Escape. Escape. It was as though she had looked into my mind and plucked out that one word of danger and longing and hope. Yes, I wanted to tell her about my perilous dreams. But she had shocked me into silence. The words would not come.
Then came Igor and I turned to go, disconcerted and miserable, like a man who has turned his head from the extended hand of a friend. She spoke coolly and formally. ‘You will come again if the set wants adjusting?’ My words came in a rush. ‘Yes, yes, of course I will. I shall be glad to.’
I felt a slow burn of excitement as I waited through the next few days to see if I would get another call. I met a man named Sigmund Makowski, a thirty-seven-year-old captain in the Polish frontier forces. A precise, clear-thinking fellow, fit, active and bearing the stamp of the Regular Army officer. I marked him down, as I had marked Kolemenos, but I said nothing of my plans at this stage. I do not know what I expected of Ushakova, but at least I thought she would be in a position to advise.
Call for me she did, and when I had tuned in the radio, dallying round the dial to pick up some news items for my friends, she started casually enough to talk of the approaching short Siberian summer. I took the plunge. ‘I am sorry about the last time,’ I said. ‘Of course, I do think of those things, but the distances are so great, the country so difficult and I have no equipment to face such a journey.’
‘You are only 25,’ she answered. ‘You need not have been afraid to admit that you do not look forward to the next twenty-five years in these surroundings. It was something to talk about between us. I am reasonably well looked after here. We have comfortable quarters, much better food than yours and as many cigarettes as we need. But I couldn’t spend twenty-five years here. So escape must be an idea close to your heart and it may do you good to tell me what you think.’
So we talked of it as an abstract thing, as though it were being contemplated by some third person. We posed the question: Supposing a man could get out of the camp, where could he head for? The only possibility for such a man, I thought, would be to dash due east the short six hundred miles to Kamchatka and from there find his way to Japan. The attempt would be a failure, in her opinion. The Kamchatka coast was a Number One security commitment and would be heavily guarded. Could he smuggle himself on to a westbound train, maybe find himself a job in the Ural mines and possibly make his way out of Russia later? There would be difficulties of travel and work permits and other vital papers, she said. That was all the exploring we did that day, and it was not until I lay thinking things over on my bunk that night that I realized the one escape route she appeared deliberately to have ignored — south, past Lake Baikal. Whence from there? Afghanistan was the name that popped into my mind. It sounded sufficiently neutral and obscure.
It was the Colonel himself who next sent for me. He genuinely could not work that simple radio set, a fact which greatly surprised me, for he was an intelligent man. He seemed to be a little in awe of it and liked to have me find the stations for him. He wanted news, and as I got it for him in various speeches and bulletins, he said he now felt certain that Russia would soon be involved in war. I don’t think he wanted war but in war obviously lay his chance to get out of Siberia and back to the real job of soldiering for which he was trained.
There was no fanciful talk of escape when the Commandant was there. I imagine he would have been horrified to know his wife had ever broached such a topic with a prisoner. When the time came for me to go, he stayed near the radio and she walked behind me to the door. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You will be all right.’
That night I spoke to Makowski. I walked him over to the latrines. ‘What would you think of an escape?’
‘Don’t be crazy, man. We have nothing to escape with, even if we got outside the camp.’
‘I might get a little help.’
‘If you can, I’m with you. To hell with this place.’
Ushakova appeared to be actively enjoying her rôle as conspirator-in-chief. I have been unable to decide whether she ever believed I would really attempt an escape. It might be that all this was an intriguing exercise for the sharp wits of a woman bored by depressing camp life. Some things, even at this distance of time, I cannot answer.
The business had emerged from the abstract. This was Ushakova planning away as the radio gave us one of her favourite Tchaikovsky symphonies. ‘You will want a small number of the fittest and most enterprising men. You, from your extra rations, will save a quarter of a kilo of bread a day and dry it at the back of your ski shop stove and you will hide it every day. I will find some sacking to make into bags. Skins you will need for extra clothing and footwear. The soldiers trap sables and the officers shoot them. They hang them on the outer wire. The men working outside must grab one a day. No one will miss them. Plan your own way out and then head south. Wait for a night when it is snowing heavily, so that your tracks are covered.’
And then, almost as an afterthought, ‘Colonel Ushakov will be leaving for a senior officer’s course at Yakutsk shortly. I would not want anything to happen while he was in command.’ A very loyal wife, this Ushakova.
I sought out Makowski immediately. ‘We are getting out,’ I said. ‘There will be a little help for us.’
‘How many men will you want?’
‘About half-a-dozen,’ I said.
‘Good. We’ll find them. I know one I can personally recommend.’
I thought of Kolemenos. ‘I know one, too. We’ll start rounding them up tomorrow.’
9. Plans for Escape
‘THERE HE is now.’ Makowski, standing beside me at the midday break the next day indicated a prisoner standing a little apart from the rest. ‘Let us wait here a couple of minutes so that you can look him over.’ The man’s shoulders were squared and the shapeless clothes could not disguise that ramrod back.
‘You are a cavalry man,’ said Makowski at length. ‘You should recognize the type.’
‘Who is he?’
‘He’s a Pole. Sergeant of Cavalry Anton Paluchowicz. He’s 41, but strong and fit, well-trained, experienced. I’d go anywhere with him. Shall we talk to him?’
We went over and talked. I liked the look of Paluchowicz. He accepted the proposition like a good soldier undertaking a mission of war. He was glad to know I was a Lieutenant of the Polish Cavalry. ‘We shall do it together,’ he said. ‘It won’t be easy, but we shall do it.’
That evening I came up behind Kolemenos. I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned. He smiled. ‘Oh, it’s you again.’
‘Kolemenos, I am getting out of here with some others. Would you like to join us?’
He put one big hand on my shoulder. ‘You mean it? Seriously?’ I nodded. ‘Yes, seriously. Perhaps very soon.’ The big man smiled happily through his blond beard. ‘I shall come.’ He laughed aloud and brought the weight of his hand down twice on my shoulder. ‘I could carry you on my shoulders if necessary. If we could come all that way from Irkutsk hanging on those bloody chains we can go a long way further without them.’
Now there were four of us. We began to plan with a sense of urgency. It was the end of March and I felt we had not a great deal of time. We began to watch things closely. We noted, for instance, that the starting of the dog patrol around the perimeter at night was always signalled by the yelping and whining of the sledge dogs showing their annoyance at being left behind. That signal came only once every two hours. We discovered the patrol always went round anticlockwise, covering the long south side first. We decided the escape must be through the southerly defences and that therefore we must get ourselves established in the end hut on that side. We began to bribe and cajole ourselves bunks in that hut.