'The CO doesn't like that?'
'He hates it. He considers himself an honourable man, and feels demeaned if anyone attempts to buy him. We get mafiya types sent here' – looking at me obliquely – 'and some of them are millionaires, of course. The first thing they try to do is get the CO to let them escape, at pretty well any price he cares to name. Wrong again – he's proud of his record in keeping his prisoners captive, since those are his orders.'
'So I've heard.'
'I expect so. His thinking runs right down through the ranks. One or two guards take bribes, probably, but they must know how dangerous it is. The punishment's always the same – a public flogging in the gym here, over that vaulting horse. It's not pretty. So if you thought you could simply buy our tickets to Moscow, I advise you to forget it.'
'I didn't.'
'I'm so glad. Your back would have taken six months to heal.'
The man who'd come in here to train was on the parallel bars now, grunting in time with his swings. In the next three days I'd be working on those myself, would need the vital difference between a muscle that held and a muscle that ripped.
'You work,' Marius was saying, 'for a government agency. But not at a desk, I imagine.'
He was thinking of the Gradov thing again, I suppose. 'I'm pretty active,' I said. 'But look, I want to know, first, whether you're ready to get out of Gulanka. I can look after you through the entire operation, but there'll be risks, some of them unpredictable.' I was watching him now, watching his pale eyes, their depths, needing to see the truth there, whatever he might put into words.
In a moment he said, 'You've got the kind of madness in you that seems to have worked, historically. There are legends, aren't there, that pass on -'
'I'm not sure what you mean by madness.'
'Oh. No offence, but you tell me you can get me out of a place like this, where no one's escaped for twenty years, since the present CO took over. I mean -'
'I see, yes. But my mind is perfectly sound, so I haven't been concentrating on the difficulties, only on the solutions. You'll have to make a mental switch yourself there, in the next three days – that's our count-down period. But for now I need your answer to one question, and it's critical. You tell me you want to destroy Sakkas if I can get you to Moscow, and – as I've said – there are unpredictable risks. So here's the question, and I want you to take your time: exactly how much are you prepared to risk? What's the ultimate?'
I watched his eyes, the way they changed, grew darker, until in a moment or two he felt he was ready.
'Death,' he said, 'if you put it like that.'
I saw Alex again soon after midnight. He came to me at the rendezvous we'd arranged, in the gap between the garbage dumps and the wire on the west side.
'Last one,' he said, and thrust the sacking bundle into my hands.
'Took some getting.'
'I hung around.'
'You're a good friend.'
'It's an honour.'
He watched me in the light of the three-quarter moon, his young face pinched, his eyes bright, waiting for me to say something more, giving me the impression that whatever I said he'd listen to it, and take it to heart. Anything, anything, so that one fine day he could vanquish the monster of all his nightmares, break his pride, shatter his reputation, obliterate his face. Annihilate Gradov, in front of a hut full of men. God only knew what I'd started.
But I suppose it was the boy's readiness to listen to me, whatever I might say, that prompted me to wrap the whole thing up for him, because I wouldn't be seeing him the next day: I would be too busy.
'Listen, we've got to get our sleep.' We were extending the mine in the morning, twenty minutes for breakfast, only half an hour for the midday break. 'But first I want to add a bit to what we've been doing in training.'
'Okay.' The wind was rising a little, and he pulled the collar of his greatcoat tighter.
'Although this doesn't apply only to training. It applies to whatever you want to do in life, whatever you've got to do. It's the ultimate key to success, and it's the only one, so when you've found it, don't lose it.' It was coming out like an avuncular homily, but I couldn't help that. At the core it was sound, and that was what mattered.
The boy's eyes were brighter still as he locked them onto mine in the moonlight. 'Okay,' on a shiver of breath.
'We create our own reality, Alex. You've seen those bumper stickers in Moscow on the back of some of the trucks – Shit happens. And those people are dead right – that's what happens to them, because that's what they expect – they get what they're looking for, what they've created for themselves.'
I waited, hearing the snuffling beyond the wire, watching the coloured glint of eyes across the snow. We could see them on most nights when the weather was clear.
'On the other side of the coin there are the miracles. I'll bring it down to size for you, in terms of training. When you make a strike, any kind of strike, you look first to the physical needs – drive from the ball of the foot, bring the force in through the hips, attend to the bodywork. But there are two final requirements in making the strike a success. The first is psychologicaclass="underline" as you commit yourself to the target, there's just the one thought you've got to hold in your mind, to the exclusion of all others. Get there.'
Alex nodded with little jerks of his head. 'Okay. Get there.'
'Right.' I noticed my voice sounded as if it were coming from a distance now, from well outside the aura, or perhaps it wasn't my voice, but someone else's, because things were going on that didn't really concern Alex, things that would concern me later, tomorrow, when the moon would be full and the choice taken and the bridges burned.
'The final requirement,' I said, 'is drawn from the field of the spiritual. It's not a thought, but a feeling. Be there.'
The wind rose again, fluting among the eaves of the huts, dying away.
'Okay,' Alex said. 'Be there. Okay.'
I don't think he'd really got it; it was a lot to ask of a man his age. But maybe he'd work on it, lying in his bunk in the quiet of the night.
'Right,' I said, and thought of the towering dark where tomorrow night the moon would be floating, of the towering odds against success, which could only be defeated if I could manage, during the torments of the trial by ordeal, not to lose the key.
22: ZERO
By early afternoon a light snow had started, borne by an errant wind from the hills to the east of the camp. By 09:00, with dark down for the past six hours, it had thickened a little, enough to hide the big floodlit gates from the main hutment area.
I watched the snow continuously. Later it would become one of the critical factors involved.
By 11:45 I was standing in the lee of the gymnasium, shielded by the eaves on the west side. I had been there for ten minutes, making detours to cover my tracks in the new snowfall, and to avoid the sentries. The rear of the camp was never patrolled: it was a dead zone, the only foot traffic leading to and away from the gymnasium itself on the south side.