CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Moscow, November 1940

The dead drop location made Metcalfe uneasy. It was too exposed, too much out in the open; there was only one way to get to it and probably no alternative egress. He would not have chosen this location, but he had no choice; Amos Hilliard was the control in this instance, and he had selected it.

There was one advantage to the drop site, though, and that was that it was easy to stake out. Metcalfe was able to observe pedestrian traffic patterns, watch those who entered and left the women’s shoe store and the meat shop on Pushkin Street as well as the building in between, see anyone who seemed to loiter for too long in the area. Dressed in his peasant outfit, his telogreika and a large backpack filled with various tools, he passed easily for a laborer; he attracted no attention.

For a long while he watched intently, allowing his mind to stray to thoughts of Lana. So far things had gone according to plan, and her initial fear seemed to have dissipated. She had given von Schussler the first load of documents, telling him that she had selected them at random from her father’s briefcase and his study at home. They meant nothing to her, she’d said; they were all numbers, incomprehensible, and terribly dull. But he had not found them dull at all, Lana said. He had been most excited, more excited than she’d ever seen him before.

Von Schussler had explained to her the procedure, for after all, he believed that he was running this operation. He would take the papers to the German embassy, where a Photostat would be made of each sheet, and then he would immediately return the originals to her. It was important, he insisted, that her father never notice any of the papers missing, so she would have to follow a very strict procedure. She would take the papers only at night, when her father had retired, and call von Schiissler to let him know she had them. Then she would meet him at the apartment, give him the documents, and he would immediately bring them to the embassy to have them photocopied. He would return to the apartment right away and give her the originals back, and she would return to her father’s apartment and replace them before he awoke in the morning. Obviously there were many factors that might alter the plan. Most nights Svetlana had to perform at the Bolshoi and thus couldn’t steal any documents. But on her off nights, it was most important that she stay at her father’s apartment to see whether he had brought any new documents home.

Von Schiissler also sought to reassure Lana that what she was doing was a good thing. Lana had recalled his reassurances with a grim humor. “The more our two countries know about one another,” he’d said, “the longer this peace between us will last. You are doing a wonderful thing, not only for my country but for yours as well.”

After an hour of watching and contemplating, Metcalfe was as certain as he could be that there was no surveillance. He strode quickly up to the unguarded entrance of the modest apartment building between the two shops. The small lobby was dark and empty, the green-painted radiator fastened to the wall on the right just as Hilliard had described. He reached behind it it was cold, as Hilliard had promised and his fingers touched something. He pulled it out: it was a thick green envelope, its color a perfect camouflage.

This contained, he knew, the second set of documents, prepared by Corcoran’s documents experts and dispatched via the diplomatic pouch. He stuffed it inside his peasant telogreika and walked out as quickly as he could without attracting suspicion. Just a few blocks away was the signal site, where he would indicate with a red pencil that he had successfully unloaded the drop.

But as he emerged from the building, an abrupt movement from across the street attracted his eyes. Metcalfe turned to look and saw a familiar face. He did a double take.

It was the pale-eyed, blond NKVD man, and he was coming at him at a quick stride, not even bothering to keep his normal discreet distance. It was as if the agent knew Metcalfe had just serviced a dead drop, knew he had incriminating documents on his person!

He could not be caught now. He could not be apprehended, not with the documents on him. They would be cause for immediate imprisonment followed by execution, without even the pretext of a trial. The operation would be unmasked, and the subsequent investigation would lead to Svetlana; she, too, would be executed.

Metcalfe’s heart raced, and he broke into a sweat. The consequences would be inconceivable! He spun to his left, raced down Pushkin Street, and saw in the reflection of a store window that the blond man was running after him. Metcalfe stopped abruptly, reversed direction, lurched off to his left again, zigzagging crazily through the square. The blond man followed, mirroring Metcalfe’s jerky movements, equally heedless of the pedestrians in his way.

