3
He was driven a mile to an outer-neighborhood police station that felt closer to the ring road than Red Square. He was hauled out of the car, and in through a door, and he stood mute in front of a desk, where the guy behind it asked questions in Russian, and the guys who had brought him in answered on his behalf, back and forth, while a long computer entry was completed. His name and age were taken from his passport. The rest seemed to be compiled from what the guys who had brought him in were describing about the incident, all in rapid-fire Russian that was impenetrable to him.
Then they put him in a downstairs cell. The guys who had brought him in walked away. The guy from the desk locked the cell door, like a ceremony. Through the bars Tyler mimed a phone call, thumb and pinkie, the universal gesture. He said, “US Embassy.”
The desk guy said, “Yes, yes, already informed,” and walked away.
The cell had three walls made of concrete blocks thickly painted many times with a high-gloss khaki color. The front wall was bars. There was a concrete sleeping shelf and a steel toilet. Those items took up most of the floor space.
Tyler waited four fretful hours, doing nothing, sitting on the concrete ledge, hunched over to ease his back, then lying flat on the unyielding surface, pressing down like yoga, trying to ease it some more. He still felt bruised and battered.
Then the desk guy came down with dinner, which was a bowl of what looked like boiled turnips, with a grudging few strings of gray gristly meat among them, all daubed with a thick sauce the color of blood. The guy slid it under the gate, with a tin mug of water.
Tyler mimed the phone again. He said, “US Embassy.”
The guy said, “Yes, yes, already informed,” and walked away.
Tyler ate half the food but drank all the water. He was thirsty from the plane. Then he waited again. Two hours. Three. Midevening. Late evening. A different guy came down to collect the bowl and the mug. The night guy. The day guy had gone off duty. Tyler mimed the phone. Thumb and pinkie. He said, “US Embassy.”
The night guy shrugged and said, “Maybe come tomorrow,” and walked away.
Breakfast was weak coffee served in the tin mug, with some kind of savory patties in the bowl. Probably last night’s leftover turnips, mashed up, shaped, and fried. Tyler ate them all. He was hungry. He was sore and cold after a fitful sleep. No mattress, no blanket. No pillow. Just the hard concrete. There was a sink pressed into the top of the toilet tank, with a solitary tap. Cold only. He washed as well as he could. He combed his hair with his fingers.
He waited.
An hour.
Two hours.
Then the desk guy came down with the key. He unlocked the gate and opened it. He gestured impatiently, as if the delay had been Tyler’s fault. Tyler hobbled out of the cell. The desk guy took him by the elbow and led him away. Not upstairs. Through a dogleg basement corridor to an underground room with an iron table and two plastic chairs.
In one of the chairs was a blue-eyed man about thirty, with fair hair in a floppy style, wearing khakis and a blazer and a button-down shirt. Shiny shoes, striped tie. He looked like an advertisement in a magazine. For Brooks Brothers, maybe. The desk guy propelled Tyler into the room and closed the door behind him. Tyler heard his footsteps fade away outside.
The man in the blazer stood up and asked, “Nathan Tyler?”
Tyler nodded. The man stuck out his hand. He said, “My name is Michael Cartwright. I’m a legal attaché at the embassy. I’m here to help.”
Tyler shook Cartwright’s hand and sat down in the vacant chair. Cartwright said, “Are they treating you well?”
“Not really,” Tyler said. “The food is shit and the accommodations are lousy.”
“Ah,” Cartwright said. “Well. First let me check I have the facts straight. You were driving in from the airport and you collided with a police car.”
“I had the green light,” Tyler said. “He collided with me.”
“Lights and siren?”
“Yes,” Tyler said.
“Ah,” Cartwright said again. “Well. That’s the problem, you see. It’s what Russian law calls a crime of strict liability. You had an absolute legal obligation to yield to a law enforcement vehicle going about its legitimate business. Doesn’t matter who had the green light.”
“A crime? It was a traffic accident.”
“Legal systems are different the world over. We play by local rules. We expect the same of visitors to our country. Technically you broke the law. And the police driver broke his arm. That aggravates the offense. Legally it’s an assault now, against a police officer. You’re also charged with destroying state property. The police car, obviously, but also a traffic light. They say that after the impact, you deliberately drove across two lanes and knocked it down.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Tyler said. “The guy had just smashed into me. I was out of it. At that point I wasn’t doing anything deliberately.”
“You’re also charged with premeditation. Traffic cameras show you were varying your speed on the approach, as if you were trying to time the impact just right.”
“That’s crazy,” Tyler said. “I was trying to time the green lights. I didn’t know there was going to be an impact. It was a built-up area. I couldn’t see into the cross street. There were sirens everywhere. What was I supposed to do? This is such bullshit. I get T-boned by a guy who ran a red light and suddenly I’m the criminal?”
“We play the cards we’re dealt,” Cartwright said. “I agree, normally we expect common sense and discretion from the prosecutor. But tensions are high right now. This is like Christmas morning for them. A real-life American has committed an actual crime in Moscow. The evidence is indisputable. They don’t even have to make anything up. You shouldn’t have come. There was a State Department advisory.”
