David Healey - Red Sniper

Inna explained her plan. The barracks were not locked at night because the prisoners or zeks needed to come and go—some worked early shifts in the kitchens, for example. So the problem wasn’t getting Whitlock out of the barracks, but out of the Gulag itself. The main gate was out of the question. That gate was mostly for show when important officials came and went, or very large machinery or supplies were brought in. Used more frequently were a couple of smaller gates in the perimeter fence. The gate closest to Whitlock’s barracks led to the village, serving as a kind of shortcut for moving between the two.

Vaska nodded when Inna described the gate; he explained that he had used this gate often when bringing in fresh meat to sell.

“One of the regular guards at the gate knows me because I have struck up a conversation with him many times,” Inna said. “He knows that I come and go at odd hours—sometimes I come over to the village to check on someone who is ill.”

“This guard isn’t going let you walk out of there with Whitlock,” Honaker said.

“Of course not,” Inna said impatiently. “I am going to make sure the guard is missing for a few minutes. I will tie my scarf to the gate as a sign for you and for Harry, and he can escape.”

“Where is this guard going to be?”

Inna shrugged. “Busy.”

She didn’t have to explain how she would be keeping the guard busy.

“What about you?” Cole asked. “It sounds like this Barkov will figure out right quick who helped Whitlock escape, once he realizes his American prisoner is gone.”

“As you say, he will figure it out,” she agreed. “But I won’t be there. I will be coming with you.”

“No, you won’t,” Honaker said. He shook his head emphatically. “The deal is that we’re taking Whitlock with us, and nobody else.”

Inna and Honaker started to argue about that.

Cole thought it over. The girl wasn’t going to have a chance once Barkov or the camp commandant figured out who had helped Whitlock escape. They didn’t have any option but to bring her along.

“She’s right,” Cole said. “She’s got no choice. As long as she can keep up, she can come along.”

Honaker was annoyed. “Listen, Cole—”

But it was Vaska who made the decision. “She comes with us. Barkov must not know who in the village helped her. If she is left behind, he will make her tell.”

They spent a few more minutes hashing out the details. Then Inna announced that she had to get back to the infirmary before she was missed.

When she had gone, Honaker said: “I don’t trust her. Who’s to say she won’t sell us out?”

Cole wasn’t buying what Honaker was selling. He went with his gut. He wasn’t sure that he understood love, but he did know loyalty, and he sensed it in this young woman. “We got no choice but to trust her. Besides, if Mrs. Vaska vouches for her, I reckon that’s good enough for me.”

They glanced at Mrs. Vaska, who stood serenely beside her husband’s chair, holding a teapot.

“Inna?” Cole asked, raising his hands in the universal gesture for what do you think?

The old Russian woman nodded curtly, like she was pecking at something with her chin. “ Da. ”

That settled it.

Inna thought she had everything planned out, but she was still missing one key piece of the plan—letting Harry know.

So the day after her meeting with the Americans, she packed some medical supplies and made her way toward the barracks where Harry and Ramsey lived. The work crews were back for the day, and it wouldn’t be the first time that she had visited the barracks at the end of the day. Most of the guards were never too curious, but she always explained that the Americans were patients. That made sense to the guards—Americans were special.

Walking across the Gulag compound, she thought about how the meeting with the rescuers had gone. They seemed competent enough, although she worried about the tension between the one named Honaker and Cole. Honaker claimed to be in charge, but Cole seemed to be the one who knew what he was doing.

The truth was, though, that Cole made her uneasy. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. But Cole had strange eyes like ice that looked right through you, and a quiet, deliberate manner. Inna had just lived through a devastating war, and she knew Cole’s type. There were plenty of soldiers, but maybe one in a thousand was something more. A killer. This Cole was one of them. So was Barkov. Such men frightened her.

The one person who set her mind at ease was Vaska. He had a reputation in the village as a capable hunter and trapper, and quite trustworthy. Did she trust him with her life—and with Harry’s?

Lost in thought, Inna didn’t see Barkov in front of the barracks until it was nearly too late.

His bulk was unmistakeable, hulking like a bear near the entrance to the barracks.

She had not seen him there these last few days. What did he want? With a sinking feeling, she realized that he wanted her .

She recalled an expression that her American father used to say. Bad news. Barkov was bad news.

Ducking her head, Inna changed course, hoping that she hadn’t been seen.

Barkov had already run into her before, going to the Americans’ barracks. Why hadn’t he just gone to the infirmary? Because the Gulag compound was his territory, she thought. The infirmary was run by doctors and nurses who didn’t have much patience with him.

Her heart pounding, she ducked into the laundry house. Looking out, it was clear that Barkov hadn’t seen her—he was lighting a cigarette and not looking in her direction at all.

Another worrisome thought gripped her. Did Barkov know about the escape plan? It seemed impossible, but there were spies everywhere. People would trade their souls for an extra piece of bread or a bottle of vodka. Maybe someone in the village had seen her go to Vaska’s house.

Inna slipped out the back of the laundry and returned to the infirmary. By the time she got there, she already had a plan in mind.

Inna took a piece of paper and composed a poem in English. Well, it would be passable as a poem to someone who didn’t know English, but perhaps not to an English teacher. She smiled, in spite of everything, at the thought of writing Harry a poem.

It took her several tries, scratching out words here and there, and when she finished she took a fresh sheet of paper and made a good copy.

She found one of the old zeks who worked around the infirmary because he was too frail for railroad construction. She gave him a heel of bread to deliver the poem to the American. She started to tell him which barracks, and which American, but the old man waved her off.

“The handsome American. Everyone in camp knows him.” The weathered old zek winked, as if to say, Ah, love .

Whitlock laid down on the bunk and couldn’t even think about getting up again. He was that exhausted. He couldn’t imagine how Ramsey must feel. Ramsey had a will of iron, even if his body was down to skin and bones. His chest rattled every time he coughed—which was almost constantly.

Not that Whitlock was doing much better. Fortunately, he had stayed healthy, but he had lost weight steadily since last spring, first in the German camp, and especially now in the Gulag, where the labor was constant and the intake of calories did little to replace the ones expended in building the railroad. He didn’t have a scale, but he guessed that he had lost twenty pounds in the last few months, and Whitlock hadn’t exactly been heavy to start with. At night when in lay in his bunk he could count his ribs, and his shoulder blades grated painfully against the slats of the bunk.