She nodded. Porphiry Grigoryevich reached for the phone.
"Now I am going to call the surgeon," he said. "He will give you several injections. Eventually, the injections will be fatal, but for some weeks, you will feel nothing from them. Post-hypnotic urges will direct you. If your plan works, you will not kill MacAmsward in the literal sense. Literally, he will kill himself. If the plan fails, you'll kill him another way if you can. You were an actress. I believe?"
"For a time. I never got to the Bolshoi."
"But excellent! His mother was an actress. You speak English. You are beautiful, and full of grief. It is enough. You are the one. But do you really love the Fatherland enough to carry it out?"
Her eyes burned. "I hate the killers of my son!" she whispered.
The colonel cleared his throat. "Yes, of course. Very well, Marya Dmitriyevna, it is death I am giving you. But you will be sung in our legends for a thousand years. And by the way—" He cocked his head and looked at her oddly. "I believe I really do love you, dushka."
With that, he picked up the phone.
Strange exhilaration surged within her as she crawled through the brush along the crest of the flood embankment, crawled hastily, panting and perspiring under a smoky sun in a dusty sky while Ami fighters strafed the opposite bank of the river where her company was retreating. The last of the Russ troops had crossed, or were killed in crossing. The terrain along the hank where she crawled was now the enemy's. There was no lull in the din of battle, and the ugly belching of artillery mingled with the sound of the planes to batter the senses with a merciless avalanche of noise; but the Ami infantry and mechanized divisions had paused for regrouping at the river. It would be a smart business for the Americans to plunge on across the river at once before the Russians could reorganize and prepare to defend it, but perhaps they could not. The assault had carried the Ami forces four hundred miles inland, and it had to stop somewhere and wait for the supply lines to catch up. Marya's guess—and it was the educated guess of a former officer—was that the Ami would bridge the river immediately under air cover and send mechanized killer-strikes across to harass the retreating Russ without involving infantry in an attempt to occupy territory beyond the river.
She fell flat and hugged the earth as machine gun fire traversed the ridge. A tracer hit rock a yard from her head, spraying her with dust, and sang like a snapped wire as it shot off to the south. The spray of bullets travelled on along the ridge. She moved ahead again.
The danger was unreal. It was all part of an explosive symphony. She had the manna. She could not be harmed. Nothing but vengeance lay ahead. She had only to crawl on.
Was it the drug that made her think like that? Was there an euphoric mixed in the injections? She had felt nothing like this during the raids. During the raids there was only fear, and the struggle to remember whether she had left the teapot boiling while the bombs blew off.
Macbeth. Once she had played Lady Macbeth upon the Moscow stage. How did it go? The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements. Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me, from crown to toe, top-full of direst cruelty!
But that wasn't quite it. That wasn't quite what she felt. It was a new power that dwelt in her bosom. It was something else.
Her guard uniform was caked with mud, and the insignia was torn loose from her collar. The earth scuffed her knees and the brush scratched her arms. She kept falling flat to avoid the raking fire of her own machine guns. And yet it was necessary that she stay on the ridge and appear to be seeking a way across the river.
She was too intent upon watching the other side to notice the sergeant. She crawled over a corpse and nearly fell in the foxhole with him. She had been crawling along with her pistol in hand, and the first she saw of the sergeant was his boot. It stamped down on her gun hand. He jammed the muzzle of a tommy-gun against the side of her throat.
"Drop it, sister! Voyennoplyennvi!"
She gasped in pain—her hand—and stared up at him with wide eyes. A lank young Ami with curly hair and a quid of tobacco in one cheek.
"Moya rooka—my hand!"
He kept his boot heel on the gun, but let her get her hand free. "Get down in here!"
She rolled into the hole. He kicked the gun toward the river.
"Hey, Cap!" he yelled over his shoulder. "I got a guest. One of the commissar's ladies." Then to the girl: "Before 1 kill you, what are you doing on this side of the river, spy?"
