The compound was a new place. A new place because the great gates had closed behind the withdrawal of the Commandant and the guards and the warders. Never before in any man's time in the Zone had the forces of the regime scuttled to safety behind those gates.
Who now were the prisoners?
Only the guards in the watch-towers were visible to the men on the inside, and they were distant dolls high above their ladders and half-hidden by the sides of their platforms.
It was unbelievable to the zeks, it was rich wine to these long stretch men on Strict Regime. It had never happened before.
How were they to respond?
As the gates slipped shut behind the retreat of Kypov and his force, the zeks had risen from their stomachs and their knees.
They swept the snow from their tunics and trousers and felt the excitement that comes only from unscheduled success. Kypov had fled from his own camp. So unbelievable, so extraordinary that the delight was merged with fast suspicion. From where would the hammer blow come?
Without a leader the zeks were pulled as if by a magnet towards the very centre of the compound. They gathered between the living huts and close to the north wall of the Kitchen. There seemed a certain security there, and for many the sight of the wire and the watch-towers was blocked off by the buildings.
Eight hundred men and each offering his opinion or listening to that of another, and interrupting, and shouting and whispering. But there was still the sight of the steel-clad stack of the Factory chimney. Only a narrow smoke column drifted from the chimney-top. No work in the Factory. The civilian foreman would be beside the lathes and saws and varnish pots. One h o u r… perhaps a few hours, and then the Commandant would seek to lead them back to the Factory.
Most men felt their freedom as a passing pleasure.
A shimmer of a whisper sped amongst the prisoners.
Fingers pointed towards the north-west corner of the compound. A guard was climbing the ladder to a watch-tower and he held the rungs with one hand, and in the other was the dark outline of a machin-gun, and his body was wrapped in belt ammunition. They watched him climb.
Then the pointing fingers changed direction as the flock of birds will turn to another course. The fingers pointed to the south-west corner watch-tower, and another guard was climbing and another machine-gun was carried to a vantage platform. And the fingers swung again and the direction was south-east. And swung again, and to the north-east.
It had been a titbit of freedom. The happiness died under the barrels of the newly-placed machine-guns. A man in freedom must own a certain privacy. What privacy could there be under the sights of eight machine-guns? Now the prisoners watched the gates. The gates were massive and shut and held their secret. Behind the gates the force that Kypov had mustered would be collecting, absorbing its orders. The whisper had gone. Voices raised now in argument, in confusion.
Men from Hut i talking with men from Hut 3 and men from Hut 5. The thief with the drug addict. The speculator with the rapist. The killer with the homosexual. The first tide of fear, fear that hissed over a shingle beach.
Fear recalled the pain at Anatoly Feldstein's bruised groin, fear carried once more the dull ache to Poshekho nov's savaged shoulder, reminded Byrkin of the thunder of falling bombs above a water-line cabin. Feldstein, Poshekhonov, Byrkin, and Chernayev… all together, and a crush of men around them. Men pressing against them, men listening and waiting and hoping…
Feldstein who had been strong on his bunk, brave in the snow when the boots and truncheons flew, now small and frightened and hurt and cold.
'What will they do?'
Poshekhonov who had sat down only after others had made the gesture and who still felt the teeth marks in his skin and the chill from the rip of his tunic.
'They'll give us one chance, then they'll fire.'
Chernayev who had taken the action he would never have considered before on any day of the seventeen years that he had laboured in the camps.
'They will subdue us. We'll all be for the courts at Yavas.'
Byrkin who had only followed, who had never initiated.
'They have the names, they have the faces. There'll be ten years "Special" Regime at best, fifteen years at Vladimir or Chistopol at worst.'
Feldstein said, it wasn't supposed to be like this. Just an individual protest… '
Poshekhonov said, it's no longer one silly bastard's hunger strike. It's collective bloody mutiny. They stamp out mutiny, they make an example of it. Down the line, in the camp at Lesnoy, there was a mutiny in '77, they shot two boys for that, neither more than twenty years old.'
Chernayev said, 'They'll kill us, or they'll let us rot.'
'We're wrecked…' said Feldstein.
'We can't find an end to what was started,' said Poshekhonov.
'Holly started it, Holly is the beginning,' said Chernayev.
'Holly fought them from the first bloody day he was here.
We have drifted this far, if we drift further we might as well run at the wire,' said Byrkin.
