by Paul Kenyon
The metal cylinder dragging at her shoulders, she swung herself out the window and slid down the line.
They were waiting for her at the bottom. They must have been hiding just around the corner of the building.
"Astanaveetes!" a harsh voice said below her. "Hold it!"
Dangling on her silken thread, she looked downward.
There were two of them. A great big fellow, bareheaded and barehanded in the freezing cold, cradling a submachine gun in one huge arm. And a little hunchbacked dwarf, a figure out of Grimm's fairytales, in a peaked hood and long red scarf, dancing excitedly around the other man.
If she could push outward from the wall, she might be able to drop directly on top of the bareheaded giant before he could swing his gun up and fire. She tensed her muscles.
"Don't try it," he said.
Chapter 13
The Baroness let all her muscles relax and hung, limp, against the side of the building. She recognized that tone of command. It meant the man who had spoken was a pro. It meant that he had noticed the imperceptible tightening of her body, had recognized her intention, and had no doubts whatever about his ability to swing the submachine gun upward and fire one-handed.
"Kharasho," the big man said. "Now come down. Slowly."
She slid down the plastic line and faced the two of them. Her captor grinned at her through stained teeth.
He had curly blue-black hair over a low simian forehead, and a big bent nose that stuck out of a face that was like battered granite.
"So far so good," he said. "Now put down the capsule. Carefully."
The Baroness hesitated. Even now she could hurl the capsule at him, try to get hold of the gun. But she didn't dare. Suppose she damaged the capsule? Suppose a wild bullet punctured a hole in it?
"Be careful, Evgeny Ivanovich," piped the little hunchback. "Watch her."
The bareheaded giant waited, picking his teeth with a fingernail, the heavy weapon pointing negligently in her general direction.
With a sigh, the Baroness set the metal cylinder down in the snow and backed away from it. The big man looked disappointed.
"You shouldn't have lighted the stove," he said.
She followed the direction of his nod and saw a bunch of snow-shoed medics and security guards bearing two blanket-wrapped forms on stretchers toward the main building.
"I couldn't let them freeze to death," she said in her best Russian.
"Ah, she's a tender one, eh, Evgeny Ivanovich?" the dwarf said with a wink.
The other looked at the little man shrewdly. "You want to play with her, Viktor?"
Viktor jumped up and down, the red scarf flapping. "Play with her, play with her! Viktor wants to play with her!"
The big man yawned. "I don't think so, Viktor. I think I'll just feed her to my wolves."
"But Evgeny Ivanovich, shouldn't we interrogate her first? She got past security. She stole the moon germs. Moscow will want to know how. Let's find out. Then we can feed her to the wolves."
"Viktor, Viktor," the giant said gently. "You're not thinking clearly. The last thing in the world I want to do is make out a report to Moscow. What, and have it be known that someone was able to get inside and steal the capsule? No, no, Viktor. We must get rid of her quickly."
Tears were in the dwarfs eyes. "But Evgeny Ivanovich, don't you want to know? At least let me have her for an hour or two. I'll make her talk, I will. I'll find out what flaws you have in your security…"
Without taking his eyes off Penelope, the big man gave Viktor a backhanded swipe that knocked him flat.
"Shut up, Viktor!"
The little hunchback picked himself up and brushed the snow off his padded tunic. "That was not nice, Evgeny Ivanovich," he said reproachfully. "You should treat me with more respect. Who was it who took care of you, raised you after your poor father and mother…"
"Shut up, I said. And don't mention my father and mother again." The giant's knuckles were blue on the trigger guard. "Maybe I ought to feed you to the wolves, too, little toad! Though you'd probably poison them!"
The dwarf backed off, looking frightened. "There, there, Evgeny Ivanovich," he said soothingly. "Of course we'll feed her to the wolves. Immediately."
Penelope listened to the sick Utile scene with disbelief. The big man must be Penkin, the Russian chief of security. People in such jobs tended to have unpleasant neuroses. Some of them were a little mad. But one expected a measure of ruthless efficiency along with the madness. She could only assume that Penkin's security measures had never been challenged as she had challenged them. He was reacting badly to her rape of his magic circle. That was why he wanted to get rid of her, forget her, as quickly as possible.
