Archangel (34 page)

in five minutes you'll be off that bed and on roll-call and that's generous. If you want to diet, that's your business.

You can diet to death for all I bloody care.'

'I declare a hunger strike, I declare a work strike.'

He saw the Political Officer step back. Rudakov's fingers snapped in annoyance.

'I'm going back to my office. In five minutes Feldstein will be in the compound.'

Above him he saw white hands that stroked the length of their truncheons.

The officers did not notice a change of mood amongst the zeks lined in front of them to hear the names called. They were familiar only with docility. If the zeks stood straighter in their lines, if their eyes gazed more questioningly around them, if they had shed a little of their apathy, it was lost on the men in uniform.

On that Tuesday morning the zeks missed nothing.

They saw the Captain of KGB stamp out from Hut 2, the annoyance large on his face. From line to line the whisper spread that Feldstein, who was a political, had declared a hunger strike. The story of this small act of rebellion slipped from tongue to ear in a quiet murmur. Rebellion frightened some, excited others, but no man could be indifferent to it. A political on hunger strike, and two days before that a pair of men had cut their way out through the wire, and two weeks before that the guards' barracks had been struck by dysentery, and a week before that the office of the Commandant had been razed to the ground. A pulse ran along the lines.

A name called and a name answered. A tedious rhythm of shout and counter-shout.

Mamarev sensed the difference. He, and all the pervert prisoners who lived in the split world between captor and captive, could sense the small current of aggression that flowed steadily, imperceptibly, through the ranks of the prisoners. He felt a fear in his own body, he felt the pull of anticipation around him.

Every man in the compound heard Feldstein's shout.

In front of the parade, from the doorway of Hut 2, Anatoly Feldstein was pitched out into the snow.

A boot swung, a truncheon lashed.

'I declare a hunger strike, I protest against the violation of my constitutional rights . . . '

A boot thudded his voice to a whimper, a truncheon smacked him flat to the ground.

'I declare a work strike against illegal safety standards . .

His head was deep in snow, his hands protected his genitals. He screamed the high-flung shriek of pain. As if a colour sergeant had howled a command at a squad of conscripts, so the zeks reacted, stiffened, stood erect.

Of course, they had seen pain before. Each man of eight hundred had known for himself what it was to be hit. On a thousand days, on ten thousand days, they would have turned the cheek, dropped the eye.

Not on this Tuesday morning.

A growl ran through the lines, something heavy with menace.

The two warders picked Feldstein up under his arms and dragged him across the snow so that his hanging legs made a tramline track between the imprint of their own boots. The growl had turned to a whistle. The whistle of the supporters who watch the home team defeated in the Lenin stadium. A whistle of derision. The warders took Feldstein to the edge of the rear rank, dropped him, scuttled back. Feldstein was not wearing his boots, his socks were black with the wet from the snow. He was bent double, the whistling sang in his ears. He wore no gloves, and blue tinged the fingers that were still tight around his groin.

'Call the names.' The Adjutant shouted to his sergeant, and there was the smear of nervousness in his eyes.

'Chernayev . . .'

The shout soared over the spilling noise of the whistle.

Afterwards he could not say why he took the action that he did. He had been seventeen years in the camps, seventeen years of preventive detention from the only trade that he knew, the work of thieving. He had been a model prisoner through the years of his second term. He had offended nobody. A docile and anonymous creature who had merged into the life of the camp. He heard his name called, listened as if he were a stranger to the shout. No answer slipped his tongue. His mind was far distanced. He thought of the perimeter path, he thought of evening when the
zeks
had gathered in their huts, he thought of walking with Michael Holly beside the killing zone, if everybody says that they cannot be beaten then that will be true.' Those were Holly's words, and now Feldstein had joined him hand in hand.

Timid Feldstein who hid behind what he believed to be his intellectual superiority. Feldstein who had never known a knife-fight. Feldstein who buried himself in books to escape the surroundings of Hut z. if everybody says that they cannot be beaten then that will be true.'

'Chernayev .. .'

