Archangel

by Gerald Seymour

  God, he was tired. Shouldn't have been tired. Not at the start. He felt the lights all around him, the lights that stood back from the far fence, suspended from poles. And this was the most naked place, the most dangerous. This was where the guard-towers had been sited to provide maximum vision. The low wooden fence was beside him, peeping over the snow that had been taken from the perimeter path. The low wooden fence that acted as a marker for the killing zone. Have to get past the fence, have to get into the wire.

  When is the best time? No time is best, every time is awful

  . . . Shift yourself, Holly, shift yourself, or turn round and head back for that stinking bloody hut.

  He looked up once, directly up towards the tower. He saw the falling snow flakes lively in the beam of the searchlight. He saw no movement. For a moment he wondered about the visibility of the guard on the next corner's watch-tower. Dead, weren't they, if that guard looked, if that guard was not huddled too at the back of his platform. He saw the barrel of the machine-gun, depressed so that the snow flakes could not penetrate its muzzle: The black eye of the barrel with a crest of snow lying on its foresight, the eye that laughed at him. Shift yourself.

  He rose halfway to his full height. He stepped over the low wooden fence.

  Into the killing zone.

  His feet plunged down into the virgin snow, where no boots had trod that winter. Gentle, giving snow. He lurched three, four, five steps towards the first wire fence. There was a howl from the wind. God, bless you for the wind.

  He felt Adimov's hand clasping at his sheet and the tail of his tunic. He had told the bugger to stay close, close he was, close as a bloody ball and chain. He was beside a post from which the wire was stretched. Old, rusty wire with ochre sharp barbs. He turned towards Adimov, and the man had remembered. Adimov had released his hold on Holly's back and now leaned away from him and crudely swept with his gloves the snow back over the chasms that their boots had left. God bless the snow, let it fall in the gouged holes and smooth away the sharp lines of recent movement. Holly fumbled in his pocket for the wire-cutters. Not much more than heavy pliers, the best that could be provided, and they were Adimov's ticket .. . Adimov alone could have provided him with the cutters. .. Everyone tries to go out in the short nights of summer. Only a fool, only Michael Holly, would try to go out in deep winter. That's your bed, Holly, lie on the bastard. He sank to his knees, grasped the cutters in both fists, cursed the impediment of the gloves. Adimov rearranged the sheet across Holly's back. Holly shivered.

  No time is best.. . every time is awful.

  Close to them, close enough for them to feel the jarring impact, were the sounds of stamping feet on the boards above. The bastard who was in the watch-tower, belting his feet on the platform, trying to cudgel some warmth into his toes. Come down here, bastard, come and feel the cold when the snow is wet through your trousers. The guard coughed, hoarse and raking, then a choking sound. God, and the bastard's crying, crying up there because it's cold, because the wind is hooked to his body. Crying for his home, crying for his mother. Keep warm, bastard, keep warm against the back of the platform.

  Holly clamped the cutters on the first strand of wire.

  Stretched, taut wire that had been applied in patterns of six-inch squares. No wire to spare for coils. That would have finished them, if the wire had been coiled. Cut low, cut close to the snow line. Holly froze. The wire snapped. The first strand was broken. He felt the slackness, behind him was the hiss of Adimov's breathing. Holly's hand groped for the next strand. He would cut out a box, a square box that had the width of a man's shoulders. There would be a tumbler alarm wire above the line where he cut, set to explode a siren if a man bucked the fence and climbed. He was below it, he was safe from it. About the only bloody thing he was safe from.

  Holly made the hole. As he crawled through, Adimov's hands protected the material of the sheet from the wire's barbs.

  Holly first, Adimov following. They had crossed the killing zone, they had broken through the first wire fence.

  Remember what Mikk Laas had said . . . they're thorough, these pigs, good and thorough. In front of them was the high wire fence, and then the high wooden fence. Above them was the watch-tower where a young guard trembled with cold, where a machine-gun rested on its mounting. He closed his eyes, tried to flourish some deep strength from far inside himself.