Each man's opinion now must count. This is not the; outside world. In the small camp the minority cannot dictate to the majority. The decision must be collective.
Chernayev could see Holly. Over the close pack of heads he saw that Holly stood apart from the mass, leaning against the door frame of Hut z. He had isolated himself from the debate, he was no part of the crowd that had come together in the heart of the compound. A calmness seemed to bandage his face. He leaned with his hands in his trouser pockets.
A group of men is a herd. It follows a leader. It gives ground to the loudest, to the most certain. Those with faint hearts stand back, though they have the opportunity to speak they will not take advantage of that opportunity.
Those in the crowd who spoke with certainty were those who believed in the retaliation of Kypov that would fall on their heads, all of their heads.
'They'll butcher us when they come in… ' if we live we'll have a Fifteen on top of what's there… ' if we stand together we have strength, if we're apart they'll eat us…'
'They ran, the shit bastards are frightened… '
Chernayev listened to the litany of confrontation. Seventeen years in the camps, more to go, and there would be another fifteen to run. Additional sentences were always consecutive, never concurrent. Why had he sat down in the snow? Abruptly Chernayev elbowed his way through the crowd that mouthed the brave words of fight and resistance.
They'd learn, they'd learn what the fine words meant.
He shoved a path for himself, his eyes locked on Michael Holly.
'You were wrong with your advice. I was wrong to have accepted it.'
'When you have fired over the top you have only one option left to you.' For the fourth time since they had left the compound, Rudakov explained his reasoning to the Commandant. 'After that you can only fire into them. Then you have a massacre. As it is, we have a problem, a small problem that will go away. They're milling about in there, all piss and wind, no leaders and no plan.'
He wished he believed in his own words.
They stood together a few metres from the gate.
Vasily Kypov was restless. He stamped and pirouetted, and seemed prepared to listen only with a minimum of attention to his Political Officer. As if he were rousing himself before combat, Rudakov thought, and shuddered.
The bloody man had no sensitivity. The sledgehammer was all he understood. in twenty minutes we go.'
Close to the two men a small phalanx of guards waited.
They wore full riot gear – helmets with plastic visors, gas canisters fastened to their webbing, infantry assault rifles alternating with long wooden sticks.
'Before we return to the compound I will address the men over the loudspeaker system.'
'You can do what you like, you have nineteen minutes.
Then we're going in.'
'Go away.'
'You are a part of us, Holly.'
'Play your games on your own.' it's not a game, not when Zone i stands together.'
'I'm not a part of you.'
'You're of our blood.'
'I am nothing to you.'
'You are everything to us, Holly.'
They were beside the doorway to Hut z. Holly on the step and Chernayev dwarfed beneath him.
'They have a dream of fighting, Holly.'
'With what?' The scorn of Holly.
'Perhaps with fire, perhaps with a fouled water-pipe, perhaps with wire-cutters.. '
'You would do better to go back and form lines, to call your own names, ask them to open the gates so that you can go to work.'
'You believe that?'
'You say they have a dream of fighting, I say that is a dream of madness.'
Holly saw in front of him the face of an old man. It was a puckered, weathered face, with gnarled veins bright under a white skin and sores at the mouth that were the inheritance of the camp diet.
Chernayev croaked at him, an old man near to tears. 'Join us, Holly.'
'You should go back to the Factory. What you call a dream of fighting is pathetic, it's suicide.'
'You fought, Holly, the dream was good enough for you.'
'And lost, Chernayev, and lost… Perhaps if you have lost it would have been better not to fight.'
'That's shit.'
'Tell them to go back to their ranks.'
'They want a leader. Look at them.' Chernayev waved his arm towards the centre of the compound. All the eyes were on Holly, and on Chernayev, who played the emissary.
Many hundreds of faces, faces of men that Holly had never spoken with.
Holly looked beyond the crowd, and his gaze circled as far as the twist of his neck would take him. Watch-towers, gun-barrels, wire fences, wooden fences.
'Tell them to go back to their lines, Chernayev. To go back before it is too late for them.'
Chernayev clawed at Holly's sleeve. 'You showed them, Holly. You were the man that roused them. Where do you think they found the courage to do what they have done this morning?'
'Silly rubbish.'
'I'll tell you of the courage they found this morning.
