He spoke to the Laundry worker as they were marched to the Factory, and the boy imagined his trousers being ripped down from his waist and the hands of an old man on his skin, and he nodded in dumb acquiescence.
Adimov could provide as Holly had asked, for the coming Sunday.
Morning roll-call.
A frost gathering on the noses and eyebrows of the zeks in their ranks. The checking of names. Rudakov stood beside Kypov, at his shoulder. Michael Holly was always in the rear rank for roll-call, and always Rudakov could see him.
There was a stature that put him above the other men in the forward ranks.
'Holly… ' The bark of the sergeant who held the clip board and the pencil.
'Present…' The reply drifting over the heads from the back.
Another name, another answering call. Rudakov walked towards the sergeant.
'Get Holly here.' Rudakov said.
The flow of the sergeant was broken.
'Holly to the front. To the Political Officer. Ignatiev… '
'Present…'
Holly moved from his place in the rear line. He skirted the end of the rank and came slowly forward. Perhaps, Rudakov thought, there was ah insolence about the way the prisoner approached. Not deliberately delaying, not hurrying.
'Isayev…'
'Present… '
Rudakov watched him come, noted that his tunic for all its padding hung looser now on the Englishman's body than when he had first come to the camp. And all the time that Holly walked, Rudakov could see that his eyes were on him.
That was the difference with this man. Any other would have dipped his head, avoided the boldness of the close gaze. ivasyuk…'
'Present…'
Rudakov permitted Holly to come near to him and when he stopped, only a couple of metres short, then Rudakov stepped forward. He spoke quietly.
'You are ready?'
'Very soon…' There was a distance in Holly's voice.
'When?' The bite of impatience frolm Rudakov.
'Next week… '
'When next week?'
'On Monday, Comrade Captain.'
Rudakov looked into Holly's face, tried to read a message of defeat and was confronted only with a lacklustre mask.
'Do it today.'
'On Monday morning.'
'You waste three more days of your life.'
'On Monday morning.'
There was a shrug from Rudakov. 'So be it… Monday morning. Get back to your place.'
Holly turned away from Rudakov, shambled away towards the wing of the front rank.
There was a flush of excitement running in Rudakov's body. His mind raced. He saw a punched tape jumping in the clamping hold of a telex machine. He saw a typed sheet being hurried from Communications along the corridors of Lubyanka. He saw the gleam of admiration playing on the face of a full Colonel of state security. He saw a telegram of fulsome congratulation being drafted for transmission to Barashevo. In the bag, where all the others had failed…
Rudakov turned cheerfully to Kypov.
'Commandant… Elena is doing Political Education on Sunday evening. She is giving a lecture, but it will be finished early. Would you care to join us afterwards for dinner?
It was the first time such an invitation had been offered.
'Your wife will hardly want to cook.'
'She'll be finished quite early. She's excellent in the kitchen. She would enjoy your company, as I would.' Rudakov grinned. 'We'll break a bottle open. I have a little light one from Tsbilisi.'
'I would enjoy that very much… ' Kypov thought of the file that rested in the safe of his Political Officer. 'I will look forward to the evening.'
'Excellent.'
Rudakov set off for his office in the Administration block.
Though his lips were chapped from the cold he managed to whistle. Something lively that he had picked up like a virus in Magdeburg. And he might be back there soon, in the German Democratic Republic or in Moscow, or perhaps to Prague or Warsaw, or even to Washington… anywhere other than the Dubrovlag. And when he left Barashevo he would be wearing Major's pips on his epaulettes. With a jaunty step, with the tune rippling in his ears, he went to his office.
Behind him the ranks of prisoners trudged towards the gate and the transfer to the Factory compound.
The perimeter path is the only place of privacy in the compound. Each night there are always a few who walk the path, sometimes in company, sometimes alone. The boot-crushed snow of the track holds no eavesdropper, the barbed wire that shields the killing zone offers no hiding-place for a 'stoolie'.
Holly had been the first to leave the hut. There were stars for a ceiling and a misted moon. He was joined by Adimov.
There was a naturalness about their meeting.
'Will you have them?'
'Cutters, food, sheets – I'll have them.'
'By Sunday?'
'I'll have them. Shit, that's the easiest…'
'Give me those and I'll get you out,' Holly said softly.
'Where? Where do we go out?'
There was a grating in Adimov's voice, and his glance roved up against the silhouette lines of the wire and the bare height of the wooden fence. Holly waited, ignoring the frustration of his companion. They walked on to the corner of the compound, the right-angled turn on the perimeter path. Their faces were lost in the grey shadow of the watch-tower.
A slow smile from Holly. 'We go out here.'
Adimov darted his eyes at Holly. 'Under the tower…?'
'Right.'
'That's crap, that's suicide… '
'That's the safest place in the compound.' it's right under him, under his gun.'
'Under him, and out of sight of him. It's the safest place.'
'I'm not having my bloody guts blown o u t…'
'Look at the place, look at it… ' Holly had seized Adimov's sleeve, gripped him, turned his body back towards the angle and the fences and the wire. 'Under the tower there is darkness. The lights are blocked by the tower and by the stilts. From the other towers they cannot look here because to do so they look into the other tower's searchlight.'
'Two lots of wire, one wooden fence.'
'Right.'
'Shit… I'm not a coward, it's mad…'
'I said I'd get you out, Adimov.'
'Under the tower, under the gun, where if we fart he'll hear us, and we cut through. two wire fences and we climb a wooden fence… shit, Holly, what tells you I've the balls for it…?'
'You have a wife with cancer of the stomach, that's why you'll come with me. That's why I chose you.'
