by Harold Lamb
On the train to Rostov she asked him what was the book of instructions in the United States about feeding and bringing up children. Shayne didn't know that one.
For the time being, Catherine was working, all out, to land him in Rostov. She got two places on the first category car on the train, although it was jammed with officers. She got smoked salmon and bread and preserved grapes, and plenty of hot chai for him to eat. She only tasted some of the grapes, when he made her.
When they left the train, Shayne saw an armored car sitting on the siding. Catherine argued, and got them two places in an auto, although the officers had to squeeze over for them. "I said," she told Shayne, "you have United States documents worth a million dollars waiting for you." She was very much excited. She kept looking around on both sides of the car, at the soldiers along the road, and there were plenty.
Shayne wasn't paying much attention to her, then, because he was listening. Along the sky line, he heard the growling of heavy guns, and he had not heard that since he was in the Argonne Forest in 1918. September and October, 1918.
Ahead of the car smoke or an autumn haze hid the city, which didn't seem to have many high buildings in it. Shayne felt a crawling in his legs and up the back of his neck. He could almost feel the weight of a pack on his shoulders. Those were heavy guns, and he thought the Jerries were in the city, all right.
THEY got out of the car at a row of houses on a paved street. Catherine kept asking the sentries for something that sounded like Chigornik, but no one seemed to know anything about that. They wanted Catherine and Shayne to turn back, only the girl argued fiercely, and got the two of them taken to a PC where a bunch of men without helmets sat by a telephone. Shayne could close his eyes and think he was back in a dugout PC near Montfaucon. It smelled just the same. Catherine did a lot of talking, and at last they paid attention to her.
"Now it is arranged for you to proceed," she explained to Shayne, "only I am prevented. I must stay here."
"Where is here?" he asked.
Catherine didn't want to say. She looked around and pointed at a truck, over on its side. It had burned. "Here," she said. Then she thought of something. Tearing off a bit of blank paper from the folded sheet she carried, she wrote something on it in Russian letters, which do not mean what they say. Finding a pin, she pinned the paper on Shayne's coat lapel.
"What's that for?" he asked. He was listening to heavy machine guns sounding off a mile or so away, and he was beginning to feel cold inside. In 1918 when you heard that, you weren't far from the front lines.
Catherine chewed her pencil. "It tells how you are Yamrican," she explained. "But you must not forget to come back here. I will wait."
When the officers noticed the paper on Shayne, they grinned. He wondered what was funny about being an American. For two bits he would have backed out of going for his stuff. But Catherine had made such a fight to get him up to the front, he hadn't the nerve to tell her it was off. She seemed pleased with him, too.
"You will have a guide," she said happily. "And soon they will send someone who can speak English. Only be sure please, to speak good English, the way I do, or he will not understand."
"Okay, sister," said Shayne, listening to trucks rumble by. His throat choked him, and his knees ached.
A big guy carrying two helmets and gas masks came up. He had an automatic pistol and a flashlight on him, and he gave Shayne one tin hat and gas mask. He had a crooked nose and he laughed when he spotted the writing on Shayne's coat.
"Call him Kunak," Catherine told Shayne, "and do what he says."
Kunak smelled like a garage and a sewer plant in one. He took Shayne around behind the wrecked truck where a manhole was open in the street. A ladder led down into a big sewer.
"Da," said Kunak and went down the ladder, motioning for Shayne to follow.
DOWN in the drain, they had to crouch, and pretty soon the gas got so bad they put on the masks. It wasn't chemical gas, but ordinary illuminating gas from broken mains somewhere. Shayne kept slipping, what with the muck underfoot and the darkness. Kunak was so sparing of the battery in the torch, he only turned it on when he fell over something. Shayne figured they were heading toward the center of the city. Once he felt and heard a building cave in over him. They kept going for a long time, until Kunak stopped and flashed the light on the side of the sewer.
