Chapter 7

Otherwise your health could be affected." I They jolted along the soupy track in rain that made it soupier, but in time the car sank with all four wheels into the mire, and halted amid long rows of yellow stubble stretching out of sight. No rescuers appeared; they could not have, without rising from the earth, but Pug half thought they might. The driver shovelled the wheels clear and laid planks to the back tires. When the passengers got out to lighten the car, Amphiteatrov warned them to stay in the road, for mines were planted everywhere under the stubble. Showering muck and splinters all over them, the car lurched free. On they went. Pug gave up trying to guess the direction. They never passed a road marker or signpost. The low gray clouds showed no sun patch. In the forest of the earthworm sol(tiers, the artillery thumps had been fainter than in the village. Here they were considerably louder. But zigzags in the front line could cause that. Obviously they had stopped going west, because westward were the Germans. The car appeared to be meandering five miles or so behind the fire zone. "Here we will go a bit out of the way," the tank colonel said at another crossroads, "but you Will See something interesting.yp They entered fields where tall Yellow-green stalks of grain stood unharvested and rotting. After a mile or so Amphiteatrov told the driver to stop. "Perhaps you won't mind stretching your legs," he said. "You all have nice thick boots." He gave Pamela an odd look. "But you might find this walk boring. Perhaps you will stay with the driver here?" "I'll come, unless you tell me to stay." "Very well. Come." They went pushing in among the stalks. The wet quiet field of overripe grain smelled sweet, almost like an orchard. But the visitors, squelching along behind Amphiteatrov in a file, soon glanced at each other in revulsion as a rotten stench hit their noses. They broke into a clear space and saw why. They were looking at a battlefield. In every direction, the grain was crushed Hat in great crisscrossing swathes of brovm muck. Random patches of stalks still stood; and amid the long brown slashes and the green-yellow clumps, damaged tanks lay scattered on their sides, or turned clear over, or canted, their camou age fl paint blistered and burned black, their caterpillar tracks torn, their armor plate blown open. Seven of the tanks bore German markings; two were light Russian T-z6 tanks, such as Pug had often seen moving through Moscow. The stink rose from German corpses, sprawled in green uniforms here and there on the ground, and others slumped in blown-open tanks. Their dead purple faces were bloated disgustingly and covered %with fat black flies, but one could see they had been youngsters. Pamela turned pale and clapped a handkerchief to her face. "Well, I am sorry,- said the colonel, an ugly gleam lighting his face. "This happened only day before yesterday-These Fritzes were probing and got caught. Theircomrades went away from here and wouldn't stop to dig proper graves, being in a slight hurry." Helmets, papers, and broken bottles were littered among the tanks and the corpses, and the oddest sight was a mess of women's underwear pink, blue, and white drawers and petticoats-heaped soiled and sodden in the mud near an overturned tank. Pamela, eyebrows rising over the handkerchief, pointed to these. "Well, funny, isn't it? I suppose Fritz stole those from a village. The Germans steal everything they can lay their hands on. That is why they have come into our country, after all-to steal. We had a tough tank fight around Vyazma a month ago. One tank we blew up had a large fine marble clock in it, and also a dead pig. The fire ruined that pig. That was a pity. It was a very good pig. Well, I thought this might interest you." Pictures of knocked-out panzers were common in Moscow, but before this Victor Henry had seen actual German tanks only in Berlin, clanking down boulevards lined with red swastika flags, to the blare of brass-band marches over the loudspeakers and the hurrahs of crowds giving Nazi salutes; or else massed factory-fresh on trains of flat cars, chugging to the front. Seeing a few broken and overturned in a desolate Russian cornfield two thousand miles from Berlin, with their crewmen rotting beside them in the mud, was a hard jolt. He said to the tank colonel, "Aren't these Mark Threes? Haw could your T-26's knock them out? They don't fire a shell that can penetrate the Mark Three." Amphiteatrov grinned. "Well, very good. For a seaman you know a bit about tank warfare. But you had better ask the battalion commander who won this battle, so let us be on our way." They backtracked to the crossroads, headed toward the forest, and arrived at what looked like an open-air machine shop for tank repairs, in a village of a dozen or so thatched log cabins straggling along the road through wild woods. Detached caterpillar tracks stretched long and straight on the ground under the trees; bogie wheels were off; guns were off; and on every side men in black or blue coveralls hammered, filed, greased, and welded, shouting in Russian and laughing at each other. Strolling down the street in an olive-colored greatcoat too large for him, a short, hook-nosed, swarthy officer broke into a trot when he saw the black automobile. He saluted the colonel, then the two embraced and kissed. Introducing the visitors, Amphiteatrov said, "Major Kaplan, I showed our friends those busted German tanks out there. Our American Navy friend asked a real tankist's question. He asked, how could T-26's knock out Panzer Mark Threes?" The battalion commander grinned from ear to ear, clapped Victor Henry on the back, and said in Russian, 'Good, come this way." Beyond the last cabin, he led them into the woods, past two lines of light tanks ranged under the trees and draped with camouflage netting over their own green-and-sand blotches. 'Here we are," he said proudly.
'This is how we knocked out the Mark Threes." Dispersed in the thickets, all but invisible under branches and nets, five armored monsters thrust heavy square turrets with giant guns high in the air. Tudsbury's mouth fell open, as he stared up at them. He ner -A vously brushed his moustaches with a knuckle. "My God! What are these things?" "Our newest Russian tank," said Amphiteatrov. "C'eneral Ycvlenko thought it might interest President Roosevelt." "Fantastic!" said Talky. "Why, I'd heard you had these monsters, butWhat do they weigh? A hundred tons? Look at that gun!" The Russians smiled at each other. Amphiteatrov said, "It's a good tank." Tudsbury asked if they might climb inside one and to Pug's surprise the colonel agreed. Young tankists helped the lame fat Englishman to the batch, as Pug scrambled up. Inside the command turret, despite the clutter of machinery and instruments and the bulky gun breech, there a lot of elbowroom. Themachinesmelledstartlinglylikeanewcar;Pugguessedthiscame(was) from the heavy leather seats for the gunner and the commander. He knew very little about tanks, but the workmanship of the raw metal interior seemed good, despite some crude instrument brackets and wiring. The dials, valves, and controls had an old-fashioned German look. "Great God, Henry, it's a land battleship," Tudsbury said. "When I think of the tiny tin cans we rode in! Why, the best German tanks today are eggshells to this. Bloody eggshells! What a surprise!" When they climbed out, soldiers were clustering around the tank, perhaps a hundred or more, with others coming through the trees. On the flat hull stood'Pamela, embarrassed and amused under the male stares. Bundled in mud-caked lambskin, Pamela was not a glamorous object, but her presence seemed to thrill and hypnotize the tankists. A pale moonfaced officer with glasses and long yellow teeth stood beside her. Major Kaplan introduced him as the political officer. "The commissar would like to present all of you to the troops," said Amphiteatrov to Victor Henry, "as he feels this visit is a serious occasion that can be used to bolster their fighting spirit." "By all means," Victor Henry said. He could understand only fragments of the strident, quick-tumbling harangue of the moonfaced commissar, but the earnest tones, the waving fist, the Communist slogans, the innocent, attentive faces of the handsome young tankists, made a clear enough picture. The commissar's speech was half a revivalist sermon and half a football coach's pep talk. Suddenly the soldiers applauded, and Amphiteatrov began to translate, in bursts o'f three or four sentences at a time,during which the moon face beamed at him: "In the name of the Red Army, I now welcome the American naval