The NKVD man was coming after him. This was no longer a matter of surveillance; he had shifted to a brazen attempt to grab Metcalfe.

Good Christ, no! This couldn’t be allowed to happen.

Spinning once again, Metcalfe vaulted into a narrow alley between two ancient-looking ramshackle brick buildings, and he ran at top speed.

The blond man had not been tricked; he followed Metcalfe into the alley, but his pace, oddly, had slowed. Was the NKVD man tired already? How could it be? Metcalfe glanced back over his shoulder, saw a broad gray-toothed smile on the blond man’s face. Why?

Immediately up ahead, the alley took a jog to the right; Metcalfe sped up, practically jumping around the corner, and then he understood the reason for his pursuer’s smile.

It was a dead end.

The J-shaped alley did not go through to the next block. It ended right here.

He was trapped.

He froze, turned back, saw the blond man advancing on him slowly, his pistol drawn.

“Stoi!” the man shouted, his deep voice, echoing: Stop!

“Hands up, please.” The blond man had switched to English.

He was several hundred feet away, too far to fire accurately and would he fire? It seemed unlikely. You did not stalk your prey for so long in order to kill it. He wanted to ask questions, wanted a full interrogation, Metcalfe was sure.

In one sweeping motion Metcalfe pulled out the weapon Hil-Hard had given him and pointed it at the NKVD man, who smiled. “Not a good idea, Comrade Metcalfe. There is no sense to run.”

“Oh, is that right?”

“This is not your city. I know these streets much better than you. It is important always to know what you do not know.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“This will be much easier if you cooperate. We will talk.”

“What are you going to arrest me for?” Metcalfe said. “The crime of being a foreigner in Moscow?”

“We know much more about you than you think,” the man replied.

Metcalfe looked desperately around at the crumbling brick walls of the building that bounded the courtyard into which the alley had dead-ended. There was no fire escape. Neither were there any footholds on the building’s facade, any ledges to grab hold of, as he might have done in Paris.

Yet to be trapped with the forged documents was unfathomable.

He would have to toss them, but where? There was no place, damn it, no place where the blond man couldn’t retrieve them.

There was an old copper drainpipe that ran down the length of the ancient stone building. It did not look sturdy, but it was all there was.

“All right,” Metcalfe said, still pointing his weapon. “You stop right there, and maybe we can make an arrangement.”

The man stopped advancing, but he kept his gun extended in a two-handed firing grip. He nodded.

Suddenly Metcalfe fired, just over the Russian’s shoulder. The agent ducked out of the way, firing back instinctually, but missing Metcalfe by a dozen feet. Deliberately missing him.

A split second later, taking advantage of the momentary chaos, Metcalfe shoved the weapon into the waistband of his trousers and then leaped toward the drainpipe, grabbing hold with both hands, scaling it quickly. “If you know anything about me,” he shouted, “you know I’m not going to get caught!” The copper pipe was indeed rickety, and as he pulled at it, it came away from the brick wall. But still it remained attached at the top and in several places along the brick face of the building. Shoving with his feet against the brick, he pulled himself up the length of the pipe until he was three-quarters of the way up the tall two-story building.

Bullets pitted the brick on either side of him as the NKVD man fired warning shots. “There’s no place to go!” the Russian shouted. “The next shot will be a disabling shot. It will strike you, if you don’t stop and climb down!”

Metcalfe continued climbing, but there came a pause in the firing; he heard the Russian eject an empty cartridge, the metal clattering to the ground, and then reload. Metcalfe reached the top of the building, grabbed at the cornice, but it came away in his hands, the old plaster crumbling like pie crust He reached for the copper gutter, which seemed more secure, and used it to pull himself up onto the flat roof, just as another round of gunfire exploded against the parapet. The Russian was now firing at him! These were not warning shots any longer.

