Chapter 21

Holly stood near to the wire and above him was the angled, subsiding structure of the south-east watch-tower. He heard the smashing of glass, the breaking of the windows of the Shop and the Store and the Library. There was the thudding of a wooden pole used as a ram against the door of the shed behind the Kitchen where the week's rations for eight hundred men were kept. The windows of the Administration block that looked through barbed wire into the compound were deserted. There would be men on the roof, and the guards in the towers overlooking the Hospital to the east, the Factory to the north, the Women's zone to the west would have a slanted and partial view into the camp.

In his mind he tried to shun responsibility for the fracturing glass, for the splintering doors. They had come to him, they had taken the step of conspiracy. But responsibility is no easy garment to cast off. Responsibility is worn tight, buttoned surely. Chernayev had told him that he, Michael Holly, had breathed the kiss of life courage into the zeks. He would lead them to hell, Feldstein had accused, would he care if they returned…?

What is the price to be paid for pride, what is the reward of the humble?

'The price of pride is crippling. The reward of the humble is survival.'

Bloody words, Michael Holly, daft words. And outside the fences they would be mustering an army, and inside the fences we're at play smashing and destroying.

He walked away from the fences and towards the Kitchen. Half a dozen men were sitting on the step outside the doorway of Hut 6. They were drunk. They had broken open the store of distilled alcohol that had been the property of the hut's 'baron'. That was democracy, that was power to the people. The capitalist had been overthrown. They were from Georgia, dark-skinned and curly-haired, singing and belching and hiccuping.

You started it, Holly.

He walked past the back of the Kitchen where the Store door sagged away from its upper hinge. An old zek came out trying to stuff potatoes down into his trouser pockets. They were raw potatoes and he would have no way of cooking them adequately, but a man who has been starved of potato for half a decade does not have to concern himself with the niceties of cooking. He had yellow rat teeth that could handle raw potato. Another man chewed uncooked semi-frozen herrings, gulped at the grey white meat. Another bit and worried at a length of tripe stomach-lining that would make him vomit. They would be fighting soon, those who already crowded the Store and blocked its entrance, and those who shouted outside the door for access.

You started it, Holly.

He walked along the side of the Kitchen and saw the broken windows. The breaking served no purpose. The snow would come in, and later the rain, the Kitchen would be a worse place for the zeks of the future… Perhaps, perhaps they do not believe in the future of the camp.

Perhaps that is why they have begun to damage systematically everything that is the camp. That can be a man's freedom. A man's freedom can be to damage systematically all the apparatus of the Dubrovlag.

He walked to the door of the Kitchen, where a knot of men with their backs to him formed an inverted laager.

They craned forward to see something at their feet. He heard the oaths and the whimper of a man who had once been privileged. Of course there would be beatings, the settling of age-old scores. Hands pulled Holly closer, he was invited to watch. He saw Mamarev on the ground. The snow was dark with mud and bright with blood. Blood dripped from the boy's mouth, from his nose. Two zeks kneeled above him and scrabbled with each other for the chance to strike the next blow. One of the zeks was Poshekhonov. Holly thought he might be sick. He reached forward and tore the two men back, and there was sudden surprise drifting to anger from Poshekhonov. Holly didn't speak. He picked Mamarev up from the ground. The sobbing gratitude of the boy shrilled in Holly's head.

You started it, Holly.

He carried Mamarev into the Kitchen.

A meeting had started. Amongst the debris of furniture one table and two benches had been retrieved. A dozen men, perhaps fifteen, were round the table. He heard a cacophony of raised voices. Argument, dissent, discussion. Poor bastards… poor, stupid bastards. They had begun something incredible and they had not known what they had done.

They were debating what to do next. That was a kind of freedom.

Holly let Mamarev slide down to the floor. He wondered how the men, some from each of the six huts, had been chosen. They were the doomed ones, they were the condemned men. When it was over, these names would be on Yuri Rudakov's desk. They would shoot these men in the yard of the Central Investigation Prison at Yavas. Zeks rule, OK. .. and for how long? For a day? For a day and a night?

Chernayev and Byrkin were the representatives of Hut 2.

Some of the other men he recognized, some he had never spoken with.

You started it, Holly.

