Wick - The Omnibus Edition

by Bunker, Michael

  “Most here may not even know that this town—this spy factory we ourselves call Novgorod—has not been a part of the federal government of the United States since 1992. To the contrary, after the so-called ‘collapse’ of the Soviet Union, the American government, ashamed of what it had done to thousands of free U.S. citizens born on its soil, desired to shut this place down and sweep their crimes under a rug. Those who lived here twenty years ago may remember that time. Even today we call it “the Great Confusion.” If the American government plan had been completed in 1992, most of you would have either been killed or deported to Russia, a foreign country to you, where you were not born. Those sent to Russia would have been given false passports and would have been expected to spy for the Americans in your new country. Most of you, though, would have met with some unfortunate accident, because it would not do to release you all into freedom in America, a place you do not know, cannot understand, a place where—by their accounting—you do not even exist.

  “Every one of us, who is over the age of ten years old, knows what this place is because that is when they tell us. And we know, even if we do not admit it or consciously understand it, that we were born into slavery in a spy school, and that we have been incarcerated here against our will for all of our lives. Every one of us knows by heart the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States, yet, for some reason, we do not acknowledge that our very existence here, and our continued enslavement here, is a patent violation of those rights supposedly guaranteed to all citizens of America.

  “At ten years of age, we were tested by our captors, and those who tested the highest for intelligence and the necessary characteristics requisite for dishonesty and lying, were set aside for extensive training so that, eventually, we would be sent to Russia to live among the peaceful people there to be traitors to our own culture and identity.

  “Over the last fifty years, thousands of our friends and neighbors have been shipped to Russia to live there as Russians and to spy for America, and that is the truth of this place. But we are not Americans! We are not citizens of the United States of America, for if we were citizens we would have the basic rights afforded to all American citizens. We have been born Russian, and our lives have been lived as Russians, despite whatever soil happens to have been under our feet for all of our lives. We are Russians!”

  Both Vladimir and Alyona stopped speaking for a moment, as the crowd began to become very animated at this last point. Many of the older villagers began shaking their heads and booing and hissing, while some of the younger residents were nodding their heads and clapping. Vladimir seemed to want this reaction and he allowed the turmoil to continue until it rolled across the entire crowd of people assembled inside the gymnasium. It gave Clay a moment to catch his breath and wonder at what he’d just heard. He felt light-headed. Too much information… He didn’t understand any of it.

  Vladimir raised his hand, and then raised his voice so he could continue.

  “In 1992, this town and facility, slated to be closed by the American government, was purchased….” (murmurs and heated shouts from the crowd) “Yes…. It’s true! You were bought as chattel property by American capitalists! This town and facility was purchased by American billionaires and has since operated as a private security firm with special contracts with the American government to provide human agents, information, intelligence, and scientific research to the intelligence infrastructure of America! Comrades! You are property! You are cattle! You are owned by companies, and you belong to them!”

  The crowd was now in turmoil and a general buzz began to grow into an angry din until Vladimir quieted them again with the raising of his hand.

  “Comrade Mikail Mikailivitch is in the process of freeing you from your slaveholders, and that process may take some time. You have been used as weapons against the free and peaceful people of Russia who have done nothing to deserve your hatred or your enmity. Comrade Mikail has come to save us all, and to free us from the bondage under which we have lived our whole lives!” Again the crowd became very animated and loud, and Vladimir had to raise his voice even louder to quiet the crowd once again.

  “I said I would be brief, and I will be brief. With us today, we have some prisoners who deserve your attention. On my right, you will see two men who are with us in chains. Some other guards and employees of Warwick, Incorporated were, unfortunately, killed during the liberation of this Dachau, this prison camp, this death camp of lies, or they would be here in chains before you as well. But these two men have been captured according to the revolutionary laws we have implemented in order to insure safety and peace while the next events unfold.”

  Vladimir stopped. Clay noticed the theatrical quality of his pivot as he turned to regard the two men, and now the entire crowd did as well, and Clay found everyone in the gymnasium looking straight at him. He blushed, he did not know why, to be there under the gaze of the crowd. Vladimir walked over to Clay and, reaching down, pulled him to his feet.

  “This man calls himself Clay, and he is one of two things, Comrades: He is either a spy employed by American intelligence to thwart our work toward your liberation and freedom… or, he is what he claims to be; an innocent wanderer, who, during the most sensitive part of our revolution, just happened into the Warwick Prison. He is one or the other, and to us it matters not. He is a prisoner all the same, and has violated our laws and thus is a criminal and a representative of arbitrary abuse and of the wickedness of the capitalist powers. He is held now so that we can ascertain whether he has any future value to the Revolution.”

  Vladimir pushed Clay back down into his seat, and then tried, struggled, and eventually succeeded, to haul the injured and weak old man to his feet.

