Archangel (36 page)

'They'll butcher us when they come in . . . '

if we live we'll have a Fifteen on top of what's there . . . '

if we stand together we have strength, if we're apart they'll eat us . . .'

'They ran, the shit bastards are frightened . . . '

Chernayev listened to the litany of confrontation. Seventeen years in the camps, more to go, and there would be another fifteen to run. Additional sentences were always consecutive, never concurrent. Why had he sat down in the snow? Abruptly Chernayev elbowed his way through the crowd that mouthed the brave words of fight and resistance.

They'd learn, they'd learn what the fine words meant.

He shoved a path for himself, his eyes locked on Michael Holly.

'You were wrong with your advice. I was wrong to have accepted it.'

'When you have fired over the top you have only one option left to you.' For the fourth time since they had left the compound, Rudakov explained his reasoning to the Commandant. 'After that you can only fire into them. Then you have a massacre. As it is, we have a problem, a small problem that will go away. They're milling about in there, all piss and wind, no leaders and no plan.'

He wished he believed in his own words.

They stood together a few metres from the gate.

Vasily Kypov was restless. He stamped and pirouetted, and seemed prepared to listen only with a minimum of attention to his Political Officer. As if he were rousing himself before combat, Rudakov thought, and shuddered.

The bloody man had no sensitivity. The sledgehammer was all he understood.

in twenty minutes we go.'

Close to the two men a small phalanx of guards waited.

They wore full riot gear - helmets with plastic visors, gas canisters fastened to their webbing, infantry assault rifles alternating with long wooden sticks.

'Before we return to the compound I will address the men over the loudspeaker system.'

'You can do what you like, you have nineteen minutes.

Then we're going in.'

'Go away.'

'You are a part of us, Holly.'

'Play your games on your own.'

it's not a game, not when Zone i stands together.'

'I'm not a part of you.'

'You're of our blood.'

'I am nothing to you.'

'You are everything to us, Holly.'

They were beside the doorway to Hut z. Holly on the step and Chernayev dwarfed beneath him.

'They have a dream of fighting, Holly.'

'With what?' The scorn of Holly.

'Perhaps with fire, perhaps with a fouled water-pipe, perhaps with wire-cutters .. '

'You would do better to go back and form lines, to call your own names, ask them to open the gates so that you can go to work.'

'You believe that?'

'You say they have a dream of fighting, I say that is a dream of madness.'

Holly saw in front of him the face of an old man. It was a puckered, weathered face, with gnarled veins bright under a white skin and sores at the mouth that were the inheritance of the camp diet.

Chernayev croaked at him, an old man near to tears. 'Join us, Holly.'

'You should go back to the Factory. What you call a dream of fighting is pathetic, it's suicide.'

'You fought, Holly, the dream was good enough for you.'

'And lost, Chernayev, and lost .. . Perhaps if you have lost it would have been better not to fight.'

'That's shit.'

'Tell them to go back to their ranks.'

'They want a leader. Look at them.' Chernayev waved his arm towards the centre of the compound. All the eyes were on Holly, and on Chernayev, who played the emissary.

Many hundreds of faces, faces of men that Holly had never spoken with.

Holly looked beyond the crowd, and his gaze circled as far as the twist of his neck would take him. Watch-towers, gun-barrels, wire fences, wooden fences.

'Tell them to go back to their lines, Chernayev. To go back before it is too late for them.'

Chernayev clawed at Holly's sleeve. 'You showed them, Holly. You were the man that roused them. Where do you think they found the courage to do what they have done this morning?'

'Silly rubbish.'

'I'll tell you of the courage they found this morning.

Feldstein was on hunger strike, clever creepy little Feldstein, he declared a hunger strike and a work strike.' Chernayev was shouting now, shouting and pleading. 'An old man who has never kicked against them, he sat down in the snow, he refused to go to the Factory.'

'Who was that old man?'

'That was me.'

A smile wreathed Holly's face.

'You brave sweet old bugger. You daft old bugger.'

'And Poshekhonov and Byrkin, and the whole of Hut z.

