Death Is My Comrade (20 page)

I looked around for Mikhail, didn't see him. Galina groaned and leaned forward to touch her ankle gingerly with one hand. Her other hand rested on the bare earth in front of the barn door.

“Let's have a look at it,” I said, and crouched.

She sprang at me with the effortless and instant coordination she had learned on Pushechnaya Street. In her right hand she held a rock. It scraped my ear, doing no damage. She scampered to her feet and threw the rock. It sailed over my head. She turned and ran, as nimble as a goat. She had like hell hurt her ankle.

Slipping in between the partially ajar doors of the barn, she pulled them shut behind her. I tugged at them. For a moment longer she held them inside, then her weight was gone and I went in after her.

It was dim in the barn. She held the haft of a pitchfork in both hands, pointing the tines at me.

“We've got a long way to go together,” I said. “We're going to be great friends, Galina.”

“We're not going anywhere together. Not us—and not my father. I'll kill you.”

I took a step toward her. She held her ground. “Don't think I won't do it. I'm warning you. Just go away. Turn around and go away.”

The barn smelled of hay and horses. Behind Galina there were stalls. I heard a horse kicking nervously in one of them. I took another step.

“I am a dancer. Ulanova is getting old. I am one of three ballerinas who may replace her.” With one hand Galina brushed a rope of sweat-matted hair from her face. She was sweating from the long run, but breathing easily. Her eyes searched my face. Rage narrowed them when she saw no fear there, only wariness. Despite what they say about anger distilling beauty, very few women I have known have kept their looks at a moment of violent anger. Galina Rodzianko was one of the few. Her eyes flashed, and those oddly narrow lips which could look mean but somehow wound up looking sensuous looked more sensuous than ever.

“I can be the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi,” she said. “Do you think I'd let a book stop me?”

“Not a book. Your father.”

“Keep back. I'm warning you.”

But I didn't keep back, and her warning hadn't been an idle threat. I took another step, which brought me close enough for Galina to use the pitchfork. She lunged for ward with it, knees bent, thrusting. I sidestepped and caught and held the tines under my left arm. We struggled over the haft. I got it. Galina Rodzianko sat down hard. She glared up at me.

“Come on. They're waiting. Every minute we stay here makes it more likely they'll catch your father. He's going. You can't stop him. Get up, Galina.”

She got to her knees. She started to smile before I heard any sound. Her ears were acute. Then I heard what she had heard—slow, measured footsteps outside.

Galina called out in Russian.

I ran for the door with the pitchfork in my hands, tines down, haft up and ready like a club.

The footsteps came closer. Stopped. Silence for an instant. Galina said something in Russian.

The doors opened, one of them scraping on earth.

I saw two hands first, and a rifle. A soldier peered into the barn. Galina spoke again, and his head swung in my direction. He was hardly more than a boy, blond-haired, wide of cheekbone. He could have been Leonid—two years later.

Letting go of the pitchfork with one hand, I grabbed the barrel of the rifle and yanked it hard. The soldier came stumbling into the barn. Grabbing the pitchfork with both hands again, I swung the haft at the side of his neck. He dropped the rifle and fell to his knees. I got the rifle and stood over him with it. He said something. He saw my cassock and clung to its skirt.

Galina told him something, probably that I was no priest.

His eyes widened. Fear showed white all around the irises. Sweat stood out on his forehead in tiny beads. He pleaded with me, his eyes jerking from the rifle to my face and back again. He began to whimper.

He thought I was going to kill him.

I couldn't use a bullet on him. That would bring help. Smash his head with the butt of the rifle?

He was just a kid. It hadn't been his idea to be born in Russia, hadn't been his idea to guard the Rodzianko dacha.

The soldier whimpered again. Still on his knees, he clasped his hands in front of his face. Maybe the cassock had triggered that. He was praying. He wore a broad leather belt. It gleamed with polish. So did his boots. I could smell the clean leather smell of them.

He began to shake with fear. Not just his tightly clasped hands; he trembled all over. His big soft eyes fastened on mine, pleadingly but without hope.

“Boy scout,” I muttered. I knew then I couldn't kill him in cold blood.

