“Is that so? What brings you to Poland?”
Skinner mumbled something about a vacation, and the soldier snickered. Probably it was a mistake. As if anyone would want to take a vacation in this poor conquered land.
“Your papers, please.”
Skinner removed the identification card and travel visa from his billfold, showed them, to the soldier, who was very surprised. But the travel visa proclaimed that one Nickolay Mironov, of Tula, could travel with impunity any place in Russia or Poland. That was an unusual thing in a land where a man sometimes had to wait months to receive permission to leave his home town.
Skinner winked. “Comrade, I told you I was an ex-officer.”
“Secret mission, eh?”
Skinner winked again. “Something like that. I can’t talk—”
“Well, then let me see your discharge papers, Comrade Nikolay.”
Damn! Skinner had invented that story about the Ninth Field Army on the spur of the moment, but in a country where service was both universal and drawn out, a man would not travel without his discharge certificate or a photostat of it.
Skinner wished he knew what the hell was going on, what had caused all the trouble. And the blond lad of the Red Army held his hand out, waiting for the papers Skinner didn’t have.
There was a rumpus down the street. It looked like an old peasant, probably as innocent as Adam before Eve, couldn’t answer all the questions thrown at him. The blond soldier ran to join his companions, calling over his shoulder that he’d see Skinner later. Not if I can help it, Skinner thought grimly.
CHAPTER II
NATASHA wore a simple, low-cut peasant dress which must have been, around for a long time, because she couldn’t quite hide the deft patchwork and stitching. “You’re early,” she said.
“I know. Does it matter?”
She shook her head. “No. I get off now anyway. You want to take a walk out on the marshes or something?”
“Well, I’d rather just sit and talk. Provided you have a place we can talk without being disturbed.”
“I know of such a place, Nikolay. Come.”
She took a bottle of vodka from the shelf, came around the bar and let Skinner hold her hand. They looked just like a couple about to embark on a date, and no one in the Red Star Inn paid them any attention, although the place was pretty crowded by now.
They walked together, not speaking, up a flight of sagging wooden stairs and thence across a dark hallway to a little room. The chamber contained a bed, quite large and quite thin of mattress, an old discolored dresser with a cracked mirror hanging from a peg over it, and a chair. Natasha slumped down on the bed after closing the door and bolting it, and Skinner crossed the room to the stiff-backed chair.
“Now,” she said, “just who are you?”
Skinner shook his head firmly. “Nikolay Mironov will be good enough. That’s who I am, Nikolay Mironov.” He wouldn’t tell every buxom peasant lass he met who he was, whether she knew the underground counter word or not.
She smiled. “All right, Nikolay. What do you want of me?”
“Well, I’d like you, or somebody, to take me through the swamps and into Russia.”
“You speak Russian. Your name is Nikolay Mironov. You are a Russian. Why do I have to take you? Also, what business would it be of mine whether you get through the swamps and across the border?”
SKINNER got up, paced around the room. He placed his hands on Natasha’s shoulders and dug the fingers in hard through the thin dress until she winced. “Who I am doesn’t matter. But I have an important mission, and if “you’re what you claim to be, you’ll take me.”
“Have you any proof?”
“No, and that’s the truth.” It was. The only identification he had was counterfeit Russian.
Natasha grinned at him. “But for one thing, I think I would turn you over to the officials and forget all about you.”
“What’s that one thing?”
“What happened in town today. Don’t tell me you don’t know why Pinsk is so excited?”
Skinner told her he didn’t.
“There was a farmer named Kurzowski hunting for snakes in the marshes. The government pays a bounty, you know. You don’t? Well, never mind. Anyway, Kurzowski found something.”
“What?”
“Kurzowski found a parachute, purely by accident. It was not Russian-made, Nikolay, and the soldiers
say it has not been in the swamps outside of Pinsk for more than a few hours, a day at most. There is someone here in Pinsk who does not belong.” She pushed his hands away from her shoulders. “But one thing I’ll have to admit, ‘Nikolay’, you speak perfect Russian.”
“So do you,” he reminded her. “And you’re Polish. Now will you take me?”
“I suppose—” Natasha’s words were cut off in mid-sentence. Someone pounded on the door.
“Open up!” a voice called loudly, and it sounded like the blond Red Army youth. “I’m looking for the Russian from Tula who calls himself Nikolay Mironov.”
“He’s not here,” Natasha said sleepily.
“I told you to open. I would like to see that for myself.”
Natasha groaned wearily, got up and went to the door. She hissed over her shoulder, “Get into, bed, quick! Under the covers.” Then, aloud: “I will open under one condition. That you count to ten before you enter. I… uh… would like to get covered again.”
The Russian grunted his acceptance of the condition, and Natasha withdrew the bolt. Quickly, she crossed back to the bed, her hands working with the buttons of her dress. Skinner caught on and thumbed open the bottle of vodka, spilling a little of it on the blanket. The room was dim with the light of only one candle, and by the time Natasha reached the bed, she was wearing exactly nothing.
SHE PULLED off one of the covers and draped it across her shoulders, swinging it about her white body like a cloak, but leaving enough revealed to show that she wasn’t dressed. Skinner pulled the other blanket up to his neck, smiled once at Natasha who stood by the bed, then watched the door swing in.
The blond soldier stalked into the room.
He sniffed at the smell of vodka, glanced briefly and then again at Natasha, who fussed, modestly with her blanket, then saw Skinner half-hidden under the covers. “I thought you said he wasn’t here.”
Natasha shrugged, letting the blanket fall from one of her shoulders. “We did not want to be disturbed.”
The soldier snorted, turned to Skinner. “Go away. Comrade,” the American said.
“In a moment. I merely want to finish the job. Your discharge papers, please.”
Natasha walked between him and the bed. “You can see—Nikolay is not dressed. Just where do you think he carries those papers?”
As a matter of fact. Skinner was fully clothed but, with Natasha, he hoped the blanket would fool the Russian.
“Well,” he said, “take me to his clothing. Where is his clothing? I’ll find the papers myself.”
Skinner got angry then. “Remember, Comrade, a secret mission. Do you want to make a fool of yourself?”
He was a stubborn one, that Russian. “Doubtless everything will be in order. But I want to check on that.”
Skinner lay there, unmoving, while the soldier’s glance raked the room. “Hey! Where is your clothing?”
He pushed Natasha aside and came to the bed. “Where is it?”
Skinner just stared at him.
Swiftly, so swiftly that it caught the C.I.A. man completely by surprise, the soldier ripped the blanket off the bed. Skinner lay there in his denim shirt and trousers. He felt foolish. It looked like his mission inside the Iron Curtain would die before it started, here in Poland, only hours from the beginning. And he might die with it.