She shrugged under the stolen white uniform. At least Washington would be happy. Penkin would get rid of the evidence that it was America that had committed this diplomatic outrage.
They'd be happy. For a few days or weeks. Then they'd be dead.
"Get along!" Penkin growled.
He prodded her toward one of the adjoining garages. A mechanic in a fur cap and mittens opened the big doors for them and they filed inside.
"Get out!" Penkin roared at the half-dozen mechanics working at the rows of snow vehicles. They fled. He shut the doors after them.
"Lie down!" Penkin ordered.
Penelope lay down on the oily concrete floor. Penkin held the gun on her while Viktor bound her wrists and ankles with lengths of wire flex. Then, lifting her as easily as if she were a kitten, he climbed atop the steel tread of a vezdekhod and flung her through the door into the cramped cabin.
It was as untidy and smelly as an animal cage inside. There was half of an unfinished meat sandwich in one corner, growing rotten. A sour-smelling wine bottle with some sediment still sloshing around inside rolled about the floor. There was a little pile of dirty socks and underwear stuffed under a seat. The windshield was greasy.
She eyed the wine bottle longingly. It wouldn't be any good against wire flex.
She heard Penkin's voice outside.
"Watch her, Viktor. I'm going to have a talk with the guards, find out what other damage she may have done. Tell them to keep their mouths shut until we get back. Keep those scientists she roughed up under lock and key. We'll have to cook up some story to explain it all, eh, Viktor?"
"Right you are, Evgeny Ivanovich!" came a squeaky voice. "Maybe we can make it look like an inside job. Blame it all on those two turds, Blok and Ropatkin. You've been wanting to get rid of them for a long time. You can kill two birds with one stone."
She heard footsteps growing fainter, and the clang of an iron door. Then silence.
After a while there was a scrabbling sound, like rats, outside the cabin. The vezdekhod trembled slightly. She looked up. Viktor's head and shoulders were framed against the cabin door.
He swung himself through the opening, long-armed and misshapen, and crouched in front of her, looking like a puppet out of a Punch and Judy show with his curving chin and crescent nose.
"What's on your mind, Viktor?" she said.
He looked longingly at her. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
"So you brought Penkin up?" she said. "He doesn't seem very grateful. What happened to his mother and father?"
"Shut up, woman!" He unfastened a couple of buttons of her white lab blouse and thrust his hand inside. He seemed disappointed when he encountered the metalized material of the hotsuit. He opened the blouse all the way and looked for the hotsuit's zipper.
"Penkin told you not to play with me," she said. His little hand, rough as sandpaper, was under the hotsuit, pinching and squeezing her breast.
"Shut up, I said!" His other hand was between his legs, fumbling. His teeth were gritted.
"It doesn't work when the woman isn't afraid of you, does it, little man?"
He gave a sob of rage, and pinched her nipple so that it hurt. He reached into his pocket and came out with a wicked little knife.
"Let's see how cleverly
you talk when I cut it off," he said.
Penelope stared at him with cool contempt. "Penkin won't like that," she said. "He'll feed you to the wolves."
Viktor gave a start as if he'd been slapped. The little knife clattered to the floor. He picked it up and put it back in his pocket. Tears were running down his bright red cheeks.
"Why is Penkin so obsessed with wolves?" Penelope said.
He made a choking sound. Then, unexpectedly, he gave her a foolish grin. He cocked his head to one side and said in a parrot's voice, "The wolves, the wolves, Viktor knows about the wolves!"
"Tell me, Viktor," she coaxed. "I'd really like to know. It doesn't matter, does it? Not if I'm going to be dead soon."
"Dead soon, dead soon," he cackled.
She raised herself as best she could with her bound arms and said, "I think Evgeny Ivanovich should treat you with more respect, Viktor, if you really did bring him up. Now stop playing the fool. It's not necessary with me."
