In the night a guard died at the Central Hospital.
Nineteen years old. A swarthy boy before the sickness found him. A conscript from a village of fishermen near the Black Sea's city of Sukhumi. A soldier of the M V D killed by a perforation of the intestine and severe haemorrhage from the gut.
One death, seventeen casualties for treatment. A doctor from Saransk said that he had read that dysentery was most likely to provide complications for the malnourished. He asked whether it was possible that a guard could suffer malnourishment. His question was not answered.
The news of the death reached Vasily Kypov as he dressed in his bungalow half a kilometre from the compound. There was a telephone beside his bed and, while he spoke, his Orderly was brewing coffee in the kitchen and whistling a popular tune of the young people in Moscow. A breath of cheerfulness swam from the kitchen as Kypov listened to the message from the hospital. As a military man he knew of casualties. The paratroops had taken killed and wounded on the streets of Budapest when he was a junior Lieutenant.
As a Captain he had known the pain of casualties in the old quarter of Prague. Casualties were inevitable; even on manoeuvres in the German Democratic Republic or on exercise in eastern Poland there would be accidents. His former colleagues serving out time as garrison troops in Jalalabad would know the meaning of casualties – unused sleeping bags, packaged personalized belongings. Casualties were part of the paraphernalia of war.
But this was not war. This was the tedium of camp administration. This was the boredom of watching over a criminal scum.
The Hungarians had kicked back. The Czechs had struck out. The Afghans would fight with the teeth of ground-to-air missiles, rockets, medium machine-guns. That was pre-dictable, acceptable. But this?.. . Was he in a state of war with eight hundred scarecrow filth as an enemy? He had never thought of the zeks as his enemy, never believed they had the will to bite against his authority. One pig from out there had killed a young man for whom Vasily Kypov, formerly a major of paratroops, was responsible.
He had not been a hard man, he told himself that, he had never resorted to brute repression. He had been fair, and they had shown their gratitude. They had given him a boy who was dead.
His chin shook, his hand trembled with his anger. When the Orderly brought his coffee the liquid slurped from the filled mug and dribbled from his jaw.
From the distant lit line that was the perimeter fence of the camp he could hear the amplified strains of the National Anthem. The night's snow lay on the track, sheeting the previous day's ice and grit. The Orderly drove slowly, with great care, towards the Administration block.
There was more coffee in the Officers' mess.
Kypov and his own at one end and, away across the room, the huddle of the interrogators who had arrived during the night. He saw that Rudakov flitted between the two groups as if uncertain of his allegiance. If one fell then all would fall.
And camp security was the one area of administration where the Commandant gave ground to the junior KGB officer on attachment.
He was buggered if he would be a prisoner in his own mess.
He strode across the room, introduced himself to the senior interrogator. The two men stood for several minutes on the no-man's-land of the central carpet, heads close, voices low. The mess was warm, the stove fire well ablaze, and when they had finished talking he found that his eyes wandered to the red coals, and he remembered the searing flash as the flames had leaped from his own fireplace, and he glanced at the coal bucket. He was afraid, in his own mess he was afraid. That was the cancer that had to be cut. He turned back to the senior interrogator.
'You have everything that you need?'
'Everything. Each man has a room allocated.'
'Excellent.'
'We are not patient, Major… there have been very firm instructions from Moscow.'
'I hope you kick the shit out of them,' Kypov said.
He buttoned his greatcoat, drew on his gloves. Out from the mess and into the darkness. The snow flakes nicked the skin of his cheeks. Around him were his officers and guards with machine-pistols, and dogs and warders with wooden staves.
In front of him the gates were pushed open, piling snow to the side. He saw the prisoners, vague through the snow-fall.
He was at war, and victory in war demanded the harshest resolution. Out there was his enemy. An enemy bent in its rags against the wind. But a boy lay dead in the refrigerated mortuary of the Central Hospital, and amongst his enemy was that boy's murderer.
