The soldier had ushered him, without questions, without a word spoken between them, to a police station, and there, in a rear alley, they’d shoved Skinner on a big open truck along with a score of weary Russians.
Now the rain pelted down harder, and Skinner tried to use his tattered overcoat for a hood. The man to his left nudged a gaunt elbow against his ribs.
“Rotten luck, eh, Comrade?” He was an old fellow, Skinner observed; hard to tell how old, but certainly in his sixties. He crouched next to the American in a corner of the truck, his long, impossibly thin body twisted like a pretzel. His face was long, too, matching the body. All in all, very drab—except for the eyes which glowed almost like twin coals in his head.
“You’re telling me,” Skinner agreed. “I didn’t do a thing, but they took me.”
The old man’s voice was throaty, deep. “As if you have to do anything to get taken.”
“Umm-m, true. But I just got in from Tula, and I don’t know, what’s going on.”
“Who does? But one can guess, Comrade! Me, I’m from the Crimea, a long way off. A Cossack there, long and long ago—aye, how I remember the old days! A man was a man then because he could split a charging horseman from crown to navel with one blow of his saber. Would you believe that I got fourteen of the Kaiser’s best that way?”
Skinner grunted something, waited for the man to continue.
“But you want to know why they took you. Well, ordinarily, they’d resort to the labor pools when they need something done. But I recollect it was different for the uranium mining in the Erz Mountains four or five-years ago. Then they merely plucked, you off the street, for they believed in quick, decisive action—and they still do, if the thing is so secret they don’t want it to get around. One moment you walk the streets of Moscow, the next—who knows?”
“You think it’s more uranium mining?” Skinner demanded. This might possibly be a lead, he knew and he didn’t want to lose the one slim thread the man offered.
“Uranium! You sure must have vegetated a long time in Tula, comrade. No one mines uranium now, and I mean no one.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Confusing, you mean. The Cominform doesn’t let us draw our own conclusions, telling us that since Uncle Joe wants peace, nothing put peace forever and ever, he’s stopped all work on atomics. But they speak out of both sides of their mouths, for they tell us all the time to arm, arm, arm against Capitalist Aggression.”
“Your talk borders on treason,” Skinner said mildly.
The man drew out a long, razor-sharp knife, ran its edge idly over his fingernails. “I don’t think so, my friend. You probably were hearing things.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I said it was treason. I didn’t disagree.”
The man scratched his head, lowered his voice to a coarse whisper, chanted, sing-song fashion: “East gate, West gate—”
Skinner shrugged. “If that song identifies you and you want me to give the countersign, you’re wasting your time. I said I’m new here. I meant it.”
The Cossack hunkered down inside his torn cape so that only the top of his grizzled head showed. He whispered, so low that Skinner had to bend close to hear: “I am Tuman Tumanov, Comrade. I don’t know where, they’re taking this truckload of men to work, but I don’t intend to go there.”
“Nikolay Mironov,” Skinner said, reaching for Tumanov’s hand and grasping at firmly for a moment. “I’m with you.”
THE TRUCK roared out from its alley, and through the cab’s back window Skinner could see the helmeted head of the driver, and next to that the guard’s head. Probably the guard carried a gun.
“Now?” Skinner demanded.
But Tumanov smiled. “Have patience, my friend. The results of the Revolution have been with us for more than thirty years. It might take twenty more before the Counter-revolution gains any headway. Meanwhile, we’re too close to the police station. Have patience, and I’ll let you know.”
The truck clattered on over the cobbled byways of Moscow, avoiding for the most part the more crowded avenues, lurching from side to side with the weight of the men in its rear. The rain had turned Skinner’s old coat into a sodden ruin.
Tumanov sneezed loudly. “Those ryua!” he muttered. “Those stupid fish! They’ll make me catch my death of cold out here. Would you rather be indoors, Comrade?”
“I would.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Tumanov got up, a big ungainly creature with a long neck, thin, stooped shoulders and stilt-like legs. Six and a half feet tall. Skinner guessed, and he didn’t weigh a hundred and fifty pounds, wringing wet.
They eased themselves toward the rear, pushing their way through the listless men who sat or crouched around them in the truck, taking cautious, wary steps every time the truck lurched. Finally, they reached a little guard-railing, no more than knee-high. Beyond it waited the rain—and a narrow, muddy, deserted street.
“A man could run as fast as we are riding,” Tumanov, observed. “Jump, then let yourself roll to a stop and you won’t get hurt.”
Skinner stood poised for a moment, then pitched himself out of the truck. He hit hard, tumbled, rolled over, struck his head against the cobbles. Voices yelled, the truck screeched to a stop, heavy boots pounded back along the cobblestones.
Tumanov helped him to his feet, shook him. “Umm-m, nasty cut on your head. Run, Comrade! Some fool let it be known that we… departed. The guards come now—”
Skinner looked down the street, saw two soldiers some fifty paces away, running for them. One of the Reds held a rifle in his hands, but he made no attempt to use it. Apparently they wanted the prisoners alive for whatever purpose they’d been taken in the first place.
SKINNER ran after Tumanov, crossed the street and plunged into a sliver of an alley which squirmed its way between two houses. Water cascaded down upon them from the eaves, and more than once Skinner stumbled and fell in the oozing mud underfoot. Sure-footed, Tumanov growled over the delay, but always he waited.
They emerged on another street much like the first with its row after row of frame, houses, but Skinner didn’t have time to look. He heard the soldiers pushing through the narrow passageway with much banging and cursing, and then Tumanov grabbed his arm in a grasp of steel and pulled him along.
The old Cossack knew the city like a rat knows its burrows, darting through alleys which Skinner failed to see until’ they started through them, leading a wild chase up the twisting side streets, trotting boldly over broad plazas and pushing his way insolently through crowds of passersby who carried on their business in spite of the rain. Skinner, who considered himself in top physical condition, found it hard to keep up with the Cossack, for all his sixty-odd years. It almost appeared that the old man moved lazily, clumsily, his long legs pounding against the cobbles heavily, but Skinner discovered that those great loping strides ate up distance.
Skinner’s breath came in rapid gasps, his vision blurred, his head still whirled from the fall. When Tuman Tumanov sauntered casually out upon a wide avenue, even stopping to peer into a shop window and observe the pretty trinkets which were not for sale unless you belonged to the Party, Skinner paused to wipe the blood off his forehead. “You—think—we’re clear of—them?” he panted.
“I know we are,” Tumanov said, smiling. “Although I was born in the Crimea, I know my Moscow, Comrade Nikolay. We have lost them.”
“Well, can they check on us in any way?”
“How? You tell me how. We went through no classification at all, so, unless some soldier happens to recognize us, it is as if we never had been there. Apparently classification would have taken place when the truck reached its destination. But without us, eh?” Tumanov grinned, broadly, and a chuckle surfaced from deep down in his belly. “Is it goodbye, then, Comrade Nikolay, after such a pleasant little interlude? I can just see their faces after they get lost in one of those alleys!”
Skinner looked at the man earnestly. “I have no place to go, Tuman. I’d cast my lot with you, if you’ll have me. Especially if it means meeting people who know that countersign you tried to get from me.”
“It sure could mean that,” Tumanov admitted. “But first for a samovar of good hot tea to warm the bones.”
He led Skinner into a restaurant, humming Meadowlands in his deep, booming voice.