That was what the present had on offer to Michael Holly.
A furtive junior diplomat bowing and scraping his way out of the interview section of the Lefortovo, ogling the KGB man and thanking him for a fifteen-minute access to a prisoner for whom the key was now thrown far away.
Forget the present, Holly, reckon on the future. The future is a plate of steel floor covering that creaks and whistles as it is dragged clear of the supports to which it was bolted down thirty years before.
That's the future, Holly.
A steel plate above the stone chippings and wood sleepers that mark the track from Moscow to the East through Kolomna and Ryazan and Spassk-Ryazanski. The chippings are coated in fine snow, and the cold blusters into the carriage through the draught gap. Behind him the men swore softly, breaking their silence.
The train was not running fast. He could sense the strain of the engine far to the front. There was a dawdle in its pace, and there had been times when it had halted completely, other times when it had slowed to a crawl. The daylight was fleeing from the wilderness that he could not see but whose emptiness beyond the shuttered windows he understood.
Barely audible above the new-found noise of the wheels, he heard the sharp step of feet in the corridor and close to the door of their compartment. There was the flap of the food hatch swinging on its hinge one door away from his. Holly pushed the steel plate down, eased the bolt back into its socket with his toe.
The flap of the door flipped jauntily upward. A sneering face gazed at the caged men. Three brown paper bags were pushed through the hatch to tumble to the carriage floor.
The flap fell back. The two men moved at stoat's speed past Holly. One bag into the hand of the man who was gross and white-skinned, a second for the man with the beard. For a fleeting moment he braced himself for confrontation, sus-pecting that they would want all three bags, but they left him his. They darted back to their bunk and behind him was the sound of ripping paper. Animals… poor bastards, pitiful creatures. But then at Vladimir, Holly had been segregated from the mass of the zeks, the convicts who formed the greatest part of the prison population. At Vladimir, Holly had been categorized as a foreigner, he had been on the second floor of the hospital block and allowed special food and privileges. There was nothing special for these men. These were the zeks – they might be killers or thieves or rapists or parasites or hooligans. At Vladimir, Holly had been different from these men.
But not any longer. The stammered words of the Consul flooded back to him. He was to be classified as a Soviet citizen, he was being sent to the Correctional Labour Colonies
… Try and live with the system, don't kick it and don't fight it, you can't beat them. You'll hear of me, you bastard, you'll hear of Michael Holly.
He reached out across the floor, snatched the last paper bag. A slice of black bread, supple as cardboard. A mouthful of sugar held in a torn square of newspaper. A fillet of dry smoked herring. It might have been better at Vladimir for Holly than for the zeks herded into the communal cell blocks, but he had learned to eat what food was provided.
He had been taught the hard lesson that you eat where there is food, because food is sustenance and without it there is failure and collapse. Always he felt sick when he ate, but he had been taught and he had learned, and his eyes squinted shut and he swallowed. The last meal for how long?
Holly grimaced.
Not much to eat in the snow beside the tracks, nor in the forests that would skirt the railway line.
They'll come with dogs, Holly, dogs and guns and helicopters. The compartment of the carriage is the small camp, everything out there is the big camp. The big camp is vast, colossal, but even beyond the hugest encampment there is still the wire and the watch-tower and the searchlight. Live with the system, the Consul had said. You'll hear of me, Mister bloody Consul, you'll hear of Michael Holly.
He munched hard at the bread, biting deeply. He turned towards the two men, smiled at them for the first time. They looked away.
It was ridiculous that he should think of lowering himself through the floor of the carriage, that he should contem-plate hanging for moments or minutes beneath the train, that he should consider allowing himself to fall on to the frozen stones between the wheels. Lunatic to reckon that it would work for him… but only as stupid as the acceptance of the alternative which was fourteen years in the camps.
His clothes were wrong. They had dressed him in the shoes and suit and overcoat that he had worn when arrested. Not the clothes for cross-country, and he would stand out like a beacon on the fringes of the villages and collectives that he must circle like a fox coming to the dustbins for food.
The distance was impossible. Nine hundred miles to the Turkish border, seven hundred to Finland. Lunatic. He wouldn't get a mile clear of the track. But there would never be another chance, not in fourteen years. Never again a time with such opportunity as from the train that plodded across the flat wilderness lands on the way to the East.
He twisted away from the two men. They whispered to each other.
Back to his knees. Fingers again under the bolt. His body straightened as he took the strain and pulled the bolt upwards. Scratches of bright metal showed in its grime as the stem of the bolt edged clear. His fingers began to scrabble at the coarse edge of the steel plate. Should have worn gloves because they would have protected his hands, but they would have denied him the freedom of movement that he now needed. Even the numbed fingers could feel pain from the sharpness of the metal. And the plate screamed as he wrenched it upwards.
There's no plan, Holly.
The blueprint of the plan is to run. The plan is to fill the lungs and run faster, run further. To run, and anywhere.
There is nowhere to go, no haven, no safety.
Better to run and be caught than the other, because the other is fourteen years of failure.
Anything better than the prison cage. Holly smiled to himself, chuckled softly, because he saw in his mind the face of the man who had brought the food to the hatch, and he thought of the retribution that would fall on the cretin's shoulders. That alone was worth i t. .. No, no, out of your bloody mind, Holly, and he laughed again. Why not, Holly, why not be bloody mad? He heaved again at the floor plate and there was room for his feet to slide down towards the blurred stones between the sleepers.
Are you going, Holly? Night's coming, you can see the black shadow on the stones that rush past and between your feet. The train's idling, not running fast. Are you going, Holly? Your decision, Holly, yours and no one else's. He took a great gulp of the fresh air, enough to sustain him. He looked once more behind him.
The two men sat on the bunk shelf very still, and their saucer eyes never left Holly's face.
Holly pushed his feet beneath the steel plate and the wind caught at his socks and trousers and drove a channelled wind against his legs and he cursed the awkwardness of his overcoat, and his feet kicked in the space like the feet of a hanging man. He searched for a resting place for them and they lashed in a helplessness before finding a firm ledge out in the grey darkness beyond his vision. Holly wriggled, squirmed, manoeuvred his body down into the hole. The stench of the floor was close to him, the smell of vomit and of urine. The floor edge tore at his buttocks, the cloth of his trousers ripped. The rim of the steel plate scraped his upper thighs. Go on, Holly… Don't hesitate, don't look down, not at the stones, not at the wheels, not at the rushing sleepers. The train's crawling. Never again the same chance, Holly, not for fourteen bastard years. Don't look down…