Archangel (21 page)

'Don't like that.' The Foreign Secretary drummed his fingers on the desk top. 'They'd trumpet it round the world.

Afterwards it wouldn't matter a damn how hard we re-tracted. If we're belting them for Afghanistan, for Angola, for Ethiopia, then we have to be clean. Apologizing for Michael Holly as a British agent is not being clean.'

'Then Mr Holly stays where he is.'

The Permanent Under Secretary beat the bowl of his pipe into the palm of his hand. Most of the inner debris reached the ashtray, some fell to the cream-based carpet. He saw the annoyance of the Foreign Secretary.

it's an unhappy option . . . What are your feelings, Deputy Under Secretary?'

'I'd not like an admission, Foreign Secretary.'

'Then, that's where he stays.'

'Admissions smack of incompetence.'

This was a matter of incompetence.' The Permanent Under Secretary spoke through a tower of smoke.

'Before my time,' the Deputy Under Secretary said evenly.

'Of course, it's not totally in our hands. We may dismiss the option of admission, but that's not to say that Mr Holly won't get into that game himself. He could, conceivably, go public to get himself out.'

'Wouldn't matter,' the Permanent Under Secretary said with confidence. 'Brain-washing and all that. . . We could stand that, not in the same league as us chipping in first and claiming him.'

in fact, it's not that likely that he'll bend.'

'Tough chap, is he?' The Foreign Secretary barked the question as if his interest in the matter was revived.

'Quite tough, they say.'

'Good, very good . . . because we won't be pulling him out. Perhaps we should try again in a few years, three or four, things might be easier then. Are those places really as bad as they're painted? They must have civilized themselves a trifle since Stalin.'

The Deputy Under Secretary examined his finger nails.

He was adept at hiding private pain, personal shame. He stayed silent.

Did it always rain in January in London? Alan Millet's shoes were again wet, stained with damp.

He couldn't fathom the Deputy Under Secretary. Incredible that he should be sent out on such a chase as this, and on the DUS's personal instructions. He'd enough work on his desk. Everyone accepted that East European carried the heaviest load at Century. But the DUS commanded and Alan Millet was paid to jump.

An insignificant sign told him that he had reached the door he wanted.

Amnesty International (British Section).

Not a place where a government civil servant was ever at ease. Fine when they were bashing the Soviets, the East Germans, the North Vietnamese, the Argentines. Awkward when they shouted against the regimes of Central America that were linked with the old ally. Impossible when they reported on the torture of Irishmen in Belfast. In the hallway he saw a poster with the motif of a candle coiled by barbed wire. The home of an organization, voluntarily funded, that struggled to win freedom for thousands of men and women, classified as Prisoners of Conscience, scattered in gaols across the world.

He took the lift. He asked, in a waiting room littered with pamphlets and cigarette ends, for the girl whom he had telephoned for an appointment.

She came through a door that had been security locked.

Jeans and sweatshirt and a baggy sweater, and he felt the daftness of his suit. She led him through a maze of passages to a room piled with unsorted papers, stacked books. She found him a chair that he thought might collapse. For a moment he pondered on young people who gave their time for a pittance to help innocents in faraway cells.

She spoke with a ladies' college accent. Her fingers were deeply stained with nicotine, her hair pony-tailed with an elastic band.

'You wanted to know about Camp 3, Barashevo? Right?

There's a complex there, one of the largest of the whole Dubrovlag. There's the Central Hospital, there's a small camp for men, there's the large camp, and each of those has its own Factory area. There's also a small camp for women.

The larger camp for men is classified as ZhKh 385/3/1, and about eight hundred men are held there. I think that's the one you're interested in - ZhKh 385/3/1. There are six sleeping huts and the usual kitchens and bath houses and store sheds, all fairly typical of an old camp, goes right back to the purge days and pre-war. The prisoners there are on Strict Regime. We don't have a great deal of information any more because the people we are concerned with have mostly been moved away to the Perm camps. We have only one at Camp 3, Zone 1. He's a Jewish dissident that we've adopted as a "P of C" - that's Prisoner of Conscience. He's Anatoly Feldstein, convicted of passing
samizdat
documents . . . we might get him out. They're not very interested in him or they wouldn't have let him stay there, they'd have moved him to Perm with what they call "especially dangerous state criminals". The commandant is an elderly army officer, Kypov, bit of a martinet but not a sadist. The Political Officer, that's KGB, is quite a young chap. The name we have is Yuri Rudakov. In the Factory they make . . .'

