Gerald Seymour - Archangel

Holly swayed on his feet. He looked past Rudakov's head to the curtain. He focused on the place where the draught blew a small bulge in the cotton.

'Those who sent you here, those who sent you on your mission against the people of the Soviet Union, they are from your past. Is that a lie? You are not at your home, you have not crossed a bridge in Berlin… you are in Mordovia, in a Strict Regime camp. Their arm is not long enough, not strong enough, they cannot lift you out from here ..

The bell rang, metallic and screeching. The call for the camp to hurry to the Kitchen. For the first in line the soup is warm, only for the first.

'Can I go now?'

'The pig swill they feed you, that is the future. You are learning well and quickly. The past has nothing for you, nothing, the past has abandoned you. Those that sent you here have forgotten you, buried you, stamped down the earth on your memory. I speak the truth, yes? If they had not abandoned you then you would not be here, you would not be wanting to run the width of the compound to drink the shit you wouldn't give your dog at home. Think on that… '

'Can I go now?'

'Enjoy your dinner, enjoy your future,' Rudakov leaned back in his chair and his face was happy with a smile, then he snapped to his feet. 'I will take you back to the cage… and in the morning I will give the order that you are to be called by any name you want.'

They went together into the night and, when the inner gate was opened, Rudakov called at Holly's back, 'Good night, Michael Holly, good night. Think of those who sent you here, think of how they are spending their evening.

Think of it when you are in the Kitchen line, when you are eating, when you have gone to your bunk. Piss on them, Michael Holly.'

Holly walked steadily along a stamped snow path, and the laughter from behind gusted to his ears.

'We are going to meet often, Michael Holly. You will learn that I can be a better friend to you than those who sent you here.'

The inner gates of the Zone scraped shut, and Holly strode on towards the doors of the Kitchen where the end of the queue spilt out from the light.

The sunburn prickled at the Deputy Under Secretary's neck.

First day back from the winter holiday, the first morning that he had worn again his white shirt and knotted his tie and refound the quiet striped suit that was his favourite.

Two weeks on the beach at Mombasa, not in a hotel of course, but in the bungalow of an old friend who had survived freedom and independence in Kenya and still made a living out of East Africa's import and export trade. It was many years since the Deputy Under Secretary had taken such a holiday; his previous inclination would have been towards fishing the west country salmon rivers or stalking the Scottish moors. But his wife had said that it was time for an opportunity to wear something other than thick tweeds.

And the sunshine would do him good, she had said, would help with the arthritis that nagged at his left hip joint.

Sunshine with a vengeance. Ninety degrees fahrenheit while the Century staffers were shivering in London. The Deputy Under Secretary had known heat before, but that was in the dim and dark ages when he had been young and ambitious, working the Counter Insurgency ticket in faraway Malaya and Kenya. Twenty years before he had known the draught-less heat of temporary offices in Kuala Lumpur and Nairobi, but God, you lost the habit of it. At the direction of his wife he had taken fourteen full days in the sun that beat back from the Indian Ocean's azure. He had greased himself in oil and he had cooked and broiled and yearned for the magic hours of noon and six when he could down a life-saving tumbler of gin and lime. The company had been good, the talk relaxing and buoyant, but limited for all that. The Deputy Under Secretary could talk of his host's prospects and disappointments, he could learn of the problems of digging out foreign exchange and hard currency in the Third World, the tribulations over the renewal of Residence Permits, the difficulties of keeping reliable servants, but of his own world he must remain silent. The Deputy Under Secretary headed the Secret Intelligence Service of the United Kingdom, and that was not a subject matter for gossip and conversation on a bougainvillaea-fringed veranda as the lights of the fishermen's dug-outs floated inside the coral reef… No bloody way.

He was a man who could be honest with himself, and in honesty he could say that he was both pleased and relieved to be back at his desk on a grey Monday morning in London. And at the same time ashamed of the affliction that he had brought down on himself. Self Inflicted Wound, that was how they had referred to sunburn back in the old days of Counter Insurgency. In CI days you thought twice about taking your bloody shirt off. The Deputy Under Secretary had no one but himself to blame for the irritation that his starched collar created just below the line of his neatly cut hair. Silly and stupid, the sort of thing he might have done as a child, pathetic for a man of his age.

He snapped shut a file on his desk, reached for his briefcase and extracted the small tin of vaseline.

He heard the chatter of Maude Frobisher's typewriter in the outer office, the pattern beat that indicated that she had steam up, and with a slight secretiveness he loosened his collar and pulled down his tie and wiped a -smear of the vaseline across the offending skin. If word of the DUS's discomfort reached beyond his office then there would be a titter around Century House, from Library in the basement to Administration on the Tenth.

The Deputy Under Secretary was a recent arrival at Century. It was less than a year since he had marched into this office, having forsaken the job of Director General of the Security Service for what he regarded as a promotion, while the men of Century recoiled at what they saw as a political insult. Security and Intelligence were distant half-brothers. Little fraternal love existed between these two clandestine arms of government. The move from Leconfield House to Century House crossed a chasm of prejudice and suspicion. Different animals and different beings, from separate heritages and upbringing. The movement of the Deputy Under Secretary had been ordered by the Prime Minister as a punishment to Intelligence, the senior service.

A rare grimace could form at the Deputy Under Secretary's lips. It had been Intelligence's own Self Inflicted Wound that had lifted him from the status of a policeman to that of a ranking diplomat. Excessive secrecy, unwillingness to consult with senior politicians, reluctance to uncover the hands of cards on the table of missions and operations, and for all that covertness there had been no great efficiency and success.

'I'll not be treated as a damned security risk,' the Prime Minister had said to the Deputy Under Secretary, i'll not tolerate activities that can blow up in our faces which I haven't known about.'

The Deputy Under Secretary's brief was clear and con-cise. The Service was to be cleansed. Intelligence was to be scrubbed free of the impurities of independent action. It would win him few friends in the offices of Century, few cosy evenings with his subordinates in the clubland of Mayfair. But with the Prime Minister at his shoulder and access to the seat of government a telephone call away, the new master in Century found such small irritations as insignificant as the raw blistered skin below his collar.

Tomorrow he would tell his wife to put out a shirt of softer cotton.

As the new man at Century wielding the new broom, he expected that decisions and policies would come to his desk.

When his reorganization plan was completed then he could anticipate greater delegation, but not yet, not while he was imposing his will on the Service. The In Tray memoranda soared in a hillock on his desk. Busily he scribbled in a scratchy copperplate hand that had been taught him by a schoolmistress from the hills of Brecon his thoughts and directives in the margins of the typed sheets. He worked briskly and with a stolid aptitude. Everything in front of him he read, down to the last words. That was the way to retain control of the job.