Archangel

Chapter 8

A building has been destroyed and can be rebuilt. A roof has fallen and can be replaced.

The Captain of KGB begins an investigation. The Major in command is at first flustered, then morose.

There is labour in Zone i, and to spare. In a few days there will be a new office for Major Kypov at the end of the Administration block.

For nearly half a century the camp has survived the storms. More than fire is required to break the regimen of ZhKh 385/3/1.

Later, those who were to piece together the events at the camp of the early months of that year, from the time of snow till the approach of spring, were to wonder what was the ambition of Michael Holly, prisoner of Hut z in Zone i of Camp 3 in the Dubrovlag complex.

For a few days there was a swirl of conversation in the camp about the fire and its likely cause, and then the talk slipped.

The zeks had more to concern them. Interest in food, in warmth, in punishment, soon outstripped a matter as trivial as a fire. The fire was a dream, the fire was as nothing as the new bricks were slapped into cold cement and the air rang with the rasp of the carpenters' saws as they fashioned the ceiling framework.

Only for Holly did the fire live on. If he had chosen to confide in anyone then he could not have said clearly what was the summit of his aspiration. He would have fumbled for explanations. But the point was irrelevant because he had no confidant. He offered his friendship to no one.

Feldstein the dissident, Chernayev the thief, Poshekhonov the fraud, all reached for the Englishman as if to draw out some spark of friendship. All were resisted.

When he walked the perimeter fence, when he worked at the bench with the wood that would become a chair's leg, when he ate in the Kitchen, when he lay on the top tier of the bunk, he was alive and alert. Always watching.

Holly searched for the next opportunity to strike again at the administration of the camp that held him.

Darkness outside the hut, and beyond that darkness the ring of light from the arc lamps over the fence and the wire. The hut windows were misted as if a concerted bluster of hot air had steamed them. The lights were on inside the hut.

A few men read magazines, Feldstein was as always with a book. Another hour until lights out. Some tried already to sleep. At the end of the hut a boy waited, sitting hunched on an upper bunk, for darkness to come to the living quarters because then he could go to the mattress of the man who loved him… A low drone of talk hummed in the hut, and Holly lay on his back on his bunk and gazed at the roof rafters and counted the time between each fall of a water drop to his feet.

Near to Holly, Adimov was stretched on his bunk stomach down. For a long time he had held the envelope in his chubby fingers and close to his face. He had seemed to sniff at the opened envelope as though it carried some scent, but the letter inside only peeped from the tear and was not taken out. A man seeming to fight some inner struggle. Lying still, with the fingers clenched on the envelope and the eyes saucer wide.

' H o l l y… ' A hissed whisper from Adimov.

The knife had never been spoken of again. Holly did not interfere with the 'baron's' running of the hut.

'Adimov…' No move of Holly's head.

'Come here, Holly.' An instruction, a command.

'I'm very comfortable, Adimov.'

'Come… now.'

'Listen when I speak to you… I said I'm comfortable.'

Holly heard him shift on his bunk and the mattress seemed to belch at the movement.

'Please come, Holly… please…'

Holly jack-knifed his legs over the side of the bunk, swung himself down to the floor, dropped his feet beside Adimov's bunk. His head was close to Adimov, close enough to smell the force of the man's breath, to see the white anger of the scar on his face.

'What is it, Adimov?' spoken gently.

The toughness caved, the face of a child who is frightened.

'I had a letter this morning, a letter from my wife's mother. It is the first letter that I have had here in a year…'

'Yes.' i can't read, Holly.'

The voice grated in Adimov's throat. Holly's ear was beside Adimov's mouth.

'You want me to read it for you?'

'They read it for me in Administration.'

'You want me to read it again?'

'You don't know whether those pigs lie to you…'

'Give it to me, Adimov… no one here will know.'

Only when Holly's hand was on the envelope did Adimov release his fingers' grip. He had held the paper as tightly as an old woman holds a rosary. Holly looked over the single sheet of paper that was covered in the large hand of one for whom writing was slow and difficult. He read the few lines through, then closed his eyes for a moment before reading aloud.

Terminal cancer, cancer of the bowel. Perhaps a month. is that what they told you?'

That is what they told me that the letter said.'

Adimov sagged down onto his mattress and his head was half-buried in his pillow and there was a redness in his eyes.

'Will they let you go to her?'

There was a choking laugh from Adimov, derisive.

'Will they bring her to you?'

'Would you bring a woman to this place? Would you give to a dying woman as a last memory the sight of our camp?

Would you, Holly…?'

'What can I do, Adimov?'

'I saw you with Byrkin's soup.'

Holly started back and something of the kindness was lost from his face.

'I saw you, it means nothing that I saw you… I thought you would help me, too. If you helped Byrkin, that you would help me.'

'What can I do?'

'I can't read, I can't write… '

The man who dominated the hut, who controlled the tobacco racket, who took an undisputed place at the front of the food queue in the Kitchen.