He raised his hand, cut the squabble. it won't be a small force the next time, they'll come in strength. Now they'll be waiting for reinforcement. This time they will shoot. We have no guns… When the big force arrives they will again offer us a choice, surrender or take the consequences. This is your camp, not mine, you must decide for yourselves which way you will fall.'

'You led us before, Holly,' Chernayev said mildly.

'When you had already made your decision. You either give in now or you finish what has begun.'

The voices that Holly had hushed were raised again. if we give in, all of us will be shot or get Fifteens… we'll be behind wire for the rest of our natural… how can we fight them when we have no g u n s… we slid into this, if we slide further we're screwed… '

Brave men. Men out of the gutters, men who were unable to read the page of a newspaper, men who had thieved and killed for a petty purse of roubles. Michael Holly could never walk away from them.

Holly said, 'There was a riot some years ago in the Dubrovlag, what was the reaction of the military?'

'They brought in helicopters.'

'They used the down-blast to flatten everybody.'

'When everyone was on the ground, the guards and warders came in.'

'They used chains on the men.'

Holly asked, 'What is the stomach of the camp for a fight?'

'Don't underestimate their hate.'

He breathed deeply, screwed his eyes shut. There would be no going back. 'Any man who wants to leave the compound should be given the chance to do so immediately.

I want wire and I want rope and I want blankets. I want every man, who wishes to stay, inside the Kitchen in fifteen minutes. There is no going back. We have to finish what has been begun… '

'Where is that finish?' The zek from Hut 4, a big man with a bulbous mole set half way up his nose, and mud streaks on his cheeks.

'There is the possibility, just the possibility, that the very weight of our action will frighten them. There is the possibility that they will step back, try to talk with us.'

'And the probability?'

'They will hit us with everything they have.'

There was silence round the table. One man slowly drummed his fingers on the wood boards, another fished in his pocket for a loose cigarette, another snorted into a rag handkerchief.

Byrkin scraped his chair, stood up. 'I'll start looking for wire and the rope and blankets. I'll pass the word for the meeting.'

Vasily Kypov put down the telephone.

He looked across his desk towards Yuri Rudakov, who was hunched on the edge of an easy chair.

'Yavas is sending a hundred men, a Company and a Colonel General. Saransk is sending four helicopters. That was staff at Yavas, a shitty Lieutenant, he was almost fucking laughing at me.'

The telephone rang. Kypov grimaced, reached out for it, listened intently.

Rudakov watched him for a moment, then resumed his own brooding. The Political Officer was responsible for gauging the mood of the compound. It had all happened at such speed, with such fury. He was baffled. He doubted if Kypov had ever considered the prospect of mutiny. Why should he have done? Rudakov had never entertained the thought. Smart arse, wasn't he? And he'd never entertained an anxiety of mutiny.

Kypov covered over the telephone, guarding it from his voice, it's bloody Moscow… the big bastard boss from Interior…' and he was listening again and Rudakov knew the connection had been made because Kypov seemed to straighten in his chair. 'Good morning, Comrade Procurator… yes, the situation is contained. There is no chance of a break-out. I am sorry if you disagree with my decision to withdraw… I was on the spot, in the compound myself… the reinforcement troops are expected very soon… no, I have not yet identified the clique of leadership… tomorrow, you are coming, tomorrow? I am sure that by then we will have the compound returned to normal working…

Goodbye, Comrade Procurator.'

Rudakov scratched sharply at the back of his neck. 'All we wanted.'

'What troops are being sent?'

'Buggers from the far east. Regular army, none of this M V D shit.' it's not easy to get soldiers to fire on crowds.'

'They're straight off the steppes, slant eyes, they'll shoot,'

Kypov said, and the pencil in his hand was broken in two short halves.

They made a grim, halting procession out of the Kitchen.

The zeks whistled their going in derision, slow-clapped in contempt. Holly led them out.

They were the 'stoolies', and the trusties, and the

'barons'. They were the outsiders who had cheated themselves of the full rigours of the camp. They were the compromisers who had sealed their deals with the regime. Each had stood in line earlier in the morning with a faint heart, because each had believed that the second stage of rebellion would be the reprisals. Until they stood in the sharp air of the compound each one had believed he might yet be the victim of a cruel trick. And now they were outside and there was no deceit.

