been called in alphabetical order from the hut. After Adimov and Byrkin and Chernayev, together with Feldstein, before Mamarev and Poshekhonov. A routine was being followed.
If there were suspicion held against him then the rhythm of the questioning would have been broken, he would have been summoned ahead of his turn. But if they did not take Michael Holly, then they would take another. All the men in the hut said that they must take one man. Holly shuddered.
He saw that Yuri Rudakov had come to his door at the far end of the corridor. He heard the shout.
'Holly, to my office.'
He walked past the interrogators, smelt their breath, smelt the herring and bread they would have gulped between the beatings, smelt the coffee that would have for-tified them. in here, Holly.'
Rudakov grabbed him by the tunic front, propelled him through the door. The lock clicked shut.
Rudakov loosed his grip. He said pleasantly, 'Sit down.'
Holly sat on the straight back wooden chair in front of the desk.
'Would you like some coffee? There's a sandwich if you'd like it. ..'
Holly craved coffee, would have grovelled for a sandwich.
'No.'
'I've plenty of coffee, sandwiches too.'
'No.'
'Please yourself,' Rudakov said. i don't come cheap, not as bloody cheap as that.'
'Please yourself…'
Rudakov walked to the filing cabinet and the tray on the top with the thermos flask and the plate. He made a song of pouring the coffee, a dance of unwrapping the sandwiches from grease paper. .. You can change your mind.'
'No.'
'My wife made the coffee, and the sandwiches. They're very good, she buys her meat in Pot'ma. Were you married, Holly?'
'You've read the file.'
Rudakov came back to his desk. Coffee ran on his chin, crumbs fell from his mouth.
The impact of a truncheon on flesh and bone and muscle buffeted dully through the thin wall, emptied the sound into Rudakov's office.
'That'll be Feldstein. Superior little bastard, don't you think so, Michael? Going to set the world to rights, going to change the order. Just a creep, our Comrade Feldstein, don't you think?'
'Why am I in here?'
Rudakov opened his hands, rolled his eyes in disbelief, theatrical and exaggerated.
'Do you want to be with him? You want to be with those animals? They're not pretty boys with a set of rules, they've come to find who killed a guard. That's their order and they will achieve it, they will find somebody they can charge with killing a guard. You want to go to their care? I've shielded you, Michael… You should thank m e… You want some coffee now?'
'No.'
Through the wall Holly heard the soft moan of Feldstein.
He stared back into Rudakov's eyes until they blinked and turned away from him.
'Did you think on what I said?'
'I don't remember what you said.'
'A transfer to Vladimir.' in exchange for what?' in exchange for a statement. Something about the work that you were sent to accomplish in our country. We would let you go for that. No one could blame you afterwards for a statement of that sort – it would only be the truth..
Rudakov warmed to his own words, a smile of friendship snuggled at his mouth.'… The truth about who sent you, and who you were to meet.'
'You have the statement that I made at Lubyanka.' i have read the statement, Holly.' Rudakov played the man who was disappointed. 'Not a very full statement and then you persisted in the lie of innocence.'
'I said in my statement that I was not a spy…'
The room shook. In the next office a body had been thrown with force against a wall.
'And that was a lie, Holly.'
'You say it was a lie, I do not.'
He thought of Feldstein, a thin Jewish boy who would have a bleeding mouth and bruises above his kidneys. A boy who could recite in the darkness the poem of a man who had died from a burst ulcer.
'Don't you want to go home?'
He thought of Feldstein who would be in pain behind a plasterboard wall, and of Byrkin who would lose a visit, and of Adimov who would not see his wife before the cancer caught her, and of Poshekhonov, and of Chernayev.
'You must want to go home, and we are making it so easy for you. But you have a problem, Holly. You labour under an illusion. You believe you can make me impatient. Holly, I have all day, I have every day to sit with you. Actually, I value the time I spend with you. You're not getting out of here; I'm not about to be posted. I have all the time I need. It is your time that is wasted. Personally, I would like to see you go home. You should believe me, Holly. Consider, who else can you believe?'
He thought of a girl that he had seen behind a line of guns and a cordon of dogs. An elfin girl with brave, bright eyes.
Morozova, the one word stamped on her tunic above a slight breast. A girl with no given name…
'You could be out of here within days, perhaps even hours. Listen to me, you have no need to be here.'
He thought of eight hundred men lined up in the snow, the pariahs and dross of a nation. And they had stood their ground.
'I want to see you go home, Holly. I want to see you go free to lead the rest of your young life away from this place.'
'Give me some coffee, please.'
'That's being sensible. Have some coffee and a sandwich then we'll talk. You won't have to go back to the hut tonight, I'll find you somewhere here…' Rudakov bounced across the room towards the filing cabinet, moving on his toes in a waltz of success. 'We'll have you out of that hut. I don't know how you've survived with that scum.'
Rudakov set the mug of coffee down in front of Holly.
Holly picked it up, pondered the coffee for a moment. He threw it in Rudakov's face.
Hot, steaming coffee ran down Rudakov's best uniform and scalded his skin, and the mug had bounced to the floor and smashed.
Rudakov blinked. Coffee droplets sprinkled from his eyebrows. He wiped furiously with his handkerchief at the growing stains on his uniform.
'If you are here fourteen years…' Rudakov spat across the table. '… If you serve fourteen years at Barashevo, remember each day the chance you were given. And remember this, too, Mister Holly. If I hit you, in the condition you're in, if I hit you then I break you. I can break any bone in your body. You remember that.'
'I said I didn't come cheap. Not as cheap as a mug of coffee and a sandwich.'
'Every day in fourteen years you will wish you had never done that.'
Holly smiled.
'When you report to Moscow will you say thqt you Back in the hut the limping Feldstein reported that Holly had been taken to the punishment cells.
'Rudakov offered him coffee, Holly threw it in his face..
Some said the Englishman was an idiot, some that he had snapped. But the zeks do not linger on the misfortune of one man. Holly was instant interest, then replaced.
Chernayev gazed wistfully at the empty bunk, the folded blanket, then went to the window and looked across the snow to the high wire fence and the high wooden wall and the jutting roof of the prison block. He alone thought that, perhaps, he understood.
