Vanguard (8 page)

January 31, 2014

“You ready for this, Sophie?” asked the Rev as they climbed into the SUV. Coalition symbols marked the sides and roof. They both wore flak jackets and helmets.

“Damn right.” Sophie grinned at him as he gunned the engine. Both their translator and armed guard took the backseat, where they conversed in low voices in Russian. Dave did his own driving, and Sophie loved him for that. She appreciated him even more when she realized that the drivers in this region were more aggressive than New York cabbies.

The farther north they went, the quieter the highway became. About forty miles away from Parnaas, the roads became deserted save for military checkpoints. Soon the Rev started dodging bomb craters in the highway. The countryside was desolate, homes and businesses abandoned. They crawled along the border between the Soviet Republic and Orlisia until they reached the town of Parnaas. The civilian population had fled, leaving the community teeming with soldiers, criminals, and black marketeers. When they stopped for a brief rest there, they heard it.

It was a low, powerful sound, like a waterfall thundering in the distance. Both the Rev and Sophie knew it – the sound of tens of thousands of people gathered in one small place. As they stood listening, the wind shifted, and Sophie vomited without warning beside the vehicle.

“You okay?” The Rev came around to put his hand on her back. She wiped her mouth, fumbling for her water bottle and feeling embarrassed.

“Yeah, fine. I puked the first time I smelled a camp when I was a teenager, and it’s been a tradition for me ever since. Will never let me live it down.” She rinsed her mouth, spat, and climbed back into the SUV. “Let’s go.” The translator looked a bit green himself, perhaps wishing he hadn’t taken this assignment. The guard seemed bored.

After another fifteen minutes jerking along the cratered road, they reached the blockade. Armed Soviet soldiers waved them to a stop. They couldn’t see the camp from where they were, but the noise and smell grew stronger. The Rev and Sophie got out and walked toward the guards. The translator scurried out behind them, but Sophie sent him back.

“Good morning,” she called in Russian, enjoying the surprise on the guards’ faces. “I am Sophie Swenda of the Refugee Crisis Coalition. This is my colleague, David Bryson. We are here to meet with the Commandant and begin work.” The guards looked at her in silence. One of them finally spoke.

“Foreigners may not enter Parnaas.”

“We are here at the request of the Soviet government, and on the personal invitation of Commandant Jaros,” she said pleasantly. “Last time I checked, the Commandant outranks you,
Seržantko
.” She silently thanked Alex for teaching her the ranking system of the Soviet army. “The Commandant awaits us. Please advise him that we are here.” She gestured to the Rev, and they walked away from the guards.

“What was that?” he hissed as they got back into the car.

“Round one,” she replied, “of a very long fight.”

They watched while the guard had an animated conversation on his phone. Then he walked over to the SUV.

“Drive forward slowly to the gates.” He gave Sophie an uneasy glance. She smiled back. The blockade moved aside, and they crept forward. They traveled half a mile and crested a rise to find the Parnaas camp spread out beneath them.

Acres of barbed wire fencing surrounded the massive encampment. Armed pickets patrolled outside, and Sophie could see tanks farther on. A cluster of rough administrative buildings stood to the left, inside the compound. Then beyond that, as far as she could see, stretched an ocean of makeshift shelters. Miles of them, on a scale she’d never before witnessed.

Beside her, the Rev crossed himself. Sophie saw bodies lying face down outside the gates, a skim of snow over them. It wasn’t enough to cover the fact that they’d been shot. Escapees, their corpses left to freeze. She resisted a horrible impulse to run to the bodies and turn them over. If she started looking for his face now, she’d never be able to stop.

They left their vehicle with their guard, taking the translator with them. Inside the administrative building, it was blessedly warm. They could hear the hum of a generator nearby. A jovial figure awaited them: an older man with salt and pepper hair, thick around the waist, his watery blue eyes sparkling with excitement. He had a wide smile.

