He Fell Among Thieves

CHAPTER II

NATASHA wore a simple, low-cut peasant dress which must have been, around for a long time, because she couldn’t quite hide the deft patchwork and stitching. “You’re early,” she said.

“I know. Does it matter?”

She shook her head. “No. I get off now anyway. You want to take a walk out on the marshes or something?”

“Well, I’d rather just sit and talk. Provided you have a place we can talk without being disturbed.”

“I know of such a place, Nikolay. Come.”

She took a bottle of vodka from the shelf, came around the bar and let Skinner hold her hand. They looked just like a couple about to embark on a date, and no one in the Red Star Inn paid them any attention, although the place was pretty crowded by now.

They walked together, not speaking, up a flight of sagging wooden stairs and thence across a dark hallway to a little room. The chamber contained a bed, quite large and quite thin of mattress, an old discolored dresser with a cracked mirror hanging from a peg over it, and a chair. Natasha slumped down on the bed after closing the door and bolting it, and Skinner crossed the room to the stiff-backed chair.

“Now,” she said, “just who are you?”

Skinner shook his head firmly. “Nikolay Mironov will be good enough. That’s who I am, Nikolay Mironov.” He wouldn’t tell every buxom peasant lass he met who he was, whether she knew the underground counter word or not.

She smiled. “All right, Nikolay. What do you want of me?”

“Well, I’d like you, or somebody, to take me through the swamps and into Russia.”

“You speak Russian. Your name is Nikolay Mironov. You are a Russian. Why do I have to take you? Also, what business would it be of mine whether you get through the swamps and across the border?”

SKINNER got up, paced around the room. He placed his hands on Natasha’s shoulders and dug the fingers in hard through the thin dress until she winced. “Who I am doesn’t matter. But I have an important mission, and if “you’re what you claim to be, you’ll take me.”

“Have you any proof?”

“No, and that’s the truth.” It was. The only identification he had was counterfeit Russian.

Natasha grinned at him. “But for one thing, I think I would turn you over to the officials and forget all about you.”

“What’s that one thing?”

“What happened in town today. Don’t tell me you don’t know why Pinsk is so excited?”

Skinner told her he didn’t.

“There was a farmer named Kurzowski hunting for snakes in the marshes. The government pays a bounty, you know. You don’t? Well, never mind. Anyway, Kurzowski found something.”

“What?”

“Kurzowski found a parachute, purely by accident. It was not Russian-made, Nikolay, and the soldiers

say it has not been in the swamps outside of Pinsk for more than a few hours, a day at most. There is someone here in Pinsk who does not belong.” She pushed his hands away from her shoulders. “But one thing I’ll have to admit, ‘Nikolay’, you speak perfect Russian.”

“So do you,” he reminded her. “And you’re Polish. Now will you take me?”

“I suppose—” Natasha’s words were cut off in mid-sentence. Someone pounded on the door.

“Open up!” a voice called loudly, and it sounded like the blond Red Army youth. “I’m looking for the Russian from Tula who calls himself Nikolay Mironov.”

“He’s not here,” Natasha said sleepily.

“I told you to open. I would like to see that for myself.”

Natasha groaned wearily, got up and went to the door. She hissed over her shoulder, “Get into, bed, quick! Under the covers.” Then, aloud: “I will open under one condition. That you count to ten before you enter. I… uh… would like to get covered again.”

The Russian grunted his acceptance of the condition, and Natasha withdrew the bolt. Quickly, she crossed back to the bed, her hands working with the buttons of her dress. Skinner caught on and thumbed open the bottle of vodka, spilling a little of it on the blanket. The room was dim with the light of only one candle, and by the time Natasha reached the bed, she was wearing exactly nothing.

SHE PULLED off one of the covers and draped it across her shoulders, swinging it about her white body like a cloak, but leaving enough revealed to show that she wasn’t dressed. Skinner pulled the other blanket up to his neck, smiled once at Natasha who stood by the bed, then watched the door swing in.

The blond soldier stalked into the room.

He sniffed at the smell of vodka, glanced briefly and then again at Natasha, who fussed, modestly with her blanket, then saw Skinner half-hidden under the covers. “I thought you said he wasn’t here.”

