Archangel (37 page)

Three men stood under each of the four towers and watched Michael Holly for the signal.

He was very tense, and around him was the hiss of anticipation. Eight hundred men, and they waited on him.

The hunger was forgotten, the cold was stripped away, the tiredness had gone. A racing excitement clawed him. Away behind the outlines of the low roofs of Hut 2 and Hut 3 he saw Kypov and behind him the guns, and behind them Rudakov.

in thirty seconds I will give the order for random fire.

Whoever has led you to this is a fool. You have been misled, turn your backs on this idiocy, you have less than half a minute . . .'

He saw the rifles ease up to the shoulders, he saw the barrels waver to select a target. He heard the smatter of sound as the catches were nudged from 'Safety'. He heard the bleat of Kypov's voice.

'You have fifteen seconds. These are automatic rifles, above you are machine-guns. I am going to count the last ten seconds. I am going to start to count.'

Holly swung his right arm away from the grip of the man next to him and raised it like a banner. He looked to the north-east tower and saw a sharp flash of light. He looked to the south-east tower and saw a bottle climb slowly, somersaul-ting, towards the open window and dark-uniformed guards.

A sheet of flame in the north-west tower. The crash of an explosion in the south-west tower. A terror scream in the north-east tower. A man beating at fire that was running across his great coat shoulders in the south-east tower.

Black smoke spilled from the towers, and orange light sucked through the interiors.

He saw a man who was ablaze jump from the top of a watch-tower ladder and dive for the salvation of the snow beneath.

He did not look behind him. Byrkin, who they said was mad, would know his job, Byrkin would be on the wire and climbing. There was the first clatter of exploding ammunition.

He hooked his right arm inside the elbow of the man next to him. He locked his hands, closed his fingers tight. The first step forward. Along the length of the line there was a shimmer of movement, a stutter. The line lurched, rolled, bent. The line straightened, the line advanced. He wondered if their nerve would hold. And why should it? If the line broke, if it broke just once, they would be massacred. God, help the line to hold. He saw Kypov, spinning like a top in a child's game. Kypov looking right, left, front, behind. He should have opened fire, Holly thought soberly. Stupid Kypov. The line was level with the rear of Hut 2 and Hut 3.

Here it could break, only here. Holly led, he was half a stride in front of the men on either side of him. Tracers streaked in brilliant lines, dividing a grey sky. Some of Kypov's detachment were on their knees as if they mistook the danger of the wild bullets. The perimeter of the line was closing in. In one place the line had not moved. The pathway to the gate was clear. The road of retreat was empty.

They came slowly now, the zeks with their arms linked, slowly and with purpose. They edged over the snow, and the sound of their boots was a perpetual, menacing shuffle.

Vasily Kypov could not utter the necessary command for his men to shoot. His pistol hung limp in his hand, its barrel rotating over the caps of his boots.

He heard Rudakov's voice behind him. What was Rudakov shouting? Why was Rudakov pulling at the arm of his coat?

Should it be gas, should it be rapid fire ? What would rapid fire manage against this creeping ramshackle crowd? There were no weapons in their hands. They carried nothing in their hands. Rapid fire... too late to use gas. He had to find the words before the stinking rabble broke over him. Rapid fire . . . where was his bastard voice? Rudakov still pulling at the arm of his coat, still shouting.

'What is it?'

'Don't shoot - whatever you fucking do, don't shoot.'

'Rapid fire, that's for them.'

'Don't fucking shoot.'

He could see their eyes, he could read the names on their tunics, he could see the cotton darning round the knee cap patches and the boots sliding towards him across the snow.

'But they're going to kill us.'

'Only if you shoot. Remember the dog, Kypov, don't forget the fucking dog .. .'

Kypov could smell them. He could not remember when last he had smelt the zeks. A hideous smell of waste, of dirt, of old death. They could not beat him. A rabble in a camp could not be permitted to gain victory over a Major of paratroops. He knew he was raising the pistol in his hand.

His arm was rising and there was the hard hold of the pistol's butt in his hand. He felt Rudakov's first clamp on his forearm, and his arm slid back, relaxed.

