Death Is My Comrade

by Stephen Marlowe

  “But that’s beside the point,” I said. “Eugenie tried to kill you because you murdered Alluliev. Didn’t she?”

  “That’s ridiculous, Mr. Drum. She said that for your benefit. She had only one reason to kill me. She refused to believe her mother was really serious about coming to Russia to live. And if I carried out my threat to expose Lucienne—”

  “No more parties for Eugenie,” I said. “No more being the daughter of the new champ of the Washington hostess set. Okay, I’ll buy that. But then who the hell did kill Ilya? Not Eugenie; she’d tried to help him. Lucienne?”

  Laschenko showed me the palms of his big hands. “I don’t know, Mr. Drum. Whatever else she may be, I can’t believe my wife is a murderess.”

  “You two all washed up?”

  “A foolish middle-aged man,” Laschenko said with a shrug, “marrying a stunning woman in the twilight of life.… I can’t answer your question. I just do not know. There are ironies within ironies in this situation. I grew disenchanted with Communism. I married Lucienne, regarding her Party membership with amusement. I married her because she embodied the very opposite of what I’d come to loath. She married me because I could bring her to Moscow. And Eugenie, I suppose Eugenie never took either of us seriously.”

  “She came here with you, didn’t she?”

  “She had to come. She has no money of her own. She has never worked a day in her life. What her mother pays for, she accepts. Where her mother goes, she goes. Which is ironic too: when she tried to kill me it was her mother’s position and money she was trying to protect, and her mother’s money forced her to come here with us.”

  “What about Lucienne?” I said. “Is she taking off with you and Rodzianko, knowing you’ll be an enemy of the state the minute you cross the border?”

  “Another irony,” Laschenko said. He thought of everything in terms of irony—now. Maybe in a way that was symptomatic, because Russian humor is too heavy-handed for irony. “Lucienne and her ex-husband. Lucienne and Mike Rodin. She left him because he was the big financier, because he stood for everything she detested. And now she is in his hands again. She’d like nothing better than to report our plans to the authorities. Or at least Mike Rodin’s plans, keeping me out of them, thinking—what is the American idiom?—I’ll get back in the groove when Mike Rodin and Vasili Rodzianko are taken by the police. But there is the irony: her ex-husband is watching her like a hawk.”

  Laschenko stood up. His suit was rumpled. All at once it seemed two sizes too big for him. “You still think the Secret Police need an agent provocateur?” he asked. There was irony in his deep voice. He was like a man trying on a new personality.

  “They need an agent provocateur about as much as I need a ventilated skull,” I admitted.

  “The final irony. If giving you the facts as I have given them is the price of your cooperation, it is a price I have willingly paid. But I still hope that Lucienne … she is my wife, after all … together we could have.…”

  His voice broke. Disappointment and regret had finally surrendered to self-pity. In a man as proud as Laschenko, they usually do.

  “Why me?” I said. “Why am I so important?”

  “Mike Rodin. Rodin has faith in you. Rodin wants you.”

  I took a deep breath. Laschenko’s story was going around and around in my brain like a flywheel. He was a chimera, he was like the old man of the sea, twisting, changing. Every time you thought you had hold of him he changed his shape. Irony and self-pity, themselves conflicting emotions, had replaced his booming, extroverted confidence, were shaping a new man out of the defeated clay that had been Semyon Laschenko. I didn’t know if I could trust him; probably, he didn’t know if he could trust himself. But still, Rodzianko wouldn’t budge except under his own conditions, unless Father Alexi had fed me a line—a Party line. I doubted that, but could find out for sure only when I saw Rodzianko.

  “What’s your plan?” I said.

  Laschenko surfaced from his funk. “Good! Good! Then you will help us?”

  “Let’s hear the plan.”

  Opening his jacket, he removed a map from the inside pocket and spread it on the table. We both leaned over it. The place names were printed in Russian. Laschenko index-fingered one of them. “Zagorsk, Mr. Drum.” Then he traced a line north and slightly east with his finger. “Zagorsk to Kashin to Babayevo to Podporozh’ye to Ozero Yanis. Ozero Yanis is a lake on the Finnish border. We can cross there.”

  “How far is it?”