'Tell me about Rudakov.'

'Rudakov . . . We had something on him about a year ago. He's young for the job, first time in the camps from what we gather. He'll be on his way through, doing one posting and then coming out. It's a long time, as I say, since we've had up to date information . . . '

'More about Rudakov, please.'

'We had something from Feldstein, but it's a year old.

There was just a passing reference to Rudakov.. .that he was intelligent, that he didn't seem very interested in Feldstein.'

'Does that mean he's looking for the easy life?'

'Christ, no . . . it means that Feldstein isn't a hero. There are passive and active prisoners. Some are overwhelmed, some struggle. Feldstein doesn't shout, so he's left to himself. As I say, we think we might get him out. He's not a name we push and we hope that gives him a better chance.

We push with Orlov and Shcharansky, people like that, because it helps them. We leave Feldstein alone.'

'You don't have any more on Rudakov?'

'Only what I've told you.'

Millet felt the inadequacy of his question, it's a pretty hard place, Zone i ?'

The girl pushed her papers away across the table to signify she had more important work to complete.

'You have a friend in there?'

'You could call him a friend.'

'Hard as a nightmare, that's what I'd call it, Mr Millet.'

The name of the punishment isolation cell is Shtrafnoi Izolyator, and the zeks have abreviated the words to SHIzo.

There is a minimum-maximum spell in the SHIzo, and that is fifteen days. Men who are sent to the SHIzo are taken outside the main perimeter of the camp to a separate compound. The unit that houses the SHIzo cells is single-storey and built of brick. Inside each long wall is a corridor that runs the length of the building and the cells form the core of the block and run back to back. Sometimes there are wooden framed bunks, sometimes the prisoners must sleep on the floor, rest their heads on their boots. Here is no heating, and the water runs on the peeling, whitewashed walls. There is a slop bucket for the long night hours and the cells stink with the waste smell of the prisoners. The rations fed to the men in the SHIzo cells are reduced, cut to 1750

calories per day, and they must work in a Factory that is specifically for them. The SHIzo cells are the home of tuberculosis and the ulcer and infection and lice. Bedding is not issued, reading matter is not permitted, letters and parcels are not allowed, visits are cancelled. The window of the cell is small and high, the light that burns round the clock is small and dimmed.

The prisoner is cold, wet, hungry and exhausted. He can believe here that he is forgotten. A man may shout and he will not be answered, he may scream and he will not be heard. The SHIzo cell is the ultimate punishment of the Correctional Labour Colony.

The name of Michael Holly was written in thin chalk on the outer surface of the cell door.

He had been in the cell for nine days. Nine days' solitary.

Half an hour's exercise in the morning, walking behind another's back in a yard with high cement walls and a wire net at the top, and the exercise time must also be used for washing, and cleaning the cell and emptying the bucket. The work is done in the extended end cell of the corridor. The fine polishing of wooden cases for clocks. Not like the big Factory where men could talk as they worked. There is silence in the SHIzo Factory. No civilian labour is permitted to enter the SHIzo block for supervision work. Warders rule here, and the quota has been set higher than in the big Factory. If a man disputes, complains, then the penalty is automatic and summary. That is a new offence, that calls for an additional fifteen days and the sentence will be consecutive.

Holly in a personal hell.

On the evening of the tenth day they brought company for Holly.

He heard the sounds of their coming as he lay on the floor, huddled and shivering. Two sets of boots beating a tattoo in unison in the corridor and the scraping of feet that were dragged. He had found that he always lay on the floor at the far wall to the door, always distanced himself as greatly as possible from the door, from the warders' entry. A bolt scraped. A prisoner was supposed to stand when a warder entered his cell, and they carried the truncheons to enforce the rule. Holly started to climb to his feet, from his stomach to his hands and knees, and then his fingers reaching up at the smoothness of the wall to give him leverage.