He flashed it three times, and Shayne saw a hole dug in the side, leading up. Through this crawl hole he followed Kunak up a slant to a place where the light was gray and he could stand up. Someone took off his mask. He looked around and discovered that he was in the lobby of the Bolshaya Hotel.
It hardly looked like the place he had left a month before. A dozen soldiers sat around on sacks and boxes, some of them watching him, some asleep. Blankets were hung across the windows, and most of the furniture was piled against the front door. A light machine gun stuck out of the porter's counter.
He didn't have a chance to notice much more because Kunak talked to the guys nearest him, and they all came up to stare at Catherine's writing on the paper on his coat. They grinned when they read it.
"What's so funny?" Shayne demanded, feeling sore. No one answered. Evidently the man who could speak English like Catherine wasn't there. And Shayne felt more than sore. The climb through the sewer and the silence of the lobby where the men padded about without scraping their feet worked on him. He wanted to get out of there quick. He started for the stairway, to get his stuff down from the third floor, and move out.
Kunak caught his arm, and said, "Niet!" which meant no dice. So Shayne indicated by signs that he wanted to go up to the third floor. Kunak nodded. That was jake with him.
Instead of using the stairs, he slid the door of the elevator shaft open. The elevator wasn't working, but Kunak began to climb up on a ladder, and Shayne followed. When they came to the third floor, the door was open. Kunak said something that sounded like Chigornik, and pushed his snout out, before climbing out to the landing floor and motioning for Shayne to be quiet.
The first thing Shayne noticed on the ending was a light machine gun behind a parapet of sandbags in the dark corner where the stairs led down. Two men squatted behind that machine gun, and they weren't asleep.
THEN he saw, hanging up on the post where the stair came down, a bunch of grenades. The light being bad he couldn't be sure, but he thought he spotted a trip wire across the steps running up to the grenades and he began to understand why the stairway was no safe thoroughfare. But he couldn't understand all this hush-hush. When he started to crawl toward the door of Number Three, which had been his room, in the center of the landing, Kunak stopped him again. The big guy made Shayne crawl into Number Four, which was the next room, and in the corner—there being three bedrooms on that side of the hotel.
Number Four had the furniture all pushed against the walls, and the windows draped with blankets. Shayne noticed some odd-looking equipment stacked around handy—pickaxes and rope, ammunition boxes and an artificial arm draped in a sleeve, the hand being covered with a glove. There was also a big box of hand grenades but not a rifle anywhere.
A soldier at a loophole had a machine gun, and another man sleeping on the bed had what looked like a long spear, Shayne spotted another loophole, where two bricks had been removed, and he went to look out of it.
Since the Bolshaya was the last building in the block, he had a pretty good view of the street and intersection. It was empty. Across from him most of the windows were boarded up, or otherwise covered. The two doors of the office building opposite stood open. But nobody moved across the way.
This silence of the street worried Shayne. It didn't make sense. A soldier stepped close behind him, and began to talk. What he said sounded familiar, and Shayne recognized Catherine's brand of English: "You-are-Yamrican. I-am-first-category-basic-English-speaker."
The basic English speaker had two gold teeth where they showed up well, and the breathed heavily as if he had been hurrying. Also he had traces of
the sewer on him. "You-discover-documents?" he asked.
Shayne started to explain that they were in the next room, when the basic English expert motioned him to be quiet.
"Gairmans over there laterally," he pointed across the street. Then he pointed overhead. "Gairmans situated vertically up roof."
Shayne looked at him. The English-speaking soldier was not kidding. He explained that some of the enemy held the roof and had worked their way down to the floor above last night. While he was talking, the street below burst into an uproar.
Bullets spattered across the Bolshaya's façade like wind-driven hail, and Shayne tried to take a look out of the loophole. From some of the windows opposite cross fire was searching the apertures in the hotel. Also the street below was full of smoke. It came from burning oil drums that Shayne hadn't noticed before.
Through this smoke screen he sighted the running figures. They were coming like a backfield in motion, keeping low, from the two open doors across the way. They were rushing the Bolshaya entrance under a solid stream of fire about four feet above the pavement.