“Welcome!” he boomed in Russian. “Welcome to the Soviet Republic. I am Commandant Vasily Jaros.” He beamed at them like they were neighbors joining him for a backyard barbeque. Sophie kept her features carefully neutral. She could hear the translator murmuring to Dave in the background. Jaros spoke Russian, but Sophie had no doubt he’d be fluent in English as well.

“Thank you for seeing us, Commandant Jaros. My name is Sophie Swenda from the Refugee Crisis Coalition. This is my colleague, David Bryson.” The Commandant’s face showed momentary shock at Sophie’s mastery of the Russian language, then clasped his hands together in delight.

“Such a beautiful young lady speaking the language of my country so well,” he marveled. “Truly a pleasure. Does your colleague also speak Russian?”

“No, but our translator here, Georgs, will assist.” Georgs translated for the Rev as the Commandant’s eyes crawled over Dave and Sophie. “Commandant, we are eager to begin work, but we have many things to discuss first. Shall we?”

~~ - ~~

It took two days of negotiation before both parties reached agreement on how they would operate. All the ground they’d covered with the Soviet representatives before leaving the US was revisited. Whether the team could use a helicopter to bring in the heavier equipment. Security protocols. Allowing refugees to play a role in the organization of Parnaas. On this last point, Commandant Jaros had a hard philosophy.

“You may use the detainees in this camp for menial labor, if you wish. Waste removal, digging of sanitation facilities. But they are not permitted to do tasks of responsibility.” The friendly façade dropped for a moment, his eyes stony. “No detainee leaves Parnaas unless they are being carried to the burial trench for disposal.” The smile returned. “I cannot have you removing my country’s newest citizens, can I? They are safest here, yes, where I can protect them.”

Agreement in hand, the coalition began moving their equipment from Kaliningrad to the Orlisian border. They commandeered what appeared to be an abandoned military establishment on the Soviet side of the border as their headquarters. Then the exec team – seven people, representing the largest coalition partners – got their first tour of Parnaas. Sophie heard someone behind her in the Jeep mutter “Warsaw Ghetto” as they crawled along the muddy tracks between the shelters.

The refugees were crammed ten to a shelter, bodies packed wall to wall for warmth. Every possible material had been pressed into service – plastic sheeting, household possessions, vehicle parts, fence posts, pine boughs. No running water. No electricity. No heat. Just icy mud, the choking haze of manure fires, and thousands upon thousands of Orlisians living in the dead of winter under the most brutal conditions.

“There were a few cases of cholera early on, but it’s been contained,” Sophie yelled to her colleagues. “The positioning of the latrines on this side of the camp helped keep the water supply from contaminating. However, they’ve got an infectious pneumonia now that’s killed about a half dozen people in the last few weeks. All elderly or very young. That’ll be high on our priority list.”

They returned to the administrative building, grim faced. Commandant Jaros awaited them, all smiles.

“To assist you in your work, we have maps of the camp,” he said. “We enlisted a detainee to help survey Parnaas prior your arrival.” Jaros gestured to the guards at the door. They stepped out and returned with a terrified man in their grasp who looked like he might have been a desk clerk in his regular life. He was painfully thin, balding, and short, his face cast down to the floor. The guards shoved him forward, and the man fell to his knees. Everyone stepped forward to help him, but stopped when the automatic weapons came up.

“Stand,” Jaros ordered. The man got to his feet without lifting his face, extending several rolled-up maps to the foreigners. Jaros gestured Sophie forward.

She gently removed the papers from the man’s trembling hands. “Thank you,” she said in Orlisian. “Do not be afraid. We will not hurt you. We are here to help.” The man’s head flew up at the sound of Sophie’s voice. His shocked eyes met hers.

“You will not speak that language again!” thundered the Commandant. “It is now forbidden in the Soviet Republic to do so.” But no one’s eyes moved from the face of the man in front of them. Sophie heard someone behind her curse under their breath.

He had been mutilated. Crusted-over knife wounds on his forehead, straight and diagonal lines. Sophie realized in horror that the cuts roughly resembled the hammer and sickle emblem that had represented the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The republic had dropped the symbol when it had changed its name in the early 1990s.