Holly held Mamarev's arm as they started out for the gates.

'They would have killed you this morning, you know that?' i thought I was dead.'

'When you came into the Kitchen you heard what we talked of.'

'A little.'

'You can buy your debt from me.'

'How?' Mamarev looked up at Holly, into the hard and chiselled face.

'You will say there are divisions and factions, that they are frightened of the helicopters coming, that some want to surrender but are not allowed to leave the camp.'

'That is all?'

Holly stopped thirty yards short of the gates. Everything changed beyond the gate. He could hear the revving of heavy lorries and in the distance was the throb of a helicopter engine.

'Tell them what I have told you.'

The blood was dry at Mamarev's mouth, dark and con-gealed at his nostrils. A bruise was forming on his right cheek, it was me that reported you as missing two nights ago. I informed on you.'

'On your way.'

Holly turned. He started to walk back along the line of deserters. If he heard Mamarev's shout, he gave no sign.

'Do you forgive me?'

Byrkin supervised the work.

A table-leg that was nearly a metre long was tied to ten metres of electrical wire stripped from the Kitchen ceiling, the wire was tied to another ten metres of heavy rope taken from the building Store, the rope was tied to two blankets knotted together and stripped from the bunks of the defec-tors. They had the material to make up nine lengths. The men that Byrkin had chosen had one thing in common. All had served their conscription duty in the army of the Soviet Union. It was the role of a Petty Officer to carry out orders.

Holly had given him his orders. He bustled between his chosen few, checking the strength of the joins and the coiling of the heaps of wood, wire, rope and blanket. They were the best men he could have found, and much was expected of them.

He heard the faraway engine drive of the first helicopter.

He looked out of the broken window at the back of the Kitchen. The zeks were out in the compound where they had been told to wait.

He felt a sort of happiness, a happiness he had not known since the sailing of the Storozhevoy from Riga harbour.

Mikk Laas heard the helicopter coming.

He was a blind man in his cell in the SHIzo block. He heard many sounds that were new and strange, he saw nothing. The window was high above him, beyond his reach.

He had heard shooting.

He had heard the outer door of the cell-block locked, and after that no movement of warders down the outer corridor.

He had heard the arrival of lorries with a different engine-whine to those of the commercial vehicles that visited the camp.

He kicked the cell wall.

'Who is there?' The cry of an old man without eyes.

'Adimov…'

'What is happening out there?'

'There is a mutiny, I heard the warders talk. We're better here.. .'

'Where is Holly?'

'How can I know?'

Mikk Laas crawled away across the concrete floor. He knew Holly would be in the compound. His ears told him that the lorries were bringing troops to Barashevo, that the helicopters were swarming down to Barashevo.

The Colonel General sat easily on the corner of Kypov's desk. He was a youngish man, assured and certain. A good-looking man beneath his steel battle-helmet. Kypov warmed to him, because this man did not sneer. The Colonel General talked briefly, factually, alternating the direction of his remarks between Kypov and his Political Officer.

'They're big beasts, the helicopters. Weil bring them down to three, four metres and nobody will be standing under them. You get blown flat. We'll give them a minute or so, then in with the troops. We'll split them into groups of thirty, forty, then I'll have your force in… shouldn't be a problem.'

The competence of the Colonel General encouraged Yuri Rudakov.

'I'm told there are divisions within whatever leadership they have, there is a faction that believes the thing has already gone too far. They know that the helicopters will come, I think the majority of them are scared half out of their minds.'

'What sort of prisoners does the camp hold?'

'Scum,' said Kypov decisively.

'Criminals, pretty low intelligence,' said Rudakov.

There was a knock at Kypov's door. News from the Adjutant. All four helicopters had now landed in the vehicle park. The perimeter of the tamp was secure. The storm-squad was in position behind the gates. Marksmen were in place on the Administration block roof.

'Will you be flying yourself, Colonel General?' Kypov asked.

'Of course.'

They were experienced men, the pilots of the helicopters.

They accepted this mission with an amused resignation.

