For three days Kaplan had enjoyed the fetterless freedom and solitary nights of free-command as a Kara convict.
One of the best-kept secrets of the Russian Siberian prison system was the fact that escape was not nearly so impossible as the St. Petersburg government would have its people believe. It all depended upon what one meant by escape. If getting outside the walls of one of the prisons sufficed in itself, then so-called “escape” was not altogether uncommon. If escape meant a successful and healthy return to Russian life and society in the cities and temperate climes west of the Urals, then it was indeed impossible. The distances were so huge, and the terrain and weather so fierce and inhospitable that the land simply could not be traversed by one traveling alone. Scattered throughout the sparsely populated regions of far eastern Russia, however, lived any number of former convicts who had managed to escape from the various prisons and labor camps and had been content to carve out some life of poverty in the nearby environs, free of their chains. Whether it was a “freedom” worth risking one’s life for, each man had to resolve for himself. Hundreds made the attempt every year. Most continued the futile effort to cross the Siberian plains before winter, the vast majority dying before catching a distant glimpse of the Urals. The wise ones did not try, but set their sights nearer at hand. Without help, without transportation, without food, escape usually meant a hasty death. So most of the convicts remained where they were, weighing the risks of escape against the possibility of pardon or release at some distant future time.
But for those intent on getting free from their shackles, ways could be found, and usually the guards did not stand in the way. Half the guards and wardens were paroled onetime prisoners themselves and were cut out of the same breed of humanity as their charges. If they could discover a means whereby to profit themselves from a prisoner’s escape, they would allow it and line their own pockets in the process. Scruples, integrity, and morals were not common in Siberia, on either side of the fence.
Of course it wouldn’t do to have the prisons emptying. The guards had to keep some semblance of order. But they all had their favorites, even those they might be inclined to help or encourage—the old and the infirm particularly, whose loss would scarcely be felt in the daily tally of gold, and whose chances of survival in the wilderness was slim. If they looked the other way, and a few escaped and died, so much the better for everyone. It was an effective means of weeding out the aged, the troublemakers, the malcontents. And if they remained on the roll, the governmental allowances continued to come in for total head count, and their reputation did not suffer from having to report escapees.
Kaplan was one such who would not be missed; he had not one chance in a thousand of making it fifty versts beyond the mines. At least that was the opinion of the guard whose friendship the old convict had been cultivating for five years—especially once Kaplan divulged his plan to follow the treacherous Shilka River to Nerchinsk, thence to embark southward over the Khingah mountains into Mongolia. It was suicide, the guard thought as he chuckled to himself over the prospect. But if the old fellow wanted to try it, who was he to stand in his way? Maybe he would even make it. He would never see Moscow or St. Petersburg again, and what harm if some Mongolian or Tartar tribesman ran him through with a scimitar.
It was late afternoon. A relentless, tiring sun beat down upon the mines of Kara. During the last of the five-minute water breaks, Kaplan sauntered over to the guard to engage him in conversation, while Sergei, by prearrangement, eased his way inconspicuously to the crude privy at the back of a short line of his fellows. The area was halfway enclosed, though hardly private.
Sergei delayed until all the others were through and the place empty. Kaplan may have been old and insignificant in the eyes of the authorities, but not Sergei. He was young and was accompanied by a reputation. It would take ingenuity and daring for him to escape the watchful gaze of the guards.
Kaplan had thought of this too, although when he first proposed it to his young accomplice, Sergei had laughed with disgust and revulsion. Only later as he pondered his hideous fate did he realize the genius of the plan. As Kaplan had said, it was his only chance. There was no other place to hide. Inspection would not reveal him missing until the morning. And by then the two of them would be many kilometers downriver—if his chains didn’t drag him to the bottom and permanently entomb him under thirty meters of icy water pouring down out of the Mongolian highlands.
The thought of freedom had nearly been outweighed by t`he disgusting horror of the plan. Sergei’s stomach had been churning all day in morbid anticipation. He would sooner face an entire battalion of Turks singlehandedly!
“That is exactly why it will work, my squeamish young friend!” said Kaplan the night before, with a grin of pleasure at Sergei’s discomfort. “Not the most suspicious, not the most wicked, not the most alert guard in all of Siberia would suspect such a thing! You will be safe until I come for you after the night is well dark and everyone in free-command well asleep.”
Safe! thought Sergei with abhorrence. His stomach would be empty within two minutes! He would then have to lie in his own vomit besides!
When the last of his fellows had left the walled-off area, Sergei knew the moment of his greatest earthly trial had come. To do what now was set before him would take more courage than it had for him to step in front of Rustaveli’s loaded gun. He inched forward, dragging his chains slowly across the dirt, knowing that the nauseating reek all about him was only the beginning. New latrines were dug only every several months, and this one was nearly full.
He crept to the edge of the ditch, casting a quick glance behind him through the opening in the privy barricade. At the edge of the pit he was shielded from the view of both convicts and guards. He slid to a sitting position, dangling his legs over into the foul hole of refuse. Then, closing his eyes and grimacing as though facing a firing squad, he slid over and lowered himself into the pit.
His feet oozed their way deep into the noxious human dung, covering the tops of his boots and going halfway to his knees before feeling the slightest resistance. His stomach retched violently from the stench—once . . . twice . . . and was empty in less time than he had predicted.
But he had to hide himself out of sight in case another prisoner should enter to make use of the place. He had known that when he began the descent, and now, without pausing for further reflection, he slowly lay down on his back, allowing the vile muck to close over his legs and body. He might faint a half dozen separate times before nightfall from the rank stench and the mere realization of what he was doing. But for now he was out of sight—just as a heavy-footed guard walked in, glanced hurriedly around for malingerers, and then exited again, leaving the onetime prince of Russia in the most hideous of self-dug living graves.
The seven-hour wait seemed like seven years, but at last Sergei heard the raspy whispering voice of his savior above him. He reached up a hand he had kept free of the muck. Kaplan took it and, with great effort, pulled his young accomplice from the hideous pit.
Without pausing to comment on his condition, Kaplan motioned him to follow. Sergei did so, and, following a circuitous route so as to avoid being seen, they arrived two or three hours before dawn at the entrance to the great Shilka, a kilometer and a half beyond the free-command border of the Kara settlement.
“The water will clean the stench from you, my young friend,” Kaplan said. “But it will also bury you if you allow your chains to drag you out into its depths. The river is rapid and treacherous. Stay near the side or you will be pokoinik, indeed!”
Sergei nodded. Right now, death itself seemed a pleasant thought alongside how he had spent the last nine hours!
Kaplan looked at him once more. “After this I will call you Pokoinik no longer, for we shall be free men indeed!” Then he turned toward the river and leaped into the turbulent blackness below.
Sergei hesitated only a moment, then followed.
He plunged in, sank down, and knew instantly the water was well in excess of his own height in depth. His chained feet hit the bottom in a moment; and from the tumbling along of the rocks beneath him, he knew he was already being carried along quickly by the fierce, icy current.
The only other creature out at that midnight hour was a solitary owl, circling above the taiga in search of field mice and wood rats. Its keen eyesight instantly discerned the two creatures at the river’s edge. But even as it swooped down for a closer look, two faint splashes sounded and then were quickly swallowed up by the rush and roar of the river itself.
The great night bird glided down with outstretched wings and floated along the water’s surface, turning its head this way and that. There would be no dinner for it to pluck out of the water, however. Far in the distance, downriver, the owl could just barely make out the form of a single head bobbing up and down in the swirling flow.
But the current was swift, and had already borne whatever it was well beyond its reach.