In the field that stretched out beyond the fence a trio of men stood. One leaned on a shovel while the other two occupied themselves with a wagon loaded with objects encased in sheets of cloth. Removing the slat of wood that comprised the back as few of the objects rolled out onto the earth below. They landed softly, dully, with a strange stiffness. "Smotret'!" a heavily bearded man who had nearly been knocked over by the sacks shouted. He and another man grabbed the top sack from the ground and flung in into the large hole that sat nearby. Then a second, then a third.
"This one's split open," the other man warned.
"Be quick then!" admonished the bearded one. They grabbed opposite ends of the sack and lifted. A slit in the side opened into a wide hole. From the hole a snowy white human hand slid, hanging inertly from the cloth sack. The other man noticed and cried out. They quickly flung the sack into the hole with the others before it could spill its grim contents. The fallen bodies now attended to, they turned their attentions to the wagon and continued the gruesome task. It was a mass grave! A chill froze Roger as he counted at least fifteen sacks thrown into the grave with still at least ten more piled in the cart. For a moment he could only look on in revulsion, without thinking he leaned forward. He heard the snapping of a branch. A crow alighted from above him scolding noisily. The men in the field startled, heads snapped to the direction of the screaming bird. Roger froze, daring not even to breath. The bearded man shrugged, "Well come on, before they start to stink." The two men returned to their task while the third, still leaning against his shovel, looked on. He had best make himself scarce, Roger thought, the perverse trance now broken. Careful not to disturb the foliage further he skirted the edge of the forest until he could no longer see the men. The fence departed from the woods at this point and trailed off into the meadow. The grass was of the scraggly, sparse variety, spotted by a few stands of weed and wildflower not even wide enough to conceal a rabbit let alone a man. Were he to come upon a guard there would be nowhere for him to hide. From the distance the two towering chimneys belched out great clouds of black smoke. Were Hoople not among the men in the grave that is where he would be. Roger took a deep breath and darted along the fence line.
It was well into the evening before he arrived at the encampment that sat in the looming shadows of the twin smelting towers and the factory from which they sprung. Both the factory and the camp were surrounded by a second chain link fence, fifteen feet in height - three lines of wire lined the top, sharp barbs glinting their threat in the evening sun. Various detritus littered the fence area. Broken boards leaned against it as if waiting for some patching job they might find new life in serving; a large stack of split logs were piled almost eight feet up, ancient glass bottles and bird bones littered the ground. Within the fence sat three long rotten wooden buildings that appeared to have once been stables but from the black metal pipes that jutted from the structures expelling thin wisps of smoke, it was clear that horses were no longer their chief residents. A guard watched lazily from his seat on a barrel outside one of the buildings as men milled about the yard. Each man was dressed in precisely the same fashion: illfitting rough tan shirts and dark trousers - the uniform of prisoners. The guard seemed largely unconcerned by the movements of the men; he cast a cursory glance at a small knot of men by the fence but made no effort to bother himself with rising from his resting place to break them up. There was no reason to. In the time it took a man to scale the fence the guard could easily stand, ready his rifle, aim, and fell the escapee before he reached the top. Even if a man were to escape the fence he would still have to elude the cossacks, and beyond the cossacks there was still slim chance he would survive the wilds of Siberia with no food and only the clothes on his back, even in the summer. A whistle blew and the prisoners lined up in two rows - Roger estimated there were at least one hundred of them. The guard reluctantly removed himself from his improvised chair and moved to the front of the lines scanning the men as a matter of course, not truly looking at any of them nor bothering to count them. There was no reason to. He shouted a command in Russian and the lines followed him toward the factory. The Night Shift, Roger figured. A few minutes later another guard leading two lines of filthy, sweat and dirt encrusted workers into the yard. Among the workers, Roger thought he saw the flash of a familiar face before the men disappeared into the barracks.
