Cold Victory

During the second night in her cell, the fear was like an octopus attacking her from all sides. On the one hand, the fear of being charged with espionage was growing. Anna knew too little about it to know what might happen, but that very ignorance made it doubly frightening.

More visceral was the feeling of being as helpless as she had been when, as a small child, a gang of drunks had pounded on the door of the shed where she lived with her mother. They had wanted to rape her mother and shouted insults and smashed their beer cans against the door and the walls. While Anna cowered in the closet, her mother had barricaded furniture before the door.

She was tormented, too, by the thought that she had failed Rick. She’d tried to staunch the bleeding as rapidly as possible, but his skull was soft and perhaps she had done more harm than good? Or had she missed some other, more serious injury in the darkness and confusion? Had the doctors at the hospital concluded that only an amateur could have handled the case so incompetently? That thought undermined her self-confidence and her very identity as a nurse and a healer.

Nagging at her in a different way was the thought that the Howleys’ friendship might have been an illusion. They had always seemed so kind and sincere. For her, the Howleys, like the Warrens, were ‘good whites,’ people who were not racists and who were prepared to accept, encourage and even fight for her. If they abandoned her now, then she lost more than two friends, she lost her faith in the ‘other America,’ the America that would one day live up to its promise of being a place of equal opportunity and justice for all.

Worst of all, the seed had been planted that she would be treated differently from the whites. The British appeared to be negotiating for Emily separately, while Anna’s fate depended on the American authorities. If they treated her differently from the two whites, then not only might she never see home again, but there would also be no point in it. A country that abandoned her when she needed it most just because of the colour of her skin wasn’t worth returning to.

When she was next taken to an interrogation cell, she was astonished to be met by yet another Soviet officer. This man affected a bored disinterest in her as he handed her a document and announced, “You will be released as soon as you sign there.” He pointed to a line at the foot of a page of tightly spaced Cyrillic text.

Anna shook her head. “I can’t sign that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know what it says,” she replied.

“It is merely a formality, saying that you were treated well and have no complaints against the Soviet Union.”

“I don’t believe you,” Anna told him flatly.

“This is ridiculous! Haven’t we treated you with more courtesy and respect than your American superiors?” As he spoke, the Soviet officer frowned and glanced at the clock. Anna suspected that he was under some kind of pressure. That made her more stubborn. She reiterated her refusal to sign until she had a complete translation.

The Russian officer became increasingly agitated by her intransigence. He pretended to read the document to her out loud, but Anna shook her head. “I want an independent translator,” she insisted.

After a tenacious back-and-forth during which he made frequent glances at the clock, he finally shouted at one of the guards, who hastened away. Minutes later, the guard returned with a dishevelled-looking civilian. This bewildered man was handed the document with a flood of orders in Russian. His hands shook as he started to read out loud. “I, Anna Savage, hereby swear that I served aboard an American spy plane—”

The interrogator exploded and brutally slapped the civilian three times and then kicked him, literally, out of the room. As soon as he turned to face her, Anna reiterated firmly, “I’m not signing that!”

The Russian officer glowered at her, and her heart thumped in terror. She braced herself for a blow. To her surprise, the Russian reined himself in and confined himself to threatening ominously, “If you do not cooperate, we will be compelled to use more unpleasant measures to obtain your confession.”

Anna felt her stomach cramping up, but she shook her head. He ordered her taken back to her cell.

By this point, her imagination was on the brink of running away with her. It took an effort to force herself to think rationally. She had to resist cooperation because if she broke, they would treat them all as spies. She wondered if she could weasel out of a confession by offering to defect. If she defected without implicating the others, she might be able to save them, but what would happen to her? The thought of spending the rest of her life in the Soviet Union was horrifying. She supposed she would learn Russian and make friends, but she would never see Aunt Flora or Miss Josephine, Emily or the Howleys, ever again. She felt the chill of the Siberian steppes entering her cell and freezing her hopes for a better world.