Yevgen Konovalets did not give every agent such protective authorizations. One had to have served under this pro-Polish commander in more than one of his bloodthirsty campaigns through the Ukraine to win his trust and be given one of those strips of cambric.
People who had stored away these cambric strips for years in hope of using them one day had friends and helpers. There could be -no doubt that the fleeing Pecheritsa also had such friends. Otherwise he could never have discovered that Doctor Gutentag, having performed several urgent operations at the hospital, had gone straight to security headquarters. It was these friends and assistants of Pecheritsa’s who had sent the old mad-looking beggar to Major Florek in Poland. When he was questioned, this beggar simply muttered a lot of nonsense. Left alone in his cell, he suddenly started singing Cossack ballads and dancing the gopak in the middle of the night. He did everything he could to make people think he was mad.
Vukovich, however, waited patiently for the beggar to give up his pretence. Vukovich guessed that besides this beggar Pecheritsa's friends had sent yet another messenger , to Poland who had been the cause of the mysterious death of the chemist Tomash Gutentag in the town of Rovno.
It was obvious that some of Pecheritsa's associates had remained in our town. The most convenient way of tracing them, of course, would have been to enlist the aid of Pecheritsa himself. But Pecheritsa had 'moved to another flat...'
All this was told to me by Nikita Kolomeyets that night, after we had been to district OGPU headquarters. Not everything, of course, that Nikita told me then had the same shape that I give it in-retelling his confused story today. There was much that Nikita could- still only guess at, and many of the details were supplied by his own suppositions, and I too, it must be confessed, have been helping him all these twenty years, investigating quite a number of black spots in the biographies of the priest's son from Rovno and of Doctor Zenon Pecheritsa, making inquiries in what is now Soviet Lvov to discover for sure whether everything really happened as we thought in those far-off days of our youth.
There is one thing I will confess. This world of secret war into which Nikita Kolomeyets had plunged me on that long-to-be-remembered night when we sat until dawn; on the rails of the cliff stairway seemed
to me very terrible and dangerous.
Until then I had been very simple-minded. I had never thought that among us there could be scoundrels who, like Pecheritsa, lived the crooked double life of spies. I just could not imagine that among those who rubbed shoulders with us every day there were slinking creatures who while pretending to be sincerely in favour of Soviet power were only awaiting its downfall and looking out all the time for a chance to stab us in the back. How great, how noble, and how dangerous is the work of the frontiermen, who, like Vukovich, at the risk of their lives, penetrate that dark terrible world where these crimes are plotted, and manage to thwart the enemy just when he is least expecting it!
And Nikita's story also made it clear to me how much the world capitalists and their agents hated us, Soviet people, and I realized that we must be on our guard against them.
A LOW TRICK
Three days later, not long before the dinner-break, Kozakevich, our instructor, walked into the foundry. The weather was so warm - that he had been across Hospital Square to the office without a cap. He had even left his heavy metal-scorched tarpaulin jacket behind in the foundry.
The sleeves of his faded blue blouse were rolled up showing his big muscles.
'Mandzhura! A message of vital importance for you!' he said with a wink, handing me a folded slip of paper.
From the tone of his voice I concluded that Kozakevich was in a very good mood.
I took the note and read it.
It was from Petka Maremukha.
'Vasil, mind you come and see me at dinner-time today. Something important has happened.
'So long,
'Petka.'
I worked harder with my slippery tamper. Now I simply must get this fly-wheel moulded before dinner. I packed the damp sand tightly into the wooden mould, forcing it in with a wedge. The job was nearly done. Somewhere under the tightly-packed layer of sand lay the cold, damp fly-wheel. Tossing my tamper aside, I swept the loose sand off the mould-box. Where was the vent wire? Ah, there it was. I snatched up the sharp-pointed length of wire and started punching holes in the mould. The wire crunched into the solid sand, bending when it struck the iron model of the flywheel.
Finished! Now I could open the mould.
There were no other chaps about. Only Kozakevich was in the foundry, carefully arranging his new freshly- painted models on the shelves.
'Can you give me a hand?' I said to the instructor.
Kozakevich strode across the sandy floor to the place where I was working.
'Knocked the wedges in, made your vents?'
'Don't worry, everything's all right.'
'I'm not worrying, but people forget sometimes. Specially you. Since you went to Kharkov, you've been going about in a dream. Come on, then!' And Kozakevich bent down and grasped the handles of the mould.
We both heaved together. We turned the mould over and stood the top half on its side by the window. Pushing back his sleeve, Kozakevich looked down at the lower half of the mould. The fly-wheel model had left a round black hollow in the greyish sand. Soon we should fill that hollow with metal and a new fly-wheel would spin on some peasant's straw-cutter, giving speed to the flashing blades.
In one place the mould had 'caked' as the foundry men say. A little clot of sand from the upper half of the mould had stuck to the model.
'Put that right,' Kozakevich said, pointing to the break.
The Motor Factory's hooter sounded in the distance. It. was dinner-time.
'Can I do it afterwards, Comrade Kozakevich? I want to slip over to the school.'
'Well, I'm not making you to work during your dinner-hour, lad. Go where you like.'
The path, which had been wet and streaked with puddles the day before, had dried in the warm sunshine. It was good to run across the square without a coat after being muffled up all the winter. And it would be even better when the grass grew on the square and we started kicking a football about there!...
Here was the school. Taking two steps at a time, I dashed up to the third floor. Furman was coming down the stairs, a packet of food in his hand. Must be going out into the yard. Every spring, as soon as it got a bit warm, the trainees, just like beetles, came out into the yard during the lunch-hour to eat their food in the spring sunshine, sitting on rusty boilers and broken-down field kitchens. 'Maremukha still upstairs?' I asked Furman. 'Yes, he's making some draughts for the club,' Furman replied, clumping away downstairs in his heavy boots.
Petka's lathe stood just by the door. As soon as I ran into the joiner's shop, I saw his broad back. Pedalling the lathe with his foot, Petka was paring down a length of birch. Fine yellow shavings were curling off the blade of the cutter and dropping on the floor. There was no one else about except the joinery instructor, Galya's father, sitting at the far end of the shop eating his lunch and staring thoughtfully out of the window. There was a nice smell of fresh wood shavings in the air.
'Eat that,' said Petka, pedalling away at his lathe. 'That's your roll on the window-sill and there's sausage in the paper.'
'What about yourself?'
'I've had mine already. It's all yours.'
'You old spendthrift, Petka! Your grant will be all gone in a couple of days, then you'll be in a fix like you were last month.'
'What's so terrible about it! We'll be finished with grants soon anyway and earning wages,' Petka retorted confidently, slicing the length of birch in two.
