“No point now in delay,” he said. “Kalemnev, assemble all guards, cordon off huts 60 through 70 as we originally planned. Place a two-man guard on the door of each hut. If there are disturbances inside, the guards are to tell them that the evacuation schedule has been speeded up, but that any man attempting to break out of the hut will be immediately shot.” He turned to the young captain. “Bring the convoy up to the main gate right away.”
The two officers departed. The colonel poured another glass of vodka and stood at the window looking across at the darkened huts.
For half an hour he stood there watching the guards take their positions and the dark line of soldiers cordoning off the huts closest to the main gate. There was no need to panic. His organization would maintain discipline.
At midnight the trucks arrived outside the gates. The doors of huts 60 through 70 were opened and men were thrust forward through the open gate and pushed and kicked onto the trucks. From some of the other huts came shouts of fury. Lights were switched on and off. But the discipline of the guns and dogs at the hut doors held.
One after another at the main gate the trucks were crammed with men before driving forward to take their place on the road leading back to Krasibirsk.
Then, in the outer office, the telephone rang. At this time of night it had to be important. The colonel ran into the other room and snatched the receiver from the sergeant-clerk. The general’s voice was on the line.
“My dear fellow,” the general said, “has that convoy left yet?”
“No, General. We’re just loading now.”
“Then don’t.”
“Don’t?” The colonel’s mouth dropped open.
“Don’t load your men. Keep the vehicles there tonight. I’ll give you clearance to resume loading tomorrow.”
“General, this is a delicate operation. Discipline must be maintained…”
“Certainly it must be maintained, Colonel. That’s exactly why I’m telephoning you, don’t you see?”
“No, General.”
“My dear man, we can’t receive your penals here in Krasibirsk.”
“Why not?” the colonel said angrily.
“Because the KGB border guards who were to escort them west have not yet arrived.”
“But they were due today.”
“You’ve been too long out in the woods,” the general snapped. “The train that arrives on time is a rarity. Keep those men at Panaka until further orders.”
The line was dead in the colonel’s hand. He turned on the sergeant-clerk. “Get me Major Kalemnev,” he shouted. “Get him over to this office immediately.”
He stumbled back into his own room. There was an inch of vodka in the bottle. He poured it into his empty glass and drank it down.
On the rise beyond the camp Anton, Bubo and the three girls stood outside their hut watching the loading of the penals.
It had stopped snowing and the night was now clear and cold. The little group stood together, each with a blanket draped round the shoulders.
Below them in the bright lights of the appel-square they saw Major Kalemnev running toward the administration building.
Anton pulled Zoya closer to him with an arm round her waist. She looked up at him. “We must never stop hoping,” she said. “So far, just think how lucky we’ve been, you and me.”
Minutes later the major reappeared, running now even faster, he burst through the cordon of guards and began to shout orders to the officer in charge of the convoy. They were too far away to hear the words, but they saw the line of loading penals falter in its movement toward the trucks, curl back on itself like a snake, then suddenly dissolve into a chaos of men running toward trucks and carts, fighting to get a place aboard.
Down on the square Major Kalemnev found himself overwhelmed by struggling, snarling prisoners. He was kicked to the ground and trampled on as they rushed to the empty trucks.
From the administration building the colonel came running across the square, bareheaded, a pistol in his hand.
He screamed orders for the cordon guard to face the main gates.
Behind him the huts erupted into uproar. He could hear shutters being smashed, men shouting and the sinister chanting of the Khans.
The cordon dissolved in a struggling mass of penals and guards. Rifle shots sounded, thin and tinny in the clear air. The locked doors of one of the huts burst open and men poured out on the square.
Guards retreating toward the administration hut fired a magazine of bullets into the running men. Dogs circled and barked and snapped in panic.
Windows shattered and, monkey-like, men clambered out. Every minute saw another 500 men running wildly onto the square.
From the watchtower the guards fired a long burst and penals tumbled and dropped and somersaulted across the snow-covered tarmac. A second and third burst drove men back into the shelter of the huts, but directly below the watchtower the confusion of struggling guards and penals made it impossible to fire into the mêlée.
A heavy truck charged forward bumping over the bodies of fallen men. Skidding across the blood and snow, the penal driver aimed the hood at the wooden supports of the watch-tower. As the truck crashed among them, the tower jerked back and then slowly forward, like a falling birchtree, into the mass of fighting men.
Flames sprang from the administration hut. Clerks lay among the burning filing boxes with their throats cut.
On the hill, Bubo was at the guard-post of the zeks’ compound. Four terrified guards faced him with their rifles.
“We’re zeks,” he was shouting, “not penals. They’ll be up here next. Let’s leave now, Brothers. Let’s go into the woods. For God’s sake, you can see what’s happening down there!”
The young soldiers’ rifles wavered.
“Save your lives, Comrades. And ours.”
Shots and screams and chants and triumphant shouts rose from the camp.
“It’s your lives, too, Brothers,” Bubo said urgently.
On the square lights shattered one by one. Flames roared from timber huts and men swirled around shouting and singing. Underfoot were trampled bodies of the guards, their throats gaping, their boots ripped off them. The colonel’s cadaver, hanging by the neck from a timber of the collapsed watchtower, was punched and knifed and hacked at until the uniform was in shreds and the pool of blood beneath his stockinged feet melted the snow in a great dark circle below the swinging corpse.
For the penals of Panaka Five, it was their night of revenge.
As dawn broke the square was empty except for the bodies of the guards and their dogs in the churned and blood-stained snow. A great fire burned by the main gate and three, perhaps four or five hundred men slept around it, wrapped in blankets and the topcoats of the murdered guards. In those huts which were still intact, thousands of other penals dozed, their backs against the wall. Sleep was the only luxury they had been accustomed to in quantity. Few had the stamina to see the night out.
Among those few were Barkut Khan and his men. They visited each hut commandeering weapons, issuing orders for the morrow. As the penals stumbled, red-eyed, back onto the square, the Khans were in command. Their orders were for the whole camp to march on Krasibirsk. Those trucks and horse-carts which had not escaped the night before would be loaded with the contents of the clothing, food and ammunition store. Any man who disobeyed Barkut’s order would have his throat cut.
In the zeks’ hut above the camp they heard them coming, chanting, shouting, bellowing as they scrambled up the hill.