captain, Genry, the British war correspondent, Tudsbury, and especially the brave English newspaperwoman, Pamela, to our front. It is always good for a fighting man's morale to see a pretty face." (Laughter among the men.) "But we have no evil thoughts, Miss Tudsbury, we think only of our own little sweethearts back home, naturally. Besides, your father has wisely come along to protect you from the romantic and virile young Russian tankists." (Laughter and handclaps.) "You have showed us that the British and American peoples have not forgotten us in our struggle against. the Fascist hyenas. "Comrade Stalin has said that the side which has more petroleum engines will win this war. Why is the petroleum engine so important? Because petroleum is the biggest source of energy today, and energy wins wars. We tankists know that! Hitler and the Germans thought they would make a lot of petroleum engines in a hurry, put them in tanks and aircraft, and steal a march on the world. Hitler even hoped that certain ruling circles in America and England would help him once he decided to attack the peaceful Soviet people. Well, he miscalculated. These two great nations have formed an unshakable front with the Soviet peoples. That is what the presence of our visitors shows us. We three countries possess many more petroleum engines than the Germans, and since we can manufacture still more engines faster than they can, because we have much larger industries, we will win this war. "We will win it faster if our friends wig hasten to send us plenum war supplies, because the Nazi bandits will not quit until we have killed a great many of them. Above all, we will win much faster if our British allies will open a second front at once and kill some German soldiers too. Certain people think it is impossible to beat Germans. So let me ask this battalion: have you fought Germans?" Twilight had fallen during the harangue, and Pug could barely see the nearest soldiers' faces. A roar came from the darkness: 'DAI' "Have you beaten them?" '(DAd) "Are you afraid of Germans?" 'NYETI'-and barking male laughter. "Do you think the British should be afraid to open a second front against them?" "NYETI'-and more laughter, and another bellow, like a college cheer, in Russian, "Second front now! Second front now!' "Thank you, my comrades. And now to dinner, and then back to our tanks, in which we have won many victories and will win more, for our socialist motherland, our sweethearts, our mothers, our Wives, and our children, and for ComradeStalin!" A tremendous college cheer in the gloom: "WE SERVE THE SOVIET union!" "The meeting is over," hoarsely cried the commissar, as the moon rose over the trees. Pug came awake from restless sleep on a straw pallet, on the dirt floor of a log cabin. Beside him in blackness Talky Tudsbury liquidly snored. Groping for a cigarette and lighting it, he saw Pamela as the match flared upright on the only bed, her back to the plastered log wall, her eyes glittaring. "Pam?" "Hello there. I still feel as though we're bumping and sliding in mud. "Do you suppose if I stepped outside, a sentry would shoot me?" 'Let's try. I'll step out first. If I get shot, you go back to bed." "Oh, that's a fine plan. Thank you." Pug pulled on the cigarette, and in the red glow Pamela came over and clasped hands. Moving along the rough wall, Pug found the door and opened a blue rectangle in the dark. "I'll be damned. Moon. Stars." A high moon, pa y veiled b rtl y swift-rolling clouds, dusted the thatched huts and the rutted empty road blue-gray. Across the road in the woods, soldiers, were sadly singing to an accordion. Victor Henry and Pamela Tudsbury sat down on a rough bench, hands clasped, huddling close in the frigid wind which blew straight up the road. Underfoot the mud was ridged hard. "Dear God," Pamela said, it's a long long way to Tipperary, isn't it?" 'Washington, D.C."s even further.anks for bringing me out, Victor. I was sitting there not daring to move. I love the smell of this countryside, but lord, that wind cuts you!" Yellow flashes ran along the sky and loud thumps followed fast. Pamela winced against him, with a little gasp. "Oh, oh! Look at that. Talky was a pig to drag me out here, wasn't he? Of course it suits him. He dictated two hours by candlelight tonight, and he Couldn't have written a line himself. It's quite a story, I'll say that. Are those tanks as startling as he claims? He says in his last sentence that if the Soviet union can massproduce them, the war's as good as over." "Well, that's journalism. Size isn't everything. Any tank, no matter how big, can be an incinerator for crews if it's built wrong. How maneuverable is it? How vulnerable is it? The germans'll find the weak spots. They'll rush out a new gun that can penetrate these things. They're good at that. Still, it's quite a tank.""Count on you!" Pamela laughed. "I think that was why I couldn't sleep. I had this vision of the war coming to a sudden end. It was such a weird, dazzling idea! The Germans beaten, Hitler dead or locked up, the lights going on again in London, the big cleanup, and then life continuing the way it used to be! All because of these monster tanks rolling by the thousands to Berlin-my God, those guns do sound dose." 'It's a pipe dream," Victor Henry said. "The Germans are winning'. We're pretty close to Moscow here, Pam." After a silence she said, looking up at the moon and stars and then at Pug's shadowy face, "When you just said those tanks couldn't end the war, do you know what? I felt relieved. Relieved! What kind of mad reaction was that?" "Well, the war's something different, while it lasts." Victor Henry gestured at the angry yellow flare-ups on the black western clouds. "The expensive fireworks-the travel to strange places-' "The interesting company," Pamela said. "Yes, Pam. The interesting company." The accordion was playing alone now, a plaintive tune like a lullaby, half drowned by the cracking and sighing of trees in the wind. 'What is that sensation of sudden remembering supposed to mean?" she said. "The sort of thing you felt yesterday at the Tolstoy place?" Pug said, 'Isn't it a kind of short circuit in the brain? Some irrelevant stimulus triggers off the sense of recognition when it shouldn't. So I once read." "()n the Bremen, the second day out," said Pamela, "I was walking the deck in the morning. And so were you, going the other way. We passed each other twice. It was getting silly. I decided to ask you, next time we passed, to walk with me. And I suddenly knew you'd ask me. I knew the exact words you'd use. You used them. I made a remark about your wife as though I were acting a play, and your answer came like the next line in the play, all old and familiar. I've never forgotten that." A tall soldier, muffled in his greatcoat, trudged by with smoking breath, the unsheathed bayonet of his rifle glinting in the moonlight. He stopped to glance at them, and passed on. "Where are we heading tomorrow, Victor?" "I'm going into the front line. You and Talky will stay in a town several miles back. Up front one sometimes has to make a dash for it, the colonel says, and of course Talky can't do that." "Why must you go?" "Well, Amphiteatrov offered. It'll be informative.""This is the flight to Berlin again." "No. I'll be on the ground all the way, on friendly territory. Quite a difference." "How long will you be gon from us?" "Just a few hours." A green radiance blinded them, a sudden blaze filling the heavens. Pamela uttered a cry. As their pupils adjusted to the shock, they saw four smoky green lights floating very slowly down below the thickening clouds, and heard the thrum of engines. The sentry had darted off the road. The village showed no sign of life: a tiny sleeping Russian hamlet of thatched huts in the woods an a mud road, like a hundred others, with a stage-setting appearance in the artificial glare. All the tanks under repair had been camouflaged. 'You look ghastly," Pam said. -You should see yourself. The)ere searching for this tank battalion." The lights sank earthward. One turned orange and went out. The airplane sounds faded away. Pug glanced at his watch. "I used to think the Russians were nutty on camouflage, but it has its points." He stiffly rose and opened the cabin door. 