Archangel

by Gerald Seymour

  'They're big beasts, the helicopters. Weil bring them down to three, four metres and nobody will be standing under them. You get blown flat. We'll give them a minute or so, then in with the troops. We'll split them into groups of thirty, forty, then I'll have your force in . . . shouldn't be a problem.'

  The competence of the Colonel General encouraged Yuri Rudakov.

  'I'm told there are divisions within whatever leadership they have, there is a faction that believes the thing has already gone too far. They know that the helicopters will come, I think the majority of them are scared half out of their minds.'

  'What sort of prisoners does the camp hold?'

  'Scum,' said Kypov decisively.

  'Criminals, pretty low intelligence,' said Rudakov.

  There was a knock at Kypov's door. News from the Adjutant. All four helicopters had now landed in the vehicle park. The perimeter of the tamp was secure. The storm-squad was in position behind the gates. Marksmen were in place on the Administration block roof.

  'Will you be flying yourself, Colonel General?' Kypov asked.

  'Of course.'

  They were experienced men, the pilots of the helicopters.

  They accepted this mission with an amused resignation.

  They were accustomed to flying into actual or simulated machine-gun fire. They were familiar with the evasion techniques necessary against ground-to-air missiles. Their machines carried armour-plating a centimetre thick to protect the soft belly beneath their seats. Apart from his co-pilot each captain carried two machine-gunners. And they were to be used as fly-swatters. The pilots talked to each other by radio, they livened their engines, the Colonel General climbed on board. The helicopters rolled, as a drunkard on ice, and lifted.

  Holly stood white-lipped in the centre of the compound.

  Beyond the high wooden fence the bedlam of the helicop-

  ters was growing. He could see Byrkin fifty yards to his right and close to the wire. Chernayev was behind him, further than fifty yards. And there were men whose names he did not know and whose faces he might not recall, and they too were beyond reach.

  He was the talisman of the compound. All the men watched him. If he broke they would all break. The zeks were spread out across the Zone, as he had wished. Their posture was aimless. When the helicopters rose and peeped for the first time over the high wooden fence they would see only confusion. Let the bastards come .. .

  Anatoly Feldstein was beside Holly.

  if it works, your plan, will men die?'

  'Not necessarily . . . '

  'And if you win this time, what of the next time?'

  'I have not won this time, not yet,' Holly yelled brutally.

  The nose of the lead helicopter sidled above the fence, a monster that had crawled from a cave and now flexed itself.

  'We're not reading your bloody samizdat in a Moscow flat, we're not having wet dreams over a Solzhenitsyn typescript . . .'

  Three more helicopters creeping into close formation above the first, clawing into the dull sky, climbing for altitude.

  ' . . . We're not sending telegrams to Ronald bloody Reagan. Nobody outside this camp gives a hell for us. We're on our own, understand that.'

  Holly craned his head, following the grey undercarriages of the helicopters. They'd rise to a thousand feet, then drop.

  A controlled fall down onto the compound, down onto men who had nothing but nine coils of table-leg, wire, rope, and blanket.

  Feldstein held Holly's head, shouted in his ear. 'Can you know what it is to read samizdat? It's wonderful. It is true freedom to read samizdat

  'Shut up and watch. Watch and I'll show you freedom.

  Watch the helicopters.'

  He pushed Feldstein away.

  The sky darkened, the noise of the rotors pounded, thrashed the air. Holly saw the machine-gunners, saw them grinning as they peered from their opened doors, leaning out safe on the tether of their lifelines. Let the bastards come

  . . . He depended on nine men, the nerve of nine men.

  The zeks began to run, began to form into four concentrations as Holly had dictated. Snow swept into the void, a white and blurring confetti, and he lost sight of Byrkin, and when he spun round Chernayev also was gone. God. . . the noise, the blasting sound. Holly and Feldstein were alone, and ignored by the pilots. The pilots had greater riches. Four man masses to occupy them. The snow swirls lay like a fog, low and held down by the rotor-blades. The helicopters sat on the white mist, and the engines roared and screamed and howled.