  Clay’s face paled and his head seemed to drain of blood as he sat and watched Vladimir lift the old man, and as he did so Clay’s equilibrium failed a bit and he almost lost his balance, almost slid off his seat into the floor…

  Uugghhh…! He had to come up for air… What was this freaking place?! He was sitting here, going under water in a freaking Russian prison camp in the Cascades… Or was it the Caucasus… Whatever! He was sitting here before a crowd of people who seemed unfriendly and who spoke Russian and who were in the path of his freaking homestead farm in Ithaca! He thought of the Superstorm and the aftermath. And the Walk. And the Almost Was. And the “What is that!” He was feeling overwhelmed and shell-shocked. He was thinking of the talk with Clive, and the firewall. And His Cheryl’s Face. And the sweet, precious faces of his daughters… His Daughters! His beautiful, artful daughters…

  …and then he blacked out.

  ****

  After a brief moment in which the crowd sat and watched the group of men at the podium bend to the aid of the collapsed man near the podium, life in the crowd began to stir. A man stepped out of the crowd, a woman cleared her throat, two stomps of a foot, a shift of a grocery bag across the floor, conversations about hairdressers and ‘when do we find out what is going on?’ and ‘God when is this going to be over?’, and whispers while children run on the floor and start playing… and all of it is in Russian.

  ****

  Vladimir spoke again. “Every one of you here knows who this man is.”

  The crowd reassembled themselves and fell into silence again. They were taut. At attention. The man at the podium began to speak as Clay slowly, groggily opened his eyes…

  “Lev Volkhov is known to everyone in Warwick…”

  Spinning. He was going under again. He steadied himself and began to breathe deeply and the spinning slowed and then stopped. The man at the podium was standing, and talking, and his words began to wash over him and Clay calmed himself and listened.

  “… unhappily, as some sort of wise sage—an ancient seer and prophet of forgotten times. At one time or another he has taught everyone here, and he is called The Professor by most of you who still cling to him as your honorable teacher and grandfather. But who is Lev Volkhov really? He is a t
raitor, many times over! In fact, not one person in this gymnasium could tell me positively which side Lev Volkhov is on today. Do you know? Of course you don’t. It has been a long day, and perhaps he has switched sides again since he woke up this morning?

  “Volkhov was born in Soviet Russia in 1937 but came to America in December of 1956 after the failed Hungarian Uprising. He came to America in the guise of a Hungarian college student seeking asylum, supposedly having fled the so-called ‘Soviet crackdown.’ But that is not who Lev Volkhov was or is.

  “Let’s see if we can unravel it. By his own admission—and we all know this from his own stories in our classes—he was a Soviet spy, and the Hungarian college student cover was designed to infiltrate him into the American society. But wait, it gets better! –“

  Clay sat.

  And waited.

  For any of this… any of it… to get better.

  “In 1962 Volkhov was exposed to the Americans as a Russian spy by Golitsyn and other traitors to the Soviet Union. That is the risk, isn’t it Professor?” Vladimir spit on the floor as if to say that the title of Professor was offensive to him. “Isn’t that the risk, that no matter how well you do your job, that some weasel or coward or double is going to get caught and then give you up to your enemy? Isn’t that what has happened to most of our friends and parents and loved ones in Russia? Aren’t many of them dead now for this same reason?”

  Vladimir turned back to the crowd.

  “Rather than take a free ticket of expulsion back to his homeland, we are informed that Volkhov switched sides! We all know the story because he has told it to us enough times that we know it by heart. He became a traitor to Soviet Union, and began working for the Americans. Eventually, afraid for his life—because he is by nature a dishonorable coward—Volkhov agreed to come here to Warwick and be an instructor, to train other spies to infiltrate and harm his own people. That is how most of you know him. But is that all we know about Lev Volkhov? No! Still No! Some of you know, as do many of us standing here before you, that—according to Lev Volkhov—he never did switch sides! Over the years he recruited many of us to secretly work for the Russians, and to do harm to the American intelligence plans. How can we keep it all straight? Well, to those of us who knew that Volkhov was actually, and had always been, a Soviet spy, we loved him for that and he became to us like a father—even while he was betraying you. He taught us English and how to put away our Russian accents so that we might better serve our Mother Russia. Some of you today, your hearts go out to broken Volkhov because you know him as grandfather and teacher. To you, he was a traitor to Russia and a lover of America, and you loved him for it. To us, he was faithful to Russia, and we loved him for it.

  “Let me pause now and clear the air. So many faces! So much switching of sides! What can we believe? Right? But, in reality, it is all very simple. Volkhov was sent to the U.S. as a spy. He was unwittingly exposed by Golitsyn and served his country by allowing himself to be recruited by U.S. intelligence so that he could infiltrate this place for his home country. He has switched sides only once, and that most recently. For all intents and purposes, Volkhov has been a faithful employee and servant of his former Soviet masters… until just over a year ago.”

  The gasps started up again in the audience. And Vladimir let it go on for a minute and then he began, again, his speech.

  “Just over a year ago, Lev Volkhov informed his superiors here in Warwick, and their handlers in American intelligence, what he has been doing all of these years. That was when he became a traitor. He exposed the names of hundreds of your neighbors, your parents, your friends as double-agents. He gave them everything. The damage wrought by what he has done spirals outward, even now.

  “I have spoken long enough. Now it is time for our new leader, our liberator Mikail Mikailivitch to speak to us.”

  There was some applause and a lot of general noise, and a smattering of boos, and hisses, and even a few sounds of spitting as Vladimir bowed to Mikail and went to take a seat.