"Most chyeryez ryekoo . . ."
"I don't speak it. No savvy. Ya nye govoryu ..."
Marya was suddenly terrified. He was lean and young and pale with an unwelcome fear that would easily allow him to fire a burst into her body at close range. The Ami forces had been taking no prisoners during the running battle. The papers called them sub-human beasts because of it, but Marya was sufficiently a soldier to know that prisoners of war were a luxury for an army with stretchy logistic problems, and often the luxury could not be afforded. One Russian lieutenant had brought his men to the Ami under a while flag, and the Ami captain had shot him in the face and ordered his platoon to pick off the others with rifle fire as they tried to flee. In a sense, it was retaliatory. The Russians had taken no prisoners during the Ami airborne landings, and she had seen seen Ami airmen herded together and machine-gunned. She hated it. But as an officer, she knew there were times of necessity.
"Please don't shoot," she said in English. "I give up. I can't get across the river anyway."
"What are you doing on this side?" he demanded.
"My company was retreating across the bridge. I was the last to start across. Your artillery hit the bridge. The jets finished it off with their rockets." She had to shout to be heard above the roar of battle. She pointed down the river. "I was trying to make it down to the ford. Down there you can wade across."
It was all true. The sergeant thought it over.
"Hey, Cap!" he yelled again. "Didn't you hear me? What'll I do with her?"
If there was an answer, it was drowned by shellfire. "Undress!" the sergeant barked.
"What?"
"I said to take off your clothes. And no tricks. Strip to the skin."
She went sick inside. So now it started, did it? Well, let it come! For the Fatherland! For Nikolai. She began unbuttoning her blouse. She did not look at the Ami sergeant. Once he whistled softly. When she had finished undressing, she looked up defiantly. His face had changed. He moistened his lips and swore softly under his breath. He crossed himself and edged away. Deep within her, something smiled. He was only a boy.
"Well, what are you cursing about?" she asked tonelessly.
"If I didn't think you would I mean I wish this gun if I had time I'd but you'd stab me in the back but when I think about what they'll do to you back there ...”
"Jeezis!" he said fervently, wagging his head and rolling his quid into the other cheek. "Put the underwear and the blouse back on, roll up the rest of it, and start crawling down the slope. Aim for that slit trench down there. I'll be right behind you."
"She's quite a little dish, incidentally," the Ami captain was saying on the field telephone. "Are we shooting prisoners now, or are we sending them back . . . Yeah?" He listened for awhile. A mortar shell came screaming down nearby and they all sat down in the trench and opened their mouths to save eardrums. "To who?" he said when it was over. "Slim? Oh, to you . . . Yeah, that's right, a photograph of Old Brass Butt in person. I can't read the other stuff. It's in Russky. . . . Just a minute." He covered the mouthpiece and looked up at the sergeant. "Where's the rest of your squad, Sarge?"
The sergeant swallowed solemnly. "I lost all my men except Price and Vittorio, sir. They were wounded and went to the rear."
"Damn! Well, they're sending up replacements tonight; and we're all going back for a breather, as soon as they get here. So you might as well march her on back yourself." He glanced thoughtfully at the girl. "Good God!" he murmured.
"You have searched me," she said cooly. "Would you gentlemen allow me to put on my skirt? I have submitted to capture. As an officer, I expect ..."
"Look, lady, what you expect doesn't matter a damn!" snapped a lieutenant. "You're a prisoner of war, and you're lucky to be alive. Besides, you are now about to have the high privilege of lying down with six ..."
"Quiet, Sam!" grunted the captain. "We can't do it. Lady, put on the rest of your clothes and get going."
"Why?" the lieutenant yelled. "That damned sergeant is going to . . ."
"Shut up! Can't you see she's no peasant? Christ, man, this war doesn't make you all swine, does it? Sergeant, trade that Chicago typewriter for a forty-five, and take her back to Major Kline for interrogation. Don't touch her, you hear?"
"Yes, sir."
