Chapter 19

'What was it worth?' Mikk Laas asked. it was worth nothing,' Holly said.

'Does freedom have a rare taste?'

'For me it had nothing.'

'To have gone through the wire you must have believed in that freedom?'

'And not found it.'

'On the outside, you saw people?'

'Not until the helicopter came.'

'You saw the face of no man who was free?'

'The first face I saw was that of the helicopter marksman.'

'Was it luck that beat you?' it was inevitable.'

'The escape was wasted?' it was lunatic, we were exhausted, we were hungry, we had nowhere to go.' Holly said bitterly. 'I hadn't thought it out. I hadn't reckoned on the tiredness. I told Adimov that I had thought I would find an excitement when we were clear of the wire, a great breath of fresh excitement, and I felt nothing. Once you hear the siren there is no freedom. Out of the little camp and into the big camp, that's what they say, isn't it? Near my country is Ireland, they have a sport there that they call "coursing". They release a hare and the fastest dogs they have chase it. For the hare there is a moment of something like freedom because it can run. But the dogs are faster. The hare has only a moment of freedom, and its freedom is spent with the blood spurting in its heart. That's not freedom, Mikk Laas.'

'Others before you have tried, others after you will try.'

'Then they're better men.'

'And now you will bend to them?'

'They drag it out of you, don't they? They drag the guts and bowels out of you. You start by trying to fight. You run against a wall, you beat your head against their bricks. You kick, you punch the wall, but you cannot hurt the bricks.

I've tried… '

'How have you tried?'

Michael Holly looked across the narrow width of the SHIzo cell towards the old Estonian. They had not talked the previous evening, but morning now, the morning after recapture, and he could talk. But he felt an impatience at the veteran's bleak questions. He felt the requirement of justification.

'I burned down the Commandant's hut.'

'You did that?' Mikk Laas nodded, an academic's approval.

'I did that. I poisoned the garrison water supply.'

'That too?'

'I escaped, I cut through their bloody wire.'

– 'And now you will bend to them?'

' I… I don't know… '

'Have you achieved anything by the burning, the poisoning, the escape? Anything of value?'

'You tell me.'

'Time alone will tell you. Perhaps you have lit some fire in the camp.'

'Did I have the right to do those things, Mikk Laas?' He thought of a man taken to Yavas to face capital trial, a man whom he had never seen.

'When we were last together you spoke of reprisal, I remember. If at the end, Michael Holly, you have won a victory, then you were justified. If now you bend the knee to them, then you have no right to do those things.'

'Thank you, Mikk Laas.'

An incredible old man. In the camps from before the time Holly was born. An old fighter, an old idiot, who did not know when to bend to them. Not a spare pinch of flesh on his body, and he had strength to give away. He had never met a man like Mikk Laas before. He had to travel a thousand miles inside the frontiers of the big camp to find him. Holly squeezed the frail fingers in affection.

A warder unbolted the door of the cell and dumped inside a bucket and a broom of bound twigs. They should slop out and clean the cell, and after that Mikk Laas would go to the workshop and Michael Holly would be taken to the office of the Political Officer. The door slammed shut.

Holly was on his knees picking up the dirt between his forefinger and thumb.

'There is a man at Yavas who will die because I poisoned the water.'

'Only a victory can balance that man's life.'

An old voice, a voice that shuffled between the close walls of the cell.

It is not easy to administer with success the daily life of an organism as complex as a prison camp.

The traditional way, the way of the Commandants of the Dubrovlag, is the iron-gloved routine. In theory the weight of repression and penalty is sufficient to make the inmates accept their demi-life behind the fences. For a thousand days, or ten thousand days, the tough way will ensure a pliability from the zeks. Short of food, short of rest, short of dignity, the prisoners will seek the one course that will permit their survival. They will strive above all to live. But one day, they refuse to lie down before the steam-roller wheel of camp routine. From the offices of senior officials of the Ministry of Interior in far away and comfortable Moscow right down to the stink of the living huts in the camps, there is no known science to explain those few and long separated moments when the prisoners' tolerance of their condition is overwhelmed.

At the camp with the designated title of ZhKh 385/3/1 that one day – the day that follows a thousand, the day that follows ten thousand – was a Tuesday in the last week of February.

A report now rests in the basement filing library of the Ministry of the Interior, compiled from laborious interviews with Vasily Kypov, Yuri Rudakov, an assortment of officers and NCOs under their command, trusties from Internal Order, and senior warders. The report seeks to explain the events that were linked, in Zone 1 of Camp 3, on a Tuesday in the last week of the month of February, with the name of Michael Holly.

Michael Holly, however, cannot be directly related to the initial action on that Tuesday morning – that point was to be most precisely made by the Ministry's senior official who was to be the final author and arbiter of the report. Michael Holly was isolated in the SHIzo punishment block with only a senile Estonian for company. But his name was spoken often on that Tuesday morning. Men conjured with that name, took it as a faith's cross, whispered it as a healing herb. Around the camp was a low wooden fence, and then a killing zone, and then two fences of barbed wire, and then a high wooden fence. Around the camp were watch-towers, guards, guns, dogs. Around the camp was an impasse of snow emptiness. Behind those barriers, in spite of those barriers, a defiance was born. On that Tuesday morning an anger fluttered, a spirit tickled and, in ways that could sometimes be touched and that were at other moments intangible, the name of Michael Holly grasped at the consciousness of the prisoners. There are many errors in the report of the Ministry of the Interior, but when the heavy typewritten sheets point to the central position of Michael Holly they do not lie.

