“I don’t mind satisfying your curiosity.” He looked up from the report that he’d taken from the folder. “I gave the order.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. For a moment, he considered arguing with Sergei but held back. In truth, he didn’t even know what he was doing there, trying to call the head of the Avtozavod secret police to account, much less when it was about Hewitt, the man who’d tried to deceive him. Upsetting Sergei could only bring trouble, so he’d try to learn the whereabouts of the industrialist and leave the rest of the questions for Elizabeth herself. “You’ll understand my position. I in no way intend to question you, but I feel an obligation toward that family. Hewitt’s niece is desperate. She just asked me to find out about her uncle’s situation and if it’s possible to visit him. It was Hewitt who hired me, after all,” he said in an attempt to justify his actions.
“Hewitt hired you? Ha!” Sergei stood, thumping the table. “How deluded you are! Do you really think the Soviet state would have allowed a newcomer like you to stick his nose in our business, just like that, however qualified he was? Or that Hewitt himself would have paid a stranger to play such an important role?”
“I . . . I don’t understand,” Jack sputtered.
“Hewitt had nothing to do with hiring you. I ordered him to do it in Moscow, when I discovered that McMillan had disappeared.”
“Disappeared? But wasn’t he confined to a hospital in the United States?” He tried to act surprised.
“So that’s what Hewitt told you? Look, Jack. Even though you’re an American, I have always believed you to be an honest man. Otherwise, I can assure you that I wouldn’t have let you within ten miles of my daughter. And for the same reason, I think I owe you an explanation.” He took a puff on his cigarette, as if weighing carefully what to reveal to him. He took a deep breath and continued. “I started suspecting Wilbur Hewitt not long after he was assigned to this factory. I’m talking three years ago, when the construction of the Avtozavod first began, and he was chosen to oversee it. Hewitt was very enthusiastic; I won’t deny it. His team worked day and night, and in a few months they transformed a piece of wasteland into the impressive complex that is now the pride of the Soviet people. But when the first machines were commissioned, the problems started, too.” He took another puff. “At first, Hewitt blamed the incidents on the Soviet workers’ lack of skills. To solve the problem, a group of technicians traveled to Dearborn to be trained, while some American operatives were brought to the Avtozavod. However, far from improving, the problems worsened, and the sabotage started. The OGPU and Ford agreed jointly to appoint two special supervisors with the mission of uncovering the criminals. For the Soviet side, the designated man was Anatoly Orlov, and for the Americans, it was George McMillan. The two of them would work side by side, and their findings would be reported directly to me.”
He checked that Jack was following him before continuing. “McMillan was an oddball, a bookworm who spent entire months neck-deep in accounts and reports. He was suspicious of everyone, he barely spoke to Orlov, and he kept his discoveries secret. I imagine that, at some stage, McMillan found out that Hewitt was responsible for the sabotage, and realized he was out of his depth. He must have guarded the information for a while, but when I was in Moscow, not long after your arrival in the capital, I received a call from him admitting that he’d found the evidence I was looking for.”
“And now he’s handed it to you.”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
Sergei Loban’s only response was to open a drawer and take out a red folder, which he dropped onto the desk. Jack picked it up and opened it. Inside, he found a clipping from the Pravda newspaper, dated January 6, 1933, the very date when Wilbur Hewitt offered Jack the role of supervisor. He read the headline in bold:
UNIDENTIFIED MAN COMMITS SUICIDE BY THROWING HIMSELF INTO MOSKVA RIVER
And under the text appeared a photograph of a body, the face identical to the one Jack had seen on George McMillan’s passport.
32
When Jack confessed the outcome of his meeting to Elizabeth, the young woman retreated until she bumped into an armchair into which she slumped like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Jack hesitated before kneeling to take her hands in his and console her. When he lifted her chin, he could see barely a wisp of the beauty that had captivated him in her reddened eyes.
He made tea for both of them. While he heated the water, he felt sympathy for her but also felt sorry for himself. Elizabeth was clearly forlorn, but Wilbur Hewitt had left Jack in the lurch, too. He waited for the young woman to take a couple of sips before telling her that Sergei had authorized a visit to see her uncle. Elizabeth seemed to come back to life. “I don’t believe him. I don’t believe that bunch of lying Soviets. Where are they keeping him?”
“He told me they’ve taken him to the ispravdom. Don’t worry. They took me there, too, and it’s a safe place,” he lied to ease her worry. “Wrap up warm. It’s out of town.”
As he drove in the direction of the labor camp, Jack reflected on the macabre plot that Wilbur Hewitt had devised, and on the attempt in the factory with which, according to Sergei, the American executive had tried to murder him. His accompanying Elizabeth at that moment was less to do with kindness than out of a desire to confront the industrialist face-to-face. He accelerated hard, and the Ford lurched forward on the icy road before going into the final bend before they reached the sinister barbed-wire fencing that surrounded the ispravdom.
When they showed him Sergei’s letter of authorization, the guard let them through and led them to a small, bare room, with no furniture other than a metal table screwed to the floor, and four chairs arranged around it. While they waited, some gut-wrenching screams made Elizabeth jump.
Ten minutes later, a bolt was drawn across, and a guard emerged through the door at the other end of the room. He was followed by a wreck of a man dragging a leg. Seeing that it was Hewitt, Elizabeth ran to help him, but the guard yelled at her to keep her distance.
“What’s he saying?” she asked Jack.
“He’s telling us to sit down and remain seated. Do what he says.”
“You have five minutes,” the guard said in English, and he positioned himself beside the table.
Elizabeth looked at her uncle with wide eyes, as if she were looking at a stranger. “Uncle Wilbur? Oh God! What have these savages done to you?”
Wilbur Hewitt pressed his lips together and raised his head, trying to preserve some trace of dignity. He glanced sidelong at the guard. “Don’t worry. These Soviet sons of bitches only—”