Bullets beat across the loophole, and Shayne ducked. He sat down against the wall, the way he used to back up against a parapet, and he thought: Why, those guys are Jerries, and where they are heading in is the Bolshaya Hotel.
He listened carefully, to try to figure out what was happening below, but the over-all racket pounded at his cars. Presently it stopped, not gradually but all at once. He waited, and the other guys were quiet. "What happened?" he asked the basic English talker.
A tall Soviet soldier stepped into the room. He was young, and looked like a farmhand. He had field glasses slung short at his neck and he gripped a grenade in each hand. Whether he was an officer or not Shayne couldn't tell, but the others perked up when they saw him.
"Chigornik," said Kunak, and patted the tall man's shoulder.
Chigornik beckoned them over, and they went into a huddle like a team. The English speaker explained to Shayne: "What happened is not good. The Gairmans now occupy the street floor."
Shayne figured on this a moment. His crowd was cut off from the roof and from the underground sewer. As for climbing out of a window, that would be the perfect way to commit suicide. When Shayne figured up his chances of getting out, he decided they were nil. The soldier seemed to think so, too, because he said regretfully, "They have too many fire implements."
It seemed to Shayne that Chigornik ought to be thinking about how to surrender. He had eight men in the hall and one room, with only two light quick-firers, and he was completely enveloped by a flock of Germans with plenty of equipment.
Wiping the sweat out of his eyes, Chigornik proceeded to act unexpectedly. He pulled the water drum away from the wall, and Shayne saw that a hole had been cut through the partition into Room Three. It was down at the floor, a man-sized mousehole.
For a moment Chigornik listened at the hole, then he squinted through it. Getting the artificial arm with the gloved hand, he shoved that into the mousehole. Nothing happened.
QUICKLY the tall boy crawled through the hole into Shayne's old room. Another soldier followed. Then Shayne's mouthpiece nudged him. "Now you go and recapture the documents and million dollars."
Shayne swore to himself. But he eased himself through the mousehole. His room looked pretty much the way it had when he left it. Only Chigornik was lying on his back on the rug watching the ceiling with great interest, while the other soldier squinted through a second mouse-hole dug in the farther wall. Shayne thought that these fellows had been careful to fix up this whole floor in case they had to defend it. And he understood why they watched the ceiling. If a German opened up an eyehole anywhere in that ceiling and sighted them, they would collect a burst of bullets. Because a slug of any kind would go through those flimsy partitions and floors.
He heard things moving above, very faintly. Chigornik had a pistol but he didn't take a crack at the ceiling with it. And Shayne knew why. Two shots, and the men on the floor over them would catch on to the angle the fire was coming from, and would loose off with their own stuff. Apparently they were still guessing where the Soviet guys were.
It was a case of spotting your enemy. in this room-to-room kind of warfare, and then beating him to the trigger. The only thing that cheered Shayne any was that Chigornik and his squad mates seemed to know their way around . . . he reflected that it must mean as much to the Jerries to clear this hotel at the end of the street as for the Russkys to hold the outlet of their sewer main.
Chigornik was looking at him and talking. From the mousehole behind them the English speaker interpreted: "He says, where is the young woman who wrote that?"
Shayne was puzzled for a moment. Then he remembered Catherine's paper pinned on him. "At the other end of the sewer," he explained.
When Chigornik heard that, he smiled and patted Shayne's shoulder.
And then the Germans above cut loose with their stuff. Shayne only heard the blast of fire, and saw plaster dust cascade down. He got back through the mousehole so fast he didn't feel himself move. And he got to his feet still alive, before he realized that the German fire was traversing Room Three from two angles—oblique fire.
Chigornik crawled after him, bleeding down one trouser leg. The other guy didn't follow, and Shayne knew he was dead. Under that cross fire from above anything in Room Three would be dead by now. The Germans must have been squatting above the two end rooms and angling their fire into Shayne's old room.