'We'll be killed, Major. If one shot is fired, every last one of us .. .' Rudakov's voice was kindly.

He led Kypov past his troops. Out of step, out of mind, they returned to the gate. Kypov was weeping. If Rudakov had not supported him he would have fallen to the ground.

The line followed them.

The linked arms broke only when the gates had closed.

'What did you get?'

'Two of the mounted machine-guns.'

'Better than I'd hoped,' Holly smacked Byrkin across the shoulders.

'Not better, they're all charred to hell.'

The cold came fast to Holly's face. 'We don't have a gun that'll fire?'

'Nothing that'll fire . . . I'm sorry.'

Holly stood near to the wire and above him was the angled, subsiding structure of the south-east watch-tower. He heard the smashing of glass, the breaking of the windows of the Shop and the Store and the Library. There was the thudding of a wooden pole used as a ram against the door of the shed behind the Kitchen where the week's rations for eight hundred men were kept. The windows of the Administration block that looked through barbed wire into the compound were deserted. There would be men on the roof, and the guards in the towers overlooking the Hospital to the east, the Factory to the north, the Women's zone to the west would have a slanted and partial view into the camp.

In his mind he tried to shun responsibility for the fracturing glass, for the splintering doors. They had come to him, they had taken the step of conspiracy. But responsibility is no easy garment to cast off. Responsibility is worn tight, buttoned surely. Chernayev had told him that he, Michael Holly, had breathed the kiss of life courage into the zeks. He would lead them to hell, Feldstein had accused, would he care if they returned. . . ?

What is the price to be paid for pride, what is the reward of the humble?

'The price of pride is crippling. The reward of the humble is survival.'

Bloody words, Michael Holly, daft words. And outside the fences they would be mustering an army, and inside the fences we're at play smashing and destroying.

He walked away from the fences and towards the Kitchen. Half a dozen men were sitting on the step outside the doorway of Hut 6. They were drunk. They had broken open the store of distilled alcohol that had been the property of the hut's 'baron'. That was democracy, that was power to the people. The capitalist had been overthrown. They were from Georgia, dark-skinned and curly-haired, singing and belching and hiccuping.

You started it, Holly.

He walked past the back of the Kitchen where the Store door sagged away from its upper hinge. An old zek came out trying to stuff potatoes down into his trouser pockets. They were raw potatoes and he would have no way of cooking them adequately, but a man who has been starved of potato for half a decade does not have to concern himself with the niceties of cooking. He had yellow rat teeth that could handle raw potato. Another man chewed uncooked semi-frozen herrings, gulped at the grey white meat. Another bit and worried at a length of tripe stomach-lining that would make him vomit. They would be fighting soon, those who already crowded the Store and blocked its entrance, and those who shouted outside the door for access.

You started it, Holly.

He walked along the side of the Kitchen and saw the broken windows. The breaking served no purpose. The snow would come in, and later the rain, the Kitchen would be a worse place for the zeks of the future . . . Perhaps, perhaps they do not believe in the future of the camp.

Perhaps that is why they have begun to damage systematically everything that is the camp. That can be a man's freedom. A man's freedom can be to damage systematically all the apparatus of the Dubrovlag.

He walked to the door of the Kitchen, where a knot of men with their backs to him formed an inverted laager.

They craned forward to see something at their feet. He heard the oaths and the whimper of a man who had once been privileged. Of course there would be beatings, the settling of age-old scores. Hands pulled Holly closer, he was invited to watch. He saw Mamarev on the ground. The snow was dark with mud and bright with blood. Blood dripped from the boy's mouth, from his nose. Two zeks kneeled above him and scrabbled with each other for the chance to strike the next blow. One of the zeks was Poshekhonov. Holly thought he might be sick. He reached forward and tore the two men back, and there was sudden surprise drifting to anger from Poshekhonov. Holly didn't speak. He picked Mamarev up from the ground. The sobbing gratitude of the boy shrilled in Holly's head.

You started it, Holly.

He carried Mamarev into the Kitchen.

