Cold Victory

The crash itself had come too quickly for Anna to feel much fear in advance. In the immediate aftermath, the medical crisis with Rick had kept her from thinking about herself. Even after the East German police arrived, she focused on pointing out Rick and Jan’s injuries and helping them get safely aboard the ambulance. The trip to the hospital had been a rough, swaying journey through the bitter cold and darkened countryside. Throughout, she’d held her hand on Rick’s pulse, begging God not to let him die.

At the hospital, she had been separated from Rick and Jan. She was taken to what appeared to be a prison, where she was given water and a blanket and confined alone to a cell. Although this was hardly hospitable treatment, she was worrying too much about the others to think about herself. She understood she was in Soviet hands. She knew that as an American she was viewed with suspicion and hostility, but she did not seriously fear for her life or freedom. She was a nurse, a non-combatant, and they were not at war with the Soviet Union anyway. She was sure that she would be turned over to the American authorities in due time. This detention was just a precaution to keep her from seeing something she shouldn’t.

The following morning, a gruff woman in Red Army uniform barked at her and gestured for her to leave the cell. She was offended by the rude tone but assumed that she was about to be handed over to the American military. Instead, she was taken to a small, windowless room where another Red Army Officer sat behind a large, wooden desk. She was told to sit on a narrow, uncomfortable, metal chair. The chair was too small for her, and the sharp edges cut into her bottom. She didn’t like this, or the fact that she had been given nothing to eat.

“What is your name? And what were you doing in the aircraft that crashed last night inside the Soviet Zone?”

Anna remembered her wartime training. The only information a prisoner was required to give to an enemy interrogator were name, rank, and serial number. Since she didn’t have a rank or serial number, she answered with: “Anna Elizabeth Savage, Registered Nurse.”

“Are you an American citizen?”

“Yes,” she answered quickly. Not only was she proud to be an American, but she also believed that her release would be quicker if there were no question of her citizenship.

“But you aren’t really a nurse, are you?” the interrogator sneered.

“Of course, I’m a nurse!” Anna responded indignantly.

“Don’t treat us like idiots! Everyone knows the Americans don’t have coloured nurses — at least not for white people.”

“You’re wrong. I am a registered nurse, and all the patients I’ve treated on the air ambulance have been white,” Anna insisted.

The interrogator shook his head and got to his feet to come around in front of his desk. Standing directly in front of her, he looked down and warned in a low growl, “Don’t lie to me, or things will be worse for you. That uniform,” he nodded with his head at her now dirty and crushed uniform, “is a disguise. A stupid attempt to mislead us. Juvenile really. We know perfectly well that coloured women aren’t allowed to hold responsible positions in America. Certainly nothing as important as a flight nurse on an ambulance.”

Anna bit her tongue to stop her angry retort, but she felt the bitter irony of him being essentially right. Yes, she was a flight nurse, but only because she worked for a civilian, British company; the US Army Nurse Corps did not allow coloured women to be flight nurses. The Russian officer tried a new question. “What did you do before you started spying?”

Anna recoiled. Spying? The first tentacles of fear reached up to take hold of her insides. She knew that spies were treated differently from soldiers, never mind nurses. Spies could be shot. The need to dismiss the allegation outweighed the risk of giving information to the enemy. “I have nothing to do with espionage! I am a registered nurse, and I have been since 1943! I served in the US Army Nurse Corps!”

The Russian leaned forward so his face was just inches from hers before he abruptly shouted at her. “YOU ARE LYING! Coloured girls aren’t allowed to train or work as nurses!” Straightening, he spoke at normal volume but contempt dripped from his lips as he asked, “What did you do before they recruited you as a spy? Clean up bedpans in a hospital?”

“I am a registered nurse, and I have worked as a registered nurse since 1943,” Anna insisted, meeting his eyes.

The interrogation went on without any significant change in theme for some time. The worst moment came when the interrogator sneered, “If you’re a real nurse, why didn’t you help the other crew members rather than letting them bleed half to death?”

That stabbed her to the quick because she had done the best she could, but she didn’t know if it had been good enough. She didn’t know whether Emily or Rick had made it or not.