The building was perhaps twenty feet wide, a mess of tar and rubble, vent pipes sticking up irregularly here and there. He ran to the opposite edge, losing his footing on the icy surface, slipping just feet from the drop-off. Below was a narrow street crisscrossed with tram tracks; a fire escape on this side was a welcome sight. From behind he could hear the NKVD man’s retreating, echoing footsteps. The Russian had obviously deduced Metcalfe’s only escape route and was running down the alley, out onto Pushkin Street, and then around the building to the avenue that intersected it. But why was the agent operating alone? These men inevitably operated in teams, and certainly a team would have made all the difference right now; with a team in place, they could easily have trapped Metcalfe! He was grateful but puzzled all the same that this particular NKVD man, by far the most skilled of all those assigned to him, was a lone wolf. No, he realized: the NKVD man was no lone operator. He was simply ahead of his team. Others would join him.

Metcalfe leaped to the top of the rusted iron fire escape and descended it by rappelling along its grating; in a few seconds, he reached the street and raced along the tram tracks. In a few hundred feet, the narrow street joined a broader avenue. He looked wildly from side to side for the best route just as he heard running footsteps from behind.

Just up ahead was the entrance to an underground passageway. He ran toward it. It was a pedestrian pathway beneath the street, a recent appearance in Moscow with the advent of the automobile. He took the steps two at a time, propelling himself through the crowd, then spotted the entrance to the Metro.

He had never taken the Metro it was another thing that hadn’t been here on his last visit but he knew that if it at all resembled the one in Paris, the Metro would provide a profusion of branching tunnels that would enable him to lose his pursuer. It was a risk, but everything was a risk now, and nothing compared to the danger of being apprehended with the forged documents on him. As he raced through the ornate marble-walled entrance toward the turnstiles, he searched for trash cans where he could toss the packet of documents; none was in sight.

There was a long line waiting at a booth by the row of turnstiles; another line, moving more rapidly, of people waiting to pass through the turnstiles. Were they buying tokens? He had no idea whether entrance required tokens or coins or what, and he had no time to find out. Looking from side to side, he saw two uniformed officers, both of them women, and he decided to chance it. Racing past the lines, he leaped over the turnstile; behind him came shouts, the shrill blowing of a whistle. He had no doubt that the NKVD man was close behind as well, but he couldn’t take the time to look back.

He raced past marble columns, mosaic walls, crystal chandeliers: the beauty staggering, wholly unexpected. The People’s Palaces, Stalin had called the Metro, and Metcalfe could see why. He entered an archway from which a crowd was surging. It was an escalator that was moving up; he forced his way onto it, going the wrong way, ignoring their angry protests, muscling his way down the astonishingly steep, fast-moving steel steps. It was choked with people, hard to maneuver, but he could hardly turn around and head back the way he came not with the NKVD agent so close behind. He vaulted ahead, colliding with the on-rushing masses, trying to force his way down the escalator. It was slow, too slow!

The sounds of running and whistle blowing told him that his pursuers were close behind. There was more than one now; the blond NKVD man had been joined by others. Desperate to advance through the impossibly thick oncoming crowd, he noticed the handrails on either side, roughly two feet wide. Could he jump up onto the railing and run down? But the path was obstructed by a cylindrical light every few feet, an ornate sconce that provided illumination to the dim tunnel.

There was no choice. He leaped up, jumped onto the steel railing, crashing into a glass tube, shattering it. Screams were everywhere. The railing was steep; it was impossible to get a foothold. He slid down, smashing lamp after lamp, until he was finally able to grab the low, vaulted ceiling to steady himself, allowing him to crab-walk down to the bottom of the escalator, though he could not avoid crashing against the glass sconces.

Finally he leaped to the floor, just missing a seated blue-uniformed security guard, a harridan who jumped aside and began screaming at him to stop. Metcalfe kept going, now almost oblivious to the madness he had incited.

