’s heart sank. “What is it?”
“After class.” Maya tapped her watch. “You don’t want to be late.”
Katherine sighed. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about.
She went upstairs and found the classroom. The class was a continuing education school for farmers who sought management positions within their collectives. The program was funded by the Agricultural Ministry, and was free to students who received recommendations from their collective. When Katherine arrived, most of the other sixteen adult students were already in the room. She sat in her usual chair, beside the window, second from the front.
Katherine took off herplatok , babushka scarf, and shook her hair. She kept on her coat; it was cold in the room. In fact, it was cold everywhere, all the time. Since coming to Ivanovka three weeks earlier, Katherine had been in a near-perpetual state of coldness. “Near,” because there had been that time, about a week earlier, when Katherine had been caught outdoors inslyakot , Russian for “slush falling from the sky.” There was no English word for it. Drenched and cold to the marrow, Katherine had come into the drafty house and set to work immediately on her bath. She astounded Baba Krista by spending an hour heating kettles of water on the stove and then dumping them into the bathtub. When the tub was full, she slipped neck-deep into the water and stayed that way for two hours, steam rising around her, a grin of utter contentment on her face. She had been warm then. That was the only time.
Katherine watched from her desk as her energetic, twenty-six-year-old Russian-language teacher bounded into the classroom and went straight to work on the blackboard. Katherine opened her textbook to the chapter on verbs of motion and prepared for her usual battle, hoping only that she wouldn’t embarrass herself too badly. She was by far the worst student in class. The other students were fluent Russian speakers, peasants who had trouble with grammar. Katherine had never before been in a class whereshe was the one holding up progress. She was determined to acquit herself well despite her slow start. She spent her evenings behind her textbooks, peppering Baba Krista with questions. Learning Russian, even with the benefit of her photographic memory and her childhood tutorials, was turning out to be more daunting than Katherine had imagined. The Russian language was not a scientifi
c question that could be submitted to the rigors of mathematics and then explained. It was a monstrous universe where laws were made and then broken without apology. It was like trying to master the violin in a few lessons, when all she could do was scratch out scales.
Katherine sat in the classroom that morning and tried to focus on what Irina Mikhailova was saying, but her mind drifted to the matter of the director’s summons. What could it mean? Katherine began to imagine the worst.
What if the KGB had found her?
Hadn’t Sergei warned her about informers?
“Knockers, secret helpers, little patriots, informers,” Sergei had said before her first day of class. “Our country is crawling with them.”
“I can’t stay home all the time,” Katherine had protested. “I’ll go crazy. I’ll just have to be careful.”
“How?” he exclaimed. “The only way to be careful is to associate with as few people as possible. You can’t know if someone is an informer. I could be one, for all you know. And you’ll never know until it’s too late and maybe not even then, so don’t even try to guess.”
Sergei paced the living room at Baba Krista’s. Katherine watched him from her chair beside the stove. His face was all tangled up and tense like a towel being wrung of water.
“What’s the matter with you tonight?” Katherine asked.
Sergei collapsed into a chair. “Men were at the taxi park asking questions today. I think they were KGB.”
“What kind of questions?”
“They wanted to know who was working three weeks ago on Tuesday.”
Katherine thought about that. “That’s the day . . .”
Sergei nodded.
“I want you to make me a promise, Sergei. If men ever come for me, you must pretend that you didn’t know who I was. Tell them I was your mistress, I don’t care. Turn me in if you have to.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Then I’ll turn myself over to the KGB today,” Katherine said fiercely. “I will not have another person’s life at risk for me. Now give me your word. Or do I go to Lubyanka now?”
Katherine’s voice trembled with emotion. This was not a bluff, and she was determined that Sergei know that.
He shrugged. “You win. I promise.”
Katherine relaxed. They were both quiet a moment, and then Katherine asked, “How are the documents coming?”
“Will you forget about the documents!” he exclaimed. “That will take months, Yekatarina. You don’t have months.”
Katherine glared at him. He was right, of course, but she needed to dosomething besides wait for her father to save her. She had an urge to throw herself into the arms of the Russian police and take her chances. But too many people — Victor, Titus, Koos, Maxim, Lena and Sergei — could get hurt.
She resolved to treat her predicament as though it were an astronomical endeavor — define the problem, construct a theory, test the theory and so on, until the original problem was no longer a problem. She had used this methodology all her life, and it had served her well. But then, she was a scientist, not a spy. Could she really expect to impose a structure on such a violent and irrational world?
Sergei’s shoulders sagged under Katherine’s stare, and he said, “It’s going about like I’d expect. In sixty days I should have everything — except the exit visa, of course. What do you plan to do about that?”
“I’ll think of something.”
“Naturally.” Sergei’s voice showed his exhaustion and worry.
“I’m sorry,” said Katherine, “for all the trouble — ”
“No. No. It’s okay. I’m . . . it’s just this terrible business at the taxi park . . .”
“I promise to be careful, Sergei.”
“But you insist on going to these Russian classes?”
“I have to, Sergei. If my escape is to succeed at all, I will need much better Russian than I have now.”
Sergei did not argue that point.
In the classroom, the voice called out her name, and she had a feeling it was not for the first time. “Yekatarina?”
Katherine looked around. The eyes of the class were on her. She had been daydreaming.
“Izvinite,” she excused herself. “I, uh, was not hearing.”
