The inner gate closed behind the new intake of prisoners.
From the window of the Administration block overlooking the open ground of the camp close to the inner gates, the Major watched as the prisoners were again lined in fives and counted, a necessary formality because this marked their passing from the charge of the M V D transport guard into the hands of the M V D Correctional Labour Detachment.
He was a short man, barrel-built, and his physique was suited to the paratroop unit he had been a part of before his transfer from the active service troops of the Red Army, to the mind-twisting boredom of Ministry of the Interior camp supervision. Paratroops were the elite while those seconded to M VD work were the latrine cleaners of the armed forces.
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.