  “The distance from Zagorsk to Ozero Yanis is slightly more than eight hundred kilometers. Five hundred miles.”

  “That’s great. Five hundred miles through the Soviet heartland. What do we use to make ourselves invisible?”

  Laschenko managed a smile. “In your American Civil War a hundred years ago, how did fugitive slaves reach the northern states and Canada?”

  “Underground railroad, they called it. Hidden in towns along the way, sometimes by sympathetic farmers, traveling at night—”

  “Precisely. There are less than seven and a half million Communist Party members in the Soviet Union, Mr. Drum, out of over two hundred million people. While no revolution is imminent, all our population is not loyal to the government. There is now in the twentieth century a Russian underground railroad. Disenchanted intellectuals, farmers still embittered by the kolkhoz, gypsies. The way stations along an underground railroad. It can be done.”

  I looked at the map. What it didn’t show were the Red Army checkpoints along the way; or the fast motorized columns of the Secret Police, armed to the teeth, that could be sent anywhere in Russia in a matter of hours at a word from an unseen man in the fortress on Lubianka Street. What it didn’t show was Galina Rodzianko, who would leave a brilliant career behind her, and all that that career meant in the Soviet Union, if she went with us docilely. What it didn’t show was Lucienne Duhamel Rodzianko, who hadn’t flown to Russia with her brand-new husband to see him make a fugitive of himself.

  Then I looked at Laschenko. I still couldn’t figure him out, but I had five hundred miles in which to try, on our way to Lake Yanis and Finland.

  Folding his map and handing it to him, I went to the door. Mike Rodin wanted me. It was Mike Rodin’s money I had put in trust for the twins.

  “What are we waiting for?” I said.

  Hadn’t Laschenko told me I was a man of action?

  Chapter Twenty-three

  When twilight hung over the white walls of St. Sergius, Semyon Laschenko and I left the monastery with Father Alexi.

  The way led along the high white wall and then north through an apple orchard and then beyond that across a turfy pasture where the monks with their dogs were calling the monastery sheep to the fold. Laschenko and I were wearing black cassocks like St. Sergius’ patriarch. Father Alexi had warned us that the guards watching Vasili Rodzianko’s dacha had already searched the monastery once because the writer had been gone since last night. Some of them might still be prowling the grounds, searching.

  We came to a stand of white birches, and skirted it. Pretty soon I could see a cluster of farm buildings silhouetted darkly against the deep green northern dusk, and when we reached the farmyard I could hear voices. A crowd stood before the main house, a dilapidated two-story structure of rough timber. The women wore kerchiefs on their heads, the men had cloth caps and dark shirts and trousers. Most of them held small, newspaper-wrapped packages in their hands.

  “Gifts for Vasili,” Father Alexi explained. “They know he is leaving. He was loved here.”

  I wasn’t wild about that, and said so. “Won’t the dacha guards know something’s going on?”

  Father Alexi smiled. “They come from the kolkhoz on the other side of the birch woods. They have slipped through two or three at a time all day. They are cunning, these Zagorsk peasants. We have nothing to fear.”

  Just then a big man came out of the house. At first the peasants thought he was Vasili Rodzianko. They became silent. But then I saw
the bald head. It was Mike Rodin, wearing a dark shirt and dark bell-bottom trousers. He saw us right away and came jogging over. He looked worried.

  He said just two words. “She’s gone.”

  “Who?” I asked him. “Lucienne?”

  He shook his head. “Galina.”

  “When?” Semyon Laschenko asked.

  “A couple of minutes ago. I couldn’t be everywhere at once.” He scowled. “She’ll head for the dacha. She’ll bring the guards.”

  The door opened again, and Mikhail Rodzianko came out. He blinked in bewilderment, then saw and joined us. He spoke Russian to Mike Rodin, who nodded.

  “The boy’s going after his sister. She’s got to be stopped.”

  “When are we pulling out?” I asked.

  “As soon as it’s fully dark. Long twilight here,” Mike Rodin said. “A couple of hours—if Galina doesn’t bring the soldiers. Damn her. Damn that girl.”

  I jerked my head toward Mikhail. “Tell him I’m going with him.”

