Accidental agent, p.19
Accidental Agent, page 19
Turning to the typewritten English translation, marked by Tippexed alterations and the translator’s margin comments in pencil, Charles read:
Since I was in that remote region, the region of my last camp, and with time to spare before the flight back to Moscow, I told my driver to take me to it. He was puzzled. ‘There’s nothing there, it was closed years ago. Just the huts and the wire and some of the old guards who have nowhere else to go.’
‘Take me.’
It was farther from the airport than I thought and there was fresh snow, unmarked by other car tracks. It was fortunate that the driver knew the way because I should never have found it, hidden in a clearing in the midst of the forest. The iron gates were open and, judging by the depth of snow piled up against them, had been so since autumn. The grey sky was breeding more snow now and on either side the high outer fence stretched into the blurred distance, sagging in places. The watchtowers stood like tall black cranes, one of them with a dangerous list. Inside the wire, the huts were squat white shapes with here and there a misshapen one where the roof had collapsed. The doors at the ends, shielded by overhangs, were mostly shut but some sagged open on rotted hinges.
I told my driver to wait and keep the engine and heater running. Then I walked slowly through the gates. There were other footprints in the snow leading to the first hut, a larger H-shaped one which used to be the guardroom. Behind it was the inner fence with another set of open gates. Within that fence were the huts. The guardroom door opened before I reached it. I wasn’t surprised. The sight of a shiny black ZiL and an official in a long black overcoat with a sable astrakhan and matching gloves was not a common one for the wretches within. A hunched figure hobbled out, muffled in old clothes and using a stick. He hurried over as if afraid to miss me.
‘Greetings, greetings, I am Kholopov, Ivanovich Kholopov. I was sergeant here. I am your guide, if you wish.’
He had a thin dirty face and his lips were never still, working continuously. He looked smelly. I knew he would be, I knew exactly how he would smell, but I had no need to get that close.
‘I know the camp well, I know everything about it, I have been here nearly thirty years. I worked here, I was sergeant of the guards.’
I took off one glove and fished out a few coins from my coat pocket. I didn’t bother to count them. He held out his hand, his glove worn through on the palm, and I dropped them into it without touching him.
‘Thank you, thank you kindly. What would you like to see – the kitchen, the offices, the punishment cells, the graveyard, the huts, the bathhouse? It is all empty, all available.’
‘Everything. Show me everything.’
That puzzled him. ‘Of course, of course, I can show you every hut, every bunk. Only there are very many and it will take time—’
‘I will tell you when to stop.’ I noticed now that he had a twitch in his left cheek.
‘With pleasure, it is pleasure. Please follow me.’
We crunched through the snow together, slowly because of the curious way he hobbled. He told me about the building of the camp in the 1930s, initially by the first prisoners sent to it who lived – and often died – in holes in the ground until the huts were up. He described its expansion, then its gradual contraction after the death of Stalin until its closure in the Gorbachev era, by which time it housed only a few politicals, as he called us.
‘But when Comrade Gorbachev let the prisoners go the authorities forgot about us, the guards and administrators. We stayed, we had nowhere to go. How can we go anywhere? Where could we go? There is no work for us here but we cannot afford to move. Unless they open the camp again.’ His laugh became a prolonged cough. ‘We have pensions but they are a pittance, which is why we have to beg from generous visitors such as yourself.’
We reached the first of the huts inside the inner wire. The number one was still just visible in faded white on the wooden door. ‘We can go in if you want but there is nothing there, nothing to see. They’re all the same. In this block there are numbers one to thirty-nine, the rest are in the other block. Twenty prisoners to a hut but sometimes there were more. They are all the same, the huts. So were the prisoners. Over there are the camp offices and the punishment cells and the bathhouse and the sick bay and our own quarters. They are more interesting. These are just huts.’
I offered him a cigarette. He glanced as if to check that he had not misunderstood, then grabbed one. ‘Thank you, thank you.’ His eyes lingered on the packet, which he couldn’t read because they were American, Peter Stuyvesant. His eyes lingered too on my gold lighter. ‘Number thirty-seven,’ I said. ‘Take me to thirty-seven.’
The cigarette seemed to give him energy and his lop-sided hobble through the rows became more rapid. The smoke was good and pungent in the cold air.
‘You see, they are all the same,’ he said again when we reached it.
‘Open it.’
I sensed he was reluctant, probably because of the effort involved. He put his cigarette between his lips, leaned his stick against the wall, pushed down on the handle and put his shoulder to the door. It was obviously stiff at first but then opened so freely that he nearly lost his balance. He stood back so that I could look in. ‘Nothing to see, just the bunks. They’re all the same.’
He had to move as I stepped in. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. There were sprinklings of snow on the earth floor beneath the closed wooden window-hatches. The ceiling was low, the wooden double bunks lined the sides, some with broken slats, others still with remnants of old straw. The gangway down the middle was too narrow for two to walk side by side and to get between the bunks you had to go sideways. There was an old metal bucket on the floor by the door and a musty smell. It felt colder inside than out.
I walked two-thirds of the way down and stopped by the lower bunk on the left side. It was no different to all the others, of course. My guide hobbled behind me.
‘You knew someone who was here?’ he asked.
I didn’t answer. After another minute or so of fruitless and circular contemplation, I turned back up the aisle. You live with the past but you can’t live it. I left my guide struggling to close the door and headed back towards the gates. The snow was thicker now and the outlines of distant huts rapidly became indistinct. Eventually I heard him shuffling and panting and he caught up with me.
‘Is there anything else – the punishment cells, the camp offices?’
I was between the inner and outer fences, approaching the H-shaped guardroom, when he made one last effort, pointing with his stick. ‘I could show you the cookhouse. We use it. It still has the ovens and pots and pans—’
That made me stop and think. ‘No,’ I said. ‘That was the guards’ cookhouse. The cookhouse for the prisoners was that one, there.’ I pointed at a long low building just inside the inner fence.
He followed my gaze, then looked back at me, his lips still for once. ‘You are right. I had forgotten. I have been here too long, I am too familiar. But you, how could you—’
‘I was here.’
We stared at each other in a long silence, but for the hiss of the snow. Those three words, three simple words, sunk into him like stones in a pond. Who were the prisoners, the real prisoners? And how could I be a senior official with a ZiL and furs? I took the cigarettes and the remaining coins from my pocket. He dropped his stick in the snow and held out his cupped hands. He was still staring, uncomprehending, as my car pulled away.
At the foot of the original Russian text was a handwritten note in English, in Badger’s characteristic forward-sloping hand and his usual brown ink: So you see, Charles, we are all prisoners really, even the guards. Tell your people who doubt my motivation – is this not enough?
Charles closed that volume of Josef’s file and put it with its mate. Then he picked up Badger’s file, a slim single volume also buff-coloured but this time with a red stripe, a different number system and a white stick-on label with heavy black lettering saying, ‘Closed. Do not digitise.’ He had stuck that on himself years before, proof of rare premonition. It meant the case had remained secret and, unlike digitised files, was fully recoverable.
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2019
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Alan Judd, Accidental Agent