  He reached forward to feel the first strand that he would cut of the high wire fence.

  A deadly, lifeless audience.

  A humourless, witless speech.

  She spoke against a wall of noise offered by scraping feet, moving chairs, hacking coughs. Yuri Rudakov did not always attend his wife's monthly Political Lecture, sometimes said to himself that it was good for her to shoulder a burden alone. She had privileges enough, it did her no damage to stand on her own feet. He was with her tonight because she had bitched so loud in the privacy of her own kitchen about the dinner invitation to Commandant Kypov.

  If she had spoken well, that would have given him pleasure, but she had hidden her pretty face behind her spectacles, buried herself in her script and read with a droning mono-tony.

  . . For many of the countries of the emerging Third World, the Soviet Union is the only friend to whom they can turn for genuine help and guidance. From the West all they will find is the desire to reimpose the chains of servility that were the way of life under the old imperialistic rule. The countries of the West have never accepted the de-slavement of the peoples whom they regard as inferior and of value only if they can be exploited. But the Soviet Union offers true friendship. I would like to tell you of some of the agricultural development programmes that have been originated in Ethiopia, just one country that has rejected and expelled the yoke of American cold-war politics ..

  Rudakov winced, wondered from where she had rifled the text. Pravda? Izvestia? And the eyes of the pigs were on her. Almost dribbling, those that sat at the front. Not watching her face, not listening to her words. Staring at her knees and the skirt was too short. Prising open her thighs, they'd be, the filth and the scum that sat in front of her.

  Elena should not have worn that skirt, not in the Kitchen hall. Then he thought of the Orderly who would bring Michael Holly. They would start early, straight after roll-call. He'd have the coffee again... That made him smile. ..

  He would speak to Elena about her skirt. Not tonight, not so that he provoked a row with the Commandant coming to dinner, not with the precious excitement of the morning beckoning. But he would find a time to speak to her about the length of skirt she wore in front of the scum.

  Holly had taken between his fingers the last strand of wire that he must cut to fashion the hole in the high wire fence.

  Behind him Adimov sighed in impatience. What did the bugger expect. He wasn't snipping bloody roses. Bloody life and death wasn't it? And each time that the cutters bit down on the wire and separated it, then there had been the crack of the parting and they had lain still for a moment, covering their breath, not able to believe that the sounds would not be heard. They were almost underneath the watch-tower now. The bastard would have to forsake his shelter, he'd have to lean through the open window to see them, he'd have to peer down at the base of the wood stilts if he were to notice the twin crouched figures. For Christ's sake, Holly

  . . . there's a path across the killing zone, smoothed a bit, cosmeticized by Adimov's efforts and by the steady falling snow, but for all that a path. There's a hole in the inner wire fence. If the bastard goes to the window, if he looks out in front of him . . . if he sees nothing then he's blind.

  The strands were loose, the square of wire could be bent back to make space for them.

  The high wooden wall was in front.

  Yes, Mikk Laas, yes, they're thorough. A killing zone, two wire fences, a high wooden fence, and the prisoners that the barricades have been built to hold are half-starved, half-dead from tiredness. Yes, they're thorough, old Mikk Laas from Estonia. You never forget Mikk Laas
, the encyc-lopaedia that made it possible, you always remember him.

  But if you remember Mikk Laas then you remember a partisan, and a partisan means reprisal, and reprisal is a road to a zek in the Central Investigation Prison at Yavas.

  That man will die, Michael Holly. And if you remember him then you remember also a letter in the pocket of Chernayev

  . . . God, God .. . and all the memories lead to a hole cut with heavy pliers in the high wire fence.

  His legs were wet, his trousers sodden. Water slopped in his boots.

  Dreaming, Holly, and dreaming is death. Adimov was pushing him. Adimov who was the fellow-traveller was heaving, shoving, persuading Holly into the hole. Holly snapped the images from his mind. His elbows edged forward, he dragged himself through the gap. He heard the gasp of relief from Adimov.

  He was through.

