Illya Kuryakin was neither fed or given water before he was loaded into a vehicle for his journey. He tried listening carefully for identifying sounds along the way, but the steady firing of the engine and the rocking as they moved along the road finally lulled him to a much needed sleep.
He awoke abruptly, feeling as though he had just dozed off when hands grabbed him, pulling him roughly out of what he guessed was some sort of lorry. He still had the bag over his head but he could hear the sound of airplane propellors and assumed he was at an air strip.
"Davay ty kusok der'ma! Peremesit' sebya_come on you piece of shit! Move it!" someone yelled as they pushed him.
He was shoved forward, losing his balance and falling on the steps that lead up to the plane. Hands grabbed him again by the back of his shirt, pulling him up the short flight of stairs; Illya barely able to keep to his feet as they did so.
Illya was shoved to the floor, presuming the way the it felt and the sounds inside that he it was a cargo plane. Minutes later he could feel it move as it taxied and then picked up speed until it took off and slowly the pressure in his ears began to pop as he swallowed.
He heard whispers and murmers around him as he knelt, cuffed and blindfolded...it was nothing distinct that her heard, except for one word whispered in Russian...and that was "gualg." He was not surprised by it and had half expected it. Now it was the question as to which one?
There was nothing to do but go back to sleep until he arrived where ever it was they were taking him. And so Illya Kuryakin allowed himself to simply fall back sleep, seemingly unconcerned to what was going on about him.
It was some time into the flight that he was woken up as the black bag over his head was finally lifted. Once his eyes focused he could see that he was indeed on a cargo plane and there were three other men with their heads still covered, bound as he and all presumably headed to the gulag as well. There were four guards at least.
One of them approached him with a canteen, putting the spout to his mouth, letting him take a long drink of water, then the hood was pulled back down.
He heard the man mumble "bednayaga_poor bastard," as he walked away from him. Illya closed his eyes again, allowing his thoughts to go his wife and son. No one could see him bite his lip as he fought back his emotions, afraid that he might never see them again. Escape from a gulag was nearly impossible...but then he realized what he had just thought to himself. The word 'nearly' offerered him a glimmer of hope. He would figure out a way to escape; he had to give himself at least that just a little, something to hold on to.
He slept fitfully, dreaming of the degrading attack by Karl Voelker. There was nothing he could do defend himself as the man brutalized him, but the feeling of helplessness was affecting him. He had failed at defending himself against the one thing he had secretly feared all his life. He had defended himself as a child, then in the state schools, then when serving in the navy, and during his intelligence training' it had become a source of pride to him that he had done it...but now he had failed.
Then his dreaming changed as he began to see the faces again, they appeared, corpse-like, staring at him; mama, papa, his brothers and baby sister, Uncle Vanya, his cousin Anastasiya, then Irina and all the faces of the children at the concentration camp. The were all reaching, grabbing for him. Just then he was jarred awake as the plane made a hard landing, throwing Illya to his side.
He was shaking as he tried to shake off the unsettling visions, but Karl Voelker had robbed him of his masculinity and his meer presence and words had awoken the memories that he had surpressed for so long. And now as despondency slowly crept into his psyche, they returned to haunt him, even though he knew rationally that it had all been part of the psychological game the man had been playing with him, yet he could still not get them to go away.
When the plane came to a stop, he was pulled up from the floor and lead down the stairs to the ground, though feeling an immediate temperature change as the frigid winds cut into him; he was given another shock as his bare feet stepped into snow. Being dressed in the thin prisoners uniform; Illya began to shiver violently as he was lead through it. By the time he was brought indoors, his feet were completely numb and began to burn painfully as the numbness began to dissipate.
His hands were freed and his body shivered as it tried to warm itself, but he had been ordered not to move, so he couldn't even rub his arms to create a little friction. He cocked his head, listening from beneath his hood as he heard footsteps coming closer.
Finally the hoods were pulled away from Illya and his fellow prisoners and they shielded their eyes from the light at first with their hands, then blinked repeatedly, trying to refocus as they saw the commanding figure standing in front of them.
Kuryakin was not surprised that it was Viktor Karkoff, this time dressed in full military uniform, with the rank of Colonel. Illya quickly glanced down the line of his fellow prisoners, seeing their faces filled with terror.
"Dobro pozhaoovat' gulag. Vy zdes',potomu chto vy byli piznany pfedatelyami v Sovet-skiii Soyouz_welcome to the gulag. You are here because you have been judged to be traitors to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but you are the kind of traitors who deserve a slow death here rather than the quick mercy of the firing squad."