"Dinner's in ten minutes!" the guard called out. A few minutes later the first of the men shuffled out from the barracks in clean clothes, hands and face thoroughly scrubbed. By the time the dinner bell had rung the men were all back in their line. The guard led the men from the barracks back to the factory area. The third man from the rear, Roger was almost certain of it though he was thinner and far more worn - that was Lt. Commander Jeremy Hoople! He had to get a closer look. Making certain the area was abandoned, he quickly scaled the outer fence. It was a short run to the inner fence. He ducked beside the woodpile, wholly concealing himself from view, and waited.
Twilight was nearing its end as the men came trudging back to their hovels. "I'm just going to get some wood for the stove!" a skinny young man with hair the color of freshly minted copper declared in the accented tones that could only belong to a man of Cardiff. As the young man began to load his twiggish arms with logs Roger whispered,
"You, Taffy!" The copper haired man started, dropping the logs with a clatter. His youthful face peered around the logs, at this distance, with his heavily freckled face and bright eyes he looked more a child than a man. He indicated to himself. "Yes, you." Roger answered, black eyes shining in the moonlight.
"Oi, Paul! You OK?" came a Londoner's voice from the dark of the yard.
"Shhh..." Roger put a finger to his lips.
"Just- just a snake." Paul answered.
"Did you get it?" the other man called, "Could use some proper meat round here!"
"No. It got away." the young man called back.
"More's the pity of it," an Irishman sighed. "I'd sooner eat a sick rat than another cup of borscht and moldy bread."
The young man turned once more to Roger and whispered, "You're an Englishman! Have you come to get us out of here?"
"Yes," Roger replied, though he had no idea quite how he would move so many people. "But I need to ask, do you know a Lt. Comm Jeremy Hoople?"
"Jeremy? Yeah I do! He sleeps in the bunk below me. Why?"
"Could you fetch him for me?" Roger asked. The young man nodded and turned. "Don't forget your logs!" the spy hissed.
"Oh! Right!" Paul quickly gathered the fallen logs and hurried off toward the barrack nearest the fence.
Roger waited in the silence of the ever darkening night for a few minutes when suddenly he heard a rough voice call out, "Hey, where are you going?" Roger guessed the voice to belong to the guard.
"I'm going to see if I can find that snake." another man replied from the darkness.
"Well if you do give me some. I haven't had a morsel of decent meat in a month." How bad must the fare be if snake was considered to be a decent bit of meat? Roger wondered with no small amount of pity for the guard.
"Hey! Hey, you still there?" the voice of the other man hissed from the other side of the log pile.
"Hoople? Is that you?" Roger whispered.
"It is." the man answered peering over the side of the pile. The months of hard labor had left its mark upon, yet not entirely vanquished the boyishness from Lt. Commander Hoople's features. "Do you have word of my sweet Melissa and the children?"
"They miss their father, but they are well." Roger fibbed, shifting his position. He hadn't the slightest how they fared though he dearly hoped it to be the truth with his entire being.
"Thank the Lord for small favors. Paul said you were here to get us out."
"I will do everything in my power to. How many of you are there?"
"Only one hundred fifty of us in this camp."
"There are other camps?"
"Only B Camp now, they're Russians though. They work in the factory. They call us Ve Camp, though amongst ourselves we are C Camp - I suppose it is hardly a rebellion worth mentioning but when there's so little you beyond a name have it feels like something. There used to be an A Camp as well but they had an outbreak of plague. Only five cases in three hundred people but late one night they burned the entire camp to ash. You could hear the crack of the rifles as they killed anyone who managed to escape the burning buildings. I can still hear their distant screams fill my ears some nights, and that stench from the greasy smoke that settled over the factory! Old Sean Guire developed it as well - he slept in the Barracks next to mine - I saw the bubous for myself, great greyish-black lumps near the groin. He threw himself down the mine shaft rather than risk the same thing happening to us. He was a good man Old Sean, he'd been here longest of any of us - don't know how he made it through the winter. They didn't even notice he was gone." Hoople shook his head in disgust. "There's always new ones to take their place anyhow."