A few metres forward of the centre of the front line of prisoners had been placed a wooden box, white from the snow-fall. He marched towards it and the murmur of talk died in the ranks.
As if it were a drill movement, and looking straight ahead, Kypov stepped onto the box… slipped… skidded…
His arms flailed for support and could clutch at nothing.
He landed in the snow on his back, arms and legs spread, sinking in its softness. And the boots and the hems of greatcoats crowded around him, and gloved hands lifted him and beat the snow from his shoulders and his buttocks.
It started as a growl, the laughter of the men in front of him. It began as a tremor, became a quake, and as far as he could see there were mouths open in mirth. His fingers gripped tight inside his gloves. And in front of him the faces were animated, alive, bright with fun.
He turned.
The nearest man with a machine-pistol. He snatched it, and still the laughter rattled in his ears. With his teeth he dragged a glove from his hand. All the time the laughter. He cocked the weapon and the crack of the metal movement was lost in the laughter's gale. He fired over their heads, his forefinger locked to the trigger. All of the magazine. Thirty-six shots. When the magazine was exhausted his finger was still tight on the trigger.
The report of the gunfire beat back at him from the low snow-cloud.
The prisoners were silent. Heads down, shoulders cowed, mouths shut.
He shouted and his words carried clearly across the compound.
'Within the last week a part of the Administration block, the property of the State, was sabotaged by fire. Within the last forty-eight hours the water supply to the garrison has been poisoned. As a result of the first action, property of the State was destroyed to the value of many hundreds of roubles. As a result of the second action the life of a young man has been taken… he has been murdered. Neither of these actions was accidental. I guarantee that the malefac-tors will be sought out and will be subject to the most rigorous penalties laid down by law. Some of you may labour under the misguided belief that you have a duty to shield a killer and a saboteur. If we discover that any of you have followed that road then I promise that you, too, will feel the full harshness of the law. Every man from this compound will be questioned by investigators. You must co-operate fully with the investigation team. Until we have arrested this murderer certain penalties will be imposed on all prisoners… No visits, short or long, will be permitted.
No parcels will be accepted. No incoming mail will be distributed, no outgoing mail will be despatched. The Library will be closed, all entertainments are cancelled. If the culprit has not been discovered by Sunday then a full day's work will be peformed on that day. There is one, or there are some, amongst you who want to play rough with me. I, too, can play. I can play rough with all of you.'
They waited in the snow. They waited for the order to move off towards the Factory compound and the shelter of the workshops. The order was not given. They stood in their lines and ranks and the snow fluttered to their caps and lay on the shoulders of their tunics and gathered over their thin felt boots.
Twelve from the front rank were taken to the Administration block.
They watched the camp Commandant, alone and brooding, as he paced around them, and they were encircled by guards and the dogs crept close to the legs of their handlers.
Few bothered to brush the snow from their caps and tunics. They had not been forbidden to talk, but the voices of the zeks were dampened.
In the rear rank were the men from Hut z.
Byrkin who had been a Petty Officer said, 'They will never let go of this one. That is the way of the Services, they will go on until they have a body. At first they will try to have the right body, afterwards they won't care… My wife was to have come next week and the children. Nothing is worse than missing a visit. I can just remember what the children look like.'
Mamarev who carried the stain of informer said, 'Who ever did this, he had no right to involve us all. He's hiding behind us. We owe nothing to the bastard that killed a guard who hadn't harmed him.'
Poshekhonov who had been a fraud said, 'The man who did this, he has destroyed Kypov, he has ruined Rudakov.
Perhaps not finally, but near to it. They have trouble in their camp, and what other camp has trouble? They have to call for more troops, for interrogators from outside. Now Moscow knows that this camp has trouble and they will ask why, why this camp alone? Did you see Kypov, like a bloody savage this morning? One man has beaten him. You could almost feel sorry for the pig.'
Adimov who was a killer said, 'It is not a man from Hut 2.