They were accustomed to flying into actual or simulated machine-gun fire. They were familiar with the evasion techniques necessary against ground-to-air missiles. Their machines carried armour-plating a centimetre thick to protect the soft belly beneath their seats. Apart from his co-pilot each captain carried two machine-gunners. And they were to be used as fly-swatters. The pilots talked to each other by radio, they livened their engines, the Colonel General climbed on board. The helicopters rolled, as a drunkard on ice, and lifted.

Holly stood white-lipped in the centre of the compound.

Beyond the high wooden fence the bedlam of the helicop ters was growing. He could see Byrkin fifty yards to his right and close to the wire. Chernayev was behind him, further than fifty yards. And there were men whose names he did not know and whose faces he might not recall, and they too were beyond reach.

He was the talisman of the compound. All the men watched him. If he broke they would all break. The zeks were spread out across the Zone, as he had wished. Their posture was aimless. When the helicopters rose and peeped for the first time over the high wooden fence they would see only confusion. Let the bastards come…

Anatoly Feldstein was beside Holly. if it works, your plan, will men die?'

'Not necessarily… '

'And if you win this time, what of the next time?'

'I have not won this time, not yet,' Holly yelled brutally.

The nose of the lead helicopter sidled above the fence, a monster that had crawled from a cave and now flexed itself.

'We're not reading your bloody samizdat in a Moscow flat, we're not having wet dreams over a Solzhenitsyn typescript…'

Three more helicopters creeping into close formation above the first, clawing into the dull sky, climbing for altitude.

'… We're not sending telegrams to Ronald bloody Reagan. Nobody outside this camp gives a hell for us. We're on our own, understand that.'

Holly craned his head, following the grey undercarriages of the helicopters. They'd rise to a thousand feet, then drop.

A controlled fall down onto the compound, down onto men who had nothing but nine coils of table-leg, wire, rope, and blanket.

Feldstein held Holly's head, shouted in his ear. 'Can you know what it is to read samizdat? It's wonderful. It is true freedom to read samizdat

'Shut up and watch. Watch and I'll show you freedom.

Watch the helicopters.'

He pushed Feldstein away.

The sky darkened, the noise of the rotors pounded, thrashed the air. Holly saw the machine-gunners, saw them grinning as they peered from their opened doors, leaning out safe on the tether of their lifelines. Let the bastards come

… He depended on nine men, the nerve of nine men.

The zeks began to run, began to form into four concentrations as Holly had dictated. Snow swept into the void, a white and blurring confetti, and he lost sight of Byrkin, and when he spun round Chernayev also was gone. God… the noise, the blasting sound. Holly and Feldstein were alone, and ignored by the pilots. The pilots had greater riches. Four man masses to occupy them. The snow swirls lay like a fog, low and held down by the rotor-blades. The helicopters sat on the white mist, and the engines roared and screamed and howled.

'Now Byrkin… now Chernayev… now… now… '

A stick was thrown in the air. Holly watched, cold and fascinated. A stick was caught by a rotor blade and swept from his sight, and a wire and a rope and two knotted blankets flew in pursuit of a tossed table-leg. Beautiful Chernayev… beautiful Byrkin… beautiful all of you.

Look at the Captain, Holly. Look at his face roving over his instruments, his hands fighting the controls. Press the panic-button. Why won't the bloody thing respond, Comrade Captain?… Holly heard the cry of a failing engine. He flung his arms round Feldstein.

'We might have won…' he yelled.

The zeks knew, the zeks had heard the swing of the engine pitch from the high roar to the failing whine. Wire and rope and blankets were wrapped tight, bandaged, around the delicate free running spool between helicopter cabin and rotors. The zeks ran, broke and spread.

One machine bellyflopped in the compound.

The zeks would be at it like thieves at a Christmas party.

Another machine scraped over the Administration block, and disappeared for a few short seconds before there was an explosion and the answering sweep of dark smoke.

The third machine cleared Hut 3 and took the outer telephone lines from the poles. It keeled against a watch-tower, and fell beyond the high wooden fence.

Almost on the ground, the fourth helicopter seemed to give up the fight for height and settle only for distance. It careered between Hut 6 and the Bath house, scattering its way through fences. Screaming wire, ripping wood, the howl of the engine. Holly saw it go, a great wounded bird fluttering to a defeated landfall. Byrkin was bellowing at him, hanging on his arm for attention.

