Holly leaned against the doorway, and covered his face.
No man should see him. God, how were they so brave? He had unleashed that bravery. Easy enough to burn the Commandant's hut, to poison the garrison's water, to cut through the two fences of barbed wire. Nothing when set against the courage of sitting cramped on the floor of the Kitchen when safety beckoned through the opened gate. He felt the girl against him. He felt her arm slide surely round his waist.
'There has to be a time when we go through the gate.'
She had a small, husky voice. 'Not when they tell us, when they bribe us. In our own time we go through.'
Clumsily Holly slipped his own arm around the girl.
Through her tunic his fingers found the hard rib bones, played on them, climbed them. 'Before you were here, before t h a t… what did you do?'
'I was a pianist.'
'When this camp no longer exists as a prison for a pianist, that is the time to go to the gates. When it is destroyed, when the camp is as if it had never been. When there is no place here for a pianist.'
His cheek rested on the top of her cap. He heard the struggling whine of an engine, the clanking of tracks biting on ice and tarmac. The coming of the tank. The roar spread through the compound, through the Kitchen, through Holly, through the girl who was against him.
Byrkin ran round the corner wall of the Kitchen. Panting, pointing towards the gulf of the opened gate.
'You hear it, Holly?'
'I hear it.' His arm fell from Morozova. 'Are you ready for it?'
Byrkin grimaced. 'As we'll ever be.'
Holly turned towards the girl, searching her face for weakness. Only the sweet brown eyes, only the mouth firm in defiance. When he broke away, her hand tried to check him, for a moment, and then her grip was broken.
Together, hugging the shadow of the huts, sprinting on the open ground, Holly and Byrkin came to Hut 4. They crawled forward over the frozen mud, beneath the floorboards. Holly smelt the paraffin, saw the bottles, the strips of torn blanket, the unlit torches, the boxes of matches.
And all the time the coming thunder of the tank.
'Left side, behind the turret, right?'
'That's where it is… I heard it said once that when they went into Budapest they even had 'Petrol' written on the screw cap.'
Level with them was Hut 3, fifty yards away. If the tank came straight through the gates it would bisect the open space between the two huts.
Holly reached out and took a handful of blanket. He felt sick from the smell of paraffin.
|
The troops who would follow the tank into the compound were gathered in two squads on either side of the approach to the gates. A little way apart from them was Kypov. Apart because he was not in command. He might wear his helmet, he might carry a pistol in his hand, but would not feel the sweet joy of participation in the first assault. He would be used later, as a gauleiter to administer prisoners already broken and defeated. His own men of the MVD guard were a full hundred metres further back with orders not to advance or in any way impede the attack by the regular troops. A bitter pill.
He was astonished to see the Colonel General approaching him.
'You are not in command?' asked Kypov.
'My colleague can manage adequately.'
'A strange decision.'
'Perhaps… I haven't much stomach for this fight.'
'None of us can choose our duty,' Kypov shouted above the thunder of the tracks.
Adimov heard the muffled sounds of the tank through the reinforced wall of his SHIzo cell. He lay where they had tossed him, in a sludge of dull pain. The sergeant in the Guard House had exacted the full toll from his ribs, his kidneys, the flesh at the fall of his stomach.
'Old man, next c e l l… I told them the tank was coming
… I gave them warning… '
A faint voice. 'Perhaps it was better if they had not known.'
'They have a better chance to fight it.'
'The harder they fight, the harder they will be smashed.'
'I tried..
'However long you are in the camps, wherever you are sent, you will be known for what you have done.'
Adimov closed his eyes, and his cell was filled with the crescendo of the tank's advance.
'He's tall, dark-haired. Usually in a group of three or four.
Very straight in the back, that's the give-away. Once the tank's in, nail him.'
The Adjutant crawled away across the roof of the Administration building, leaving the four marksmen to prepare for their work.
When he peered over the low parapet wall he saw the tank charging at the gates, full speed for the engine of 130 horse power.
They lay on their stomachs in the doorway of the Kitchen. A daft place to be, but neither would miss the entrance of the tank into the compound.
'Are you afraid?' Morozova asked.
'Wetting my pants, darling,' said Poshekhonov.
The tank loomed between the open gates. Above the engine howl they heard the noise of splintering wood as it took the right side gate-post in its rush. Poshekhonov reached for the girl, pulled her underneath his body. Shit, she felt good. Everyone who was near the doorway heard Poshekhonov's laughter, and thought a madness had taken him.
Feldstein and Chernayev crouched beside the window, peeping through cracked glass that distorted the armoured hull of the T34.
Feldstein said, 'I want them all killed. I'm ashamed of myself, I want every man in that tank killed.'
Chernayev said, if we beat the tank, then I don't care. If we beat the tank, then I don't care if they drop a bastard bomb on us.'
A dimming grey light as the tank plunged into the compound. A grey-brown shape against the grey-white ground, and speeding towards the grey-black huts. A monster that mesmerized its watchers. Something foul from the time before history.
Holly had the blanket rags in his hand, felt the oil run slippery through his fingers. Byrkin gripped an uncapped bottle of paraffin in one hand, and in the other was an unlit torch made from a ring of cloth wrapped round a short stick. Another man held a crowbar. Another kept safe, in large work-scarred fists, a box of matches.
'Wait… ' whispered Byrkin.
The tank hammered towards the gap between Hut 3 and Hut 4.
'Wait
God… how long? The tank blotted out the perimeter arc lights, it swerved in the snow, hunting for a target. The main armament barrel heaved and swung. He saw the thrashing motion of the tracks that he must clear when he hurled himself onto the platform. God… What did you hold onto? Byrkin was coiled tight beside him.
From underneath Hut 3 came the sharp flash of a lit match. A second, a third.
From underneath Hut 3 came the first firing from the machine-gun.
The whine, endless and onward, of the tracer ricocheting from armour-plate.
The first bottle rose easily in its arc between the base of Hut 3 and the tank. A brilliant vapour of light caught the tank and its turret-number and its radio aerial and its gun-barrel. The second bottle and the third curved from Hut 3. The pitch of the engine sagged. The driver knew he must back away from the fire, so that his gunner could drop the main armament barrel for the dose-quarters contact.
He veered to the right, towards Hut 4, then to the left, aligning the gun-barrel towards the source of annoyance.
Closer to Hut 4 than to Hut 3. Blind to Hut 4, preoccupied only with Hut 3.
