Building Trust

Catherine and Tatiana were driven to the home of the Ukraine women.  They both wore orange dresses.  They sat with the women and helped with the babies.  They cooked and cleaned and washed an endless supply of diapers.  Days passed.  The women refused to go.  They were past the point of ever trusting another Russian.  Promised train travel, promised freedom, all promises were just new lies from the world’s liars.  Their current house in Tomsk was a prison for them, but it was a better prison than any others that might await.  They had each other, they had the babies, they had a safe house on a quiet street. 

Catherine focused on Kristina.  Still skinny, the woman was armed with a chin she liked to point.  Catherine sat near her, helped her when she cooked, did dishes with her after meals, but mostly she listened.  It took little prodding.  Her hometown.  A boy she talked with and thought about.  Her job in a flower shop.  It was all gone now.  Blown apart by Russian artillery.  Friends killed or escaped to Poland.  She had stayed a day too long.  A few more things to pack.  Rounded up and “filtered.”  She wouldn’t talk about that camp and those soldiers.

Catherine talked about Poland.  Good people.  Lots of Ukrainians there.  Kaliningrad was Russian, but it was an island surrounded by Lithuania and Poland.  A train had to travel through Lithuania to get there.  Things might happen as the train traveled through Lithuania.  She could say no more, but she thought good things might happen.

Kristina pointed her chin and asked the obvious question.

“Why are you doing this?  You are Russian.  You come in an orange dress and pretend to be one of us.  But you are Russian.”

“I have a daughter.”

Catherine paused and took Kristina’s hand.

“I am Russian now, but I was born American.  I have a mother in America.  I want my daughter to live with her.  I want my daughter out of Russia.  When you leave, I ask that you take her with you.”

“You can take her out.  You are Russian.  Get a tourist visa.  Go to Germany, then go to America.”

“I cannot leave Russia.  I am a different kind of prisoner.  I will die here.”

Catherine held Kristina’s hand and looked into her eyes.  That chin pointed at her for a while, then slowly sank.  Maybe they had an agreement.

There were two more days of babies, cleaning, cooking, and conversations.  The Ukrainians tended toward one end of the house.  They took babies up there to change them.  And they talked.  Two days they talked.  Catherine and Tatiana left them alone to talk.  They sat with babies on their orange laps and listened.  They could not hear words, but they could hear the noise of arguments.  A decision was being debated.

Late on the second day, Kristina sat with Catherine.

“I wish to see a picture of your daughter.”

Catherine pulled her wallet from her purse.  She had half a dozen pictures of Svetlana.  Two were first-day-of-school pictures.  One was of her at Christmas.  One was her as a flower girl at the wedding in Wisconsin.  One was her reading to the children in Poland.  In one she sat proudly on her mother’s lap.

“She is truly your daughter?”

“I adopted her when she was three.  She was in an orphanage near Moscow.”

“We will keep these babies until they are two or three.  Until they are toilet trained.  Russian mothers want to be mothers, but they don’t want to change diapers.”

“These babies will come with us.  We will take them back to Lithuania or Poland or Ukraine.  They will not become Russians.”

“And if any of us refuse to come with you?”

“I do not know what will happen to them.”

Kristina was gone for over an hour.  Catherine and Tatiana waited in the front room with several babies.  All eight women came forward with their decision.  Kristina spoke for them.

“We will go.  We don’t want these babies to grow up to be more Russian monsters we will hate.”

Tatiana made some calls on her phone.  Catherine hugged each of the women while they waited to hear what would happen next.  Tatiana finally announced the schedule.

“We will take the morning train south to Novosibirsk.  We will be there two hours while Catherine gets her daughter.  Then we will take the Trans-Siberian Train west.  It will take us several days to reach Lithuania.”

The women spent the next hours packing for themselves and packing for the babies.  They whispered among themselves.  They feared the Trans-Siberian train.  It had carried them thousands of kilometers from their families.  Now it would take them west?  Maybe.  Or maybe this was a trick to take them farther east.  They slept when they could and cared for the babies when needed.  The night was many hours long.

Catherine and Tatiana spent the night planning for Svetlana.  The Larins would not give her up.  Tatiana knew about all the attempts the parents had made to get US visas.  They were in daily contact with Catherine’s parents.  They had been asking Catherine’s parents to contact the US State Department.  And Catherine’s father had done that.  He had completed forms that might admit the Larin family as relatives of his.

So, they could not ask the Larins to bring Svetlana to the train station.  They would not give up their lever to get into the US.  Catherine would have to go to Lana’s school and get her.  But the school knew Lana’s mother to be Natalia Larin.  They did not know Catherine.  Tatiana made more phone calls.

Two vans arrived at six.  Thirteen crying babies needed to be cleaned, dressed, and given a bottle as they and ten women in orange filled the vans.  Two matrons in black, both armed with pistols, joined the women crowded into the vans.  It was a long drive to the train station.  Rather than board at the main station, they would board at the smaller station at the south end of town.  Smaller station, fewer observers.  Most babies quieted from the rocking of the vans.  Not all.  The thirty-minute drive seemed endless.

A dozen or so passengers waited at the southern station.  And eight guards, six in uniform, two pretending to read newspapers.

Catherine had been assured the FSB fully approved this escape.  They would have the right people at the right places.  The assurances had come after Catherine had signed her name, recited the oath, sat for a picture, and had her fingers printed.  She had joined the FSB ironically in an office at the back of the Museum of Oppression.  They had been her guards for the past months.  Now they were her “brother and sister” agents.  They inserted a computer chip into her shoulder, shook her hand, and sent her off to her first assignment – get the Ukraine women to Lithuania.

The train station was the first test.  Would the FSB agents keep local cops from questioning ten women in orange?  Yes.  Three local cops walked through the station but kept their distance.  Maybe they were following instructions from the FSB agents.  Maybe they wanted nothing to do with ten foreign women and a collection of screaming babies.

The matrons led them to a car near the end of the train.  Babies, baggage, ten women in orange, they made quite a sight as they hurried to their compartments.  The matrons pointed, barked orders, and kept the women moving.  They were quickly loaded in four adjacent compartments.  Baggage spilled over into the hall.  It took an hour for the women and babies to finally settle in for the ride.  Fortunately, the rocking of the train did magic for the mood of the babies.

Tatiana did her share of baby care, but she also spent much of the trip whispering with the matrons.  Catherine assumed the matrons were in on the escape plan.  Catherine was not.  She assumed something would happen somewhere in Lithuania or maybe in Kaliningrad.  Something that would free Lana and these women.

Catherine’s concern at the moment was Lana.  How could she get her daughter out of her school?

As it turned out, the FSB did what it was best at.  It arrested her.  The next morning as the Tomsk train pulled into the Novosibirsk station and the women and babies were pushed into a secured room, agents entered Lana’s school.  The principal was ordered to bring out a subversive student.  She had been communicating illegally with agents in the US.  A very confused Lana was loaded into the back of a government car and taken away.  Ten minutes later she was with her mother in the train station.

Hugging and crying lasted almost until the arrival of the west-bound train.  But Catherine did find time to introduce Lana to all the Ukrainian women and Tatiana.  Tatiana pulled an orange dress from a bag and got Lana changed just before they all boarded.  They got the last car on the train.  This time no compartments, just rows of seats quickly filled with women, babies, and diaper bags.

Catherine put Lana on her lap and held her tight.  She would have three days to explain the purpose – and final destination – of this trip.