'You want me to write a letter to your wife?'

'And none of these people shall know.'

Because in the life of the camp, if the wife of the strongman has terminal bowel cancer and will be dead within a month, then that is weakness, and from weakness there cannot be spawned authority, and without authority the man who breeds fear throughout the hut will disintegrate. i will write the letter tomorrow. I'll get the paper and you will tell me what to write.'

'Thank you, Holly. I am generous to my friends.'

Holly turned away, climbed again on to his bunk.

On his back he began again to count the interval between the water drops. He wrapped the blanket round him, a sparse level of protection against the cold. He thought of Alan Millet… didn't know why, couldn't place the trigger that led him to Alan Millet and a pub in the Elephant and Castle south of the Thames. It would be more than a week since he had thought of Millet. More than a year since they had last spoken, and more than a week since he had last examined his memory of those meetings. It had been a very typical contract that Mark Letterworth had contrived in outline for the sale of the turbine engines to a Moscow factory. And Letterworth had said that the deal was bogging down in that bloody stupid Olympic fracas and the Afghan mess, and that he didn't give a shit for politics, only for selling engines. Holly spoke the language, so he'd better jump on an Aeroflot and get over there and chase it up with the Ministry. All simple, all sweet. And the day after Holly had been up to London to apply from the Consulate for a visa there had been the telephone call at Letterworth Engineering. A call with a bad script…

'You don't know me, Mr Holly, but there's something I'd like to meet you about when you're next in London. Hopefully that'll be in the next week…'

They met near Waterloo station because that was good for a train from Dartford. He knew about Holly, this man who called himself Alan Millet. He had read a file on Stepan and Ilya Holovich that would have come with a dust coat out of a Home Office basement reserved for the histories of Aliens (Naturalized). He knew of attendance by Stepan Holovich at NTS meetings in Paddington, and had the date that a father had taken his son to a house off the Cromwell Road to celebrate the National Day of the Ukrainian exiles with supermarket Italian wine and kitchen table cheese. And Alan Millet had spoken soft words… it's not really anything very important, Michael, it's rather a small thing we're asking of you. It helps us and it doesn't help them, if you know what I mean.'

There must have been a point of no return, but Holly could not remember passing it. It had not occurred to him that he could stand up in the pub, leave the beer half-drunk, the sandwich half-eaten, walk out into the London early evening. When he thought back over it, as he lay on the bunk and water drips splattered every eleven seconds between his ankles, he could remember only a film of excitement that had wrapped him. At their next meeting instructions had been given for a rendezvous. That had been a long meeting. Long and fulfilling because Alan Millet offered the chance to bite at an old enemy whose presence pervaded the rooms of the terraced home in Hampton Wick.

Michael Holly had trusted Alan Millet implicitly. On his back, on his bunk, he doubted if he would ever trust another man again.

If Yuri Rudakov, undressing in the front bedroom of their bungalow, had not been so tired, he would have taken the time to admire the new nightdress that his wife wore as she sat against the pillows and turned the pages of a picture magazine. If he had not been halfway to sleep he would have noticed that far from washing the make-up from her face she had taken the trouble to apply the eye shadow and lip-stick that her mother sent her from Moscow.

She read him. Elena Rudakov knew the signs.

'The fire… still the fire… '

'Still the fire.' Yuri Rudakov settled in the bed beside her, he made no effort to close the gap between them.

'You've let the cold in.'

'I'm sorry… '

'How did the fire start?' i don't know.'

'It takes you two days and half of two nights to find out that you don't know?'

'You want to hear?'

'I've sat here two days waiting for you to come home, waiting to have a conversation with you. Yes, perhaps I want to hear.'

He wanted only for the light to be put out, he waited only for darkness and sleep. He would get nothing before he had fulfilled the chore of explanation.

'Something that was inflammable was in the coal bucket.

'I don't know what it was, perhaps just paper with oil on it, I don't know. The room had draughts, you needed a greatcoat to stand in it. Kypov never complained, never did anything about it, seemed to think that the chiller his office the more masculine and vigorous he was. Would have made him think he was with the poor bloody paras in a tent in Afghanistan… I don't know. There were draughts through the window frame, under the door. He's a fat little bugger and he'd stood his backside in front of the fire. That's all I know. There wasn't a bomb, nothing like that. Just something that ignited enough to get a flame onto his seat. After that, panic… He was shouting, the door is opened, somebody puts a rifle barrel through the window. Draughts all over. I know how it spread, you see. I don't know what started it.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Put a couple in the SHIzo block for fifteen days, the ones who filled the buckets. That's all.'

'Then you don't have to go early tomorrow?'

Her arms reached towards his head, pulled him towards her.

'I've a bastard day tomorrow. Really… They've given me a major interrogation – I'd told you about the Englishman – that's what I should have been working on, not an idiot fire. The interrogation is a challenge to me. It's a compliment in itself that they've given me the chance… '

He felt her body surge away from him. His head fell against the pillow. He saw her back clothed in the flannelette nightdress. He wanted to touch her, but he did not know how.

