They were standing side by side, staring at the next man’s shoulder, rocking with the motion of the freight truck. Although there was no guard stopping them from sitting down, there were no benches and the floor was so cold that they’d taken a collective decision to stand, shuffling to keep warm, like a captured herd of animals. Leo occupied a space closest to the tarpaulin sheet. It had come loose, rendering the compartment’s temperature subzero but offering, by way of exchange, a partial view of the landscape as the material flapped open. The convoy was climbing into the mountains following the Kolyma highway-a surface that unrolled meekly across the landscape as though conscious it was trespassing across a wilderness. In the convoy, there were three trucks in total. Not even a car bothered to follow behind to make sure prisoners didn’t jump down and try to escape. There was nowhere to escape to.
Abruptly the highway steepened, the rear of the truck tilting down, angled toward the snow-covered valley to such an acute degree that Leo was forced to grip the steel frame, the other prisoners pressing against him as they slid down. Unable to make the climb, the truck remained stationary, teetering and ready to roll back. The handbrake was yanked up. The engine stopped. The guards unlocked the back, spilling the prisoners onto the road:
– Walk!
The first two trucks had managed to climb over the crest of the hill, disappearing from view. The remaining truck-without the weight of the prisoners-started its engine and accelerated up the hill. Left behind, the convicts trundled, huffing like old men, the guards at the back, guns ready. Set against the terrain, the guards’ swagger seemed slight and absurd-an insect strutting. Observing them through a convict’s eyes, Leo marveled at how different the guards believed themselves to be-men marshaling cattle. He wanted to say, just to see their surprise:
I am one of you.
The idea caught him short. Was he one of them? Smug with power, stupefied by State-allocated importance: he was certain that he had been.
At the crest the highway flattened out. Leo paused, catching his breath, surveying the landscape before him. Blasted by cold air, his eyes watering, he was confronted by the surface of a moon-a sprawling plateau as wide as a city, smoothed with ice and permafrost, pock-marked with craters. The lonely highway sliced an uncertain diagonal, heading toward a mountain larger than any they’d encountered so far: rising out of the plateau like a monstrous camel’s hump. Somewhere at the base was Gulag 57.
As the convicts climbed back into the truck, Leo glanced at the other two vehicles. He had to face up to the fact that Timur wasn’t in the convoy. There was no chance that his friend would’ve gotten into one of those vehicles without making contact with him, even if it was nothing more than a glance across a crowd. Leo hadn’t seen him since yesterday, passing him on the deck of the Stary Bolshevik. After that he’d been shepherded into the transit camp at Magadan where he’d been deloused, inspected by a doctor who’d declared him fully fit, assigned to TFT, tyazoly fezichesky trud, heavy labor, no limitations placed on work duties. Duly processed, he’d waited in one of the large tents erected for the arrivals, the smell of canvas reminding him of makeshift medical facilities during the Great Patriotic War, hundreds of beds crammed together. They’d agreed to find each other that night. Timur hadn’t appeared. Leo had reassured himself with various explanations: there had been some delay and they’d find each other in the morning. It was too risky to ask after him-aside from jeopardizing their cover, Leo might be mistaken for an informer. Unable to sleep, he’d risen early, expecting to see his friend. When they’d been loaded into the trucks, Leo had held back. Comforting explanations for Timur’s absence had become harder to concoct.
Leo was about to meet Lazar for the first time in seven years. Their first encounter, the moment they laid eyes on each other, was perhaps the most dangerous moment in the entire plan. There could be no question of Lazar’s hatred being eroded by time. If he didn’t try and kill Leo outright, he’d announce that Leo was a Chekist, an interrogator, a man responsible for the incarceration of hundreds of innocent men and women. How long could he survive surrounded by those who had been tortured and interrogated? This was why Timur’s presence was essential. They’d predicted a violent reunion. More than that, they’d factored it into their calculations. As a guard Timur could intervene and stop any altercation. Regulations stipulated that Leo and Lazar would be pulled out of the conflict and ordered to the isolator, individual punishment cells. In adjacent cells, Leo would have an opportunity to explain that he was here to free him, that his wife was alive, and that there was no chance he’d ever be released by ordinary means. He either accepted Leo’s help or died a slave.
Running his icy fingers across his newly shaven head, Leo frantically improvised a solution. There was only one option-he’d have to postpone meeting Lazar until Timur caught up. Hiding wouldn’t be easy. Gulag 57 had contracted in size since Stalin’s death both in prisoner numbers and geographical sprawl. Previously it had been composed of many lagpunkts scattered over the mountainside, sub-colonies within a colony, some positioned in such exposed topography and in such poor mining yields that their purpose could only have been death. Gulag 57 had closed all of these smaller barracks, a prison empire whittled back to the main base at the foot of the mountain, the only place where the gold mine had ever produced a viable return. From Leo’s assessment of the blueprints even this central complex was rudimentary. The zona, the controlled area, was rectangular in shape. Although a curved design would have suited the terrain better, law dictated that the zona must be of regular design. There were to be no rounded edges in a Gulag except for the barbed wire, coiled across poles six meters high, sunk two meters deep, forming an outer perimeter. Inside the perimeter there were several sleeping barracks, a communal eating barracks, closed off from the administration center by an inner rectangle of barbed-wire fencing, divisions within divisions, zones within zones. Security was provided by six small guard towers, two substantial vakhta towers-one on either side of the main gate with mounted, heavy machine guns and log-panel protective walls. At each corner of the zona was a smaller tower where officers surveyed the ground through telescopic sights. If the guards fell asleep, or passed out drunk-freedom depended upon scaling the mountain or crossing kilometers of exposed plateau.
Upon arrival Leo would be herded into the inner prisoner zone. Since there were three barracks he could in theory remain inconspicuous, at least for another twenty-four hours. That might give Timur enough time to catch up.
The truck slowed. Wary of being picked off by a zealous sniper in the vakhta, Leo glanced out, his eye drawn to the mountain. The slopes were perilously steep. Against the mountain’s colossal bulk the mine, a series of trenches and man-made streams where clods of earth were washed and sifted for gold, appeared insignificant.
There were shadows in the tops of the two vakhta: guards watching the new arrivals. The towers were fifteen meters high, accessed by a series of rickety ladders that could be pulled up at any time. In between the towers the gates were opened by hand. Guards pushed the timber frames, scratching them across the snow. The trucks entered the compound. From the back of the truck Leo watched as the gates closed behind him.