We marched – were marched – at the double, our packs of belongings bumping, our boots slipping on the frozen ground, our steaming breath whipped away by the wind coming off the Arctic Ocean.
On each side, mounds of split rock, bare facets of it showing through snow drifts; mining rigs, tools, cranes, crates, trolleys on a single line heaped with shining ore, a timber yard stacked with beams, poles, props, weather-boarding; and then the huts, running in blocks halfway to the massif, their windows dark.
'Over there!'
Boots shuffled, shoulders bumped against the walls; the noisy heaving of lungs as we stood getting our breath back after the running march.
'Don't bunch! One at a time, can't you fucking listen?' Another flash from the camera on the other side of the office.
A man dropped, hitting his head against the corner of a desk, his fur hat coming off to show wisps of greying hair. 'Get him out of here!'
'You, next!' He fished for my papers as I stood forward. 'Berinov, Dmitri Stanislav – is that you?'
'Yes.'
'Yes, officer!'
'Yes, officer.'
His eyes bulbous in the shadow of his peaked cap, the veins broken into a bloodied web across his face, a bottle of vodka on his desk, half empty. 'What work did you do?'
'I was a shipping clerk, officer.'
'So you can read and write?'
'Yes, officer.'
My papers were shaking between his hands as he went on scanning them. 'What else? What other work did you do?'
'A little merchandising.'
His head jerked up. 'You were in the mob?'
'On the fringe.'
'You make much money?'
'I was comfortable.'
A sudden roar of laughter, spittle shining on his stubbled chin. 'Were you now! Then you'll find a slight fucking difference here, my friend. How much did you bring with you?'
'The regulation amount.'
'You sure?'
'Yes, officer.' We'd been body-searched twice, coming through.
He looked down again. 'We've got no use for a clerk here right now. If we need another one I'll send for you.' He scrawled something in red across the papers. 'Meantime, see how you like the mines.'
'Can I ask a question?'
'You can try.'
'There's a friend of mine here, Marius Antanov. Can you tell me which hut he's in?'
'That's none of your business. It's confidential information, and we respect privacy in this place, you understand that? No names, no pack drill. Now get over there.'
'You! Come on, then!'
A guard pushed me between ragged yellow tapes. 'Hold still!'
The camera flashed.
'All right, get over there. Boris! One more for Hut nine – you got room?'
'No, but I'll take him. He can sleep on the floor.'
My watch had stopped, but I judged it to be three or four hours after midnight. Sleep had been difficult: for the first time in five days the floor was no longer rocking. Rumbling through the Urals and then north and east across the steppes and into the mountains of the Siberian Uplands, our main concern had been to keep from freezing: there'd been a dozen cases of frostbite as we'd been herded through the inspection rooms. On the train, to fall sleep had been dangerous unless your body temperature was adequate; survival depended on a minimum of circulation.
This hadn't changed very much: a draught was still slicing across the floor from under the door to the urinals outside, but I'd found some newspaper and blocked at least half of it. The silence was also hard to get used to after the noise of the train, and I lay awake for another hour, listening to the distant voice of warning that hadn't given me any peace since we'd arrived at the camp.
It was the first time I'd taken an uncalculated risk during a mission, and now I knew why the idea had always frightened me: with a calculated risk, when you know most of the data, most of the hazards and the chances of escape, you can keep a modicum of control over the operation. Without that, you're plunging into the labyrinth blind, and may God have mercy on you.
It was something I'd been certain I would never do, however hot a mission was running, however urgent the need, the one thing that as a seasoned professional I would never expose myself to, because of its deadly threat to survival.
The uncalculated risk.
Mea culpa. But stay, be gentle with me, my good friend, grant me your charity, for madness of whatever kind can come upon any man at any time.
Sleep came at last from the shadowed silence of the night, broken only by the distant howling of the wolves across the snow.
18: BONES
'What's your name?'
I stowed my spare mittens in the empty orange crate along with the rest of my stuff. The crate was my locker, nailed to the wall above the bunk.
I looked round. 'Berinov.'
'Berinov.' He said it slowly, giving it a sarcastic twist, as if I'd said it was Napoleon. 'That the only name you got?'
He was a big man with a sloping forehead and eyes buried in puckered flesh, a hare lip distorting his mouth. Other men were gathered in the hut, getting what warmth they could out of the dying stove. It was evening, and a time for rest.
'It's the only name,' I told the big man, 'I'm giving you.'
'And why's that, now?'
There was a hook on the wall by the crate, made from a bent rod, but we never took off our coats until we were ready for bed. They'd taken the one I'd worn here at the check-in yesterday and given me a regulation issue with broad stripes on it; it wasn't lined but it was thick, and kept out most of the cold.
'Whoreson,' the big man said. 'I asked you a question.' Some of the men were turning to watch. They'd seen this before, had been victims of it themselves, probably, the old sweat and the new recruit routine. This was my second day in Gulanka.
'You're in my bunk space,' I told him. 'You can leave.'
'I'm in your what?'
I went to move past him to get nearer the stove, but he stopped me with a push of his hand. 'You telling me what I can do?' Feigning total disbelief, not a terribly good actor. He smelled of sweat and stale beer.
'What's your name?' I asked him.
'None of your fucking business, whoreson.'
'All right, then let's call you Mickey Mouse. You've only got one little problem, Mickey. You're full of shit.' I wanted to put a stop to this before I got bored, and there was only one way to do it.
'Say it again?' Cocking his head as if he really hadn't heard.
'I said you're full of shit.'
His eyes glinted and he pulled back his right elbow with his fist bunched and I looked around the whole of the exposed target area and decided on a sword hand to the right carotid artery because he was leaving plenty of time for it, and as he dropped I drove a finger into the spatulate nerve and got a scream that filled the hut, drove it in again and got another one and stopped right there because I didn't want him to start vomiting, there's always the risk with this strike because of the pain.
'Holy Christ,' someone said from near the stove, his voice hushed. I assumed nobody had put the big man down before.
He was rolling on the boards, hands clutching his jawbone with his eyes squeezed shut.
'Mickey,' I said, 'you're in my way there.' He didn't answer, quite possibly couldn't, so I took a light kick at the median nerve in his arm to wake him up. 'Mickey, you've got three seconds. Crawl if you have to, but get out. One.'
He was moaning now but I knew he could hear.