Archangel (38 page)

Goodbye, Comrade Procurator.'

Rudakov scratched sharply at the back of his neck. 'All we wanted.'

'What troops are being sent?'

'Buggers from the far east. Regular army, none of this M V D shit.'

it's not easy to get soldiers to fire on crowds.'

'They're straight off the steppes, slant eyes, they'll shoot,'

Kypov said, and the pencil in his hand was broken in two short halves.

They made a grim, halting procession out of the Kitchen.

The zeks whistled their going in derision, slow-clapped in contempt. Holly led them out.

They were the 'stoolies', and the trusties, and the

'barons'. They were the outsiders who had cheated themselves of the full rigours of the camp. They were the compromisers who had sealed their deals with the regime. Each had stood in line earlier in the morning with a faint heart, because each had believed that the second stage of rebellion would be the reprisals. Until they stood in the sharp air of the compound each one had believed he might yet be the victim of a cruel trick. And now they were outside and there was no deceit.

Holly held Mamarev's arm as they started out for the gates.

'They would have killed you this morning, you know that?'

i thought I was dead.'

'When you came into the Kitchen you heard what we talked of.'

'A little.'

'You can buy your debt from me.'

'How?' Mamarev looked up at Holly, into the hard and chiselled face.

'You will say there are divisions and factions, that they are frightened of the helicopters coming, that some want to surrender but are not allowed to leave the camp.'

'That is all?'

Holly stopped thirty yards short of the gates. Everything changed beyond the gate. He could hear the revving of heavy lorries and in the distance was the throb of a helicopter engine.

'Tell them what I have told you.'

The blood was dry at Mamarev's mouth, dark and con-gealed at his nostrils. A bruise was forming on his right cheek, it was me that reported you as missing two nights ago. I informed on you.'

'On your way.'

Holly turned. He started to walk back along the line of deserters. If he heard Mamarev's shout, he gave no sign.

'Do you forgive me?'

Byrkin supervised the work.

A table-leg that was nearly a metre long was tied to ten metres of electrical wire stripped from the Kitchen ceiling, the wire was tied to another ten metres of heavy rope taken from the building Store, the rope was tied to two blankets knotted together and stripped from the bunks of the defec-tors. They had the material to make up nine lengths. The men that Byrkin had chosen had one thing in common. All had served their conscription duty in the army of the Soviet Union. It was the role of a Petty Officer to carry out orders.

Holly had given him his orders. He bustled between his chosen few, checking the strength of the joins and the coiling of the heaps of wood, wire, rope and blanket. They were the best men he could have found, and much was expected of them.

He heard the faraway engine drive of the first helicopter.

He looked out of the broken window at the back of the Kitchen. The zeks were out in the compound where they had been told to wait.

He felt a sort of happiness, a happiness he had not known since the sailing of the Storozhevoy from Riga harbour.

Mikk Laas heard the helicopter coming.

He was a blind man in his cell in the SHIzo block. He heard many sounds that were new and strange, he saw nothing. The window was high above him, beyond his reach.

He had heard shooting.

He had heard the outer door of the cell-block locked, and after that no movement of warders down the outer corridor.

He had heard the arrival of lorries with a different engine-whine to those of the commercial vehicles that visited the camp.

He kicked the cell wall.

'Who is there?' The cry of an old man without eyes.

'Adimov. . .'

'What is happening out there?'

'There is a mutiny, I heard the warders talk. We're better here.. .'

'Where is Holly?'

'How can I know?'

Mikk Laas crawled away across the concrete floor. He knew Holly would be in the compound. His ears told him that the lorries were bringing troops to Barashevo, that the helicopters were swarming down to Barashevo.

The Colonel General sat easily on the corner of Kypov's desk. He was a youngish man, assured and certain. A good-looking man beneath his steel battle-helmet. Kypov warmed to him, because this man did not sneer. The Colonel General talked briefly, factually, alternating the direction of his remarks between Kypov and his Political Officer.

'They're big beasts, the helicopters. Weil bring them down to three, four metres and nobody will be standing under them. You get blown flat. We'll give them a minute or so, then in with the troops. We'll split them into groups of thirty, forty, then I'll have your force in . . . shouldn't be a problem.'