“Tell him I'm not going to kill him,” I said. Galina translated for me. The kid blinked rapidly. He collapsed to his haunches. It was as if fear had pulverized the bones in his body. Tears welled from his eyes. He sat there, swaying a little and crying silently.

“Find something to tie him with,” I told Galina.

She gave me an odd look. If she tried to play tough, I could still have my hands full with both of them. She headed, without comment, toward the back of the barn.

In a moment she was back with some harness straps, and dropped them, still without a word, near the boy. I propped the rifle against the barn door and crouched between it and Galina. The boy didn't resist as I strapped his hands behind his back, strapped his ankles. Fumblingly he even tried to help. Why not? He was going to live.

I tore a strip from the hem of the cassock and wadded it. Obediently he opened his mouth. I shoved the gag in and tied it in place with another strip torn from the cassock.

“Come with me,” I told Galina. Rifle under one arm, I dragged the soldier toward the rear of the barn. I left him there, uncomfortable but alive, and headed for the door with Galina.

“He'll get loose,” she said. “Or they'll find him.”

I shrugged.

“You're soft. He would have killed you.”

I didn't answer her. We went to the door. Mikhail met us in the farmyard. He admonished his sister. She said nothing. Together the three of us walked back across the farmyard and through the birch woods to where the others were waiting.

Several times I caught Galina's eyes on my face. She'd look away hurriedly each time our eyes met.

Chapter Twenty-four

A
high moon just waning off the full rode over the birches as we set out on the first leg of our five-hundred-mile journey. Mist coiled like smoke on the ground among the trees. It was heavy, and our disembodied heads seemed to float on its surface.

Three of the peasants went with us. That made eleven in all: Rodzianko, moodily silent and taking the lead with a big knapsack high on his shoulders, then the peasants, then Semyon Laschenko and his wife, then Eugenie and Mike Rodin, then Galina and Mikhail. I brought up the rear with my rifle. I had offered Leonid's pint-sized Luger to Rodzianko. He had refused it. Mike Rodin had it now. He'd said he felt foolish wearing it. It was tucked into his belt and he'd said it poked his gut painfully. But he kept it.

Earlier, we'd all eaten heartily at the farmhouse. I'd told Mike Rodin about the soldier. Over dinner Laschenko and Lucienne had talked in low tones, he earnestly, she angrily and with scorn. Soft, silent Mikhail never said a word.

After dinner Mike Rodin had a mild attack. His face turned gray and he began to sweat. We had packed our knapsacks already. He had a needle and morphine in his, but when I started to open it he shook his head. Rodzianko was gravely concerned. There was no electricity in the farmhouse. By the ruddy, flickering light of the oil lamps, they could have passed for twins.

Eugenie, as unpredictable as ever, stood behind Mike Rodin, stroking his shoulder while he endured the pain. Her face mirrored his. When his face twisted with the pain, hers did too. A little later she brought him tea. She kept saying, “Daddy, daddy, are you all right? Please be all right. Please.”

We all changed into rough peasant clothes, dark skirts and heavy blouses for the women, shirts and bell-bottomed trousers and soft caps for the men. By the time he changed, Mike Rodin was feeling better. Eugenie hovered near him.

Father Alexi gave us a benediction. His parting words were:
“Bog lyubov.”
That is Russian for God is love.

Then in small groups the peasants who had gathered around the farmhouse drifted back through the birch woods. Three of them remained to guide us the first night. It had been decided previously that we couldn't chance the road for a while. By now soldiers might be on the lookout for Vasili Rodzianko. They could watch the roads, they could set up blocks, they could even send patrols through the woods, but they couldn't cover all the vast birch forest and the marshes along the Moscow and Mologa Rivers between Zagorsk and Pestovo to the north.

We made less than eight miles that first night. At dawn we reached a woodcutter's crude hut and spent the day there. Food was waiting, smoked fish and coarse dark bread. The three peasants left us. Our new guide was a red-faced man in a leather jacket.

