December. James Steel

place overnight.

      Kuzembaev stopped in front of him; the thin slits of his eyes were implacable in the light shining up from his torch. He pulled D-504’s hat off, revealing a badly shaved head—to reduce the lice. The prisoner felt the bones of his head contract as the wind got at it. Then the guard stabbed the beam of his torch into his face and yanked the cloths down.

      The face that the sergeant scrutinised was the most famous in Russia. When he was captain of the national football team, the heavy brow, strong jaw and steady eyes had been idolised by millions as the embodiment of true Slav heroism—battered but unbowed.

      He was the highest scoring player ever for his country. His heavy build and low centre of gravity had helped him ride out the roughest tackles as a centre forward, never fearing to stick his head into a flurry of raised boots looking for a goal, as the large scar across his right temple proved.

      The face stared back at Kuzembaev impassively just as it had when the camera zoomed in on him as he’d lined up to kick off when they were 2-2 against Germany with just minutes to go. How the nation had prayed to that face as if to the icon of St George in the days of old—the warrior of a nation.

      And he had not let them down.

      The commentator was hoarse with shouting as the Russians threw everything forward. The Germans dug in and defended stoically until Raskolnikov intercepted a pass.

      The commentator went mad: ‘Raskolnikov intercepts! Past Shtrum! Past Weissman! Raskolnikov, our last hope!’ His voice rose to a scream, ‘Yeeess!’

      That line—‘Raskolnikov, our last hope!’—became part of the Russian lexicon.

      What made those moments of iconic glory even greater was the modest way that he had handled them afterwards. His quiet grin, with its self-effacing aversion of his eyes, had endeared him to millions of Russian women, but had made men trust him as well.

      Two years in the camps had taken their toll, though. The bearded face was now pinched with hunger and his skin was grey and wrinkled like old newspaper.

      Kuzembaev grinned mockingly. ‘Ah, Captain, it’s you! Who are we playing today then?’ he chuckled, and moved off down the line, never tiring of that joke.

      Roman Raskolnikov quickly pulled his hat back on and stared ahead, pushing his anger into the vast river of patience that flowed quietly through him like the Don.

      He was forty-five now but had started playing aged eighteen in his hometown for Rotor Stalingrad. After stunning success as a striker there, he had transferred to Spartak Moscow and captained them and then Russia.

      He stared at the white, blue and red of the Russian tricolour flying in front of him over the platform on which Commandant Bolkonsky stood with the machine-gunner next to him, squinting down the barrel of his belt-fed 7.62mm PKM, his finger on the trigger and itching to fire into the packed ranks of prisoners.

      Raskolnikov had such mixed feelings about that flag now: he used to look at it with tears in his eyes when the anthem played at the start of matches. He still loved his country but he hated the corrupt and tyrannical government that had sentenced him to this terrible place under Article 275 of the Criminal Code on trumped-up tax evasion charges.

      The real reason for his sentence was his work for the United Civil Opposition party. Both his mother and father used to talk politics at home all the time. They had been true believers under communism—somehow managing to ignore the corruption and iniquity, and maintain a belief in the ideal of social justice that the system espoused.

      He had ignored politics as a child and concentrated on his football, but some of their rigid morality stayed with him. When the anarchy of the Yeltsin era broke out, pensions went unpaid and healthcare and schooling collapsed, he felt he ought to use his fame to do his bit by setting up a football academy for street kids in Moscow. This brought him great respect amongst the city’s working class, and for a time he did not take it further.

      As a man of action he just wanted to do something practical to help, but gradually he was pulled into the political web. After he retired he became a sports ambassador for Russia, helping to win the hosting of the European Cup finals. He started working for Sergey Shaposhnikov’s TV station as a commentator and every political party wanted a slice of the great Roman Raskolnikov, thinking that he would just be a meathead who would boost their popularity.

      However, as Putin had eroded democracy and human rights, Roman felt himself more and more outraged by what was happening. The basic human decency that his parents had insisted on was being destroyed all around him. As a smart tactician he soon realised that, if he wanted to change the situation, he would have to do more than just run football academies, and get involved in politics properly.

      The United Civil Opposition never really stood a chance in the era of media manipulation by the government; as independent newspapers and channels were gradually closed down, its activities had ceased to be reported in the press. But Roman was never one to bow to pressure. He dug deep and knew that what he was doing was right for his country. His wife, Ivana, and his two daughters, Masha and Irina, had suffered as well and that had been the hardest thing to bear. He had not heard from them directly in over two years, but his network of supporters told him that they were still alive and living in Moscow.

      He tried not to think about them, it was too painful. He had to concentrate all his efforts on just staying alive in this place. It was a separate planet from the rest of humanity: oppressed by different laws of gravity, breathing harsh atmospheric gases, labouring under a different sun.

      This strange world had been named ‘Honolulu’ by Commandant Bolkonsky. All the new ‘enhanced regime’ camps opened under Krymov’s orders were nicknamed by the guards after famous holiday destinations: Honolulu, Marbella, Sharm el-Sheik and Yalta.

      The camps provided labour for a range of activities: logging, mining and construction. Each of the nine hundred inmates was allocated to a work gang and their numbers were now being read out over the blaring Tannoy; Roman listened carefully for his. The day’s arrangements depended on what his gang boss—Shubin—had been able to bribe the overseer with.

      ‘The following teams will be on forest detail: 49th, 18th, 89th, 51st and 33rd.’

      That was his then—the 33rd. A whole day out in the freezing cold, logging, but better than the mines.

      ‘Better watch yourself out there today, Roman. Don’t want to get a nasty sliding tackle, eh?’ someone whispered to him from the rank behind and then made a strange creaking noise, which passed for a laugh.

      It was Getmanov, a former FSB officer who had been sentenced for corruption and rape. He claimed he was a huge fan of Roman’s but his interest in what he was doing verged on the obsessive. Roman found him a disturbing character. He had a wide mouth that he left hanging open most of the time; one of his front teeth had been broken in half, and the combination gave him an ugly, careless look.

      Roman had seen him in muttered conversations with guards occasionally, huddled around the back of the kitchens. Whenever he saw him, Getmanov always stared back and then leered as if half-witted. Roman couldn’t work out if he was just a fan, mad or something else.

      Dannil Kozlov was sure he was bad news, though. Big Danni, in Roman’s work gang, was a huge Moscow thug, an armed robber, whose shaved head showed the many scars of life in Moscow’s poorest quarters.

      One of the features of life in the camps was the mixture of criminals like Danni and political prisoners like Roman. The politicals were journalists, human rights lawyers and politicians who had fallen foul of the regime and been banged up for years on spurious charges, such as infringing health and safety regulations at work. Putin’s ‘Dictatorship of the Law’ had certainly been used to good effect on them.

      Generally, the criminals hated the politicals as lily-livered intellectuals, and harassed and exploited them. Danni, however, had spent some time as a boy in Roman’s football academy and, although it hadn’t kept him on the straight and narrow, he still regarded Roman as a saint, one of the few people in his hard life who had actually done something unequivocally