I know when a mouse farts in Hut 2. Huts 3 and 4 are closest to the pit, he'll have come from them… I had a letter taken out that night, a little creep from the perimeter guard, I've not seen him again. He'll have the shits, he'll be in the hospital… their man's not from our hut.'
Feldstein who considered himself the political prisoner said, 'I cannot support such an action as this. The boy who died was as oppressed as we are. All the conscripts are ignorant and captive. If we strike at them with violence then we only justify the repression tactics of the Politburo, of the fascists of the monolith. It will only be by non-violence that we win anything, by passive resistance. To attack them like this is to be as crude and vulgar as they are.'.
Chernayev who had not been a thief for seventeen years said, 'They can do nothing to us. One only they can shoot
… perhaps he would have died of pneumonia, or coronary exhaustion, perhaps anyway he would have run for the wire
… They can't do anything. But the man who killed the guard, I hope that man knows why the guard had to die.
Unless he knows why, then what he did was wasted.'
The voices around Michael Holly.
In the second rank two men fell, simultaneously, as if by signal. They were pulled back to their feet by the zeks of the same line. Blue, blood-drained faces, fingers that could not move, feet that could not be felt.
An old man screamed. A young man sobbed without shame. The snow fell on the compound.
Kypov paced alone around his prisoners.
The first twelve came back and one bled from the nose and another from the lip and a third was helped by others.
Another twelve were called, and the snow fell. Another twelve returned, and the snow fell. Another twelve were called…
No bell for lunch, no call for the Kitchen queue, no smoke from the iron stack on the Kitchen roof.
The guards shivered and their dogs moaned.
Holly stood straight, tried not to twist his face away from the snow flurries that were channelled between the bodies and over the shoulders of the men in front of him.
Why, Holly?
What's the justification, Holly? Eight hundred men lined in ranks in the snow, and the temperature sliding, and the snow settling, and the Kitchen idle. Why, Holly?
Because it's there…
There had once been a cartoon that he had seen in a London evening newspaper. A mountain of bodies, Asian and Caucasian and dead that were the casualties of the battle for South Vietnam's Khe Sanh, and on one side of the mountain was LBJ and on the other was Ho, and the caption read 'Because It's There'.
Everyone says you should fight them. Fight against a wrong, fight against an evil, fight against an injustice.
Everyone says that, until they are confronted themselves with wrong and evil and injustice. Different when you face it yourself… And because Holly fought, then Byrkin and Mamarev and Poshekhonov and Adimov and Feldstein and Chernayev stood in the snow and shivered and were cold to the marrow and their bellies scraped in hunger like a shingle" sea shore.
You have an arrogance, Michael Holly.
Perhaps.
You have a conceit when you put these poor bastards to the agony of a day frozen in line in the snow.
Perhaps.
And one man will die, Holly. Perhaps you… perhaps some man that you know. Perhaps some grey creature from another hut whose life has never crossed yours. Will you cry for him, Holly? Will you, when he goes to the bullet in the yard of the Central Investigation Prison at Yavas?
God… God, I don't know.
When you made the bomb to go with the coal, when you forced the shit into the water-mains pipe leading to the barracks, did you know of this?
No… No… Of course I didn't bloody know. How could I have known?
A man in his rank crumpled and slithered to the ground, and his companions pulled him back to his feet and tried to chafe his legs and cheeks and hands, and then Holly knew weakness, felt his knees cave, his strength slide.
He fought a war with proxy weapons. He used the hand-gun of the men of the compound, and he hadn't asked them, he hadn't won them to his flag.
A man is a better man if he fights. . You believe that, Holly?
I believe t h a t… I think I believe that. Anything is better than just surviving. And if you fight then some will be hurt, that is the way of fighting, and some will know why and some won't. And this is an evil place, this place should be destroyed. Even if another place rises afterwards, it should still be fought against.
Will you believe that, Holly, when they take a man to the yard at Yavas?
He watched Kypov striding his own perimeter, a short round figure made grotesque by the thickness and length of his greatcoat, made silly by the full wide cap.
Pray God I have the strength, to believe that.
