not like what has happened any more than we do. Yes, the Nazis, through unparalleled perfidy, did achieve surprise. And there is another thing. They are cocky. Their tails are up. They are professional winners, having already won several campaigns, and driven the indomitable British into the sea, and so forth. They believe they are unbeatable. However, as they watch their comrades die like flies in Russia, I think they are starting to wonder. At first they would advance in column down our highways, not even bothering to guard their flanks. Lately they’ve grown more careful. Yes, Hitler trained them to maraud, kill, and loot, and those are old Teutonic customs, so they are good at it. We are a peace-loving people, and I suppose in a mental sense we were caught unprepared. So, as you say, they have come far. Now we have two jobs: to keep them from coming farther, and then to send them back where they came from, the ones we haven’t squashed into our mud.” He turned to Henry and Tudsbury. “We will do the job faster, naturally, if you help us with supplies, for we have lost a lot. But most of all, the opening of a front in western Europe can lead to the quick destruction of these rats. The English might be surprised to find they could march straight to Berlin once they set foot in France. I believe every German who can shoot a gun straight has been shipped here for this attack.”
“I never broadcast without advocating a second front now,” Tudsbury said.
The general nodded. “You are well known and esteemed as a fiend of the Soviet people.” He glanced at Victor Henry. “Well, and what are you interested in seeing Captain? Unfortunately, this far inland, we cannot show you very good naval maneuvers.”
“General, suppose — of course this is absurd, but — suppose my President could visit your front, in a cloak of invisibility from the fairy tales.”
“We have such stories,” Yevlenko said “but unfortunately no such cloaks.”
“What would you like him to see?”
The general glanced at the four officers sitting elbow to elbow at the table across from the visitors, smoking continuously, four kinky-haired pale Russians with shrewd, weary eyes, who looked like quadruplets in their identical brown tunics. None of them had as yet uttered a word.” Now he addressed them, and a colloquy in rapid Russian broke out. He turned back to Henry. “You put that well. It will be arranged. As the situation is a bit fluid, I suggest you make a start at dawn.” He said to Pamela, gesturing upward, “A bedroom has been cleared for you. The gentlemen will bunk with these officers.”
“Good heavens, a bedroom? I counted on sleeping on the floor or on the ground in my clothes,” Pamela said. “Anyway, I’m not at all sleepy yet.”
As the colonel translated, Yevlenko’s face lit up. “So? You talk like one of our Russian girls, not like a delicate Englishwoman.” Offering her his arm, he led them into the next room, where worn, inked-over maps hung on the walls, and the fusty house furniture was jumbled in with desks, stools, typewriters, and black twisting telephone cables. Soldiers pushed furniture, screeching here and there to clear a space around a shabby upright piano with bare wooden keys. An officer sat, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and thumped out “There’ll Always Be an England.” Pamela laughed when she recognized the tune, and stood and sang it. The general led applause and called for more champagne. The pianist began stumbling through “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” With an elegant low bow, General Yevlenko invited Pamela to dance. He towered head and shoulders above her, so they made a grotesque pair, two-stepping stiffly round and round the narrow clear space in heavy muddy boots, but his face shone with enjoyment. She danced with other officers, then with the general again, as the pianist ran through the few American tunes he knew and started over on “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” Everybody in the room quaffed much champagne and vodka. In the doorway soldiers crowded, watching with round gay eyes the foreign lady in gray pants dancing and drinking with the officers. Pug knew that she hated to dance, especially with strangers; he recalled almost the first words he had heard Pamela utter, on the
The pianist began playing Russian music — which he did much better — and Pamela sank into a chair while the officers danced alone or with each other. The laughing and the handclapping grew louder. One handsome young soldier with a week’s growth of beard burst into the room and did a bravura solo, bounding, squatting, pirouetting, then acknowledging applause with the bow of a professional ballet artist. The general lumbered to his feet and began to dance by himself; he too twirled, jumped, then folded his arms and squatted, kicking his feet and hoarsely shouting, “
Chapter 54
At dawn, it was raining hard. Children and animals floundered in the dim violet light all over the square, and trucks splashed, skidded and spun their wheels, throwing up curtains of muck. The back seat of the car was roomier, since many of the packages had been eaten or drunk up. Victor Henry thought of complimenting the master chef at the wheel, but decided against it. Pamela, squeezed between her father and Pug, had managed a touch of lipstick and eye makeup. In these surroundings she looked like a movie star visiting the troops, Pug thought.
“Well, we go,” said Colonel Amphiteatrov. “In this weather we will go slower, and not so far.” The car bumped and slid about a hundred yards, then sank and stalled.”
“Well, I hope we will go farther than this,” said the colonel. Soldiers in greatcoats surrounded the car. With shouting and shoving they got it to move. The wheels hit solider ground and the car went splashing, rocking, and slewing out of the town. After a run on asphalted highway through the fields, they took a narrow mud road into a forest. The chef drove well (or the chauffeur cooked well — Pug never did find out the truth), and he kept the car going through terrible ruts, mounds, and holes, for perhaps twenty minutes. Then the car stopped dead. Pug got out with the driver and the colonel. The hubs of the rear wheels were buried in ropy red mud. It was still raining heavily. They were stuck in wild woods, so quiet that rain hitting the hot hood made a hiss.
“I suppose he has a shovel,” Pug said.
“Yes, I suppose so.” The colonel was looking around. He walked off into the woods some yards ahead — to relieve himself, Pug imagined, before getting to work. Pug heard voices, then hoarse engine snorts. The bushes began to move. Out of the shrubbery a light tank appeared, covered with boughs, its cannon pointed at Pug. Behind it walked the colonel and three muddy men in greatcoats. The American had been looking straight at the mottled, camouflaged cannon, yet had not noticed it until it started toward him. The tank chugged out of the trees, swerved, and backed on the road. Soldiers quickly attached a chain and the car was pulled loose in a moment, with the passengers inside. Then the bough-festooned turret opened, and two bristly, boyish Slav heads poked out. Pamela jumped from the car, splashed and stumbled to the tank, and kissed the tankists, to their embarrassed pleasure. The turret closed, the tank backed into the wood to its former place, and the black automobile went lurching on into the forest. Thus they were bogged and rescued several times, and so discovered that the wet silent forest was swarming with the Red Army.
They arrived at a washout that severed the road like a creek in flood. The gully’s sides bore gouge marks of caterpillar treads and thick truck tires, but obviously the auto could not struggle across. Here soldiers emerged from the woods and laid split logs across the gash, smooth side up, lashing them together into a shaky but adequate bridge. This was a sizable crew, and their leader, a fat squinting lieutenant invited the party to stop and refresh themselves. There was no way of telling him from his men, except that he gave the orders and they obeyed. They were all dressed alike and they were all a red earth color. He led the visitors through the trees and down into an icy, mucky dugout roofed with timbers, and so masked by brush and shrubs that Victor Henry did not see an entrance until the officer began to sink into the earth. The dugout was an underground cabin of tarred logs, crisscrossed with telephone cables, lit by an oil lamp and heated by an old open iron stove burning chopped branches. The officer, squinting proudly at a brass samovar on the raw plank table, offered them tea. While water boiled, a soldier conducted the men to a latrine so primitive and foul — though Tudsbury and the Russians happily used it — that Pug went stumbling off into the trees, only to be halted by a sentry who appeared like a forest spirit. While the American attended to nature, the soldier stood guard, observing with some interest how a foreigner did
