by Tig Hague
For the next four days Papi breezed into the room after breakfast with his chessboard and a supply of luxuries like chocolates, tinned fruit and peanuts. It turned out that we shared a birthday and he started calling me ‘mon jumeau’ (‘my twin’). He had an English wife and two young kids, who’d gone back to London after his arrest for drug dealing, and on the last day before I was to be transferred to the atrads he showed me photos of their London house and his family. The house was a brown-brick, terraced two-up two-down with a little walled garden out the front, strikingly similar to the type that Lucy and I had been trying to buy, and the sight of it sent a shock of sadness shooting through me, transporting me for an instant back to my former life.
‘The last time I saw my kids, the younger one was just learning to talk. The next time I see them they’ll be teenagers,’ he said, brushing away a tear. He was trying to make me feel better, but it only made us both sadder.
We sat in silence for a few minutes, staring at the half-empty chessboard. I pretended I was contemplating my next move, but my mind was thousands of miles away. I was back in London, waking up alongside Lucy. It was about seven o’clock UK time. After a while I took one of Papi’s pawns with a knight.
‘Check,’ smiled Papi, immediately diagonally sliding his bishop into line with my king. ‘Get out of that one! All I can say, my friend, is I hope you play the Zone 22 game better than you play chess, ’cos otherwise you’re going to be cooling your ass in here for longer than you think. Getting out of this hole is the hardest game you’ll ever play. Want me to explain the rules?’
‘Tell me everything you know.’
17
‘I’ll give you the bad news first. There are guys in here who should’ve been released months, even years ago; the system’s fucked and there’s a huge backlog. And do you think they give a shit? Do they fuck. They couldn’t care if you died in here an old man. You’re just scum in a black uniform, a head to be counted, an arse to be kicked. They’re not going to help you out of here, the system alone’s not going to get you out of here… but, and it’s a big “but”, you can get yourself out of here. You just have to learn the game and then play it with skill, cunning and ruthlessness. Half the Zone’s playing it – everyone except the long-termers – so you’ve got competition. But if you’ve got money, you’ve got power. You can be a frontrunner. You’ve got as good a chance as anyone. This is what you’ve got to do.’
We had stopped playing chess and were now leaning towards each other over the board. The smile had gone from his baby face, and he was looking at me intently.
‘The first thing you need to do is attach yourself to a “cop”, one of the top officials in the Zone sitting a few yards away from us along the corridor,’ he said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. ‘For a price, they can exert influence over the progress of your parole, or dig you out of trouble if a guard starts giving you a hard time and slaps you with an extra six months for whatever minor offence you’ve committed – like standing in the wrong place, or not taking your hat off and standing up fast enough when he enters the room.’
He was growing ever more passionate as he spoke, using his hands to stress his points: ‘Most of these guards are as bored and frustrated and miserable and poor as we are, and when you finally get out of here, just remember these sad bastards will still be here. They’re in for life. The prison’s all they’ve got, and they like to entertain themselves and feel a bit bigger about themselves by playing God with our lives. They don’t want you to get out of here. They resent the fact you’ll be free and they’ll still be stuck here in this shithole. Besides, you’re a free lunch to them, an endless supply of Western cigarettes and coffee and chocolate – stuff they could never afford on their wages. So they’re going to try and keep you here as long as possible. It’s Zone 22’s catch 22 – the more you give them to secure your route out of here, the more they’re going to want to keep you in.’
He paused and took a slug of water from his metal mug.
‘This is where the embassy comes in. Most of the guys in here never get visited by their embassy, or even acknowledged, but the Brits have got a good embassy. The Western embassies look after their people, and they can do more for you than just bring or send down food parcels and check on your human rights – but it’s up to you to motivate them. When the time comes to make your move, you’ve got to get them to jack up the pressure on the authorities from the outside. You’ve both got to push at the same time; you showering your cop, your governor, with goods, while your embassy starts waving the big stick at them back in Moscow.’