In mid-afternoon the men who had not been questioned were sent back to their huts.
Internal Order knew the reason. The trusties reported that the interrogators had complained that the men who were being brought to them were too cold to talk, that their minds were as numbed as their feet and fingers.
Like rats after food the zeks struggled to get close to the central stove of the hut and the snow melted from their clothes and boots, puddling the floor. Beside the door Holly had scraped the snow from his tunic and trousers. Now he sat on his bunk, dangling his legs and listened to the skirmish of talk around the stove.
Feldstein came to his own bunk and shook his head with puzzlement.
'You know, Holly, there is a pride among the zeks tonight. You would expect it of the politicals, but not from the zeks… Nobody screamed at Kypov for deliverance.
There was no surrender out there. That was the strength of non-violence. Just standing there, dumb, and staring them out, that was incredible. I didn't think the zeks could behave like that.'
'And that matters?'
'Of course that matters. It shows them that we are people, not numbers. The more they believe we are people, then the more they will show respect towards us. Eight hundred numbers are simply an administrative question for them, eight hundred people is something else.'
'But they must find one to shoot.'
'I had forgotten… ' Feldstein spoke with a sharp sadness.
He flopped down onto his mattress.
From the door of the hut the names were called.
Those that came back said the interrogators were losing heart, were bored with battering at the silence wall. The questioning was sluggish, ill-informed, they said.
The dozen from Hut 2 came to the Administration block and the long internal corridor. Hanging out from each door was a KGB man, whores in a brothel and touting for a customer. Holly saw that their tunic collars were unfastened, that all pretence of smartness was abandoned. He wondered whether they would hit him… how he would respond if they did. He had never been hit in his life, least of all by a man with a rubber truncheon. They had been called in alphabetical order from the hut. After Adimov and Byrkin and Chernayev, together with Feldstein, before Mamarev and Poshekhonov. A routine was being followed.
If there were suspicion held against him then the rhythm of the questioning would have been broken, he would have been summoned ahead of his turn. But if they did not take Michael Holly, then they would take another. All the men in the hut said that they must take one man. Holly shuddered.
He saw that Yuri Rudakov had come to his door at the far end of the corridor. He heard the shout.
'Holly, to my office.'
He walked past the interrogators, smelt their breath, smelt the herring and bread they would have gulped between the beatings, smelt the coffee that would have for-tified them. in here, Holly.'
Rudakov grabbed him by the tunic front, propelled him through the door. The lock clicked shut.
Rudakov loosed his grip. He said pleasantly, 'Sit down.'
Holly sat on the straight back wooden chair in front of the desk.
'Would you like some coffee? There's a sandwich if you'd like it. ..'
Holly craved coffee, would have grovelled for a sandwich.
'No.'
'I've plenty of coffee, sandwiches too.'
'No.'
'Please yourself,' Rudakov said. i don't come cheap, not as bloody cheap as that.'
'Please yourself…'
Rudakov walked to the filing cabinet and the tray on the top with the thermos flask and the plate. He made a song of pouring the coffee, a dance of unwrapping the sandwiches from grease paper. .. You can change your mind.'
'No.'
'My wife made the coffee, and the sandwiches. They're very good, she buys her meat in Pot'ma. Were you married, Holly?'
'You've read the file.'
Rudakov came back to his desk. Coffee ran on his chin, crumbs fell from his mouth.
The impact of a truncheon on flesh and bone and muscle buffeted dully through the thin wall, emptied the sound into Rudakov's office.
'That'll be Feldstein. Superior little bastard, don't you think so, Michael? Going to set the world to rights, going to change the order. Just a creep, our Comrade Feldstein, don't you think?'
'Why am I in here?'
Rudakov opened his hands, rolled his eyes in disbelief, theatrical and exaggerated.
'Do you want to be with him? You want to be with those animals? They're not pretty boys with a set of rules, they've come to find who killed a guard. That's their order and they will achieve it, they will find somebody they can charge with killing a guard. You want to go to their care? I've shielded you, Michael… You should thank m e… You want some coffee now?'
