Archangel Page 12

'Where the hole is, that is the junction between their water and ours?'

  'Yes . . . Imagine working in a pit with the water frozen round you, and you cannot wear gloves. If you wear gloves then the water will freeze on them, freeze them hard, and you cannot work. The supervisor says that they cannot wear gloves.'

  'After the place where they have dug the hole, after that all the water flows to the barracks and the administration?'

  'Yes . . . they always cheat on materials for the camp. We earn our wages here. We work in the Factory, good work is done here, and they deduct for our food and our keep. If they used the money that they take from us for the maintenance of the camp we would live like kings. It's exploitation, you agree with me?'

  'I agree with you, Chernayev.'

  The old thief rambled on and together they completed another circuit of the perimeter path. Holly barely listened.

  He thought only of a water pipe, a narrow metal pipe that carried water away from the compound and under the wire and the high wooden fence and on towards the two-storey barracks and the kitchens and dormitories of the guards. A slow smile played at Holly's mouth, and there was a bright happiness in his narrowed eyes.

  'And the water is cut off while the men work?'

  'What do you say? .. . The water . .. ? The mains water

  . . . ? Of course it is cut off. But the bastards in the barracks have the water tower to supply them. Once a day they flush the water through the pipe so that the water tower is topped, that's why the hole is water filled each morning when the men start work. We have only a water tanker this week, so no showers. They're right bastards who cheated on the materials .. .'

  'If they have the water then they should enjoy it. Holly's head was doubled on his chest, and his words were spoken without sound, and Chernayev talked on from the side of his mouth, oblivious to the loss of his audience.

  An old man talking and a younger man who no longer listened.

  No man lingered in the latrine wing of the Bath house. Fear of the rats hurried even those with the fluid stomach of embryonic dysentery or gastroenteritis. Some said they had seen the quizzical, grey-whiskered faces staring up at them as they crouched on the two boards above the refuse pit, peering at the nervous men from beside the walls of the cubicles and showing no apprehension. The poison was insufficient to destroy the rat colony Beneath the boards on which the men squatted the matter froze hard and solid Before he cleaned himself with old newspaper, Holly knew the germ of his idea.

  The prisoners shambles in an untidy mess towards the open space between Hut 3 and Hut 4. Soon the Commandant would come through the gates and into the compound and the orders would be shouted for them to form their ranks for roll-call and check before the march to the Factory for Holly stood beside a poorly dug hole and he looked down at a T-shaped junction of pipes and saw that the screw-fastened aperture that gave access to the pipe join and its subsidiary were swathed in cloth and knotted around in plastic sheeting. The screw would be adequately protected against the night frost. He believed he would be able to unfasten the screw turn. His eyes roved to the perimeter fences where thelights still shone as if in defiance of the coming day The lights were far away, and at their nearest points the bulk of Hut 3 and Hut 4 would shelter the hole in shadow. A clean ice sheet at the pit of the hole was evidence that the work was not close to completion. At the pace the zeks worked, the hole would not be filled by that evening.

  There was a barked shout. Without emotion the prisoners took their places in the appointed line.

  He had dressed that morning in his civilian clothes, reckoning that military uniform was unsuitable for the work of the day. He would not attend parade, he would avoid his Commandant. A pleasant enough looking young man was Yuri Rudakov in his slacks and open check shirt and loose grey jacket. His hair was combed and carefully parted, he had shaved with a new blade. On his way to the office he had asked for a thermos of coffee to be sent to him and two mugs and a bowl of sugar and some milk. When they had been brought he ordered that Michael Holly should be escorted to the Administration building from the Factory's furniture production shop. From beyond his rooms and from outside his seldom-washed windows he heard the persistent hammer blows of the carpenters astride the new roof of the Commandant's office.

  'Sit down, Holly.'

  'Thank you, Captain Rudakov.'

  'Some coffee?'

  'Thank you.'

  'A cigarette?'

  'No, thank you.'

  'You are well, you are not ill?'

  'I am not ill, not by the standards that exist here.'