  'Now Byrkin . . . now Chernayev . . . now .. . now . . . '

  A stick was thrown in the air. Holly watched, cold and fascinated. A stick was caught by a rotor blade and swept from his sight, and a wire and a rope and two knotted blankets flew in pursuit of a tossed table-leg. Beautiful Chernayev .. . beautiful Byrkin .. . beautiful all of you.

  Look at the Captain, Holly. Look at his face roving over his instruments, his hands fighting the controls. Press the panic-button. Why won't the bloody thing respond, Comrade Captain? .. . Holly heard the cry of a failing engine. He flung his arms round Feldstein.

  'We might have won .. .' he yelled.

  The zeks knew, the zeks had heard the swing of the engine pitch from the high roar to the failing whine. Wire and rope and blankets were wrapped tight, bandaged, around the delicate free running spool between helicopter cabin and rotors. The zeks ran, broke and spread.

  One machine bellyflopped in the compound.

  The zeks would be at it like thieves at a Christmas party.

  Another machine scraped over the Administration block, and disappeared for a few short seconds before there was an explosion and the answering sweep of dark smoke.

  The third machine cleared Hut 3 and took the outer telephone lines from the poles. It keeled against a watch-tower, and fell beyond the high wooden fence.

  Almost on the ground, the fourth helicopter seemed to give up the fight for height and settle only for distance. It careered between Hut 6 and the Bath house, scattering its way through fences. Screaming wire, ripping wood, the howl of the engine. Holly saw it go, a great wounded bird fluttering to a defeated landfall. Byrkin was bellowing at him, hanging on his arm for attention.

  'I have a Colonel General... I have two pilots, two crew.

  We have two machine-guns and ammunition.'

  Holly shook himself, tried to rid his head of the echoing noise. 'Get the guns under Huts 3 and 6. Get the crew into the Kitchen.'

  God .. . they had won! The zeks ran round him, dazed, overwhelmed, hysterical.

  Holly went towards the Administration block. So quiet without the rotors spinning above him. He walked past the huge downed beast. The zeks were in it, hyenas at a carcase.

  He walked tall.

  The marksmen would be locked on him.

  Twenty metres in front of the Administration block he stopped.

  'Tell Major Kypov that we have a Colonel General and two pilots and two crew alive and in our care. Tell him also that we have machine-guns intact.'

  'I couldn't shoot,' the marksman sobbed. 'As soon as the helicopters came down they just chucked up the snow. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't give them covering fire.

  When the snow cleared, the first thing I saw was that they had our people. They had knives to their throats. They'd have butchered them if I'd fired.'

  His sergeant turned away, headed for the tra'pdoor, and the ladder and the corridor to the Commandant's office where the inquest would be raging.

  The helicopter had speared first through the fences of Zone i, then across the roadway and into the fences and high wooden wall of Zone 4. It breached the barricades of the Women's camp.

  The women had been in their work area at the time of the helicopters' assault, not at their machines but crawling up for vantage points, peering through the glass of the upper windows. As the helicopter exhausted its flight they had streamed from the doorway and out into their compound ignoring the shouts of the wardresse
s.

  It was a stampede.

  In the single watch-tower above the Women's zone, the guard seemed not to watch them, but stared across the broken defences into the men's camp.

  One group ran towards the helicopter, and was laughing, screaming, at the dazed and disorientated crew strapped in their seats.

  One group ran straight for the breach in the fences.

  Twenty women, perhaps thirty, sprinted and slithered over the snow and iced paths, shrieking in hysteria, and heading for the hole without reason, and without care. Irina Morozova, not a part of the group, was running with them. A small girl, slight even in her quilted tunic and her knee-length black skirt. A single guard ran along the roadway dividing the two Zones holding rifle at the hip and his finger, awkward in its glove, trying to push forward the frozen catch from 'Safety'. The guard shouted once, and the women swept towards him, ignored him, the sight of the roadway in front of them, and beyond the guard the sight of the men's camp. The knees of the women pumped below their lifting skirts as they ran for the hole.

