Wu said, "Very likely."
The road had wound up from the river to the crest of a low hill. All around them the day was clear. The fields were much larger than most Chinese or Japanese fields. There was something to the look of the land which reminded Dugan of Western Ohio. But the houses were small, poor, and huddled. Wu pointed. Ahead of them was a big village. Guardboxes stood along the highway, built years before for the convenience of the Japanese road patrol. Two or three brick buildings loomed up — probably the Japanese-built post office, police station, and school.
"Our headquarters," said Wu. "You are my prisoner, and I will take you there."
"Whatever the comrade says, just so long as we eat. I desire to eat. When I was in the Red Army, I had delicious American food all the time."
"You are lying," said Wu.
"I swear to you it is true. Excellent pork. Many remarkable delicacies. Even the trucks which brought the food were American. Estiudebakhers, we called them. The newspapers did not say much about it but our officers explained that it was an American trick. They wanted to feed us good food so that we would die willingly fighting the Germans without the Americans having to get killed."
"You yourself fought Germans?"
"I have never been in the West," said Dugan, naively, "and I wonder why the Americans fed me, too. After all, America is run by a few capitalists, so why do they worry if their working-class people are killed? And if they sent us food for a trick, it was a very stupid trick, because they sent us too much. Have you ever eaten the Espam?"
"E-ssu-p'angT
"The most delicious of all meats. The Americans sent us terrific quantities of it. We soldiers ate all that we wanted."
"But you always do anyhow, in Russia," said Wu.
"Nothing like the American food. Never so much. Never so good. Not for poor soldiers like me. I am no Russian. I am not in the police or a Guards division."
Wu said, mildly, "Some things surpass my understanding. You have been away from the Party too long. When we discuss Communist principles, you will be able to resolve such problems. Believe in Stalin and everything will be all right."
"Can we eat and talk at the same time?" asked Dugan.
"First we talk to the boss," said Wu.
They had come into the village and were approaching the police building. The Imperial Manchukuo insignia had been beaten off with hammers. Pictures of Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and Sun Yat-sen were hung in front. They were on weather-beaten canvas.
When Dugan looked down from the pictures, he got the surprise of his life.
A man was standing in the doorway. A white man. Wearing an American Army uniform with Air Force insignia and captain's bars on his shoulders.
He waved to them and Wu saluted.
VII. THE APPARITION OF TREASON
Dugan momentarily had the nightmarish feeling that the American captain had recognized him through the disguise of the Chinese coolie clothes, the deeper disguise of his natural complexion, and the final covering of Asiatic manners which he had assumed. The flyer was probably one of the several Americans whom the Chinese Communists had reported as dead, but whom they kept for possible use as hostages at a later date. Before Dugan could think of some way of speaking to the captain, the man turned and went back into the building.
As soon as he had gone, Dugan began to wonder if the whole thing were an illusion. This was the last place for an American to be. Americans were Fascists and oppressors, so far as these local people were concerned. The only thing to do was to ask Wu, his captor.
"I beg to ask you," he started, using the respectful form of the second-person singular, nin with the sound ah added to it to give formal courtesy to the inquiry, "was that not an American captain whom you saluted?"
Wu's face clouded over with ostentatious secrecy. But even under the exaggerated pretense of mysteriousness, he looked truly frightened.
"Not your business, Comrade An. Nor mine. Come along."
"But he looked so strange…" Dugan whined his protest, trying to wheedle information in a loutish way; but the statement was true.
Dugan, himself a human chameleon, had developed a talent for sensing the assumed roles of other people. There was something inhuman, something far worse than un-American in that blank white face of the captain who had waved to them and had gone back into the building. The man had a broad, low, heavy-browed forehead. His full lips had smiled at them with a hint of controlled contempt. There was something measured in the way that he had moved. His pace was not American. Nor, said Dugan to himself, was it Russian. It was the stance and movement of a man under drugs, of a sick man who has just learned to walk again. It was an adult walk — measured, arrogant, firm — but it was blank. Walking was as individual a process as handwriting, once you got to recognize the different kinds of walking that there were. No two human beings ever walked in quite the same way. The walk of a Japanese woman, for example, was as different from the stride of an American girl as water-brushed ideographs were from finishing-school penmanship. But that alleged captain now… he did not walk the walk of an American, or of a Russian. Certainly not of a German. It was not the walk of a cripple, or of an eccentrically nervous individual.
As he followed Wu into the building, Dugan shivered at the thought of the "American." That was a very bad kind of human being to have around: it was a person without proper origin; and perhaps it would have to be destroyed as an obstacle. To the Chinese peasant-soldiers lounging around the police building, there was nothing unusual about the self-styled captain, but to Dugan that masked walk, that blind firm gait, was as bold as a flag of treason.
But whoever the "American" might be, Dugan felt confident that he could cope with him. A spy who knew no better than to conceal his old identity, without assuming a new one all the way down to his bones, was not too much of a threat.
Wu and he stopped at an office door.
The room was hung with cloth banners, lettered in red and white. They called for democracy all over the world and asked the common people, who loved peace, to stand fast against American Fascism. A long table had been set up. Many people stood around the table, all of them gabbling at the same time. Only one man sat — a haggard but cheerful young Chinese with a tremendous long mop of uncut hair. When he saw Dugan, he looked up, pushed the hair away from his face, and said to Wu: "What person is this you bring in?"
Dugan answered first. "My name, Comrade Mayor, is An, and I am a sort of deserter from the Red Army of the Soviet Union."
"You speak Chinese?"
"A little," said Dugan.
The chairman looked up at Wu. "Take him to the Sergeant."
Wu grunted.
The other people sneaked looks at Dugan without staring directly at him. There was something to this Sergeant business which they understood and feared.
Wu took Dugan's arm, led him out of the room, down the corridor. The corridor was unswept and un-aired. At the end there was a little door. Wu pushed Dugan through that, said, "Down there," and stopped.
Dugan looked down a flight of spiral steel stairs. The Japanese had built well. The lower part of the staircase was pitch black. Dugan thought that "Take him to the Sergeant…" might be code for "Take him to the cellar and shoot him in the back of the head…" and was a little restless at the prospect.
Whining again, but in a panicky tone this time, he complained, "How can I go down these steps? It is too much not-bright, comrade."
Wu tapped his pistol butt. "Go on down. You'll find out."