“I thought the math conference would be safe.”
“But you didn’t quite get there, did you?”
Tyler didn’t answer.
“This is a game within a game,” Cartwright said. “They don’t really care about the police car. This is about diplomatic leverage. They want you in the bank, ready for a prisoner swap. Or to extract some other concession.”
“So what happens next?”
“We think your trial will be this afternoon. The court will provide a lawyer. Our advice is to plead guilty and offer a sincere apology.”
“And then what?”
“You’ll be sentenced and sent to prison. Then you’ll sit tight and wait for us to work the channels.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“There isn’t one.”
“Seriously?”
“Technically it was a crime. This is Russia. I have to be honest. The way things are right now, you have zero chance of walking away from this.”
“Prison where?”
“We expect Korovki. It’s a work camp eight hundred miles north of here. They like that location for foreign citizens. And troublemakers. It’s the middle of nowhere. Makes it hard for lawyers to get there. Or journalists. You’ll be making shoes, most likely.”
“How long of a sentence?”
“The guilty plea and the apology will help enormously. We’re expecting nine years. Best case six, worst case twelve.”
“Nine years?” Tyler said.
“A move in the game,” Cartwright said. “Pawn to king four. We can play too. We won’t forget you. We’ll get you out.”
“But when?”
“About ten months, probably. That’s our current average.”
Tyler didn’t answer.
The trial was surreal. No one spoke English. Not even his lawyer. The guy knew just two words, and he spoke them only once each, as the entirety of his pretrial discussion with his client. He used them as questions. First he said, “Guilty?” Tyler said yes. Then he said, “Apology?” Tyler said yes. Those were the last words he understood. There was no gavel. Someone started speaking, and then someone else, and then a third person, and a fourth, all talking fast in a bored boilerplate monotone. Then it was over. Papers were shuffled and some people left and new people entered. Ready for the next case.
Tyler had no idea what had happened. He assumed he had been convicted and sentenced. His lawyer gave him an arch of the eyebrows and a shrug of the shoulders, as if to say Oh well, never mind, goodbye. Then two guards in tan uniforms took an elbow each and walked him through back corridors and out a door to a parking lane, where a minibus was waiting. Really just a panel van with windows. Engine running, a driver in the front. The guards pushed Tyler inside. There were bus-style seats with chrome hoops where headrests would be. No other passengers. The guards handcuffed his right wrist to a hoop. They tossed the key to the driver. They climbed back out of the van.
The driver cricked his neck, rolled his shoulders, shoved the lever in gear, and got on the road.
Seven time zones to the west the day was just beginning inside the White House. As always the president started with the daily intelligence briefing from the CIA. That morning it was delivered by the director herself. She had business on the Hill, so she dropped by ahead of time to share coffee and a three-page document stapled together. The first two pages were full of tensions here, problems there, crises brewing all over the place. The third page was a list of smaller concerns. In the middle was a minor line item: US citizen Professor Nathan Tyler arrested in Moscow for traffic violation, Foreign Service to monitor. Ramsey saw it but didn’t react in any visible way. The CIA director was not a member of the club of five.
After six hours on the road the prison van had covered three hundred miles. Tyler was exhausted and uncomfortable. His seat was hard and upright, and the way his arm was cuffed to the rail meant he couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t doze, couldn’t rest. The drone of the engine wore him down. Rough roads and hard springs shook him up. He figured eight hundred miles at the current rate of speed would take two days. Where would he sleep? In the van?
But no. Late in the evening the van stopped at a remote rural police station outside a small dark town full of wooden buildings. The driver got a cot upstairs and Tyler got a cell downstairs. Evidently an organized system. The cell was a mirror image of his first accommodations in Russia, but otherwise identical. Sleeping shelf, toilet, bars. No mattress, no blanket, no pillow. Maybe a nationwide specification.
The next day was rinse and repeat. The van, the handcuff, the endless jolting miles. They left at dawn, and drove through mist and wan light, through flat fields, birch forests, an immense dome of sky above. Six hours in, they stopped at another remote police station for lunch and the bathroom. The driver ate upstairs, Tyler downstairs, and then they got back on the road, seemingly forever.
They arrived at Korovki as the daylight faded and a cold northern dusk clamped down. Tyler saw a wide cluster of buildings ahead, dull wood, worn and weathered. Like the occasional towns they had passed, except this one was ringed by a tall stockade fence, not tight to the buildings but some distance away, where a town’s municipal boundaries might be. The place was at least sixty miles beyond the last man-made structure they had passed. There was nothing before the horizon in any direction. Truly the middle of nowhere.
The gates opened and the van drove in, along a rutted track, a hundred yards to the nearest building. The driver shuffled down the aisle and unlocked Tyler’s cuff. He pulled him to the door and pushed him through.
Waiting for him was a guard in uniform who took his arm and hauled him inside. Tyler saw the van turn around and drive away. Then he was photographed and fingerprinted. He was given a blanket and a metal cup. Nothing else. No words were spoken. Some kind of trusted prisoner arrived to show Tyler to his quarters.