  A sandcastle cannot staunch the tide. The guard was overwhelmed. He never fired, he never found the strength in his gloved finger to release 'Safety'. Beside Morozova, women fell on the guard and toppled him to the snow and she heard the howl of their fury and saw the scratching nails of their hands. Morozova watched. The hands ripped at his greatcoat, pulled at his tunic, thrust at the flies of his trousers. Morozova watched. She saw the skin of his belly, she saw the white of their hands. She heard the gabble of laughter, the scream of the soldier's fear.

  There was a long burst of machine-gun fire into the snow and the women scattered like sparrows disturbed from a bird-table. Morozova saw two guards with machine-pistols a hundred metres away, on the road beside the corner of the men's fence. The guard whimpered; his arms were outstretched and his genitals were exposed and bloodied. Some women turned back towards their own compound. Two women ran away from the guards and along the stretch of seemingly empty road, but the watch-tower machine-gun found them and pitched them carelessly over. A few more women ran, hunched and bent, towards the hole into the men's compound. Morozova wondered if she were about to be sick, and she was running too, she was hunched as well.

  Where was she running to?

  In front of her a woman cartwheeled and there was the flash of flesh above her stockings and the white of her knickers. Another shouted as if a victory had been won.

  Another wiped the blood from her hands onto the dark material of her skirt where it would be hidden.

  Morozova saw the helicopter that was downed, she saw a dog that was dead. She could no longer see the other women, engulfed now by the men who had charged to meet them.

  'You should not have come. You have escaped to a worse prison.'

  A man gazed at her, a look of stupefaction on his round and fatted face.

  'You have an Englishman in the camp,' she said. 'Where will I find him?'

  'We have an Englishman . . . ' Poshekhonov shook his head and laughed. 'We also have a helicopter because we have an Englishman.'

  Chapter 22

  In the Kitchen Feldstein waited on Michael Holly, at the fringe of the river-flow of men. He had twice pulled Holly's elbow for attention, he had twice been rebuffed.

  'They will have photographers on the Administration block. Every man, whether or not he is involved in positive action, must have torn off the name strip on his tunic . . .

  'I want the forage caps down over men's heads, if they have a scarf they should wear it across their mouths .. .

  'The machine-guns should stay under Huts 3 and 6, but I want a diversion rush with anything that looks like a gun to under 1 and 4. The men with most recent military experience should be involved . . .

  'I want one man into the rafters of each hut and in the roof of the Kitchen and the Store and the Bath. I want holes in the roofing, and runners to report troop movements . . .

  'What is it, Anatoly? No, the distribution of food is not my concern, that is for the Committee to organize . . . No, I am not putting a guard on the huts, that's the problem of the Committee. If they want to wreck the huts that's their concern . . . In a moment, Anatoly . .. Are we winning? Go and ask Comrade Major Kypov whether he thinks he's winning . . . Everything else must w a i t . . . After the meeting, please, after the meeting of the Committee . . .'

  He gestured his hands to show that enough had been said.

  The men around him backed away, respectful. In the corner of the Kitchen near to the Committee were the prisoners.

  They sat on the floor, with their backs resting against the wall and their hands were clasped on top of their heads.

  They watched for the first signs that they would be beaten, they waited for the rush of men with sticks and iron bars, they wondered whether before the night came they would be dangling from a taut rope.

  'You have the prisoners. Don't play the idiot with the prisoners. With the prisoners we can show that we are not animals.'

  Holly was distracted, half-listening, threading his way between the upturned tables and benches.

  'How can we show that?'

  'Let the prisoners go, Holly. Let them go without condition. Release them while you are at the zenith of your power.'

  'Why?'

  it would be their way to shelter behind the backs of hostages. Only a coward covers himself with such a shield.'

  'What if that shield saves us from a massacre?'