The competence of the Colonel General encouraged Yuri Rudakov.

'I'm told there are divisions within whatever leadership they have, there is a faction that believes the thing has already gone too far. They know that the helicopters will come, I think the majority of them are scared half out of their minds.'

'What sort of prisoners does the camp hold?'

'Scum,' said Kypov decisively.

'Criminals, pretty low intelligence,' said Rudakov.

There was a knock at Kypov's door. News from the Adjutant. All four helicopters had now landed in the vehicle park. The perimeter of the tamp was secure. The storm-squad was in position behind the gates. Marksmen were in place on the Administration block roof.

'Will you be flying yourself, Colonel General?' Kypov asked.

'Of course.'

They were experienced men, the pilots of the helicopters.

They accepted this mission with an amused resignation.

They were accustomed to flying into actual or simulated machine-gun fire. They were familiar with the evasion techniques necessary against ground-to-air missiles. Their machines carried armour-plating a centimetre thick to protect the soft belly beneath their seats. Apart from his co-pilot each captain carried two machine-gunners. And they were to be used as fly-swatters. The pilots talked to each other by radio, they livened their engines, the Colonel General climbed on board. The helicopters rolled, as a drunkard on ice, and lifted.

Holly stood white-lipped in the centre of the compound.

Beyond the high wooden fence the bedlam of the helicop-

ters was growing. He could see Byrkin fifty yards to his right and close to the wire. Chernayev was behind him, further than fifty yards. And there were men whose names he did not know and whose faces he might not recall, and they too were beyond reach.

He was the talisman of the compound. All the men watched him. If he broke they would all break. The
zeks
were spread out across the Zone, as he had wished. Their posture was aimless. When the helicopters rose and peeped for the first time over the high wooden fence they would see only confusion. Let the bastards come .. .

Anatoly Feldstein was beside Holly.

if it works, your plan, will men die?'

'Not necessarily . . . '

'And if you win this time, what of the next time?'

'I have not won this time, not yet,' Holly yelled brutally.

The nose of the lead helicopter sidled above the fence, a monster that had crawled from a cave and now flexed itself.

'We're not reading your bloody
samizdat
in a Moscow flat, we're not having wet dreams over a Solzhenitsyn typescript . . .'

Three more helicopters creeping into close formation above the first, clawing into the dull sky, climbing for altitude.

' . . . We're not sending telegrams to Ronald bloody Reagan. Nobody outside this camp gives a hell for us. We're on our own, understand that.'

Holly craned his head, following the grey undercarriages of the helicopters. They'd rise to a thousand feet, then drop.

A controlled fall down onto the compound, down onto men who had nothing but nine coils of table-leg, wire, rope, and blanket.

Feldstein held Holly's head, shouted in his ear. 'Can you know what it is to read
samizdat
? It's wonderful. It is true freedom to read
samizdat

'Shut up and watch. Watch and I'll show you freedom.

Watch the helicopters.'

He pushed Feldstein away.

The sky darkened, the noise of the rotors pounded, thrashed the air. Holly saw the machine-gunners, saw them grinning as they peered from their opened doors, leaning out safe on the tether of their lifelines. Let the bastards come

. . . He depended on nine men, the nerve of nine men.

The zeks began to run, began to form into four concentrations as Holly had dictated. Snow swept into the void, a white and blurring confetti, and he lost sight of Byrkin, and when he spun round Chernayev also was gone. God. . . the noise, the blasting sound. Holly and Feldstein were alone, and ignored by the pilots. The pilots had greater riches. Four man masses to occupy them. The snow swirls lay like a fog, low and held down by the rotor-blades. The helicopters sat on the white mist, and the engines roared and screamed and howled.

'Now Byrkin . . . now Chernayev . . . now .. . now . . . '

A stick was thrown in the air. Holly watched, cold and fascinated. A stick was caught by a rotor blade and swept from his sight, and a wire and a rope and two knotted blankets flew in pursuit of a tossed table-leg. Beautiful Chernayev .. . beautiful Byrkin .. . beautiful all of you.

