Michael Bunker - WICK

This great man, this winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, this sufferer from the Soviet Gulag, had warned America—the stated enemy of his own country—to be wary of Russia. In the Warning to the West , Solzhenitsyn, speaking of the forces of social change in America, and of the ongoing threat of Soviet communist hegemony, had said, and Vasily knew it by heart…

“They are trying to weaken you; they are trying to disarm your strong and magnificent country in the face of this fearful threat—one which has never before been seen in the history of the world. Not only in the history of the country, but in the history of the world.”

Solzhenitsyn had warned America of everything that the old man Volkhov had said when he’d addressed the crowd gathered for his show trial, in the moments before being summarily convicted by the gang.

It was Solzhenitsyn who’d once said, “One word of truth outweighs the world.” Vasily had heard the old man speak that truth in the simple word… No.

Vasily had also read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch , as had most of the boys in his school, but he hadn’t let it end there as most of the others had. Wanting more of this truth that outweighed the world, he dove deeper. He read more about his supposed country of Russia in The Gulag Archipelago , and in the Red Wheel books. He’d read Solzhenitsyn’s short stories, like Matryona’s House , and unlike the other boys in his school, he had cried, only a few years back, when he’d learned of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s death.

This was the secret life that Vasily Kashporov led, one of books and of the mind, and this is why he chose truth and freedom over any of the other options being offered to him by men of every age who wanted and abused power.

Walking away from the prison, he’d heard the gunshots, and he knew that he was now alone, save for the man who was in this house to which he’d been sent.

Lev Volkhov, before he was killed, promised Vasily that his nephew, Pyotr Alexandrovitch Bolkonsky, would ‘know everything’ and would know what to do next. Volkhov had ordered Vasily to go to Pyotr and not to look back. Vasily respected his old friend enough to do exactly what he’d been told.

He knew the house, and found it easily, and had climbed the steps with trepidation, not knowing whether the gang might have already arrived, or if its inhabitant had already cleared out. There was fear in his heart, cold and brittle like ice, as he raised his hand to knock on the door.

Pyotr opened the door and saw the young man standing there with his face pale from the cold and fear. He grabbed Vasily by the shoulders and guided him into the house and then through the hallway and into a tiny room near the back. An earnest fire snapped in a fireplace, sending shadows of the two men leaping onto the walls. Pyotr poured the young man a cup of coffee, black, bitter, and strong, from a pot on a stove, and pointed him to a chair by the fire. They made introductions as the cup was handed from one set of hands to the other, but such things were unnecessary. Everyone in the town always knew everyone else as a matter of course, or seemed to.

Pyotr had a million questions, and he spoke in rapid-fire Russian, but Vasily was too shaken to respond immediately.

“What was the shooting, Vasily?” Pyotr asked. “Who was shot? I heard so much shooting…” He let the implications of his question hang in the air like the cold. “The whole town’s been turned upside down since the trial. I cannot believe it! Mikail shot Todd point blank. And right in the head! And in front of everyone! And then these soldiers fall out of the sky. What kind of thing was that? I’m worried sick about Lev. How is Uncle Lev? Have you spoken with him? Is he ok?”

Vasily brought his eyes up to look at Pyotr, and in the look he tried to say what he feared he could not. He waved at the older man to slow him down, and then dropped his head to his chest. He drew in his breath slowly. He knew that the news that he carried was dark and would hurt Pyotr. “Only English, Pyotr. Only English now. Please. I’ve come from the prison. It’s not good. I don’t know it, but I do know it… Lev Volkhov and the man called Clay are dead. There would have been no shooting if they had escaped.” Vasily looked up again and into Pyotr’s confused eyes. “The shooting was too fast and too soon. They cannot have gotten to the fence. They are both dead, I know it.”

Pyotr sat forward, his eyes widened as a flash of despair crossed his face. He opened his mouth, but for a moment no words came out. He clenched his jaw, taking a deep breath through his nose. Vasily could see the man’s ribcage expand with the breath and then hold there for a moment, as if in pain, before a long, sad exhale, and the older man pushed his head back in resignation or supplication.

“Uncle Lev is… dead?” he asked, in English. The sound of the words was plaintive. His hand reached out and gripped Vasily’s shoulder, steadying himself.

“He is, Pyotr. He has to be. There is no other way for me to know, but he has to be. He cannot be alive.”

Vasily went through the story of the planned escape, telling Pyotr about Volkhov’s words, and how Vasily was to exit the front of the prison with the backpack, get to Pyotr, and then go to some water plant. He told Pyotr about how Volkhov and Clay were going to try to rush the guard at the back entrance and somehow make it through the destroyed fence line and then head to this same water plant.

“It was always 50-50, Pyotr. We all knew that. Either Lev and Clay would get the drop on the guard, or the guard would get the drop on them. And… and… just as they made their exit, the troops parachuted in on top of them and dropped down all around the prison.”

There were tears in Pyotr’s eyes as he listened, but he nodded his head and did not interrupt until Vasily had shared his whole story. Vasily told him how the soldiers had landed all over that end of town, and he told of the sound of machine gun fire coming from behind the prison. There was the sense of finality in his voice, a certainty gained not through witness, but certainty nevertheless, based on the only reasonable conclusion he could draw.

“That’s it then,” Pyotr said, choking back tears. “They’re dead.”

Pyotr stood and walked over to the ikons on the wall and, with tears in his eyes he bowed his head to the holy saints. “Now… Now I’ve lost everyone,” he said to the saints who were flat and long dead and who could not hear him.

Vasily sat and watched him and the twin of his shadow on the wall. Pyotr stood for a moment before exploding in anger and, ripping the sacred iconography from the wall, he smashed each frame individually against the table that held the candles. He hurled the broken frames against the opposite wall. They burst into a hundred separate pieces against the plaster, each one a tiny fractured narrative describing the man’s pain and anguish. Vasily flinched, but he understood Pyotr’s pain. He could hear the sound of humanity in his weeping, and he commiserated with the language.

Pyotr wept until he collapsed across a nearby table, his sobs coming in rolling, heaving waves, each gasp passing through his body and then out into the universe.

After a time, through some inner strength, Pyotr regained his composure, steadied himself and walked calmly back over to Vasily. He wiped the tears from his face. His eyes were red, and he seemed to have exhausted himself with the outflow of emotion.

“What do we do now, young Vasily?” he asked. “They will come for you.” Pyotr, it seems, was fully Russian. His attitude now reflected the millennia of Russian experience, which was to say… Enough of crying, I’m done with that, now what do we do?