After a long time, he changed tactics and tried to get her to talk about the other people in the aircraft with her. Anna feared that anything she said might be used against them and that any show of concern on her part might be used to manipulate her. She decided to answer every question with a stubborn “No comment!” Privately, she was least worried about Emily because her husband was a senior officer, and Robin would not rest until he had her home. Jan and Rick, on the other hand, were civilians with no friends in important places, which made her worry about them most. To her interrogators, however, she presented an indifferent face and a monotonous refusal to speak.

Eventually, her bladder was so full that her discomfort could not be ignored. Before something ruptured, she asked permission to go to the toilet. To her surprise, her request was granted, although a woman soldier stood in the open stall door watching her. Anna was furious and asked the woman what she wanted to see, but of course, Anna spoke in English and her guard didn’t — or pretended not to — understand her.

To her surprise, rather than going back to the interrogation cell, she was returned to a different cell and locked in. Moments later, she received black bread, white lard, and some cooked carrots. She gobbled them down, ravenous.

Later they came for her again. This time she knew what to expect — or she thought she did. She was surprised to be taken to a different room with a different interrogator. The chair here was larger, wooden and more comfortable. The interrogator indicated the pitcher of water and glass on the front of his desk and said she was welcome to help herself whenever she wanted. He also offered her a cigarette. His tone, when he started asking questions, was chatty rather than confrontational. Anna remembered hearing about this tactic. It was called “Good cop, bad cop.”

“Miss Savage,” he opened, “I’m very curious about you. Based on your last interview, you are very loyal to the United States.” She was glad they had got that message. “But why?”

“Because I am an American,” Anna told him and risked asking, “Aren’t you proud to be Russian?”

“Of course! But I am a citizen of the most progressive country in the world! A country dedicated to bringing justice and prosperity to all people regardless of nationality or race. I am especially honoured to wear the uniform of the army that liberated the world from fascism. You, on the other hand, are what? A second class citizen! You’re exploited, segregated, denied justice and opportunities.”

Anna glared at him. She knew about discrimination and racism in the United States better than this Russian, and she didn’t appreciate his meddling.

His tone turned flattering, “You must have shown remarkable skill and perseverance to overcome the American barriers of race and gender. It is truly admirable. I can’t help but wonder what someone with your skill and determination could achieve in our great nation where racism plays no role. You do know that if you request asylum, you could become a Soviet citizen?”

Anna glared back at him but gave no answer.

“If you were to request asylum in the Soviet Union,” he continued, smiling, “I could arrange for you to attend one of our prestigious colleges. You could really study nursing or even train as a doctor. We have many women doctors in the Soviet Union. More than half of our doctors are women. Or you could learn another skill if you prefer. Anything at all! And once you finish training, you would have a chance to work in the most modern facilities in the world.”

That wasn’t what Anna had heard. She’d been told that Soviet hospital facilities were very poor and backward.

“I’ve prepared a statement for you to sign, explaining that you prefer to stay under the protection of the Soviet Union rather than return to being a slave in America.”

“I am not a slave.”

“But your grandparents were, weren’t they? Surely, you know that most Americans wish you were slaves again?”

Anna shook her head, “I wish to return to the American Sector. You have no right to hold me in custody. I insist that you return me to American jurisdiction immediately.”

Her interrogator shrugged and managed to look sad. “That’s a pity,” he told her. “You see, the American authorities have shown no interest in you whatsoever. They are howling for the return of the pilot. They are desperate for the return of the other woman spy, but they have made no mention of you in any of their demarches, press releases or verbal communications. It appears that to them you don’t exist — or you aren’t in the least important. General Clay couldn’t care less about what happens to some coloured girl who blew her cover and exposed the whole shabby ruse.”

Was that possible? Anna asked herself, shaken. The tenacles of fear gripped harder.

The interrogator sensed he had scored. “Come now! You didn’t seriously think that a man from Georgia like General Clay would give a damn about a coloured girl, did you? Why would a son of the Confederacy care what happened to the granddaughter of slaves — especially when your inadequate treatment of the casualties exposed the fact that the ambulance markings were nothing but a disguise for an espionage flight.”

Her treatment of Rick had been “inadequate”? That must mean he had died, Anna registered with horror. She had failed. The knowledge lamed her.

The interrogator was talking again, “General Clay doesn’t care what happens to you, Miss Savage. He sees you as a liability. So much so, that he hasn’t even asked if you were injured.”