The repetition of the shout. Between the shoulders of the
zeks
in front he saw the reddening face of the sergeant. It was a caricature of pomposity. He found its fury amusing.

Chernayev sat down.

He sat down in the snow. He felt the wetness seep through the seat of his trousers, tickle against his skin. He was smiling as if a light-headed calm had captured him. It had been so easy, easier than he could ever have believed. He did not think of the truncheons and boots that had struck Feldstein. He thought of nothing but the contentment of sitting in the snow, and the ruddy anger of the sergeant's face. He reached up with his hand and tugged at Byrkin's tunic then pointed to the squeezed mess of slush beside Byrkin's boots. Byrkin responded, Byrkin settled beside him. Chernayev saw Byrkin's chin jut out, take on the gaunt point of a rock's edge.

The whistling had stopped. There was a great quiet clouding the compound. The guards cradled their rifles and looked to their sergeant. The sergeant studied his board with the lists of names, then turned to the Adjutant for guidance. The Adjutant clasped and unclasped his fingers behind his back and stared at the window of the Commandant's office in Administration as if from the steamed panes of glass* might come salvation.

The gate of the compound opened. Just a few feet, sufficient to allow the passage of a prisoner who wore manacles on his wrists, and two warders who gripped his arms. The prisoner was being taken from the SHIzo punishment block to the Administration building.

Chernayev saw Michael Holly and his escort, Byrkin too.

They watched him as he walked, eyes straight ahead, before he was lost to their view behind the mass of legs.

Poshekhonov saw Michael Holly. Poshekhonov who was the survivor, who had slept in a death cell, who now had the bunk beside the stove in Hut z. He had never joined the company of the whines and dissenters. Lucky to be alive, wasn't he? He had faced the executioner's bullet, and any life was better than » dawn death in a prison yard. He intended to walk out through those prison gates one day and collect the suit he had been wearing at the time of his arrest - it wouldn't fit him well, it would be a give away at every station between Barashevo and the Black Sea - and take his railway warrant and go home to dream of a bank account in Zurich gathering interest and dust. He'd find a way to get there. Bloody well swim the Black Sea if he had to. Poshekhonov was a survivor. That's what he had told Holly, told him that his weapon was the humour that won him small victories. And Holly had dismissed him. 'Little victories win nothing • • Extraordinary, that Chernayev had sat down. Sensible old goat, he'd always reckoned Chernayev. Byrkin, well Byrkin was different - half mad, wasn't he? Everyone knew that Byrkin was touched. And who wouldn't be if they'd been locked in a cabin below the waterline with the bombs falling. 'Little victories win nothing . . . ' Feldstein on hunger strike, Chernayev sitting down, Byrkin following him, that wasn't; a little victory, only an inconvenience. But if the whole of Hut z sat down, what then? Perhaps it would be a big victory if the whole of Hut z sat in the snow. He looked to the man on the right of him, who was described as a 'parasite to society', and saw that his gaze was questioned. He looked to the man on the left, who was described as a 'hooligan', and saw that his action was waited for. You're not mad, are you, Poshekho-

nov? You're not going to play daft buggers? If the whole of Hut z were to sit down . . .

The prison diet had not entirely stripped away his fat.

Poshekhonov made a faintly ridiculous sight as he rolled down onto his buttocks.

And the zek on his right followed him, and the zek on his left.

First the fraud, then the parasite, then the hooligan.

And like a line of tin soldiers who will keel over when one is pushed, the zeks of Hut z sat down.

For a moment only Mamarev was standing, and he looked hard at the Adjutant and saw only indecision, then he too lowered himself to the snow.

The Adjutant pursed his cold-chapped lips, wet them with his tongue. Behind five ranks of standing prisoners a whole line was sinking, dropping from his sight.

'Request Major Kypov to come here, and suggest to him that his attendance is immediate.'

The Adjutant rasped the instruction to an N C O , who turned and ran towards the Administration building.

It was a familiar place, almost a place that was home.

As Holly was led inside Yuri Rudakov's office he felt the warmth .worm beneath his clothes. He looked warily at Rudakov while the warder's keys unfastened his manacles.