‘What kind of goods?’
‘Small. Small but expensive. Stuff you can conceal in your clothes. The whole Zone’s taking bribes or handing them out, but everyone has to pretend it’s not going on. It’s one of the golden rules of the game. So the shopping list you give your family to give to your embassy should include exquisite Western items such as pens, watches, chocolate, cigars, real coffee, jewellery – anything a poor backwater Russian would consider luxurious. The guards and lesser officials can be persuaded to grant small favours – like using the library – with cheaper bribes such as cigarettes, a few slices of salami, or a couple of teaspoons of instant coffee wrapped up in a piece of paper. Good-quality cigarettes are your chief currency in here.’
‘So which governor should I target?’ I asked eagerly, scribbling abbreviated notes in the back of my diary as Papi talked.
‘There’s no point,’ Papi continued, ‘in trying to win over the head governor because he has little to do with the day-to-day running of the prison and you rarely see him. Besides, I’ve already seen three governors come and go in five years, and there’s no point concentrating all your efforts on a man who’s going to move on before your parole date comes up. You want to choose one of the four others, who are all permanent fixtures in the Zone. They live in the little wooden houses just beyond the walls of the camp. They grew up here, and they’ll die here. They’re not going anywhere. Each has their own merits and weak points and it boils down to a question of what you want most: an easier life in the Zone, or the quickest possible escape out of it…’
‘The latter, any day.’
‘The second-in-command is a bastard known as Regime. It’s a name he gave himself in order to impress his authoritarian manner on the prisoners. He’s good for clearing problems inside the camp, such as ensuring that a “black mark” – the extra six months they hit you with – is erased from the records. But your best bet for securing your release from the Zone is the third-in-command, a man known as Zanpolit. He’s in charge of the legal affairs of the prisoners and has good contacts and influence at the region’s main courthouse. A third option is the FSB officer, known as the “koom”, who, like Regime, is useful if you want an easier life in the Zone. Zone 22 is a Black Zone run by the FSB, and part of the way they assure control of the prison is through a “grass” or spy network that involves prisoners reporting back to the koom on any misbehaviour or skulduggery going on in the atrads. The koom runs the network, but most of his spies are the poorest guys in the Zone. They can’t afford goods as bribes, so they use information instead.
‘The fourth alternative is the prison doctor, a plump, middle-aged woman with peroxide blonde hair who puts her make-up on with a bucket and spade. Most of the prison’s in love with Olga Dimitrova because…’ And Papi broke out in a huge grin. ‘She’s got a lovely big bum – a good cushion for pushin’!! She also hands out sick notes for the right price.’
‘Why don’t I try and get friendly with all of them?’
‘No, don’t go that route,’ he said with emphasis. ‘There’s no point trying to work all four of them because you’d spread yourself too thin and waste valuable resources. There’s a physical limit to how much stuff you can store in here, and you need half that for your own food supplies. Also, they like to feel special, so concentrate all your efforts over the coming months on one individual; and if it’s the quickest route out of h
ere you want, there’s only one choice. It has to be Zanpolit. He’s the guy who goes to court every month with a list of guys up for parole. The only way your name’s going to get on that list once your parole date has passed is if Zanpolit writes it on. He’s your man. You may have come across him already. He’s the young guy who thinks he’s a bit of a smooth operator.’
I knew the one he meant because I’d seen him a few times sweeping past the quarantine door to his office. He was tall and slim, maybe early thirties, and he had his hair slicked back over his head with oil or gel – an image which, by Mordovian standards, was bordering on radically cool. With his thigh-length leather coat, he was a bit of a natty geezer who stood out from the others.
‘So how do I work him?’
