Golgotha by John Gardner

Author:John Gardner [Gardner, John]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

21

The Commandant of Camp Fifteen was a big, raw-boned Colonel: a man whose face showed his ancestry lay among the old peasant families of Russia as plainly as if he had displayed a label on his chest to proclaim the fact.

The Commandant, a career officer of the Soviet Army, had no sentiment about the job he held in Scotland. To him, the orders were there to be obeyed. He obeyed them to the letter. If the General Staff, or High Command, issued a directive saying he was to shoot all the prisoners, he would have done it without turning a hair. Equally, if the order was to shoot himself, he would have taken a pistol to his head immediately.

When the directive had arrived, the previous evening, to separate Sir Graham Eldrich from the other prisoners, the job was done within ten minutes. Half of that time was taken up in checking Eldrich’s name against his prison number. Prisoners at Camp Fifteen lived without names.

Some knew, or recognised, each other; but they all carried numbers stencilled on to their drab grey overalls. It was forbidden to use real names.

When he was called, prisoner 44533A had been eating his slice of dark bread, dipping it in the cup of dishwater soup that was his evening meal, and two armed guards led him away to a block half a mile from the main concentration of huts.

While the whole camp ran on a high-security basis, with four electrified fences surrounding it, this small, concrete block, set in one corner of the complex, was cut off from the rest of the camp by an extra fence. From the air it looked like a small square in the top left-hand corner of the huge rectangle.

Sir Graham Eldrich — Prisoner 44533A — looked an old man; gaunt, with shaking hands; the once famous shock of white hair now thin and unkempt, while the normally erect stance had disintegrated to a shambling and stooping attitude, through the meagre diet and back-breaking work forced upon him so suddenly. In fact, Graham Eldrich was only fifty-six years of age. He looked seventy. He also looked as though he was dying.

The cell, where he slept for that one night, was more comfortable than the stinking barrack block which he normally shared with fifty other inmates. There was a bed and blankets; privacy; a decent toilet and — to his surprise — a reasonable meal waiting for him. The Commandant knew the value of presenting prisoners in moderately good condition when senior KGB officers wanted to see them. This prisoner was also provided with a shave and haircut, by the military barber, and an entire change of clothes.

At least he looked, and smelled, clean, fresh and slightly rejuvenated when they unlocked the cell, telling him to follow them down the short corridor leading to a bare room, equipped only with a table (screwed to the floor) around which stood four, equally immovable, chairs. The guards told him to sit down, their English confined only to the simple words, ‘Sit there.

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