The train from which the crowd had poured was still there. A sequence of four tones sounded over a loudspeaker, indicating that the train was about to leave. He raced toward it, propelling himself into the nearest wagon just as the doors shut.

He collapsed onto the floor, ignoring the shocked expressions of the passengers. An old man and a young child, presumably his grandchild, backed away, the man throwing his arms around the boy.

But he had made it. The train began moving rapidly. The NKVD man, he assumed, had been left behind at the station. Still, he would have to assume that there were emergency procedures in place. There would be telephone hookups between stations or perhaps radio transmissions; the NKVD agent, who was nothing if not resourceful, would have phoned ahead to arrange for others to be in place at the next stop.

When he got up, however, he saw that he had not lost the blond man at all.

He was there, in the next compartment, and he was trying to force the door between the two wagons, which was meant to open only in an emergency. Christ! It was as if the damned agent were tethered to him! Metcalfe could see the man turn around, run toward the far end of his compartment, calling for an official a conductor, perhaps, or a militsiyoner. Was there one in that compartment? Or in the next one down?

Suddenly, with a squeal of brakes and a rush of air, the train came to a stop mid tunnel The walls on either side were black.

Somehow, the NKVD man had gotten the officials to halt the train, obviously to trap Metcalfe. Or had he simply pulled the emergency brake cord?

But Metcalfe did not intend to make it easy for them. He ran to the doors, inserted his fingers between the rubber gaskets, and tried to pull them apart. But they were stuck. The door-opening mechanism was intended to keep the doors closed between stations; there seemed to be no way to pry them open, no matter how hard he tried. The young boy, watching him from his grandfather’s lap, started crying. A man began shouting at him, waving his hands crazily.

He tried the windows and had more luck there. They opened; he was able to slide one all the way down. Climbing up on the leather seat, he reached out into the blackness. There was a space of several feet. He grabbed hold of the ceiling-mounted straps and used them to pull himself up, then thrust his legs through the open window. He dropped to the ground painfully, a longer fall than he expected, landing on ballast.

But he was out of the train. And now … now what?

The shouting continued, crescendoing, as he sidled along the tunnel wall. The only illumination came from the dome lights inside the train, but it was enough to highlight the regular niches set several feet deep into the walls, presumably used by Metro workers to protect them from the passing trains.

He remembered the flashlight in his backpack, reached behind him, and pulled it out. He switched it on, and suddenly there came an explosion. Metcalfe dived forward in the darkness as a fusillade of bullets pitted the tunnel walls inches away, the sound reverberating in the tunnel. He turned, saw the blond man firing from the next car down, his Tokarev angled out the window. The NKVD man had obviously gone beyond wanting to bring him in; now he wanted Metcalfe dead. He was not going to allow Metcalfe to escape.

There was not enough room to duck to either side. Between the stopped train and the brick wall was two feet or so. Metcalfe could only flatten himself against the ballast. But the gunfire continued, steadily, rhythmically. Metcalfe grabbed his pistol from his waistband and, his left hand steadying his right, began firing back. He squeezed off two shots, but the blond man had pulled back into the compartment.

Another noise began: the sound of the train’s engines powering up. The train had begun to move again. Metcalfe leaped to his feet and out of the way of the train’s wheels, his back flat against the tunnel wall. He could feel the rush of air; he flinched as the accelerating steel passed inches from his face. For the time being he could not move. Flat against the tunnel wall, he was vulnerable, a stationary target. He raised the gun, gripped in his right hand, and with barely a few inches of space attempted to aim it at the passing car. But he was unable to position the gun in time. He saw the pale gray eyes of his pursuer, saw the pistol aimed dead at his face through the glass of a window a few feet away, flickering in the kaleidoscopic light of the tunnel. This was the end, he thought to himself in that split second: I can’t move, can’t defend myself. But I can’t let this happen! And abruptly he slid down against the brick wall, his shoulders bracing his body, keeping himself from pitching forward into the train. It all happened in the space of a second or so: he saw the blond man smile, squinting one eye, firing; he saw the white-orange muzzle flash, and as he slid, he felt the bullet slice across his shoulder, the pain agonizing.