A meeting had started. Amongst the debris of furniture one table and two benches had been retrieved. A dozen men, perhaps fifteen, were round the table. He heard a cacophony of raised voices. Argument, dissent, discussion. Poor bastards . . . poor, stupid bastards. They had begun something incredible and they had not known what they had done.

They were debating what to do next. That was a kind of freedom.

Holly let Mamarev slide down to the floor. He wondered how the men, some from each of the six huts, had been chosen. They were the doomed ones, they were the condemned men. When it was over, these names would be on Yuri Rudakov's desk. They would shoot these men in the yard of the Central Investigation Prison at Yavas. Zeks rule, OK . . .

and for how long? For a day? For a day and a night?

Chernayev and Byrkin were the representatives of Hut 2.

Some of the other men he recognized, some he had never spoken with.

You started it, Holly.

He raised his hand, cut the squabble.

it won't be a small force the next time, they'll come in strength. Now they'll be waiting for reinforcement. This time they will shoot. We have no guns . . . When the big force arrives they will again offer us a choice, surrender or take the consequences. This is your camp, not mine, you must decide for yourselves which way you will fall.'

'You led us before, Holly,' Chernayev said mildly.

'When you had already made your decision. You either give in now or you finish what has begun.'

The voices that Holly had hushed were raised again.

if we give in, all of us will be shot or get Fifteens.. . we'll be behind wire for the rest of our natural . . . how can we fight them when we have no g u n s . . . we slid into this, if we slide further we're screwed . . . '

Brave men. Men out of the gutters, men who were unable to read the page of a newspaper, men who had thieved and killed for a petty purse of roubles. Michael Holly could never walk away from them.

Holly said, 'There was a riot some years ago in the Dubrovlag, what was the reaction of the military?'

'They brought in helicopters.'

'They used the down-blast to flatten everybody.'

'When everyone was on the ground, the guards and warders came in.'

'They used chains on the men.'

Holly asked, 'What is the stomach of the camp for a fight?'

'Don't underestimate their hate.'

He breathed deeply, screwed his eyes shut. There would be no going back. 'Any man who wants to leave the compound should be given the chance to do so immediately.

I want wire and I want rope and I want blankets. I want every man, who wishes to stay, inside the Kitchen in fifteen minutes. There is no going back. We have to finish what has been begun . . . '

'Where is that finish?' The zek from Hut 4, a big man with a bulbous mole set half way up his nose, and mud streaks on his cheeks.

'There is the possibility, just the possibility, that the very weight of our action will frighten them. There is the possibility that they will step back, try to talk with us.'

'And the probability?'

'They will hit us with everything they have.'

There was silence round the table. One man slowly drummed his fingers on the wood boards, another fished in his pocket for a loose cigarette, another snorted into a rag handkerchief.

Byrkin scraped his chair, stood up. 'I'll start looking for wire and the rope and blankets. I'll pass the word for the meeting.'

Vasily Kypov put down the telephone.

He looked across his desk towards Yuri Rudakov, who was hunched on the edge of an easy chair.

'Yavas is sending a hundred men, a Company and a Colonel General. Saransk is sending four helicopters. That was staff at Yavas, a shitty Lieutenant, he was almost fucking laughing at me.'

The telephone rang. Kypov grimaced, reached out for it, listened intently.

Rudakov watched him for a moment, then resumed his own brooding. The Political Officer was responsible for gauging the mood of the compound. It had all happened at such speed, with such fury. He was baffled. He doubted if Kypov had ever considered the prospect of mutiny. Why should he have done? Rudakov had never entertained the thought. Smart arse, wasn't he? And he'd never entertained an anxiety of mutiny.

Kypov covered over the telephone, guarding it from his voice, it's bloody Moscow . . . the big bastard boss from Interior . . .' and he was listening again and Rudakov knew the connection had been made because Kypov seemed to straighten in his chair. 'Good morning, Comrade Procurator .. . yes, the situation is contained. There is no chance of a break-out. I am sorry if you disagree with my decision to withdraw... I was on the spot, in the compound myself...

the reinforcement troops are expected very soon . . . no, I have not yet identified the clique of leadership . . . tomorrow, you are coming, tomorrow? I am sure that by then we will have the compound returned to normal working . . .