'Did he have cake as well?'
'I am entitled to interrogate a man in any manner I wish. It is a matter of state security.'
'Does 'state security' require that coffee be served to the enemies of the state?'
'There are various techniques of interrogation.'
'And some require the serving of coffee?'
'I have been entrusted with a job of interrogation.'
'We have had arson in this camp, we have had murder, now we have blatant insubordination to an officer. We are wavering on a collapse of discipline. I will not suffer insubordination.'
'I think he lost his head…' Rudakov spoke with desperation. it will not happen again.'
'I will see that it does not happen again.'
'No, Captain, you don't understand me… I'm not asking you, I am telling you that it will not happen again.'.
Rudakov lurched to the door. Failure soared at him.
Failure to handle a prisoner who could toss coffee in his face and commit his Number One uniform to the civilian dry cleaners in Pot'ma. Failure to stand up to the cretin who had been thrown from military service to work out his last days in this shit-heap camp. He was a man familiar only with having his way. He believed his rank and office guaranteed his authority. But he had been caught out and humiliated.
He flung open the door and went out, he heard behind him the cavern chuckle of Kypov.
Two warders brought Michael Holly back to his cell from the workshop.
When he had seen their faces he had known what faced him. In the workshop the other prisoners had known. They had turned away, all except Mikk Laas and from him there could be only a mute sympathy.
Inside the cell they tripped Holly to the floor and as he fell he saw the squat shape of the Commandant who had waited for him to be fetched.
The palms of his hands smacked into the concrete, the roughness caught and scratched his flesh. The boots were around him. Wet, dirt-smeared, snow-soaked toecaps, and above the toecaps the bright black polish.
Boots and truncheons working on Holly's body. He rolled himself into a defensive coil, but that was poor protection. When he saved his sides, then his head and his back were defenceless. When he saved his head and his back, then his sides were open to the kidney kicks of the boots. They said nothing, and he did not cry out. Only the squelch of the boot and the thud of the truncheons disturbed the silence of the cell. They didn't pant, they didn't sweat. It was not hard work to beat a man who was on the concrete floor beside their boots. His eyes were closed, his mind circled in hatred of the men around him. There was nowhere to flee, Holly lay still until they were satiated.
When the door had slammed behind him the pain came, came in rivers, came in mountains. Pain settling in his muscles, flowing in his limbs, climbing to agony.
Holly fainted. He was on the floor and with his arms around his head when Mikk Laas returned to the cell.
The man who had come thirty years before from Estonia prised Holly's arms away from his head and cradled him in his lap. He saw the blood that caked his hair and the fierce technicolour of the developing bruises. Later, when the soup swill was brought to the door, Mikk Laas dipped bread into the warm liquid and opened Holly's mouth and put the wet bread on his tongue and massaged his throat so that he could swallow.
The afternoon had merged with the evening, the evening had slipped to night, and the old man held Holly's head and crooned a song that came from the far villages of the Baltic coast.
When Holly woke there was a moment before he felt the pain and in that time he was aware only of the old man's body and the calloused hands that held his cheeks. Then he moved, and pain swilled through him. He looked up into Mikk Laas's face.
'I didn't cry… I begged nothing of them,' he whispered.
'Then you have beaten them.'
Holly managed a bitter smile. Blood ribbons sailed on his cheeks.
'I won't wait twenty years, Mikk.'
'Why do you tell me?'
'Because I look for help.'
'What help?'
'I have to know everything that has been tried… everything that has failed, everything that has succeeded.'
'There are many who say it is impossible.'
'You're not one of those.'
'For a certain man it is possible. In my time there have been a few… for a few escape is possible.'
Because they spoke so quietly, whispered in each other's ears, they heard the sound of the woman sobbing. A damaged sound muffled by brickwork, but for all that the noise of a woman who was sobbing.
–
He had worked late and because the contents of the file still played irrationally in his mind, Yuri Rudakov was not ready to go home to his bungalow and his wife. He went to the Officers' Mess in the hope that a brandy, or two, or three, would relax him. He would need something to calm him before he faced Elena and the newest bitching criticism that she had for his return.
As he came through the door he knew that the Commandant was drunk.
Kypov stood with his back to the stove, telling a story, and his collar clasps were unfastened and a twist of hair draped over his forehead.
The story died on the Commandant's lips.
The young officers shuffled in guilt around Major Kypov.
Nobody slackened his guard when the KGB officer was present, nobody allowed alcohol to talk when the KGB officer listened.
Rudakov went to the bar, asked the mess steward for a brandy, signed the docket, took his glass to a table, selected a magazine and sat down. Silence hung like a shroud on the room.
'Where have you been, Rudakov, working…?' Kypov shouted across the carpet. A voice of slurred treacle. 'Working or holding a coffee-party…?'
There was a titter from one of the younger officers.
Rudakov stared at the printed page.
'Our Comrade from the Organ of State Security likes to entertain his prisoners to coffee-parties, but they are not always grateful…'
Rudakov snapped shut the magazine, reached for his glass. The men around Kypov backed away, rats on a ship's hawser.
'Have no fear, Comrade, he'll not do it again. He's learned. He'll not give any more cheek… not to you, not to me, not to anyone.'
Rudakov stood up.
'How will he have learned?'
No movement in the Mess. The eyes of the watchers ranged from Rudakov, erect and ice-cold, to Kypov whose hand was against the wall beside the stove-pipe as if he needed support.
'The boot and the stick, that's how he's learned. The boot in the balls, the stick on the shoulder…' Kypov giggled, steadied himself.
'You put the boot into Michael Holly? You're a stupid bastard, Major Kypov. More stupid than 1 could have imagined.'
The door slammed on Rudakov's back.
The room emptied. Those who a few minutes before had been happy to surround the Commandant now slipped from his company. Behind the bar the mess steward found work for himself in polishing glasses.
He was alone. What had happened? In a fortnight what had happened in his camp? The camp that had been a model of management and efficiency. The bastard thing had fallen on his head in one fortnight. His office had been burned, his garrison incapacitated. There had been reinforcement platoons and the indignity of an interrogation squad in his compound. The KGB officer had sworn at him in the full hearing of his officers.
Kypov slumped to a chair.