Natasha shrugged, letting the blanket fall from one of her shoulders. “We did not want to be disturbed.”

The soldier snorted, turned to Skinner. “Go away. Comrade,” the American said.

“In a moment. I merely want to finish the job. Your discharge papers, please.”

Natasha walked between him and the bed. “You can see—Nikolay is not dressed. Just where do you think he carries those papers?”

As a matter of fact. Skinner was fully clothed but, with Natasha, he hoped the blanket would fool the Russian.

“Well,” he said, “take me to his clothing. Where is his clothing? I’ll find the papers myself.”

Skinner got angry then. “Remember, Comrade, a secret mission. Do you want to make a fool of yourself?”

He was a stubborn one, that Russian. “Doubtless everything will be in order. But I want to check on that.”

Skinner lay there, unmoving, while the soldier’s glance raked the room. “Hey! Where is your clothing?”

He pushed Natasha aside and came to the bed. “Where is it?”

Skinner just stared at him.

Swiftly, so swiftly that it caught the C.I.A. man completely by surprise, the soldier ripped the blanket off the bed. Skinner lay there in his denim shirt and trousers. He felt foolish. It looked like his mission inside the Iron Curtain would die before it started, here in Poland, only hours from the beginning. And he might die with it.

“You’re dressed,” the Red said, “and the woman is not. Now, that’s strange. So strange that I’m going to ask both of you to come with me.”

Natasha was behind him—but then she was oh top of him. She jumped on his back and circled his neck with her arms and the blanket slipped off her to the floor.

“Run!” she cried. “Run!” She fought like a tiger, clawing and scratching’, arid the blond soldier cursed as he writhed around the room in her grasp, blood trickling down his cheeks from where her nails had raked them.

By the time he threw her clear, depositing her in a sobbing heap on the floor, and then kicking her to make sure she remained that way. Skinner had his .45 out and pointing straight at the Red’s belly. “Put your hands oh the back of your head,” he said quietly. “Clasp them there. If you move a muscle, I’ll kill you.”

NIGHT IN Pinsk. The first really cold night of the year, with a bitter autumn wind howling in from the Marshlands. And three figures fighting that wind as they cut across the last paved street and set out upon a dirt road that twisted into the swamps east of the city.

“What can we do with this Red?” Natasha demanded.

Skinner shrugged himself more deeply inside the overcoat which had belonged to the girl’s father. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “We couldn’t leave him in the city. He’d have them hunting for us without wasting any time about it.”

“Well, I know what I’d,do, were I in your place.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

She spat. “He’s a Red, Isn’t he? And he can get you into trouble can’t he? I’d kill him.”

Skinner couldn’t see the soldier’s face in the darkness, but he knew it must have lost a shade or two of color just then. “We can’t kill him,” Skinner said. “Not in cold blood.”

“No? You’ll learn. Listen, Nikolay—I’m not in the underground out of any whim. The Reds killed my brother, and my mother died soon after that. You’ll learn.”

Skinner had a problem, all right. He had the Red’ helpless at gunpoint now, but as soon as he released him, the man would go scampering off to warn his fellows. Also, Natasha would find herself in a lot of hot water. Still, the alternative was murder….

The Red. Army youth had not lost his arrogance. “How far do you think you can go in the swamps at night? Why don’t you turn back and give yourself up, Nikolay? At least you’ll have a warm bed to sleep in, eh?”

“I slept in the marshes last night, and I can do it again tonight. That is, Natasha, if you’ll sit guard duty with me.”

She nodded eagerly, almost too eagerly. Skinner thought. But hell, he had nothing to worry about as far as the girl was concerned. He’d better concentrate on putting as much distance as possible between them and the city. And then they’d worry about sleeping.

SKINNER HAD no watch, guessed that it was after midnight when they stopped. “This ground looks as dry as any,” he shouted over the wind.

He paced back and forth for a time while the Russian stretched out on his back and Natasha eased herself down against a tree trunk. “Try to get some sleep,” the American told Natasha. “I’ll stand, the first watch.”

“All right—if you promise to wake me so I can do my share.”

Skinner said he promised, but he wasn’t so sure. He’d as soon spend the whole night on guard himself; but in the end he decided to leave it up to his ability to remain alert. If he grew weary, time enough to awaken the girl then.

