Beria relayed the message into his phone muttered to Skinner: “You’ll never get away with it. Where in Moscow can we go?”
“You let me worry about that.”
Skinner removed, Rashevsky’s leather belt, worked deftly,and quickly with it, securing Beria’s hands behind his back, prodding him to his feet.
Again, the clanking of machinery. The metal door scraped on its runners, slid up into the ceiling.
Skinner pushed the chief of the M.V.D. ahead of him into the corridor.
UNIFORMED men stood all along their path in the corridor, grumbling among themselves. Once or twice they blocked the way, made threatening gestures, but Skinner prodded his captive ahead of him with the pistol. The little knots, of soldiers dispersed to let them through, but Skinner could almost feel the eyes boring into the small of his back, and more than once he expected the jarring impact of a bullet in one final flash of pain before he stopped feeling anything.
They took ah elevator down, and here again anything could happen. One flick of a switch and the soldiers could trap them helplessly in the shaft.
Nothing happened. The door slid soundlessly open on the ground floor, and the American stalked out into a big hall with Beria. More guards. Fifty. A hundred. Skinner let them see him flick the automatic off safety, then he headed for the door.
He opened it—and got a surprise.
Winds howled furiously through Lubianka Street, snow fell in great blinding flurries. The wind piled huge banks of it high against the brick walls. The Russian Winter…
Skinner gestured to a captain with his free hand. “You! Bring winter garments for two. Hurry!”
Beria yawned. “Just where do you think you can go? That snow is three feet deep.”
He couldn’t answer that one, Skinner knew. A car would not get far, sinking down to, its fenders in that fresh-fallen snow. On foot then? Where? He could Beria with him to Sonya and Tumanov, but then what? He’d leave a trail that any doddering old peasant could follow, let alone the M.V.D.
“Stop wracking your brain,” Beria advised him. “It is all so futile anyway. Mironov, if I were to tell you something, if I were to tell you what I believe you crossed our frontier to find out, you would then see what I mean.”
It sounded like a dodge. Beria might be grasping at straws to save his neck. Still…. Skinner shrugged.
“Go ahead, talk. But make it fast, because when that man comes back with our coats, we get the hell out of here.”
“Precisely at noon tomorrow,” Beria said, “the United States of Arrierica will be destroyed.”
CHAPTER V
SKINNER waved the man with the coats away. Suave Laurenti Beria had the poker face to end all poker faces, and the way he made that, statement, he might have, been talking about tomorrow’s weather. Something was cooking, all right. Something so big that Soviet production of atomic bombs had fallen by the wayside. But this bland statement…
“Go on. Keep talking.”
Beria smiled coolly. “Who said I wanted to tell you more?”
“I said. Unless you’d like to settle for a bullet instead. I don’t expect to get out of this alive, Beria, so I can kill you now as well as later.”
“Better make it now,” said Beria, “for I won’t talk.”
“You’d better! You—”
“You’re acting like a hysterical school girl, Mironov. Is that what they teach you in the American Secret Service? Don’t you think I know you won’t shoot me now? First, you need me to get out of here. Second, you would like to hear more of my story. Third—but must I go on?”
Wearily, Skinner shook his head, then motioned for the man to come forward with his winter garments.
TUMANOV pulled the fur collar up around his ears.
“Wait,” Sonya called to him. “It’s hopeless, Tuman. You just can’t walk down Lubianka Street, and—”
Tumanov shrugged boney shoulders under the great coat. “I have no choice. Your Colonel tells you they have Nick Skinner. Very well. If we find out what the Kremlin has up its sleeve, what better way to pass that information along to where it will be useful than through an, American agent? Even if we somehow did get across the frontier, assuming we found out what’s going on, who is to say that the Americans will believe us? Skinner they will believe. I will get Skinner.”
“Just like that. How, Tuman? How?”
“I will get him,” said Tumanov, pushing the door out against the fierce wind, “or I will die trying….”
SKINNER found it difficult climbing into the heavy garments while he kept his gun trained on Laurenti Beria. He faltered once or twice, almost dropped the weapon. He could see the Red Soldiers watching eagerly, if he made one slip, just one small slip, it would be his last…
Finally, it was done. He told the captain to open the big oak door, motioned Beria out through the portal ahead of him. The Russian Winter closed in….
Ten steps. Twenty. Pulling one booted foot out of the snow and pushing it forward. Still, the eerie feeling remained a bullet might crash into his back at any moment, putting an abrupt end to the whole wild adventure. Well, he would take Beria with him if they fired. Perhaps Beria, stalking through the snow ahead of him, had the same tingling sensation up and down his spine.
There in the snow ahead of them, a figure. Tall and thin even in the overcoat. So tall and so thin that it didn’t seem possible, and yet—
“Tuman! I’ll be damned! ”
“Tovaritch! Comrade! Comrade Nick…”
The old Cossack shuffled forward through the snow, a great grin spreading across his battered face like the spring thaw. He embraced Skinner with long, snake-like arms.
Beria grunted, started to bolt away. But Skinner pushed himself clear of the Cossack, cocking his pistol. “Hold on, Beria! Take one more step, and—”
The leader of the M.V.D. halted, turned and faced them.
Tumanov roared his laughter. “But this is rich! Not only do you escape, but you take Commissar Laurenti Beria with you. Comrade Nick, maybe there is something to this American way of life!”
Skinner smiled, “Can you get us away from here so that the M.V.D. won’t be able to follow?”
“Comrade, you insult me! I am a rat, a quick gray rat, and all Moscow is my burrow. Come, and you will see.”
Tumanov was as good, as his word. Half a block down, then a flight of stairs hidden in an alley, buried under snow. A dark, wet passageway. “Air-raid shelter from the late war,” Tumanov grunted, leading them.
Another alley, where you had to fight your way through the drifts of snow. Still another, and underground again. Tumanov must have had the eyes not of a rat, but of a cat.
Out into the snow once more. Shuffle along through it, knife your body into the wind. Down into a pit, through a tunnel, long and winding. Tumanov ahead, rapping on a door above his head. An answering knock, a loud squeaking, a shaft of light cutting down.
They clarnbered up a rickety ladder—and Sonya Fyodorovna Dolohov waited for them in a cozy living room. “You got him, Tumanov! I take it back, all back, Tuman! Men are wonderful, you big, handsome, grinning ape. And who? Oh, no! The prize catch of them all, Beria. Tuman, I love you passionately….”
“Please be quiet,” the Cossack grumbled. “I rescued no one, captured no one. Tovaritch Nick did all the work. I hope you have some tea ready. Yes? Splendid.”
“SO, SAID Skinner, starting on his third cup of strong dark tea, “that’s about it. Now it’s your turn, Beria. Tell them what you told me;”