by Anthology
“We have deliberated and talked amongst our nation’s great leaders, from the science and political realm, and we have decided, that while a great project of this magnitude may someday be possible, now is not the time.”
***
Sophie sat on a small chair in the lobby, her giant bag disregarded on the floor next to her, hair in disarray, glasses slid down her nose. She felt like a slouching, lifeless doll. Sophie had no idea how long she had been like that, nor did she care. His words kept repeating in her head, no matter how much she tried to push them from her head. The whole week had been for naught; it had meant nothing! And yet she knew it wasn’t true.
It had been real, every moment of it. The laughter and the debates, his charming smiles and covert touches. The connection of two people, both personally and professionally. Perhaps she had been a fool to think that they would ever work together, he had made his thoughts on the Islands clear before they had even met in person. And yet, as her heart had expanded again, as she had pulled herself out from behind her glasses and felt brave enough to reach out for love again, she couldn’t help but hope for a different outcome.
Why? Why was he so against this? She looked around at the soldiers and scientists, reporters and administrative personnel wandering in the lobby, all of them closer than they had been the first tense night, and she knew that they could have made this work.
She pushed at her glasses then, pushing them back to her nose, only to see him come into focus. He was walking toward her slowly, all his previous charm gone. At least he had the decency to wear a concerned frown, Sophie thought.
“Sophie?” His voice, not as sure or arrogant, like it had been ringing out earlier during his great speech. It was hesitant this time, with a touch of sadness, perhaps the slight sound of guilt topping it off. Good, she thought. He should feel guilty. Erik sat down in the chair across from her. “Sophie, I know this will never be enough, but I am so sorry.”
“You’re right, it’s not enough.” She still didn’t look up into his eyes, she could only stare at his hands wringing nervously. The same hands that had held her only hours before.
“Sophie, please understand that I would do anything for you, anything to have a chance of being with you. As long as I can grant it. But the Islands are not in my power to give.”
Finally, she stirred, her ears deaf toward his pleas. “Then you must not hold a whole lot of power there, Doctor Zacrevsky.” She wiped at an errant tear, cursing herself for continuing to cry in front of this man.
“Please, Sophie …”
“Please what?” She looked at his eyes and could see her own raw pain echoed inside him. “Please understand that despite you being a grown man, you can’t decide for yourself what you want? What is best for this earth and the environment? What is best for you? What is best for us? Sorry that you continue to just spew out the party’s propaganda instead of thinking for yourself?”
He leaned forward then, trying to touch her, looking about the room at the few stragglers from the conference. “Keep your voice down …”
Sophie rose from the chair in anger, standing over him, finally releasing the anger she had pent up inside herself after the conference.
“Why should I, Erik? This is my country, and I can say whatever I think needs to be said. And I think that this is big mistake with the Islands. You know it to be true! But instead your Soviet message is simply ‘No!’”
Erik stood up as well, stepping forward to meet her face to face. “There are things that you don’t fully understand in this situation.”
“Why? Is this only something a big, strong military grunt like yourself would understand?” She pushed her hands through her hair in a frustrated manner. “You must not think much of me Erik, if you feel that I am too simple to understand.”
“You are wrong Sophie. You know I respect you, as a scientist and a woman. It has to do with the fact that you are not in possession of all the facts.” He snapped back into his soldier stance, his face a rocky mask as he realized he had said too much.
She practically jumped forward, noticing that for a moment she had seen the real Erik. “What facts, Erik, please help me to understand. What am I missing?” She was back to shouting, as more people in the lobby turned to look in their direction.
Erik opened his mouth then looked around the room and shut his mouth again, reaching out to pull a struggling Sophie in close. “I cannot tell you, Sophie!” His voice twisted in anguish.
She wretched her arm from his grip and stepped back, almost tripping on her bag as she stubbornly tried to keep the tears at bay.
“I thought I knew you, Erik. I thought you fought for the same thing as me. But you just stood up there and rattled on with whatever they wanted you to say. You were a perfect little Communist, weren't you Erik?”
“Sophie, I cannot go against my country.” His voice held a steel edge to it, warning her she could not say much more. But Sophie continued on, no longer caring what the consequences might be.
“But you can go against everything you believe in as an environmentalist? As a living, thinking human? Or are you not even a human, just some Soviet machine, incapable of feeling? Incapable of loving?” The damn tears; those traitors slid from her eyes. She had to get away from this man that had broken her heart.
***
He watched as she turned to flee. He could not let her walk away without her knowing how much she meant to him. Erik caught her upper arm again, twisting her back toward him, this time not so gently.
“I think you know by now how very much I feel, how human I am. I am a man Sophie, not some statue in a square.” His eyes penetrated right to her very soul, urging her to feel the anguish and conflict that turned like a squall inside him. “I hate that we cannot work together on the Islands. And I hate this constant struggle in me, the push and the pull that I have had my entire career. To believe in one thing, but be told to believe in another …” He stopped again, noticing a few more of his comrades gathering at the edge of the show he and Sophie were putting on. “I must speak to you in private …” He pulled at her arm but she pushed back, another tear running down her cheek.