The soldier slept restlessly, tossing and turning, trembling in the cold. Natasha seemed somewhat more comfortable, but Skinner heard her moan in her sleep more than once. For his own part, he walked a little circle for himself in the clearing, beating his chest briskly to fight off the cold. They’d have about as much of a chance to start a fire in this dank mess as they’d have in the middle of the ocean, with nothing but seaweed for kindling.

The minutes dragged by, lengthened into hours. It seemed to grow even darker, and the wind’s fury increased. Would dawn never come?

“Nikolay?”

“Huh?”

“You go to sleep now. I will watch.”

“Listen,” he tried to stop! a yawn, couldn’t, “I feel wide awake, and—”

“And nothing. I will watch now, that’s all.”

Wearily, Skinner agreed. Sleeping in this cold would be no picnic, but it would give. him a little more strength for tomorrow, and they’d both need that for the trek ahead of them. He gave Natasha the .45, watched her get up, a shadow among shadows in” the darkness, heard her flip the gun open.

“Loaded,” she grunted with satisfaction and then Skinner Kit the ground. He was asleep almost at once.

HIS LEGS were numb from the cold when he awoke. A gray dawn had seaped into the Pripet with the morning fog, half-hiding the girl and the soldier. They were both standing five or six paces from Skinner, and they were speaking in heated whispers. The Red looked very frightened.

Suddenly, he turned and ran off into the swamps. Natasha did not try to stop him. Instead, Skinner heard the girl counting: “One, two, three, four—”

“What the hell’s going on?” Skinner cried.

“Later. Five, six, seven—”

“Damnit, I said what’s going on!”

“Eight, nine, ten.”

Natasha cocked the .45 and plunged into the swamp.

Silence. Skinner swore softly to himself.

A scream—not a woman’s voice, but a man’s. After that, more silence, for perhaps the space of a heartbeat. Then Skinner heard the .45 roar once, and once only. In a moment, Natasha appeared again in the clearing, handed Skinner his gun butt first. She said hot a word.

“Well?” Skinner demanded.

“Well what?”

“Suppose you tell me what happened.”

“Won’t it be enough if I say you don’t have to worry about the Red?”

“No. What happened?”

“Well, we couldn’t go on this way. He’d get us into trouble sooner or later.”

“I know that, but I saw no way out.”

“I did, I saw one. We played a little game, and I won. Oh, the Red didn’t want to play it at first, but I was very firm. I gave him ten seconds to escape, and then I ran after him with your gun. Don’t you think it was fair?”

“Then what happened?”

“I said” you don’t have to worry about the Red any more. You don’t.”

Anger washed over Skinner in a wave. “Then you murdered him?”

The girl snorted, “Murder, he says! Look, Mr. Nikolay Mironov Smith or whatever your American name is, don’t you know we’re fighting a war? The Polish underground has been fighting it a long time because the Nazis and the Reds, occupied my country at the same time. Other undergrounds fight too—and whoever sent you in here didn’t send you in to twiddle your thumbs. When you fight a “war you kill, and it’s hot murder. You kill to protect your home, your. people, your—”

Abruptly, she was sobbing. She threw herself at Skinner, burying her face against his shoulder, crying softly, over and over, “I had to kill him. I couldn’t help it. I had to kill him….”

“We’ll get out of here when you’re ready,” Skinner said. He did not want to argue. He couldn’t argue with the girl’s logic. She’d done more for the Russian than he’d have done for her had. the situation been reversed. At least she’d given-him a chance. Skinner knew a long road lay ahead of him, and suddenly he found himself wishing that he had some of the girl’s spirit, some part of her ability to accept facts bleakly and coldly for what they were. He realized he would need that in the long days ahead.

“WE’RE ON the frontier now,” Natasha said.

Skinner looked around him: The Pripet lay behind them and they stood on a wide grassy plain which rolled off, without change, to the horizon in all directions. They’d reached the tiny town of Luniniec on the second day of their flight, after they’d exhausted the meager supply of food Natasha had taken from Pinsk. There they’d eaten and rested and, from careful questioning. Skinner learned that the natives had heard nothing of a parachute, or a dead Russian soldier. After that, they’d plodded in a northeasterly direction through the swamps, another day and night, until suddenly the bogs faded away behind them and an occasional farmhouse dotted the land.