Anna pulled herself together. Why should General Clay take an interest in her? He was the American Military Governor with almost 100,000 troops under his command and she wasn’t even in the US military. She was working for a civilian company and a British one at that. She could not expect General Clay to take an interest in her fate, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “And Colonel Howley?”

“Mad Dog Howley?” The interrogator asked back surprised and then shrugged. “What about him? He is screaming and shouting insults as usual, but he’s made no mention of you. He’s all riled up about the pilot and the spy. You mean nothing to any of them. Nothing.” He emphasized the word, and doubts started to take root in her belly.

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.

The banging on the cell door startled her. Anna had fallen asleep and was bewildered, unsure how long it had been since the last interrogation. She pulled herself together, sitting up before the door crashed open.

The woman guard barked at her as usual, and Anna got to her feet. She was placed between two Russian soldiers with rifles at their sides. They marched her along the corridor at a quick pace. Anna was terrified, convinced she was about to be tortured. Her legs started to give way. From behind her the Russian woman soldier pushed her in the small of her back and shouted. Anna forced herself to keep moving.

They burst out into a courtyard lit by bright lights. She saw barbed wire and watch towers, so it was a prison. A car stood at the exit, and she was shoved inside. Soviet flags flapped on the fenders as they sped along the deserted streets. It appeared to be the middle of the night, but then nights were more than sixteen hours long at this time of year in Northern Europe. All Anna knew for sure was that she was being moved, and she suspected the timing was meant to make it less likely someone would find out about it. Maybe they were taking her out of Berlin altogether. She might be put on a train for Siberia, where no one would ever hear from her again — much less find her.

Then she noticed that the broad avenues had given way to city streets. These were often cobbled, and the rumble of the tyres on the stones sounded almost like rapid machine-gun fire. No one was on the sidewalks. None of the shops were open. They twisted and turned through the bowels of a city still in ruins. Dogs, cats, and the occasional human darted out of the headlights, seeking the safety of darkness. Wherever she was being taken, it was somewhere no one wanted to be.

Suddenly the car screeched to a halt, and Anna was pushed out of the door. A barricade blocked the road in front of her. Beyond it, other cars were drawn up facing towards them with their headlights trained straight at Anna. They almost blinded her, but she could just make out something dark and rectangular looming behind the cars. Was it a tank? What did that mean? Were they about to shoot her?

“Go!” Her Russian escort ordered.

“Where?”

“Through the barriers!”

“Where am I?”

“Check-Point Charlie.”

Anna had never heard of it, but she started forward hesitantly, expecting to be shot at any moment. Suddenly she heard Frank Howley calling to her, “It’s all right, Anna! Keep coming! Just keep walking towards the lights!”

Anna started praying her thanks to Jesus in a way she hadn’t done since that night when those drunks had tried to break into her mother’s shed. She tried to focus beyond the bright beams. Gradually, she deciphered figures. Men stood beside the cars. As she got closer, she recognised the distinctive figure and face of General Clay. Had the American Military Governor of Germany come to see her, Anna Savage, the granddaughter of slaves, released by the Soviets? The thought so moved her that she couldn’t take another step. Then in a gesture that she hoped expressed the depth of her respect, she lifted her right hand and saluted him.

Clay returned the gesture. Then he smiled and advised in a voice soaked with the sun of Georgia, “Just a few more steps, Miss Savage.”

She was so close to tears, she couldn’t move. Frank came forward and put his arm through hers. He led her to General Clay, and the military governor offered her his hand. “I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Savage. Frank hasn’t given me a moment’s peace since your plane went down. Now, we could all use a good night’s sleep, so Frank’s going to take you home with him, and we can talk sometime tomorrow or the next day.”

“And the others, sir? Are they safe?”

“We’re still working on their release, but don’t worry about them. It’s my job to get them back. You go home with Colonel and Mrs Howley and let them look after you for a bit. There will be plenty of time to talk later.”

“Thank you again, sir,” Anna managed as she let Frank guide her to his waiting car.

As she slipped inside, Edith Howley took her into her arms. At that point, Anna’s nerves gave way completely, and she started crying with relief and gratitude.

Edith held her close, muttering. “It’s all right, Anna. Have a good cry, but everything is going to be fine. You can stay with us as long as you want.”