  'You would like sugar with your coffee?'

  'No.'

  'All the prisoners take sugar.'

  'Then I am different.'

  'You have settled here?'

  'As well as I will ever settle here.'

  'The other men in your hut, how do they treat you?'

  'I have no problems in the hut.'

  Rudakov leaned forward across his table, extracted a cigarette from a Marlboro carton, reached with his fingers for his lighter.

  'But it's ridiculous, Holly, ridiculous and stupid.'

  'What is ridiculous and stupid, Captain Rudakov?'

  'You are an idiot to be here, you know that, Holly. It is unnecessary, it is a waste. You face fourteen years here . . . '

  'I know the sentence of the court.'

  'A man like you should not be here, you have no necessity to waste your life away here. The camp will destroy you, it destroys every man. You will be an animal when you leave here.'

  'I am grateful for your concern, Captain Rudakov.'

  'Are we to work together, Holly, or are we to fight?'

  'I don't imagine us as colleagues.'

  Rudakov drew deeply on his cigarette, let the smoke waft towards the chipboard ceiling.

  'You like to be facetious, Holly. You are fond of playing with sarcasm. It is not a game that I like, it does not amuse m e . . . I asked whether we should work together or whether we should fight . . . it will be your decision, Holly. If we work together then, perhaps, you will be here for a few months, if we fight then you are here for fourteen yearsl'

  'The coffee, Captain, it's foul.'

  'If we work together then doors will open, the road will be clear to the airport. The flight to London, everything into place, co-operation will take you home, Michael — you don't mind if I call you by your name, and I am Yuri - it would never be known in London that you have helped us, you would go home with honour . . . '

  'Don't they give a man in your position better coffee than this, Captain Rudakov?'

  'In England you were a talented man. You have a good job, a good salary. You have no need to turn your back on that. You can return to your work, to your home, to your friends. In a few months you can be back. You do not belong here, Holly, not amongst these scum that you sleep with, not in those rags, not in a place like this camp. You understand me?'

  'A child could understand you, Captain Rudakov.'

  'You owe them nothing, those that trapped you, sent you here. You owe them no loyalty . . . you owe my country no enmity. My country has not harmed you. We do not deserve your hatred. Do you want to stay here or do you want to go home?''

  Holly held the mug between his two hands, and his palms were warmed, and he looked into the murk of the liquid. He yearned to gulp down the coffee that remained, he craved to ask for more. He looked back at his interrogator.

  'I'm sorry, I wasn't listening . . . you'll have to say that again . . .'

  Rudakov's body surged up over the table, his arm snatched at the collar of Holly's tunic, pulled him up from his chair. The fingers were clamped solid as if sewn into the material. Holly felt the spatter of Rudakov's breath.

  'Don't play with me, Holly .. .'

  Two heads a few inches apart. Two pairs of eyes caught in the action of battle. Holly saw the red glow at Rudakov's cheeks.

  'Don't do that to me again, Captain Rudakov,' Holly said.

  '
A prisoner does not talk in that way to a camp officer. . .

  I do what I like with any zek. You are just another zek.'

  'Don't do it to me again.'

  'You are forbidden to speak to an officer in that fashion.'

  But Rudakov was subsiding back into his chair and his hand had loosened the grip at Holly's collar and he panted as if the slight movement had winded him. 'What would you do if I did that to you again?'

  'When you are on the floor in the corner you will know what I have done, Captain Rudakov.'

  Holly saw the anger rise, saw the clench of Rudakov's fists, saw his chair back away on its castors.

  'Article 77 Section 1: striking or assaulting a member of camp administration, fifteen years to death. Remember that, Holly.'

  The smoke hung in the air between them. Rudakov poured more coffee into Holly's mug. The game of persuasion did not come easily to the interrogator. He spoke like a man who uses an alien language. But the chair was sliding back towards the table, back to the closeness of conspiracy and friendship.