Now they stood on the frontier, and Natasha extended her hand. “What is it you Americans do, shake hands?”

Skinner nodded.

“Here, then—shake mine. And good luck, my American friend. If you walk in that direction—” she pointed across the barbed wire fence—“you should: reach the village of Slutsk by late afternoon. From there you can get a bus to Bobruisk—and from that point, a train to wherever you’re going. Good luck.”

“What will you do?”

“Oh, I’ll manage. Probably I’ll stay for a time in Luniniec with some friends. I’ll be back in Pinsk before you know it, and life will go on as if you’ve never been there.”

“There’s something else we Americans do,” said Skinner. “Poles, too.” He put his arms around the girl, felt her buxom figure snuggle up against his chest, kissed her. I sightly at first, then fiercely.

“I never could have made it without you, Natasha. Here, right at the beginning, I’d have been finished.”

“Kiss me again, Nikolay. Some day I’ll be able to tell my friends what an American kiss is like. Ahh….”

“Goodbye, Natasha,” Abruptly he turned, pushed apart two of the strands of wire, stepped through the fence. When he looked again, the girl was trudging back the way they had come. She’d reach the Pripet Marshes at about the same time that he got to Slutsk.

SKINNER approached the clerk in the little depot in Slutsk. “When’s the next bus for Bobruisk?”

“There’s no ‘next bus’. There is only one bus, and that leaves in an hour. Your travel visa, please.”

Skinner showed it to the man, a sour-faced old fellow with glasses.

“Umm-m, yes. Seems to be in order. Six rubles, fifty kopeks.”

Skinner counted out the unfamiliar change, exchanged it for his ticket, a filthy yellow stub which probably would be collected and used again. “Thank you.”

The man looked surprised. “Don’t thank me, thank the State. They gave you your visa.”

Little things like that, thought Skinner as he clambered into the rickety bus. The State this and the State that. The State everything. Meanwhile, he didn’t have the vaguest shadow of a plan. The bus to Bobruisk, then—then, what? Another trip to some equally unheard of place? Just poking around the incredible length and breadth of the Eurasian land mass until he found something? It might take years.

And the Russians had stopped their playing with atomic power, suddenly, without warning. Why? Why except that they’d found something so much more powerful that atomics were relegated to the position of Fourth of July—or May Day—firecrackers? No, thought Skinner, the little hick-towns couldn’t give him his answer, and the more he dallied, the harder it might be to find that answer. From Bobruisk he’d take the train to Moscow….

SONYA FYODOROVNA Dolohov had a headache. But it didn’t stop her work. No, she’d see the man from Lubianka Street in spite of it, she’d merely have to be more careful, that’s all. Some wine, some dancing, the wee hours of the morning in her apartment. Then, who could tell? Bah! A big, loud bah to Boris Rashevsky and all men! Rashevsky carried Secret Police written all over his stupid face, and like all men, he could he had—for a price. Swaggering Laurenti Beria, who ruled the M.V.D. with an iron will, now he might be different. It was said in Moscow that Beria had to answer to no one, but Josef Stalin himself.

But for now at least, Sonya need not worry about Laurenti Beria. Just Rashevsky, that clumsy, pawing ape. And, looking at the soft contours of her figure in the mirror as she dressed, smiling and even humming a little tune which was definitely capitalist and hence outlawed, Sonya knew she’d be able to extract the information from Boris Rashevsky, first lieutenant to Beria, head of the M.V.D., the dreaded Secret Police.

Rashevsky strutted in promptly at eight, a huge bull-necked man with a bristly, close-cropped head of graying hair, loose, sensuous lips, beady, little pig-eyes which almost seemed to come together, and a ridiculously delicate nose. “Ah, Sonya,” he said, smiling broadly.”

She allowed her hand to be kissed. “Colonel. My own private Colonel Boris! How good it is to see you—”

“My dear, how I waited for the hour! I fumed arid fretted over some paper work—yes, I can fume and fret—I—your gentle Colonel Boris, when it is you. I am waiting to see. But Beria stood over me, and Beria wanted the work finished.” He sighed.

