Gulanka. She had said Gulanka, and quite clearly.
So if they'd sent Marius Antanov to one of the other camps it had been done without her knowledge, perhaps deliberately, so that he would never receive her letters, her parcels of comfort, her love, her encouragement. That would be something a man like Sakkas would think of, would arrange. Or there'd simply been some official decision reached behind the scenes: Gulanka was already running beyond its specified capacity, Igor had told me yesterday, and the crowding had brought complaints from some of the staff. And again, Natalya Antanova hadn't known, hadn't been informed by the authorities – why should she be? Her brother had been thrown on the trash heap in northern Siberia and was of no further account.
So face the facts.
To find which camp Antanov had actually been sent to I would have to get out of this one first and reach Moscow and see Mitzi and start all over again. Easy to say. You want to know the only way to get out of Gulanka? Igor, his big knife whittling at the prop. Get yourself a bit of rope and sling it over a beam and kick the box away.
The hut flexed to the wind, and somewhere on the roof a loose patch of tarred fabric flapped, fretting at the nerves as I stood motionless still, thinking, letting the subconscious play in what peace it could find while I held patient, waiting for the final readout.
Conscious business: watch the window; the sentries would be back in this area before long now, or possibly new ones, after an unscheduled changing of the guard because of the blizzard. Rehearse again what I would say if anyone came in here, embellish on it. Remember that whatever the risk of standing for any length of time outside to lock the door again with the makeshift key, take it: it must be found locked, in case I ran foul of a sentry on my way back to the hut and they started putting two and two together in the morning.
Patient, be patient, let the infinitely subtle processes of the subconscious consult the higher self and look for answers, while in the forebrain the thoughts circled under the garish light of logic… Even if I tried to get out of this place there were the guards, the guns, the dogs, the wire, the wolves… there's a big pack out there, thirty or forty of 'em with a huge dominant male. You think the wire's something to get through? Try getting through the wolves. And even if I could -
Readout.
Not a breakthrough, but let's look it over. Conceivably, yes, Marius Antanov could have been sent to Gulanka under an alias, perhaps to sever his link with Sakkas. So I should now search the files again for a name I didn't even know?
No. Look at the photographs.
And start now: there are six or seven hundred of them. 03:32.
And don't just look at them: study them carefully. She had an elfin face, Natalya, finely sculpted and delicate. I wouldn't expect to find that in her brother, though there could be the same bone structure, the same overall slightness of feature. Or his genes could be paternal-dominant or he could even be a throwback to an earlier generation and look totally different, his face square, heavily set.
03:35. Three hundred of the photographs scrutinized, two noted as possibles.
04:49. The storm buffeted the hut, screaming now through the overhead cables outside.
Six hundred faces, with two more possibles, and forget the sinking of the heart as the cold hard facts nagged at the mind: it was a total shot in the dark to think that Antanov was here in the camp under a different name, and if he were, the chances of his looking anything like his sister were slight in the extreme; you can tell people more easily by their walk, the way they turn their head, the movement of their hands, their speech patterns; the camera is notoriously inaccurate, limited by the light factor and only two dimensions.
06:12. Six hundred and seventy-one, with a total of twelve possibles, the embers in the stove long since dead and the hands numbed and the feet frozen, the blood sugar low by this time and my estimation of the chances of success close to zero.
I slid the last of the files back into its correct position as voices sounded again in the alleyways outside and a beam of light began playing across the doors of the huts. A new guard would have come on at 06:00 if they conformed to recognized routine, and I sighted through the window again from cover.
I couldn't recognize them in their fur hats but one of them was stopping at the door of the commandant's office to try the handle and my boot kicked the corner of the counter as I came through the gap very fast but the sound wouldn't have carried outside. The key was in my hand as the two sentries – a change of guard, yes, the last ones hadn't checked the door handles – came along the pathway with the beam of light swinging through the snow.
Faster.
The tumblers obstinate, the crude key slipping across their surfaces, the voices outside louder now, the beam of light brighter, the wind screaming through the overhead cables, faster, the tumblers as firm as rocks, if that guard had checked the commandant's office door he'd be certain to check this one, tilt the key the other way, tilt it and try again, it doesn't follow that a home-made lock pick will work from both sides but keep on trying, tilt it this way again, the voices louder still, shouting against the wind as the beam swung across the window and then flooded the gap below the door, take the last chance then and abandon the lock and get behind the counter, got right down as the handle rattled and the door swung open and the sentries came in through a gust of driving snow, slamming the door against it and coming across to the counter.
'Leave 'em a note, Rudi, door found unlocked, 06:17. The skipper's going to piss all over poor old Sacha but we've got to report it, bloody hell, this is the orderly room, anyone could just walk right in.'
'God's truth.'
I could hear him tearing a sheet off a pad and raking among some pens, his breathing noisy as he took his time forming the words he wanted. Crouched on the floor in the shadows, I could see the top of his hat, the snow melting into diamond drops on the fur. If he raised his head too far my own would come into his line of vision, an inch too far, two inches, not more than that.
'Unlocked,' he asked, 'or left open?'
'What? Unlocked. Door wasn't open, was it? There's a difference. Door'd been open, this place would've been covered in snow by now.'
A brief laugh. 'God's truth. Unlocked, then.'
'Right.'
I couldn't move down any lower than I was, couldn't turn my head farther into the shadows, had to wait it out, listening to the guard's breathing and thinking of the whip, the shackles, the solitary cell.
'Come on, Rudi!'
'Writing ain't me best thing, you know that.'
'Let's have a look,' his boots clumping over the boards.
'Found's got a "d" for Christ sake, it's not "foun". Put a "d". Look.'
'Oh.'
'That's it. Now come on, we're holding up the fucking parade.'
For an instant I saw his eyes, Rudi's, but he wasn't looking down but turning away, dropping the pen onto the counter. Then their boots marched across to the door and one of their rifles swung and hit the frame as they went out into the howling wind and I heard the bunch of keys jingling outside as I slowed the breath, let the muscles go, re-establishing the norms in the system.
I gave them ten minutes to clear the area and then got the door unlocked again and worked on it from the outside before I left, took short detours between the huts on the way back to my own, tramping through the deep new snowfall with the names of the twelve apostles of Balalaika lodged in my head.