"I shall be going to a far, far better place than I have ever known. You see that I am familiar with the work of your Mr. Dickens."
"Oh. You mean you think we're going to chill you?" Ryan said.
"Of course."
Ryan hadn't honestly given it that much thought. His main purpose had simply been to escape from the work gang and get back to the dacha to help fix the gateway and make the jump, if all went well, with the others.
But now that he did think about the problem of the prisoner, it seemed that the easiest thing would be to put a bullet through his brain and dump him by the side of the road. A dead enemy would never come after you in the dark hours of the night.
Then again, he didn't actually have any personal animosity against Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin. He was a Russian, but that didn't necessarily mean that he was an evil person.
And bullets cost jack.
"I reckon not," he said eventually. "What d'you figure, J.B.?"
"I figure bullets cost jack. There's nobody behind us, Ryan. Mebbe the major's ridden far enough with us right now."
"Yeah," Ryan agreed. "So long, Gregori. Guess we won't ever meet up again."
"You will not cause me any dying?"
"No." Ryan slowed the wag to little more than a walking pace and peered through the windshield seeing that they were coming to an area of dense forest on both sides of the blacktop.
"You wish me to disembark?" Bewilderment was evident in Zimyanin's voice.
Ryan couldn't avoid a smile. "Yeah, Gregori. We want you to disembark. Right now would be a real good time."
Zimyanin opened the car door, letting in a gust of damp, fresh air. He glanced behind him at J.B., then across at Ryan as though he were making sure that their faces were well fixed in his memory. Then he jumped. Despite the puddles and the mud, he succeeded in keeping his balance, running a few steps, then standing still.
J.B. gave a casual wave out of the back window of the wag, but Zimyanin didn't respond. He knew that some of the sec-troop wags would be along shortly, but he didn't look around for them. He stood and watched the spot on the highway where the Americans and the stolen wag had vanished.
His face showed no expression at all.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ryan and J.B. eventually reached the ravaged mansion in the early hours of the evening. Both were soaked to the skin from the rain, which had continued to pound the countryside throughout the morning and afternoon. As they'd gotten closer to the dirt-poor ville, they'd decided to abandon the wag so that they wouldn't attract unwanted attention.
Krysty greeted them at the open front door, hugging Ryan with a sudden strength that took his breath and made his ribs creak.
"Fireblast! You'll snap my spine, lover." He kissed her on her warm cheeks with his cold, wet lips.
"Good to see you again, lover. Gaia! But it's so good."
"How about me, Krysty?" J.B. grinned and eased himself out of his sopping furs.
"Hell, I knew you'd make it. Uncle Tyas McCann used to say it was often the runt of the litter that survived."
"How's Rick? They made it safe?"
"Yeah. Jak was beat. Nearest to the line I've ever seen him. Slept ten hours straight through. He's up now with Doc, looking at the gateway and trying to figure out how those tools can help us."
Ryan let go of her and took a half step back. "You still haven't said how Rick is, lover. Guess that must mean bad."
She nodded. "Bad. I've tried using the healing skills that Mother Sonja taught me."
"No good?"
"No."
"He's not dead?" J.B. asked after pushing the door closed, having taken a good look around the dusk-gray fields.
"Close. Doc wondered about trying to help him down those stairs so he could talk us through the repairs."
"He conscious?"
"Some of the time." She hesitated. "Not all of the time."
"How long?"
Krysty shook her head. She, too, looked close to exhaustion. The flaming crimson of her hair was dulled and coiled flat against her head, not tumbling free and fiery over her shoulders as it usually did. There were dark rings beneath her startlingly green eyes.
"Way I see it, it's coming down to hours, lover. Only hours. The muscles are all failing, like a machine where every part quits at once. He's having a real hard time swallowing."
"Best go see him."
"In there." She pointed across the hall to the main shuttered chamber.
Rick's eyes were open as Ryan, Krysty and J.B. walked in on him. He was lying in a corner of the room, under piles of furs, barely visible.
"Hi, guys. You made it." His voice was slurred and slow.
"How is it?" Ryan asked.
"That's like... like askin' Mrs. Lincoln if she liked the play." He croaked a laugh, like a raven, very far off.
"Listen, Rick." Ryan knelt down at his side, Krysty and J.B. standing behind him. There was the sound of footsteps, and Ryan turned to see that Doc and Jak had also entered the room.
"Go ahead, man. Speaking's getting harder, but I can still listen real good."
"We got clear of the ville. But we faced up with that sec man, Gregori Zimyanin. Mebbe we should have chilled him. I don't know. There's too many throats to try and cut them all."
"You fear that the Russians might try to pursue us?" Doc asked.
"Yeah. Their tracker got wasted. But Zimyanin's not a stupe. He got a map and he'll have sec reports. Food stolen from villes around. Won't take him that long to start drawing some lines and find that they all connect close by here. Then it's only an hour or so before we get visitors."
Rick swallowed several times, as though he were trying to summon up strength to speak, coughing to clear his throat. A shimmering ghost of a near-smile appeared and hung on his lips for a few heartbeats, then vanished.
"You mean get my finger out of the hole, Ryan. Time's a wasting. Sure. You get me down to the gateway and sit me comfortable and... Hell's bells, it hurts... Help me get there and we'll save the ship."
"When, Ryan?" Jak asked.
"Now."
"There were some killings. Some men disappeared. I want the request taken to my office. Clerk Second Class Alicia Andreyinichna will know. I must know as soon as possible. While we wait, I want men to sweep every stinking hovel for twenty miles around. I want word of food or clothes being taken. Word of any strangers. Word of hearing blasters. Tracks. Wags. Anything that's even a breath away from the ordinary. Anything at all. Understand? Good. Then get on with it. I'm sure we're close. I want to be closer."
When they helped Rick to his feet, Ryan saw that the tattered and scorched American flag was neatly folded at his side. The freezie was almost helpless, unable to stand unaided. Outside, the skies had cleared and the temperature had dropped below zero. Krysty had suggested a fire to keep the glow of life in Rick, but Ryan vetoed the idea. The smoke from the chimney would carry for miles and would lead any pursuers to them as surely as a bank of floodlights.
Zorro was underfoot as they began to move Rick up the main stairs of the house. Ryan nearly tripped over the puppy and kicked out at it.
"Fireblast, Doc! Keep the bitching dog out of the way or I'll snap its neck."
"Stow it, lover," Krysty protested. "It's only a little dog."
Ryan turned quickly and faced her angrily. "I meant what I said. This isn't some double-easy kids' game. I figure we have to be out of this place one way or another by the end of tomorrow. Probably sooner. Or the Russkies'll pick us off easy as a bear plucking ripe thimbleberries."
Zimyanin was only a handful of miles away from the dacha by sunset of the same day. He'd enlisted one of the gangs of teenage wolverines from the nearest suburb, knowing that their blind loyalty to the Party and their insatiable relish for cruelty and death made them the perfect instruments of terror.
It had taken irritatingly long for the information he wanted to be transmitted from his office in Moscow. When it came, nobody had a decent map of the area. Zimyanin was finding that his patience was slipping from his control like sand through an hourglass. Everything was going wrong. If Aliev had still been alive he was confident that Cawdor, Dix and the rest of the spies would already be dangling from a convenient branch. If his bosses hadn't ordered them back to the ville for some popular show trials.