  'Holly, it is stupid that we fight... we have everything to offer each other. You should not be here, Holly, this is a place for filth, for criminals. Within days of helping me you would be transferred back to the hospital wing of Vladimir, within a few months you would be home . . . think on it.

  You do not have to survive the Dubrovlag, you do not have to survive anything. You can go home, if you co-operate .. .'

  'Thank you for the coffee,' Holly said.

  'Holly, listen to me, believe in me . . . you need me, you need my friendship. . . you do not have to be here. Help me, Michael Holly, help me and lean help you. Help me and you have the transfer. Help me and you have the flight home . . .'

  The voice across the table tapped at Holly's mind. There was nothing for him to say. He thought of the latrine and the T-junction of a water-main pipe, and a hole that had been carved from the snow and frozen earth, and a screw top cover that was lagged at night, and a place that was in shadow from the arc lamps of the perimeter fences. He thought of a fighting field that was again simple, again anonymous.

  'When you came to Moscow you carried a packet, a coded packet, that you were to pass to someone. Who gave you the packet, Holly? What was the agency in London, what was the name of the man who gave you that packet?

  They were not very efficient, the people who prepared you in London. You can't say they were efficient, can you? The pick-up was not met. You placed the packet, you returned an hour later and because the packet had not been taken you retrieved it. Who instructed you? What were your fall-back orders? Was there another collection point, H o l l y . . . ?'

  Holly sweating, Holly who was not trained and who had laid the envelope given him by Alan Millet on the top of the wire rubbish basket beside the bench on the Lenin hills.

  Holly coming back to the bench after an hour's walk that had taken him to the ski jump where the young people gathered to watch the first of the winter's athletes propel themselves into the dizzy air flows. Holly finding that his packet had not been taken, retrieving it, hurrying away, and frightened to look over his shoulder and check whether he was under surveillance. The first fear, the first knowledge that involvement was real and personal and far distanced from a glass of beer and a sandwich in a pub across the Thames.

  'You had to know that you would be caught. Did they not tell you that you might be held? Do they think we are stupid? They misled you, for a year you have known that. It is a kindness to them to say that they misled you, Holly, you were their plaything. Was it a senior man who briefed you? I don't think so, I think it was a boy. Did your desk officer tell you who would collect the package . . . ?'

  Holly alone on the Underground, with an uncollected package. Surrounded by Muscovites, strap-hanging on a fast train that slid to its halts and was away again. Returning to the Rossiya and not daring to look at the men and women who stood and swayed beside him.

  it wouldn't even have been an important mission. They may have told you that it was, but it couldn't have been.

  Would they have asked you, without training, without experience, to carry an important package? Hardly, Holly

  All so fast, so dreamlike and simple, the arrest of Michael Holly. Standing at Reception at the Rossiya, asking if there had been any messages because the Ministry might .have telephoned to give timings for his meeting. One moment standing at Reception and then wafted, as if he were a feather fluttering, to the car on the kerb. Through the swing doors, and he had not registered what was happening to him until he was out into the late afternoon cold and the open doorway at the back of the car was yawning for him. God, he'd been frightened. Terrified. A locked car, a short journey of screaming tyres, a side entrance to the Lubyanka.

  Nothing they could do now would be worse than the fear as the high gate fell like a guillotine behind him.

  'You owe it to yourself to help us to help you. It is not betrayal, it is you who have been betrayed. You owe them nothing. I think that you know I speak the truth. What do you say, my friend?'

  Holly saw Rudakov leaning easily back in his chair, saw the smugness on his face.

  'I think, Comrade Captain, I think you should shove yourself right up your arse . . .'

  Rudakov laughed, richly and loudly.

  'Right up your arse till you choke in your own stink.'

  Rudakov still laughing, and the shimmer of cracked ice across his face, and his gaze unwavering.

  'Think on it, Holly. Think on it tonight, think on a transfer to Vladimir, think on a flight to London.'

  Holly laughed too, and their laughter mingled. There was something of pride in Holly's eyes, and there was an inkling of combat in Rudakov's eyes. But in an instant the laughter was gone from the Political Officer's mouth. 'Be careful for yourself, Holly. Believe me you should be careful. In a few days I will send for you again. In the meantime you consider.'