  Mikail stood up and looked over the crowd. His eyes were piercing. While the crowd looked on and at one another and wondered whether anyone would tilt at windmills, or hoist themselves, you know, on their own petard, Mikail’s eyes gripped the whole town and everyone began to wait, in absolute silence, for whatever he had to say.

  When he spoke, there were no interruptions. There was no applause, and no booing. The gymnasium, as a single entity, embraced the voice of Mikail with utter and soundless attention.

  “Comrade Vladimir Nikitich has spoken well. I do not plan to wear out your patience, so I will speak only briefly.

  “I am a young man. But I believe that actions speak louder than words.

  “I know what you may think, but you are wrong. I do. I believe that actions… speak louder… than words.”

  Full Stop.

  “I think you all have some idea now as to what is happening. In here, and out there.

  “As we gather here tonight, forces beyond your reckoning and your imaginations are gathering together to right many of the wrongs of the world. As you in Warwick now know, all of this part of the country is without power, and the Americans have announced that voting in Tuesday’s elections for the Presidency of America has been delayed in all of the areas affected by both Hurricane Sandy and the blizzard that we have all just suffered.

  “Oh, how we all have suffered, and we have also persevered. But, because of the blizzard, all over America tonight, riots and disturbances have greeted this announcement about the election. Societal upheaval is underway. It is nothing that was not expected. But still, perhaps, not entirely to be welcomed, because it can be worked into the plan.

  “Of course, we,” he indicated to the men standing at the front and the others with guns, “did not plan the Hurricane or the Nor’easter, but they could not have happened at a more opportune time for all of us. For well over two decades, for my whole life and for the entire lives of many of you young people here, our cultural and national brethren in Russia have been planning an event. Some say that the spark of the idea of that event was birthed as far back as 1960, and that very event, so long in the planning, is soon to come to pass.

  “I will have more to say on that in the future, but I wanted to mention it because some of you might believe that this action of ours in taking the prison and then Warwick has been rash and unplanned. You might be saying to yourselves, ‘Hey, as soon as the Americans learn of it, they will raid this place and destroy all of us.’ But you would be wrong if you were to believe that. There is no help—or intervention—coming from the Americans, and if it does come, it will be destroyed.

  “So tonight—and I hope you don’t mind if I just do away with all pretense—is all about the necessarily brutal assumption of power.”

  He looked at the crowd. They looked at him.

  “In several days, you will thank me. In the meantime I will expect you all to behave yourselves and to obey all commands and laws given to you, and to wait patiently for your liberation from this American Gulag. In the end, I am sure, you will thank me.

  “But I am not a Pollyanna. I am not a sanguine dreamer just hoping that things will go right. Some of you, unhappily, feel affinity for your captors and you want to see America win. So old is the Stockholm syndrome… older than Stockholm. So to display to you my determined intention to maintain power and peace and security among us, we are going to have an execution. Right here. Right now.”

  The crowd stirred, inhaling deeply for the first time, and there was conversation as each man or woman or child seemed to need to gain balance or understanding or perspective by whispering to a neighbor or parent or friend.

  The word “execution”, in a general sense, hit Clay in much the manner that such a thing should hit a man, but the mental churnings and the snap-snap of puzzle pieces coming together in his brain prevented him from clearly analyzing just what the word meant to him.

  “I apologize to those of you who are of a temperament that
is too sensitive for what you are about to see. It is a necessary evil. The murders and deaths of thousands of your brethren and hometown friends have escaped your notice, but this death will not. Believe me, it is a necessitous act to insure order. We have brought before you tonight a few criminals, and one of them will now face execution as a sign of our determination.

  “I am not a terrorist or a tyrant. I am a patriot, of sorts, for a nation I have never seen, and likely never will see. I, like you, am Russian. And so that we will not seem to be unfair, I have determined to let these two prisoners speak to you on their own behalf if they so wish.”

  Vladimir walked over to Clay and lifted him up by his upper arm and pushed him forward toward the crowd. The people murmured and whispered, and he wondered what they were thinking. His heart pounded in his chest and his mouth was so dry that he could only swallow with difficulty.

  Clay looked over and near the wall closest to the entrance he saw Vasily. The young man’s eyes were closed as if he were praying or wishing himself to be anywhere else in the world than here.

  Clay’s legs moved only with reluctance, and he did not know if he could trust them for long.

  “I have nothing to say,” Clay began, “other than that I am not a criminal. I have broken the laws of neither the United States nor Russia. I am an innocent man, just trying to get home to my old farm in upstate New York. In this, I am like you. I have been in a prison, and only hope to be free. I know nothing of Warwick, nothing of spies or intrigue or wars or traitors. I only want to go home.” He turned slowly and walked stiffly back to his seat.

  Vladimir bent down to lift up Volkhov, but as he did, the old man began to rise to his feet under his own power. His head was still drooped over onto his chest as he began to rise, and Clay wondered whether he had been that way since he had first arrived—as if he were unconscious the whole time. As he stood to his feet, though, his head rose as well and, eyes ablaze, he stepped confidently forward before the people of his town.