to the front. The correspondent got so excited that he stopped eating. “Good God, man, you are? With the Germans swarming in all over the place? It’s impossible. It’s just talk. Dear Christ, these Russians are good at putting you off with talk. You’ll never go.” He brushed up his moustaches and reached for more food.
“Well, maybe,” Pug said sinking into a chair and laying on his lap the briefcase stuffed with codes and harbor charts, which he had just collected at the navy ministry. He had had five or six hours’ broken sleep in four days. The room was jerking back and forth in his vision as he strove to stay awake. “But my clearance has just come in from pretty high up.”
Tudsbury was putting a chunk of bread heaped with sardines to his mouth. The morsel stopped in midair. He peered at Henry through his bottle-glass spectacles, and spoke in low quiet tones. “I’ll go with you.”
“The hell you will.”
“Victor, the correspondents went to the central front two weeks ago, when the Russians were counterattacking. The day they left, I had flu, with a sizzling temperature.” Tudsbury threw down the food, seized his cane, limped rapidly across the room, and began to put on a fur-lined coat and a fur hat. “Who’s handling this, Lozovsky? Can’t I just tell him you said I could come? I know them all and they love me. It’s up to you.”
Victor Henry did not want Tudsbury along, but he was exhausted and he was sure the Russians would refuse.
“Okay.”
“God bless you, dear fellow. Stay and finish my tea. Tell Pam I’ll be back before six, and she’s to retype my broadcast.”
“Where is she?”
“A letter came for her in the Foreign Office pouch. She went to get it.”
Pug fell asleep in the armchair where he sat. Cold fingers brushing his cheek woke him. “Hello there. Wouldn’t you rather lie down?” Pam stood over him, her face rosy from the frost, her eyes shining, wisps of brown hair showing under her gray lambskin hat.
“What? Oh!” He blinked and stretched. “What am I doing here? I guess I walked in and collapsed.”
“Where’s Talky?” She was talking off her hat and gloves. “Why did he leave his tea? That’s not like him.”
Sleep cleared from his brain like fog; he remembered his conversation with Tudsbury, and told her. Her face went stiff and strained. “The front? They’ll never let him go, but
“Yes.”
“Well, I know better than to argue, but — I can tell you this, our embassy’s getting ready to be moved to the Urals or somewhere. By the bye, Ted’s all right.” She went to the desk, still in her fur coat, and picked up typed yellow sheets. “Oh, drat, another revision. Such niggling!”
By now Pug was used to her casual bombshells, but she dropped this one so swiftly that he wasn’t sure he had heard aright. “Pamela, what’s this? What about Ted?”
“He’s fine. Or safe, anyhow.”
“But where is he?”
“Oh, back in Blighty. Hardly the worse for wear, according to him. It seems he finally managed to escape — he and four French aviators — from a prison camp outside Strasbourg. He did have quite a few adventures in France and Belgium, straight out of the films. But he made it. I rather thought he would, sooner or later.” She sat down and took the cover off the typewriter.
“Good God, girl, that’s tremendous news.”
“Yes, isn’t it? You must read his letter. Seven pages, written on both sides, and quite amusing. He’s lost three stone, and he still has a bullet in his thigh — or, more accurately, in his behind. He’s quite chastened, he’ll take the desk job now — as soon as he can sit at a desk, he adds rather ruefully! And that means I’m to come straight home and marry him, of course.”
Pamela broke her offhand manner with a long glance at Victor Henry. She put on black-rimmed glasses. “I’d better get at this. And you obviously need some sleep.”
“No use. The mission’s leaving soon. I have to see them off. Pam, that’s splendid about Ted. I’m very glad and relieved.”
Rubbing her hands and blowing on them, she said, “Lord, it would be a relief at that, wouldn’t it? I mean to get away from Talky’s handwriting and his optimistic drivel.”
Tudsbury burst in on them a little later, his face aflame, his nose empurpled by the cold, just as Henry was putting on his bridge coat.
“
“Oh, Talky!” Pamela stopped typing, and glared at him. “Victor didn’t insist at all He couldn’t have.”
“Pam, one has to bludgeon these people.” Tudsbury’s face creased in a tricky grin. “I said you two were old friends, in fact and that Victor rather liked you and wanted to oblige me. So please back my story if occasion arises.”
“You unscrupulous old horror,” Pamela said, her face mantling pink.
“Well, that’s true enough, as far as it goes,” Victor Henry said. “I have to get on to the airport now. Pamela’s got some great news, Talky.”
The intrusion of Tudsbury snagged the trip. The Narkomindel, the Foreign Office, hemmed, hawed, and stalled. Days went by. Pug remained stuck in Moscow with nothing to do. The ambassador and the attaches acted cool and distant, for Victor Henry was that plague of the Foreign Service, an interloper from Washington. Once he dropped in on Slote’s office and found the diplomat pale, harassed and given to pointless giggling.
“Say, what’s my daughter-in-law doing on your desk?” Pug said. Natalie smiled from a silver frame, looking younger and fatter, with her hair in an unbecoming knot.
“Oh! Yes, that’s Natalie,” Slote laughed. “D’you suppose Byron would mind? She gave it to me ages ago, and I’m still fond of her. What’s happened to your trip? You won’t have far to go, at the rate the Germans are coming on, hee hee.”
“God knows,” Pug said, thinking that this man was in bad shape. “Maybe it’s all off.”
The main trouble, it turned out, was Pamela. Her father had asked to bring her along, claiming helplessness without her. He had since withdrawn the request. But the Narkomindel had fed the three names into the great obscure machine that handled the matter, and there was no starting over. Lozovsky began to lose his genial humor when Pug appeared or telephoned. “My dear Captain Henry, you will hear when you will hear. There are other equally pressing problems in the Soviet Union just now.”
So Pug wandered the streets, observing the changes in Moscow. New red-and-black posters blazed appeals for volunteers, in the crude bold socialist imagery of muscular young workmen and peasant women brandishing bayonets at spiders, snakes, or hyenas with Hitler faces. Labor battalions shouldering spades and picks marched raggedly here and there; big trucks crammed with children crisscrossed the city; long queues stood at food shops, despite the heavy rain that persisted day after day. Soldiers and horse-drawn carts vanished from the streets. Under the sodden caps and wet shawls of street crowds, the swarm of white high-cheekboned faces wore a different look. The Slavic phlegm was giving way to knotted brows, inquiring glances, and a hurrying pace; Victor Henry thought that the approach of the Germans made the Muscovites look more like New Yorkers.
Lozovsky finally telephoned him at the hotel, his voice ringing cheerily. “Well, Captain, will tomorrow at dawn suit you? Kindly come here to the Narkomindel, wear warm clothing, a raincoat, and good boots, and be prepared to be out three or four days.”
“Right. Is the girl coming too?”
“Of course.” The Russian sounded surprised and a bit offended. “That was the problem. Really it was not easy to clear, though we wanted to make the exact arrangements you desired. Our Russian girls face combat conditions as a matter of course, but we know that foreign ladies are much less hardy. Still we all know Miss Tudsbury, she is attractive, and one understands such a devoted friendship. It is arranged.”
Victor Henry decided to ignore the jollying, even ribald tone, and not to try to rewrite this record. “I’m