In a moment, it was all over. The train had passed, and he had crumpled to the ground, on the tracks. He reached for the wound, felt the stickiness of blood under his thick peasant jacket. It felt as if the bullet had creased his shoulder: the wound was painful, the blood flow heavy, but it was not grave. The important thing was that he was still alive. He felt for the package of documents inside the jacket; the stiff crinkle of the cellophane told him they were still in place.

He would have to escape some way, but how? The distance between Moscow’s Metro stops could be as much as two thousand meters; despite the pain, he could walk through the tunnel to the next station if he had to, but he knew that would be a mistake. His pursuer had seen Metcalfe shot, but he would not likely assume that Metcalfe had been killed. That would be a careless assumption, not characteristic of an agent who seemed to be as canny and thorough as he did. The man might well have gotten off at the next stop to wait for Metcalfe to emerge, or else to lead a search party through the tunnels. This would require shutting down the trains temporarily, but the NKVD certainly had that authority. No, it would be dangerous for Metcalfe to return to the last station or go to the next one, where he would have to assume that searchers would be posted.

He was trapped.

Yet he could not stay here, either. There had to be another way out. He continued along the narrow ledge, alert for the distant sound of an oncoming train, shining his flashlight along the tunnel walls and ceiling, looking for an air shaft, something, anything at all. The tunnel curved to the right, and then he saw that the tracks branched off. No, that wasn’t quite right, he saw as he approached; there was a newly laid section of track that came off the main run, a switch that wasn’t yet operational. As he rounded the bend, he saw that the secondary set of tracks led to another tunnel, but this one was still under construction. Its walls were only partially bricked in, earth still visible in certain areas, reinforced by steel girders.

This was indeed promising. A tunnel under construction was likely to lead to an entrance used by its workers, probably a shaft down which workers were lowered. He turned into the unfinished tunnel and was immediately assaulted by a sulfurous stench. A sewer conduit was probably nearby. He saw a few discarded vodka bottles on the ground. These could not have been left by workers; was it evidence of vagrants living in the tunnels,

seeking temporary refuge? If so, that might indicate that there was indeed another way out.

He must have walked for half an hour, his pace slowed by the throbbing pain in his shoulder. He was weakened by the loss of blood. He would have to get medical treatment, but where? Obviously, going to a Soviet hospital was an impossibility, with all the questions that would be asked, all the reports filed. Roger had been trained as a paramedic but Roger, he remembered with a pang of grief, was dead. That left only Lana. Perhaps when he got the documents to her she could arrange for the assistance of a doctor.

The farther he went along the tunnel, the more finished it appeared to be. Obviously it was being built from the outside in. By now the walls were fully bricked in, the tracks laid. The sequence of work puzzled him, but then, so did most things Soviet.

But then the tunnel came to an abrupt end at a tall set of heavy steel doors. The surface was flat, smooth, with no knob or handle, no way to force the doors open. Clearly this was a security measure, designed to keep out trespassers, accessible only with the right keys. He examined the doors for a good five minutes, but it was hopeless. There was no way out of here.

Frustrated, weary, and in pain, he turned around and headed back the way he came. Now he was trapped more than ever, the only way out the main tunnel, which meant heading toward one or the other of the stations where men waited. Had he not been wounded, he could probably have attempted to wait them out, to hide in the crevices of the tunnel for hours, even days. But he was continuing to lose blood, and he would not be able to endure this cold for much longer.

He needed a plan, damn it, but what?

For a moment he thought he heard voices, and he stopped to listen. Yes, there were voices. From where?

He was still hundreds of meters from the main tunnel. Did that mean that a search party was headed his way, trapping him in this blind alley?

