CHAPTER NINEIn the first week of December, after three days of heavy snowfall — grainy, fierce, and coarse — word came from Riga that each of the young Founders who had taken part in the protest was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. They threw the book at them, tied in a nonsensical terrorism charge, when all they did was barricade themselves in a tower and didn’t harm a hair on anyone’s head. The grenade they threatened the guards with was a fake. On the news they showed the squeamish face of the judge, his grey mane, thin lips, angry eyes. Luakreze… Luarkeze… Luakrezee… Sasha immediately forgot his name. They credited that judge with sending seventeen Red Army veterans to Latvian prison in the past two years. Some of them died in jail — one of old age, the other as a result of a hung
