He had condemned a man to die. He had consigned an elderly couple living in a London suburb to a dotage of misery. For what?
To indulge an ideal? The ideal of Michael Holly scattered casualties across the length of the compound, across the breadth of a terraced house.
When he looked up he saw the triumph large in Rudakov's face. He knew of nothing to say. Michael Holly had thought he was brave, and his bravery was paid for with another man's life, with his parents' misery. The strength ran from him, the resolve leaked away. Another man's life, his parents misery. His head was deep in his hands, hidden.
'Captain Rudakov…'
'You are going to be sensible, Michael?'
'Give me time.'
'Get it over, Michael. Finish it now.'
'Give me a few days. You will find I am not a fool. You will have something to send to Moscow.'
'Each day you wait is a wasted day.'
Rudakov beamed over the table, made a dramatic gesture by pulling from a drawer a sheet of blank paper, took his pen from his tunic pocket.
'I have to prepare myself.'
'A few days only.'
'Thank you.' Holly seemed to brighten, as if a great decision had been taken. 'I want to go back to the work cell.
If I do not go now I will not complete my output norm.'
Rudakov shook his head, a tinge of sadness had gathered.
He saw the wreckage of a human being. At that moment the sight gave him no pleasure. He could take no pride in the destruction of a proud man. The collapse had been faster than he would have believed possible. He was vindicated.
The pentothal drugs, the torture electrodes, the beatings, they were not the only way. His approach had been correct, even humane.. .
Holly forced himself up from the chair. He staggered towards the door, and waited for the Orderly to answer Rudakov's call and come to escort him back to the SHIzo block.
They had ravished the supper, raped the soup and bread.
They were left now with a windy ache in the belly, a warmth in the throat, the knowledge that if they were quiet they would not be disturbed for the night hours. No crying from the cell through the wall, no response to Holly's tapping.
But the girl had been an interlude, an interruption. The business of that evening, and each evening that followed, devolved from the experience bank of Mikk Laas.
Mikk Laas on the concrete floor beside Michael Holly and whispering at his ear.
'You can't tunnel out of here, not in winter with twenty degrees below and permafrost. You see that? And it's no better a prospect in the summer. It's the matter of the water table – it's high here. There's a top level of sand and under that runs the water. Anywhere in the camp if you dig a hole more than four feet deep you will have standing water. Then they have another small sophistication – they are very thorough people, never forget that, Michael Holly-beyond the wooden fence there is in summer a ploughed strip, they harrow it to show footprints. Between the wooden fence and the ploughed strip they have dug into the ground a line of concrete blocks. The blocks are a metre square and a few centimetres thick. They have dug them down into the earth so that if it were possible to cope with the water table and to have a tunnel running under the fence then the weight of the blocks would collapse the workings. Years ago we worked to place the blocks in position, I know their weight, it took two of us to move each one. .. Even if you could disperse the earth, if you had the strength to manage the digging, if you could find the collaborators that you could trust, you still would not succeed by tunnelling. Forget a tunnel.'
Mikk Laas with his bony body pressed against Holly, searching his memory for precedent.
'There is a way that relies on conspiracy, but it is always dangerous to involve others, because then the chance of the
'stoolies' hearing is widened. Back in Camp 19, ten years ago, perhaps eleven, there was a snowstorm as the men were to be marched back from the Factory to the living zone. Two men stayed in the Factory and when their names were shouted for the roll-call others claimed their names. The two men had lifted the floor of the Factory and sheltered underneath and they had smeared the boards with oiled cloths. They knew they would be missed, but they needed those few hours for the trail to grow cold. They knew that the dogs would be loosed to search through the living zone and the Factory, but they hoped that the cloths would have dulled their scent to the dogs. It was a Friday when they went under the boards, and they hoped that by the Sunday the heat would have gone and with the work place not in use they might find a place on the wire to climb and run. I said the guards were thorough, Michael Holly… They were shot on the Factory wire.'
Mikk Laas would sometimes shake his old stubble-crested head at Michael Holly, as if there was a futility in all he said.
'There have been those who have tried to smash their way out through a broken fence. A lorry will come in, to deliver coal, materials, anything… the men will attempt to seize the lorry and drive it at the fence. Not the gate, because the gate is reinforced. .. They will set the lorry in gear and hide on the floor of the cab and hope the machine-gun spray misses them. To me that plan is useless. Even if you break the fence and clear the compound you have woken all hell and its jackals. They will come after you with jeeps, you have aroused them. It is a way that has been tried and it is hopeless.'
Mikk Laas with his spindle fingers holding tight to Michael Holly's hand.
'To have any chance the man must go as soon as darkness falls. He must use the whole night of darkness to get clear of the camp. If he goes in summer then he has a short night. If he goes in winter he has a long night, but the snow track also. That is the choice. There is another thing, Holly.
Should you leave the camp, should you get a kilometre clear, ten kilometres, a hundred kilometres, what have you achieved then? Where has that taken you?'
The last night, the last night of fifteen for Michael Holly in the SHIzo cell. He wondered whether he would ever again see the old Estonian.
'You would go for the wire, Mikk Laas?'
'If a man is careless for his life… yes, I would go for the wire.' in the early evening?'
'Just before six in winter, before the guard change.'
'Wire-cutters?'
'You would need an accomplice. There are some zeks who would have the power to get cutters from a guard…
You would need a 'baron'.'
'And outside the wire?'
'You should not ask me. In thirty years I have not been outside the wire or the transport convoy.' it is better with an accomplice?'
'You cannot do without a friend. You are blind outside the fence.'
'Mikk, Mikk Laas… you were a partisan…?' Holly's head was buried in his hands, and his fingers were white as they pressed down on his skull.
'I was a partisan, or a terrorist, or a freedom-fighter… '
'You hit German barracks, Soviet convoys?'
'And we ran and we hid… sometimes we attacked, not often.. . I am not proud, Michael Holly, I do not have to pretend. Mostly we ran and we hid.'
'When you attacked what followed your action?'
'Reprisals.' Mikk Laas grated the word in hatred, spat it from his tongue.
'When you attacked you knew that reprisals would follow?'
'We knew.'
'They shot people in reprisal because of what you had done?'
'Some they shot, some they transported.'
'You knew what would happen? Each time you planned an attack you knew what would happen?'