His quarters were inside the third workshop they came to. It was as big as a country barn, made of wood, with big windows and glass panels in the roof, for light to work by. Inside it smelled of new leather and unwashed bodies. Dozens of men were crouched over heavy-duty sewing machines, stitching soles to uppers. The trusted prisoner led Tyler through a partition door to a dormitory area. Rows and rows of identical beds. All but one had a blanket folded on it. The trusted prisoner left him there.
Tyler sat down on the bed without a blanket. It had a mattress. Just a thin pad of wadded cotton, but it felt good. So good he stayed there. He had no idea what else he was supposed to do. So he just waited.
An hour later the clatter of the sewing machines died away, and was replaced by slow footsteps and creaking floorboards. The door opened and the machinists filed into the dormitory. One by one they kicked off their boots and lay down on their beds.
Next to Tyler was a blond man about forty. Maybe more. He looked tired and worn. And thin and cold. He looked at Tyler and said, “You look American.”
“Can’t help it,” Tyler said.
The guy asked, “What brings you here?”
His English was good, but with an accent. Dutch, Tyler thought.
“Are you from the Netherlands?” he asked.
“Yes, Rotterdam. My name is Jan de Vris.”
“Nathan Tyler. I got hit by a police car. My fault, apparently.”
“I took a photograph of a duck on a lake. Two miles away in the background was a military helicopter. I’m a secret agent, apparently.”
“Is your embassy working on it?”
“Yes, but it turns out not many Russian spies are captured in the Netherlands. So we’re a bit short in the quid pro quo department.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Four years.”
“Christ,” Tyler said.
“What did you do before you became a shoemaker?”
“I’m a math professor.”
“Really? That’s good. You’ll fit right in. There are always a few math people here. Russians love math people. They respect them.”
“They have a funny way of showing it.”
“It proves their importance. They can be public figures. People listen to them. So if they say bad things, they must be isolated, so they can’t be heard anymore.”
“What kind of bad things?”
“They know that two plus two is four. They don’t like it when the Kremlin says it’s five, or one, or eighty-seven.”
“What about you?” Tyler asked. “What did you do before you became a shoemaker?”
“I was a boat builder. I made yachts for rich people. Now I live a thousand miles from the sea.”
They heard a clanging sound in the distance, like an iron bar hitting an iron triangle. Clang, clang, clang.
“Dinnertime,” de Vris said.
Everyone rolled off their beds and grabbed their mugs and headed out. Tyler grabbed his, and followed them.
Dinner was a thin stew, ladled into their mugs. Standard practice among the prisoners seemed to be to drink the liquid and eat the lumps with their fingers. Tyler followed suit. There was a faint taste of meat, and plenty of turnips. Maybe some beets. But overall it was disgusting. We won’t forget you, Michael Cartwright had said. The embassy lawyer. No doubt Jan de Vris’s lawyer had said the same thing. Four years ago.
The dining hall was the same size as the workshop buildings. There were maybe two hundred people in it, eating at long trestles, then milling around, talking in low tired tones. Like a social hour. Tyler saw de Vris moving from group to group, exchanging news, checking on the general welfare. He seemed like a decent guy. Others were quiet and withdrawn. Some were silent, some were miserable. Some were clearly foreign. Out of place, different, restless, visibly anxious. As if they were always wondering whether tomorrow would bring a diplomatic breakthrough.
People started drifting away. Tyler tried to remember the route back to his workshop. He started to follow a guy he remembered, but Jan de Vris cut him off before the door. He said, “I brought you a math friend.”
With de Vris was a young man, intense, skinny, shaved head, nervous eyes. He said, in formal English with a Russian accent, “Please do us the honor of joining us for an hour. We have a little mathematicians’ club. We would like to hear the news from America.”
Tyler paused a beat, and then went with him. Why not? What else did he have to do? They walked the maze of dark camp streets together, beaten earth underfoot, to a distant workshop building the same as Tyler’s own, except there were no sewing machines inside. Just lasts and hammers, and bins full of heels, and tubs full of nails.
The dormitory was different. It was subdivided by extra partitions, into smaller rooms with four beds each. One room led to the next, and the next. A sequence. The last door was closed. The nervous guy stopped six feet from it and gestured Tyler to go on ahead without him.
Tyler opened the door. The room had just one bed, not four. Plus a wooden table, and a three-legged stool. There was no mathematicians’ club. No group of people. No waiting audience. Just one person. An elderly man, sitting on the bed, stooped, bent, long gray hair, seamed face, hooded eyes, a crackle of wild intelligence in his gaze.
It was Arkady Suslov.
President Ramsey and National Security Advisor McGinn had broached the subject on Tyler’s second day in DC. Smooth White House timing, he thought. It can’t be stopped. If you’re in, you stay in. Ramsey said, “At this point we need to inform you that Suslov won’t actually be at the math conference. He was arrested six months ago. Supposed to be a secret, but we heard about it. He criticized the government.”