Even the trustie sat down. And not one man from another hut would go to work-'

'You knew what you were doing?'

'Of course we didn't know what we were bloody doing.

And they put a dog on us, a sodding dog as big as a man, and we killed it.'

Holly came down the step. His arm was around Chernayev's shoulder. They walked towards the waiting zeks.

There was a faltering in Holly's stride, as if he crossed an unknown room.

'What do you want of me now?' Holly asked Chernayev.

'We want your commitment to fight.'

it cannot be the fight of one man.

'It will be the fight of us all.'

The static whine of the loudspeakers burst upon them.

'...Attention... Attention.'

Holly recognized the voice of Yuri Rudakov. He thought of the confession that would be lying in the room of the Political Officer. Holly had weakened, Holly had collapsed, Holly had started to dictate a statement. And Feldstein had declared a hunger strike, and Chernayev had sat in the snow, and Poshekhonov and Byrkin with him, and a dog had been killed, and Kypov had ordered gunfire in the air, and Holly had been saved from his confession. Silently he uttered the words of his own commitment. He would never sit again in Yuri Rudakov's office. He would never place his chair again close to the warm pipes in Yuri Rudakov's office. „

' . . . Attention . • • All men in the compound have precisely ten minutes to form up in their ranks preparatory to roll-call and despatch to the Factory zone. If you do that immediately, there will be no reprisals taken. Failure to observe these instructions will lead to heavy penalties against all inmates of the camp. You have ten minutes . . . '

A hundred men were close around Holly, and behind them were another hundred, and behind them another hundred. Bleak, bowed men, with the counsel of suspicion and fear in their faces. Your army, Holly, an army of refuse and offal. Shrunken, starved bodies, hungry for leadership.

Where will you lead them, Holly? Bloody fools . ..

He was lifted up. He swayed on the shoulders of a dozen men, his legs hanging limp against their chests. Less than ten minutes to go, and the fever of rebellion burned in them.

And you started it, Holly. You started it with fire, with excrement, with wire-cutters. And how will you finish it?

Less than ten minutes until the gates of the compound were opened.

'Do you want to fight?' Holly called from his roost on the bucking shoulders.

A thunder of agreement buffeted around him. And the bright mouths of hope gleamed back at him. Bright mouths, gap teeth, pinched lips.

is there petrol or paraffin in the compound?'

A voice shouted back, anonymous among the bee-swarm faces, in the store at the back of the Kitchen there is paraffin

- a reserve if the electricity is cut.'

'And there are glass bottles in the compound?'

Another voice, another hidden face, in the Shop there are bottles of lemonade.'

'Who has matches?'

More voices that clamoured for inclusion. 'I have matches... I have a b o x . . . I have a lighter...'

'I want a dozen bottles filled with paraffin. I want a little paraffin soaked into rags that will seal the neck of the bottles. I want them here in three minutes.' He saw men detach themselves from the main group. He saw men run when before he had only known them slouch and stumble

.. I want every man on the perimeter path - "stoolies", Internal Order, "barons" - everyone. And I want a man on the roof of the Kitchen building, someone to wave to me when they come.'

There was a wasp nest of activity around Holly. The men who had not run to the Kitchen Store nor the Kitchen Shop nor to their huts for the hoarded matches now sidled away towards the edges of the compound and took a place on the stamped-down path. God, they trusted him.

He eased himself down from the shoulders that had supported him. Chernayev smiled, Poshekhonov grinned, Byrkin showed him the fierce anticipation of a combat-trained serviceman. The bloody fools, and so bloody p r o u d . . .

He saw Feldstein, and there was something haunted in the stolen glance of the young Jew.

it's not your way, Anatoly?'

i t is not my way.'

'You would lie down in front of them?'

'I would humiliate them by non-violence.'

'They'd spit on you.'

'Your way they will not spit on us, they will shoot us.'

'You can go out of the compound.'

Feldstein looked steadily into Holly's eyes. 'Don't try to cheapen me. I said when you were brought back that you would take men to hell and would not care if they returned.

Do you take us to hell, Holly? Do you care if we ever return?'