“Beria. Always it is Beria. Is the man a god?”

Rashevsky got alarmed. “Please, my dear, I know you mean nothing, but must you always use those words? God, what is God but a figment of the warped capitalist imagination? And since the capitalists have constructed an Iron Curtain around their countries, we’ve gone a long way in stamping that myth out.

“And something else. Why, last week I heard you humming something capitalist—”

Sonya smiled demurely. “Well, I promise to do.neither again. Now can we go and have some fun?”

RASHEVSKY nodded eagerly helped Sonya on with her sable wrap—a gift from Beria, months ago, before she’d turned her attentions to the more talkative Rashevsky. Then they took the elevator down to the street, where Rashevsky’s long, sleek car awaited them.

The Symphony first, at the Stalin Theater, where the orchestra rendered a stirring performance of Prokofief’s latest work. It sounded a lot like his earlier and extremely charming Peter and the Wolf, Sonya realized, except now the part of Peter was relegated to the benevolent Dictatorships of the Proletariet, wherever they existed, and the lean hungry wolf became Capitalist Imperialism. The triumphant fourth movement was the Korea Movement, and idly Sonya wondered if they’d ever really know what was happening in that tiny Asiatic country.

Later, champagne and caviar at the Club Molotov—restricted to officials of the Kremlin and the M.V.D. and a few lucky foreign diplomats who’d remained much more rational than that man in Yugoslavia—what was his name?

“You see,” said Rashevsky, sipping his fifth champagne, “we really have everything the capitalists claim, to have. A beautiful club, is it not?”

Sonya smiled. “I’ve been here before.”

The Colonel drank the remainder of his champagne in one gulp, ordered another one from the waiter who stood at attention near the silver urn which held their magnum. Good, thought Sonya, let him grow jealous. It might loosen his thick tongue….

“When?” Rashevsky pouted, small-boy fashion.

“Oh, what’s the difference? I’m here with you now, my Colonel. Would you like to dance?”

He nodded, got up, followed her to the dance floor. The band played liltingly the strains of a delicate, Strauss waltz. Strauss, the genius of the waltz, who’d come from Austria to Mother Russia to do his wonderful work in a properly invigorating atmosphere.

RASHEVSKY danced clumsily, holding the slim, beautiful girl in a two-hundred-pound bear-hug. She was glad when the music stopped. But then, as Rashevsky led her back to their table, the band played a loud fanfare, and all eyes turned to the elaborate doorway.

Someone spoke into a microphone: “All please rise for the Foreign Office and the M.V.D!”

Shoulder to shoulder, two men came into the room, indifferent to the homage which was their due. Gray-haired, vitriolic Vishinsky, Commissar of the Foreign Office, number three man in the Soviet hierarchy—and dark, swarthy Laurenti Beria, walking with his swaggering stride. Beria—who could tell what place in the hierarchy that mysterious figure filled? Some even hinted at number one, above old Yussov Djugashvilli-Stalin himself….

Beria, head of the Secret Police—certainly the most feared man in all of Russia. But that didn’t matter, and Sonya found other thoughts crossing her mind in rapid succession. Vishinsky and Beria together, an oddity. Did it mean, then, that the secret thing which had cast aside the production of atomic bombs was coming to flower? Vishinsky and Beria certainly looked cheerful enough….

“Look how everyone loves them,” Rashevsky was saying, as he sat down again! “Isn’t it wonderful, my dear?”

“Yes, and I suppose you’re right about Commissar Beria—a truly mighty figure.”

“Hah—now it is you talking about my chief as if he were… ah… a deity. If you don’t stop staring at their table, I think I will suggest we leave this place.”

“Suggest it.”

“My dear—”

She waved at Beria, who waved back while Vishinsky scowled darkly at this lack of dignity. “Go ahead, my Colonel, suggest it. I don’t bite, really, and I’m a little tired anyway.”

“Very well. I’ll take you home. My, notice how early it is….”

“THIS CHAMPAGNE of yours is delicious,” muttered Rashevsky, placing a big hand on Sonya’s lovely white shoulder, where the straps would have been had her evening gown come with straps.