He reached up for the light switch. Sleep would be hard to find. Before his eyes would cavort the typed words in the file of Michael Holly.

A fire must have a spark, a flash of ignition. So, too, must an idea of action. There is a moment when an idea is born, the clash of a flint.

Holly was on the perimeter path.

He walked alone, deep-wrapped in his own thoughts, and the morning was colder than any of those of the week before.

The cold cut through him, summoned by the winds that had begun their journey on the far plains of Siberia and the Ural mountains and the great Kirgiz steppe.

He felt it at his face and his fingers and his back and his arms, felt it at his buttocks and privates and thighs. No snow in the air that morning, only the wind that gusted and trapped the men on the perimeter path. And the cold was worst at the feet, he thought. Michael Holly had been a prisoner of the camp for less than one month, and already he believed that he could walk this path with his eyes closed.

Four turns to the left on each lap of the compound, and he fancied that he knew at which moment he must drop his shoulder, cut his stride and turn. If he knew the path blindfold after one month, how well would he know it after fourteen years?

In front of him was Chernayev who had not practised his trade of thieving for seventeen years. Twice that morning Holly had passed Chernayev on the path. Now the old man walked in the centre of the path and the way was blocked and Holly had to check his stride.

Chernayev turned his head as if he felt the breathy impatience of the man behind him.

'Holly… the Englishman…?'

'Yes.'

'And in a hurry? Is it different to you if you make four times round the path and not three?'

Holly faltered for an answer, if I go faster then I am warmer.. . ' if you go faster then you are hungrier.'

'Perhaps.'

'I k n o w… I used to go fast when I was first at Perm, and my gut punished me. Slow yourself, Michael Holly, walk with me.'

'There are many you can walk with.'

He could have bitten at his tongue. Crudeness and arrogance, enough to shame himself. Chernayev turned towards him, little of his face showing. The old zek, the one who took care of himself and who would walk out of Camp 3, Zone 1, when his time came.

'Easy, Michael Holly… you should not forget who you are. You are not one of us, you are from outside us. In the hut we all talk of you, you know that? If a man drinks only an alcohol made from paint or varnish or polish or acetone then he will dream of vodka. If a man talks only with the prisoners of his own world then he will seek out a stranger

… You are important to us. You make a window for us.'

'I will walk with you, Chernayev.'

Holly fell into step with the old thief, clipped his pace.

Holly's shoulder was high above Chernayev's. There was a distant whistle from behind Chernayev's teeth as if he tried to blow away the wind that settled on him.

'The dirt is the hardest, you find that, the filth is the hardest. ..'

'I suppose you learn to live with it,' Holly said distantly.

'I've never learned to. I hate the scum on my body… And this week there will be no showers…'

'Why not?'

'Look with your own eyes.' Chernayev waved his arm towards the centre of the compound. The snow was dirtied there, earth spattered,, and a dark mound was set beside a hole. 'We dug a new water pipe, two summers back, across the middle of the camp. The old pipes were cracked, leaked.

Some bastard cheated, they say there was not enough binding put around the joins, again the pipe leaks. It's the main water supply for the whole camp, for us and for the barracks. They won't keep the barracks short, so we lose the water, we do without.'

'Yes.'

'Where they have dug the hole is a main junction, they say it is the worst place for the leak, where the water is sepa- rated. Some goes to us from the junction, the rest goes to the barracks. The men who work in the hole say it is a pig to work there.'

Holly's eyes flickered.

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

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

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

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

'I agree with you, Chernayev.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Sit down, Holly.'

'Thank you, Captain Rudakov.'

'Some coffee?'

'Thank you.'

'A cigarette?'

'No, thank you.'

'You are well, you are not ill?'

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

'You would like sugar with your coffee?'

'No.'

'All the prisoners take sugar.'

'Then I am different.'

'You have settled here?'

'As well as I will ever settle here.'

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

'I have no problems in the hut.'

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

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

'What is ridiculous and stupid, Captain Rudakov?'

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

'I know the sentence of the court.'

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

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

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

'I don't imagine us as colleagues.'

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

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

'The coffee, Captain, it's foul.'

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

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

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

'A child could understand you, Captain Rudakov.'

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

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

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

…'

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

'Don't play with me, Holly…'

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

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

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

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

'Don't do it to me again.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Thank you for the coffee,' Holly said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holly alone on the Underground, with an uncollected package. Surrounded by Muscovites, strap-hanging on a fast train that slid to its halts and was away again. Returning to the Rossiya and not daring to look at the men and women who stood and swayed beside him. it wouldn't even have been an important mission. They may have told you that it was, but it couldn't have been.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rudakov laughed, richly and loudly.

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

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

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

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

'Thank you for the coffee, Captain Rudakov.'

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

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

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

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