Around the next corner they walked straight into a large sec patrol, stopping everyone who tried to pass.
The woman with the baby carriage reported the three strangers as soon as she was able to find a public phone that hadn't malfunctioned. Fortunately for Ryan, Krysty and Rick, that took her nearly an hour. Then the baby was bawling so loudly that she had to stop and feed it before making the call to the headquarters of Internal Security.
By the time the message had filtered on through the various levels of bureaucratic incompetence and reached Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin on his crackling pocket radio, the three strangers were long gone and it was near evening.
Zimyanin wasn't pleased.
Ryan and Krysty played mute, shuffling their boots in the slush and mud, gazing vacantly around. Both had their trigger fingers locked in place on their blasters under the furs.
Even without Rick's whispered, worried translation, it was fairly obvious what was going on.
There had been no warning, just a line of men in dark maroon uniforms, some with rifles slung over their shoulders, blocking off the street. For a razored microsecond Ryan considered their chances of turning and making a break for it. His mind told him that he and Krysty could almost certainly have made it, with the maze of derelict buildings and overgrown gardens. In the same instant he knew that it would mean abandoning Rick to definite arrest.
"Cool. If we have to chill them, then we take out as many as we can," he had time to hiss to the other two.
But he quickly saw why they'd been stopped, why everyone out walking that morning along that particular street was being stopped. The melting snow had flooded storm culverts, and a wide drainage ditch had overflowed, leaving a spreading pool of filthy, freezing water seeping over the road. With the exception of the very elderly or young children, everyone was directed to a flat-topped wag piled high with shovels, picks and forks.
Nobody tried to resist the armed militia. They simply took the tools that they were given and plodded into the water, above the knees, and shoveled the icy sludge from the ditch. The three friends joined them.
"This is fucking crazy," Rick muttered. "This wasn't what I was supposed to do ending my days in a shit-filled river in Moscow! Listen, Ryan. I tell you I can't do this. You and Krysty leave me. Go for it and have a dry martini in Harry's Bar up on Fourth Avenue."
"Keep your mouth shut and stay on the far side of me. Go through the motions of digging, and I'll try and cover for you. But don't try to talk, Rick."
Fortunately for all of them the work took only a few minutes.
A ragged cheer went up as a skinny young woman heaved out a length of wire netting, tangled with weeds and torn plastic. Immediately there was a bubbling surge of water, and everyone scrambled hastily out of the ditch. Krysty grabbed Rick's arm and hauled him with her, slipping in the stinking mud and nearly falling. Once the blockage was cleared, the water drained away quickly, seeping off the road. Everyone shuffled to the wag and returned their shovels, nodding solemnly to one another. The sec men were smiling, one of them kissing the skinny woman on both cheeks and slapping her on the shoulders. A sour-faced young officer beckoned her over and counted out a number of silver and copper coins into her hand. The rest of the crowd looked enviously at her reward.
She set off alone, down a winding side street. Ryan beckoned to the other two. "There goes our jack. Come on."
The russian woman never knew what hit her. Krysty walked quickly past, overtaking her, then turned suddenly with a bright and friendly smile. The girl returned her smile, head slightly to one side as she waited to see what Krysty wanted.
Moving soft as a midnight shadow, Ryan glanced around once, making sure the road was deserted. He stepped in and hit her a clubbing blow with the edge of his clenched fist, just beneath the left ear. He caught her as she dropped like a rock to the uneven sidewalk.
"Jesus, Ryan!" Rick protested. "You really have to?.."
"Yes, friend," Ryan snarled, suddenly angered. "Yeah, I did have to."
"She'll be fine in a few minutes," Krysty said reassuringly. "Ache in the head and empty in the pockets. Better than being dead."
Rick didn't reply. He hobbled down the street, leaning on his bamboo cane, not looking back at the other two.
"It's like being with a dumb kid," Ryan muttered. "A big dumb kid."
Zimyanin returned to his office and worked late that afternoon. Reports of street muggings rarely came to his desk, since they were a matter for Highway Incidents. But an alert officer had seen Zimyanin's circulated memo and had phoned in the report.
"How pleasant to again make your acquaintance," the pockmarked man said, tugging absently at his drooping mustache. He shook his head as he returned The English Tongue for the Benefit of the Russian Gentleman Abroadto his drawer.
The assailants were "a mean-looking man, with only one eye, a tall, attractive woman with very red hair and a shambling, crippled man wearing thick eyeglasses." They were the same people he was seeking. Now they were closer to the sensitive center of the ville.
Chapter Nineteen
"Read it back to me, Alicia Andreyinichna, if you would?"
"Are you sure that?.."
"I am sure. I am also sure that it will be many long winter's days before you rise to Clerk First Class, Alicia Andreyinichna, unless you learn quickly to do what you're told." Seeing the way the girl's face dropped, sensing her disappointment, Zimyanin pasted on his best smile. "I am sorry, child. I had a brief falling-out with my wife, Anya. By the hammer and the anvil! She has a mouth sharper than the best polar bear trap! I should not take it out on you."
"I only worried in case Comrade Marshal Siraksi reproved you for stepping beyond your commission. That was all."
"Perhaps he will. Let us send the letter to him and find out, with copies to all members of the Internal Security Presidium."
She cleared her throat. "Having noted your last communication, I respectfully point out to the Comrade Marshal that there have been new sightings of the three mysterious outlanders. Now there is definite crime, proved: an assault on a decent and honest citizen of Ramenki, and theft. Who are they, Comrade Marshal? Why do they come here? Only one speaks our tongue, and that badly and with an accent that nobody can place with any surety. I repeat my request for the condition to move from yellow to orange at once, and that condition-red reserves be warned. He might agree... Gregori," she said, blushing at her boldness in using his first name.
"Add one more line, Alicia, which may cause him to foul his breeches."
"What?" Her pencil was paused over her ring-bound notepad.
"I have reason to believe that these three strangers might be American terrorists, bound on violence and sabotage. Go on, girl. Write that."
For a moment he genuinely thought that Clerk Second Class Alicia Andreyinichna was going to faint dead away.
Jak went out alone the next morning to scout for food, only to find that the small ville had taken some precautions: a deadfall trap had been cleverly concealed among the woods, as well as a couple of spring traps that fired sharpened lengths of pine at anything that triggered them. There was even a massive old iron bear trap with jagged, broken teeth. If Doc had been with the boy, there was every chance that he would have stumbled over one of the devices.
The villagers had a guard out, though the middle-aged man playing the part had fallen asleep against the wall of a hut, near the smoldering remains of a banked fire. Now that they knew that someone from the outside was stealing from the ville, there was no point in planting any more red herrings. Jak went in, lifted as much food as he could possibly carry and left the place in the opposite direction. He splashed through the stream and then doubled back to throw off any potential pursuers.