Archangel (3 page)

. . It's not that it's anyone's fault, Mr Holly, you mustn't think that. It's just terribly bad luck, it's the worst luck I've heard of since I've been here, that's eight years. It was all set up — well, you know that. People had worked very hard on this matter, you really have to believe that.. .

Well, we can't deliver. That's what it's all about now. A swap is a swap, one man to be exchanged for another. It was you and this fellow, and we can't deliver. . . I'm dreadfully sorry, Mr Holly, it's the most extraordinary thing but the chap's dead, snuffed it. He had the best medical treatment —well, you'll not be interested in that.. .'

The bolt shifted. Holly strained with his fingers to twist the coin under the lip of the bolt. The bolt had moved a millimetre, perhaps two.

'. . . But I can assure you that people back in London were really most upset at this development . . . I'm afraid the Soviets are going to take rather a hard line with you now, Mr Holly. There's no point in my not being frank .. . The Foreign Ministry informs us now that, since your parents were both born Soviet citizens, under Soviet law you are a Soviet citizen also. I know, Mr Holly . . . you were born in the United Kingdom, you were brought up there, you were in possession of a valid British passport when you travelled to Moscow. The Soviets are going to disregard all that.

We've had a hell of a job getting this degree of consular access. I want you to know that. We said they couldn't have the corpse if we didn't get it - that's by the by - but it's understood by both sides that this is the last of such meetings. You're being transferred to the Correctional Labour Colonies, but you won't be classified as a foreigner, you won't be in the foreigners' camp. They're going to take you beyond our reach . .. Mr Holly, you've always proc-laimed your innocence of the charges and accusations made against you. From our side, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have been very firm too. You are innocent as far as Her Majesty's Government is concerned. We're not wavering from that position. You understand that, Mr Holly? We deny absolutely that you were involved in any nonsensical espionage adventure. It's very important that we continue to take that line, you can see that, I'm sure. Mr Holly, the British government knows that you have supported your parents most generously during their retirement. Your parents will not be abandoned by us, Mr Holly, just as we will not abandon the stance that you were completely innocent of trumped-up charges. You do understand me, Mr Holly . . . ?'

The bolt rose a centimetre.

There was a dribble of sweat at Holly's forehead. Too much space now for the coin to be useful, his finger could slide under the lip. The rough metal edge cut into his finger tip. An eddy of chill air swirled into the carriage, fastening on his knuckles. He heard, louder than before, the dripping clatter of the wheels on the rails beneath him.

' . . . Look, Mr Holly, I've painted the picture black, because that's the only honest thing to do. We'll keep trying, of course, that goes without saying, but in the present climate of relations there's little chance of your situation altering dramatically. You'll be going to the camps and you have to come to terms with that. What I'm saying is - well, you have to learn to live in those places, Mr Holly. Try and survive, try and live with the system. Don't kick it, don't fight it. You can't beat them. I've lived here long enough to know. In a few years things may change, I can't promise that, but they may. And you have my word that you won't be forgotten, not by Whitehall, not by Foreign and Commonwealth. It's going to boil down to keeping your pecker up, looking on the best side of things. You'll do that, won't you, old chap.. . There's not really anything more for me to say. Only I suppose, Good Luck . . . '

That was what the present had on offer to Michael Holly.

A furtive junior diplomat bowing and scraping his way out of the interview section of the Lefortovo, ogling the KGB

man and thanking him for a fifteen-minute access to a prisoner for whom the key was now thrown far away.

Forget the present, Holly, reckon on the future. The future is a plate of steel floor covering that creaks and whistles as it is dragged clear of the supports to which it was bolted down thirty years before.

That's the future, Holly.

A steel plate above the stone chippings and wood sleepers that mark the track from Moscow to the East through Kolomna and Ryazan and Spassk-Ryazanski. The chippings are coated in fine snow, and the cold blusters into the carriage through the draught gap. Behind him the men swore softly, breaking their silence.