‘OK. First of all, every time you want to come to the office, you have to bribe the guard on duty with a couple of smokes or a teaspoon of coffee. The first time you visit Zanpolit, give him a generous gift, maybe three packets of Western cigarettes and a jar of coffee. That way, he’ll know you’d like to recruit his services. Then, for the first six months, find an excuse to go see him every two or three weeks, each time bringing him a gift, such as a bar of chocolate for his wife, or another packet of cigs. If you have an important request, like making sure a parole document is lodged with the court – often they sit in trays or filing cabinets for weeks or months – take him something fancy like a decent lighter or a good pen.
‘There’s no point plying him with goods for the first half of your sentence because you’re not going to get out early and all you’re doing is raising the bar of his expectations. Just slowly build up a solid relationship with him. A gift here, a gift there, and then, when winter comes, a few months before your parole date, start making your moves on him. Increase the visits, as well as the quality or quantity of your gifts. Around then you need to start stockpiling goods so that you have enough to start showering him with stuff two, even three times a week, piling up the moral pressure on him to make sure your parole application is somewhere near the top of the list that will be submitted to the local judge that month.’
Parole for me meant a half-sentence, because the trial judge had handed me the more favourable obshi regime and strictly, my release date was 15 February 2005, roughly fifteen months from the day of my arrival in the Zone. But more realistically, given the delays and congestion in the system, and assuming I avoided black marks, I was looking at June or July.
‘You got to be ruthless and push your way to the front of the queue, whatever that takes, and fuck whoever you have to push out of the way to get there,’ Papi said. ‘It’s everyone for themselves in here. Don’t listen to anyone’s sob stories. There are guys in here without a penny to their names and no support on the outside, who are months and years beyond their parole date. They’re constantly forced to the back of the queue by the richer prisoners like you, who are able to bribe their way to the front. But you can’t worry about them. It’s just their tough shit. If you want to be a good Christian about it and wait your turn, well, that’s your business. But if you want to get home within a few months of your parole date, you’ve got to use your elbows.’
All week I’d been convinced that, from the moment I’d stepped off the train and trudged under the sniper towers into the Zone, I had surrendered all control over my own fate. I just had to sit and wait, keep my head down and be a good boy, avoid trouble and pray for a prompt release. I had gone into passive mode. Lucy, my family and the British Embassy would carry on trying to exert some influence on the outside to ensure my freedom – in more optimistic moments, I even hoped they might get me out a little earlier – but Papi showed me that I could have a sense of purpose in Zone 22, an ongoing challenge to occupy me and focus my mind. The thrilling realization dawned on me that I still had some power over my own destiny. When he was gone, I clenched both my fists and punched the air.
18
It was late afternoon, already pitch black, an hour or so before the prisoners came back from the factory, and the Zone was very quiet when Alan and Ahmed came to move me out of quarantine into my living quarters – the atrads. Ahmed was a tall wiry Moroccan with cropped dark hair and a scar running on the diagonal over his nose, from one side of his face to the other. Papi had warned me not to get on the wrong side of him because the threat of solitary confinement or a sentence extension never stopped him from fighting someone who crossed him. An aggressive drunk, serving ten years for stabbing someone to death in a Moscow knife fight, Ahmed had been put in charge of Atrad 1, because he was a reliable informer and the authorities knew that the other prisoners – or most of them at least – were scared of him. He wasn’t strictly a smatriashi because the prison was not a Red Zone; he was more a kind of head prefect, a union rep or an office manager who supervised the day-to-day running of the atrad and the settling of minor disputes between inmates. That was his job in the Zone, and he had earned it after five years’ hard graft in the factory.
It was probably just the scar, but I felt the man’s simmering menace as we shook hands and looked into each other’s eyes. Even his toothy smile failed to wipe away the sense of danger that hung on him like a cloak.
‘An Englishman in Zone 22, eh? We are honoured,’ he said, offering me his hand.
The two of them helped carry my bags across the concourse, and after we’d been buzzed through the gate by the guard in the observation window behind us, they led me across the small dirt exercise yard and up three wooden steps into a small hall area. Atrads 1 and 2 each housed roughly 120 prisoners, while Atrad 3, in exactly the same amount of space, had double that number.