The captain scribbled an order in his notebook, tore out the page, and handed it to the sergeant. "You can probably hitch a ride on the chow wagon part of the way. It's going to get dark pretty soon, so keep a leash on her. If anybody starts a gang rape, blow his guts out." He grinned ruefully. "If we are going to pass it up ourselves, by damn, I want to make sure nobody else does it." He glanced at the Russian girl and reddened. "My apologies, lieutenant. We're not really bastards. We're just a long way from home. After we wipe of this Red Disease (he spat out the words like bites of tainted meat) you'll see we're not so bad. I hope you'll be treated like an officer and a gentlewoman, even if you are a commie." He bowed slightly and offered the first salute.
"But I'm not—well, thank you, Captain," she said, and returned the salute... .
They sat spraddle-legged in the back of the truck as it bounced along the shell-pocked road. The guns had fallen silent, but the sky was full of Ami squadrons jetting toward the sunset. Pilotless planes and rocket missiles painted swift vapor trails across the heavens, and the sun colored there with blood. She breathed easier now, and she was very tired. The Ami sergeant sat across from her and kept his gun trained on her and appeared very ill-at-ease. He blushed several times for no apparent cause. She tried to shut him out of her consciousness and think of nothing. He was a doggy sort of a pup, and she disliked him. The Ami were all doggy pups. She had met them before. There was something of the spaniel in them.
Nikolai, Nikolai, my breasts ache for you, and they burst with your milk, and I must drain them before I die of it. My baby, my bodykins, my flesh torn from my flesh, my baby, my pain, my Nikki Andreyevich, come milk me—but no, now it is death, and we can he one again. How wretched it is to ache with milk and mourn you...
"Why are you crying?" the sergeant grunted after awhile.
"You killed my baby."
"I what?"
"Your bombers. They killed my baby. Only yesterday."
"Damnation! So that's why you're—" He looked at her blouse and reddened again.
She glanced down at herself. She was leaking a little, and the pressure was maddening. So that's what he was blushing about!
There was a crushed paper cup in the hack of the truck. She picked it up and unfolded it, then glanced doubtfully at the sergeant. He was looking at her in a kind of mournful anguish.
"Do you mind if I turn my hack?" she asked.
'Hell's bells!" he said softly, and put away his gun.
"Give me your word you won't jump out, and I won't even look. This war gives me a sick knot in the gut." He stood up and leaned over the back of the cab, watching the road a head and not looking at her, although he kept one hand on his holster and one boot heel on the hem of her skirt.
Marya tried to dislike him a little less than before. When she was finished, she threw out the cup and buttoned her blouse again. "Thank you, sergeant, you can turn around now."
He sat down and began talking about his family and how much he hated the war. Marya sat with her eyes closed and her head tilted back in the wind and tried not to listen.
"Say, how can you have a baby and be in the army?" he asked after a time.
"Not the army. The home guard. Everybody's in the home guard. Please, won't you just be quiet awhile?"
"Oh. Well. Sure, I guess."
Once they bailed out of the truck and lay flat in the ditch while two Russian jets screamed over at low altitude, but the jets were headed elsewhere and did not strafe the road. They climbed back in the truck and rolled on. They stopped at two road blocks for MP shakedowns before the truck pulled up at a supply dump. It was pitch dark.
The sergeant vaulted out of the truck. "This is as far as we ride," he told her. "We'll have to walk the rest of the way. It's dark as the devil, and we're only allowed a penlight." He flashed it in her face. "It would be a good chance for you to try to break for it. I hate to do this to you, sis, but put your hands together behind your back."
She submitted to having her wrists bound with telephone wire. She walked ahead of him down the ditch while he pointed the way with the feeble light and held one end of the wire.
"I'd sure hate to shoot you, so please don't try anything."
She stumbled once and felt the wire jerk taut.
"You've cut off the circulation; do you want to cut off the hands?" she snapped. "How much farther do we have to go?"
The sergeant seemed very remorseful. "Stop a minute.