I kept the first watch outside the woodcutter's hut. Mikhail would have the second, and Mike Rodin the third, if he felt up to it. Then Vasili Rodzianko would watch till dusk, when we'd be off again. I sat on a rail fence with the rifle over my knees. It was quiet in the woods. A bird called, far off. The morning was gray and oppressively muggy.

Eight miles, I thought. Almost five hundred to go. If things had gone according to plan, I'd be out over the Atlantic now with Vasili Rodzianko. Look at the bright side of things, I told myself. Rodin's coming out with you.

Halfway through my watch, I heard a noise behind the hut.

I headed back there with my rifle. Lucienne Duhamel was outside in a crouch under one of the paper-paned windows.

“Not sleepy?” I said.

Mike Rodin's face appeared in the window. “It's okay,” I told him. “Get back to sleep.”

“I was restless,” Lucienne said. She made a face. “These clothes. I wouldn't be surprised if they had lice in them.”

She had managed to keep her Gallic poise, though. The Italian-cut hair was neatly in place, the broad brow was so clean it looked scrubbed, the dark eyes in the pale beautiful face looked at me mockingly.

“I'm going to get away sooner or later, you know.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“You can't stay awake all the time.”

“Where would you go? Could you find your way out of the woods?”

“We won't be in the woods forever.” Lucienne looked at the white boles of the birches, at the cordwood neatly stacked. “We
have
come a long way from Chevy Chase, haven't we?”

“Too long for me. Apparently not long enough for you.”

“Semyon told you?”

“He told me.”

“He is a fool. He was lucky enough to be born a part of the wave of the future. He's throwing all that over for a—a whim. He has everything to lose, nothing to gain. He is a fool.”

“It took him twenty years to make his decision. That's no whim. And Rodzianko doesn't see it as the wave of the future.”

“Then he too is a fool.” Lucienne gave me a strange look that could have been Gallic peasant cunning. “Chet,” she asked suddenly, “are you quite incorruptible?”

“Better hit the sack, Lucienne.”

“Are you a fool too? You'll never get out alive, none of you. I have money. I could—”

“Put it in a bank.”

I started to walk away from her, the rifle trailing. She came after me. I felt her hand on my shoulder. I turned around.

“And put this too in a bank?”

She placed her arms around my neck. She kissed me, with zeal and considerable skill. From thigh to breast her body pressed against mine. She drew her head back an inch and breathed against my lips. “Take me back. To Zagorsk. To Moscow. Take me back with you, Chet.”

I pushed her away from me, less gently than I had intended. She stumbled and almost fell.

“And you on your honeymoon,” I said lightly, chidingly.

My tone enraged her. She was no second Galina. Rage grooved lines in her face. She looked then like what she was: a confused and angry woman shoving her fortieth birthday hard enough to knock it over.

She tried to slap my face. I caught and held her wrist. “Hit the sack,” I said. “Maybe you'll feel younger when you get up.”

She cussed me out in French. Then she strode angrily toward the hut, her shapely buttocks swinging. I heard Mike Rodin's laughter from inside. He'd been her husband. He'd probably known what to expect from Lucienne. I hadn't. I knew now.

And someone else knew too; I saw Galina's face disappearing from the window as Lucienne slammed the door.

I finished the rest of my watch without anyone else trying to seduce me.

Soon after we started out that second night the rain broke.

It dripped soddenly through the firs and pines and birches. It quickly turned the grassless, clay-rich soil of the forest into a quagmire. Our footsteps made sucking sounds in it. We were soaking wet after a half hour. The water streamed down our faces and drenched our clothing. I weather-slung the Russian rifle, bore down, and wondered if it would be all right. Lucienne fell once. She got up dripping mud. She cursed the elements as she had cursed me. In the darkness and the wet we stumbled against one another. The forest smelled moist and earthy.

Two hours like that—and we heard the dogs.

They were still far away, but their baying and yelping came frighteningly over the hissing roar of the rain. The soldier, I thought. The soldier got free. Or one of the peasants returning to the kolkhoz was caught and questioned.

We called a halt. Rodzianko thought the dogs were closer. The dacha, he said. They could get the scent at his dacha, and follow. A mile to the east, the woodcutter told us, was marshland. It would be more difficult for the dogs to follow our trail there.