'We'd better try to sleep." Pamela put a hand out, palm up to the black sky. The clouds were blotting out the moon and stars. "I thought I felt something." She held her hand toward Pug. In the light of the last falling flare he could see, melting on her 'aim, a fat snowflake. The car crossed a white bare plain in a steady snowfall in leaden gray light by which the driver guided the jolting, Tlight. Pug could s no roa sliding, shaking machine. What about mines? Trusting that Pug could Amphiore appetite than he to get blown up, Pug said nothing. teatrov had no m In about an hour an onion-top belft-y of yellow brick loomed ahead They entered a town where soldiers milled and through the veil of snow. wood houses. army trucks lurched on mud streets between unpainted idlers peered the livid, bloody, bandaged faces of so From some trucks sadly. Villagers, mostly snow-flecked old women and boys, stood in front of the houses, dourly watching the traffic go by. At the steps of the yellow brick church, Pug parted company with the others. A political officer in a belted white leather coat, with the slanted eyes of a Tartar and a little beard like Lenin's, came to take him off in a small British jeep. Talky Tudsbury happily said in Russian, pointing to the trademark, "Ah, so British aid has reached the front at last!"The political officer replied in ragged English that it required men and gunfire, not automobiles, to stop Germans, and that the British vehicles were not strong enough for heavy duty. Pamela gave Victor Henry a serious wide-eyed stare. Despite the wear and soil of travel she looked charming, and the lambskin bat was tilted jauntily on her head. 'Watch yourself," was all she said. The jeep went west, out of the tumultuous town and into a snowladen quiet forest. They appeared to be heading straight for the front, yet the only gunfire thumps came from the left, to the south. Pug thought the snow might be muffling the sound up ahead. He saw many newly splintered trees, and bomb craters lined with fresh snow. The Germans had been shelling the day before, the commissar said, trying in vain to draw the fire of Russian batteries hidden in the woods. The jeep bounced past some of these batteries: big horse-drawn howitzers, tended by wearylooking bewhiskered soldiers amid evergreens and piles of shells at the ready. They came to a line of crude trenches through the smashed fallen trees, with high earthworks sugared by snow. These were dummy dugouts, the commissar said, deliberately made highly visible. They had taken much of the shellfire yesterday. The real trenches, a couple of hundred yards further on, had escaped. Dug along a riverbank, their log tops level with the ground and snowed over, the actual trenches were totally invisible. The commissar parked the jeep among trees, and he and Victor Henry crawled the rest of the way through the brush. "The less movement the Fritzes can observe, the better," said the Russian. Here, down in a deep muddy hole-a machine gun post manned by three soldiers-Victor Henry peered through a gun slit piled with sandbags and saw Germans. They were working in plain view across the river with earth-moving machines, pontoons, rubber boats, and trucks. Some dug with shovels; some patrolled with light machine guns in hatnhde. GUenrlike the Russians, concealed like wild eatures in the earth, mans were making no effort to hide themselves or what they were doing. cr Except for the helmets, guns, and long gray coats, they might have been a big crew on a peacetime construction job. Through binoculars handed him by a soldier-German binoculars-Victor Henry could see the eyeglasses and frost-purpled cheeks and noses of Hitler's chilled men. "You could shoot them like birds," he said in Russian. It was as close as he could come to the American idiom, "they're sitting ducks." The soldier grunted. "Yes, and give away our position, and start them shelling us! No thanks, Gospodin American."If they ever get that bridge finished," said the commissar, "and start coming across, that'll.""That's what we're waiting for," said a pipe-smoking soldier with heavy drooping moustaches, who appeared to be in command of this hole in the ground. Pug said, "Do you really think you can hold out if they get across?" The three soldiers rolled their eyes at each other, weighing this question asked in bad Russian by a foreigner. Their mouths set sourly. Here, for the first time, in sight of the Germans, Victor Henry detected fear on Red Army faces. "Well, if it comes to that," said the pipe smoker, every man has his time. A Russian soldier knows how to die." The political officer said briskly, "A soldier's duty is to live, comrade, not to die-to live and fight. They won't get across. Our big guns are trained on this crossing, and as soon as they've wasted all the time it takes to build a bridge, and they start across, we'll blast these Hitlerite rats! Eh, Polikov? How about it?" "That's right," said a bristle-faced soldier with a runny nose, crouched on the earth in a corner blowing on his red hands. "That's exactly right, Comrade Political Officer." Crawling through bushes or darting from tree to tree, Victor Henry and the commissar made their way along the dugoutsp pillboxes, trenches, and one-man posts of the thinly held line. A battalion of nine hundred men was covering five miles of the river here, the commissar said, to deny the Cennans access to an important road. "This campaign is simply a race," he panted, as they crawled between dugouts. "The Germans are trying to beat Father Frost into Moscow. That's the plain fact of it. They are pouring out their lifeblood to do it. But never fear, Father Frost is an old friend of Russia. He'll freeze them dead in the ice. You'll see, they'll never make it." The commissar was evidently on a morale-stiffening mission. Here and there, where they found a jolly leader in a trench, the men seemed ready for the fight, but elsewhere fatalism darkened their eyes, slumped their shoulders, and showed in dirty weapons, disarrayed uniforms, and garbage-strewn holes. The commissar harangued them, exploiting the strange presence of an American to buck them up, but for the most part the hairy-faced Slavs stared at Henry with sarcastic incredulity as though to say-'If you're really an American, why are you so stupid as to come here yourself? We have no choice"worse luck." The Germans were in view all along the river, methodically and intimidating, calmly preparing to cross. Their businesslike air was more Pug thought, than volleys of bullets. 'neir numbers were alarming, too; where did they all come from? The commissar and Victor Henry emerged from one of the largest dugouts and lay on their elbows in the snow. "Well, I have finished my tour of this part of the line, Captain. Perhaps you will rejoin your party now.""I'm ready." With a grim little smile, the commissar stumbled to his feet. "Keep in the shadows of the trees." When they got back to the jeep, Pug said, "How far are we from Moscow here?" "Oh, quite far enough." The commissar whirred the noisy engine. "I hope you saw what you wanted to see." "I saw a lot," Victor Henry said. The commissar turned his Lenin-like face at the American, appraising him with suspicious eyes. "It is not easy to understand the front just by looking at it." "I understand that you need a second front." understand the The Commissar uttered a brutal grfurntn.t,"iTfhweenmyuosut, Captain Genry, main thing. But even without the second cockroaches." we ourselves will smash this plague of German By the time they reached the central square of the town, the snowfall had stopped and patches of fast-moving blue showed through the clouds. The wind was bitter cold. The tangle of trucks, wagons, horses, and soldiers was worse than before. Vehement Russian cursing and arguing filled the air. The old women and the wrinkle-faced boys still watched the disorder with round sad eyes. In a big jam of vehicles around two fallen horses and an overturned ammunition wagon, the jeep encountered the black automobile. Talky Tudsbury, in great spirits, stood near forty yelling soldiers and officers, watching the horses kick and struggle in tangled traces, while other soldiers gathered up long coppery shells that had spilled from burst boxes and lay softly gleaming in the snow. "Hello there! Back already? What a mess! It's a wonder the whole wagon didn't go up with a bang, what? And leave a hole a hundred feet across." "Where's Pamela?" Tudsbury flipped a thumb over his shoulder. "Back at the church. An artillery spotter is stationed in the belfry. There's supposed to be a great view, but I couldn't climb the damned tower. She's up there making some notes. How are things at the front? You've got to give me the whole picture. Brrr! What frost, eh? Do you suppose Jerry is starting to feel it in his balls a bit? Hullo, they've got the horses up." Amphiteatrov said he was taking Tudsbury to see a downed junker 88 in the nearby field. Pug told him that he had seen plenty of junker 88's; he would join Pam in the church and wait for them.