But no! The voices were not coming from up ahead; they were coming from somewhere to his right. How could that be? To his right was nothing but brick wall and … And another set of steel doors, he noticed: an access hatch, actually, built into the brick wall. It was something he had not noticed when he had first walked by, because the hatch was low to the ground, camouflaged, it appeared, by dark paint the color of the surrounding bricks, obscured by girders. Metcalfe stopped in front of the steel plate, knelt down, placed his ear against it.

Definitely voices.

But not shouts, not barked orders: not the cadences of a search party. It was the low murmur of conversation. What was on the other side of this hatch? Perhaps it was a way out, Metcalfe thought; in any case, it was his only possibility.

The hatch was not painted, he realized; it was covered in rust. It was made of iron, with a handle and latch on one side; it appeared to be ancient, far older than the surrounding brick. He carefully turned the latch, then slowly pulled it open. It gave a rusty squeak, and he stopped. Then he resumed opening it, even more slowly, this time silently, until it was open just enough for him to be able to see inside. He felt warm air.

What he saw astonished him.

In the flickering light from a fire he saw what appeared to be an immense, elaborate hall with walls and floors of green marble. The opening through which he peered was some ten feet off the floor; an iron ladder led all the way down. The chamber was several hundred feet square, its ceiling almost twenty feet high. At the far end was a raised dais. Behind it, built into the wall, was a tall creche displaying a large white marble bust of Joseph Stalin. A small bonfire was burning in the middle of the room. Around it huddled three seedy-looking, shabbily dressed men. On the floor nearby, blankets had been placed.

Were they vagrants? What were they doing here? And more important: What was this imposing, grand hall?

One of them looked up, pointed at him, and shouted, “Seryozha!”

Suddenly something slammed into Metcalfe from behind, crashing into his neck. Metcalfe spun, saw his attacker, a wild-eyed bearded man wielding a crowbar. He lunged, slamming all his weight against the attacker, knocking him to the ground as he wrested the crowbar out of the bearded man’s hands and then cracked the man’s forehead against the floor. His attacker let out a bloodcurdling scream. Metcalfe jammed his knee into the man’s abdomen, forcing the breath out of him.

“Who are you?” Metcalfe demanded. “You sure as hell don’t look like

NKVD.”

The bearded man moaned. “NKVD? I’m no goddamned Chek-ist, like you! Or are you a goddamned cop?”

He heard the clatter of footsteps on the iron rungs of the ladder; he whirled around to see one of the seedy-looking vagrants from the marble hall pointing a small antique revolver at him, a nineteenth-century Galand. “Get off of him, Chekist, or I’ll blow your head off!” the vagrant roared.

Metcalfe pulled out his Smith & Wesson and aimed it nonchalantly while maintaining his grip on the bearded man. “Put that old musket down,” Metcalfe said, “or you’re liable to put your own eye out.”

The vagrant standing on the iron ladder kept pointing his gun, but it shook in his hand. “Let Seryozha go!” he cried.

“I’ll let Seryozha go, you put down that damned toy, and we’ll talk. Now, I need your help. I’m not a Chekist, or I’d have a Tokarev, not a Smith & Wesson. You can see the damned blood on my shoulder.”

Metcalfe could see the vagrant’s resolve waver. He went on, “I’m trying to hide from the damned militsiyoneri, and it looks to me like you’ve got room in there for one more.”

“But who are you?”

A few minutes later Metcalfe was seated around the fire with the four Russians. The one named Seryozha had a nasty bruise on his forehead.

Metcalfe had removed his quilted jacket and was compressing his bullet wound with a scrap of dirty bedsheet provided by the man who had aimed the antique revolver at him, who seemed to be the leader of this motley group. Metcalfe told them he was visiting from the Ukraine; he told them a tale of an attempted robbery gone bad, an escape from the Moscow police that led him into the Metro, into the tunnels.

“And you?” he asked. “How long have you men been living down here? And what is this place anyway?”

