Archangel

Keep on the move inside.'

'We heard they'd got a Colonel General as prisoner,' said the observer.

'They let him go.'

Astonishment from the gunner.

'Other than the machine-guns do they have any firing weapons?' the gunner.

'Two machine-guns, that's their lot.'

'Poor bastards…' The driver spoke to himself from the bowels of the tank.

'There's a queue in Hut 5,' Poshekhonov said. He laughed because Holly did not understand him. 'Hut 5 is a brothel now. That's the extent of our liberation, Holly. Home comforts for the storm troops. There's a queue half way down the hut. She wasn't the only one through the fence, you know, the little one who came to see you.'

'What have we begun?' Holly seemed to lean against Poshekhonov's shoulder.

'You should know that, Holly. Of all of us, you should know what we have begun.'

Holly's face was close to Poshekhonov's. 'Promise me something, friend.' it is not an easy time to make promises that can be honoured.'

'Promise me you will take care of the girl.'

'When?'

'When they attack.'

'Our iron man, our leader of more than seven hundred zeks, and he asks for the safety of a girl who need not have come?'

'Promise me.'

Poshekhonov tried to laugh again, but when he looked hard into Holly's face he met only the steel gaze.

'I think you care for all of us, Holly.'

'I care for all of you.'

'I promise, Holly. I will care for the girl when they attack.'

Holly punched Poshekhonov playfully on the arm and walked away.

Rudakov ushered Adimov out of his office.

Down the corridor the door to Kypov's room swung open. Rudakov saw the Colonel General follow the Commandant into the passageway. Ten minutes before, the Colonel General had been held in the camp Kitchen

…

What was happening? He forgot Adimov. He hurried down the corridor after the two men.

Kypov turned.

Rudakov looked at the Colonel General in bewilderment.

'How did it happen?'

'They let me out, myself and the flying crew.'

'Why?'

'Their leader said that if they kept us and tried to use us as a shield they would be animals. He said animals would be forgotten. He said that if they freed us they would never be forgotten, never as long as the camps exist.'

'What bloody use is it to them whether they're forgotten or not, when they're about to be mangled?'

'I don't know,' said the Colonel General drily. 'I've never led a mutiny.'

'Who is the leader?'

'They've all taken the name strips off their tunics. There is one who can be identified. Tall, darkish, speaks fluent Russian but with something of an accent.'

'Michael Holly… '

'Once the attack goes in, he's to be shot on sight,' Kypov spoke with determination, a man who had at last retrieved his respect in the anticipation of combat.

'What did you think of this Michael Holly?' A hoarseness in Rudakov's voice.

'I thought rather well of him,' the Colonel General replied. There was a light smile at his face, as if he were not prepared to share his emotions with strangers. 'They have a Central Committee, and every man on the Committee wanted either to use us as sandbags or to hang us. Of course I think well of him. He is not a man to be underestimated.'

'Get that scum of yours on the microphone,' Kypov ordered.

Inside the Guard House they found a chair for Adimov. He was sat down in front of a table, and Rudakov lifted down the microphone from the wall bracket. Adimov gripped the microphone with white knuckles. He looked round at the walls that were covered with lists and typed guard rosters and duty orders and photographs from the files of selected prisoners.

He felt Rudakov's faint tap on his shoulder.

'This is Adimov, from Hut z. You will all recognize my voice. I want to tell you to surrender. You have been misled, you have been betrayed by your leaders. In a few minutes the gates of the camp will be opened, and those of my comrades who wish to leave the camp may do so, and they will not face penalties…' He had no script to read, he spoke as Rudakov had tutored him. 'I have been told by the Comrade Political Officer that only the leaders will be punished. This is your last opportunity, I urge you to come through the gates. My friends, all of our grievances will be most thoroughly investigated. Take this cbance, walk out of the compound… '

Adimov looked over his shoulder at Rudakov, saw the nod of satisfaction. His thumb slid purposefully along the stem of the microphone as if he raised the switch from 'On' to 'Off'.

'Was that good, Captain Rudakov?'

'Excellent, Adimov.'

The voice was distorted over the loudspeakers in the Kitchen.

'And the tank attacks at four o'clock?'

'Not your concern.'

A desperate hush in the Kitchen, all eyes on the twin loudspeakers.

'And once the attack starts Holly is to be shot on sight?'

'What's it to you, Adimov?'

The words were ferried the width of the compound by the exterior loudspeakers.

Then a distant shout, harder to hear.

'The microphone's live… '

Rudakov was close to the microphone now, and screaming. There was the sound of struggling.

'Bastard, stupid shit… stupid bastard, Adimov.'

'I don't need your ticket, she's dead. The letter said she was dead. She was dead before I went o u t… '

The loudspeakers were severed. For a few seconds there was ice-cold soilness inside the compound, then the zeks were moving.

'I didn't know he had the guts,' Holly said. 'Can you deal with a tank?'

'I can deal with a tank,' Byrkin replied.

Chapter 23

The camp lay squat on the snow plains, an isolated place that seemed to fly the yellow pennant of contamination.

Outside, soldiers in pairs and threes had used their trench spades to make small holes in which they could cower down from the wind with their rifles, their machine-guns, their anti-tank rocket launchers. The dog-handlers were out with their animals and the skis. The Major had told his boys whose homes were two and half thousand kilometres from the Dubrovlag of the dangerous, seditious scum led by Western provocateurs, who had risen in rebellion behind the creosote-covered fence. The troops did not doubt the word of their Major. Let the Fascists break out, let the Traitors come through the fence… There were no birds in the winter trees, no song to impede the crackle of instructions over the portable radio sets. The camp was doomed.

The death of the camp would come before dusk, and dusk was hurrying across the flat snowscape of Mordovia, like a fog wall on a calm sea.

The marksmen watched the camp from their eyrie on the roof of the Administration building. There should have been despair among the zeks. The bastards knew that a tank was coming, they knew that an infantry force had gathered, they knew that their leader was a man marked in the gunsights for death.

A grey light was settling on the compound. Only the perimeter lights were lit. The huts were deep shadows. The Kitchen was blurring, fading, from the view of the marksmen. They followed with difficulty the movements of men running between the huts, between the Kitchen and the Bath house, between the Store and the Library.

The tank was late coming. They would not use the searchlight that had been brought to the roof of the Administration building until the tank arrived in the compound.

The Kitchen was built of brick and concrete, the most secure construction in the camp. All who would not fight the action were gathered there. The old, the useless, the sick. And the women made a lonely group as if the liaisons of Hut 5 counted now for nothing. There were no jokes in the Kitchen, but a desperate, close quiet, with each man listening for the low-slung conversations of the Committee who were grouped close to the doorway. Holly stared out towards the black spaces sandwiched between the compound snow and the outline of the huts. Waiting for Byrkin. Byrkin away on his rounds and sprinting from hut to hut, diving for the cover of the darkness underneath the stilted floors.