Archangel (5 page)

But a duty was a duty, a posting could not be evaded by a Major who had been turned down for promotion to Colonel. He would serve out his uniformed days as Commandant of Camp 3, Zone i.

The paratroop regiment that he had left eighteen months before was now bivouacked in a concrete and brick school house on the outskirts of Jalalabad and dominated the low ground of an Afghan valley. This was where his heart lay, where the helicopters waited to lift men into mountain combat, and the radio chattered the co-ordinates for Ilyushin strikes. He was an activist, with bluff red cheeks under his stunted pig eyes to prove his love of the outdoor life. Zone i was in its way as much of a prison for the Commandant as for the eight hundred men to whom he played a vague mutation of God and Commissar. Far from his paratroops, far from their mortars and machine-guns and rocket-launchers, far from their special camaraderie, he worried like a dog with freshly stolen meat over the in-cessant and aching problems of the camp's discipline and routine.

The little parade that he witnessed through the steamed window of the Administration block was a wound to him.

The conscript troops of the MVD could not entirely be blamed for the ill fit of their uniforms, for their slouched shoulders, for their callow and chilled faces. They were not the cream or they would not have found their way to this worthless place. Scum in uniform . . . he yearned for a parade ground of his former troops, for the whip crack of their rifle drill, the unison stamping of their marching boots.

And the prisoners were worse, the worst. No feet picked up, just a slovenly shuffle in the snow . . . as if they knew that their scraping passage festered in the mind of the Major. But he tried. He strove through all his waking hours to impose a smartness and snap on Camp 3, Zone 1, that he knew had never been present before, and that during the night hours when he was alone he doubted he would ever achieve.

He was Major Vasily Kypov, thirty-three years of service behind him, and three more to endure before the blessed release of retirement.

A young man stood a pace behind him, young enough to have been his son, and his breath played the sweet stale smell of the cigarette smoker's mouth across the Major's nostrils. The same uniform, but without the silver wings and blue tabs instead of red. A Captain in KGB he might be, the power in the kingdom of Zone 1, feared by the superior in rank and the inferior in fortune, but the Major had demanded that inside the Administration block in the mornings he should wear his uniform. Such were the victories available to the Commandant in his skirmishes with his Political Officer.

The Captain smoked imported Marlboro cigarettes. They were sent to him in packages of ten cartons from Moscow.

That was a display of influence, not that the Major needed information on the long arm of KGB. And Major Vasily Kypov knew well that he commanded Captain Yuri Rudakov in name only. They shared their responsibilities for the smooth running of Zone 1 with the enthusiasm of those bound by a loveless marriage. Where possible they went their own ways. Where contact was unavoidable their relations were frosted and formal. If asked, Captain Rudakov would not have been able to recall an occasion when he had given ground, important or trivial, to Major Kypov.

With his pocket handkerchief the Major wiped the window pane.

There was one amongst the dross people in their three ranks of fives who stood out. A tall man who gazed about him as if not yet intimidated by what he saw. Interest stirred in the Major. There were few enough who came to the camps with their heads erect, who stood their ground in the snow and fielded the threat of the gun barrels and dogs'

mouths. The Major's sensibilities were divided between admiration for a man with self-pride and hostility to a man who by defiance might provide a threat to the peaceful and submissive nature of the Zone.

'What do we have today, the same shit as always?' The Major's breath blurred the glass, and he reached again for his handkerchief.

'The usual medley, Comrade Major.. .Criminals mostly.'

'Scum, parasites, hooligans . . . '

'And pliable and quiet, Comrade Major . . . if you want the busier life you can apply for Perm . . . '

'I don't want the politicals, I don't want Perm. I want a camp that is efficient and productive.'

'Then you must have the scum, the parasites and the hooligans. From the criminals you have no argument... 1

have the files . . . thieves, one who took a knife to a postmaster's throat, one who buggered a Pioneer intake class, one who caught his wife screwing the rent official and took off half her head with a hammer — he should work well.

There is only one .. .'

'The one in the front rank,' mused the Major.