“Was notlistening ,” the teacher corrected.
“Right.”
“Now, repeat after me . . .”
Class broke up at eleven o’clock, and Katherine went directly to Maya Timofeyeva’s office. She knocked on the door.
“Sit down,” Maya said, and sat down beside her. She looked troubled.
“I know I’m holding the class back,” said Katherine. “If you want me to drop out, I will understand.”
“Drop out?” Maya said surprised. “Good heavens, no. You must stay with it. You must double your efforts. Russian is the official language of our nation. If you are to be a good citizen you must improve your Russian. Do you want to be a good citizen?”
“Of course. I just hate holding up the class.”
Maya shook her head. “You have a very competitive, verycapitalist view of education, Yekatarina. Is that Latvian?”
Katherine gulped.
“Now,” said Maya, slapping her hands on her thighs. “I understand you know some English.”
Katherine felt the blood drain from her face. “Why do you think that?”
“Yulya Sergeyevna saw you listening to the English-language broadcast of Radio Moscow. She said you were speaking along with it.”
Katherine’s heart sank. Yulya Sergeyevna! Who needs informers when you have gossips?
With her father out of the country, and her calls to Cameron Abbott down to one per week, Katherine had been desperate for her native tongue — hence the Radio Moscow broadcast. Sometimes it seemed that if she heard one more word of Russian her head would explode.
“I speak a little bit, I guess,” Katherine said.
“Oh, don’t be modest. Yulya Sergeyevna said you spoke beautifully.”
Katherine ground her teeth. “She’s too kind.”
“How would you feel about teaching English here?”
“Excuse me?”
“As you no doubt know, Katya Grigorevna has left to be with her son in Leningrad, and we have no one to teach our summer semester.”
“But I’ll only be in Ivanovka a few more months,” said Katherine. “Then I have to go back to Latvia.”
“That’s perfect. I only need someone to fill in until I can get a proper replacement. I have twenty students registered for our summer semester, and I can’t just turn them away.”
“I wouldn’t know how to teach English.”
“We have a syllabus. Just follow it.”
“I don’t know . . .”
Maya shrugged. “I can’t force you, of course. At least promise me you’ll think about it.”
“I’ll think about it.”
No. No. No. Absolutely not,” said Sergei that evening.
“I’m so bored most of the time,” said Katherine. “It would be nice to feel useful.”
“Out of the question.”
Katherine saw the fear in Sergei’s face and relented. “Okay. I won’t do it unless you agree. I don’t want to put you or Baba Krista in any more danger than I already have.”
Sergei relaxed.
“Shall we go?” asked Katherine.
It was Monday night, time for her weekly phone call to Cameron. She and Sergei got into his taxi, and he drove her to the collective farm. He sat in his usual chair in the corner. Katherine went around behind the secretary’s desk and dialed the number.
A moment later, she was talking to Cameron.
“Your father got out okay,” Cameron said cheerfully.
“Good,” breathed Katherine.
“He’s already raising hell in Washington. I heard he has a meeting next week with the secretary of state. He certainly has access. You know, I doubt I’ll be surprised when I see him standing beside the president whispering in his ear
, ‘What about Katherine Sears, Mr. President? What about Katherine Sears?’”
Katherine didn’t laugh. “Me either.”
“Now, have you thought about what you want me to say to Victor Perov? He’ll be calling me this evening.”
“Tell him ‘thanks, but no thanks,’” said Katherine. “He can’t help me, and it would be risky for us to try to meet. Tell him I’m glad he’s making headway with his search. Thank him for helping Lena Ryzhkova and Maxim Izmailov. It means a lot to me to know that they’re both okay.”
“Is that all?”
“Tell him I suggest we work out a way to meet in case it should become necessary in the future. I’ll leave the details to him.”
Aweek later, Katherine spoke to Cameron again, and this time he had a new message from Victor.
“He says, and I repeat exactly, ‘If Anna Akhmatova ever wishes to discuss poetry with Victor Perov, she may do so on the ascension of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Anna will know the place.’”
Katherine smiled. Victor had just thrown a life preserver into the alien sea of Russia. She didn’t intend to use it, but just knowing it was there, that she could reach out to Victor Perov if the need arose, made her feel less alone.
“Understood,” she said.
“Not to me!” said Cameron. “What does it mean?”
“Good night, Cameron.”
“Wait a minute! Just tell me one thing: Who the hell is Anna Akhmatova?”
On the way back to Ivanovka, Katherine fell into reverie. Sergei must have sensed her mood because he was quiet also. As they drove through Bolshevichka, Katherine stared at the rickety houses with their roof-high wood piles. She had been inside a few of those houses. It seemed to her that a long time had passed since she had come to Ivanovka. A month.
Snow fell on the windshield and melted as soon as it touched the warm glass. The crumbling wipers streaked the dirty glass, and Sergei had to stop once to throw snowballs at the windshield. He smeared it with an oily rag and went on. She watched him and thought: It’s already summer in Ithaca. On the Cornell campus, students would be studying outdoors in the grass and playing Frisbee barefoot. She was overwhelmed by an odd melancholy. In the absence of news of the outside world, Katherine could easily have imagined that time was suspended. What a strange isolation a Russian peasant endured. And what a blessing! That isolation was all she had to protect her.
The Forbidden Zone Page 29
