William Wu - Dictator

Judy nodded solemnly.

“Judy, did the agents photograph you?”

“Uh, no. They just put us in the room and made us wait Maybe they were working out what questions to ask or something.”

“You are still in danger of being recognized by the two agents who took you. We shall have to be especially careful to avoid them.”

“Yes, I see.”

“What’s my identity this time?” Steve asked. “I can’t be a slave, as I was in Roman times. But you still have to account for my not being Russian.”

“Judy, do you have a suggestion?” Hunter asked.

“You can be a Turk from Central Asia,” said Judy. “Or a Tatar, of old Mongol descent Both were in the Soviet Union at that time.”

“I took the sleep course for Russian, but not Mongol or any kind of Turkish,” said Steve.

“In Moscow, Russian will be sufficient,” said Judy. “Hunter, are we ready?”

“Yes. We shall go back to Moscow the following day, well after sunup, to look for Jane.”

“What if something happened to her during the night?” Steve asked.

“I want to avoid returning Judy during that same night,” said Hunter. “If something has happened to Jane, we shall return here and then go back earlier to find her if necessary. For now, we shall return after people have begun their daily routine, so that we can get lost in the crowd. Now that I have returned to my original appearance, the NKVD will not recognize me.” He turned to Judy. “Perhaps we should wait while you get some sleep. You will lose a night’s sleep with my plan.”

“I’m too upset to sleep now,” said Judy. “I want to go right back.”

“Let’s go,” said Steve.

Early the next morning, Jane woke alone in the corner after a nervous, fitful sleep. She got in line with her companions for breakfast and then returned to her corner to eat a thin, tasteless gruel. After returning her bowl and spoon, she queued up for the rest room.

Jane finally took her turn and moved into a stall. She flushed the toilet to cover her voice somewhat from her neighbors on each side. Then she switched on her lapel pin.

“Hunter? It’s Jane. Where are you?”

She waited for an answer as long as she dared. She repeated the message twice more, flushing each time to create more noise. Other people came and went. When she realized that Hunter could not or would not respond, she gave up and left the rest room. Now she was really alone.

Out in the main room again, she heard the rumbling of trucks outside. Everyone else gradually began moving toward the front door. She wanted to stay here, where Hunter could find her, but she did not dare risk attracting attention. To avoid that, she would have to stay with everyone else.

No one else spoke very much. Everyone plodded patiently out to one specific truck and climbed into the back, where picks and shovels were stored in barrels. For them, of course, this was an established routine.

Jane boarded also and soon found herself standing shoulder to shoulder with the other women out in the cold, clear winter morning. Their truck, part of a convoy, jerked and moved away. The convoy wound through the streets of Moscow, stopping at other large buildings that had been converted to emergency housing. When all the trucks were full, they snaked out along an unpaved highway to the west.

All the women in the work brigade were well bundled against the cold. Jane could not remember if Judy had told her how long they had been doing this. No snow lay on the ground right now, but Jane could tell by the way the truck bounced and rumbled on the unpaved road that the mud was frozen solid. At one point, she overheard a woman say that the temperature was about minus twenty centigrade.

Finally Jane saw the ditches appear in the distance. As the convoy turned to run parallel to them, heading for the ends still under construction, Jane looked down at them. She estimated that the nearest ditches were about eight meters wide and three or four meters deep.

When the truck creaked to a halt, Jane jumped to the ground with the others and accepted a shovel from someone. No one told her what to do, so she followed the other women. They walked down an earthen ramp into the middle of the ditch.

Some women stood in the center of the ditch, digging the deepest groove. They moved dirt to an intermediate ledge, where other women shoveled it up to the surface. There, a few more women began arranging the dirt into a ridge on each side of the ditch to make the ditch seem even deeper.

Relatively few men were in the brigade. The ones Jane could see were either too old for the military or else injured in some way. The men took picks to the undisturbed, frozen ground at each end of the ditch and began to break it loose.

Jane could see that the purpose of the brigade was to create a ditch big enough and steep enough that German tanks would go front-down into them so sharply that they could not roll forward to come up the other side. Jane picked out a spot a short distance from the other women and switched on her lapel pin. That way, at least, she would hear Hunter in the unlikely event that he called her, despite their agreement that he should not risk it. Right now, it was her best hope. Then she started to dig. If nothing else, the activity helped her keep warm.

Hunter chose to return at midday following the night he left. As before, he took his team to a spot outside the city to avoid being noticed on their arrival. They landed east of Moscow, on the opposite side of the city from the front. He hoped that would help them avoid army patrols from either side.

“You going to call Jane?” Steve asked. “I’m worried about her.”

“I do not dare, at least until taking the risk becomes justified,” said Hunter. “I am not receiving any sound from her, which means she has either turned off her lapel pin or else she is out of range. I calculate the chance of her being surrounded by other people to be extremely high. Jf her lapel pin is turned off or out of range, calling her will not matter. If it is turned on and within range, I would risk attracting attention.”

“Wait a minute,” said Steve. “She’s been through this long enough to know how it works. If it’s turned on, that means she figures it’s safe to hear from you.”

“At this time I will not take the risk,” said Hunter. “We must walk back to the warehouse and see if she is there.” He pointed toward the city.

“Look that way,” said Judy, pointing north as they began to walk.

Hunter saw a faint, dark line on the horizon, too vague to identify. “Do you know what that is?”

“The Sixteenth and Twentieth Soviet armies are encamped that direction,” said Judy. “They’ll be opening the counterattack soon, to drive the Germans back from Moscow. I think we’re looking at the very southern end of their line.”

“Can they help us in any way?” Hunter asked.

Judy shook her head emphatically. “No. The military has political commissars all through it.”

“They are as unpredictable as the NKVD?”

“Well…let’s just say that the potential exists all through the Soviet system. We should avoid all the authorities as much as possible.”

Wayne sat huddled with Ishihara alone in a small two-man tent. The night before, the patrol had taken them to a Leutnant Johann Mohr. Leutnant Mohr had communicated with them in rather limited English. Then he had tried to contact his Hauptmann, who put him off until this morning; Ishihara explained that the Hauptmann was the German equivalent of captain. So Wayne and’ Ishihara had been put into this tent for the night, under guard.

To keep his guests away from the soldiers, Leutnant Mohr had ordered one of his men to bring their breakfast to the tent, maintaining their isolation. Wayne was finishing his bowl of hot gruel. Ishihara had already put his aside. For now, they were simply left to wait. Wayne felt certain that Leutnant Mohr was afraid to take responsibility for making any decision regarding them.