He muttered his thanks in Polish—at least Skinner guessed it was thanks, because the seamy old face smiled at him. But the peasant grumbled and muttered to himself when he received an answer in. Russian. If this simple farmer were typical, the Poles lost no love on their Russian masters.
“Pinsk?” Skinner demanded.
When the peasant nodded sourly, Skinner climbed into the wagon beside him, and with much clearing of his throat and swearing, the old man drove his horses forward. The two scrawny beasts made almost as much noise as he did.
There were a lot of Red Army, men in Pinsk, wearing their bright gray uniforms. The town was a dirty, isolated place, seemingly, serving no other purpose than to attract all the horseflies and mosquitos in the area.
IN BONN they’d told Skinner, to seek out the Red Star Inn which, before the “Liberation”, had been called the Inn of Pripet. It turned out to be a weather-beaten old building that looked like a barn. Inside, the big room was musty, gloomy, foul-smelling. Off to the left, half a dozen Red soldiers laughed and joked at the bar, and one of them would make lewd gestures at the Polish barmaid every time she came past. She hardly seemed to notice him.
A man with a big, unkempt moustache that would have been Stalinesque had it not been iron-gray, was cleaning glasses at the other end of the bar. The girl’s father, Skinner guessed.
“Vodka,” he said, waiting while the old man poured the drink. Skinner had a money belt and a billfold, both given to him in Bonn, and both cram-full of Russian currency. The native vodka, Skinner realized after one choking swallow, bore the same relationship to the smoother United States product as corn-liquor bears to bonded bourbon, and sometimes the stuff ran as high as a hundred-fifty proof, or seventy-five per cent alcohol. The Red Army boys were getting a refill from the barmaid, and it didn’t look like their first. All of them seemed pretty gay.
“Why do you Pinsk people live out. here in the middle of the swamps?” Skinner asked the barman. That question would serve as identification; if he were a member of the Polish underground, the old man would know the right answer.
But he merely growled from behind his moustache: “The government was supposed, to drain these marshes, my friend. You know that. But then came the war.”
Skinner shrugged, ambling slowly down the length of the bar until he was in such a position that he’d get his next drink from the girl.
“Hey, Pole!” shouted one of the Red Army boys, a blond lad too young: to have seen action in World War II. He was grinning in expectation of some joke about to be perpetrated.
Skinner wiped his lips, tried to make his voice steady. Here was his first contact with the Reds themselves. “I’m no Pole,” he said quietly, in Russian. The soldier seemed very disappointed.
“Oh, Comrade. Well, then will you have some vodka with us?”
One of the others demanded: “Why aren’t you in uniform?”
“I served my time,” Skinner said. “Ninth Field Army and guerrilla work near Smolensk. I’m in the reserve now.”
“That’s a coincidence,” the blond lad told Skinner, slapping him on the back. “We’re from the Ninth. What do you think of General Roskinov’s new policy?”
Who the hell was General Roskinov?
SKINNER mumbled something about being out of the service for three years, and then he called loudly to the girl for more Vodka. “It’s on me, Comrades,” he assured the Red Army boys, and they were very pleased. All ordered double vodkas as Skinner asked the girl, a buxom thing in peasant garb, the same question he’d asked her father.
She didn’t bat an eyelash. She said, “After you live in the Pripet for a time, you get to like it. The life is so quiet.” And that, precisely, was the answer Skinner sought.
He smiled at her, casually. “Are you doing anything tonight, miss… uh…”
“Natasha.” She smiled, making eyes at Skinner in such a way that all the Red Army boys turned to watch, “No, I’m not doing anything.”
“Well, would you like to spend the evening with an ex-officer of the Red Army—?”
“Officer, eh?” the blond Red demanded, respect in his voice.
Skinner shrugged. “Just a lieutenant. But, Comrades, you’re interfering with an operation of love.”
They laughed at that, and one of them muttered the Russian equivalent of the idiom about their not being able to get to first base with the girl. Skinner told them it was superior-technique, and they laughed again.
Natasha said, “Yes, I’d like that. Did you say seven?”
“I didn’t say. But seven is fine, Natasha. You can call me Nikolay—and I’ll see you then.”
“Yes, Nikolay,” she agreed demurely, and blushed.
“Yes, Nikolay,” one of the Reds mimicked her speech. “I don’t know how you do it, Comrade Nikolay.”
Skinner had a few more drinks with the Reds—their treat this time—and then his head began to swim. He’d eaten nothing for close to twelve hours, and now he ordered some sausage and black bread, the middle-European equivalent of a hamburger.
After that he excused himself and went to one of Pinsk’s three barber shops, which was a bathhouse as well. While he was shaved, he heard water splashing in the ancient metal tubs in a rear room. Like barbers anyplace else—from Ancient Greece to the present—Skinner’s man deluged him with a constant flow of chatter, half in Polish which he did not understand, half in a very badly spoken Russian.
Shave concluded, the barber began to finger the buttons of Skinner’s shirt. “You’ll want a bath, of course.”
Skinner shoved his hands away. “Of course not.”
“But, sir, everyone who shaves here also bathes here, and for so little extra money. Come—”
SKINNER had to push the dirty hands away again. A bath would feel mighty good to his cramped muscles, but he could just see himself stripping off the shirt, and exposing his .45 and cartridge belts. He’d be in the hands of the Secret Police before he had time to put his shirt on again.
“No, thanks,” he said, this time more firmly. He paid the man, who was talking to himself as he made his way back to the bath room, doubtless to check upon the aniount of soap his bathers were using.
Skinner wandered around town idly, chafing at the delay. The robust good health of Natasha’s red cheeks and buxom figure was an exception. Most of the people of Pinsk were thin and undernourished here in this dirty little city which was the focal point of Russo-Polish trade across the Pripet Marshes. The trade was one-way, of course—all to the advantage of the overlords, and you could see that in the people’s faces.
By six o’clock a change came over the town, and Skinner was nervous because he couldn’t put his finger on the reason, for it. The streets became almost deserted, and that didn’t seem right, not now, just at the close of the working day. Those people he did encounter were fearful, suspicious, alert—and more than once he saw some of them detained and questioned by gray-uniformed Red Army men.
One of the soldiers laid a big hand on his shoulder, and Skinner felt the fingers scant inches from his holster-strap. It was the blond boy from the Red Star Inn.
“Comrade Nikolay,” he said, not friendly now, “just what is it you’re doing in Pinsk? What brings you here?”
Skinner smiled. “Why?”
“Answer the questions, please.” He was alarmed about something, but at the same time he was a cocky, arrogant new member of the army which, not too many years before, had shattered the German Wehrmacht. He could be dangerous.
Skinner said he was a transient worker out of Tula.