“Who did this to you?” Sophie asked in a deadly voice, still speaking Orlisian. The man didn’t answer, shaking his head wildly and staring at her in terror. In the background, she heard the guards switching the safeties off their weapons.

“It will not be you and your colleagues who die, Ms. Swenda, if you continue to violate the laws of this nation.” The guns, she saw, were pointed at the man in front of her. Sophie stepped back, her eyes narrowing at the Commandant.

“Torturing prisoners of war is against the Geneva Convention, Commandant,” she said in Russian.

“There was no torture, Ms. Swenda. This man experienced an unfortunate accident.” Jaros shrugged. “Totally unintentional. Just ask his fellow residents, they will tell you it was so. As I said earlier, detainees generally do not perform jobs of responsibility, such as this one did. Accidents like this only happen when they perform skilled labor.” He smiled serenely. “Too many did not survive anyway.”

The executive team stood silently in the middle of the room until the guards took the man away, his frantic eyes fixed on Sophie until he was out of sight.

“It grows late,” she said, her voice sounding far away in her own ears. “Thank you for the maps, Commandant. They will make our job easier. My colleagues and I will return to our base to begin planning. Tomorrow, we will present our recommendations on how we wish to proceed, if that is acceptable to you.”

“Very much so.” Commandant Jaros’ frightening smile returned. “You are a surprising and talented woman, Ms. Swenda. I look forward to our next meeting.”

Sophie nodded stiffly and gestured to her colleagues to leave.

Chapter 5

February 7, 2014

The team had been in Parnaas for about a week. Sophie was working late into the evening on ideas for expanding the living areas of the camp. She’d been doing her best to convince Jaros that people stacked like cordwood inside flimsy shelters weren’t good for business.

She heard a rap on the doorframe and turned to see Anjali. She waved her into her quarters, figuring she could use some girl time.

“How goes the battle?” Sophie asked.

“We’re getting there,” the slender Indian woman replied. Anjali and the rest of the medical team had some tough challenges on their hands. “If we could get more space from the Commandant, it would help.”

Sophie tapped the papers on her desk. “I have a working plan here. Under normal circumstances, we’d split this monstrosity up into five or even six smaller camps. Maintaining a camp of this size is nuts. Then again, so is the Commandant.” She grimaced. “Since he refuses to allow us to split up the camp – says he doesn’t have enough guards and fencing to accommodate more than one facility – I’m working on getting more space. I think he’ll agree to a phased expansion.”

“That’s good news. Medical needs more room to isolate these pneumonia cases. Plus dysentery is making a comeback. But at least we can manage that.” Anjali paused for a moment. “How are you doing, Sophie? Personally?”

“I’m wondering what the hell I’m doing here.” Sophie rubbed her eyes. “Not on this mission. These last few days have been amazing. The team is working together better than I’d envisioned. Imagine if we could do this all the time. One global aid organization instead of thousands of small ones competing for donations.”

“I know the mission is successful. I’m asking about you. No news on Vanguard?”

Sophie shook her head, a lump in her throat. “No sign of him yet. No guarantee he’s here.” She stopped, her voice rough. “No guarantee he’s alive.”

“We’ve only been here a week.”

“And he’s been missing for nearly five months.” Sophie’s lips trembled at the corners. “I’ve sworn to find him no matter what it takes. But maybe he doesn’t want to be found.”

“Nonsense,” said Anjali. “From what you’ve told me of Vanguard, he’d never abandon his family without a word. Nor do I think he’d do that to you.” Her voice softened. “Do you honestly think he would object to you rescuing him from this camp? After everything we know about this place?”

“You have no idea the sorts of things he objects to,” said Sophie with a wry smile. “I’ve told him once in my life that I loved him. And that was ten years ago under highly emotional circumstances.” She looked down at the desk covered in her notes and sketches. “So yes, I have concerns about overstepping the boundaries of our relationship here. If I bump into him one day in the camp, it’s not like I can say, ‘Oh, hey, this is a crazy coincidence! When did you get here?’”