Free Winston’s War by Michael Dobbs Page B

customers. The graying hair was scraped neatly but thinly across the skull, the skin beneath his mouth was wrinkled, as though the chin had tried to withdraw and seek refuge from the blows. He was not yet forty but looked considerably older.
    “I thought maybe you wouldn't come,” Burgess offered, but didn't extend a hand. The English never did.
    “I thought so too. Particularly when I saw you drinking in the saloon bar. Bit rich for me.”
    “It's on me. What's your poison?”
    “I'd be thankful for a pint of mild, Mr. Burgess.”
    Burgess noted the obsequious “sir” had gone. This was a meeting of equals. Burgess took out a large roll of notes from his pocket and paid for a glass of flat brown liquid. “You couldn't get that in the gulag, could you, McFadden?”
    “We got many things. Brutality and starvation mostly. But there was always plenty of work to fill idle moments.” He drank deep, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. An old scar ran across the hand, dulled by time, and he had a crooked finger that had clearly been broken and badly set.
    “How did you end up in Solovetsky?”
    “Who can tell any more? Through a series of other camps, moved from one to another, forgotten about, rediscovered, moved on. I wasn't a criminal, just unfortunate. That was the problem. You see, they'd completely forgotten why I was there, so they couldn't release me, could they? Not without the proper paperwork. If they'd let me free and made a mistake, they would end up serving thesentence for me. Such things have to be handled correctly. So they kept me, just in case. The only reason I can recall Solovetsky above the many others is because of this.” He indicated his leg.
    “How'd it happen?”
    “We were building a new dock. It was February, I think. Winter in the Arctic Circle. We hadn't seen the sun for weeks. I was ordered to unload a wagon full of heavy timbers. In the dark and the cold, they fell on me.”
    “I thought you said it wasn't an accident.”
    Their eyes met once more, almost as combatants. “When it's thirty degrees below, you've already worked nine hours without food, you can't feel your feet or your hands and the entire pile of logs has frozen solid, you've been beaten twice by the guards that day because the work detail hasn't completed its quota, and they threaten they'll go on beating you until the timbers are unloaded—I don't call that much of an accident. Do you, Mr. Burgess?”
    “You must hate the Russians.”
    “Why should I? Most of my fellow prisoners were Russians.”
    “The Soviets, the guards, then.”
    “Not especially. They simply took over the camps that had been built by the Tsars and didn't know any different. And it was a Soviet doctor who in the end saved my life. I was one of the lucky ones, Mr. Burgess. At the start of the war I was one of many friends, yet today I am the only survivor. They all died, every one of them. That wasn't the Bolsheviks' fault. Except for little Moniek, perhaps.”
    Burgess offered another drink but Mac was still less than halfway through his pint and declined. Burgess ordered another large Jameson's. “So whose fault was it?”
    “The System.”
    “What system?”
    “Any System. Happens everywhere. Politicians and rulers who decide, who decree, and who leave ordinary folk like me to pay for their mistakes. At least one thing about the Russian Revolution, Mr. Burgess, is that when they shot the Tsar at last they got someone to pay for their own mistakes. It's progress of sorts, I suppose.”
    It seemed an excellent time to start playing the game. “In a way that's why I wanted to see you, McFadden. The System. To ask for your help. Do you know I work for the BBC?”
    “No, Mr. Burgess, I didn't. I know quite a lot about you, but not that.”
    “What the hell do you know about me?”
    “That your job involves a deal of writing—judging by the ink smudges on your fingers and the stain on your jacket pocket. It also involves you in a