I want to think. It's about four miles." He fell silent. They stood in the ditch while a column of tanks thundered past toward the front. There was no traffic going the other way.
"Well?" she asked after awhile.
"I was just thinking about the three Russky women they captured on a night patrol awhile back. And what they did to them at interrogation."
"Go on."
"Well, it's the Blue Shirt boys that make it ugly, not so much the army officers. It's the political heel snappers you've got to watch out for. They see red and hate Russky. Listen, it would be a lot safer for you if I took you in after daylight, instead of at night. During the day there's sometimes a Red Cross fellow hanging around, and everybody's mostly sober. If you tell everything you know, then they won't be so rough on you."
"Well?
"There's some deserted gun emplacements just up the hill here, and an old command post. I guess I could stay awake until dawn."
She paused, wondered whether to trust him. No, she shouldn't. But even so, he would he easier to handle than half a dozen drunken officers.
"All right, Ami, but if you don't take wires off, your medics will have to amputate my hands."
They climbed the hill, crawled through splintered logs and burned timbers, and found the command post under-ground. Half the roof was caved in, and the place smelled of death and cartridge casings, but there was a canvas cot and a gasoline lantern that still had some fuel in it. After he had freed her wrists, she sat on the cot and rubbed the numbness out of her hands while he opened a K-ration and shared it with her. He watched her rather wistfully while she ate.
"It's too bad you're on the wrong side of this war," he said. "You're okay, as Russkies go. How come you're fighting for the commies?"
She paused, then reached down and picked up a handful of dirt from the floor, kneaded it, and showed it to him, while she nibbled cheese.
"Ami, this had the blood of my ancestors in it. This ground is mine. Now it has the blood of my baby in it; don't speak to me of sides, or leaders, or politics." She held the soil out to him. "Here, look at it. But don't touch. It's mine. No, when I think about it, go ahead and touch. Feel it, smell it, taste a little of it the way a peasant would to see if it's ripe for planting. I'll even give you a handful of it to take home and mix with your own. It's mine to give. It's also mine to fight for." She spoke calmly and watched him with deep jade eyes. She kept working the dirt in her hand and offering it to him. "Here! This is Russia. See how it crumbles? It's what they'll bury you in. Here, take it." She tossed it at him. He grunted angrily and leaped to his feet to brush himself off.
Marya
went on eating cheese. "Do you want an argument, Ami?" she asked, chewing hungrily while she talked. "You will get awfully dirty, if you do. I have a simple mind. I can only keep tossing handfuls of Russia at you to answer your ponderous questions."
He did an unprecedented thing. He sat down on the floor and began—well, almost sobbing. His shoulders heaved convulsively for a moment. Marya stopped eating cheese and stared at him in amazement. He put his arms across his knees and rolled his forehead on them. When he looked up, his face was blank as a frightened child's.
"God, I want to go home!" he croaked.
Marya put down the K-ration and went to bend over him. She pulled his head back with a handful of his hair and kissed him. Then she went to lie down on the cot and turned her face to the wall.
"Thanks, Sergeant," she said. "I hope they don't bury you in it after all."
When she awoke, the lantern was out. She could see him bending over her, silhouetted against the stars through the torn roof. She stifled a shriek.
"Take your hands away!"
He took them away at once and made a choking sound. His silhouette vanished. She heard him stumbling among the broken timbers, making his way outside. She lay there thinking for awhile, thoughts without words. After a few minutes, she called out.
"Sergeant? Sergeant!"
There was no answer. She started up and kicked something that clattered. She went down on her knees and felt for it in the dark. Finally she found it. It was his gun.
“Sergeant."
After awhile he came stumbling back. "Yes?" he asked softly.
"Come here."
His silhouette blotted the patch of stars again. She felt for his holster and shoved the gun back in it.
"Thanks, Ami, but they would shoot you for that."
"I could say you grabbed it and ran."
"Sit down, Ami."
Obediently he sat.
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