David Healey - Red Sniper

“Maybe your girl is coming by tonight,” Ramsey said.

He knew Ramsey enjoyed Inna’s company as much as he did, and that was all right—he was willing to share. Ramsey needed every bit of encouragement he could get.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a zek from another barracks angling toward his bunk. The man held a piece of paper in his hand.

Inna, he thought. Who else would send him a note?

He took the few final steps toward Whitlock, a smile on his face as if this were the postman back home rather than a prisoner delivering a message in a prison camp.

A guard materialized to block his path.

The zek ’s smile vanished. The guard snatched the note from him.

These guards were a rough and brutal lot. It wasn’t clear that the guard could read, let alone read English, but every guard excelled at petty cruelty. He studied the note intently.

“ Poeziya ,” the guard said with a sneer.

Then he crumpled the note and tossed it toward one of the stoves that struggled to warm the barracks.

Whitlock felt his heart stop and anger bubbled up in is throat. The son of a bitch was trying to burn Inna’s note. His note, goddamnit. He started to get off the bunk, the exhaustion in his muscles forgotten. What he’d like to do is take his fist and—

Ramsey caught his eye. “Don’t even think about it,” he muttered.

Fortunately, the guard had turned and wandered off before the note hit the floor. He wasn’t all that intent on destruction. Neither was the stove, even though the damn thing glowed cherry red. The note struck the grate that served to keep sparks from burning down the barracks and bounced off, singed but legible.

Whitlock waited until the guard was gone. Then he was off the bunk, snatching the note out of the cinders and dirt on the rough wood floor boards.

The note contained a poem that was one stanza in length.

First Words of Icarus

Escape the great northern sky

Gate beyond the stars

Three wisdoms keep their watch

Midnight in the garden of evil

Tomorrow can’t come soon enough

Scarf of the muse if the path is clear

“She sent me a poem,” Whitlock said, a little in awe. A woman had never sent him a poem before. In this place, seeing a few words of English on a scrap of paper was the equivalent of getting the New York Times delivered. “It’s lovely, even if it doesn’t make any sense.”

He handed it off to Ramsey.

The other man read it and announced, “Harry, your girl may be a looker, but I hate to say that she’s a lousy poet.”

“It’s the thought that counts.”

Ramsey handed back the piece of paper and said in barely a whisper: “It’s not a poem, you blessed idiot. It’s a message in code.”

Whitlock studied it again. “How do you figure?”

“Icarus was a pilot of sorts who escaped the island of Crete,” Ramsey explained in hushed tones. In a Gulag barracks, you never knew who was pretending not to know English, but being paid to listen to the American prisoners. “I didn’t go to Harvard like some people here, but I know that much. Well, he escaped for a little while. He did crash into the sea.”

“How is it in code?”

“The first word of each line.”

Once he saw that, it seemed so obvious that he wondered how he had overlooked it in the first place. Whitlock strung the first words together: Escape gate three midnight tomorrow.

Gate three was the one closest to the barracks. He didn’t need Ramsey’s help to figure out the line about the scarf. The muse in the poem was Inna. Inna’s scarf. It was to be the signal.

“Pack your bags, Ramsey. This is our last night in the Gulag Hotel.”

Then he crumpled up the paper and fed it into the fire, making certain that this time, only ashes remained.

Inna’s heart pounded as she approached Gate 3. She wore a cheap wristwatch made by Pobeda—a Soviet attempt at a fashion label of sorts—that showed that it was getting close to midnight. Harry would be expecting her signal. The team of Americans would be in place beyond the Gulag walls.

Everything now depended upon her.

In her ears, her pounding heart now sounded loud as a kettle drum; she was sure that someone else must hear it. She forced herself to walk calmly.

Since her last encounter with Barkov, Inna had taken to carrying a tiny pistol tucked into her boot. Her father had brought the .22 caliber pistol from America all those years ago, and the five shots left in the magazine were the only ammunition she had for it. She felt the weight of it there now, reassuring her.

Although she was afraid, it surprised her how easily she had learned to live this deceptive life. In Stalinist Russia, one had to be good at hiding one’s true thoughts and actions. Then again, secretly planning the escape of an American prisoner from the Gulag was an entirely different level of deception.

In her pockets were the tools of her new-found trade, starting with a flask of vodka to help distract Dmitri, the young guard at the gate. The poor boy was drunk most of the time. Who could blame him in this place? He had gotten used to her coming and going at all hours of the night to help the sick people of the village. They had even flirted in the meaningless way that young people did. He was a young man—of course he was interested in her. Many of the guards coerced female inmates into being their “prison wives,” but Dmitri was still too young and naive for that.

Her other pocket hid a bright red scarf, which she would tie to the gate once she had dealt with Dmitri.

But as she approached the gate, she sensed that something was wrong. The man there did not have Dmitri’s tall, slim build. As usual, a single bare bulb struggled to light the darkness around the gate. The gate itself was somewhat larger than a normal-sized door so that two men could easily pass through it, shoulder to shoulder. The guard stood just outside the circle of light. As she approached, however, the guard stepped closer, and she saw at once that it was not Dmitri.

Her heart, thrumming now like a hummingbird, skipped several beats in panic. She managed to keep her face carefully blank.

“Where is Dmitri?” she demanded, a bit too quickly.

The guard shrugged. He was an older man that Inna recognized, but had never talked to before. She didn’t know a thing about him—she wasn’t about to risk her plan by attempting to flirt with him, only to be turned down, or worse yet, raise his suspicions.

Her thoughts went to the pistol in her boot. Maybe she could wrap it in her scarf to muffle and gunshot, and then shoot the guard.

“They put Dmitri in the guard tower,” the guard said. “The poor fool who was normally there was sick—vodka flu, most likely. Barkov will skin him with that whip of his if he finds out that he was drunk.” Then a thought came to the older guard and he raised his eyebrows. “So, you were hoping for Dmitri? You’re the girl from the infirmary. Lucky boy, though he wouldn’t know what to do with you, ha, ha. The poor dumb devstvennitsa . If you want a man with some experience, come see me.”

Despite what the guard said, she doubted that Dmitri was still a virgin. Inna looked away demurely and lowered her eyes, not wanting to encourage his flirting, but not wanting to make him angry. There was still time to shoot him, but she could not bring herself to reach for the pistol. “Mmm, I will keep that in mind. Listen, I am going into the village to help Anna Korkovna. Her child is due any day now and she has been having—”

“Go ahead then,” the guard said, waving toward the village. He was not really interested in discussing the particulars of childbirth. “Watch out for wolves, though. They have been seen prowling around the village at night. If you see any, give me a shout.”