At least fifty pairs of threadbare slippers and trainers were stacked on top of each other along the walls inside the door, and all three of us removed our outdoor shoes and changed into our ‘indoor’ ones. Alan put his finger to his lips and whispered: ‘The night shift prisoners and the sick guys are still asleep in bed.’ Inside the room to the left were rows of cupboards and lockers. ‘For your food and cigarettes,’ Alan whispered, as we turned right into a dormitory and a maze of double bunks, stacked head to toe along the walls and in columns across the middle, with no more than a foot between each one. It was like the lower deck of an old ship of the line, only with wooden bunks instead of hammocks. All the beds were made with immaculate precision, with the sheet turned down over the rough grey blanket and a towel folded neatly below the pillow, just as Baska had shown me. Around ten of the beds were occupied as we tiptoed over the creaking floorboards, and the guys were sleeping in woolly hats and jackets. There was a window in each wall, but the one in the front was twice as big as the others, presumably so that the guards could see straight in from the observation area across the concourse. There was no decor to speak of; just bunk after bunk, wooden walls and wooden floors painted pale grey-blue. It was impossible to walk between bunks without brushing against them.
To the right, immediately on coming out of the dormitory, was the toilet area, which consisted of three sinks and two holes in the ground separated by a low wooden screen. An Afghan guy, or Uzbek maybe, was finishing a shit. His trousers were around his ankles as he crouched over the hole while washing his hand under the tap at the same time.
Next door was the kitchen area, which consisted of a small table with a bench on either side. And that was it, except for a concrete ledge on the right where a heating element was coiled up next to a socket. Alan led me along the corridor, which had two hot water pipes running across the ceiling over its entire length. A couple of towels were hanging from them, dripping on to the floor. We turned right into a second dormitory, which looked exactly the same as the other one except that it was marginally smaller and felt even more cramped. Another dozen or so guys were sound asleep, some of them snoring, and we trod as quietly as we could on the creaking, splintered floorboards. Squeezing between two rows, Alan showed me to my bunk, which was the third to the right of the door against the wall, and, in silence, we laid the sheets Mum had brought over from home,
separating the filthy mattress from the rough horsehair blanket.
To the right of the dormitory as we walked out was a room that looked out towards the perimeter fence and the main gates. A small black and white television sat in the corner on a low table, and there were a dozen plastic chairs stacked up next to it. Heading back down the corridor, there was a coatroom next to the TV room, with black jackets hung on pegs above a few pairs of black shoes. Along from that, before the hall area by the door, there was an admin office where Ahmed was sitting at a table, still wrapped up in his thick coat and woolly hat, cradling a steaming mug.
‘Let me help you,’ he said, getting to his feet and taking my suitcase from me. ‘Thanks, Alan, I’ll look after Tig now.’ Ahmed led me to the storage cupboards near the entrance and eagerly helped me unload my provisions into one of two large food lockers. As we stacked the noodles, biscuits, cigarettes and coffee on to the shelves, it was obvious, looking at the others’ provisions, that I had a hell of a lot more than most people in there, and a wave of embarrassment washed over me. ‘We can share our food if you like,’ he said, the scar zig-zagging across his face as he grinned. I remembered Papi’s warning that everyone in the atrad would try to befriend me when I arrived and that it was going to be difficult for me to work out who I could trust as a friend and confidant, and who just wanted to get their nose into my food bags. Papi’s advice was that as I would probably always have enough cigarettes and basic foods of my own and wouldn’t need handouts from my smelnik, I should choose someone who spoke good English, whose company I enjoyed and who didn’t cause trouble. Ahmed spoke good English, but that’s about as far as it went. I didn’t want to cook and share my food with a man who scared me shitless. I mumbled a reply, trying to avoid the subject.