“This is a bomb shelter,” said the first man, who gave his name as Arkady.

Metcalfe looked at him skeptically. “With all this marble?”

“Why should the leaders suffer?” Arkady lit a cigarette. He offered one to Metcalfe, who demurred. “It is part of the Metro-2 complex,” he said. “The spetztunnel.”

“The special train just for the emergency use of the Party elite,” Metcalfe said, nodding. He had heard rumors, seen vague intelligence reports out of Moscow, of a secret metro system built to take Kremlin leaders to an underground town fifty miles away.

“In the classless society, some are more equal than others.” Arkady’s smile was mordant.

“Is there more than one bomb shelter down here?”

Arkady and the other men laughed. “It is a wonder all these tall buildings they are building don’t fall into the earth,” said a gray-bearded professorial-looking man in a long shabby black overcoat, “with all the digging that goes on down here. There are maybe twelve levels below ground, far below the Metro tunnels, hundreds of meters deep in some places. A huge network of bunkers and secret tunnels for Stalin and his gang. And all of this built by slave labor!”

“I thought it was all done by Komsomol volunteers,” said another in a dry tone of voice.

More laughter. “The Komsomol volunteers were just for the newspaper photographs,” said the professor. “The tunnels were actually dug in the frozen ground by prisoners with shovels and pickaxes.”

“Come, the czars have been digging under the city for centuries,” Arkady said. “Ivan the Terrible had a torture chamber built deep underground beneath the Kremlin, and then he had the diggers killed to conceal its existence. His grandfather even had his priceless library, his collection of medieval Hebrew and Byzantine scrolls, buried somewhere down here in an Egyptian-style sarcophagus to keep it safe, and it’s never been found.”

“The famous Lost Library of Ivan the Terrible, they call it,” said the professor. “Because Ivan the Terrible discovered it, then had it concealed again. And our own Ivan the Terrible, Stalin they say there are mass burial sites far beneath Moscow as well. The millions of Russians he has executed had to be put somewhere, after all.”

“But the bomb shelters that Stalin had built,” Metcalfe said. “How long ago did he have them constructed?”

“He started in 1929,” Arkady replied. “And he continues to have them built.”

“Stalin expects Moscow to be attacked.”

“Of course.”

“But this treaty with Nazi Germany ?”

“Stalin is always expecting a war! He’s always expecting to be attacked. He talks about capitalist encirclement, about the enemies that would strangle the Bolshevik infant in its cradle.”

“So if the Germans attack “

“He will be prepared,” Arkady replied. “Know this about Stalin. He is always prepared for war. He never trusts his allies. He trusts only himself. But why do you ask these questions? What kind of a thief are you, who’s so interested in wars and attacks?”

Metcalfe deflected the question with a question of his own. “And who are you? Forgive me for saying it, but you’re not you’re all far too well spoken to be …”

“Bums? Vagrants?” said Arkady. “But we are bums, you see. In this society, we cannot hold jobs; we cannot live in apartments. We are fugitives.”

“From what?”

“From the NKVD. All four of us and there are surely dozens more like us hiding in underground shelters like this are hiding from the persecutors. The secret police.”

“You’ve escaped them?”

“We’ve escaped before they could get to us. We were called in to the Lubyanka, or we were warned that they were coming to arrest us.”

“For what?”

“For what?” scoffed Seryozha, the wounded one. This was the first he had spoken since he had attacked Metcalfe. “They arrest people at random now. They arrest for no reason, or for the slightest reason whatsoever. You say you are from the Ukraine? Are you saying it’s different there?”

“No, no,” Metcalfe said hastily. “It’s the same. But I need your help. I need help getting out of here without being caught. There must be a way! I, too, am evading the NKVD.”

“You are a political refugee as well?” the professor asked. “A fugitive?”

“In some ways,” Metcalfe answered vaguely. Then he paused, reconsidered. “Yes. I’m a fugitive as well.”