'Of course you are right. They cannot send us a box that is filled only with good apples, there has to be one that is bruised.'

'Tell me.'

'A peculiar case. His name is Holovich. Mikhail Holovich. That is the bruised apple.' The Captain walked back from the window towards the Major's desk and tipped onto its ordered surface a bundle of buff card files. 'In Moscow they have given Holovich the Red Stripe category.'

The Major swung away from the window. The red stripe on the file was attached only if there was believed to be a risk of escape. The red stripe demanded a special vigilance. The blue stripe was its brother and indicated that a prisoner had shown tendencies towards organization and confrontation.

'Blue I can handle, blue you can see, blue is self-destructive and the posture of an idiot. The red stripe I detest. The prevention of escape is inexact..

'You haven't lost a man, not in your time.'

'Not in my time. .. Who is Holovich?'

'Quite a star, actually,' the Captain drawled. 'Something far from the ordinary. His parents lived before the Great Patriotic War in the Ukraine, they were married there just prior to the Fascist invasion. The Germans took them, man and wife, back to their war factories. After the surrender they refused to be repatriated, and they settled in Great Britain. It is certain that they became participants within the traitor ranks of NTS . . . you know of that, Comrade Major?

Narodno-Trudovoi Soyuz, an emigre organization, of course you know that.. . They have one son, born Mikhail Holovich and now thirty years old. In the eyes of the British the boy had their citizenship, but we see the matter differently. To us he will always be a Soviet citizen. Mikhail Holovich became Michael Holly, but the change of a name does not discard nationality. He is Soviet. Holovich is an engineer, small-scale turbines. He worked for a firm in the area of London, and that company began to negotiate with one of our Ministries for the sale of their products to the Soviet Union. During his childhood, Holovich had been taught Russian by his mother and it was ostensibly for that reason that his company asked him to visit Moscow - a quite spurious reason because we supply most adequate and experienced interpreters for commercial negotiations with foreign concerns. Before arriving in the Soviet Union, Holovich was recruited by the British espionage service and was given instructions for a contact — I don't have to go into detail, these are matters available to me. He was caught and he was sentenced. In the interests of detente, because of our belief in the value of friendly relations where possible, our government agreed to return this criminal to the British in exchange for a Soviet citizen falsely accused in London. We were giving them gold, they were handing us tin. We made this offer on humanitarian grounds. The gaolers of Holo-

vich reneged on the agreement, the exchange will not take place. In Moscow, the Ministry of the Interior after consultation with the Ministry of Justice has determined that the full rigour of the law shall now be turned on Holovich.

One year ago he was sentenced to a term of fifteen years imprisonment. Up to now he has known the soft ride of the foreigners' block at Vladimir.. . From now he will be treated as a Soviet offender, that is why he is not at Camp 5 . . .

He is a spy, he is a traitor, perhaps he is fortunate not to have faced the extreme penalty provided for in the Criminal Code.'

The Major strode back towards the window and his boots sounded drum rattle over the hollow spacing under the bare boards of his office. A spartan, soldierly room.

'This Holovich, he is a self-confessed spy?'

The Captain laughed quietly. 'They were dilatory in Moscow. He is not self-confessed. That is to come . . .'

Always when the snow had recently fallen there was a damp fog over the camp, a link between the low grey cloud and the whitened ground. It was hard for the Major to see the little procession that moved away from the Administration block towards the heart of the camp, but he fancied he could still make out one dark head amongst the hazing image of the retreating column.

There were faces at the glass of the windows watching their approach.

A timbered hut, a hundred feet long and balanced on stilts of brickwork, with smoke flowing from a central chimney.

There were other huts visible as outlines in the mist of early afternoon, but it was to the hut with the figure '2' painted in yellow on the doorway that they were led. The snow had drifted at one end, at the beck of the wind, so that it reached almost to the eaves of the roof.

And the old man at Pot'ma had said that self-pity was not acceptable.

Holly kicked the snow from his shoes against the jamb of the door and climbed the few steps into Hut 2.