Feldstein was on hunger strike, clever creepy little Feldstein, he declared a hunger strike and a work strike.' Chernayev was shouting now, shouting and pleading. 'An old man who has never kicked against them, he sat down in the snow, he refused to go to the Factory.'
'Who was that old man?'
'That was me.'
A smile wreathed Holly's face.
'You brave sweet old bugger. You daft old bugger.'
'And Poshekhonov and Byrkin, and the whole of Hut z.
Even the trustie sat down. And not one man from another hut would go to work-'
'You knew what you were doing?'
'Of course we didn't know what we were bloody doing.
And they put a dog on us, a sodding dog as big as a man, and we killed it.'
Holly came down the step. His arm was around Chernayev's shoulder. They walked towards the waiting zeks.
There was a faltering in Holly's stride, as if he crossed an unknown room.
'What do you want of me now?' Holly asked Chernayev.
'We want your commitment to fight.' it cannot be the fight of one man.
'It will be the fight of us all.'
The static whine of the loudspeakers burst upon them.
'…Attention… Attention.'
Holly recognized the voice of Yuri Rudakov. He thought of the confession that would be lying in the room of the Political Officer. Holly had weakened, Holly had collapsed, Holly had started to dictate a statement. And Feldstein had declared a hunger strike, and Chernayev had sat in the snow, and Poshekhonov and Byrkin with him, and a dog had been killed, and Kypov had ordered gunfire in the air, and Holly had been saved from his confession. Silently he uttered the words of his own commitment. He would never sit again in Yuri Rudakov's office. He would never place his chair again close to the warm pipes in Yuri Rudakov's office. „
'… Attention. • • All men in the compound have precisely ten minutes to form up in their ranks preparatory to roll-call and despatch to the Factory zone. If you do that immediately, there will be no reprisals taken. Failure to observe these instructions will lead to heavy penalties against all inmates of the camp. You have ten minutes… '
A hundred men were close around Holly, and behind them were another hundred, and behind them another hundred. Bleak, bowed men, with the counsel of suspicion and fear in their faces. Your army, Holly, an army of refuse and offal. Shrunken, starved bodies, hungry for leadership.
Where will you lead them, Holly? Bloody fools…
He was lifted up. He swayed on the shoulders of a dozen men, his legs hanging limp against their chests. Less than ten minutes to go, and the fever of rebellion burned in them.
And you started it, Holly. You started it with fire, with excrement, with wire-cutters. And how will you finish it?
Less than ten minutes until the gates of the compound were opened.
'Do you want to fight?' Holly called from his roost on the bucking shoulders.
A thunder of agreement buffeted around him. And the bright mouths of hope gleamed back at him. Bright mouths, gap teeth, pinched lips. is there petrol or paraffin in the compound?'
A voice shouted back, anonymous among the bee-swarm faces, in the store at the back of the Kitchen there is paraffin
– a reserve if the electricity is cut.'
'And there are glass bottles in the compound?'
Another voice, another hidden face, in the Shop there are bottles of lemonade.'
'Who has matches?'
More voices that clamoured for inclusion. 'I have matches… I have a b o x… I have a lighter…'
'I want a dozen bottles filled with paraffin. I want a little paraffin soaked into rags that will seal the neck of the bottles. I want them here in three minutes.' He saw men detach themselves from the main group. He saw men run when before he had only known them slouch and stumble .. I want every man on the perimeter path – "stoolies", Internal Order, "barons" – everyone. And I want a man on the roof of the Kitchen building, someone to wave to me when they come.'
There was a wasp nest of activity around Holly. The men who had not run to the Kitchen Store nor the Kitchen Shop nor to their huts for the hoarded matches now sidled away towards the edges of the compound and took a place on the stamped-down path. God, they trusted him.
He eased himself down from the shoulders that had supported him. Chernayev smiled, Poshekhonov grinned, Byrkin showed him the fierce anticipation of a combat-trained serviceman. The bloody fools, and so bloody p r o u d…
He saw Feldstein, and there was something haunted in the stolen glance of the young Jew. it's not your way, Anatoly?' i t is not my way.'
'You would lie down in front of them?'
'I would humiliate them by non-violence.'
'They'd spit on you.'
'Your way they will not spit on us, they will shoot us.'
'You can go out of the compound.'
Feldstein looked steadily into Holly's eyes. 'Don't try to cheapen me. I said when you were brought back that you would take men to hell and would not care if they returned.
Do you take us to hell, Holly? Do you care if we ever return?'