“No Erik, I can’t do it. I can’t be alone with you again. I can’t be hurt again!”
“I wish with my entire heart that I could keep you from hurting, but I would hurt you a thousand times over if it would keep you safe. I would cut my own skin and bleed to keep you safe, because that is exactly what I have done, Sophie. I have allowed my heart to be crushed under your feet, so that you can walk away!” He pulled her to him, running his hands through her hair, feeling the tears soak into his shirt, no longer caring who saw, or what they thought.
He whispered into her ear as he felt her shaking with the grief. “I hate the choice that I had to make for us. It kills me that I have kept both of us from having what we want, what is in our hearts. But I will do it again and again, for you, my love.” He felt her weakening in his arms, trying to keep the sounds of her grief buried inside her.
“What is it?” She whispered. He had barely heard her and for a moment he thought it was all in his imagination.
“Pardon?”
“What is it? What choice did you make for us?”
By that time there were too many eyes for it to make any difference. He had mere moments before the goon squad, the “grunts”, would be on them.
“Did I ever tell you how I lost Anya? How she died?”
He felt her shake her head “no” as she sniffed her nose rather loudly, almost bringing a smile to his lips.
“She was a scientist, a lady scientist, just like you. I guess I have a type.” He felt her giggle between a gulp while crying. That was his brave, fighting little Sophie. “She was desperate to find out why the whales were dying near those islands. What was causing so many to lose their migratory path at those coordinates.”
“Everyone warned her away. The University took away her funding. I even threatened to lock her in the house! She went any
way. And for that she died.” He ran a finger gently down her face, completely past noticing the state of panic in his colleagues listening nearby. The only thing left to him was the woman standing before him and the one who had been ripped from his side. “You must know why I keep you from this island; why I keep you from me.”
A pair of men in Soviet uniforms with guns holstered at their side were coming down the main staircase eyes locked on Erik, but he continued.
“It was radiation poisoning, Sophie, from that island.”
“Tishina! Silence!” It was one of the soldiers, hand on the gun at his hip. Erik hurried on; this was it.
“The island is a Soviet testing ground for nuclear weapons! That is why the whales are getting sick, losing their way, dying. We have been burning the bodies to hide the evidence …” The nearest soldier reached the scene and smacked Erik down with a truncheon to his back.
Sophie screamed and the lobby erupted into chaos as several FBI agents in plain clothes came forward guns drawn, while the Russians formed a circle around the traitor and his American woman.
***
“My God, Erik …” Sophie fell to the floor beside the moaning Erik, gathering him into her arms. It all made sense now! How could she have been so stubborn and blind. She held onto him, sheltering him against the rushing waves. How much he had sacrificed for her, how much he could stand to lose! She threw her glasses from her now streaked eyes as she cradled his head in her lap.
Erik whispered in a pained voice into. “The island, it took her away. So now I will break your heart, I will break my own, to keep you safe, alive. I will not let it take everything I love away.”
“Erik…” She touched his face gently with the tips of her fingers, her heart bursting like a dam with the love she wanted to give this man. “You could die for this …”
“Sophie …” He painfully reached up to touch that beautiful soft hair, one last time. “If this happens, then I know I will die protecting the woman who loves me, the woman who taught me to love again. Who taught me to believe again …” He pulled her down to gently kiss her on both of her closed, teary eyes. “You must go on now, lady scientist, and fight for the world to know the truth. You must do this for Anya, for us, da?” She nodded then cried out as the soldiers roughly pulled the prone form of the man she loved from her grasp.
Sophie railed and scrambled to her feet, shouting for the Americans to do something, anything to stop the injustice they were all witnessing. But they could do nothing. Erik was one of theirs. But he was also hers, or at least he had been for a short time.
***
Sophie returned to her small cabin on the shore of Depoe Bay. She had been through the whirl of police questioning, FBI cross examinations, even a “debriefing” with some Langley men in ill-fitting black suits. Through it all she had felt numb, drowned, swept away to sea like the nymph in the tragic ballet. But unlike the nymph, she would never have her love beside her again.
As she fixed her tea and sat on her front porch, the scientist voice in her head logically told her that she had known from the start nothing could ever come of this. At least she had uncovered the mystery of the islands and could better fight against the wrong being done there.
The passionate, devastated woman shouted back that it still hurt, no matter how many times she had told herself to be realistic. The petty side of her shouted that the Russians could have their bombs, if only she could hold Erik again.
He was out there somewhere on that angry, navy and gray sea. It had only been two days and yet she felt as though they had been apart forever. A lone crying seagull to the howling wind, reminded her that she was now alone.
***
It was a cruel fate they had handed the seafaring man that Erik was. He was on a ship, and yet so far in the bowels of the mechanical beast that he could not even hear the sounds of the ocean. Still, he needed to get used to this. Where they would put him, he would never be near an ocean again.