Ampbiteatrov made an annoyed face. "All right, but please remain there, Captain. We'll come back in twenty minutes or less." Pug said good-bye to the bearded commissar, who was sitting at the wheel of the jeep, bellowing at a scravmy soldier who clutched a live white goose. The soldier was coarsely shouting back, and the goose turned its orange beak and little eyes from one to the other as though trying to learn its fate. Making his way around the traffic tangle, Pug walked to the church on crunching squeaking dry snow. Freedom from the escort-even for a few minutes-felt strange and good. si the church, a strong unI In de churchlike miasma of medicine and disinfectant filled the air; peeling frescoes of blue big-eyed saints looked down from grimy walls, at bandaged soldiers who lay on straw mats smoking, talking to each other, or sadly staring. The narrow stone staircase spiralling up the inside of the belfry with no handholds made Pug queasy, but up he went, edging along the rough wall, to a wooden platform level with big rusty bells, where wind gusted through four open brick arches. Here he caught his breath, and wooden ladder. mounted a shaky st brick walk, Pam waved and "Victor!" As he emerged on the topmo called to him. gi e job of tin sheets Seen this close, the bulging onion dome was a c,d yellow brick nailed rustily on a curving frame. Squared around it was a walk and parapet, where Pamela crouched in a corner, out of the whistling wind. The artillery spotter, shapeless and faceless in an ankle-length thick earflaps, manned brown coat, mittens, goggles, and fastened-down giant binoculars on a tripody pointed west. A fat black tomcat beside Pamela crouched over a bowl of soup, lapping, shaking its big head in distaste, nd the spotter were laughing at the cat. 'Too and lapping again. Pamela a look showed she clearly was much pepper, kitty?" Pamela's gay flirtatious ched far east and south to enjoying herself. Below, the bare plain stret distant forests, and west and north to the black wriggling river and sparse t of life, made thin noise in an woods. Straight downward the town, a clo empty white Hat world. "Vy Amerikanski offitzer?" The spotter showed fine teeth in the hairy uncovered patch of his face. "Da." 'Pos-niotritye?" The mittened hand tapped the binoculars. "Videte nemtzi?" Pug said. ("Can you see Germans?") "Slishkom m'nogo." ("Too many.") 'Odin slishkom m'nogo," Pug said. ("One is too many!") With a grim nod and chuckle the spotter stepped away from the bithem to the oculars. Pug's eyes were watering from the wind; he put n eyepieces and the Germans on the riverbank leaped into sight, blurry and small, still at the same work. "Doesn't it give you an eerie feeling?" Pam said, stroking the cat.
"They're so calm about it." Victor Henry went to a corner of the brick parapet and surveyed the s, hands jammed in his blue snowy vista through all points of the compas south to north, made a slow coat. The spotter, turning the binoculars from east on a long black sweep along the river, talking into a battered telephone wire that dangled over the parapet." The cat was washing itself, and "Kitty, don't forget behind the ears. Pamela scratched its head. Pug told her about his trip, meanwhile scanning the horizon round and round as though he were on a flying bridge. An odd movement in the distant snowy forest caught his notice. With his back to the spotter, he peered intently eastward, shielding his eyes with one chapped red hand. 'Pass me those." She handed him small field glasses, in an open case beside the binocular stand. One quick look, and Pug tapped the spotter's shoulder and pointed. Swinging the large binoculars halfway round on the tripod, the spotter started with surprise, pulled off goggles and cap, and looked again. He had a lot of curly blond hair and freckles, and he was only eighteen or twenty. Snatching up the telephone, he jiggled the hook, talked, jiggled some more, and gestured anger at no answer. Pulling on his cap, he went trampling down the ladder. "What is it?" Pamela said. 'Take a look." Pamela saw through the big eyepieces of the spotter's instrument a column of machines coming out of the woods. "Tanks?" 'Some are trucks and armored personnel cars. But yes, it's a tank unit." Victor Henry, glasses to his eyes, talked as though he were watching a parade. 'Aren't they Russians?" "No." 'But that's the direction we came from." "Yes." They looked each other in the eyes. Her red-cheeked face showed fear, but also a trace of nervous gaiety. "Then aren't we in a pickle? Shouldn't we get down out of here and find Amphiteatrov?" To the naked eye the armored column was like a tiny black worm on the broad white earth, five or six miles away. Pug stared eastward, thinking. The possibilities of this sudden Turn were too disagreeable to be pu dragging of t into words. He felt a flash of anger at Tudsbury's selfish his daughter into hazard. Of course, nobody had planned on being surPrised in the rear by Germans; but there they were!
If the worst came to the worst, he felt he could handle himself with German captors, though there might be ugly moments with'soldiers before he could talk to an officer. But the Tudsburys were enemies. 'I'll tell you, Pam," he said, watching the worm pull clear of the forest and move sluggishly toward the town, leaving a black trail behind, "the colonel knows where we are now. Let's stick here for a while." "All right. How in God's name did the Germans get around back there?" "Amphiteatrov id theresa was trouble to the south. They must have broken across the river and hooked through the woods. It's not a large unit, it's a probe." The top of the ladder danced and banged under a heavy tread. The blond youngster came up, seized a stadimeter, pointed it at the Germans, and slid a vernier back and forth. Hastily flattening out a small black and white grid map on one knee, he barked numbers into the telephone: "Five point six! One two four! R seven M twelve! That's right! That's right!" Animated and cheery now, he grinned at the visitors. "Our batteries are training on them. When they're good and close, we'll blow them to bits. So maybe you'll see something yet." He put on his goggles, changing back from a bright-eyed boy into a faceless grim spotter. Victor Henry said, "they're watching across the river for your batteries to fire." The spotter clumsily waved both heavy-clad arms. "Good, but we can't let those bastards take the town from the rear, can we?" "I hear airplanes." Pug turned his glasses westward to the sky. "Sa?Mlyuttil' "Da!" Swivelling and tilting the binoculars upward, the spotter began to shout into the phone. "Airplanes too?" Pamela's voice trembled. "Well, I'm more used to them." "that's the German drill," said Victor Henry. "Tanks and planes together." The oncoming planes, three Stukas, were growing bigger in Pug's glasses. The spotter switched his binoculars to the tanks again, and began cheering. Pug looked in that direction. "Holy cow! Now I call this military observing, Pam." Tanks in another column were coming out of the woods about halfway between the Germans and the town, moving on a course almost at right angles to the panzer track. He handed her the glasses and squinted toward the airplanes. "Oh! Oh!" Pamela exclaimed. "Ours?" 'Da!" cried the spotter, grinning at her. "Nashil Nashil" A hand struck her shoulder andknocked her to her hands and knees. "They're starting their dive," Victor Henry said. "Crawl up close to the dome and lie still." He was on his knees beside her. His cap had fallen off and rolled away, and he brushed black hair from his eyes to watch the planes. They tilted over and dove. When they were not much higher than the belfry, bombs fell out of them. With a mingled engine roar and wind screech, they zoomed by. Pug could see the black crosses, the swastikas, the yellowish plexiglass cockpits. All around the church the bombs began exploding. The belfry shook. Flame, dirt, and smoke roared up beyond the parapet, but Pug remained clearheaded enough to note that the flying was ragged. The three ungainly black machines almost collided as they climbed and turned to dive again in a reckless tangle. The Luftwaffe had either lost most of its veteran pilots by now, he thought, or they were not flying on this sector of the front. Anti-aircraft guns were starting to pop and rattle in the town. Pamela's hand sought his. She was crouched behind him, against the dome. "Just lie low, this will be over soon." As Pug said this he saw one of the Stukas separating from the others and diving straight for the belfry. He shouted to the spotter, but the airplane noise, the chatter of A.A. guns, the clamor