He saw on the Political Officer's face the smile of studied friendship.

'Sit down.'

'Thank you.'

'You have suffered no injury during y o u r . . . your expedition?'

'There is no heating in the SHIzo, my clothes are still wet.'

'Of course. Put your tunic on the radiator, your socks too.'

'Thank you.'

Holly laid his tunic on the hot pipes and the worn socks beside them and the heat tingled his fingers.

'Your shirt, ypur trousers?'

'They're all right. Thank you again.'

'Coffee? Something to eat?'

'No, thank you.'

Yuri Rudakov rested his elbows on the desk, balanced his chin against his hands. They could have been friends, they might have been companions. Two educated young men.

Their smells divided them - Rudakov rich with the talc from his bathroom, Holly ripe with the sweat stains from his flight. Their cheeks separated them - Rudakov close-shaved, Holly raw with a week's stubble.

'I would not have credited that you could have been so crass, so stupid.' Rudakov said. 'You believed in the possibility of escape, Holly. You believed so strongly in the possibility of running clear that you even sent me a little letter. That showed a touching faith in your ability to leave us.' There seemed a mocking serenity in Rudakov. That was his outward armour. There were two paths he could take.

There was friendship, there was the fist. His choice was based not on kindness but on expediency. 'You have confessed to murder. You make a confession and at the same time you run away like a truant from a teacher. Did no one ever tell you how many get clear from the Dubrovlag? You know, Holly, down the road is Camp 5 where we keep the foreigners - addicts, currency offenders, drunks, religious maniacs - never has one of them done anything as stupid as to try to break out. For a foreigner it is impossible . . . '

'What are you going to do?'

'Why should I do anything, Holly? It is on you that we wait.'

'No riddles, please. You don't sleep when you're running, nor when you're on a concrete floor.'

if I do not have your statement then I do not interfere in the case of a man held at Yavas. If I have your statement then I take upon myself a different course of action. That is not a riddle.'

'You're a pig, Rudakov, a stinking, lousy pig.'

'You don't have to be theatrical, Michael. If you did not want to meet me you could have stayed in England. If you did not wish to make a statement to me you could have avoided introducing excrement in the water supply of the barracks.' There was a change now in Rudakov, a cut of hard steel. 'He was a young boy who died. He was a conscript. He served his country, he had done no harm to you. You had no right to murder him.'

'What guarantees do you give me?'

'You cannot ask for guarantees, you are owed nothing.

You have to trust me when I say that an innocent man will not die at Yavas because of what you have done. You have no alternative but to trust me.'

Holly looked down at the floor, saw the blisters on the joints of his toes where the skin had been rubbed away by boots that were sufficient for the slow shuffle of the prisoner, inadequate for the gallop of the escaper. He was no longer certain. He had boasted of his strength, and his strength was found out and false. The life and death of a man at Yavas had rotted it.

He could have cried out the name of Mikk Laas, he could have cried for an older fighter's forgiveness.

'You'd better get a sheet of paper,' Holly whispered.

Vasily Kypov strode across the compound. He glowered at the front lines that stood in dumb hostile insolence. Relief at his coming lit the face of the Adjutant.

He recognized the signs. Any trained and experienced officer would have recognized the signs of approaching mutiny. You catch mutiny early, he had been told that at some long ago staff officers' course, you catch it early and you belt the balls off it. He saw the widely spaced cordon of guards around the lines of prisoners, and the three small groups of warders who huddled together with only their truncheons to sustain them. Too few men, he decided.

He reached the Adjutant, but did not concern himself with returning the salute.

'I want every man out of the barracks,' Kypov hissed. 'And I want the perimeter guard doubled.'

'Most of the men who are in reserve are at Visitors'

Reception .. .'

'Get them here.'

'Who is to supervise the visits? There is the searching of visitors . . . '

'Fuck the visits, fuck the visitors. I want them out.'

The zeks in the front rank had heard. The Adjutant watched the bitter hardening of their faces. Visits were the cornerstone of their lives. Visits were precious.

is that wise, Commandant?'