He took a deep breath and rolled over on his bunk, putting his hands behind his head. At least Sophie would be free to see the ocean, hear it, fight to protect it, as he had fought to protect her. The world would now know the dirty secrets of what was happening on the islands, and he had no doubt Sophie wouldn’t stop until the testing was shut down. He had given her up, but his sacrifice and the sacrifice of Anya would not be in vain. Funny the irony of the only two women he had ever loved, on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, and yet, fighting for the same side.
He heard a creak then a loud pop as the door to the brig was unlocked. Perhaps it was time to eat. He had lost all track of time, as eating just didn’t seem to matter anymore.
In stepped an older, grizzled-looking man with wild hair that haloed around his head. Erik recognized the man, and his eyes went wide before he scrambled to stand up.
“Dr. Oromolov!”
“Sit, sit, Erik. Please, you have been through enough.” The older doctor eased himself into the only other piece of furniture in the room, a steel chair that was bolted to the floor.
“I am so glad you have come to visit me. Please forgive me, I have no tea for you.”
The Doctor let out a single smirk then pulled off his glasses to pat at his sweating head with a handkerchief. The addition of heavy breathing gave Erik the thought that the older man had been exerting himself.
“Your sense of humor, Erik, it was always something I appreciated.” Dr. Oromolov tucked the handkerchief back into his front pocket, right next to a pencil and screwdriver. It was very scientific of him. “So, you love this girl?”
Erik fought to keep the reaction from his face. He thought of denying the whole thing but the old man knew him to well. “How did you know?”
“I suspected, the first night, when you came around the corner like a wild man in search of her.” A wheezy laugh escaped from the professor’s lips. “I knew that fateful day in the lobby. I have seen you in love before, Erik.”
“I should have known you would miss nothing.” Erik shook his finger. “You are too wily by far, old man.”
“You have no idea, Erik.” Bushy eyebrows bobbed above the rheumy blue eyes. “So, what are you going to do about this then?”
“What can I do? I’m facing a court-martial at the least, treason to my country. It is too late.”
“Is it? Is it really too late, Erik?”
“She is gone now. Just as my Anya is gone.”
“But she is not gone, my son. She still walks the earth, unlike the ghost of Anya, who only walks along in your mind. But now Sophie will be haunted by the ghost of you for the rest of her days.”
“That is not fair to her. I can only hope she finds love again.”
“You were lucky to find that kind of love twice, Erik. For many it only happens once in a lifetime. What if you were Sophie’s only?”
“I pray that I am not.”
“No! Do not pray. Do. You can only do.” Now it was the professor’s turn to shake a finger at the hopeless looking sailor. “We men must do what we can for the women that we love. For the women who are our sunrise, our days, and our nights, for the women that are everything to us, we must do all there is for them. So you must do everything you can to get back to her.”
“What can I do? We have just set to sea, and I am helpless again, just like the last time.”
“I watched in anguish as you stood helpless with Anya. I knew that if you could, you would have done anything for her. Just as I would have. There was nothing the men in her life, me, her father, or you, her husband, could do. So we watched as she slipped away.”
Erik looked up towards the steel roof of his bunk, unable to look at the man who had raised Anya. Unable to show the emotions he had no control over at that time.
“I loved my wife for many years, and I loved my daughter Anya for all the years that I had her. I love you, my son by marriage, and I will miss you, just as I miss them.” Dr. Oromolov wrapped his gnarled weathered hands around Erik’s clenched fists in the
only affectionate show of solidarity he knew to give. “But now you must go and do what is right for Sophie. You must be happy and make her smile every day, and you must fight on with her by your side to let the world know the truth behind the islands. Only love and truth can fully free you, do you understand?”
Erik couldn’t say a word, he only nodded once, overcome with emotion for the great man who sat beside him. His thoughts turned in his mind. How? How would this task be accomplished?
“And now, I must finish the safety inspection of the rescue boats, my duty I take tonight. I am getting older and I sometimes forget to check on the locking mechanism for them among the starboard side. Much as Commander Blivitch forgot to assign a man to guard the brig during this late hour. Two old men with slipping memories. What can those in charge possibly do?”
Years in the military had Erik standing as the professor stood. Dr. Ormolov grasped Erik in a fierce hug before wiping at his eyes with the heel of his hand. He didn’t look back, only shuffled out, leaving a tiny splinter of light through the still-open and unlocked door.
***
As the setting sun brought twilight to paint the rocks outside, Sophie untucked herself from her warm bed and shuffled to her front room. Tucking her toes into her sandals she decided to do what she had always done for comfort: she headed outside to walk the beach.
The wind ripped her hair around her face to the point that she could barely see the blood red sun as it fell behind gray ominous clouds. On another day she might have admired the view, taking delight in the natural world around her. But now all she saw was the cruel world that would keep two people in love apart from each other. And all of it over antiquated political ideals and long, cold rivalries. America bragged of freedom. Ha! How free was she when she was not allowed to be with the man she loved! Sophie turned toward the shore, facing the vast distance that would forever separate her from Erik, the man she had come to love. She felt herself sinking to the damp sand, as a soft rain began to fall.
