The blinding Kolyma spring began – without a single drop of rain, without any movement of ice on the rivers, without the singing of any bird. Little by little, the sun melted the snow, leaving it only in those crevices where warm rays couldn’t pierce. In the canyons and ravines, the snow lay like silver bullion till the next year.
And the designated day arrived.
There was a knock at the door of the guard hut next to the camp gates where one door led in and the other out of the camp. The guard on duty yawned and glanced at the clock. It was five a.m. ‘Just five,’ he thought.
The guard threw back the latch and admitted the man who had knocked. It was the camp cook, the convict Gorbunov. He’d come for the keys to the food storeroom. The keys were kept in the guardhouse, and Gorbunov came for them three times a day. He returned them later.
The guard on duty was supposed to open the kitchen cupboard, but he knew it was hopeless to try to control the cook, that no locks would help if the cook wanted to steal, so he entrusted the keys to the cook – especially at five in the morning.
The guard had worked more than ten years in Kolyma, had been receiving a double salary for a long time, and had given the keys to the cooks thousands of times.
‘Take ’em,’ he muttered and reached for the ruler to write up the morning report.
Gorbunov walked behind the guard, took the keys from the nail, put them in his pocket, and grabbed the guard from behind by the neck. At that very moment the door opened and the mechanic, Ivashenko, came through the door leading into the camp.
Ivashenko helped Gorbunov strangle the guard and drag his body behind the cabinet. Ivashenko stuck the guard’s revolver into his own pocket. Through the window that faced outward they could see a second guard returning along the path. Hurriedly Ivashenko donned the coat and cap of the dead man, snapped the belt shut, and sat down at the table as if he were the guard. The second guard opened the door and strode into the dark hovel of the guardhouse. He was immediately seized, strangled, and thrown behind the cabinet.
Gorbunov put on the guard’s clothing; the two conspirators now had uniforms and weapons. Everything was proceeding according to Major Pugachov’s schedule. Suddenly the wife of the second guard appeared. She’d come for the keys that her husband had accidentally taken with him.
‘We won’t strangle the woman,’ said Gorbunov, and she was tied, gagged with a towel, and put in the corner.
One of the work gangs returned from work. This had been foreseen. The overseer who entered the guardhouse was immediately disarmed and bound by the two ‘guards’. His rifle was now in the hands of the escapees. From that moment Major Pugachov took command of the operation.
The area before the gates was open to fire from two guard towers. The sentries noticed nothing unusual.
A work gang was formed somewhat earlier than usual, but in the north who can say what is early and what is late? It seemed early, but maybe it was late.
The work gang of ten men moved down the road to the mine, two by two in column. In the front and in the rear, six meters from the column of prisoners as required by the instructions, were two overcoated guards. One of them held a rifle.
From the guard tower the sentry noticed that the group turned from the road on to the path that led past the buildings where all sixty of the guards were quartered.
The sleeping quarters of the guards were located in the far end of the building. Just before the door stood the guard hut of the man on duty, and pyramids of rifles. Drowsing by the window the guard noticed, in a half-sleep, that one of the other guards was leading a gang of prisoners down the path past the windows of the guard quarters.
‘That must be Chernenko,’ the duty officer thought. ‘I must remember to write a report on him.’
The duty officer was grand master of petty squabbles, and he never missed a legitimate opportunity to play a dirty trick on someone.
This was his last thought. The door flew open and three soldiers came running into the barracks. Two rushed to the doors of the sleeping quarters and the third shot the duty officer point-blank. The soldiers were followed by the prisoners, who rushed to the pyramid of weapons; in their hands were rifles and machine-guns. Major Pugachov threw open the door to the sleeping quarters. The soldiers, barefoot and still in their underwear, rushed to the door, but two machine-gun bursts at the ceiling stopped them.
‘Lie down,’ Pugachov ordered, and the soldiers crawled under their cots. The machine-gunners remained on guard beside the door.
The ‘work gang’ changed unhurriedly into military uniform and began gathering up food, weapons, and ammunition.
Pugachov ordered them not to take any food except biscuits and chocolate. In return they took as many weapons and as much ammunition as possible.
The paramedic hung the first-aid bag over his shoulder.
Once again the escapees felt they were soldiers.
Before them was the taiga, but was it any more terrible than the marshes of Stokhod?
They walked out on to the highway, and Pugachov raised his hand to stop a passing truck.
‘Get out!’ He opened the door of the driver’s cab.
‘But I…’
‘Climb out, I tell you.’
The driver got out, and Georgadze, lieutenant of the tank troops, got behind the wheel. Beside him was Pugachov. The escapee soldiers crawled into the back, and the truck sped off.
‘There ought to be a right turn about here.’
‘We’re out of gas!’
Pugachov cursed.
They entered the taiga as if they were diving into water, disappearing immediately in the enormous silent forest. Checking the map, they remained on the cherished path to freedom, pushing their way straight through the amazing local underbrush.
Camp was set up quickly for the night, as if they were used to doing it.
Only Ashot and Malinin couldn’t manage to quiet down.
‘What’s the problem over there?’ asked Pugachov.
‘Ashot keeps trying to prove that Adam was deported from paradise to Ceylon.’
‘Why Ceylon?’
‘That’s what the Muslims say,’ responded Ashot.
‘Are you a Tartar?’
‘Not me, my wife is.’
‘I never heard anything of the sort,’ said Pugachov, smiling.
‘Right, and neither did I,’ Malinin joined in.
‘All right, knock it off. Let’s get some sleep.’
It was cold and Major Pugachov woke up. Soldatov was sitting up, alert, holding the machine-gun on his knees. Pugachov lay on his back and located the North Star, the favorite star of all wanderers. The constellations here were arranged differently than in European Russia; the map of the firmament was slightly shifted, and the Big Dipper had slid down to the horizon. The taiga was cold and stern, and the enormous twisted pines stood far from each other. The forest was filled with the anxious silence familiar to all hunters. This time Pugachov was not the hunter, but a tracked beast, and the forest silence was thrice dangerous.
It was his first night of liberty, the first night after long months and years of torment. Lying on his back, he recalled how everything before him had begun as if it were a detective film. It was as if Pugachov were playing back a film of his twelve comrades so that the lazy everyday course of events flashed by with unbelievable speed. And now they had finished the film and were staring at the inscription, The End. They were free, but this was only the beginning of the struggle, the game, of life…
Major Pugachov remembered the German prisoner-of-war camp from which he had escaped in 1944. The front was nearing the town, and he was working as a truck driver on clean-up details inside the enormous camp. He recalled how he had driven through the single strand of barbed wire at high speed, ripping up the wooden posts that had been hurriedly punched into the ground. He remembered the sentry shots, shouting, the mad, zigzag drive through the town, the abandoned truck, the night road to the front and the meetings with his army, the interrogation, the accusation of espionage, and the sentence – twenty-five years.