God, he was tired. Shouldn't have been tired. Not at the start. He felt the lights all around him, the lights that stood back from the far fence, suspended from poles. And this was the most naked place, the most dangerous. This was where the guard-towers had been sited to provide maximum vision. The low wooden fence was beside him, peeping over the snow that had been taken from the perimeter path. The low wooden fence that acted as a marker for the killing zone. Have to get past the fence, have to get into the wire.
When is the best time? No time is best, every time is awful
… Shift yourself, Holly, shift yourself, or turn round and head back for that stinking bloody hut.
He looked up once, directly up towards the tower. He saw the falling snow flakes lively in the beam of the searchlight. He saw no movement. For a moment he wondered about the visibility of the guard on the next corner's watch-tower. Dead, weren't they, if that guard looked, if that guard was not huddled too at the back of his platform. He saw the barrel of the machine-gun, depressed so that the snow flakes could not penetrate its muzzle: The black eye of the barrel with a crest of snow lying on its foresight, the eye that laughed at him. Shift yourself.
He rose halfway to his full height. He stepped over the low wooden fence.
Into the killing zone.
His feet plunged down into the virgin snow, where no boots had trod that winter. Gentle, giving snow. He lurched three, four, five steps towards the first wire fence. There was a howl from the wind. God, bless you for the wind.
He felt Adimov's hand clasping at his sheet and the tail of his tunic. He had told the bugger to stay close, close he was, close as a bloody ball and chain. He was beside a post from which the wire was stretched. Old, rusty wire with ochre sharp barbs. He turned towards Adimov, and the man had remembered. Adimov had released his hold on Holly's back and now leaned away from him and crudely swept with his gloves the snow back over the chasms that their boots had left. God bless the snow, let it fall in the gouged holes and smooth away the sharp lines of recent movement. Holly fumbled in his pocket for the wire-cutters. Not much more than heavy pliers, the best that could be provided, and they were Adimov's ticket… Adimov alone could have provided him with the cutters… Everyone tries to go out in the short nights of summer. Only a fool, only Michael Holly, would try to go out in deep winter. That's your bed, Holly, lie on the bastard. He sank to his knees, grasped the cutters in both fists, cursed the impediment of the gloves. Adimov rearranged the sheet across Holly's back. Holly shivered.
No time is best… every time is awful.
Close to them, close enough for them to feel the jarring impact, were the sounds of stamping feet on the boards above. The bastard who was in the watch-tower, belting his feet on the platform, trying to cudgel some warmth into his toes. Come down here, bastard, come and feel the cold when the snow is wet through your trousers. The guard coughed, hoarse and raking, then a choking sound. God, and the bastard's crying, crying up there because it's cold, because the wind is hooked to his body. Crying for his home, crying for his mother. Keep warm, bastard, keep warm against the back of the platform.
Holly clamped the cutters on the first strand of wire.
Stretched, taut wire that had been applied in patterns of six-inch squares. No wire to spare for coils. That would have finished them, if the wire had been coiled. Cut low, cut close to the snow line. Holly froze. The wire snapped. The first strand was broken. He felt the slackness, behind him was the hiss of Adimov's breathing. Holly's hand groped for the next strand. He would cut out a box, a square box that had the width of a man's shoulders. There would be a tumbler alarm wire above the line where he cut, set to explode a siren if a man bucked the fence and climbed. He was below it, he was safe from it. About the only bloody thing he was safe from.
Holly made the hole. As he crawled through, Adimov's hands protected the material of the sheet from the wire's barbs.
Holly first, Adimov following. They had crossed the killing zone, they had broken through the first wire fence.
Remember what Mikk Laas had said… they're thorough, these pigs, good and thorough. In front of them was the high wire fence, and then the high wooden fence. Above them was the watch-tower where a young guard trembled with cold, where a machine-gun rested on its mounting. He closed his eyes, tried to flourish some deep strength from far inside himself.
He reached forward to feel the first strand that he would cut of the high wire fence.
A deadly, lifeless audience.
A humourless, witless speech.
She spoke against a wall of noise offered by scraping feet, moving chairs, hacking coughs. Yuri Rudakov did not always attend his wife's monthly Political Lecture, sometimes said to himself that it was good for her to shoulder a burden alone. She had privileges enough, it did her no damage to stand on her own feet. He was with her tonight because she had bitched so loud in the privacy of her own kitchen about the dinner invitation to Commandant Kypov.
If she had spoken well, that would have given him pleasure, but she had hidden her pretty face behind her spectacles, buried herself in her script and read with a droning mono-tony. .. For many of the countries of the emerging Third World, the Soviet Union is the only friend to whom they can turn for genuine help and guidance. From the West all they will find is the desire to reimpose the chains of servility that were the way of life under the old imperialistic rule. The countries of the West have never accepted the de-slavement of the peoples whom they regard as inferior and of value only if they can be exploited. But the Soviet Union offers true friendship. I would like to tell you of some of the agricultural development programmes that have been originated in Ethiopia, just one country that has rejected and expelled the yoke of American cold-war politics..
Rudakov winced, wondered from where she had rifled the text. Pravda? Izvestia? And the eyes of the pigs were on her. Almost dribbling, those that sat at the front. Not watching her face, not listening to her words. Staring at her knees and the skirt was too short. Prising open her thighs, they'd be, the filth and the scum that sat in front of her.
Elena should not have worn that skirt, not in the Kitchen hall. Then he thought of the Orderly who would bring Michael Holly. They would start early, straight after roll-call. He'd have the coffee again… That made him smile…
He would speak to Elena about her skirt. Not tonight, not so that he provoked a row with the Commandant coming to dinner, not with the precious excitement of the morning beckoning. But he would find a time to speak to her about the length of skirt she wore in front of the scum.
Holly had taken between his fingers the last strand of wire that he must cut to fashion the hole in the high wire fence.
Behind him Adimov sighed in impatience. What did the bugger expect. He wasn't snipping bloody roses. Bloody life and death wasn't it? And each time that the cutters bit down on the wire and separated it, then there had been the crack of the parting and they had lain still for a moment, covering their breath, not able to believe that the sounds would not be heard. They were almost underneath the watch-tower now. The bastard would have to forsake his shelter, he'd have to lean through the open window to see them, he'd have to peer down at the base of the wood stilts if he were to notice the twin crouched figures. For Christ's sake, Holly