Page 10 of Eleven Numbers

“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 forlawyers 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 sayOh 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 pushedTyler 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?”

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