Lisa looked through the envelope stuffed with papers and traveler’s checks that Burov had given them. “Even if they did murder that boy, they are very correct when it comes to legalities.”
“When it suits them. Did you get the impression Colonel Burov was worried about Major Jack Dodson?”
“Oh, yes. Major Dodson is still out there somewhere with Gregory Fisher’s rubles and maps.”
“That’s right. And if Dodson makes it to the embassy, which is where I suppose he’s heading,” Hollis added, “then tons of shit will hit the fan and splatter everything from here to Washington. We’ll all be home in a week, leaving the night porter as chargé d’affaires.”
Lisa didn’t respond.
Three kilometers out of town, Hollis and Lisa spotted the huge wooden sign set on two poles over the entrance road to the sovkhoz—the state farm. Beneath the name of the sovkhoz was the inspirational message: We will strive to meet the quotas of the Central Committee.
Lisa said, “Well, pardner, welcome to the Lazy Red Revolution October Ranch.”
Hollis managed a smile and turned into the gravel road, then proceeded toward the state farm. They could make out a large group of stark wooden farm buildings, corrugated metal sheds, and a three-story concrete building that Hollis took to be the commune, which housed the salaried workers of the state farms and their families, the single and transient workers, and the technicians, all under one roof. There were individual sitting rooms and bedrooms in the apartments, but the kitchens, dining rooms, and bathrooms were communal. It seemed to Hollis that there was something of Brave New World in those prefab apartment blocks rising out of the farmland, something unnatural about people who worked the soil having no yard and garden of their own, climbing stairs to their apartment.
Lisa looked back and announced, “I see the Chaika’s headlights turning onto this road… he just killed his lights.”
Hollis drove on past the commune and spotted the small brick structure that Burov told them was the administration building. There was a single light in one window. Hollis shut off his headlights, drove past the building, and continued on.
Lisa said, “You think it’s a setup?”
“Quite possibly.”
“What are we going to do now?”
Hollis replied, “Our little Zhiguli didn’t have much chance on the main road, but back here on the farm lanes we can give the Chaika a run.”
“Is this another itinerary violation?”
“Quite possibly.” There was not much available light, but Hollis could pick out the dirt and gravel road from the surrounding fields of the famous Russian black earth. Hollis sped up, hitting the brake whenever he saw an intersecting lane and turning onto it. Without brake lights or headlights the Zhiguli was virtually invisible, and after fifteen minutes of random turnings Hollis announced, “We’ve lost the Chaika. Unfortunately we’re lost.”
“No kidding?”
“Did you notice any Holiday Inns back there?”
“Way back. Like two years and ten thousand miles back. Say, Sam, you really know how to show a girl a good time. Let me buy lunch next time. Okay?”
“I’m glad you’ve maintained your sense of humor, Miss Rhodes, as vapid as it may be. Well, better lost than dead, I say. I think we’ll pull into a tractor shed and wait until dawn.”
Lisa shut off the car heater and rolled down her window. “It’s nearly freezing, and it’s only nine o’clock.”
“It is a bit nippy. Do you have long johns?”
“We have to find shelter, Sam.” She thought a moment, then said, “I think we’re off that state farm by now. If we can find a kolhoz—a collective farm village — we can get a peasant to take us in for a few rubles, no questions asked.”
“No questions asked? In Russia?”
“A collective is different from a state farm. In a collective village you’ll see Russian peasant hospitality. I’d trust them to keep quiet.”
“You’ve never even been in the countryside. How do you know the peasants are friendly?”
“Instinct.”
“Too many nineteenth-century Russian novels, I think.” He shrugged. “All right. I’ll trust you on this.” He added, “You get your wish to see a village sooner than we thought.”
The road had gone from gravel to dirt and was deeply rutted by farm vehicles. They drove on in a westward direction and within fifteen minutes saw the silhouettes of utility poles against the horizon. They followed the poles and came to the first izba of a small hamlet. Hollis slowed the car on the dirt track that ran between two rows of log cabins. He said, “I don’t see any lights.”
Lisa replied, “It’s past nine, Sam. They’re in bed. They’re peasants. This is not Moscow.”
“True. In Moscow they turn in at ten.” Hollis stopped the car and looked out the window. “I think we turned left into the last century.” He shut off the engine, and they listened to the dead silence. Hollis got out of the car and scanned the narrow lane. Like most of rural Russia, this village boasted electricity, but Hollis saw no sign of telephone lines nor was there a vehicle in sight or a structure large enough to hold one. There was no evidence that the village even possessed a single horse. It was nicely isolated. Lisa came up beside him, and Hollis said, “They don’t show this place to the foreign dignitaries.”
A light went on in the front window of an izba, then a few more lights came on. The door of a cabin opened, and a man stepped out onto a dirt path. Hollis said to Lisa, “You talk.”
The man approached, and Hollis could see he was somewhere between forty and sixty, wore felt boot-liners, and had probably dressed hastily.
Lisa said in Russian, “Greetings. We are American tourists.”
The man didn’t reply. A few other doors opened, and more people came out into the dirt lane.
Hollis looked around. There were about ten izbas on each side of the road, and behind them Hollis could see pigpens and chicken coops. Each kitchen garden was fenced in, and in the corner of each was an outhouse. Ten meters down the lane was a single well and next to it a hand pump. The whole place had a look of extreme neglect about it and made the villages outside of Moscow look prosperous by comparison.
A crowd of about fifty people — men, women, and children — were standing around Hollis, Lisa, and the Zhiguli now. Hollis said to Lisa in English, “Tell them we come from Earth with a message of peace and to take us to their vozhd.”
She gave him a look of both annoyance and anxiety, then said to the man who had come out first, “We have having car trouble. Can you put us up for the night?”
The peasants looked from one to another, but amazingly, Hollis thought, there was no sound from them. Finally the peasant she addressed said, “You wish lodgings? Here?”
“Yes.”
“There is a state farm not far from here. They will have lodgings now that the harvest is done.”
Hollis replied, “I don’t think the car will make it. Do you have a telephone or vehicle?”
“No. But I can send a boy on a bicycle.”
“Don’t go to that trouble,” Hollis said with a politeness that seemed to surprise the man. Hollis added, “My wife and I would rather stay with the people.” At the word narod—the common people, the masses — the man smiled.
Hollis looked closely at the peasants around him. They were coarse people with leathery skin the color of the earth on which they stood. Their clothes were little more than rags, their quilted vatniks not so clean or tailored as Lisa’s. The men were unshaven, and the women had that unusual Russian combination of fat bodies and drawn faces. Half their teeth were black or missing, and from where Hollis stood, he could smell the sour clothes mixed with various flavored vodkas. My God, he thought, this can’t be.