Holly smelt the paraffin. He turned away from Feldstein's persistent gaze. A dozen men came to him with bottles and a wad of rags oozed from each neck. Matches rattled in their boxes. A thin, reed voice carried from the roof of the Kitchen.
The group around Holly headed for the perimeter path.
Three bottles of paraffin would be underneath each of the corner watch-towers.
Holly walked across the compound to join the line of grey-uniformed men who ringed the huts and the Kitchen and the Bath and the Store and the parade area. He whis- pered something to Byrkin, that could not be heard by Chernayev and Poshekhonov, and Byrkin nodded, and went on his way like a soldier.
'What are we going to do?' asked Chernayev.
'Start something they won't forget, not quickly.'
'Are we going to die?' asked Poshekhonov.
'I shouldn't think so, not y e t… '
Holly was facing inwards towards the centre of the camp.
He linked arms with the zek on either side of him, elbow to elbow with fists clenched across the stomach. The gesture was imitated, the movement rippled. A chain of men was formed, a chain that was broken only in front of the gates into the compound.
They were not paratroops. They were a callow collection of conscripts and reserve NCOs. They were all that was available to Major Vasily Kypov. And they were nervous.
He could read that, he thought that he could smell their fear.
He would keep them close, a nugget group. Five ranks of five, and he would be at the front, and Rudakov would be at the rear. A magazine of live ammunition to each rifleman, and his own pistol was loaded, and Rudakov's too. He'd heard Rudakov's broadcast over the loudspeakers. Crap, he'd thought it, not hard enough, unnecessary crap.
'Rudakov, we're going.' Kypov straightened himself. 'Get the gates open. What are they at in there?'
Rudakov was behind the Commandant. 'They are on the perimeter path.'
'Any weapons?'
'Nothing that the watch-towers have reported.'
'Together in formation, men, only act on my orders.
Exactly on my orders.'
Best foot forward, Vasily Kypov marched his men into the mouth of the camp. They were a pretty sight. They might have had a band playing because each man was in step, and as they progressed across the snow towards the centre of the compound the snow flew smartly from their boots. Kypov. kept his head erect, glanced to the side with the shift of his eyes. He must dominate, that was the first rule in handling a rabble. Dominate and control. When Rudakov had said they were on the perimeter path, he could not register the significance of that information. Kypov saw the significance when he was fifty metres into the camp. He was marching into a vacuum. The zeks were distanced from him, he could not reach out and touch them with the power of his small force. The silence and the linked arms were unnerving. He had reached the centre of the camp, the very centre. Between the huts, beyond the buildings, the line of zeks confronted him. Small blurred figures in front of him, and on either side.
Blurred because of the water at his eyes, the water of frustration, of biting anger. If he marched his men to the left then he gave up all contact with the prisoners on his right. If he marched further forward then he could not dominate those behind him. If he held the centre ground then he must bellow to be heard. Amongst the scum was a brain that had bettered his. He stamped to a halt. Where was Rudakov?
Rudakov should have known. Rudakov had let him march onto shifting ground. Rudakov, at the bloody back. He turned to face his men. He saw them fidget, finger their rifles. And they had not taken the dog out, the bastard dog was still wet in the snow. Every soldier had seen the dog.
Twisted neck, blue tongue, helpless teeth, bruised fur. Shit.
And which way to face, when he addressed the scum? Shit.
And if he made his speech, what was his message, conciliation or threat? Whose was the brain that had bettered him?
Shit. Only the silence, only the linked arms of solidarity.
The training of the paratrooper won out. He took a deep sighing breath. He repeated to himself his first sentence. He was a toad puffed up to frighten the distant creatures.
'You are to form into your ranks. If my order is not obeyed the most severe penalties will be exacted on all prisoners. The troops with me are armed. If you do not move immediately I will order them to open fire at random upon you. You are completely surrounded, and there are additional machine-guns sited in the towers.'
He turned slowly on his heel. He looked for a movement, for the first man to break the chain and step forward. Silence beat over him, and the linked arms mocked him.
Three men stood under each of the four towers and watched Michael Holly for the signal.
He was very tense, and around him was the hiss of anticipation. Eight hundred men, and they waited on him.
The hunger was forgotten, the cold was stripped away, the tiredness had gone. A racing excitement clawed him. Away behind the outlines of the low roofs of Hut 2 and Hut 3 he saw Kypov and behind him the guns, and behind them Rudakov. in thirty seconds I will give the order for random fire.
