There was no real need for him to re-read Badger’s account of his visit to his former prison camp. Charles remembered it well enough and his renewed interest in the case now, so many years later, was not because of that. He read it partly because he was nostalgic, partly to revive his sense of the man known as Badger, whose own file he had yet to re-read, and partly in penance, acknowledgement of unfulfilled promise. The description of the camp visit was intended by Badger to be part of the memoir he never wrote, an indication of what he hoped to publish when safely resettled in the West. But he never was resettled and this was the only chapter written. Charles had promised that, if anything happened to Badger, he would see it published somewhere. And never had.

Turning to the typewritten English translation, marked by Tippexed alterations and the translator’s margin comments in pencil, Charles read:

Since I was in that remote region, the region of my last camp, and with time to spare before the flight back to Moscow, I told my driver to take me to it. He was puzzled. ‘There’s nothing there, it was closed years ago. Just the huts and the wire and some of the old guards who have nowhere else to go.’

‘Take me.’

It was farther from the airport than I thought and there was fresh snow, unmarked by other car tracks. It was fortunate that the driver knew the way because I should never have found it, hidden in a clearing in the midst of the forest. The iron gates were open and, judging by the depth of snow piled up against them, had been so since autumn. The grey sky was breeding more snow now and on either side the high outer fence stretched into the blurred distance, sagging in places. The watchtowers stood like tall black cranes, one of them with a dangerous list. Inside the wire, the huts were squat white shapes with here and there a misshapen one where the roof had collapsed. The doors at the ends, shielded by overhangs, were mostly shut but some sagged open on rotted hinges.

I told my driver to wait and keep the engine and heater running. Then I walked slowly through the gates. There were other footprints in the snow leading to the first hut, a larger H-shaped one which used to be the guardroom. Behind it was the inner fence with another set of open gates. Within that fence were the huts. The guardroom door opened before I reached it. I wasn’t surprised. The sight of a shiny black ZiL and an official in a long black overcoat with a sable astrakhan and matching gloves was not a common one for the wretches within. A hunched figure hobbled out, muffled in old clothes and using a stick. He hurried over as if afraid to miss me.