"My only words of advice to you all is to perform your assigned work to its completion. Do that and you will recieve your full rations of food, fail to do as you are told and you will not receive your rations. Those who do not get the food they need to survive will die of starvation. It is as simple as that... work to live."
"There is no means of escape, surrounding outside the great walls to this camp are high barbed-wire fences and we have ample guard towers. There are no blind spots so do not bother to look for them. We are on an island that is part of the Solovetsky Archipelego and there is no way off...if you were to even possibly get out of the compound; you would freeze to death in the treacherous waters of the Blagopoluch'ya Bay."
"There is no one here to help you. No one knows you are here, as you no longer exist. You are no longer of any value to the people of the Soviet Union, if you die; you will simply be replaced by new prisoners. It is no matter to us; only you need to decide how much you want to live, or die. Your survival or death is in your own hands."
Karkoff snapped his fingers and a guard dropped piles of clothing in front of the prisoners, outerwear for the cold weather.
They were each issued thick woolen socks, wool trousers, a shirt, wool sweater, mittens, scarf, a thickly padded coat and a hat. Karkoff pointed to Kuryakin, "this one in my office now."
Illya was grabbed by the arm, being pulled along down a corridor before he could gather his clothing.
Once in the office, he was shoved down into a chair in front of Viktor's desk.
"So Illuyshenka, you do recognize where you are do you not?"
"Yes," Illya huffed, " I know it is Solovki...I thought it had been shut down, but apparently not."
"You are actually correct but only in part. To the world it has been shut down...there is but a handful of people who know that we now use it for only a very few special prisoners."
"How fortunate for me, it is so nice to be made to feel special" Kuryakin quipped, "and what is the so-called work that you have for the inmates to do. As I recall when we trained here there was virtually nothing to do here except to make salt, nothing as productive as in the other gulags, such as lumber work or gold mining?
"You will find out soon enough what will be required of you. Right now the world thinks the Monastery is being converted to a museum of sorts, so no visitors for now Illuyshenka or should I address you as Count Kuryakin?"
Illya seemed somewhat surprised at that question, denying it with a firm answer." I am not a Count?"
"Oh by rights of succession, you are are the only surviving son of Count Nicholaí Kuryakin and according to my records your grandfather Count Alexander Kuryakin died in this very camp...but then I think you already knew that?"
Illya said nothing in response to Viktor's question. His noble background was something that had never been discussed with anyone. His family had warned him against that as a child. But now Karkoff had apparently dug into his background and made this discovery.
"You see, once the inmates hear that you are a member of the bourgeois aristocracy, they will not take kindly to your presence and who knows what they would do to you? But then perhaps I will withhold that information for now...let us say as a little insurance?"
"Insurance for what? So I will not die too soon? What is the point to all this Viktor, why do you not just pull your pistol now, shoot me and get it over with? You will have the satisfaction of having killed me and it will then be over for the both of us. You will at least live to move on, that is until my partner Mr. Solo catches up with you...and he will catch up with you eventually. I promise you that. Your days will be numbered."
"You are in no position to make threats, I assure you Kuryakin, you are going to die here, and it will be a slow and painful death, that you can be sure of. You made me a laughing stock at the directorate, but that not withstanding, your continued work for U.N.C.L.E. showing no support to your own government is more than sufficient reason for you to be here."
"Viktor I obeyed the orders of my government when I took the assignment with U.N.C.L.E. and supplying intelligence and spying for the Directorate were never part of the agreement. I have never given up my allegiance to the Soviet government...nor disobeyed my orders from it."
"That is until you declared your intentions to defect?"Viktor looked at him with an icy stare.
"That is because KGB refused to accept that I was following my assignment from the Directorate to the letter...I tired of the endless torment from you and your people. It may make you feel better that the American C.I.A. hounds me with equal enthusiasm. So there are idiots on both sides you see," he smiled" and defecting will rid my life of interference from idiots such a yourself."
Karkoff stepped over to Illya, slamming him in the face with his hand, sending Kuryakin's head reeling back. He then raised his arm to deliver a blow, but Illya blocked it, hitting Karkoff in the chin with his clenched fist.
The guard slammed Illya in the back with his rifle butt, sending him down to his knees and then Vicktor Karkoff proceeded to kick him in the stomach and sides until he moaned in pain.
"Take him to his cottage," Viktor ordered the guard.
