"Something must have happened inside," Chang said calmly to Rodzhensky. "Perhaps we should tell our own superiors. Wouldn't that be wise?" She looked up at the Russian with her narrow almond eyes, her face a mask of persuasion and equanimity. Wu felt tremendous admiration for her. He had never seen her react to this sort of crisis.

Corporal Rodzhensky thought that over, shook his head firmly, then slumped his tension-hunched shoulders and seemed to reconsider. "What do we do if it doesn't open?" he asked.

"It doesn't open now."

"Our leaders are inside—all of them," he said.

Chang maintained her intent gaze.

"Yes—all right," Rodzhensky finally said. "Please go and bring your own superiors."

"Thank you," Chang said. She took Wu by the arm and walked with him back across the plaza.

"Very strange," she exclaimed, shaking her head in wonder. "Most strange."

"You were wonderful," Wu said, awestruck.

"Thank you." She smiled appreciatively.

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Six

He had buried his parachute and now lay down in the long, sweet-smelling dry yellow grass near the road. Hands over his eyes, he waited for a truck or car to come along, so he might hitch a ride back to Podlipki—or was it that base in Mongolia with only a number, 83?

Not that it mattered. The sun was warm, and except for a slight headache, Major Mirsky felt grand. He had fallen so far off course that he might take hours to reach the base, missing dinner, but also missing the political instruction. He would gladly trade kasha for a few hours alone to think.

At length a dusty, long black Volga came down the road and stopped beside him. The rear window rolled down and a bulky, beefy-faced man in a gray fedora stuck his head out, frowning at Mirsky.

"What are you doing here?" the man asked. He resembled Major General Sosnitsky, but he also looked a bit like poor Zhadov, who had died in the bore-hole massacre, wherever that was, and whenever. "What's your mother's name?"

"Nadia," he said. "I need a ride—"

"And what did you have for a cake on your eleventh birthday?"

"Comrade, I don't see—"

"It's very important. What did you have?"

"Something with chocolate, I think."

The man in the fedora nodded and opened the door. "Get in," he said. Mirsky squeezed in beside him. The seat was wet with blood; the man's three companions were corpses, all alike, all with their heads bloody and brains leaking. "Do you know these people?"

"No, I don't," Mirsky said, laughing. "We haven't been introduced."

"They are you, Comrade," the man said, and the dream faded to grayness. Once again, he buried the parachute. . . .

He began to get suspicious. Finally, after he had been picked up for the seventh or eighth time—the car minus its corpses—and the man in the fedora asked him about his Komsomol days, Mirsky decided to ask some questions of his own.