Look at the Captain, Holly. Look at his face roving over his instruments, his hands fighting the controls. Press the panic-button. Why won't the bloody thing respond, Comrade Captain? .. . Holly heard the cry of a failing engine. He flung his arms round Feldstein.

'We might have won .. .' he yelled.

The zeks knew, the zeks had heard the swing of the engine pitch from the high roar to the failing whine. Wire and rope and blankets were wrapped tight, bandaged, around the delicate free running spool between helicopter cabin and rotors. The zeks ran, broke and spread.

One machine bellyflopped in the compound.

The zeks would be at it like thieves at a Christmas party.

Another machine scraped over the Administration block, and disappeared for a few short seconds before there was an explosion and the answering sweep of dark smoke.

The third machine cleared Hut 3 and took the outer telephone lines from the poles. It keeled against a watch-tower, and fell beyond the high wooden fence.

Almost on the ground, the fourth helicopter seemed to give up the fight for height and settle only for distance. It careered between Hut 6 and the Bath house, scattering its way through fences. Screaming wire, ripping wood, the howl of the engine. Holly saw it go, a great wounded bird fluttering to a defeated landfall. Byrkin was bellowing at him, hanging on his arm for attention.

'I have a Colonel General... I have two pilots, two crew.

We have two machine-guns and ammunition.'

Holly shook himself, tried to rid his head of the echoing noise. 'Get the guns under Huts 3 and 6. Get the crew into the Kitchen.'

God .. . they had won! The zeks ran round him, dazed, overwhelmed, hysterical.

Holly went towards the Administration block. So quiet without the rotors spinning above him. He walked past the huge downed beast. The zeks were in it, hyenas at a carcase.

He walked tall.

The marksmen would be locked on him.

Twenty metres in front of the Administration block he stopped.

'Tell Major Kypov that we have a Colonel General and two pilots and two crew alive and in our care. Tell him also that we have machine-guns intact.'

'I couldn't shoot,' the marksman sobbed. 'As soon as the helicopters came down they just chucked up the snow. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't give them covering fire.

When the snow cleared, the first thing I saw was that they had our people. They had knives to their throats. They'd have butchered them if I'd fired.'

His sergeant turned away, headed for the tra'pdoor, and the ladder and the corridor to the Commandant's office where the inquest would be raging.

The helicopter had speared first through the fences of Zone i, then across the roadway and into the fences and high wooden wall of Zone 4. It breached the barricades of the Women's camp.

The women had been in their work area at the time of the helicopters' assault, not at their machines but crawling up for vantage points, peering through the glass of the upper windows. As the helicopter exhausted its flight they had streamed from the doorway and out into their compound ignoring the shouts of the wardresses.

It was a stampede.

In the single watch-tower above the Women's zone, the guard seemed not to watch them, but stared across the broken defences into the men's camp.

One group ran towards the helicopter, and was laughing, screaming, at the dazed and disorientated crew strapped in their seats.

One group ran straight for the breach in the fences.

Twenty women, perhaps thirty, sprinted and slithered over the snow and iced paths, shrieking in hysteria, and heading for the hole without reason, and without care. Irina Morozova, not a part of the group, was running with them. A small girl, slight even in her quilted tunic and her knee-length black skirt. A single guard ran along the roadway dividing the two Zones holding rifle at the hip and his finger, awkward in its glove, trying to push forward the frozen catch from 'Safety'. The guard shouted once, and the women swept towards him, ignored him, the sight of the roadway in front of them, and beyond the guard the sight of the men's camp. The knees of the women pumped below their lifting skirts as they ran for the hole.

A sandcastle cannot staunch the tide. The guard was overwhelmed. He never fired, he never found the strength in his gloved finger to release 'Safety'. Beside Morozova, women fell on the guard and toppled him to the snow and she heard the howl of their fury and saw the scratching nails of their hands. Morozova watched. The hands ripped at his greatcoat, pulled at his tunic, thrust at the flies of his trousers. Morozova watched. She saw the skin of his belly, she saw the white of their hands. She heard the gabble of laughter, the scream of the soldier's fear.