On that Tuesday morning from his bunk in Hut 2, Anatoly Feldstein declared that he had begun a hunger strike,

When the body is semi-starved, when the diet provides sufficient calories and protein only to keep the prisoner as a working creature, then a hunger strike is no easy weapon for a man to take with his fist.

Feldstein lay on his mattress and the hut around him was quiet. All the zeks had gone for exercise and breakfast, and then for roll-call before the march to the Factory zone. The trustie was the last who had spoken to him, sworn at him, cursed him.

Not an easy weapon to hold, the self-denial of food. But he had seen a man jump down from the cabin of a helicopter on the previous evening, a man who had crawled in the snow to slice through the strands of wire that bound them all to the compound, a man who had run before the hunting troops with the scream of the siren betraying his action, a man who had carried his friend, a man who had managed to wave to the zeks who watched his home-coming.

He had seen a man who had fought back.

Bukovsky, Orlov, Shcharansky, Kuznetsov – they were in the folklore of the dissident fighters. Bukovsky had led the hunger strike at Perm 35. Orlov, who was in Perm 37 and shadowed even in the camp by two KGB officers, alternated between hunger strike and the SHIzo punishment cell.

Scharansky, while in the hard Christopol gaol, had organized a ten-day strike in solidarity with 'the Peoples struggling against Russia-Soviet Imperialism and Colonialism'.

Kuznetsov had not compromised even under the sentence of death. They were the cream, they were the leaders who were known beyond the borders of their country. Anatoly Feldstein was a minnow in their company.

He had been serving out his time, whiling away the months of his captivity. He had been in the SHIzo just once, for failing to remove his cap in the presence of an officer. He had dreamed of an exile in the West. The Englishman had nudged his guilt. Where before he had seen no value in confrontation, he now saw its worth. When he had passed the samizdat writings in Moscow he had known of the penalties, he had told Michael Holly that he knew of them.

Now, as he lay on his mattress, he thought of the further penalties that he would face.

Let the bastards come. When you have nothing, what then can be taken from you? This was his gesture…

Four men around the bunk. Two warders with truncheons drawn, the trustie who had brought them, Captain Yuri Rudakov because Feldstein was political.

'Get up, you little Jew shit,' from the first warder.

'Off your arse before we kick you off,' from the second warder.

'Why are you not at roll-call, Feldstein?' A coldness from Rudakov.

Words hammering around Feldstein's ears, and he felt small and vulnerable and beneath the swing of their fists and truncheons he waited for the blows.

'I declare a hunger strike in protest against the violation of my constitutional rights… ' it's not like you to be stupid, Feldstein… '

The boy saw the beginning of puzzlement on Rudakov's forehead, as if the Political Officer were weighted by another preoccupation. in addition to a hunger strike I declare a work strike in protest against the labour conditions of the camp, which are illegal under Soviet law because they contravene Soviet safety standards.' 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?'

'I will say what is wise.'

In a camp of Strict Regime such asZhKh 385/3/1, prisoners are entitled by law to two brief and one prolonged visit each year. A brief visit may last up to a maximum of four hours, a prolonged visit may be extended to three days with prisoner and relative sleeping together in small rooms set aside in a secure section of the Administration block. Before and after both brief and prolonged visits, the men and women and children who have travelled to the camp to see their loved ones are subjected to a vigorous and painstaking body-search.

Weakened by their winter journey, depressed by the surroundings, the relatives on this Tuesday morning sat in the wooden hut beyond the outer door of the Administration building and waited to be strip-searched. The hut was full, the search cubicles already occupied, when Kypov's order found its destination.

The daughter, aged twelve, of a fifteen-year man was in one cubicle, her skirt up around her waist, her knickers at her ankles, feeling the fingers of a wardress pry her open in the hut for contraband.

A farmer from a collective outside Kazah, and past seventy years and the father of an army deserter, was in the second cubicle, with his trousers on the floor and his body bent forward to expose his anus.

The mother of a thief, who had travelled eight hundred kilometres and made five connections, tipped the contents of her plastic handbag onto the search table.

The son of an Adventist with four years to serve looked at the crumbled wreckage of a cake first torn apart and then passed for inspection.

These people, and those crowding the benches at the side of the hut, were informed of the order given by the Camp Commandant. They wailed in plaintive union, and the guards linked arms and jostled them out through the door, back into the cold and the snow. Prisoners' scum. The women shouted the loudest. They screamed at the smooth dark surface of the high wooden fence, they shouted at the young men in their high watch-towers.

Holly heard the screaming. Cocked his head for a moment, then ignored the noise of disturbance.

'As a teenager I occasionally went with my father to meetings of the OUN – that is the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. I don't remember that I was ever particularly interested in what I heard there. I thought it was pretty sterile.'