and cries from the town below, and the roar of the wind, quite drowned his voice. Tracers made a red dotted line to the belfry across the gray sky. The tin dome began to sing to rhythmically striking bullets. Victor Henry roughly pushed Pamela flat and threw himself on top of her. The plane stretched into a sizable black machine approaching through the air. Watching over his shoulder to the last, Victor Henry saw the pilot dimly behind his plexiglass, an unhelmeted young blond fellow with a toothy grin. He thought the youngster was going to crash into the dome, and as he winced, he felt something rip at his left shoulder. The airplane scream and roar and whiz mounted, went past, and diminished. The zinging and rattling of bullets stopped. Pug stood, feeling his shoulder. His sleeve was torn open at the very top and the shoulder board was dangling, but there was no blood. The spotter was lying on the bricks beside the overturned binoculars. Bombs were exploding below; the other twO planes were still whistling and roaring over the town; one plane was smoking badly. Blood was pooling under the spotter's head, and with horror Pug perceived white broken bone of the skull showing through the torn shot-away cap, under blond hair and thick-moving red and gray ooze. Pug went to the spotter and cautiously moved his goggles. The blue eyes were open, fixed and empty. The head wound was catastrophic. Picking up the telephone, Pug jiggled the hook till somebody answered. He shouted in Russian, "I am the American visitor up here. You understand?"He saw the smoking plane, which was trying to climb, burst into flames and fall. "Da! Where is Konstantin?" The voice sounded exhilarated. "Airplane killed him." "All right. Somebody else will come." Pamela had crawled beside the spotter and was looking at the dead face and smashed head. "Oh, my God, my God," she sobbed, head in hand. The two surviving planes were climbing out of sight. Smoke rose from fires in the town, smelling of burning hay. To the east, the two tank unit tracks had almost joined in a black V, miles long, across the plain. PLig n owing in the line of vision, he righted the binoculars. rough smoke bill saw the tanks milling in a wild little yellow-flashing vortex on the broad white plain. Five of the KV monsters bulged among lighter Russian tanks. Several German tanks were on fire and their crewmen were running here and there in the snow like ants. Some German tanks and trucks were heading back to the woods. Pug saw only one light Russian tank giving off black smoke. But even as he watched, a KV burst into violent, beautiful purple-orange flame, casting a vivid pool of color on the snow. Meantime the rest of the German tanks began turning away. "Kitty! Oh, Christ, Christ, no, stop it!" Pam snatched up the cat, which was crouching over the dead man. She came to Pug, her tearstained face gaunt and stunned, holding the creature in her arms. Its nose and whiskers were bloody and its tongue flickered. "It's not the animal's fault," she choked. "The Russians are winning out there," Victor Henry said. She was staring at him with blank shocked round eyes, clutching the black cat close to her. Her hand went to the rip at his shoulder. "Dearest, are you hurt?" "No. Not at all. It went right on through." "thank God! Thank God!" The ladder jumped and rattled, and Colonel Amphiteatrov's face, excited and red, showed at the top. "Well, you're all right. Well, I'm glad. That was best to stay right here. The bombing was bad in the town. Many people killed. Quick! Both of you. Come along, please." Then his eye fell on the body lying in blood. "Aghl' "We were strafed," Pug said. "He's dead." The colonel shook his head and sank out of sight, saying, "Well, please, come quickly.""Go first, Pam." Pamela looked at the dead spotter lying on the bricks in snow and blood, and then at the tin dome, and out at the tank fight, and the black V gouged in the landscape. "It seems I've been up here for a week. I can't get down the ladder with the cat. We mustn't leave it here." "Give the cat to me." Tucking the animal inside his bridge coat, steadying it with one arm, Victor Henry awkwardly followed her down the ladder and the spiral stairs. Once the cat squirmed, bit, and scratched, and he almost fell. He turned the cat loose outside the church, but the clanking vehicles or the rolling smoke alarmed the animal and it ran back in and vanished among the wounded. Through the open door of the black automobile Tudsbury waved his cane at them. "Hello! There's a monstrous tank battle going on just outside the town! They say there's at least a hundred tanks swirling around, an utter inferno, happening right this minute! Hello, you've torn your coat, do you know that?" "Yes, I know." Though drained of spirit, Victor Henry was able to smile at the gap between journalism and war, as he detached his shoulder board and dropped it in his pocket. The reality of the two small groups of tanks banging away out there on the snowy plain seemed so pale and smallscale compared to Tudsbury's description. "We had a view of it," he said. Pamela got into the car and sank into a corner of the back seat, closing her eyes. " 'Did you? Well, Pam ought to be a help on this story! I say, Pam, you're all right, aren't you?" "I'm splendid, Talky, thank you," Pam said, faintly but clearly. Pug said to the colonel, 'We saw the Germans starting to run." "mid. Well, Kaplan's battalion got the word from down south. That is a good battalion." Amphiteatrov slammed the car door. "Make yourselves comfortable please. We are going to drive straight back to Moscow now." "Oh no!" Tudsbury's fat face wrinkled up like an infant's. "I want to have a look when the fight's over. I want to interview the tank crews." Amphiteatrov turned and faced them, and showed his gums and teeth without smiling. Behind him through the frosted windshield they could vaguely, see on the main street of the town smoke, fire, a plunging horse, soldiers running, and green army trucks in a slow-moving jam. "Well, there has been a very big breakthrough in the north. Moscow is in danger. Well, foreign missions all will be evacuated to the Caucasus. We must skedaddle." He brought out the awkward slang word humorlessly , and turned to thedriver. "Nu, skoror Under the blanket stretched across the passengers' legs, Pamela Tudsbury's gloved hand groped to Victor Henry's hand. She pulled off her glove, twined her cold fingers in his, and pressed her face against the torn shoulder of his bridge coat. His chapped hand tightened on hers. ESLI]G SLOTH heard footfalls in the dark, as he sat in an overcoat and fur hat, working by the light of a kerosene lamp, His desk overflowing with papers and reports stood directly under the grand unlit chandelier in the marble-pillared great hall of Spaso House, the ambassador's Moscow residence. "Who's there?" The nervous strident words reverberated in the empty halls. He recognized the white Navy cap, white scarf, and brass buttons, before he could make out the face. "Ye gods, Captain Henry, why didn't they take you straight to the Kazan Station? Maybe you can still make it. You've got to get out of Moscow tonight" "I've been to the station. The train to Kuibyshev had left." Pug brushed snow from his shoulders. "The air raid held us up outside the dty." Slote looked at his wristwatch in great agitation. "But-that's terriblet God knows when there'll be another train to Kuibyshev-if ever. Don't you know that one German armored column's already passed by to the north and is cutting down behind the city? And they say another pincer is heading up from Kaluga. One doesn't know what to believe any more, but it's at least conceivable that in the next twenty-four hours we may be entirely surrounded. It begins to smell like Warsaw all over again." Slote gaily laughed. 