The train was not running fast. He could sense the strain of the engine far to the front. There was a dawdle in its pace, and there had been times when it had halted completely, other times when it had slowed to a crawl. The daylight was fleeing from the wilderness that he could not see but whose emptiness beyond the shuttered windows he understood.

Barely audible above the new-found noise of the wheels, he heard the sharp step of feet in the corridor and close to the door of their compartment. There was the flap of the food hatch swinging on its hinge one door away from his. Holly pushed the steel plate down, eased the bolt back into its socket with his toe.

The flap of the door flipped jauntily upward. A sneering face gazed at the caged men. Three brown paper bags were pushed through the hatch to tumble to the carriage floor.

The flap fell back. The two men moved at stoat's speed past Holly. One bag into the hand of the man who was gross and white-skinned, a second for the man with the beard. For a fleeting moment he braced himself for confrontation, sus-pecting that they would want all three bags, but they left him his. They darted back to their bunk and behind him was the sound of ripping paper. Animals .. . poor bastards, pitiful creatures. But then at Vladimir, Holly had been segregated from the mass of the zeks, the convicts who formed the greatest part of the prison population. At Vladimir, Holly had been categorized as a foreigner, he had been on the second floor of the hospital block and allowed special food and privileges. There was nothing special for these men. These were the zeks - they might be killers or thieves or rapists or parasites or hooligans. At Vladimir, Holly had been different from these men.

But not any longer. The stammered words of the Consul flooded back to him. He was to be classified as a Soviet citizen, he was being sent to the Correctional Labour Colonies

. . . Try and live with the system, don't kick it and don't fight it, you can't beat them. You'll hear of me, you bastard, you'll hear of Michael Holly.

He reached out across the floor, snatched the last paper bag. A slice of black bread, supple as cardboard. A mouthful of sugar held in a torn square of newspaper. A fillet of dry smoked herring. It might have been better at Vladimir for Holly than for the zeks herded into the communal cell blocks, but he had learned to eat what food was provided.

He had been taught the hard lesson that you eat where there is food, because food is sustenance and without it there is failure and collapse. Always he felt sick when he ate, but he had been taught and he had learned, and his eyes squinted shut and he swallowed. The last meal for how long?

Holly grimaced.

Not much to eat in the snow beside the tracks, nor in the forests that would skirt the railway line.

They'll come with dogs, Holly, dogs and guns and helicopters. The compartment of the carriage is the small camp, everything out there is the big camp. The big camp is vast, colossal, but even beyond the hugest encampment there is still the wire and the watch-tower and the searchlight. Live with the system, the Consul had said. You'll hear of me, Mister bloody Consul, you'll hear of Michael Holly.

He munched hard at the bread, biting deeply. He turned towards the two men, smiled at them for the first time. They looked away.

It was ridiculous that he should think of lowering himself through the floor of the carriage, that he should contem-plate hanging for moments or minutes beneath the train, that he should consider allowing himself to fall on to the frozen stones between the wheels. Lunatic to reckon that it would work for him.. . but only as stupid as the acceptance of the alternative which was fourteen years in the camps.

His clothes were wrong. They had dressed him in the shoes and suit and overcoat that he had worn when arrested. Not the clothes for cross-country, and he would stand out like a beacon on the fringes of the villages and collectives that he must circle like a fox coming to the dustbins for food.

The distance was impossible. Nine hundred miles to the Turkish border, seven hundred to Finland. Lunatic. He wouldn't get a mile clear of the track. But there would never be another chance, not in fourteen years. Never again a time with such opportunity as from the train that plodded across the flat wilderness lands on the way to the East.

He twisted away from the two men. They whispered to each other.

Back to his knees. Fingers again under the bolt. His body straightened as he took the strain and pulled the bolt upwards. Scratches of bright metal showed in its grime as the stem of the bolt edged clear. His fingers began to scrabble at the coarse edge of the steel plate. Should have worn gloves because they would have protected his hands, but they would have denied him the freedom of movement that he now needed. Even the numbed fingers could feel pain from the sharpness of the metal. And the plate screamed as he wrenched it upwards.

There's no plan, Holly.