He was halfway to his feet when the door opened, and the corridor light was impeded by the dwarfing shape of the men. They did not enter the cell, they pitched the old man in, and in the same movement that they discarded him they slammed shut the door. The bolt ran home. Holly rolled back onto the floor.

The old man was close to him.

'Bastards . . .' he growled at the door. 'Bastards . ..

whores .. .'

Holly looked at him. A skinny bag of bones and tattered uniform. A grey parchment of skin drawn across the face, a white stubble of hair across a skull that was rivered in high veins. A tiny man, and if they had been standing he would have rested his forehead under Holly's chin.

'Scum . . . whoring scum.'

Holly saw the bruises, red and flushed, on the old man's cheek.

The old man turned to him, manoeuvred his shoulders slowly so that he stared at Holly. There was a brightness in the eyes. Holly recognized it and felt the disgrace that he had been clawing his way to his feet in submission while the old man had laid on the ground and cursed his captors. Holly had been caving, slipping, falling. If an old man could give back to them, then Michael Holly had no cause to slither upright in humility.

He had been shown a way back.

'Mikk Laas . . .'

'Michael Holly . . . '

'I've not seen you before.'

'I've been here a little over a month, in the camp.'

i know everyone who comes to the SHIzo.'

'My first time.'

'For me it is home.'

'Thank you, Mikk Laas.'

'For what?'

'For showing me something that I had forgotten.'

'For shouting?'

'I had forgotten.'

'You are not Russian ..

'English.'

'I am Estonian, from near Tallinn. You know where that is?'

'Only from the map.'

'How old are you, Michael Holly?'

'Just past thirty.'

'When you were a baby, perhaps even before you were born, they took me from Estonia.'

'All the time here?'

'Here —and in 4 and in 17 and in 19.'

'You have earned the right to shout at them, Mikk Laas.'

'What can they do to me now? What can they do that they have not already done?'

They talked a long time, Mikk Laas who was from Estonia, Michael Holly who was from England. They talked in quiet, concerned voices and built themselves a wall around their two bodies that curtained off the wet running walls and the harsh concrete floor and the spy hole of the door. Later, Holly pulled his tunic up from the waist and tugged his undershirt clear and dipped a pinch of it into his mug of water and moved close to the old man and wiped at the dirt that had gathered at his bruised cheek. With his eyes closed and the brightness gone, the fight went from the face of Mikk Laas and he was pathetic and worn, and Holly knew he was close to tears, tears of pity.

'You have been here thirty years?'

'Thirty years and it is a sentence of life. I will be here until I die.'

'For what?'

'They call it treason, we said it was freedom . . . And you Michael Holly . . . ?'

'Fourteen years more. They call it espionage.'

Mikk Laas opened his rheumy eyes. They glowed in an instant sadness.

'You are right, Michael Holly. You are right to guard yourself. You are beginning your time, it is right that you should first find who you can trust and who will betray you.

It doesn't matter for me. I'm here, I stay here. You are right to have caution .. . but I tell you, Michael Holly, I'm not a

"stoolie" .. .'

'I'm sorry.'

'You have nothing to be sorry for.'

'Why are you in the punishment block?'

'This time . . . ? Last time . .. ?'

'This time.'

'I was in the Central Hospital. I have stomach ulcers.

They said I was malingering. Perhaps they were right, perhaps they are not too bad, my ulcers. I found the place where they dump the potato that they are feeding to the guards who are sick - not real potatoes, only the peelings. I was eating the peelings when I was caught. Under the blanket the bed was half-full of potato peelings.'

A slow grin came to Holly's face. 'Rudakov gave me some coffee in his office, proper coffee. I threw it back in his face. I think I spoiled his uniform.

Mikk Laas smiled too, and the laughter croaked in his throat. 'Always keep your pride, Michael Holly. Even if you must waste good coffee, keep your pride.'

'Does your face hurt still?'

' L e s s . . . I kicked the bastard that hit me, kicked his balls.