He gave her a bright gnomelike glance. "We lived in the same village," he said. "A remote area in eastern Siberia, east of the Lena. The government hardly noticed us. We were never electrified. I was a woodcutter. Evgeny Ivanovich's father was the village blacksmith. We still used horses, even after the war with the Germans."
"Go on, Viktor." She favored him with a look of rapt attention. Surreptitiously she edged closer to the wine bottle on the floor.
"The army took our young men to fight the Germans." He gave a bitter laugh. "The hunchback was spared. Our village was without wolf hunters between 1941 and 1945."
She saw what was coming. "The same thing happened all over northern and eastern Europe," she said. "There was a postwar surge in the wolf population. The hunters were gone. And there was more game for the wolves, because the deer and the rabbits weren't getting shot either. It was so bad in Finland that the government organized a mass wolf hunt by the Finnish army in 1949."
He nodded. "For us, the worst year was 1947. The wolves were migrating in huge packs across the taiga, looking for food. They were hungry, and very bold. Day by day, we found their tracks closer and closer to the village. They killed livestock on the outlying farms. And they killed our watchdogs. Soon there were none left to warn us when wolves were near. The wolves began to take people. Children, playing near their homes. Women they caught alone, working in the barnyard or gathering firewood."
Penelope's hands closed around the neck of the wine bottle. She shifted it in her bound hands behind her back for a firmer grip.
"And the men?" she said. "Didn't they go out to hunt?"
"There was nothing they could do. The whole area was infested with wolves. Thousands and thousands of them. The packs were migrating from both east and west. There was no food for them. They were desperate. One day a hunting party was organized. Twenty men with guns. We heard shots in the woods. But they never came back."
Penelope shifted her weight and found a hard projection of metal she could shatter the wine bottle against when the right time came. With luck, she could twist around and drive the jagged edges into the dwarf's throat. Then what? Perhaps it would buy her enough time to work on the wire flex before Penkin returned.
Viktor moved closer to her, the little gnarled hands gesturing. She could smell the garlic on his breath. "Now there were no guns in the village. No guns and no dogs. When a wolf appeared in the streets, we could only run inside and bar the doors and windows. Soon they had us trapped in our own houses. We could hear the wolves outside, fighting over the horses and cattle. When they finished with our livestock, they started sniffing around our doors and windows. They broke through the weaker shutters and devoured whole families."
"In 1947? Surely…"
"We were isolated. A few days later an airplane making a survey flew over, and the pilot saw that the streets of the village were full of wolves. The army was sent in with grenades and machine guns. By that time, there were only a few people left alive. The wolves had broken into almost every house."
"And you, Viktor?"
The queer little barrel chest puffed out with pride. "My house was strong."
"And Penkin? He must have been a small boy at the time."
"His parents locked him in a heavy wooden cabinet when they heard the door starting to give way. Evgeny Ivanovich watched through the keyhole while the wolves ate his mother and father alive. The wolves tried to get in the cabinet, but they couldn't. They knocked it over and gnawed at it. Evgeny Ivanovich was inside the cabinet for two days before the soldiers came,"
"How horrible!"
"Even today, he dreams about the wolves. He likes to have me sleep in a cot at the foot of his bed to wake him up when the nightmares come."
"So now he has to prove his mastery over wolves…" Penelope made a grimace of distaste. What a casebook in abnormal psychology — the little boy who'd seen his mother and father devoured by wild animals while he was locked away in a dark place, then the two days of terror while the wolves tried to get at him, too!
The little hunchback went on, "I took care of him, raised him to a man. He was smart and strong, my little Evgeny. When he got his first important job in Moscow, he sent for me. I have been with him ever since."
Viktor rocked on his heels, his eyes far away. His knobby face was flushed and mottled. Penelope cracked the wine bottle smartly against the projecting metal and twisted her body around, whipping herself backward, the broken bottom of the bottle aimed squarely at Viktor's face.
The little man moved with startling speed. He hopped upward and sidewise, like a jack-in-the-box. The broken glass ripped at his sleeve. A second later, a thick-soled little boot kicked the bottle out of Penelope's hands.