The blueprint of the plan is to run. The plan is to fill the lungs and run faster, run further. To run, and anywhere.

There is nowhere to go, no haven, no safety.

Better to run and be caught than the other, because the other is fourteen years of failure.

Anything better than the prison cage. Holly smiled to himself, chuckled softly, because he saw in his mind the face of the man who had brought the food to the hatch, and he thought of the retribution that would fall on the cretin's shoulders. That alone was worth i t . . . No, no, out of your bloody mind, Holly, and he laughed again. Why not, Holly, why not be bloody mad? He heaved again at the floor plate and there was room for his feet to slide down towards the blurred stones between the sleepers.

Are you going, Holly? Night's coming, you can see the black shadow on the stones that rush past and between your feet. The train's idling, not running fast. Are you going, Holly? Your decision, Holly, yours and no one else's. He took a great gulp of the fresh air, enough to sustain him. He looked once more behind him.

The two men sat on the bunk shelf very still, and their saucer eyes never left Holly's face.

Holly pushed his feet beneath the steel plate and the wind caught at his socks and trousers and drove a channelled wind against his legs and he cursed the awkwardness of his overcoat, and his feet kicked in the space like the feet of a hanging man. He searched for a resting place for them and they lashed in a helplessness before finding a firm ledge out in the grey darkness beyond his vision. Holly wriggled, squirmed, manoeuvred his body down into the hole. The stench of the floor was close to him, the smell of vomit and of urine. The floor edge tore at his buttocks, the cloth of his trousers ripped. The rim of the steel plate scraped his upper thighs. Go on, Holly . . . Don't hesitate, don't look down, not at the stones, not at the wheels, not at the rushing sleepers. The train's crawling. Never again the same chance, Holly, not for fourteen bastard years. Don't look down .. .

When you fall, fall limp.

When you hit, clutch your body with your arms, don't bounce with your legs.

Remember the wheels. When you've fallen, stay still, don't move.

Is there a guard box at the end of the train? Hadn't looked, had he? Is there a machine-gunner at the end of the train? But he'll be high, and looking forward, the windows and the carriages will be his watch.

Just remember the wheels.

The train's running slow. It can be done at this speed.

Leave it, and perhaps the gradient'll even out, the speed'l pick up.

Go now or you're lost, Holly.

Go.

The last effort. The last pushing pressure on the steel plate to create the space for his stomach and chest.

Past his eyes exploded the boots and ankles and shins of the big man sweeping towards the doorway of the compartment. And the smaller man was at Holly's back, his knee at Holly's shoulder blades and his fingers deep in the spare folds of Holly's overcoat, and he pulled and wrenched to drag Holly from the hole, and Holly knew his stale breath as he hissed and heaved to prise Holly clear. The big man beat on the door and shouted in the high nasal tone of the Caucasus, slammed his fist into the woodwork, demanded attention. The guard was running in the corridor. The big man turned and came fast towards Holly and caught his throat. Holly could not resist, and they squeezed him out from the hole and when his feet were clear the two men stamped together on the steel plate to flatten it back, and between his knees he could no longer see the whiteness of snow on the stones and the zebra flash of the sleepers. The bolt scraped in the door. The doorway gaped around the guard. The guard stood uncertain. His right hand was half hidden by the cover flap of the holster that he wore at his belt.

'Comrade. . .' wheedled the big man with the pleading of a comic. 'We need water. Please, Comrade, we have had no water . . .'

The guard stiffened in anger. He had been made to run, and they wanted water. 'Piss yourself for water.'

'How long till we can have water, Comrade?'

The guard was young, a conscript. Command did not come easily to him, He dropped his eyes. 'In two hours we are at Pot'ma Transit. There will be water there.'

The door swung shut, the bolt ran home. Beneath Holly the wheels quickened over the rails. He felt weak and drew his knees up to his chest to contain his body warmth. The men had gone back to the bunk shelf and their feet swung, threatening and powerful, beside his face.

Holly looked up at them, into their mouths, into their eyes. The tiredness had stripped his fury.