When the MVD checked me, they would find a smuggled manuscript taped to my body and two rolls of subversive microfilm in my shoes. I did not care to think about what they might do to me. It was like contemplating the various possible manners in which I might eventually die. Such thoughts were not only futile, they were the breeding ground of despair.
I thought instead of fourteen passengers sitting in a darkened bus.
The twelve Lettish girls would have a hard time of it, probably drawing some prison time, possibly getting away with fines and such punishment. Milan Butec would be almost certainly returned to Yugoslavia, where, like Djilas, he would live out his days in prison.
And Minna?
No punishment for Minna, certainly. Adoption, perhaps, by some good patriotic citizens of Soviet Russia. Adoption and relocation in another republic of the U.S.S.R. No trip to America, no chance for her brain to grow the way it wanted to, no opportunity for Minna to become the person she had every right to be.
I could resign myself to the fate of Milan and Sofija and Zenta and the other Lettish gymnasts. I could avoid thinking, at least for the moment, of what might lay in store for me. But I couldn’t put Minna out of my mind.
Until I heard a thin, birdlike voice from the far end of the huge room. “Papa? Papa?”
My guards turned toward the voice. And, stepping between two rows of stainless steel desks, her tiny hands clutching a rag doll tight to her chest, her little pink cheeks streaked with tears, came my little Minna.
Chapter 15
“Papa!’
“It’s his daughter-”
“How did she get in?”
“Papa!”
“Who knows?”
“What a pretty thing she is! The poor child has been crying. Let her go to her father.”
“Papa…”
She ran full-speed at me, the little legs flying over the concrete floor. I stooped down and held out my arms, and she threw herself into them. I picked her up and held her close, and she sobbed madly.
“It’s all right, Minna,” I told her. “Don’t cry, it’s all right…”
Between sobs she drew something from behind the rag doll and pressed it into my stomach. My hand closed around it. It was an automatic pistol.
“Hold me in your arms,” she whispered urgently. “When you hear a gunshot, get us out of the way as quickly as possible. And shoot as many guards as you can.”
“Where did you get this?”
“ Milan strangled a sentry.”
The guards were chattering as they watched this touching familial scene. “A beautiful child,” one said. “How she loves her father.”
“He can remember her love in his prison cell.”
“What is a child of that age doing awake at this hour? That is what I would like to know.”
“Perhaps the whole family was escaping.”
“The MVD will be here soon enough.”
“Be ready,” said Minna.
And a shot rang out at the rear of the hall.
The guards, all but one, spun around toward the source of the noise. The one who did not turn reached for his pistol. I shot him in the chest, grabbed Minna tight, and made a mad dash for a clump of heavy machinery on my right. Bullets splattered the floor around us. We dropped breathless behind a cover of futuristic stainless steel machinery. Minna huddled beside me, and I peered through the machine, took aim, and fired at the man who had asked me all those damnable questions. The bullet went wide. I shot again, aiming for his head, and hit him in the calf. It wasn’t the world’s best marksmanship, but at least it put the son of a bitch on the ground.
Milan was firing from behind a desk at the far end of the room. He had already done for two of the guards, but there were still almost a dozen of them left, and the odds seemed impossible. There were only two rounds left in my own pistol. I didn’t know whether to waste them now or wait until we were rushed.
It seemed hopeless. We were outnumbered and outarmed and outclassed, and our adversaries had help coming; the MVD were due to arrive at any moment. All the guards had to do was keep us pinned down until the secret police arrived in force. Then we would be finished.
I turned to Minna. “How did Milan know I was here?”
“He followed you.”
“Followed me?”
“When you left the bus. He told all of us to stay where we were because he had to follow you. He was afraid that there might be a trap, and then he came back short of breath and told us that there had been a trap.”
No trap, I thought. Just a maddening combination of little things going wrong, a bit of bad luck for Anders and a bigger bit of bad luck for me.
“He was certain you would be angry with him for disobeying orders,” Minna said.
“He picked the right orders to disobey. But I’m afraid it will only make things worse. I don’t see how we can get out of here alive.”
“Look, Evan-” She pointed at the ceiling. I looked up, and at the other end of the hall Milan shouted, and high up on the ceiling, in the maze of ropes and chains and pulleys and lateral beams, the women’s gymnastic team of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic swung gaily into action.
They scampered over the ceiling like agile monkeys on the bars of their cages, tossing themselves here and there, then swooping gracefully down upon the guards and soldiers below. They dipped and soared, they swooped and sailed, and the guards didn’t know what to make of it.
“Look, Evan!”
Sofija, swinging on a length of wire cable, sailed in a perfect parabolic arc toward a fat bug-eyed guard. He was trying to draw a bead on her with his pistol but couldn’t get the gun aimed in time. With one nimble foot she kicked the gun out of his hand. Her other foot took the guard full on the point of the chin and tumbled him out of the game. Another guard crawled on his hands and knees toward the fallen gun. Zenta dropped twenty feet through the air, feet first, and landed with a foot upon each of the guard’s shoulders. He crumpled to the floor, and the room rang with the sound of his shoulder bones snapping from the impact.
Minna was dancing beside me, clapping her hands madly in hysterical glee. The guards, the few who were still conscious, had abandoned their guns entirely by now. They were merely trying to get out of the way of the wild Lettish gymnasts.
They didn’t have a chance.
Outside, the night once again began to erupt with bells and sirens. Inside the battle was quickly drawing to a close. The plant guards, though not outnumbered, were clearly outclassed; this wasn’t the type of situation they had been trained to handle, and the girls were too much for them. Within minutes it was over, and Minna and I emerged from our hiding place and stepped over the inert bodies of the guards. The final score stood at Christians 14, Lions 0. One of our girls – Lenja, I think – had turned an ankle in the course of the fray. She limped slightly. And that, incredibly, was the extent of our injuries.
The girls were beaming with pride. Milan, an odd smile on his round face, moved toward me. “I violated orders,” he said apologetically, “because I suspected a trap.”
“No trap. The harbor police picked up Anders, and then I blundered into this mess.”
“And now?”
“We have to get the hell out of here. The MVD is on the way. God alone knows what’s going on outside.”
“Shall we run for the bus, Evan?”
“And then what? The bus won’t get us out of Russia.”
“We could hide.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
I tried to think straight and couldn’t get anywhere. We were in the building, and the building was locked, but sooner or later someone would come and find a way to get in. If we opened the door now, they would all stream in and…
And we would all stream out.
That seemed fair enough for openers. I went to the door, opened it. A small gang of troops stood at the ready in front of the door. Other than that, the place was surprisingly quiet. Only the wail of a siren in the distance broke the quiet of the night.