Illya spat blood as he was pulled up to his feet, outside his clothing was shoved into his arms, not being permitted to dress. Instead he was dragged out still in his thin uniform and barefoot through snow, walking across the open plaza to one of the half dozen wooden cottages; the inmate quarters, that stood in the center of the compound.
He remembered the layout well as he glanced about, seeing nothing seemed to have changed. The camp was in the center of the Solovetsky Monestary, surrounded by massive stone walls up to 11 metres high and 6 metres thick. There were eight towers made up of mainly huge boulders. Former religious buildings, principally interconnected with roofs and arched passages surrounded by multiple household buildings and living quarters. These had been used to house the officers and guards, no doubt Karkoff's quarters were there.
There were also rooms within the main Monastery itself that were used for torture and solitary confinement.
They shoved Illya to move along through the nearly knee-deep snow as prisoners in the yard looked up from their shoveling, clearing pathways that would soon be filled in by the heavy snowfall, truly a Sisyphean task, serving nothing but to give the prisioners mindless work in the frigid temperatures.
They lead him to building number two, shoving him inside, ordering him to get dressed and then come back out to begin shoveling along with the others.
There were a dozen or so bunk beds with a cast-iron stove in the center of the room, of a size that would do little good to warm the place. The place reeked of urine, dirt and human filth.
Illya sat on a bunk in the back corner, looking like it was one that was not already occupied, dressing himself slowly as his feet were still numb while he pulled on the wool socks. The lace up boots were obviously worn and a little big, but with the socks, they fit a little better.
Time had become all but meaningless to the agent as he had no idea how many days or even weeks had truly passed. He reached up, rubbing his face with his hand; he had a fairly good growth of beard now, so he guessed he had been held for at least two weeks.
The door to the cabin opened and a guard stepped in, walking back to him and smashing his rifle into Illya's shoulder. "Too slow...now you get half ration! Now move your ass outside!"
Illya grabbed his jacket, quickly wrapping the scarf around his neck and shoving the knit hat onto his head. He buttoned the coat as he made it out the door, then shoved the mittens onto his hands as the guard handed a rusted shovel to him.
"Pristupit' k rabote vy bespolezny sobak_get to work you worthless dog!"
Illya Kuryakin joined the line of his fellow prisoner digging into the snow, forming a long line as the dug across the plaza, the excess snow being loaded to sleds, drawn to the gate and dumped outside the complex.
The Monastery was situated directly along he shore, the island very indented, formed of granite and gneiss and Kuryakin was familiar with the layout both inside and outside, and now that he understood where he was; he resigned himself to the fact that there was no apparent escape from this place, as least on he hadn't discovered yet.
He continued working with the other men, toiling at the endless task of shovelling the snow until darkness fell; then they were lead to a building to be fed. The men lined up one by one, with assortments of dented metal bowls and cups in their hands, each stepping up to a pass through window, where a cook ladled soup out to them, giving them each a small loaf of black bread.
Their eyes were all vacant as they stared at the food being doled out; hope in their eyes that it would be a thick soup instead of a watery one. And as if a miracle had occurred, the soup was thick with plenty of turnips and they ate it slowly, savoring every mouthful. There were no utensils and what was left in the bowls was scooped out with the fingers.
When it came Illya's turn the guard stopped him, holding a club in front of his chest, preventing him from stepping up to the window.
"No soup for this one, and half ration of bread only."
The cook, who was an inmate himself looked sadly at the young newcomer, as he handed Illya a small piece of bread, filling his bowl with only a bit of water.
Illya found himself a bench, sitting down alone, then watched his fellow inmates as they ate in silence.
Then one man, looking deathly thin, shuffled past as he struggled to sit at a nearby table with his meager ration. Another man sitting next to Kuryakin watched, seeing him eyeing the poor soul, leaned over whispering to him.
"He is dokhodiaga_a goner. He will be done in soon, he is so far gone that he cannot work and if you don't work, you don't get fed enough."
The goners were prisoners who had become extremely emaciated and were literally on the verge of death by starvation. Their presence were a reminder to the other prisoners of their potential fate if they failed to fulfill their daily work quotas and thus deprived of their men there showed no compassion, and Illya could hear them whispering about who would take the man's clothes when he died, another hoped it would happen during a meal, so they could take his ration of food.
These men had been reduced to thoughtless animals, suffering from more than a hunger in their bellies; they had lost all human emotion. There was no place for love, friendship, or concern for one's fellow man in their lives. There was just the hopeless emptiness that remained as the flesh disappeared from their bodies as each day passed, not caring what they did to each other in order to survive.
And now Illya Kuryakin was among them...would he become dokhodiaga as well?