She nestled closer to him, stroked his cheek. “My Colonel…”

“Soft little kitten!”

“Yes, thank you for turning off the lights. It is much more pleasant here in the dark.”

“My priceless jewel!”

“You know, of course, I was only trying to make you jealous at the Club Molotov. I don’t know much of how you work, but I’ll wager that you do an amount equal to Beria’s own.”

“Why, thank you. Yes, yes, to be sure. I do, but few people realize it. Why, only yesterday…”

“What about yesterday, my Colonel?”

“Kitten! Jewel!” That seemed to be the extent of his imagination.

“I said, what about yesterday?”

“Yesterday? Why, we… no, no, it would only trouble your delicate mind.”

“I’m interested.”

“No. I have,said no.”

“Well, is that definite?”

“It is.”

Sonya Fyodoroyna Dolohov sighed, stood up, put on the lights, lit a cigarette. “I suddenly have a headache,” she said, crossing, to the door and opening it. “Will you call me next week?”

Rashevsky bowed, mopping his glistening brow with a silk handkerchief. “Sooner, if you’d like. Thursday?”

“Thursday,” she agreed, letting him kiss her hand, then closing the door behind him.

Maybe on Thursday the pig-ape would talk…

MOSCOW. Less than a week before—Washington. Striding past the Spazzo House—the American Embassy—Nick Skinner found it hard to believe. If anyone had told him, a week before, that he’d be walking the streets of Moscow within a few days, Skinner would have laughed outright.

He felt suddenly like a fly caught, not on the tenuous outer regions of a spider web, but at the core, where all the spider had to do was wrap its great hairy body, around him. And Moscow was a spider’s web in more ways than one. Here was the matrix, the core, the hub. But the web wove its way outward in all directions: China, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Poland… insatiable, it trailed, delicate filaments invitingly….

No one had told him to contact the Embassy, and he considered it an unwise move. First place, he doubted that the Embassy knew of his presence, and he had no proof of his identity beyond his ability, to speak American—something which any good Russian spy should be able to do. Also, any contact with the Embassy might make him that much less efficient as a free-roving agent. And finally, if he were caught, and if he’d been working in conjunction with the portfolio boys, they’d find themselves in plenty of hot water too.

Skinner left the Spazzo House behind him, walked the length of Lenin Avenue. There seemed to be as many green-uniformed city police arid gray-uniformed soldiers as there were citizens on the crowded streets. Twice Skinner was halted, questioned, then released.

The third time, as he approached the gaunt brick wall of the Kremlin, he got a surprise. A soldier, not a policeman, stopped him, and said: “Your papers, Comrade.”

Skinner showed them.

“Transient worker, eh? What are you doing, in Moscow?”

“Vacation.”

“Vacation? Then you’re a Sthakanovite. But Where’s your badge of merit?”

Skinner had pulled a serious boner. Apparently only those workers who produced above and beyond their quotas could expect vacations. “It… has not come yet.”

“Not come yet? Either you have it or you don’t have a vacation. From Tula, eh? Won’t you provincials ever learn you can’t pull the wool over our eyes? Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Just shut your mouth and come along. You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Da,” said Skinner. “I will go.”

LAURENTI BERIA pushed back his sleek black hair, grunted with satisfaction when he smiled at himself in the mirror and saw the fine rows of even white teeth. He turned to his aide with part of that smile still lingering on his face, the cold part.

“Colonel Rashevsky, what do you know about the Dolohov woman?”

Rashevsky looked up from his desk, spilling some ink on an official document and cursing softly. “Why… not much. But I do know that she’s the loveliest creature in all of Moscow.”

“Very lovely,” Beria admitted. “Also very deadly. Sonya Fyodorovna Dolohov works for the underground.”

“What?”

Beria smiled again. “Are you deaf? I said she works for the underground. As a matter of fact, she’s one of their leaders. I’ve known that for a long time, Rashevsky—”

“My Commissar!” Rashevsky croaked, purpling. “Give me a squad of three men, and I—”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Rashevsky. She’d wind you around her little finger and go skipping off into hiding. Also, I don’t intend to do a thing about Dolohov—not yet. The agent who informed me, the only man who knew, is now in Siberia. He might have talked, and I don’t want it known that we know. You do understand, don’t you, Colonel?”