  A minute later we started out, Mikhail leading the way across the farmyard and into the birch woods. It was dark in there, and silent except for our footfalls, but the trunks of the birches stood boldly white against the lingering green dusk. Mikhail was walking fast. I touched his shoulder and broke into a trot. He ran hard alongside me. He was out of shape. I had set a stiff pace and I could keep it, but every stride I took hammered a nail of pain into my stomach. It was cool in the birch woods, and damp, but before long Mikhail began to sweat. He was snorting like an overworked truck horse. Sweat flew from his face as it swung from side to side in the awkward cadence of his running.

  When the green sky brightened ahead of us, I broke away from Mikhail. He was slowing me down. His sister, a ballerina, was in shape. She could probably run all night. I had to overtake her.

  Suddenly I left the woods behind me. I ran across spongy turf again. A flock of unshorn sheep scattered.

  Then I saw Galina, silhouetted briefly against the horizon. She ran easily, in long loping strides. I increased my pace. To my left, a sheep dog barked. The sound drew Galina’s head around. She still had a couple of hundred yards on me. She called out something in Russian and kept going. I expected her to sprint. She didn’t. Then I realized it was the black cassock. She had nothing special to fear from me. I was one of the monks from St. Sergius.

  A hundred yards separated us when she reached a farmyard much bigger than the one where I had started out with Mikhail. Geese fled her path, honking raucously, spreading and flapping their wings ineffectually. I sprinted, cutting the distance between us in half. She looked back and called out again. Her dark skirt whipped about her dancer’s legs as she ran.

  I overtook her in front of a barn. She turned a third time, her eyes narrowing in recognition.

  “You!” she gasped in English. “The American!”

  Turning had been a mistake. She stumbled and went sprawling. The skirt rode up her thighs. She rolled over and didn’t get up. She was barefoot.

  “You’re coming back with me,” I panted. “Am I going to have to carry you again?”

  Her face twisted in pain. “My leg. I hurt my leg.” She even smiled a little. “It looks like you’ll have to.”

  I looked around for Mikhail, didn’t see him. Galina groaned and leaned forward to touch her ankle gingerly with one hand. Her other hand rested on the bare earth in front of the barn door.

  “Let’s have a look at it,” I said, and crouched.

  She sprang at me with the effortless and instant coordination she had learned on Pushechnaya Street. In her right hand she held a rock. It scraped my ear, doing no damage. She scampered to her feet and threw the rock. It sailed over my head. She turned and ran, as nimble as a goat. She had like hell hurt her ankle.

  Slipping in between the partially ajar doors of the barn, she pulled them shut behind her. I tugged at them. For a moment longer she held them inside, then her weight was gone and I went in after her.

  It was dim in the barn. She held the haft of a pitchfork in both hands, pointing the tines at me.

  “We’ve got a long way to go together,” I said. “We’re going to be great friends, Galina.”

  “We’re not going anywhere together. Not us—and not my father. I’ll kill you.”

  I took a step toward her. She held her ground. “Don’t think I won’t do it. I’m warning you. Just go away. Turn around and go away.”

  The barn smelled of hay and horses. Behind Galina there were stalls. I heard a horse kicking nervously in one of them. I took another step.

  “I am a dancer. Ulanova is getting old. I am one of three ballerinas who may replace her.” With one hand Galina brushed a rope of sweat-matted hair from her face. She was sweating from the long run, but breathing easily. Her eyes searched my face. Rage narrowed them when she saw no fear there, only wariness. Despite what they say about anger distilling beauty, very few women I have known have kept their looks at a moment of violent anger. Galina Rodzianko was one of the few. Her eyes flashed, and those oddly narrow lips which could look mean but somehow wound up looking sensuous looked more sensuous than ever.

  “I can be the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi,” she said. “Do you think I’d let a book stop me?”

  “Not a book. Your father.”

  “Keep back. I’m warning you.”

  But I didn’t keep back, and her warning hadn’t been an idle threat. I took another step, which brought me close enough for Galina to use the pitchfork. She lunged for ward with it, knees bent, thrusting. I sidestepped and caught and held the tines under my left arm. We struggled over the haft. I got it. Galina Rodzianko sat down hard. She glared up at me.