  He rested for a moment against the thick beam support of the watch-tower. Only the high wooden fence, only that barrier left. What did they say? That the little camp was only a microcosm of the big camp, and the big camp stretched for ever, the big camp compound was a thousand miles across, wasn't that what they said? Wrap i t . . . He took Adimov's hand, pulled him a few inches, released a wire barb from Adimov's sheet. Adimov joined him, slumped on top of him.

  They tried together to catch their breath, to subdue the pounding. They lay together in the snow under the high wooden fence. Holly could no longer feel his toes and his fingers were brilliant with pain.

  It was Adimov who heard the ice slither of the skis.

  First the skis, then the patter of the dog's feet and the panting of his breath. It was Adimov who reacted, pressing Holly face-down into the snow. Skis and a dog approaching on the far side of the high wooden fence. A scuffling of paws on the far side of the high wooden fence. Was this where it finished, gin-trapped between an attack dog and a belt-fed machine-gun.

  'All quiet?'

  'Yes, sergeant, all quiet . . . ' A chilled, unhappy voice from above.

  'Fucking awful night.'

  'Yes, sergeant.'

  'All right for you in your shelter.'

  'Yes, sergeant.'

  'Fucking awful night to be o u t . . . and the dog, silly bitch, doesn't notice it. Have you been throwing food down?'

  'Perhaps, perhaps a bit of sandwich, sergeant.'

  'You eat your food in the barracks, you don't take bloody sandwiches on duty. Right?'

  'Right, sergeant. I'm sorry, sergeant.'

  'Don't let me catch you again . . . come on, you stupid bitch, you're fed enough without having to dig the snow for a crust. . . '

  The dog growled, a soft rumble in her throat.

  'I'm sorry, sergeant.'

  Then the hiss of the skis and the oath for the dog to follow, and the stamp of the feet above them. Holly and Adimov held each other for comfort. Holly grinned, Adimov bit his lip to suffocate a laugh of relief.

  The high wooden fence was dark with creosote. The top was two feet above Holly's head when he stood. He reached up with his hands, felt the rough-cut wood through his gloves. It was the last mountain to be climbed. He stood a long time, waiting for the strength to return.

  The words had passed him by. Chernayev cared nothing for the lecture of Elena Rudakov. He had sat for near to an hour rigid in his seat. He had listened only for the hammer of gunfire, the agony scream of the perimeter siren. The letter burned in his pocket, the letter he had been charged by Michael Holly to hand to Captain Yuri Rudakov on the following afternoon. And Holly was running.. . Holly who had no words for the thief once he had returned to the hut from the SHIzo block. Happy enough to talk with Chernayev before he went to the SHIzo, glad enough then to hint of revolution. But the SHIzo had changed him .. . How many times had Chernayev tried to talk with him since he had come back? Half-a-dozen times, a dozen times? And nothing given in return, nothing until the last. When the letter had been passed, that had been the Holly he knew.

  The man who was going to the wire, the man who could crack a grin, the man who was going to run and who asked a friend to give a letter to the Captain of KGB. Shit, that was style. Chernayev had been seventeen years in the Dubrovlag and had never known of a man succeed in running loose from the camps.

  There was no applause when she finished her speech.

  The senior man from Internal Order shouted for them to come to their feet and they stood in silence and watched the departure of the Political Officer and his woman. He was smart in his uniform greatcoat, she was velvet in the warmth of her fur. And she wore her scent, the bitch, because her scent would save her nose from the smell of the men that gaped at her. Chernayev flopped again to his chair and waited for a film to be shown - and for the gunfire, and for the sirens.

  Run with the wind, Holly. They'll hunt you as they would a rat in a chicken coop. And in winter... Run hard. An old thief was allowed to cry. There was no shame in crying for a young man who ran at the wire.

  'What's the film called?' Chernayev asked.

  'The title is irrelevant. The important thing is that it lasts two hours,' replied Poshekhonov comfortably.