“Well, I… of course I can theorize and—”

“Why don’t you just say no?”

“I am confused,” said Rashevsky, hanging his head.

“Dolohov is an underground leader. She can take us to other leaders—pfft! We will close a ring around them, but not now. When we’re ready. Meanwhile, Rashevsky, play your role of the infatuated lover; it fits you well. But don’t tell the woman things which you should not like to see fall into the wrong hands. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“And don’t let anyone know what I have just told you. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“Why don’t you take the afternoon off and pay your sweetheart a surprise visit of love?”

“But I’ve hardly done my work!”

“I think the M.V.D. will manage without you for an afternoon. Good day, Colonel.”

A SLOW, steady drizzle. A cold October drizzle, chilling the flesh and stiffening the bones. Prelude to the Russian winter, Skinner realized. He wondered if he’d live to see that winter.

The soldier had ushered him, without questions, without a word spoken between them, to a police station, and there, in a rear alley, they’d shoved Skinner on a big open truck along with a score of weary Russians.

Now the rain pelted down harder, and Skinner tried to use his tattered overcoat for a hood. The man to his left nudged a gaunt elbow against his ribs.

“Rotten luck, eh, Comrade?” He was an old fellow, Skinner observed; hard to tell how old, but certainly in his sixties. He crouched next to the American in a corner of the truck, his long, impossibly thin body twisted like a pretzel. His face was long, too, matching the body. All in all, very drab—except for the eyes which glowed almost like twin coals in his head.

“You’re telling me,” Skinner agreed. “I didn’t do a thing, but they took me.”

The old man’s voice was throaty, deep. “As if you have to do anything to get taken.”

“Umm-m, true. But I just got in from Tula, and I don’t know, what’s going on.”

“Who does? But one can guess, Comrade! Me, I’m from the Crimea, a long way off. A Cossack there, long and long ago—aye, how I remember the old days! A man was a man then because he could split a charging horseman from crown to navel with one blow of his saber. Would you believe that I got fourteen of the Kaiser’s best that way?”

Skinner grunted something, waited for the man to continue.

“But you want to know why they took you. Well, ordinarily, they’d resort to the labor pools when they need something done. But I recollect it was different for the uranium mining in the Erz Mountains four or five-years ago. Then they merely plucked, you off the street, for they believed in quick, decisive action—and they still do, if the thing is so secret they don’t want it to get around. One moment you walk the streets of Moscow, the next—who knows?”

“You think it’s more uranium mining?” Skinner demanded. This might possibly be a lead, he knew and he didn’t want to lose the one slim thread the man offered.

“Uranium! You sure must have vegetated a long time in Tula, comrade. No one mines uranium now, and I mean no one.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Confusing, you mean. The Cominform doesn’t let us draw our own conclusions, telling us that since Uncle Joe wants peace, nothing put peace forever and ever, he’s stopped all work on atomics. But they speak out of both sides of their mouths, for they tell us all the time to arm, arm, arm against Capitalist Aggression.”

“Your talk borders on treason,” Skinner said mildly.

The man drew out a long, razor-sharp knife, ran its edge idly over his fingernails. “I don’t think so, my friend. You probably were hearing things.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I said it was treason. I didn’t disagree.”

The man scratched his head, lowered his voice to a coarse whisper, chanted, sing-song fashion: “East gate, West gate—”

Skinner shrugged. “If that song identifies you and you want me to give the countersign, you’re wasting your time. I said I’m new here. I meant it.”

The Cossack hunkered down inside his torn cape so that only the top of his grizzled head showed. He whispered, so low that Skinner had to bend close to hear: “I am Tuman Tumanov, Comrade. I don’t know where, they’re taking this truckload of men to work, but I don’t intend to go there.”

“Nikolay Mironov,” Skinner said, reaching for Tumanov’s hand and grasping at firmly for a moment. “I’m with you.”

THE TRUCK roared out from its alley, and through the cab’s back window Skinner could see the helmeted head of the driver, and next to that the guard’s head. Probably the guard carried a gun.

“Now?” Skinner demanded.