'Sorry there are no chairs, a party of mad Georgian workmen came in and covered and stacked all the furniture-oh, there's a stool a after all, do sit down-" Pug said, "That's more than I know, about the German pincers, and I've just come from the Narkomindel." He sat down without opening his coat. It was almost as cold and dark in Spaso House as in the snowstorm outside. "Did you suppose they'd tell you anything? I got this straight from the Swedish ambassador, I assure you, at nine o'clock tonight in the dining room at the Kazan Station, when I was seeing off the staff. My God, that station was a spectacle to remember! One bomb hit would have wiped out all the foreign correspondents and nine-tenths of the diplomats ill Russia-and a healthy chunk of the Soviet bureaucracy too." "Have all the typewriters been stowed? I have to write a report." "There are typewriters in Colonel Yeaton's office. I have a skeleton staff, and we're to keep things going somehow until the charge gets organized in Kuibyshev." Slote gave this answer with absentminded calm, then jumped at a muffled sound from outside. "Was that a bomb? You have no time to write reports, Captain. It's really my responsibility to see that you leave Moscow at once, and I must insist that somehow-" Pug held up a hand. "The Nark's makingarrangements. There are other stragglers like me. I have to check back in at eleven in the morning." "Oh! Well, if the Narkomindel's assumed responsibility, that's that," Slote giggled. Victor Henry looked narrowly at him. "How come you got stuck with this duty again? It seems kind of thick, after Warsaw."I volunteered. You look skeptical. I truly did. After all, I've been through the - I wasn't to drill 0 proud of the job I did in Warsaw and I thought perhaps I could redeem mys& this time." "Why, Byron told me you did a helluva job in Warsaw, Leslie." "Did he? Byron's a gentleman. A knight, almost. Which reminds me, an enormous pouch came in from Stockholm the day you left. There was stuff from Rome. Would you like to see a picture of your new grandson?" Fussing through papers on his desk he pulled a photograph from a wrinkled envelope. "There he is. Don't you think he's handsome?" The lamplight carved deep black marks in the naval officer's face as he read the sign on the back of the vmtn ha he snapshot, For old Slote Henry, aged ri s, t r la -Louis day U" h ci cus t lady, then contemplated the photograph. A Plump, hollow-eyed Natalie in a loose robe held a baby that looked star ingly like B t] Byron as an infant. The triangular face, the large serous eyes, the comics Ily determined look, the fine blond hair-they were the sam was was another n e Pried -t of the template that had molded his Son. He was much more of a Henry than Janice's boy. Victor Henry cleared his choked-up throat. -Not bad. Natalie's right, she's gotten fat." 'Hasn't e though? TOO much bed rest, she says. I'll bet the baby win be as clever as it's handsome-It looks clever." Victor Henry sat staring at the snapshot. Slote added, 'Would you care to keep that?" Henry at once extended it to him. "No, certainly not. She sent it to you. "I'll only lose it, Captain Heny. I have a better picture of Natalie." "Are you sure? All right.- Victor. Henry tried to express in an awkward smile the gratitude for which he could find no words. Carefully he put the print in an inner pocket. "What about the Tudsburys?" Slote asked. "Are they stuck in Moscow too?" "I left Talky trying to wangle a ride to Archangel for himself and Pam. The Russians are flying out some R.A.F pilot instructors. I'm sure he'll get on that plane." 'Good. Did you run into any trouble at the front? What an idiocy, dragging a girl out there!" "Well, we heard some firing, and saw some Germans. I'd better get at this report. If Talkydoes fly out, I want to give him a copy to forward via London." "Let me have a copy too, won't you? And another to go in the next pouch. If there is one." "You're a pesimist, Slote." 'I'm a realist. I was in Warsaw. I know what the German's can do." "Do you know what the Russians can do?" 'I thought I did. I was the Red Army's biggest booster in the embassy, until-' Slote shrugged and turned to his desk, blowing his nose. "the only thing that really gets me is this stink of burning paper. My God, how it brings back Warsaw! The embassy absolutely reeks. We were burning and burning today, until the minute they all left. And there's still a ton that I've somehow got to get burned in the morning." "All Moscow stinks of it," Pug said. "It's the damnedest thing to drive through a snowstorm and smell burned paper. The city's one unholy mess, Slote. Have you seen all the barbed wire and tangled steel girders blocking the bridges? And good Lord, the mob at that railway station! The traffic jams heading east with headlights blazing, blackout be damned! I didn't know there were that many trucks and cars in the whole Soviet union. All piled with mattresses and old people and babies and what-all. And with those blue A.A. searchlights stir swinging overhead-God knows why -and the snow and the wind, I you it's a real end-of-the-world feeling." Slote chuckled. "Yes, isn't it? This exodus began the day you leftIes been snowballing. A convoy of government big shots left yesterday in a line of honking black limousines. Gad, you should have seen the faces of the people along the streets! I'm sure that triggered this panic. However, I give Stalin credit. He's staying on to the last, and that takes courage, because when Hitler catches Stalin he'll just hang him like a dog in Red Square. And he'll drag Lenin's mummy out of the tomb too, and string it up alongside to crumble in the wind. Oh, there'll be stirring tngs to see and record here, for whoever survives to tell it all." Victor Henry rose. "Do you know there's no sentry at the door? I just walked in." "That's impossible. We're guarded night and day by a soldier assigned by the Narkomindel." "There's nobody there." Slote opened and Closed his mouth twice. "Are you positive? Why, we could be sacked by looters! It's getting near the end when soldiers leave their posts. I must call the Narkomindel. If I can get the operator to answer!" He jumped up and disappeared into the gloom. Victor Henry groped to the military attache's office. There he struck matches, and found and lit two kerosene lamps. In their bleak yellowgreen glow be surveyed the office. Bits of black ash flecked the floor and every surface. 'BURN-URGENT was scrawled in red crayon on manila folders topping heaps of reports, files, and loose papers piled on the floor and in the leather armchair. Emptied drawers and files stood open; a swivel chair was overturned; the place looked as though it had been robbed. On the desk, on a tYPewriter with bunched tangled keys, a message was propped, printed in block letters on torn cardboard: IMPOUTIVE-BUYWTONIGHT conmws SECOND BROWN LOCKM FILE. (L. sLo-rE HAS C MiBiNA'noN.) Pug cleared the desk, untangled the typewriter keys and stood the lamps on either side of the machine. He found paper, carbons, and onionskin paper in a drawer. Spaso House October 16, 1941 THE MOSCOW FRONT-EYEWITNESS REPORT His cold stiff fingers struck wrong keys. Typing in a bridge coat was clumsy and difficult. The slow clicks of the machine echoed hollowly in the deserted embassy. One lamp began to smoke. He fiddled with the wick tmtil it burned clear. This report attempts a description of a visit to the fighting front west Of MOscow, from which I have just returned. Tonight, twenty miles outside the city, our car halted because of an air raid on Moscow. At a distance this was quite a spectacle: the fanning searchlights, the A.A. like an umbrella of colored fireworks over one patch of the horizon, blazing aw,y for half an hour straight. Whatever the Russian deficiencies, they seem to have an infinite supply of A.A. ammunition, and when the Luftwaffe ventures over the capital, they blow it skyward in huge displays. This bats anything I saw in Berlin or London. However, this brave show is not being matched on the ground in Moscow tonight. The town is getting ready for a Siege. It has an abnormal look, and the fainthearted are fleeing in a heavy snow. The Communist government is either unable or unwilling to stop the panic. I am told there is already a slang name for this mass exodus-Bolshoi Drap, the Big Scram. The foreign diplomats and newspapermen have been sent to Kuibyshev on the Volga, five hundred miles further east, and many government agencies are departing for the same haven en masse. Heavy vehicular and foot traffic eastward gives an undeniable aspect of rats leaving a sinking ship. However, it is reported that Stalin is staying on. I believe this panic is premature, that Moscow has a fair chance of holding, and that even if it falls, the war may not end. I bring back many impressions from the front, but the outstanding one is that the Russians, though they are back on about their nine-yard line, are not beaten. The American leadership must guess whether Russia will stand or fall, and lay its bets accordingly in Lend-Lease shipments. An eyewitness account of the front, however fragmentary, may therefore be pertinent. The typewriter was clicking fast now. It was almost one o'clock. Victor Henry still had to return to the hotel and pack. He chewed another it polar bear," the Russian chocolate candy, for energy, and began banging out the tale of his journey. Electricity all at once lit up the room, but he left the kerosene lamps burning and typed on.
