A calm, almost beatific smile. “I feel sorry for you, Alexander,” he said softly. “You thought you were avenging him.
But really you were avenging yourself. Your own pain. And you locked yourself in this cell with me.”
“I found a way out. You didn’t.” Sever shoved him away.
He paced the cell like a caged animal. The madman’s words had landed exactly where they hurt. He really had locked himself in.
He had given years of his life to revenge. It had become the whole meaning of his existence. And now that it had ended in this absurd way, he had nothing left.
Nothing but emptiness. He looked at Baskakov. The man sat on his bunk and quietly hummed.
Not one of Krug’s songs. Some old church hymn. And Sever understood then that he had lost.
He could kill him right there. But what would that change? It would only prove the point.
He had wanted the man to suffer. Instead, he might be handing him exactly what he wanted. That night, for the first time in years, Sasha Sever couldn’t sleep.
He lay there staring at the ceiling and thinking. Thinking about his life.
About the criminal code, about honor, friendship, revenge. And for the first time he asked himself a question. Had any of it been worth it?
All the deaths. All the ruined lives. Would Mike have wanted this? Or would he, like Baskakov in that dream, have told him to let it go?
He found no answer. The next day he called over a guard. “Tell the warden,” he said.
“I’m requesting solitary. Personal reasons.” The request was granted. When they moved him, he looked back one last time at his cellmate.
The man stood in the middle of the cell, smiling. He gave a small wave. And Sasha Sever was taken to a single cell, into silence…