He stood there, panting. "Bitch!" he spat.
"Little toad," she said.
He slapped her across the face, then reached in his pocket for the little knife. He was leaning over her with it when the vezdekhod shook and Penkin poked his head in through the door.
Penkin took it all in at a glance: the broken bottle, Viktor's ripped sleeve, Penelope's unbuttoned blouse.
"So, Viktor," he said. "You have been careless."
The little man was fighting down tears of rage. "She is dangerous," he said. "She charms you, then bites like a snake."
Penkin seated himself behind the controls and sent the big snow vehicle crawling outward through the garage doors. "Let her charm the wolves," he said.
* * *
Penkin was quite jovial and conversational about it. "Wolves can smell blood for dozens of miles in the Arctic air," he said. "In fact, that's how the Lapps sometimes trap them. They'll smear some reindeer blood on a sharp knife and wedge the handle in the ice. The wolf will lick the blade and cut his tongue. But the frozen steel keeps him from feeling pain. His own blood will excite him further, and he'll keep on licking the blade until he bleeds to death."
They were forty or fifty miles from the biological laboratory. Penkin had explained that a migrating wolf pack was in the vicinity, heading west In fact, he'd recently fed a Nenet herdsman and his wife to them. The wolves were getting used to taking their food this way.
Penelope felt herself lifted like a sack of potatoes and slung over Penkin's shoulder. He handled her easily as he jumped down from the vezdekhod and carried her over to the four spikes that Viktor had hammered into the frozen ground. He dumped her unceremoniously between them.
"Just a little blood is enough to attract them," Penkin went on. "I don't want you to bleed to death before they arrive. It's no fun that way, eh, Viktor?"
"You're a pair of sick bastards," Penelope said.
Penkin laughed. He wired one wrist and ankle to stakes before he separated her arms and legs to tie down the other wrist and ankle; he was taking no chances with her. She tried to break free, but it was impossible. He wrestled her wrist, with two hands, to the other stake while Viktor lashed more wire around it.
"Spread out like a Warsaw whore, isn't she, Viktor?" Penkin said.
He peeled
the hotsuit off her like a banana skin, cutting through the compound fabric with a knife to get it past wrists and ankles. He frowned when his knife became entangled in the fine embedded wires, but sawed through them until it was free.
The cold gripped her body like a giant fist, shocking the breath from her. The day was relatively mild — only ten degrees below freezing — and there was no wind. But she could feel her fingers and toes already growing numb.
"Aren't you afraid I'll freeze to death before the wolves get here?" she said.
He grinned through yellow teeth. "It won't take them that long," he said.
He examined her body with clinical interest, then scored the point of his knife down the inside of her thigh. She felt nothing — Penkin had been right about that — but she could see a thin line of blood oozing out of her white flesh.
Viktor was dancing about, holding his crotch with both hands. "Please, Evgeny Ivanovich," he begged. "She looks so beautiful lying there in the snow. Like a fairytale princess. Just once, can't I have a woman like that?"
"All right, Viktor," Penkin said gruffly. "But be quick about it. I'll keep a watch for the wolves."
The gnome moved toward her and knelt between her legs. He dipped a finger in the blood on her thigh and tasted it. Then, a sly smile spreading like a crack over his lumpy features, he lifted his tunic like a curtain.
"See," he said.
There was the dull thwump of an explosion in the distance. Viktor's head jerked around.
Penkin was standing on the vezdekhod's caterpillar tread, holding an earphone to his head. "It's the laboratory!" he shouted. "An armed force is moving in on it! They've just blown up a bunker!"
Viktor scrambled to his feet.
"Hurry up, you little worm!" Penkin yelled. "We've got to get back there right away!"
Viktor scuttled like a crab over the snow. Penkin reached down and plucked him off the ground by the coat. He threw the little man into the cabin and climbed in after him. A moment later, the vezdekhod's twin engines roared, and the bulky vehicle lurched toward the laboratory, forty miles away.