Death Is My Comrade (26 page)

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Authors: Stephen Marlowe

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I stood up with my oar. I lurched against the gunwale and went down to one knee.

“Who are you?” I shouted.

The man with the rifle looked surprised. In English he said: “Welcome to Suomi.”

Suomi, in one of the two Finnish languages, means Finland.

They took us by plane from a town called Tohmajarvi to Helsinki. Finnish Foreign Office officials met us at the airport. We were closeted with them for five hours, and then a man from the American Legation came to talk with me and I had to tell our story all over again.

“Five hundred miles?” he gasped. “You mean you came five hundred miles through Russia?” I nodded. He was still talking. “With Vasili Rodzianko?” I nodded. He went on talking. What else he said I never knew. I'd fallen asleep.

Some of the rest of it made the papers. Laschenko will stay in Finland, at least for the present. He has no plans beyond that. He had made his break; he was still like a man searching for a new personality. The American Legation in Finland wired the State Department in Washington and they sent a stiff note to the Russian Ambassador saying that Eugenie Duhamel Rodin, an American citizen, had been kidnaped by a band of roving Kelderaris gypsies in Russia. But Russia is vast, and doesn't a swimming fish taste best? I have a hunch no one will find Eugenie.

Someone from the Swedish Academy flew to Helsinki to see Vasili Rodzianko. He will receive his Nobel Prize at next year's ceremony. There is much he can tell the West. I hope we'll listen.

I put through a transatlantic call to Marianne. “Finland?” she gasped. “What on earth are you doing in
Finland?”
I said I'd tell her when I got home.

The shared violence and tension over, Galina and I were almost like strangers. She came out to the airport with me.

“Mikhail is making contacts,” she said. “The ballet in the West â¦ France or Denmark â¦ I will get work.”

Her hand touched mine. My plane already had been announced. Her fingers squeezed once, and were gone. I turned her toward me, and her blond hair brushed my face.

“Good luck, Galina.”

Her dark eyes narrowed, and for a moment we both remembered. “Lone wolf,” she said huskily. “I'll never forget youâlone wolf.”

I boarded the plane. Lone wolf?

Lone wolf, hell.

I'd remember Galina, but I was going back to Marianne.

THE END

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This edition published in 2012 by
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