Archangel

Mikk Laas with his bony body pressed against Holly, searching his memory for precedent.

'There is a way that relies on conspiracy, but it is always dangerous to involve others, because then the chance of the

"stoolies" hearing is widened. Back in Camp 19, ten years ago, perhaps eleven, there was a snowstorm as the men were to be marched back from the Factory to the living zone. Two men stayed in the Factory and when their names were shouted for the roll-call others claimed their names. The two men had lifted the floor of the Factory and sheltered underneath and they had smeared the boards with oiled cloths. They knew they would be missed, but they needed those few hours for the trail to grow cold. They knew that the dogs would be loosed to search through the living zone and the Factory, but they hoped that the cloths would have dulled their scent to the dogs. It was a Friday when they went under the boards, and they hoped that by the Sunday the heat would have gone and with the work place not in use they might find a place on the wire to climb and run. I said the guards were thorough, Michael Holly… They were shot on the Factory wire.'

Mikk Laas would sometimes shake his old stubble-crested head at Michael Holly, as if there was a futility in all he said.

'There have been those who have tried to smash their way out through a broken fence. A lorry will come in, to deliver coal, materials, anything… the men will attempt to seize the lorry and drive it at the fence. Not the gate, because the gate is reinforced. .. They will set the lorry in gear and hide on the floor of the cab and hope the machine-gun spray misses them. To me that plan is useless. Even if you break the fence and clear the compound you have woken all hell and its jackals. They will come after you with jeeps, you have aroused them. It is a way that has been tried and it is hopeless.'

Mikk Laas with his spindle fingers holding tight to Michael Holly's hand.

'To have any chance the man must go as soon as darkness falls. He must use the whole night of darkness to get clear of the camp. If he goes in summer then he has a short night. If he goes in winter he has a long night, but the snow track also. That is the choice. There is another thing, Holly.

Should you leave the camp, should you get a kilometre clear, ten kilometres, a hundred kilometres, what have you achieved then? Where has that taken you?'

The last night, the last night of fifteen for Michael Holly in the SHIzo cell. He wondered whether he would ever again see the old Estonian.

'You would go for the wire, Mikk Laas?'

'If a man is careless for his life… yes, I would go for the wire.' in the early evening?'

'Just before six in winter, before the guard change.'

'Wire-cutters?'

'You would need an accomplice. There are some zeks who would have the power to get cutters from a guard…

You would need a "baron".'

'And outside the wire?'

'You should not ask me. In thirty years I have not been outside the wire or the transport convoy.' it is better with an accomplice?'

'You cannot do without a friend. You are blind outside the fence.'

'Mikk, Mikk Laas… you were a partisan…?' Holly's head was buried in his hands, and his fingers were white as they pressed down on his skull.

'I was a partisan, or a terrorist, or a freedom-fighter… '

'You hit German barracks, Soviet convoys?'

'And we ran and we hid… sometimes we attacked, not often.. . I am not proud, Michael Holly, I do not have to pretend. Mostly we ran and we hid.'

'When you attacked what followed your action?'

'Reprisals.' Mikk Laas grated the word in hatred, spat it from his tongue.

'When you attacked you knew that reprisals would follow?'

'We knew.'

'They shot people in reprisal because of what you had done?'

'Some they shot, some they transported.'

'You knew what would happen? Each time you planned an attack you knew what would happen?'

'We knew. Whether it was the Nazi or the Soviet column that we hit, the result would be the same.'

'And when you knew that, how then could you justify your attack?'

'Why do you ask?' There was a fear in Mikk Laas's voice.

'How could you justify your attack?' Holly hissed the question.

'We agonized… '

'How did you justify it?'

Mikk Laas looked around him as if for escape, but there was none, and the breath from the young Englishman played across his old cheeks, and his wrists were caught hard. He hesitated, then the answer flowed in the torrent of a cleaned drain.

'We thought we were right. We believed we were the guardians of something that was honour and courage. We told ourselves that even reprisal killings and transportation could not justify our inaction. It was an evil thing that we fought. That is not an easy word to use – "evil" – but we felt from the depths of our hearts that if a man is confronted by evil then he must fight against it. We thought this was the only way, that without this there could be no freedom, not ever. We decided that some had to die, some who had not chosen our course, in order that one day there might be a freedom.'

'And now, what do you think now?'

Mikk Laas sighed, and his body seemed to shrivel.

'I think now that those men and women who were shot in reprisal for an action of mine died for nothing.'

'You're wrong.'

'I am not young. I have been here thirty years… '

Holly shook him to silence. Holly's fists were buried in Mikk Laas's tunic. With all his strength he shook an old man's words from his lips.

'When you were a fighter you were right, now that you are old you are wrong!'

Like a wounded rat Mikk Laas scuffled his way to the corner of the cell. His voice was a high whine. 'When I was young I knew certainty. I know that certainty no longer.'

They slept separately that night, using the full width of the SHIzo cell. The gap of concrete flooring was not bridged and both were cold in their shallow sleep.

Early in the morning, before the start of the working day, Holly was escorted back to the living zone. He was in time to join the breakfast queue, and then take his place in the ranks for roll-call, and afterwards go back to his bench and lathe in the Factory. Chernayev, Poshekhonov and Feldstein all tried to begin a conversation with Holly, but they were rebuffed. He would speak to no man until the evening.

When it was dark Holly asked Adimov to come from the hut with him. Two huddled figures on the perimeter path.

'Your wife is dying. They will not let you go to her. I will give you the chance to see her before she dies. We will go out of here together. We go out this week.'

When they returned to Hut z, there were those who saw the gleam of tears on Adimov's cheeks.

Chapter 14

In all the years that Adimov had been at Barashevo no man had ever offered him the hand clasp of friendship.

Authority in plenty, friendship in minimum, for the killer of a woman on Moscow's Kutuzovsky Prospekt. From his first days in ZhKh 385/3/1 he had fought to maintain that authority. Knife-fights, beatings, humiliations all played their part in winning for him a pedestal position that left him respected yet friendless.

In the Kitchen Adimov would never be the man who went short. In the Factory Adimov would never be the man who operated the dangerous lathe. In Hut z Adimov would never be the man who must hide and guard his possessions. Like a new stag that disputes the territory of an old antlered stud he had overthrown the former 'baron' of the hut. They still reminded him of the fight, those who wished to settle close at his side in the evenings and breathe the words they thought he wished to hear. They reminded him of the circling combat in the aisle between the lines of bunk beds when he had wrested supremacy from their former master.