'You will have been on their files from that time, Michael, the files of the Intelligence people.'

'I suppose so. When I left school I went to Technical College. I was studying to be an engineer… '

Yuri Rudakov was hunched over his desk, writing in a fast scrawl. It was not easy for him to mask his exhilaration.

Holly was waffling, Holly was telling it his own way, in his own time. Rudakov would not interrupt, just write until his arm ached.

Kypov heard the screaming.

The zeks in their lines heard the screaming.

The guards who circled the prisoners heard the screaming, and they looked into the burning eyes of many hundreds of men and saw a hatred, and among the conscripts none had seen that loathing so co-ordinated before.

The detachment doubled into the compound.

A dozen more armed men. Kypov's army was augmented to twenty-five guards from the M V D force, fifteen warders with truncheons, four dog handlers. And he had wire fences behind him, and the watch-towers with their mounted machine-guns. He would use the detachment as a wedge to break up the mass of prisoners. He would break the will of one rank, then the second, then the third.

Hut 3 formed the forward line.

'Front rank, form into fives… Move! Move, you bastards!

Kypov might have yelled at a mountain. The front rank stayed solid. Not even the trusties moved, not even the

'stoolies'. The trusties and 'stoolies' had visits.

'Put a dog in, break them up.'

The sergeant handler was positioned behind the lines of prisoners. He faced the sitting backs of the men of Hut 2.

His dog was king, master of the pack. A black and tawny German shepherd, huge within its long and rough-haired coat, weighing 3 5 kilos. He slipped the leash at the collar.

The dog was trained to attack the zeks, taught from the time it had been a puppy. The dog ran forward, low and devastating in its assault. The white teeth buried themselves into Poshekhonov's shoulder.

It was the moment that the dam burst. For two, three brief seconds, the sergeant handler saw his dog worrying at the shoulder of a small, fat prisoner who scrabbled to get clear of the animal's jaws. Then dog and prisoner were engulfed. The zeks from either side, the zeks who stood to the front, threw themselves upon his dog. Once the sergeant handler thought he heard a yelp of pain. He saw the pounding movement of the zeks. And as suddenly as they had moved, they parted, and as the stillness fell upon the zeks the sergeant handler reached for the holster flap at his waist.

His dog had a strip of padded tunic material clamped in its jaws. His dog was lying on its side, strangely twisted. His dog had been killed by the zeks.

Around the prisoners from the cordon of guards was the noise of bullets sliding into the breeches of rifles.

'Over their heads… Fire!' Kypov shouted.

'This firm I was working for, Letterworth Engineering and Manufacturing Company had several contracts from the Soviet Union. Sovlmport wasn't the biggest of our clients but it was a healthy one, one that we kept sweet with. Well, it was a turbine order that we were chasing, worth two million sterling to us. We're not a big firm and that was good money. Along tripped Afghanistan, then we had the Olympic fracas. Our contract was in the pipeline but stuck there.

Mark Letterworth wanted it unstuck but he wasn't the man to have the time on his hands to be sitting around Moscow.

He asked me to go. Seemed obvious really. I speak the language, I'd worked on the specifications… '

The sound of gunfire crashed through the room.

Instinctively Holly fell to the floor from his chair.

After the first volley another was fired, then a third.

Rudakov was on his knees clawing open the lower drawer of his desk, finding the strapping of the shoulder holster that carried the small Makharov pistol, threading it over his chest and back. He crawled across the floor to the doorway.

He yelled for an Orderly. He was greeted with silence, an empty corridor, deserted offices. His place was in the compound and he had no escort to take Michael Holly back to the SHIzo block. He swore, he caught at Holly's arm as the Englishman was pulling on his socks and boots and tunic.

He delayed long enough for the tunic to be over Holly's shoulders, not for his boots to be tied. He propelled Holly out of the office, down the corridor, out into the compound.

He gasped at the sight in front of him.

In a great flattened antheap the prisoners of Camp 3, Zone I, knelt and lay prone. In the snow beside the long boots of the guards was the twinkle of discharged cartridge cases. He barely noticed as Holly drifted from him into the fallen mess of men and was lost to his sight. He hurried to Kypov.

'They won't go to work, we've fired over their heads.'

Rudakov did not hesitate, knew no caution with his advice. 'Better to calm them than confront them. Withdraw the troops and the dogs – the "stoolies" will give us the names. Once you've fired over their heads you can only fire into them, and that's a blood bath, that's the end of us all.'

'You're yellow, Rudakov, you're a bastard coward.'

Rudakov yelled back, 'I'm not a coward, I'm not stupid.

Your way we lose, my way we win.'

'It's running away.'

'Call me a coward again, and I'll break you… '

Rudakov, a bright young officer with a future on the KGB ladder did not know of the beating of Feldstein. Nor did he know of the sit-down in the snow, by Chernayev first and then by all the men of Hut 2. Nor did he know of the killing of the sergeant handler's dog. Rudakov's sure confidence won the day over the wavering uncertainty of his Commandant.

As they backed out through the compound's gates inside a porcupine of rifles, Rudakov said, 'Within two hours we'll be back… when they're cold and hungry.'

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