  He had needed Adimov to push him up. Without Adimov he could not have found the muscle necessary to scale the high wooden fence. When Holly jumped, Adimov grasped his shins and forced them up so Holly could swing his leg and straddle the summit of the fence. For a moment Holly was silhouetted on the top of the fence, and he ducked his body down and tried to lie along its length. He pulled at Adimov's wrist. Adimov was strong. The man who was at the front of the food queue in the Kitchen, who had not spent fifteen days in the SHIzo block on half-rations. He could climb for himself. They were together on the fence. A deafening noise they seemed to have made. Holly saw the ski tracks and the footprints of the dog. He held the top of the fence in a steel grip of his hurt fingers, he swung the other leg, he hung from his fingers.

  He fell and his body crumpled on the snow and the blood flushed to his head and his ears screamed with the noise of his landing. He thought of a guard who stood a few feet above him, he thought of a balaclava and a forage cap with ear muffs. . . Adimov fell beside him.

  They crouched low. Each for the other they spread out the sheet-tangle to cover their backs. The camouflage of the white winter fox.

  The guard shifted on his platform, his feet beat on the planked flooring. Over the fence and the high wire and the low wire came the drift of voices, the spill from the Kitchen, those who were leaving before the start of the film. Incredible, to hear those voices from beyond the fences.

  It was as though Holly had performed his task. Adimov's fist rested on Holly's elbow, ready to propel him towards the darkness of the tree-line. Holly had said he would take Adimov out, Holly had been good to his word. Like a team that could work in tandem, the leadership was exchanged without question. Adimov pointed to the snow surface, made a smoothing motion with his hand.

  Forty metres to the treeline.

  Adimov went first, awkward, charging.

  Holly watched him go. His legs shook. He lost Adimov in the haze of trees.

  Holly's turn. But he must go backwards, his back to the trees. He must be bent so that he could push the snow again into the holes that their feet had left. Forty yards to cover while his glance wavered between the snow pits and the back of the guard in the watch-tower. Don't turn, you bastard, don't turn. He remembered Feldstein's question: if you had known that this place waited for you would you have done what you d i d ? ' . . . and a miserable answer he had given. Of course he hadn't known of ZhKh 385/3/1, of course he hadn't known of two wire fences and a high wooden fence and a guard above him with a machine-gun and clear fire field . . .

  Did Alan Millet know? Holly wanted to shout the question, found it rising in him. Did the man who gave him sandwiches and beer in a pub near the Thames and a package to take to Moscow, did he know? When he was out

  . . . when. . . he'd find Alan Millet.

  Adimov clutched him, twisted him towards the abyss of the woods. No gun h
ad been cocked. No siren button had been depressed.

  At first they went in caution, doubled beneath the lower branches of the firs and larches and wild birch. Sometimes where the trees were set thickest there was little snow, but when they came to places of more open planting they would fall up to their waists into drifts. They blundered in the blackness with an arm raised to protect their faces from the whiplash of loose young branches. When the lights over the perimeter of the camp could no longer be seen, they went faster. They cared less for noise now. The pace increasing, the exhaustion surging. And through all the hours of darkness they must never stop, never break the rhythm of distancing themselves from the fences.

  'We're going north?'

  'As I said we would, Holly.'

  'How far, like this?'

  'Till we reach the railway that runs north from Barashevo.'

  'We will go along the line?'

  'The line is safer than the roads.'

  'I thought... I thought there would be a greater excitement . . .'

  Adimov leading, not looking back, the snow falling from the branches that he disturbed onto Holly's face and body.

  'Excitement at what?'

  'At getting out. Stupid, I thought I'd be singing.'

  'Stupid, Holly . . . it's not a bloody Pioneer ramble . . .

  You want to know what chance you have of getting out, right out, over the frontier? None. You've done all this just to be brought back, and when you're back it will be worse

  . . . And for me, what is there?'

  'There is your wife, Adimov . . .'

  'My wife who is dying. To see her, should that make me excited?'

  In morose silence they trudged on through the woods.

  There were tears in the sheets where they had caught against branches. Neither man was willing to stop to remove the drapes, and they would need them when they came to the railway line.

  No excitement, Holly. Only the pain, only the waiting for the siren to reach out for them.