Gerald Seymour: Archangel

Not easy to prise at the rim of the bolt, because this was a purpose-built carriage. No ordinary carriage, not subject to any hasty conversion to ensure its usefulness, but out of the railway factory yards of Leningrad and designed only for transporting the prisoners. A walkway for the guards, and compartments to separate the convicts into manageable groups, each fitted with small hatches for the dropping of their black bread rations, and unmoveable benches and shelves for a few to sleep on. The carriages had their name.

The Stolypin carriage carried the name of the Tsarist minister struck down by an assassin seventy years before. The new men of the Kremlin were not above the simplicity of taking a former idea and adapting it to their needs. The walls, the bars, the bolts and the locks remained; only the prisoners of the regime had changed.

They had brought Holly by car from the Lefortovo gaol to the train while Muscovites still slept. He had barely slept after the meeting with the Consul from the Embassy and the escort of men in the khaki uniforms of the Komitet Gosu-darstvennoi Bezopasnosti had taken him still drowsy from the back seat to the train at a far platform. The one who wore on his blue shoulder flash the insignia of major's rank had shaken his hand and grinned a supercilious smile. Into the carriage, the door slammed, the bolt across, the key turned.

Two other men for company. Perhaps they had been loaded on the train many hours before Holly, because they seemed to him to be sleeping when he had first seen them in the darkened carriage. He had not spoken then, they had not spoken since. A barrier existed between them. But they watched him. All through the morning, as they sat on the makeshift bunks, they stared without comment at the kneeling figure who ground away at the rust around the bolt.

The work at the bolt, mindless and persistent, allowed the thoughts of Michael Holly to flow unfettered. The week before had stretched the distance of a lifetime. And the lifetime had ended in a death, and death was the carriage that rolled, shaking and relentless, towards the East.

Where to go back to, where to find the birth? Months, weeks, days – how far to go back? The coin had found the central stem of the bolt, the rust shell was dispersed. The bolt was not strong, arthritic with age and corrosion. How far to go back?

Not the childhood, not the parentage, that was a different story, that was not the work of the last crowded hours.

Forget the origins of the man.

What of Millet? Complacent, plausible Millet. But neither was Millet a part of these last days, nor was the journey to Moscow, nor the rendezvous that was aborted, nor the arrest and the trial. Millet had a place in the history of the affair, but that place was not in its present, not in its future.

Where did the present begin?

Michael Holly, now on his knees on a Stolypin carriage floor, and unshaven because they would not permit him a razor, and with the hunger lapping at his belly, had been a model prisoner in the Vladimir gaol 200 kilometres east of the capital. A foreigner, and housed on the second floor of the hospital block in the cell that it was said had held the pilot Gary Powers and the businessman Greville Wynne.

Down for espionage, given fifteen years by the courts.

Everyone from the governor to the humblest creeping

'trustie' knew that Michael Holly would serve only a mini mal proportion of those fifteen years. There was a man in England, there would be an exchange. So they gave him milk, they gave him books to read, they allowed food parcels from the Embassy. They waited, and Michael Holly waited, for the arrangements to be made. The Political Officer at Vladimir said that it would not be too long, and the interrogations had been courteous, and the warders had been correct. When they had taken him from the hospital block with his possessions and spare clothes in a cloth sack he had smiled and shaken hands and believed that the flight was close, Berlin he had thought it would be. In Lefortovo holding prison he had learned the truth across a bare scrubbed table from the Consul sent by the Embassy. An obsequious little man the Consul had been, crushed by the message that he brought. The Consul had stumbled through his speech and Holly had listened. .. It's not that it's anyone's fault, Mr Holly, you mustn't think that. It's just terribly bad luck, it's the worst luck I've heard of since I've been here, that's eight years. It was all set up – well, you know that. People had worked very hard on this matter, you really have to believe that…

Well, we can't deliver. That's what it's all about now. A swap is a swap, one man to be exchanged for another. It was you and this fellow, and we can't deliver… I'm dreadfully sorry, Mr Holly, it's the most extraordinary thing but the chap's dead, snuffed it. He had the best medical treatment -well, you'll not be interested in that.. .'

The bolt shifted. Holly strained with his fingers to twist the coin under the lip of the bolt. The bolt had moved a millimetre, perhaps two.

'… But I can assure you that people back in London were really most upset at this development… I'm afraid the Soviets are going to take rather a hard line with you now, Mr Holly. There's no point in my not being frank… The Foreign Ministry informs us now that, since your parents were both born Soviet citizens, under Soviet law you are a Soviet citizen also. I know, Mr Holly… you were born in the United Kingdom, you were brought up there, you were in possession of a valid British passport when you travelled to Moscow. The Soviets are going to disregard all that.

We've had a hell of a job getting this degree of consular access. I want you to know that. We said they couldn't have the corpse if we didn't get it – that's by the by – but it's understood by both sides that this is the last of such meetings. You're being transferred to the Correctional Labour Colonies, but you won't be classified as a foreigner, you won't be in the foreigners' camp. They're going to take you beyond our reach… Mr Holly, you've always proc-laimed your innocence of the charges and accusations made against you. From our side, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have been very firm too. You are innocent as far as Her Majesty's Government is concerned. We're not wavering from that position. You understand that, Mr Holly? We deny absolutely that you were involved in any nonsensical espionage adventure. It's very important that we continue to take that line, you can see that, I'm sure. Mr Holly, the British government knows that you have supported your parents most generously during their retirement. Your parents will not be abandoned by us, Mr Holly, just as we will not abandon the stance that you were completely innocent of trumped-up charges. You do understand me, Mr Holly…?'

The bolt rose a centimetre.

There was a dribble of sweat at Holly's forehead. Too much space now for the coin to be useful, his finger could slide under the lip. The rough metal edge cut into his finger tip. An eddy of chill air swirled into the carriage, fastening on his knuckles. He heard, louder than before, the dripping clatter of the wheels on the rails beneath him.

'… Look, Mr Holly, I've painted the picture black, because that's the only honest thing to do. We'll keep trying, of course, that goes without saying, but in the present climate of relations there's little chance of your situation altering dramatically. You'll be going to the camps and you have to come to terms with that. What I'm saying is – well, you have to learn to live in those places, Mr Holly. Try and survive, try and live with the system. Don't kick it, don't fight it. You can't beat them. I've lived here long enough to know. In a few years things may change, I can't promise that, but they may. And you have my word that you won't be forgotten, not by Whitehall, not by Foreign and Commonwealth. It's going to boil down to keeping your pecker up, looking on the best side of things. You'll do that, won't you, old chap… There's not really anything more for me to say. Only I suppose, Good Luck… '