Archangel by Gerald Seymour Read Free Book Online

Soyuz, an emigre organization, of course you know that.. . They have one son, born Mikhail Holovich and now thirty years old. In the eyes of the British the boy had their citizenship, but we see the matter differently. To us he will always be a Soviet citizen. Mikhail Holovich became Michael Holly, but the change of a name does not discard nationality. He is Soviet. Holovich is an engineer, small-scale turbines. He worked for a firm in the area of London, and that company began to negotiate with one of our Ministries for the sale of their products to the Soviet Union. During his childhood, Holovich had been taught Russian by his mother and it was ostensibly for that reason that his company asked him to visit Moscow - a quite spurious reason because we supply most adequate and experienced interpreters for commercial negotiations with foreign concerns. Before arriving in the Soviet Union, Holovich was recruited by the British espionage service and was given instructions for a contact — I don't have to go into detail, these are matters available to me. He was caught and he was sentenced. In the interests of detente, because of our belief in the value of friendly relations where possible, our government agreed to return this criminal to the British in exchange for a Soviet citizen falsely accused in London. We were giving them gold, they were handing us tin. We made this offer on humanitarian grounds. The gaolers of Holo-

    vich reneged on the agreement, the exchange will not take place. In Moscow, the Ministry of the Interior after consultation with the Ministry of Justice has determined that the full rigour of the law shall now be turned on Holovich.
    One year ago he was sentenced to a term of fifteen years imprisonment. Up to now he has known the soft ride of the foreigners' block at Vladimir.. . From now he will be treated as a Soviet offender, that is why he is not at Camp 5 . . .
    He is a spy, he is a traitor, perhaps he is fortunate not to have faced the extreme penalty provided for in the Criminal Code.'
    The Major strode back towards the window and his boots sounded drum rattle over the hollow spacing under the bare boards of his office. A spartan, soldierly room.
    'This Holovich, he is a self-confessed spy?'
    The Captain laughed quietly. 'They were dilatory in Moscow. He is not self-confessed. That is to come . . .'
    Always when the snow had recently fallen there was a damp fog over the camp, a link between the low grey cloud and the whitened ground. It was hard for the Major to see the little procession that moved away from the Administration block towards the heart of the camp, but he fancied he could still make out one dark head amongst the hazing image of the retreating column.
    There were faces at the glass of the windows watching their approach.
    A timbered hut, a hundred feet long and balanced on stilts of brickwork, with smoke flowing from a central chimney.
    There were other huts visible as outlines in the mist of early afternoon, but it was to the hut with the figure '2' painted in yellow on the doorway that they were led. The snow had drifted at one end, at the beck of the wind, so that it reached almost to the eaves of the roof.
    And the old man at Pot'ma had said that self-pity was not acceptable.
    Holly kicked the snow from his shoes against the jamb of the door and climbed the few steps into Hut 2.

Chapter 4
    There was a smell from Hut 2 that was unlike anything Holly had known before. Stronger than the smells of Lefortovo or Vladimir, more pervasive than the smells of the Lubyanka interrogation cells or the train. It was the smell of a hundred bodies that had not been bathed for a week, of a hundred sets of clothes that had been lived and slept in for a week, of excreta and vomit trapped by the windows that had not been opened for a week. It floated in the dull light of the hut, a wall that hung from the wooden rafters to the boards of the flooring. The smell would catch its victims as a spider's web