Archangel

That is why I will never be allowed to return to Estonia.

They would not permit a man who has fought against them to go back because he might again breathe something into the emptiness of those people's lives. I don't know whether I was lucky that they didn't shoot me. Twenty-five years they gave me…'

Holly was near to sleep. His eyes were firm shut against the ceiling light.

'You said you had done thirty years… '

'After twenty years I wanted to escape.'

'You waited twenty years?'

'I waited twenty years. They gave me another fifteen…'

'I could not have waited twenty years.' it is not easy… believe me.'

Mikk Laas looked at Michael Holly's back. He watched the rhythm of the breathing. He believed the young man was asleep. He dragged his body closer and snuggled against Holly for more warmth and rested his head on his hands. A slight heat flickered between them, a slight small heat in the SHIzo cell.

A man in handcuffs was driven by jeep to the Central Investigation Prison at Yavas.

The KGB team of interrogators dispersed to their camp appointments and to headquarters.

Major Vasily Kypov stood before his prisoners and announced that he was good to his word, that the restrictions he had imposed were lifted. The new roof for his office was completed and peeped smugly over the high wooden fence and waited for a snowfall to embrace it.

In Hut 2, by an end wall and far from the stove, a bunk was empty and draped with a folded blanket. Nearby, rolled in the dream that showed to him a woman who was dying, Adimov was asleep, and Feldstein lay still with the picture of exile alive in his mind.

Captain Yuri Rudakov could concern himself again with the prize that would be won when a confession of guilt was extracted from a prisoner in the solitary cells.

The camp ticked away the hours, grudgingly maintained its motion. One man ran at the wire and when the sentry fired high, fled back to the safety of his hut. Another man hanged himself with a towel in the Bath house and was buried without the recognition of a stone in the prisoners' cemetery. Another man tried to steal the tobacco hoard of a

'baron' and was clubbed unconscious and nobody witnessed the attack and nobody stood to defend him.

In Moscow, in a high room at the Ministry, a senior official of the Procurator General's staff read the report that ZhKh 385/3/1 was again at peace, and wondered how it could ever have been otherwise.

Through cold days and frozen nights the camp at Barashevo wheezed an existence. The camp worked and slept, ate its food, searched for its lovers, plundered and thieved, changed the guard in the watch-towers, patrolled the wire and the high wooden wall.

And in the SHIzo cell past the perimeter fences two men found a friendship on a concrete floor.

With a new office to work from, Major Vasily Kypov returned to the administrative details that had been neg-lected. For ten days he had ignored the paper piles that were now heaped as a punishment on his desk. The movement of prisoners into and out of his jurisdiction. The allocation of visits. The permission for parcels to be distributed. The reports on the letters vetted by the censorship team. The order for the camp's food supplies. Of course, he had a team of clerks and officers whose job it was to oversee such business. But the Commandant was responsible.

Deep in the mound of paper was a laconic note from Captain Yuri Rudakov stating that the prisoner Michael Holly had been sent to the SHIzo 'box' for fifteen days.

Kypov had not been consulted. The maintenance of discipline was the responsibility of the Commandant, yet he had not been told that a man had been punished. He had not entered the offence and the penalty on the man's security file. The slip of paper was inadequate. A matter such as this should have been brought directly to his attention, not left for him to find as he sifted the paper mass.

Vasily Kypov instructed his Orderly to find Yuri Rudakov and bring him to the office. He could have gone himself, but he played the formal game and sat in full splendour behind his desk and waited for Rudakov to come.

Ten minutes he waited, and the poor humour induced by the paper mountain was fuelled by the delay. And when Rudakov came, the annoyance of the Commandant verged with anger. Not even in uniform. And always with those sickly foreign cigarettes in his mouth, and a hand in his pocket.

'Captain Rudakov… '

'You sent for me, Major.'

'I sent for you ten minutes ago, more than ten minutes ago…'

'I came as soon as I was free, Major.'

The hostility billowed from the Major's face.

A shadowed smirk sidled to the Captain's mouth.

'A man has been sent to the SHIzo block – I was not informed.'

'The SHIzo is full, two-thirds men, one-third women from Zone 4.'

'You sent one man there, Michael Holly.'

'I provided your clerk with a memorandum of my action.'

'Which I find now, buried in my papers.'

'Then the blame is with your clerk.'

'All matters of discipline should be referred to me.'

'You've seemed preoccupied… '

Vasily Kypov stared back at the KGB Captain, his pig eyes burned.

'What was the nature of the man's offence?'

'My report refers to insubordination.'

'What type of insubordination?'

'He was offensive to me.'

'How was he offensive?' Kypov tunnelled with his questions, following a seam.

'He threw something at me… ' Rudakov shifted on his feet. His hand was no longer in his pocket, his fingers flicked irritably.

'What did he throw at you?'

'He threw coffee at me.'

'Coffee…?'

'Coffee.' is it a regular practice to serve coffee to your prisoners?' i t is not.'

'Why in this case did you feel it necessary to supplement this man's diet?'

'A mug of coffee is not supplementing a diet. I was interrogating this man.'

'Did he have cake as well?'

'I am entitled to interrogate a man in any manner I wish. It is a matter of state security.'

'Does "state security" require that coffee be served to the enemies of the state?'

'There are various techniques of interrogation.'

'And some require the serving of coffee?'

'I have been entrusted with a job of interrogation.'

'We have had arson in this camp, we have had murder, now we have blatant insubordination to an officer. We are wavering on a collapse of discipline. I will not suffer insubordination.'

'I think he lost his head…' Rudakov spoke with desperation. it will not happen again.'

'I will see that it does not happen again.'

'No, Captain, you don't understand me… I'm not asking you, I am telling you that it will not happen again.'.

Rudakov lurched to the door. Failure soared at him.

Failure to handle a prisoner who could toss coffee in his face and commit his Number One uniform to the civilian dry cleaners in Pot'ma. Failure to stand up to the cretin who had been thrown from military service to work out his last days in this shit-heap camp. He was a man familiar only with having his way. He believed his rank and office guaranteed his authority. But he had been caught out and humiliated.

He flung open the door and went out, he heard behind him the cavern chuckle of Kypov.

Two warders brought Michael Holly back to his cell from the workshop.

When he had seen their faces he had known what faced him. In the workshop the other prisoners had known. They had turned away, all except Mikk Laas and from him there could be only a mute sympathy.

Inside the cell they tripped Holly to the floor and as he fell he saw the squat shape of the Commandant who had waited for him to be fetched.

The palms of his hands smacked into the concrete, the roughness caught and scratched his flesh. The boots were around him. Wet, dirt-smeared, snow-soaked toecaps, and above the toecaps the bright black polish.