Antanas Sileika - Underground

“Maybe Lozorius is pinned down in his bunker and doesn’t know anything,” said Lukas.

“Maybe. Or maybe he’s sending disinformation.” Zoly said it dispassionately enough, as if he had never known the man in all his charisma. He stood up and took the full ashtray from the table and tossed it on the cinders in the cold fireplace. When he returned to the table, he lit up again.

“If what you say is true, they’re asking me to walk into a trap,” said Lukas.

Zoly shrugged. “You have to be prepared for whatever reality you find there.”

“Or maybe what Lozorius is saying is true, he has not been turned, and the Americans just don’t want to hear it.”

“That’s also possible.”

“If they don’t want to hear it from him, they won’t want to hear it from me. I wouldn’t want to be stranded in the country because they doubted me.”

“I’ve promised to get you out of there once you’ve contacted Lozorius and collected some information.”

“You’ll have to do better than promise. I have no intention of dying. I’m going in there to get my wife out, and you have to help me.”

“I said I would.”

“If it means rowing a dinghy yourself to pick us up, I expect you to do it.”

“I’ll do everything I can.”

“You have to do the impossible, Zoly. And if I don’t make it out, you have to watch over Monika and watch over Elena. Get Monika a pension or something.”

“What am I supposed to do for Elena from here?”

“I don’t know. Send Elena Red Cross packages, if they’re permitted.”

“I promise I’ll do the best I can!” said Zoly, throwing up his hands. “Just remember this: the Brits, Americans and Swedes are going to a lot of trouble putting you in there. Remember that you owe something to them. Get some intelligence. Set up a conduit for information. They want to know about troop movements and missile bases. Don’t be quite the high-minded soul you were when you first came out. Help them and you’ll make it easier for me to help you.”

“All right. There is just one more possibility I’d like to explore.”

“What’s that?”

“The possibility that Dunlop has made it all up.”

Zoly stood and walked into the kitchen to put a kettle on the stove. He came back to lean on the door jamb as he waited for the kettle to boil. “I thought of that too. So I asked to listen in on a recording of Lozorius’s transmission. Dunlop didn’t let me do that. He said there was no recording. But there was a transcript. I looked at that.”

“Well?”

“Lozorius does say that your wife is alive, but not much more than that. Maybe he doesn’t want to betray her accidentally.”

“So you’re satisfied what he said is true?”

“True?” Zoly laughed. “I saw the transcript, but I can’t prove that he sent it, or that he was telling the truth if he did. The Brits or the Americans might be luring you in to go and test whether Lozorius has been turned. On the other hand, he might be intending to lure you in so the Cheka can take you as a prize. Or it could all be true. Even if it is true, Elena might be under some kind of pressure of her own, something we’re unaware of. We can’t be sure of anything.”

Too restless to sit still as the other men slept, Lukas walked cautiously along the forest cutline to the point where it ended a kilometre farther along, and there he looked out to where a few farmhouses stood among the autumn fields. The first one, a thatched-roof wooden home, belonged to a man named Martinkus, supposedly a friend and contact. Lukas watched from the distance but did not see anything out of the ordinary about the house or the surroundings.

When he made his way back, he found Shimkus poised in a crouch with his rifle at the ready. So much for his easygoing attitude. He had been boiling water over a small fire.

“Where did you go?” Shimkus asked accusingly.

“I wanted to look around.”

“Never walk off like that without leaving word.”

“Why not?”

“I thought you’d abandoned us.”

“I didn’t think you were the nervous type.”

“I’m not from this part of the country. I’d be lost on my own.”

“Is Rudis still asleep?”

“I tried to wake him, but he told me to go to hell.”

Shimkus had an aggrieved air, like someone who nurtured his insults. Lukas resolved to keep an eye on this tendency. You could never tell what a man was like until you were with him in the field. Some became better and some became worse.

Of the two radios they had brought, only one worked because the other’s batteries had got wet. Rudis was finally woken and came up sullen, but after a cup of tea and a cigarette he was prevailed upon to transmit a signal back to Sweden. They waited for a response but received none.

At dusk, all three of them went to the farmhouse, where Lukas rapped on the window. A middle-aged man came out.

“We’re looking for a farmer named Martinkus,” said Lukas.

The man looked at their weapons and packs. He did not appear to be afraid, but he did not look too happy either. “He’s dead. I married his daughter, but she’s lying inside, pregnant and sick.”

“We’re partisans come in from Sweden,” said Rudis. “Someone was supposed to meet us here.”

Lukas did not like it that Rudis spoke out on his own.

“I don’t know anything about it,” said the man, and he turned to go back inside. But Lukas made him take two of them in, leaving Shimkus on guard outside.

The pale, frightened wife was lying on a bench in the kitchen, two small children playing around her. Rudis took off his hat and shook out his golden hair and smiled down on the woman. Lukas was astonished that the man imagined he could work his charm here.

“We mean no harm,” said Lukas.

“Then please take what you want and go away.”

Lukas wished he could do that, but he could not. He sat down with his knapsack and began to take things out of it. He showed them a Swedish camera, wonderfully miniature. He took out a bar of chocolate and gave it to the children. They held it in their hands, afraid, so he took it back and unwrapped it, breaking off pieces for the woman and the man as well as the children. He showed them the Swedish wrapper.

“We don’t have any ties with the partisans,” the man said eventually, “but if you tell me where you’re camped in the woods I can start looking around and send someone there.”

“Don’t send anyone. We’ll come back tomorrow to find out if you’ve learned anything.”

“Please,” said the woman, “don’t come to the house. Meet him by the shrine half a kilometre down the road. I don’t want people to see you coming here.”

They bought eggs, butter and bread from the couple, paying 350 rubles, which seemed high, and then went back to the forest.

“What do you make of that?” asked Rudis.

“They were terrified. They thought we might be agents provocateurs .”

“She was a nice-looking lady, though, for all her problems.”

For three days they camped out in different spots, warily meeting the farmer each night. Once they bought bacon and another time bread, eggs and butter. Lukas was beginning to think the farmer had found a useful private market, but on the fourth night he said he had someone for them to meet, a partisan.

Lukas asked him to bring the man into a clearing in the forest at dawn. He kept Rudis with him and asked Shimkus to stand a little way inside the forest beyond the clearing in order to cover them in case of complications. An hour before the meeting, Lukas and Shimkus combed the forest around themselves, looking for movement of partisans or interior army agents. They saw nothing.

The man the farmer brought with him was middle-aged, which was a little surprising. Older men did not do well in the partisan movement because the living conditions were so poor. This man had a very straight back and a good, if old, long brown leather coat over his jacket, and he wore a tie as well as a woollen cap. He looked somewhat familiar.