Cold War

Intelligence can be a curse, Graham realised. Because he was clever enough to think through his situation, he knew he was in deep trouble. In his windowless four-by-five cell with a neon light that never went out, he also had plenty of time to let his imagination run wild. He slept fitfully, and what sleep he snatched was filled with nightmares.

He repeatedly dreamed of Jasha — and she always rejected him. In one, she brushed aside the box of chocolates he tried to offer her. In another, she looked at him in disgust. More frequently, he chased after her, only for her to turn a corner or slam a door in his face. On the one hand, she had become the mirror in which he saw himself, and he was acutely conscious of being ugly, deformed, and contemptible. On the other, the dreams underlined the fact that he had no wife, no family, no one who cared for him enough to demand action from a notoriously timid and conflict-adverse British Military Governor.

When he didn’t dream of Jasha, his semiconscious state repeated and amplified the experiences he was suffering while awake. The interrogations came at irregular intervals and lasted indeterminate lengths of time. They were conducted in other windowless rooms, and his interrogators were pale and bloodless — as if they, too, never saw the light of day or breathed fresh air. He lost all sense of day or night and passing time. He was only aware that his body was slowly breaking down as pain spread from his shoulders to his hips and back. It became more intense depending on how he moved, sat or tried to lie. There was never a moment without pain, hunger, or fear, and there was blood in his urine.

At the sound of someone outside the door, Graham felt panic bordering on hysteria. That panic had been building over time because he knew he could not take much more abuse. Yet “taking” it represented his last shred of dignity. If he broke down, he would hate himself completely and lose the last remnant of identity as an officer and a gentleman. As long as he upheld his determination not to cooperate, he told himself, he was still Lt. Col. Graham Russel of the Corps of Royal Engineers.

The NKVD thugs flung the door open so hard it bounced partially back, hitting one of them. They grabbed Graham, bound his hands behind his back and then with a Russian on either side of him, they marched/dragged him down the corridor. Unexpectedly, they turned and forced him up a long flight of stairs. He found it very hard to lift his feet high enough to clear the steps and kept tripping. Each time he fell, they cursed and yelled and sometimes cuffed or kicked him before yanking him upright. At the top of the stairs, a heavy metal door guarded by soldiers of the NKVD blocked his way. At a command, the door opened, and Graham was shoved into the fresh air and sunshine beyond.

The sunshine was blinding. Graham wanted to shade his eyes from the painful brightness, but his hands were tied behind his back. Unable to stand the light, he screwed his eyes tightly shut as they flung him into the back of a car. The NKVD men got in behind him and pushed him down onto the floor with their boots. He lay on his stomach, a boot on the back of his head crushing his face against the gravel and dirt on the floor. He heard the doors crunch shut and a key turn in the ignition. The car started vibrating and then wallowed through ruts to the sound of tires on fine stones until, with a thump, a wheel hit the edge of the paving. A moment later, all the wheels were on concrete, and the car gathered speed. Graham acknowledged to himself that this was something new, but he did not think it was good.

Sure enough, after driving fifteen or twenty minutes, they stopped. He was flung out of the car and tumbled painfully onto the road. Someone reached out and cut the ropes binding his wrists. Then they gave him a kick in the seat of his pants accompanied by a burst of Russian.

Graham knew he was supposed to run so they could gun him down for “trying to escape.” He wasn’t going to give them that pleasure. He dragged himself to his feet and turned to face them; his eyes had adjusted enough to the light to see that the NKVD men were gesturing for him to go away. He shook his head. They pointed behind him and again made gestures for him to leave. Someone said: “American Sector!” They must have brought him to a spot near the Sector border to make it plausible that he was “trying to escape.”

His executioners were getting agitated. One of them grabbed him by the arm, turned him around and started dragging him. He could make out a river and a bridge with a heavy if elegant metal superstructure. It wasn’t a suspension bridge, the engineer noted; it rested on thick, round piers standing in gently flowing water. It must be the Havel, Graham registered. Turning cautiously to look over his shoulder, he saw a street lined with villas. Turning back to face the bridge he saw a lake beyond it.

The lure of the bridge became irresistible. He started stumbling towards it. The pain from his back and hips made him wince and gasp. He struggled to right himself and then tried to master the pain enough to move more rapidly. He expected to hear the crack of a gunshot any second. His exposed back burned in expectation of a bullet slamming into it. What were they waiting for? Biting his teeth together to counter the stabbing pain from his hips, he forced himself to keep going. He took only one step at a time, so he could brace for the pain. At last, he started up the gentle incline of the bridge. If they didn’t shoot him soon, they wouldn’t kill him outright, he reasoned, imagining being mortally injured and left to bleed to death in agony for hours. On the far side of the bridge, US jeeps with machine guns flanked a Mercedes flying British flags.

As he passed the highest point on the bridge, the mid-way point, the driver of the Mercedes got out. He opened the back door and saluted. “My God,” Graham thought in shock as he stumbled down the gentle incline. “That’s General Herbert. If the Reds shoot now, it will cause an international incident.”

It wasn’t until that moment that he realised he was being released.