But Tumanov smiled. “Have patience, my friend. The results of the Revolution have been with us for more than thirty years. It might take twenty more before the Counter-revolution gains any headway. Meanwhile, we’re too close to the police station. Have patience, and I’ll let you know.”

The truck clattered on over the cobbled byways of Moscow, avoiding for the most part the more crowded avenues, lurching from side to side with the weight of the men in its rear. The rain had turned Skinner’s old coat into a sodden ruin.

Tumanov sneezed loudly. “Those ryua!” he muttered. “Those stupid fish! They’ll make me catch my death of cold out here. Would you rather be indoors, Comrade?”

“I would.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Tumanov got up, a big ungainly creature with a long neck, thin, stooped shoulders and stilt-like legs. Six and a half feet tall. Skinner guessed, and he didn’t weigh a hundred and fifty pounds, wringing wet.

They eased themselves toward the rear, pushing their way through the listless men who sat or crouched around them in the truck, taking cautious, wary steps every time the truck lurched. Finally, they reached a little guard-railing, no more than knee-high. Beyond it waited the rain—and a narrow, muddy, deserted street.

“A man could run as fast as we are riding,” Tumanov, observed. “Jump, then let yourself roll to a stop and you won’t get hurt.”

Skinner stood poised for a moment, then pitched himself out of the truck. He hit hard, tumbled, rolled over, struck his head against the cobbles. Voices yelled, the truck screeched to a stop, heavy boots pounded back along the cobblestones.

Tumanov helped him to his feet, shook him. “Umm-m, nasty cut on your head. Run, Comrade! Some fool let it be known that we… departed. The guards come now—”

Skinner looked down the street, saw two soldiers some fifty paces away, running for them. One of the Reds held a rifle in his hands, but he made no attempt to use it. Apparently they wanted the prisoners alive for whatever purpose they’d been taken in the first place.

SKINNER ran after Tumanov, crossed the street and plunged into a sliver of an alley which squirmed its way between two houses. Water cascaded down upon them from the eaves, and more than once Skinner stumbled and fell in the oozing mud underfoot. Sure-footed, Tumanov growled over the delay, but always he waited.

They emerged on another street much like the first with its row after row of frame, houses, but Skinner didn’t have time to look. He heard the soldiers pushing through the narrow passageway with much banging and cursing, and then Tumanov grabbed his arm in a grasp of steel and pulled him along.

The old Cossack knew the city like a rat knows its burrows, darting through alleys which Skinner failed to see until’ they started through them, leading a wild chase up the twisting side streets, trotting boldly over broad plazas and pushing his way insolently through crowds of passersby who carried on their business in spite of the rain. Skinner, who considered himself in top physical condition, found it hard to keep up with the Cossack, for all his sixty-odd years. It almost appeared that the old man moved lazily, clumsily, his long legs pounding against the cobbles heavily, but Skinner discovered that those great loping strides ate up distance.

Skinner’s breath came in rapid gasps, his vision blurred, his head still whirled from the fall. When Tuman Tumanov sauntered casually out upon a wide avenue, even stopping to peer into a shop window and observe the pretty trinkets which were not for sale unless you belonged to the Party, Skinner paused to wipe the blood off his forehead. “You—think—we’re clear of—them?” he panted.

“I know we are,” Tumanov said, smiling. “Although I was born in the Crimea, I know my Moscow, Comrade Nikolay. We have lost them.”

“Well, can they check on us in any way?”

“How? You tell me how. We went through no classification at all, so, unless some soldier happens to recognize us, it is as if we never had been there. Apparently classification would have taken place when the truck reached its destination. But without us, eh?” Tumanov grinned, broadly, and a chuckle surfaced from deep down in his belly. “Is it goodbye, then, Comrade Nikolay, after such a pleasant little interlude? I can just see their faces after they get lost in one of those alleys!”

Skinner looked at the man earnestly. “I have no place to go, Tuman. I’d cast my lot with you, if you’ll have me. Especially if it means meeting people who know that countersign you tried to get from me.”

“It sure could mean that,” Tumanov admitted. “But first for a samovar of good hot tea to warm the bones.”

He led Skinner into a restaurant, humming Meadowlands in his deep, booming voice.