  Holly had reached the table, eased himself down onto the end of a bench.

  Feldstein spoke with a rare passion. 'You are a stranger, you know nothing of these people. You think they will allow a mutiny to continue because we hold one Colonel General, one helicopter crew? They don't give a shit about a human being. Look at this camp and tell me I am wrong.'

  'Stay here, we'll listen to you.'

  Holly turned away, the hands of the Committee reached out for him. A great gale of laughter blew amongst these men, and their hands slapped each other's backs, and the kisses smacked on their cheeks. Byrkin told how he had thrown a table-leg up into the hurricane of the down-blast, of the magic moment that he had seen the rope and the knotted blankets dragged away from the neat coil beside his feet. They laughed and they shouted and the noise echoed in the room.

  'What will they do next?' Holly asked quietly, and the softness of his voice smashed through the bogus triumph.

  'What any commander would do when he is beaten by an inferior force,' Byrkin said. 'He withdraws, he regroups, he waits for reinforcements, he attacks again . . . '

  'How long?'

  'Before tonight, before darkness,' said the man from Hut 4 with the mole on his nose.

  'The reinforcements are available?'

  'There are more than a hundred thousand men behind the wire of the Dubrovlag, from Barashevo to Pot'ma,' said the hunchback from Hut 6. 'There is a division of M V D along the railway line, there is always a regiment of regular army in reserve. They have more than a division to stamp on us.'

  'A division .. . and we have two machine-guns . . . '

  He sat with his back to the door of the Kitchen. He heard Poshekhonov's voice shouting the length of the Kitchen hall.

  'The Chief has a visitor. A young lady has called to seethe Chief.'

  She looked the length of the wrecked Kitchen, and felt like an interloper. The men who sat on the benches began to turn, and she saw the annoyance in their faces at the interruption of their debate. He was the last to turn. She saw the sunken eyes of exhaustion and the pursing of the forehead in surprise.

  His face lightened. In place of strain there was the half grin of amusement. She felt she had made an idiot of herself.

  'Morozova, yes?'

  'I am Morozova, Irina Morozova.'

  'There are more people looking for a way to leave this camp than to join it.'

  'There was a hole in our fence. I came before the guards blocked i t . . . I don't know your name.'

  'Michael Holly.'

&nbs
p; 'I wanted to thank you for what you said to m e . . . when I was in the SHIzo block.'

  His eyes had narrowed. 'I accept your thanks. You should go back to your Zone.'

  it's wired now. If I wanted to I couldn't.' She tossed her head back, and her thick, black hair wavered over the collar of her tunic. She jutted her chin, she rose to her toes to add to her stature.

  'The compound will be attacked this afternoon . . . '

  'I'm going to stay.'

  Holly shouted the length of the Kitchen. 'Morozova, if you stay, if you go, I don't care. This Committee is preparing to fight an army. We have two machine-guns. I haven't the time to talk. I'd like to and I can't. Go away, go away and hide yourself. Find me again after the attack, find me if I am here.'

  'This is not the man who spoke to me through the walls of the SHIzo,' she shouted back in anger.

  it is the same man. The same man but a different moment

  . . . ' Holly turned back to the Committee. 'Feldstein wants to say something about the prisoners.'

  'I have two and a half hours more of light. I have the Procurator flying from Moscow tomorrow. I have a compound armed with two machine-guns and five hundred rounds minimum. I have a Colonel General as a hostage to inhibit me. What do I do, what do we do?'

  Kypov paced the short carpet of his office. With him now were his Adjutant, and the Major who had come from Yavas and who had now assumed command of the regular Company.

  'I'm not going in there against machine-guns, not without armour. And where do I find tanks? Where?'

  The Adjutant had been silent. His intervention now was quietly spoken, if you were thinking of tanks, how many would you need?'

  'One, but there are none in Mordovia.' said the Major.

  The Adjutant was not to be deflected. 'There is one tank, on the parade ground at Yavas.'

  it's a T34 - a museum piece. Has it even an engine?'