  'Thank you for the coffee, Captain Rudakov.'

  Coming from the latrine, the figure hugged the shadow of the building before jogging across open ground to the cover of Hut 5. Wrapped in newspaper were the frozen lumps he had fashioned by stone to the width of the water pipe. From Hut 5 he had thirty yards of snow space to cross. He caught his breath, prepared himself, then ran for the hole. His shape joined the dark heap of earth and he landed without noise in the pit. A searchlight beam curved above him. A dog barked. He heard the voices, miserable and low-pitched, of patrolling warders. He realized with a vicious clarity that he had never considered the possibility of discovery. The light swung away, no sign or sound of the dogs, the voices faded.

  He trembled. His fingers groped for the junction of the pipes. It was the work of a few minutes.

  Michael Holly was back inside Hut z a clear hour before the trustie slammed shut the hut's door, switched off the lights.

  In the morning the water would run, run fast and sweet along a mains pipe until it met with an obstruction and the water would eat away at the mass that blocked it. Chisel it, and then carry that mass in diminishing particles to the taps and basins and sinks and cooking saucepans of the barracks.

  Chapter 9

  The prisoners are quick to notice change.

  Behind the listless,, dulled faqade their minds are keen to seek out anything which is eccentric in the camp life. It is impossible to trick these leeches. Better than those who administer the compound, the prisoners know the working of the camp ritual.

  Within a day and a night of Holly making his night run to the earth hole, the huts were alive with rumour.

  Another morning after and there was no longer scope for rumour. The talk now was certainty.

  Of the four corner watch-towers overlooking the compound of Zone 1, one was not manned as the men massed for parade and roll-call.

  The work of counting the prisoners and shouting the names was managed by seven warders and guards and not the familiar dozen.

  The Captain of KGB was on show in uniform and greatcoat, and held the cl
ipboard for the ticking off of names, and that would normally have been the task of a junior officer of the M V D detachment.

  And of those who were, there, some looked sick with a yellow pallor of the face skin, and some leaned on the shoulder of the nearest colleague for support, and some during the day would duck away from their duties and run with a crabbed strut towards the barracks building.

  A guard on the ski run between the high wire fence and the high wooden wall collapsed in the view of the prisoners and it was a full ten minutes before he was noticed from a watch-tower and help sent to him. The zeks had heard his soft low call for help, turned their backs and closed their ears.

  The prisoners were marched to work. They were hurried across the transit land between the compound and the Factory. They were stampeded over the open space of the road and the railway line, and when they reached the work shops they found that all was normality with the full staff of civilian foremen there to harry them to the daily quota.

  And the zeks wondered, wondered how it were possible for only guards and warders to be ill and sick, and for themselves to crawl about their work and existence immune from the microbe.

  Late in the morning the word spread through the workshops. From tongue to ear, from the finish shop to the paint shop to the lathe shop the word flowed.

  The word was dysentery.

  Dysentery. How was it possible that an epidemic of dysentery could afflict only that minority living in the barracks, and avoid touching eight hundred men who ate and slept the short distance away over the high wooden wall and high wire fence?

  How was it possible?

  Major Vasily Kypov pondered that question as he walked a slow circle of the compound in the company of Captain Yuri Rudakov. When an ambulance passed them, khaki and green camouflage with the red marking on white background, he could remember that it was the third that morning to leave the barracks sleeping-quarters for the Central Hospital of the Dubrovlag.

  And there would be an inquiry and findings and an official report that would reach the desk of the Procurator in Saransk, the capital city of the Mordovian ASSR, and then join the paper chain that routed to the Ministry in Moscow. Public Health inspectors had come from Pot'ma and had sealed the kitchens of the barracks. A crate of phthalyl-sulphathiazole tablets had been flown by helicopter from Saransk. And at the hospital there was nausea and fever and diarrhoea of mucus and blood, and it was said that a guard and a warder might die.