Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Read online

  One evening when Wladek had been hauling logs across the waste, his leg began to throb unmercifully. When he looked at the scar caused by the Smolenski, he found that it had become puffy and shiny. That night he showed the wound to a guard, who ordered him to report to the camp doctor before first light in the morning. Wladek sat up all night with his leg nearly touching the stove, surrounded by wet boots, but the heat was so feeble that it couldn’t ease the pain.

  The next morning Wladek rose an hour earlier than usual. If you had not seen the doctor before work was due to start, then you missed him until the next day. Wladek couldn’t face another day of such intense pain. He reported to the doctor, giving his name and number. Pierre Dubien turned out to be a sympathetic old man, bald-headed, with a pronounced stoop—Wladek thought he looked even older than the Baron had in his final days. He inspected Wladek’s leg without speaking.

  “Will the wound be all right, Doctor?” asked Wladek.

  “You speak Russian?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Although you will always limp, young man, your leg will be good again, but good for what? A life here chopping wood.”

  “No, Doctor, I intend to escape and get back to Poland,” said Wladek.

  The doctor looked sharply at him. “Keep your voice down, stupid boy … . You must know by now that escape is impossible. I have been in captivity fifteen years and not a day has passed that I have not thought of escaping. There is no way; no one has ever escaped and lived, and even to talk of it means ten days in the punishment cell, and there they feed you every third day and light the stove only to melt the ice off the walls. If you come out of that place alive, you can consider yourself lucky.”

  “I will escape, I will, I will,” said Wladek, staring at the old man.

  The doctor looked into Wladek’s eyes and smiled. “My friend, never mention escape again or they may kill you. Go back to work, keep your leg exercised and report to me first thing every morning.”

  Wladek returned to the forest and to the chopping of wood but found that he could not drag the logs more than a few feet and that the pain was so intense he believed his leg might fall off. When he returned the next morning, the doctor examined the leg more carefully.

  “Worse, if anything,” he said. “How old are you, boy?”

  “I think I am thirteen,” said Wladek. “What year is it?”

  “Nineteen hundred and nineteen,” replied the doctor.

  “Yes, thirteen. How old are you?” asked Wladek.

  The man looked down into the young boy’s blue eyes, surprised by the question.

  “Thirty-eight,” he said quietly.

  “God help me,” said Wladek.

  “You will look like this when you have been a prisoner for fifteen years, my boy,” the doctor said matter-of-factly.

  “Why are you here at all?” said Wladek. “Why haven’t they let you go after all this time?”

  “I was taken prisoner in Moscow in 1904, soon after I had qualified as a doctor. I was working in the French embassy there, and they said I was a spy and put me in a Moscow jail. I thought that was bad until after the Revolution, when they sent me to this hellhole. Even the French have now forgotten that I exist. The rest of the world wouldn’t believe there is such a place. No one has ever completed a sentence at Camp Two-O-One, so I must die here, like everyone else, and it can’t be too soon.”

  “No, you must not give up hope, Doctor.”

  “Hope? I gave up hope for myself a long time ago. Perhaps I shall not give it up for you, but always remember never to mention that hope to anyone; there are prisoners here who trade in loose tongues when their reward can be nothing more than an extra piece of bread or perhaps a blanket. Now Wladek, I am going to put you on kitchen duty for a month and you must continue to report to me every morning. It is the only chance you have of not losing that leg and I do not relish being the man who has to cut it off. We don’t exactly have the latest surgical instruments here,” he added, glancing at a large carving knife.

  Wladek shuddered.

  Dr. Dubien wrote Wladek’s name on a slip of paper. Next morning, Wladek reported to the kitchens, where he cleaned the plates in freezing water and helped to prepare food that required no refrigeration. After chopping logs all day, he found it a welcome change: extra fish soup, thick black bread with shredded nettles, and the chance to stay inside and keep warm. On one occasion he even shared half an egg with the cook, although neither of them could be sure what fowl had laid it. Wladek’s leg mended slowly, leaving him with a pronounced limp. There was little Dr. Dubien could do in the absence of any real medical supplies except to keep an eye on Wladek’s progress. As the days went by, the doctor began to befriend Wladek and even to believe in his youthful hope for the future. They would converse in a different language each morning, but his new friend most enjoyed speaking in French, his native tongue.

  “In seven days’ time, Wladek, you will have to return to forest duty; the guards will inspect your leg and I will not be able to keep you in the kitchen any longer. So listen carefully, for I have decided upon a plan for your escape.”

  “Together, Doctor,” said Wladek. “Together.”

  “No, only you. I am too old for such a long journey, and although I have dreamed about escape for over fifteen years, I would only hold you up. It will be enough for me to know someone else has achieved it, and you are the first person I’ve ever met who has convinced me that he might succeed.”

  Wladek sat on the floor in silence, listening to the doctor’s plan.

  “I have, over the last fifteen years, saved two hundred rubles—you don’t exactly get overtime as a Russian prisoner.” Wladek tried to laugh at the camp’s oldest joke. “I keep the money hidden in a drug bottle, four fifty-ruble notes. When the time comes for you to leave, the money must be sewn into your clothes. I will have already done this for you.”

  “What clothes?” asked Wladek.

  “I have a suit and a shirt I bribed from a guard twelve years ago when I still believed in escape. Not exactly the latest fashion, but they will serve your purpose.”

  Fifteen years to scrape together two hundred rubles, a shirt and a suit, and the doctor was willing to sacrifice them to Wladek in a moment. Wladek never again in his life experienced such an act of selflessness.

  “Next Thursday will be your only chance,” the doctor continued. “New prisoners arrive by train at Irkutsk, and the guards always take four people from the kitchen to organize the food trucks for the new arrivals. I have already arranged with the senior ‘cook’”—he laughed at the word—“that in exchange for some drugs you will find yourself on the kitchen truck. It was not too hard. No one exactly wants to make the trip there and back—but you will only be making the journey there.”

  Wladek was still listening intently.

  “When you reach the station, wait until the prisoners’ train arrives. Once they are all on the platform, cross the line and get yourself onto the train going to Moscow, which cannot leave until the prisoners’ train comes in, as there is only one track outside the station. You must pray that with hundreds of new prisoners milling around, the guards will not notice your disappearance. From then on you’re on your own. Remember, if they do spot you, they will shoot you on sight without a second thought. There is only one thing I can do for you. Fifteen years ago when I was brought here, I drew a map from memory of the route from Moscow to Turkey. It may not be totally accurate any longer, but it should be adequate for your purpose. Be sure to check that the Russians haven’t taken over Turkey as well. God knows what they have been up to recently. They may even control France, for all I know.”

  The doctor walked over to the drug cabinet and took out a large bottle that looked as if it were full of a brown substance. He unscrewed the top and removed an old piece of parchment. The black ink had faded over the years. It was marked “October 1904.” It showed a route from Moscow to Odessa, and from Odessa to Turkey, 1,500 miles to freedom.