'I have a Colonel General… I have two pilots, two crew.

We have two machine-guns and ammunition.'

Holly shook himself, tried to rid his head of the echoing noise. 'Get the guns under Huts 3 and 6. Get the crew into the Kitchen.'

God… they had won! The zeks ran round him, dazed, overwhelmed, hysterical.

Holly went towards the Administration block. So quiet without the rotors spinning above him. He walked past the huge downed beast. The zeks were in it, hyenas at a carcase.

He walked tall.

The marksmen would be locked on him.

Twenty metres in front of the Administration block he stopped.

'Tell Major Kypov that we have a Colonel General and two pilots and two crew alive and in our care. Tell him also that we have machine-guns intact.'

'I couldn't shoot,' the marksman sobbed. 'As soon as the helicopters came down they just chucked up the snow. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't give them covering fire.

When the snow cleared, the first thing I saw was that they had our people. They had knives to their throats. They'd have butchered them if I'd fired.'

His sergeant turned away, headed for the tra'pdoor, and the ladder and the corridor to the Commandant's office where the inquest would be raging.

The helicopter had speared first through the fences of Zone i, then across the roadway and into the fences and high wooden wall of Zone 4. It breached the barricades of the Women's camp.

The women had been in their work area at the time of the helicopters' assault, not at their machines but crawling up for vantage points, peering through the glass of the upper windows. As the helicopter exhausted its flight they had streamed from the doorway and out into their compound ignoring the shouts of the wardresses.

It was a stampede.

In the single watch-tower above the Women's zone, the guard seemed not to watch them, but stared across the broken defences into the men's camp.

One group ran towards the helicopter, and was laughing, screaming, at the dazed and disorientated crew strapped in their seats.

One group ran straight for the breach in the fences.

Twenty women, perhaps thirty, sprinted and slithered over the snow and iced paths, shrieking in hysteria, and heading for the hole without reason, and without care. Irina Morozova, not a part of the group, was running with them. A small girl, slight even in her quilted tunic and her knee-length black skirt. A single guard ran along the roadway dividing the two Zones holding rifle at the hip and his finger, awkward in its glove, trying to push forward the frozen catch from 'Safety'. The guard shouted once, and the women swept towards him, ignored him, the sight of the roadway in front of them, and beyond the guard the sight of the men's camp. The knees of the women pumped below their lifting skirts as they ran for the hole.

A sandcastle cannot staunch the tide. The guard was overwhelmed. He never fired, he never found the strength in his gloved finger to release 'Safety'. Beside Morozova, women fell on the guard and toppled him to the snow and she heard the howl of their fury and saw the scratching nails of their hands. Morozova watched. The hands ripped at his greatcoat, pulled at his tunic, thrust at the flies of his trousers. Morozova watched. She saw the skin of his belly, she saw the white of their hands. She heard the gabble of laughter, the scream of the soldier's fear.

There was a long burst of machine-gun fire into the snow and the women scattered like sparrows disturbed from a bird-table. Morozova saw two guards with machine-pistols a hundred metres away, on the road beside the corner of the men's fence. The guard whimpered; his arms were outstretched and his genitals were exposed and bloodied. Some women turned back towards their own compound. Two women ran away from the guards and along the stretch of seemingly empty road, but the watch-tower machine-gun found them and pitched them carelessly over. A few more women ran, hunched and bent, towards the hole into the men's compound. Morozova wondered if she were about to be sick, and she was running too, she was hunched as well.

Where was she running to?

In front of her a woman cartwheeled and there was the flash of flesh above her stockings and the white of her knickers. Another shouted as if a victory had been won.

Another wiped the blood from her hands onto the dark material of her skirt where it would be hidden.

Morozova saw the helicopter that was downed, she saw a dog that was dead. She could no longer see the other women, engulfed now by the men who had charged to meet them.

'You should not have come. You have escaped to a worse prison.'

A man gazed at her, a look of stupefaction on his round and fatted face.

'You have an Englishman in the camp,' she said. 'Where will I find him?'

'We have an Englishman… ' Poshekhonov shook his head and laughed. 'We also have a helicopter because we have an Englishman.'

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