Whoever has led you to this is a fool. You have been misled, turn your backs on this idiocy, you have less than half a minute…'
He saw the rifles ease up to the shoulders, he saw the barrels waver to select a target. He heard the smatter of sound as the catches were nudged from 'Safety'. He heard the bleat of Kypov's voice.
'You have fifteen seconds. These are automatic rifles, above you are machine-guns. I am going to count the last ten seconds. I am going to start to count.'
Holly swung his right arm away from the grip of the man next to him and raised it like a banner. He looked to the north-east tower and saw a sharp flash of light. He looked to the south-east tower and saw a bottle climb slowly, somersaul-ting, towards the open window and dark-uniformed guards.
A sheet of flame in the north-west tower. The crash of an explosion in the south-west tower. A terror scream in the north-east tower. A man beating at fire that was running across his great coat shoulders in the south-east tower.
Black smoke spilled from the towers, and orange light sucked through the interiors.
He saw a man who was ablaze jump from the top of a watch-tower ladder and dive for the salvation of the snow beneath.
He did not look behind him. Byrkin, who they said was mad, would know his job, Byrkin would be on the wire and climbing. There was the first clatter of exploding ammunition.
He hooked his right arm inside the elbow of the man next to him. He locked his hands, closed his fingers tight. The first step forward. Along the length of the line there was a shimmer of movement, a stutter. The line lurched, rolled, bent. The line straightened, the line advanced. He wondered if their nerve would hold. And why should it? If the line broke, if it broke just once, they would be massacred. God, help the line to hold. He saw Kypov, spinning like a top in a child's game. Kypov looking right, left, front, behind. He should have opened fire, Holly thought soberly. Stupid Kypov. The line was level with the rear of Hut 2 and Hut 3.
Here it could break, only here. Holly led, he was half a stride in front of the men on either side of him. Tracers streaked in brilliant lines, dividing a grey sky. Some of Kypov's detachment were on their knees as if they mistook the danger of the wild bullets. The perimeter of the line was closing in. In one place the line had not moved. The pathway to the gate was clear. The road of retreat was empty.
They came slowly now, the zeks with their arms linked, slowly and with purpose. They edged over the snow, and the sound of their boots was a perpetual, menacing shuffle.
Vasily Kypov could not utter the necessary command for his men to shoot. His pistol hung limp in his hand, its barrel rotating over the caps of his boots.
He heard Rudakov's voice behind him. What was Rudakov shouting? Why was Rudakov pulling at the arm of his coat?
Should it be gas, should it be rapid fire? What would rapid fire manage against this creeping ramshackle crowd? There were no weapons in their hands. They carried nothing in their hands. Rapid fire… too late to use gas. He had to find the words before the stinking rabble broke over him. Rapid fire… where was his bastard voice? Rudakov still pulling at the arm of his coat, still shouting.
'What is it?'
'Don't shoot – whatever you fucking do, don't shoot.'
'Rapid fire, that's for them.'
'Don't fucking shoot.'
He could see their eyes, he could read the names on their tunics, he could see the cotton darning round the knee cap patches and the boots sliding towards him across the snow.
'But they're going to kill us.'
'Only if you shoot. Remember the dog, Kypov, don't forget the fucking dog…'
Kypov could smell them. He could not remember when last he had smelt the zeks. A hideous smell of waste, of dirt, of old death. They could not beat him. A rabble in a camp could not be permitted to gain victory over a Major of paratroops. He knew he was raising the pistol in his hand.
His arm was rising and there was the hard hold of the pistol's butt in his hand. He felt Rudakov's first clamp on his forearm, and his arm slid back, relaxed.
'We'll be killed, Major. If one shot is fired, every last one of us…' Rudakov's voice was kindly.
He led Kypov past his troops. Out of step, out of mind, they returned to the gate. Kypov was weeping. If Rudakov had not supported him he would have fallen to the ground.
The line followed them.
The linked arms broke only when the gates had closed.
'What did you get?'
'Two of the mounted machine-guns.'
'Better than I'd hoped,' Holly smacked Byrkin across the shoulders.
'Not better, they're all charred to hell.'
The cold came fast to Holly's face. 'We don't have a gun that'll fire?'
'Nothing that'll fire… I'm sorry.'