  “Come on. They’re waiting. Every minute we stay here makes it more likely they’ll catch your father. He’s going. You can’t stop him. Get up, Galina.”

  She got to her knees. She started to smile before I heard any sound. Her ears were acute. Then I heard what she had heard—slow, measured footsteps outside.

  Galina called out in Russian.

  I ran for the door with the pitchfork in my hands, tines down, haft up and ready like a club.

  The footsteps came closer. Stopped. Silence for an instant. Galina said something in Russian.

  The doors opened, one of them scraping on earth.

  I saw two hands first, and a rifle. A soldier peered into the barn. Galina spoke again, and his head swung in my direction. He was hardly more than a boy, blond-haired, wide of cheekbone. He could have been Leonid—two years later.

  Letting go of the pitchfork with one hand, I grabbed the barrel of the rifle and yanked it hard. The soldier came stumbling into the barn. Grabbing the pitchfork with both hands again, I swung the haft at the side of his neck. He dropped the rifle and fell to his knees. I got the rifle and stood over him with it. He said something. He saw my cassock and clung to its skirt.

  Galina told him something, probably that I was no priest.

  His eyes widened. Fear showed white all around the irises. Sweat stood out on his forehead in tiny beads. He pleaded with me, his eyes jerking from the rifle to my face and back again. He began to whimper.

  He thought I was going to kill him.

  I couldn’t use a bullet on him. That would bring help. Smash his head with the butt of the rifle?

  He was just a kid. It hadn’t been his idea to be born in Russia, hadn’t been his idea to guard the Rodzianko dacha.

  The soldier whimpered again. Still on his knees, he clasped his hands in front of his face. Maybe the cassock had triggered that. He was praying. He wore a broad leather belt. It gleamed with polish. So did his boots. I could smell the clean leather smell of them.

  He began to shake with fear. Not just his tightly clasped hands; he trembled all over. His big soft eyes fastened on mine, pleadingly but without hope.

  “Boy scout,” I muttered. I knew then I couldn’t kill him in cold blood.

  “Tell him I’m not going to kill him,” I said. Galina translated for me. T
he kid blinked rapidly. He collapsed to his haunches. It was as if fear had pulverized the bones in his body. Tears welled from his eyes. He sat there, swaying a little and crying silently.

  “Find something to tie him with,” I told Galina.

  She gave me an odd look. If she tried to play tough, I could still have my hands full with both of them. She headed, without comment, toward the back of the barn.

  In a moment she was back with some harness straps, and dropped them, still without a word, near the boy. I propped the rifle against the barn door and crouched between it and Galina. The boy didn’t resist as I strapped his hands behind his back, strapped his ankles. Fumblingly he even tried to help. Why not? He was going to live.

  I tore a strip from the hem of the cassock and wadded it. Obediently he opened his mouth. I shoved the gag in and tied it in place with another strip torn from the cassock.

  “Come with me,” I told Galina. Rifle under one arm, I dragged the soldier toward the rear of the barn. I left him there, uncomfortable but alive, and headed for the door with Galina.

  “He’ll get loose,” she said. “Or they’ll find him.”

  I shrugged.

  “You’re soft. He would have killed you.”

  I didn’t answer her. We went to the door. Mikhail met us in the farmyard. He admonished his sister. She said nothing. Together the three of us walked back across the farmyard and through the birch woods to where the others were waiting.

  Several times I caught Galina’s eyes on my face. She’d look away hurriedly each time our eyes met.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  A high moon just waning off the full rode over the birches as we set out on the first leg of our five-hundred-mile journey. Mist coiled like smoke on the ground among the trees. It was heavy, and our disembodied heads seemed to float on its surface.

  Three of the peasants went with us. That made eleven in all: Rodzianko, moodily silent and taking the lead with a big knapsack high on his shoulders, then the peasants, then Semyon Laschenko and his wife, then Eugenie and Mike Rodin, then Galina and Mikhail. I brought up the rear with my rifle. I had offered Leonid’s pint-sized Luger to Rodzianko. He had refused it. Mike Rodin had it now. He’d said he felt foolish wearing it. It was tucked into his belt and he’d said it poked his gut painfully. But he kept it.