There was a smell from Hut 2 that was unlike anything Holly had known before. Stronger than the smells of Lefortovo or Vladimir, more pervasive than the smells of the Lubyanka interrogation cells or the train. It was the smell of a hundred bodies that had not been bathed for a week, of a hundred sets of clothes that had been lived and slept in for a week, of excreta and vomit trapped by the windows that had not been opened for a week. It floated in the dull light of the hut, a wall that hung from the wooden rafters to the boards of the flooring. The smell would catch its victims as a spider's web ensnares a fly.

Holly and two others were delivered to Hut z, the rest would be further dispersed. The door closed on his back.

He thought he would choke, he thought he would be sick.

The bile ran in a bitter taste to his mouth.

The door split the centre of one wall of the hut, a long wall. Holly turned slowly from left to right, gazed and absorbed.

A poster, white lettering on red background, blared from the gloom of the opposite wall, under the conditions of socialism every man who leaves the path of l a b o u r is able to return to useful activity.

In the centre of the hut stood a tall coke stove, blackened from use, deep in dust, and its chimney stack climbed to the ceiling and through its open hatch there was the glow of fuel working out a second day's burning. There were windows without curtains. What else, Holly? What else is there to see in Hut z? Only the bunks, nothing else. The bunks are round the walls, the bunks fill the central aisle of the hut.

Wooden framed and two tiered, half a yard between them.

Hut 2 is a dumping-ground for bunk beds, it offers no space to any other furniture. There are no tables, chairs, cupboards. This is the place where they dump you, Holly, you and the bunk-beds. This is where they leave you while your existence is hacked from the memory of the former life. This is home for the forgotten. Of course, you'd read of these places and screwed up your nose in disgust and said such things shouldn't be permitted, and why didn't someone else do something about it. But now, Holly, you're in Hut 2 of ZhKh 385/3/1, and nobody did do anything and the hut is reality. Tbe hut breathes and lives and survives. The hut is your home, Holly.

'What is your name?'

A voice beside him, Holly spun to his right.

There were faces peering at him. Tired faces all of them, some old and some young. The men lay on the bunks, all but one. He was a small man with a puffed chest and a jutting chin. Holly saw the bright red band that was sewn to the upper arm of his tunic, the red diamond on his chest.

'What is your name . . . you, the one in the front?'

Holly knew the standing of the man. There had been similar men at Vladimir. The trustie of the Internal Order System. The toadie, the crawler, the compromiser, the one who worked for favours. The man came closer, manoeuvring with the confidence of authority between the bunks.

'Holly, Michael Holly . . .'

'We are Soviets here, we are not foreigners.'

'My name is Holly.'

'If you are in Camp 3 you are a Soviet. If you are in this camp you have a Soviet name. What is your name?'

'My name is Michael Holly . . . I was charged in that name, I was sentenced in that name.'

And the faces stirred above the grey blue pillows, and the bodies shifted beneath the dark blankets. A newcomer disputed with the trustie in his first moments inside the hut.

That was entertainment. Like cats' eyes on a night road the pale faces beamed at Holly and his adversary through the greyness of the room.

'Smart arse, clever prick .. . What is your name in Russian?' Anger flared in the man who was not accustomed to the answer back.

Holly smiled. 'When I was born my parents called me Mikhail Holovich. My name now is Holly . . . '

Their eyes held, Holly's and the trustie's. The trustie looked away, far down to the recesses of the hut.

'At the end of the line you will find a bunk . . . And Holovich, be careful, you clever shit. Learn what is the arm band, learn what is the diamond, remember them and be careful.'

The faces watched him as he walked half the length of the hut, searchlights following him, and Holly went briskly as if by the speed of his step fourteen years might somehow trickle faster through the future's fingers. The two men who had stood behind him gave their names quickly, eagerly, anxious to avoid association. Holly went to the end of the hut. He had not given his name in Russian and the bunk that was allocated to him was against the wall at the furthest stretch from the narrow band of heat that the boiler might service.. The two tiers of the end bunk were unoccupied. He chose the upper bunk. There was sagging wire beneath the frame, a drip of water plunged sporadically into the space where his feet would rest.