Holly smelt the paraffin. He turned away from Feldstein's persistent gaze. A dozen men came to him with bottles and a wad of rags oozed from each neck. Matches rattled in their boxes. A thin, reed voice carried from the roof of the Kitchen.

The group around Holly headed for the perimeter path.

Three bottles of paraffin would be underneath each of the corner watch-towers.

Holly walked across the compound to join the line of grey-uniformed men who ringed the huts and the Kitchen and the Bath and the Store and the parade area. He whis--

pered something to Byrkin, that could not be heard by Chernayev and Poshekhonov, and Byrkin nodded, and went on his way like a soldier.

'What are we going to do?' asked Chernayev.

'Start something they won't forget, not quickly.'

'Are we going to die?' asked Poshekhonov.

'I shouldn't think so, not y e t . . . '

Holly was facing inwards towards the centre of the camp.

He linked arms with the
zek
on either side of him, elbow to elbow with fists clenched across the stomach. The gesture was imitated, the movement rippled. A chain of men was formed, a chain that was broken only in front of the gates into the compound.

They were not paratroops. They were a callow collection of conscripts and reserve NCOs. They were all that was available to Major Vasily Kypov. And they were nervous.

He could read that, he thought that he could smell their fear.

He would keep them close, a nugget group. Five ranks of five, and he would be at the front, and Rudakov would be at the rear. A magazine of live ammunition to each rifleman, and his own pistol was loaded, and Rudakov's too. He'd heard Rudakov's broadcast over the loudspeakers. Crap, he'd thought it, not hard enough, unnecessary crap.

'Rudakov, we're going.' Kypov straightened himself. 'Get the gates open. What are they at in there?'

Rudakov was behind the Commandant. 'They are on the perimeter path.'

'Any weapons?'

'Nothing that the watch-towers have reported.'

'Together in formation, men, only act on my orders.

Exactly on my orders.'

Best foot forward, Vasily Kypov marched his men into the mouth of the camp. They were a pretty sight. They might have had a band playing because each man was in step, and as they progressed across the snow towards the centre of the compound the snow flew smartly from their boots. Kypov.

kept his head erect, glanced to the side with the shift of his eyes. He must dominate, that was the first rule in handling a rabble. Dominate and control. When Rudakov had said they were on the perimeter path, he could not register the significance of that information. Kypov saw the significance when he was fifty metres into the camp. He was marching into a vacuum. The zeks were distanced from him, he could not reach out and touch them with the power of his small force. The silence and the linked arms were unnerving. He had reached the centre of the camp, the very centre. Between the huts, beyond the buildings, the line of zeks confronted him. Small blurred figures in front of him, and on either side.

Blurred because of the water at his eyes, the water of frustration, of biting anger. If he marched his men to the left then he gave up all contact with the prisoners on his right. If he marched further forward then he could not dominate those behind him. If he held the centre ground then he must bellow to be heard. Amongst the scum was a brain that had bettered his. He stamped to a halt. Where was Rudakov?

Rudakov should have known. Rudakov had let him march onto shifting ground. Rudakov, at the bloody back. He turned to face his men. He saw them fidget, finger their rifles. And they had not taken the dog out, the bastard dog was still wet in the snow. Every soldier had seen the dog.

Twisted neck, blue tongue, helpless teeth, bruised fur. Shit.

And which way to face, when he addressed the scum? Shit.

And if he made his speech, what was his message, conciliation or threat? Whose was the brain that had bettered him?

Shit. Only the silence, only the linked arms of solidarity.

The training of the paratrooper won out. He took a deep sighing breath. He repeated to himself his first sentence. He was a toad puffed up to frighten the distant creatures.

'You are to form into your ranks. If my order is not obeyed the most severe penalties will be exacted on all prisoners. The troops with me are armed. If you do not move immediately I will order them to open fire at random upon you. You are completely surrounded, and there are additional machine-guns sited in the towers.'

He turned slowly on his heel. He looked for a movement, for the first man to break the chain and step forward. Silence beat over him, and the linked arms mocked him.