Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(163)

Tatiana swayed and sank into the bench.

For a very long time she remained mute.

"Tania?"

"Yes?" In a voice that wasn't hers. "Sam, who is Private Markey?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Private First Class Paul Markey of Des Moines, Iowa. Twenty-one years old, three years in the armed forces. I called his home last week. Spoke to his mother." Sam lowered his head. "He was returned from Europe and discharged from duty last summer, I guess that's when he made the inquiry. I'm afraid there is bad news about him. In October he took his own life."

Tatiana sucked in her breath. Blinked. "Sam, no, I'm sorry for him, but...I mean,who is Paul Markey? Where was he?"

"I know little about him except his inquiry, which he made verbally by phone."

"Who did he speak to at PRM?"

"A woman by the name of Linda Clark."

"Should we go talk to her?"

"I already have. She is the one who got me the notes of that conversation."

Tatiana held her breath.

"Paul Markey told her that when his regiment liberated Colditz Castle--a fortress used as an Oflag during the war--when the Americans liberated Colditz on April 16, 1945, among the hundreds of Allied officers, there were a few Soviet officers, half a dozen, maybe. One of them approached Markey in surprisingly good clean English, asking for his help. He said he was an American named Alexander Barrington, and asked if Markey could check out his story and help him."

Tatiana started to cry. Her shoulders shook and the tears ran between her fingers with which she covered her face. Sam's hand was on her back, patting her gently.

A few minutes went by. Tatiana calmed down. "I knew he lied to me. I just knew," she whispered. "I could feel it in my bones, I had no proof, but I knew."

"What about the death certificate?"

"Fake, all fake." She sucked in a pained groan. "Just to make me leave Soviet Union."

"How did he end up in Colditz all the way from Leningrad?"

"Like I already tell you. He was put in penal battalion. When Soviet army pushed Germans out of Soviet Union, he went with his battalion. Obviously he ended up in POW camp, this Colditz."

"Do you want me to tell you the rest of what Markey told Clark?"

"Yes," she said with a short sob. "What happened to the liberated men?"

"Everybody but the Soviets went home. Markey told Clark that the morning after liberation, on April 17, a Soviet convoy came into Colditz and took the handful of Soviet officers away, including that man."

"Took them where?"

"Markey did not know. He told Linda Clark that he returned to the United States in the summer and Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

made the call out of curiosity. In October, Consular Affairs called his home in Iowa to tell him that indeed Alexander Barrington had been born in the United States but had been residing in the Soviet Union since 1930. Three days after that Markey took his own life, his mother told me."

Tatiana was quiet, trying to compose her voice. "What kind of liberation is that?" she finally said. "Americans come in to liberate Colditz. Why didn't the Soviets also get liberated? Why was he there even a day later?"

Sam said nothing.

Tatiana looked up and wiped her face. "Sam?"

"What?"

"I thought I was asking rhetorical question, but by your heavy silence I suspect question has answer."

He was silent.

"Sam!"

"Why do you do that? Sam what?" He sighed. "Look, this is just what I hear, I can't confirm or deny this, but the buzz in the State Department, connected to a much larger buzz from the Defense Department, was that the liberating Americans were ordered to keep any Soviet officers or refugees in place until the Red Army came to pick them up."

"Why?"

"I don't know why."

"Where did this order come from?"

"From up the ranks."

"How high up the ranks?"

Sam didn't answer for many ticking seconds. "All the way," he finally said.

That night, Tatiana came home and said, "Vikki, we have to take little trip."

Vikki fell back on the sofa. "No, God, no. Please. Every time you say the word little, it means somewhere unbelievably far. Where to, this time?"

"Iowa. Poor Edward. I'm afraid I will have to cancel our plans."

"Iowa? No! I refuse. Go by yourself. I'm not going. Anthony is not going. We refuse. Do you hear me?"

Looking out the train window, Vikki was saying to Anthony, "Look, it's quite pretty here, so many Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

fields. What do you think they grow on these fields, Anthony?"

"Wheat," he said. "Corn."

Vikki glanced at Tatiana, who sat pretending to be immersed in a book. "Anthony, and you know this how?"

"That's what Mama calls them. Wheat fields. Corn fields."

"Oh."

Tatiana smiled.

Des Moines was a city rising up out of those fields. It was brutally cold in Iowa in January. Vikki said she had not expected it. "Why did I think it was warm here? They keep talking about the dust bowl droughts. How can you have a drought in frigid temperatures?"