In about half an hour the lights flickered, burned orange, dimmed, and pulsed, and went out. Still he typed ahead. He was describing the interior of the KV tank when Slote came in, saying, "You're really going at it." "You're working late yourself." "I'm getting to the bottom of the pile." Slote dropped on the desk a brown envelope sealed with wax. "By the way, that came in the pouch, too. Care for some coffee?" "You bet. Thanks." Pug stretched and walked up and down the room, beating his arms and stamping his feet, before he broke the seal of the envelope. There were two letters inside, one from the White House and one from the Bureau of Personnel. He hesitated, then opened the White House letter; a few sentences in Harry Hopkins's dashed-off slanting hand filled a pageMy dear Pug1 want to congratulate you on your new assignment, and to convey the Boss's good wishes. He is very preoccupied with the Japanese, who are beginning to get ugly, and of course we are all watching the Russian struggle with anxiety. I still think-and pray-they'll hold. I hope my letter reached Stalin. He's a land crab, and he's got to be convinced that the Channel crossing is a major task, otherwise bad faith accusations will start to fly, to Hitler's delight. There's been an unfortunate upturn in submarine sinkings in the Atlantic, and the Germans are cutting loose in Africa, too. All in all the good cause seems to be heading into the storm. You'll be missed in the gray fraternity of office boys. Harry H. The other envelope contained a Navy letter form in tele aphic style: gr MMLGRAM IPROM: nM CHIEF OF PFRSONNIEL. TO: VICTOR (NONE) HENRY, CAPTAIN, U.S.N. DETACHED ONE NOVEMBER PRESENT DUTY X PROCEED FASTEST AVAILABLE TRANSPORTATION PL OR X REPORT CALIFORNIA (BE 64) RELIEVE CO X SUBMIT VOUCHERS OF TRAVEL EXPENSES COM]BAT FOR PL In bald trite Navy jargon on a flimsy yellow sheet, here command of battleship. And what a battleship! The California,theoldPruneBarge,(was) ashipinwhich(a) he had served twice, as an ensign and as a lieutenant commander, which he knew well and loved; the ship named for his own home state, launched in 1919 and completely modernized. Captain of the California! Pug Henry'S first reaction was orderly and calculating. Evidently Admiral King's staff was a trap he had escaped. In his class only Warendorf, Munson, and Brown had battleships, and Robinson had the Saratoga. His strange "gray oit:ice boy" service to the President had proveda career shortcut after all, and flag rank was suddenly and brightly back in sight. He thought of Rhoda, because she had sweated out with him the twenty-seven-year wait for this bit of yellow tissue paper; and of Pamela, because he wanted to share his excitement right now. But he was not even ure that he would see her again in Moscow. They had parted at the railroad station with a strong handclasp, as Talky Tudsbury pleaded with the R.A.F pilots to take him along and simultaneously blustered at a Narkomindel man who was trying to lead him off. Leslie Slote walked in, carrying two glass tumblers of black coffee. "Anything good?" "New orders. Command Of the California.m "Oh? What is that?" "A battleship." "A battleship?" Slote sipped coffee, looking doubtu. 'Is that what you wanted next?" "Well, it's a change." "I should think you'd find it somewhat confining and-well, routine, after the sort of thing you've been doing. Not many naval officers-in fact not many Americans-have talked to Stalin face to face." "Leslie, I'm not entirely unhappy with these orders." 'Oh' Well, then, I gather congratulations are in order. How are you coming with that report? I'm almost ready to Turn in." "Couple of hours to go." "You won't get much sleep." Slote went out shaking his head. Victor Henry sat drinking coffee, meditating on this little rectangle of yellow paper, the sudden irreversible verdict on his life. He could ask for no better judgment. This was the blue ribbon, the A-plus, the gold medal of naval service. Yet a nag in his spirit shadowed the Marvelous news. What was it? Between sips of coffee, probing his own heart, Pug found out something surprising about himself. After more than twenty-five years, he had slightly outgrown his career drive. He was interested in the war. At War Plans, he had been waging a vigilant fight to keep priorities high for the landing craft program. "Pug's girlfriend Elsie" was no joke; but now he could no longer carry on that fight. Mike Drayton would take over. Mike was an excellent officer, a commander with a solid background in BuShips and an extraordinary knowledge of the country's industries. But he was not pugnacious and he lacked rank. "Elsie" was going to lose ground. That could not last. One day the crunch would come-Henry was sure of this from hisoperational studies-and landing craft would shoot to the top of the priority fist, and a frantic scramble would ensue to get them made. The war effort might suffer; conceivably a marginal landing operation would fail, with bad loss of life. But it was absurd, Pug thought, to feel the weight of the war on his shoulders, and to become as obsessed by 'Elsie" as he had once been by his own career. That was swinging to the other extreme. The war was bigger than anybody; he was a small replaceable cog. One way or another, sooner or later, the United States would produce enough landing craft to beat Hitler. Meantime he had to go to his battleship. Taking a lamp to a globe standing in the corner, he used thumb and forefinger to step off the distance from Moscow to Pearl Harbor. He found it made surprisingly little difference whether he travelled west or east; the two places were at opposite ends of the earth. But which direction would offer less delay and hazard? Westward lay all the good fast transportation, across the Atlantic and the United States, and then the Pan Am hop from San Francisco to Honolulu. Duck soup! Unfortunately, in that direction the fiery barrier of the war now made Europe impassable from Spitzbergen to Sicily, and from Moscow to the English Channel. Tenuous lanes through the fire remained: the North Sea convoy run, and a chancy air connection between Stockholm and London. In theory, if he could get to Stockholm, he could even pass via Berlin and Madrid to Lisbon; but Captain Victor Henry had no intention of setting foot in Germany or German-dominated soil on his way to take command of the California. His coarsely insulting last remark to Wolf Steller about Goering undoubtedly was on the record. The Germans, now so close to world victory, might enjoy laying hands on Victor Henry. Well then, eastward? Slow uncertain Russian trains, jammed already with fugitives from the German attack; occasional, even more uncertain Russian planes. But the way was peaceful and a bit shorter, especially from Kuibyshev, five hundred miles nearer Pearl Harbor. Yes, he thought, he had better start arranging now with the distraught Russians to make his way around the world eastward. "You look like a mad conqueror," he heard Slote say. "Huh?" "Gloating over the globe by lamplight. You just need the little black mustache." The Foreign Service officer leaned in the doorway, running a finger along his smoking pipe. 'We have a visitor out here." By the desk under the chandelier, a Russian soldier stood slapping snow from his'long khaki coat. He took off his peaked army cap to shake it by an earflap, and Pug was startled to recognize jochanan Jastrow. The man's hair was clipped short now; he had a scraggly growth of brown beard flecked with gray, and he looked very coarse and dirty. He explained in German, answering Slote's questions, that in order to get warm clothes and some legal papers, he had passed himself off as a soldier from a routed unit. The Moscow authorities werecollecting such refugees and stragglers and forming them into emergency work battalions, with few questions asked. He had had a set of false papers; a police inspector in an air raid shelter had queried him and picked them up, but he had managed to escape from the man. More forged papers could be bought-there was a regular market for them-but he preferred army identification right now. "In this country, sir," he said, "a person who doesn't have papers is worse off than a dog or a pig. A dog or a pig can eat and sleep without papers. A man can't. After a while maybe there will be a change for the better in the war, and I can find my family." 'Where are they?" Slote said. "With the partisans, near Smolensk. My son's wife got sick and I left them there." Pug said, "You're not planning to go back through the German lines?" Natalie's relative gave him a strange crooked smile. One side of the bearded mouth curled upward, uncovering white teeth, while the other side remained fixed and grim. "Russia is a very big country, Captain Henry, full of woods. For their own safety the Germans stick close to the main roads. I have already passed through the lines. Thousands of people have done it." He turned to Leslie Slote. "So. But I heard all the foreigners are leaving Moscow. I wanted to find out what happened to the documents I gave you." The Foreign Service officer and Victor Henry looked at each other, with much the same expressions of hesitation and embarrassment. "Well, I showed the documents to an important American newspaperman," Slote said. "He sent a long story to the United States, but I'm afraid it ended I up as a little item in the back pages. You see, there have been so many I stories of German atrocities!" I 'Stories like this?" exclaimed Jastrow, his bristly face showing anger and disappointment. "Children, mothers, old people? In their homes, not doing anything, taken out in the middle of the night to a hole dug in the woods and shot to death?" 