'No.'
Through the wall Holly heard the soft moan of Feldstein.
He stared back into Rudakov's eyes until they blinked and turned away from him.
'Did you think on what I said?'
'I don't remember what you said.'
'A transfer to Vladimir.' in exchange for what?' in exchange for a statement. Something about the work that you were sent to accomplish in our country. We would let you go for that. No one could blame you afterwards for a statement of that sort – it would only be the truth..
Rudakov warmed to his own words, a smile of friendship snuggled at his mouth.'… The truth about who sent you, and who you were to meet.'
'You have the statement that I made at Lubyanka.' i have read the statement, Holly.' Rudakov played the man who was disappointed. 'Not a very full statement and then you persisted in the lie of innocence.'
'I said in my statement that I was not a spy…'
The room shook. In the next office a body had been thrown with force against a wall.
'And that was a lie, Holly.'
'You say it was a lie, I do not.'
He thought of Feldstein, a thin Jewish boy who would have a bleeding mouth and bruises above his kidneys. A boy who could recite in the darkness the poem of a man who had died from a burst ulcer.
'Don't you want to go home?'
He thought of Feldstein who would be in pain behind a plasterboard wall, and of Byrkin who would lose a visit, and of Adimov who would not see his wife before the cancer caught her, and of Poshekhonov, and of Chernayev.
'You must want to go home, and we are making it so easy for you. But you have a problem, Holly. You labour under an illusion. You believe you can make me impatient. Holly, I have all day, I have every day to sit with you. Actually, I value the time I spend with you. You're not getting out of here; I'm not about to be posted. I have all the time I need. It is your time that is wasted. Personally, I would like to see you go home. You should believe me, Holly. Consider, who else can you believe?'
He thought of a girl that he had seen behind a line of guns and a cordon of dogs. An elfin girl with brave, bright eyes.
Morozova, the one word stamped on her tunic above a slight breast. A girl with no given name…
'You could be out of here within days, perhaps even hours. Listen to me, you have no need to be here.'
He thought of eight hundred men lined up in the snow, the pariahs and dross of a nation. And they had stood their ground.
'I want to see you go home, Holly. I want to see you go free to lead the rest of your young life away from this place.'
'Give me some coffee, please.'
'That's being sensible. Have some coffee and a sandwich then we'll talk. You won't have to go back to the hut tonight, I'll find you somewhere here…' Rudakov bounced across the room towards the filing cabinet, moving on his toes in a waltz of success. 'We'll have you out of that hut. I don't know how you've survived with that scum.'
Rudakov set the mug of coffee down in front of Holly.
Holly picked it up, pondered the coffee for a moment. He threw it in Rudakov's face.
Hot, steaming coffee ran down Rudakov's best uniform and scalded his skin, and the mug had bounced to the floor and smashed.
Rudakov blinked. Coffee droplets sprinkled from his eyebrows. He wiped furiously with his handkerchief at the growing stains on his uniform.
'If you are here fourteen years…' Rudakov spat across the table. '… If you serve fourteen years at Barashevo, remember each day the chance you were given. And remember this, too, Mister Holly. If I hit you, in the condition you're in, if I hit you then I break you. I can break any bone in your body. You remember that.'
'I said I didn't come cheap. Not as cheap as a mug of coffee and a sandwich.'
'Every day in fourteen years you will wish you had never done that.'
Holly smiled.
'When you report to Moscow will you say thqt you Back in the hut the limping Feldstein reported that Holly had been taken to the punishment cells.
'Rudakov offered him coffee, Holly threw it in his face..
Some said the Englishman was an idiot, some that he had snapped. But the zeks do not linger on the misfortune of one man. Holly was instant interest, then replaced.
Chernayev gazed wistfully at the empty bunk, the folded blanket, then went to the window and looked across the snow to the high wire fence and the high wooden wall and the jutting roof of the prison block. He alone thought that, perhaps, he understood.