THEN the firing let up. Chigornik, limping, shoved the water drum over against the mousehole opening. Then he just stood there listening, watching the ceiling. Shayne held his breath until his eardrums roared. Not one of the Russians moved or said anything.
When Shayne could hear things again, he was sure that men were moving close to them. Nothing came through distinct, but wood creaked as if a weight were put on it. He thought the sounds came from their level, too, and that meant the men were in the next room.
The sweat dripped from his chin while he tried to hold his breath and listen. He thought: A whole platoon of Jerries may be six feet away with automatic weapons.
No man's nerves could stand this kind of waiting. Here he was with the four Russians, waiting like day pigeons to be busted by the machine guns. It was a certain bet that the Jerries would traverse this last room with bullets before trying to break in——
"For Pete's sake," he muttered, "open up before they do."
Chigornik didn't understand. He touched the American's arm, and pointed at the door. It was open. He shoved Shayne toward it, motioning for him to be quiet.
Moving one foot at a time, Shayne made his way out the door. He remembered how he had once moved up to Montfaucon in the night, walking over solid ground lighted by shell bursts here and there, with a rifle in his hands. And here on the third floor of the Bolshaya he wished he were back at Montfaucon.
It was quiet enough in the hall, with those two Russians still crouched over their machine gun, behind the sandbags. Probably with the stairs mined two ways and all, neither side was making any attempt to rush the halls. Shayne climbed in behind the sandbags.
He could breathe easier there, but he felt like a man blindfolded waiting for a rifle squad to execute him, backed up against a wall. Through the door he saw the Russians in Room Four huddled around Chigornik as if he were calling off a new signal. They separated, climbing up silently on the bureau, the table and bed.
Shayne prayed that they would open up with their machine gun and pistols. They crouched motionless as listening animals—Chigornik's eyes shifting, his face pinched and hard. He was on the bureau beside the mousehole. Leaning down, he gripped the top of the water drum and slid the thing back a little from the hole. Shayne thought: He can't be going in there—
The crash of the firing made Shayne yell. Plaster dust puffed out of the wall around Chigornik, and splinters shot up from the furniture. The beat of the bullets was only a few inches above the floor. The Germans were traversing ve
ry low, to dispose of anyone lying or standing on the floor. Only the Russians weren't there.
Kunak was hit by a ricochet, and shots tore into the sandbags in front of Shayne. Then the blast of fire stopped. A haze of dust filled Room Four. Water spurted from holes in the pierced drum.
As Shayne watched, that drum began to move, an inch or so. Someone inside the hole was moving it. Simultaneously, Chigornik shifted his hands. He held a grenade, and he pulled the lever.
"One ... two ... three," Shayne counted, his eyes on the grenade. Again the drum moved, and the big Russian swung his arm down, slipping the grenade back of the water drum, through the mousehole. "Seven . . . eight," Shayne counted. And the grenade exploded in the other room. Immediately Chigornik bowled another through the hole and it cracked off.
Metal clashed and a voice whined somewhere in Room Three. Then the machine gun beside Shayne jumped into life, its roar filling the hall. Down the hall, a figure holding a Luger pistol slumped out of the door of Room Two, the door swinging open under pressure of the man's body falling.
From the door by Shayne, Kunak crawled, a grenade in his hand. Pressing close to the wall, he scrambled to the body of the German. The machine gun kept up its chatter over his head, until he swung his right arm wide, flipping the grenade into the end room. When it crashed he made a sign, and the gun quit firing.
Kunak listened for a moment, then carefully picked up the Luger. He seemed to know how to work it. Putting his helmet on the end of it, he edged it into the open door. When nothing happened he put the tin hat back on his head, and looked into the door. He beckoned to the other Russians.
The Jerries weren't doing any more fighting on the third floor of the Bolshaya. Most of them were killed. Shayne saw how they had come into the room down the hall, by a rope ladder from the roof, through a window.