Archangel

'You fought, Holly, the dream was good enough for you.'

'And lost, Chernayev, and lost… Perhaps if you have lost it would have been better not to fight.'

'That's shit.'

'Tell them to go back to their ranks.'

'They want a leader. Look at them.' Chernayev waved his arm towards the centre of the compound. All the eyes were on Holly, and on Chernayev, who played the emissary.

Many hundreds of faces, faces of men that Holly had never spoken with.

Holly looked beyond the crowd, and his gaze circled as far as the twist of his neck would take him. Watch-towers, gun-barrels, wire fences, wooden fences.

'Tell them to go back to their lines, Chernayev. To go back before it is too late for them.'

Chernayev clawed at Holly's sleeve. 'You showed them, Holly. You were the man that roused them. Where do you think they found the courage to do what they have done this morning?'

'Silly rubbish.'

'I'll tell you of the courage they found this morning.

Feldstein was on hunger strike, clever creepy little Feldstein, he declared a hunger strike and a work strike.' Chernayev was shouting now, shouting and pleading. 'An old man who has never kicked against them, he sat down in the snow, he refused to go to the Factory.'

'Who was that old man?'

'That was me.'

A smile wreathed Holly's face.

'You brave sweet old bugger. You daft old bugger.'

'And Poshekhonov and Byrkin, and the whole of Hut z.

Even the trustie sat down. And not one man from another hut would go to work-'

'You knew what you were doing?'

'Of course we didn't know what we were bloody doing.

And they put a dog on us, a sodding dog as big as a man, and we killed it.'

Holly came down the step. His arm was around Chernayev's shoulder. They walked towards the waiting zeks.

There was a faltering in Holly's stride, as if he crossed an unknown room.

'What do you want of me now?' Holly asked Chernayev.

'We want your commitment to fight.' it cannot be the fight of one man.

'It will be the fight of us all.'

The static whine of the loudspeakers burst upon them.

'…Attention… Attention.'

Holly recognized the voice of Yuri Rudakov. He thought of the confession that would be lying in the room of the Political Officer. Holly had weakened, Holly had collapsed, Holly had started to dictate a statement. And Feldstein had declared a hunger strike, and Chernayev had sat in the snow, and Poshekhonov and Byrkin with him, and a dog had been killed, and Kypov had ordered gunfire in the air, and Holly had been saved from his confession. Silently he uttered the words of his own commitment. He would never sit again in Yuri Rudakov's office. He would never place his chair again close to the warm pipes in Yuri Rudakov's office. „

'… Attention. • • All men in the compound have precisely ten minutes to form up in their ranks preparatory to roll-call and despatch to the Factory zone. If you do that immediately, there will be no reprisals taken. Failure to observe these instructions will lead to heavy penalties against all inmates of the camp. You have ten minutes… '

A hundred men were close around Holly, and behind them were another hundred, and behind them another hundred. Bleak, bowed men, with the counsel of suspicion and fear in their faces. Your army, Holly, an army of refuse and offal. Shrunken, starved bodies, hungry for leadership.

Where will you lead them, Holly? Bloody fools…

He was lifted up. He swayed on the shoulders of a dozen men, his legs hanging limp against their chests. Less than ten minutes to go, and the fever of rebellion burned in them.

And you started it, Holly. You started it with fire, with excrement, with wire-cutters. And how will you finish it?

Less than ten minutes until the gates of the compound were opened.

'Do you want to fight?' Holly called from his roost on the bucking shoulders.

A thunder of agreement buffeted around him. And the bright mouths of hope gleamed back at him. Bright mouths, gap teeth, pinched lips. is there petrol or paraffin in the compound?'

A voice shouted back, anonymous among the bee-swarm faces, in the store at the back of the Kitchen there is paraffin

– a reserve if the electricity is cut.'

'And there are glass bottles in the compound?'

Another voice, another hidden face, in the Shop there are bottles of lemonade.'

'Who has matches?'

More voices that clamoured for inclusion. 'I have matches… I have a b o x… I have a lighter…'

'I want a dozen bottles filled with paraffin. I want a little paraffin soaked into rags that will seal the neck of the bottles. I want them here in three minutes.' He saw men detach themselves from the main group. He saw men run when before he had only known them slouch and stumble .. I want every man on the perimeter path – "stoolies", Internal Order, "barons" – everyone. And I want a man on the roof of the Kitchen building, someone to wave to me when they come.'

There was a wasp nest of activity around Holly. The men who had not run to the Kitchen Store nor the Kitchen Shop nor to their huts for the hoarded matches now sidled away towards the edges of the compound and took a place on the stamped-down path. God, they trusted him.

He eased himself down from the shoulders that had supported him. Chernayev smiled, Poshekhonov grinned, Byrkin showed him the fierce anticipation of a combat-trained serviceman. The bloody fools, and so bloody p r o u d…

He saw Feldstein, and there was something haunted in the stolen glance of the young Jew. it's not your way, Anatoly?' i t is not my way.'

'You would lie down in front of them?'

'I would humiliate them by non-violence.'

'They'd spit on you.'

'Your way they will not spit on us, they will shoot us.'

'You can go out of the compound.'

Feldstein looked steadily into Holly's eyes. 'Don't try to cheapen me. I said when you were brought back that you would take men to hell and would not care if they returned.

Do you take us to hell, Holly? Do you care if we ever return?'

Holly smelt the paraffin. He turned away from Feldstein's persistent gaze. A dozen men came to him with bottles and a wad of rags oozed from each neck. Matches rattled in their boxes. A thin, reed voice carried from the roof of the Kitchen.

The group around Holly headed for the perimeter path.

Three bottles of paraffin would be underneath each of the corner watch-towers.

Holly walked across the compound to join the line of grey-uniformed men who ringed the huts and the Kitchen and the Bath and the Store and the parade area. He whis- pered something to Byrkin, that could not be heard by Chernayev and Poshekhonov, and Byrkin nodded, and went on his way like a soldier.

'What are we going to do?' asked Chernayev.

'Start something they won't forget, not quickly.'

'Are we going to die?' asked Poshekhonov.

'I shouldn't think so, not y e t… '

Holly was facing inwards towards the centre of the camp.

He linked arms with the zek on either side of him, elbow to elbow with fists clenched across the stomach. The gesture was imitated, the movement rippled. A chain of men was formed, a chain that was broken only in front of the gates into the compound.

They were not paratroops. They were a callow collection of conscripts and reserve NCOs. They were all that was available to Major Vasily Kypov. And they were nervous.

He could read that, he thought that he could smell their fear.

He would keep them close, a nugget group. Five ranks of five, and he would be at the front, and Rudakov would be at the rear. A magazine of live ammunition to each rifleman, and his own pistol was loaded, and Rudakov's too. He'd heard Rudakov's broadcast over the loudspeakers. Crap, he'd thought it, not hard enough, unnecessary crap.

'Rudakov, we're going.' Kypov straightened himself. 'Get the gates open. What are they at in there?'