into the water system of the barracks building. Untreated sewage flowed directly through the waterpipes… '
'Impossible.'
'Not impossible, but proved. We have taken scrapings from several feet behind the taps, there is no area of doubt.
You have a very serious situation on your hands. We believe there has been an act of sabotage… ' impossible… ' But the denunciation of Major Kypov was hesitant, unsure.
'How could it be sabotage?' Rudakov said quietly. Filth in the kitchens was within the province of the camp's Commandant. Sabotage was KGB, sabotage was his own.
'From your own charts of the water-main route and that of the sewage pipes from both inside and outside the compound that lead to the general cesspit… they are not even close to each other. Raw sewage was introduced to the water-main. Major Kypov, I assume that the diet of your prisoners differs considerably from that of the camp officials.'
'Correct.'
'We have managed only a preliminary examination of the specimen from the pipes, but I am confident that a more thorough testing will show that the sewage is the product of he prisoners' faeces.'
The Captain of KGB closed his eyes. In front of his face he palms of his hands rubbed slowly together. A man who winces at the implications of his knowledge.
Rudakov ignored his Commandant, he stretched out his hand to the Superintendent of Public Health and led him to he door. Before they went out into the compound he had Jdraped a guard corporal's weatherproof anorak over the ; ivilian's shoulders.
They walked to a place behind Hut 3 and Hut 4, and stopped beside a dug pit and a heap of earth. Rudakov shouted at the two zeks who worked in the hole and when they were slow to respond he dragged them each up from the ground heaving at their collars. The Superintendent of Public Health took the place of the zeks, looked hard at the pipes between his shoes that were half covered in mud water.
He took a knife with a fine sliver of a blade from his pocket and first scraped at the rim of the screw top over the junction, then dropped his findings into a plastic sachet bag. Afterwards he took another bag and unscrewed the top of the junction pipe and scraped again. When he had finished he looked up and shrugged, then blew into his hands to warm them. i said it was an act of sabotage – there is your evidence.'
The prisoners marched with their snow-shuffling tread back into the compound. Midday and lunch. Eight hundred men. Blank-faced, yet devouring the sight of the Captain of KGB and a civilian with a white coat peeping beneath a military anorak. Like the rustle of wind in an autumn tree the word echoed from those who could see to those who were at the back and denied sight. Rudakov scanned the faces, saw the dumb and sullen eyes of those who stared back. There was one amongst this mass who fought against him, one who had taken Yuri Rudakov as the target of his attack. Any battle against the life of the camp was a personal fight with the Captain of KGB. He bit his lip. He pulled his cigarettes from his pocket. One of them amongst that mess of filth had tossed the glove into the path of the Captain of KGB. And they seemed so barren of initiative, so deserted of spirit, and yet there was one
… He had thought Michael Holly important. Michael Holly was a luxury, an irrelevance compared to the sabotage of the water-mains pipe.
Where to begin?
The eyes of the zeks bored into Yuri Rudakov's back as he walked away towards the Administration block. He abandoned the Superintendent of Public Health to find his own way back to the barracks.
There had been a fire in the Commandant's office. Begin there.
There had been an attempt to poison the guard troops and warders living in the barracks, follow with that. He had the beginning, he had no end. He felt the eyes trace his footsteps. Fear winnowed his gut. The regime of the camp had never been challenged before. If the worm was not stopped then it would eat out the core of submission around which the camp existed.
In the months that he had been at ZhKh 385/3/1 he had never known that fear that slid with him into his office.
He had the beginning, he had no end.
On her knees, beside her pail, a rough brush in her hand, Irina Morozova scrubbed the floor of the corridor that led to the ground floor wards of the hospital. At least once a week a detachment of the Zone's prisoners were taken to the hospital for the skivvy work. The water was cold, her hands blued, her nails cracked, but it was welcome work.
She was outside the Zone. The work separated her from the other women of her Zone. She would have liked a friend inside the Living Hut of Zone 4, someone to share with, to talk with. She was alone in her Zone. Her education and privilege dictated that she be alone. Only those with calloused minds and coarse hands who sought a lover bothered themselves with the small, pale-skinned Morozova. Kneel ing in the corridor, with her bucket and her brush, she enjoyed the limit of freedom that could be hers.
It was not easy to clean the corridor floor.
The impatient progress of the medical staff on their way to and from the wards caused her to pull aside her bucket, rock back on her knees to make room for them. Each time the wheeled stretcher squeaked past her, she had to pull the bucket from the centre of the corridor to the wall. Some of those on the stretcher were in night clothes, some were dressed still in full winter-issue uniforms.
And the word accompanied the stretcher and the sharp paces of doctors and nurses. The word was disease. The word was poison. The word was sabotage.
Disease might be accident, but not poison, not sabotage.
Poison was premeditated. Sabotage was attack. She had no need to see the harassed faces of the medical staff to know of the success of a premeditated attack on the administration of the camp. She saw a boy wheeled by in his pyjamas who cried and rolled in pain. She saw a young guard taken to the wards who spewed yellow mucus down to his waist across the buttons of his greatcoat.
Who was doing this with poison and sabotage?
Why? To what end? To what hope of success?
In her whole life Irina had never stamped on a spider, laid a hand on the wings of a butterfly, nor set the trap for a mouse. Her mind rocked in argument. The camp was her enemy. The servants of the camp were her enemies. A man had dared an act of premeditated sabotage. Had that man the right to her support? She scrubbed fiercely at the floor.
She thought of the pain of that boy, she thought of the sickness of that guard. She thought of a man who dared what had never been dared before. She knew no way to silence the rage of argument.
At the end of the morning, Morozova and the others of the hospital detail were taken back to Zone 4. The argument was not settled. One thing only blazed in her mind.
Who dared it?
Two more reports now fell on the desk of the senior official of the Ministry in Moscow.
News from Barashevo, again and so soon.
A report from the Superintendent of Public Health in Pot'ma on the first findings as to the causes of a dysentery epidemic. A report also from Major Vasily Kypov concerning the circumstances in which he had requested the reinforcement of his guard capability by two platoons from Central Garrison. The official did not immediately file away these two reports. He photostated them, and did the same with the earlier teleprinter sheet that gave details of a fire and the destruction of an office. Three reports now, and a file and a reference number of their own.
With the slim, new folder under his arm, the official went to the office of the Procurator General. The Procurator General ruled over all the Correctional Labour Colonies stretched across the State. When the whiff of trouble seeped to Moscow, then the official would carry a new file up the steps and along the passages to the presence of the Procurator General.
On an upper floor, in a pleasantly furnished room overlooking the inner streets of the capital, the name of Vasily Kypov was raised, bandied, his career examined.
'But regardless of whether there have been failings in administration by Major Kypov, we have the more pressing matter,' the senior official said softly. 'We have an incidence of terrorism
'I want a charge, I want a court, I want an execution,' the Procurator General stated. 'I will not tolerate terrorism in the camps.'
