Wrestling with the problem, the colonel came up with a partial solution. He would order the cooks to issue a double ration of soup and bread tonight. He would also cordon off the group of huts closest to the gate and at two hours after midnight transfer the occupants into the convoy of vehicles which he would keep hidden a half-mile away from the camp.
Less uneasy than before, he called in Major Kalemnev, his second in command, and issued his orders.
In their hut in the woods outside the main camp, the zeks sat in the biggest room morosely drinking Zoya’s lab vodka. Now that the evacuation program had been announced, they saw their future at Panaka extending no more than a few weeks. Indeed, there was already no real function for the men. It was possible they would be leaving any day while the three girls stayed on to continue their duties in the medical hut.
Every hour or so two of the men would take shovels and go outside to clear the snow from the door. Pushing Laryssa gently from him, Bubo stood up and took a shovel. Anton reached out for the other shovel and followed across the hut. The two men dressed in workcoats and caps and with a quick nod from Anton, Bubo hauled open the door. Plunging through the burst of windborn snow, they pulled the door closed after them. They were stumbling in a drift already over two feet high.
Gaining their balance they stood together in the snow. It was just before dusk. Panaka Five was stretched out immediately below them in regular lines of huts on either side of the appel-square, the third side of which was closed by the administration huts and the medical room.
The snow was already settling on Bubo’s thick eyebrows. Leaning on his shovel, he gestured to the camp below. “Perhaps all is not lost, Anton,” he said grimly. “Surely our masters won’t let such a fine camp go to waste. Perhaps we’ll be invited to stay.”
“Perhaps,” Anton said without conviction. “They’ve amnestied the penals for whatever reason. But we wouldn’t be short of ordinary zeks for company.”
They began to shovel the snow from the door. It was good to work outside and the cold still lacked the ferocity of the deep winter temperature. By the time they had finished, the falling snow seemed to be thinning. They could see now right across Panaka, past the main gate until the winding road was lost in the gloom.
They were just about to reenter the hut when Bubo stopped Anton with a hand on his arm. Anton turned, following the movement of Bubo’s head. There, far out beyond the camp, a line of slowly moving lights was visible.
“Headlights,” Bubo said.
One by one the lights disappeared as the road wound among pine and leafless birch.
“There must be fifty of them or more,” Anton said.
“So another contingent leaves tonight.” Bubo dug his shovel into the bank of snow and thrust his gloved hands into his pockets. “When I was at the camp this afternoon nobody was expecting to go tonight.”
Anton shrugged. “It’s getting colder,” he said. “I’m going in.”
For another twenty minutes Bubo stood outside the door watching the winking lights as they disappeared following the bends and undulations of the road. He could not have said why he stayed there as darkness fell. Perhaps because to a zek all information was precious. Or might be. When he finally turned to go back in, the convoy had halted about a half-mile along the road out of sight of the main camp, and had extinguished its lights.
But Bubo was not the only prisoner to have seen the moving lights. Before dark each evening food from the cookhouse in the camp was carried up by cart to the compound where the zeks and their guards lived on the hill. That evening two of Barkut’s “Khans” had been detailed to go with the cart. Marching beside the whip-guard who led the horse, one of them had glanced back over his shoulder and seen distantly what Bubo had first seen. He had said nothing. But by the time they had unloaded the soup boxes at the compound, he knew that a large convoy of carts and vehicles was hiding behind the bend in the road just beyond the camp.
In his office the colonel received the report of the convoy master, a young Captain, with some satisfaction. The trucks and carts were well hidden off the road and ready to be called up at any time.
The colonel even enjoyed the drama of the situation in explaining at length to the young captain that he would be unable to authorize food to be taken out to the drivers. For camp discipline, he said, it was utterly vital that no one should know until the last moment that a convoy was leaving tonight. The captain, slicing his sausage with his sharp knife, agreed.
Outside the office window the appel-square was well lit. All Panaka guards were on special duty, and as hut after hut of penals trudged across to collect their double ration it was comforting to the colonel to see the stocky figures of the guards, bundled in their overcoats, standing in pairs at every hut doorway. From where he sat at his desk he could see, too, the timber structure of the watchtower rising above the main gate. The platform itself was in darkness, but the knowledge that two light machine guns pointed onto the main square was a further comforting element in what, until now, had been an unnerving day.
It was eight o’clock. There were another six hours to go before the loading operation began. The colonel took from his desk a quart of vodka. He felt that he himself certainly, and the captain even possibly, deserved a warming glass while they waited.
There was no similar calm in the huts. Men gathered in groups wolfing their double ration, spitting soup through broken, gapped teeth, even dropping precious crusts of bread in their anxiety to join in the speculation about the convoy. Why was it hiding? How many men could take it? Who were they to be when the lottery was not to be held until Friday?
In the circumstances it is not surprising that they believed that in some way they were about to be tricked. And if that were so, could it mean that the whole idea of a General Amnesty was just a device to keep them quiet while some other barbarity was planned for them?
Months, years, of near starvation and isolation do not make for rational judgments. When the doors were locked for the night and the lights extinguished, lookouts were posted in every hut to keep watch on their neighbors. Men lay on their plank beds still speculating, seething with anger at yet another betrayal by the system.
At just before midnight Major Kalemnev, the colonel’s second in command, entered the office with no more than a perfunctory knock.
The colonel, flushed with vodka, was in the middle of a story to the captain about the young woman doctor at the camp and the passion they had conceived for each other.
He was irritated at Kalemnev’s appearance in the doorway. He never knew exactly what the major had heard about the day in his apartment in Krasibirsk when his wife came home.
“What is it Kalemnev?” He lifted his head peremptorily.
“They’ve heard,” the major said. “They know the convoy’s waiting.”
The colonel rose to his feet in alarm and anger.
“How have they heard?” he roared. “How do you know they’ve heard?”
The young Captain looked respectfully away.
“I keep a number of informers, Colonel. I see it as my duty as second in command to know exactly what’s going on among the penals.”
“Your duty, of course it’s your duty.”
The colonel sat down suddenly, with a furtive glance toward the square outside. “What are they saying? It seems all quiet out there.”
“I think they’re waiting to see what happens to the convoy.”
The colonel poured himself more vodka. He stood up, glass in hand, and began to pace the room. After a few moments while his subordinate watched him, he stopped, tipped the vodka to the back of his throat and hammered the glass down decisively on the desk top.