"There won't be any shipments any longer. The man responsible has been jailed."
Hoople snorted disdainfully, "Jailed? For what he's done he should have been hung. Who was it?"
"A Councilman, Stanton was his name."
"An Englishman! I had hoped it had at least been an Indian - that I might understand, but to be betrayed by one of my own countrymen! And for how much might I ask?"
"Two Hundred pounds for each white man."
"Two hundred pounds." Hoople's eyes narrowed. "I pull at least twice that from the ground in an hour. So Mother England has finally arranged for our rescue?"
"They requested I bring you back if I could."
"And what of the others?"
"I will do everything in my power to get you all home. But understand: if I cannot, it is you I have been assigned to bring home."
"I won't go without the others." Hoople swore, resolution gleaming in his blue eyes only moments ago dull.
"I admire the sentiment but you may have to. If it comes down to it-"
"If it comes down to it," the young Lieutenant Commander interrupted, "you will tell them you never found me. That I had already died. I will not sit on comfortable pillows and eat fine foods enjoying the embraces of my children and the caresses of my wife knowing these men are wasting and dying half a world away."
Roger sighed heavily, calculating equations in his mind. Heroics were terrifically inconvenient at times such as these, though he had to admire the small man - it was no small wonder he had risen through the ranks so quickly, he inspired a loyalty by his dedication to his charges that would make any man blindly follow him into any tempest. If he went for aid these men would almost certainly be dead before he returned. One hundred fifty men! The number was staggering. "How many guards are here?"
"Two hundred if you include the cossacks."
"Without the cossacks?"
"Maybe one hundred fifty."
"Quite a lot of guards for so few people."
"Camp A had over four hundred before they burned it. Camp B has two hundred. I suppose they assume they shall soon rebuild the previous numbers."
"Might Camp B help us?"
"No. They are treated a fair deal better than us and many fear they might be forced to work in the mines if we were to rebel. Not to mention what might happen to their families. Apparently Sean Guire was part of such an attempt last March, they gave him twenty lashes for his trouble - he showed us the scars. Said Camp B fought alongside the soldiers and put down the uprising almost as soon as it had started. Each prisoner who joined with the guards was given ten rubles as a reward. The only assistance we can count on from them is to the stygian ferryman's boat."
So there was no hope of simply taking the facility by force and simply leaving at their leisure. Certainly there was no way to travel with so many - he might as well attempt to conceal an army. At least the trouble of being tracked by the cossacks would quickly resolve itself. Still, something did not wholly add up in his mind. Camp A had held four hundred, Camp C one hundred fifty - even without accounting for deaths (and certainly there were a great deal of those, as he had witnessed himself) that number was well above what Stanton alone could have provided in the five months since January. He had only sent between ten and forty a month; perhaps a hundred in total. Which left most of these men unaccounted for.
"Hoople, did all of these men come through Bombay?"
"No. We have a number of Afghanis, some Finns, a couple Germans and Pollocks, a lot of Slavs, we even have a pair of Greeks. There's even some from God only knows. Only sixty of us in this camp are from the Royal Navy..." he continued but Roger was no longer listening, something in his mind clicked at the mention of the Greeks - an idea: a wild, singular idea began to take form.
"You found that snake yet?" the voice of the guard called from the darkness.
"Not yet!" Hoople answered. He turned to Roger and whispered, "I have to go."
"Can you meet me here tomorrow morning?"
"Breakfast starts two hours before sunrise and then we go straight to the mines, but I think I can get away before that."
"Do you think you could get me a worker's uniform?"
"How tall are you?" Hoople hissed.
"6 ft 2 in."
Hoople grimaced, "I'll see what I can scrounge up. Mueller might be about that tall."
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow." Hoople echoed.