'Most horrible. Perhaps the army commander in the Minsk area was an insanely fanatical Nazi." "But the shooters were not soldiers. I told you that. They had different uniforms. And here in Moscow, people from the Ukraine and from up north are telling the same stories. This thing is happening all over, sir, not just in Minsk. Please forgive me, but why did you not give those documents to your ambassador? I am sure he would have sent them to President Roosevelt." 'I did bring your papers to his attention. I'm sorry to say that our intelligence people questioned their authenticity." "What? But sir, that is incredible! I can bring you ten people tomorrow who will tell such stories, and give affidavits. Some of them are eyewitnesses who escaped from the very trucks the Germans used, and-' In a tone of driven exasperation, Slote broke in, "Look here, my dear chap, I'm one man almost alone now"-he gestured at his piled-up deskIt responsible for all mycountry's affairs in Moscow. I really think I have done my best for you. In showing your documents to a newspaperman after our intelligence people had questioned them, I violated instructions. I received a serious reprimand. In fact, I took this dirty job of staying on in Moscow mainly to put myself right. Your story is ghastly, and I myself am unhappily inclined to believe it, but it's only a small part of this hideous war. Moscow may fall in the next seventy-two hours, and that's my main business now. I'm sorry." Jastrow took the outburst without blinking and answered in a quiet, dogged tone, "I am very sorry about the reprimand. However, if President Roosevelt could only find out about this crazy slaughter of innocent people, he would put a stop to it. He is the only man in the whole world who can do it." Jastrow turned to Victor Henry. 'Do you know of any other way, Captain, that the story could possibly be told to President Roosevelt?" Pug was already picturing himself writing a letter to the President. He had seen several stories like Jastrow's in print, and even more gruesome official reports about German slaughter of Russian partisans and villagers. Such a letter would be futile; worse than futile-unprofessional. It would be nagging the President about things he suspected or knew. He, Victor Henry, was a naval officer, on temporary detached duty in the Soviet union for Lend-Lease matters. Such a letter would be the sort of impertinence Byron had offered at the President's table; but Byron at least had been a youngster concerned about his own wife. Victor Henry answered Jastrow by turning his hands upward. With a melancholy nod, Jastrow said, "Naturally, it is outside your province. Have you had news of Natalie? Have she and Aaron gone home yet?" Pug pulled the snapshot from his breast pocket. "This picture was taken several weeks ago. Maybe by now they're out. I expect so." Holding the picture to the light, Jastrow's face broke into an incongruously warm and gentle beam. "Why, it is a small Byron. God bless him and keep him safe from harm." Peering at Victor Henry, whose eyes misted at these few sentimental words in German, he handed back the photograph. "Well, you gentlemen have been gracious to me. I have done the best I could to tell you what happened in Minsk. Maybe my documents will reach the right person one day. They are true, and I pray to God somebody soon finds a way to tell President Roosevelt what is happening. He must rescue the Jews out of the Germans' claws. Only he can do it." With this jochanan Jastrow gave them his mirthless crooked smile and faded into the darkness outside the small glow of the kerosene lamp. When his alarm clock woke him after an hour or two of exhausted slumber, Pug scarcely remembered writing the letter which lay on the desk beside the clock, scrawled on two sheetsof Hotel National paper. The tiny barren room was freezing cold, though the windows were sealed shut. He threw on a heavy wooren bathrobe he had bought in London, and an extra pair of warm socks, and sat at the desk to reread the letter. My dear Mr. President: Command of the California fulfills my life's ambitions. I can only try to serve in a way that will justify this trust. Mr. Hopkins is receiving a report on a visit I made at his request to the front outside Moscow. I put in all the trivial details which might not be worthy of your attention. My basic impression was confirmed that the Russians will probably hold the Germans and in time drive them out. But the cost will be terrible. Meantime they need and deserve all the aid we can send them, as quickly as possible. For our own selfish purposes, we can't make better use of arms, because they are killing large numbers of Germans. I saw many of the dead ones. I also take the liberty to mention that the embassy here has recently received documentary evidence of an almost incredible mass slaying of Jews outside the city of Minsk by some German paramilitary units. I remember your saying on the Augusta that scolding Hitler any further would be humiliating and futile. But in Europe, America is regarded as the last bastion of humanity; and you, Mr. President, are to these people the voice of the righteous God on earth. It's a heavy burden, but nevertheless that is the fact. I'venture to suggest that you ask to see this material about Minsk yourself. The Germans will think twice about proceeding with such outrages if you denounce them to the world and back up your condemnation with documentary evidence. Also, world opinion might be turned once and for all against the Hitler government. Respectfully yours, Victor Henry, Captain, U.S.N. In this fresh look after a sleep, the letter struck him most forcibly as an ill-considered communication, for which the right place was the wastebasket. The first two paragraphs were innocuous; but the President's sharp eye would at once detect that they were padding. The rest, the meat of the letter, was superfluous and even offensive. He was advising the President to go over the heads of everybody in the State Department, including his own ambassador in the Soviet union, to demand a look at some documents. The odds against Roosevelt's actually doing this were prohibitive; and his opinion of Victor Henry would certainly drop. He would at once recall that Henry had a Jewish daughter-in-law, about whom there had been trouble. And Pug did not even know that the documents were authentic. Jastrow might have been sent by the NKVD, as Tudsbury thought, to plant the material for American consumption. The man seemed genuine, but that proved nothing. In his career Henry had drafted dozens of wrongly conceived letters to get a problem out of his system, and then had discarded the letters. He had a hard editorial eye, and an unerring sense of professional selfpreservation. He threw the letter face down on the desk as a heavy rapping came at the door. There stood Alistair Tudsbury, leaning on his cane in the doorway,enormous and red-faced in an astrakhan hat and a long brown fur coat. "Thank God you're here, old friend." The correspondent limped to an armchair and sat in a dusty shaft of sunlight, stretching out his bad leg. "Sorry to crash in on you like this, but-I say, you're all right, aren't you?" -Oh yes. I'm just great." Pug was rubbing his face hard with both hands. "I was up all night writing a report. What's doing?" The correspondent's bulging eyes probed at him. "This is going to be difficult, but here it is straight. Are you and Pamela lovers?" "What!" Pug was too startled, and too tired, to be either angry or amused. 'y, no! Of course not." "Well, funnily enough, I didn't think you were. That makes it all e the more awkward and baffling, Pamela has just told me flatly that she's not returning to London unless you're going there! If you're off to Kuibyshev, she means to tag along and work for the British embassy or something. Now this is wild nonsense!" Tudsbury burst out, banging the cane on the floor. "To begin with, I know the Nark won't have it. But she's turned to stone. There's no reasoning with her. And those R.A.F fellows are flying off at nbon, and they've got space for both of us." "Where is she now?" 'y, she's gone out for a stroll in Red Square, of all things! Can you imagine? Won't even pack, you see. Victor, I'm not coming the indignant father on you, you do realize that, don't you?" Talky Tudsbury appeared in a manic state of verbosity even for him. "That would be a most absurd stance for me to take. Hell, I've done exactly as I pleased in these little matters myself all my life. She'd laugh in my face if I tried to talk morality to her. But what about common sense? You don't want her trailing after you, a happily married man, do you? it's so embarrassing! In any case, what about Ted Gallard? Why, she told me to tell him it was all off! When I said I'd do nothing of the sort, she sat down and scribbled a letter for him and threw it in my bag. I tell you I'm having the devil of a time with Pam." Putting a hand to his brow, Victor Henry said in weary tones, yet with a glad surge at heart, "Well, take my word for it, I'm utterly amazed." "I was sure you would be. I've told her till I'm blue in the face that it's no go, that you're a straitlaced old-fashioned man, the soul of honor, devoted to your wife, and all that sort of thing. Well, the minx simply agrees and says that's why -,he likes you. Quite unreachable!