Within the hour, he’d taken the car for an angry little spin down to the Smolny sawmills, and back to the yards. The ride was jumpy, the car smelled as if someone had coughed into a sardine bucket, and every surface was slick and tacky with fish oil. He could not imagine a more disgusting place. When asked whom he wanted to assist him, he whispered, “Wodziczko.”

Then he took his first passenger run. Wodziczko stood at the front to take tickets. But at the very first stop, when three heavily bundled workers stepped into the car to be taken to the herring cannery, Wodziczko didn’t know how to make change. This led to exchanges of coins and paper money between the soldier and the woolen-capped-and-coated passengers that looked like khaki starfish arguing over a catch of sand dollars.

Hugo didn’t know the names or locations of any of the stops. No matter where he jerked the trolley to a halt, someone would yell at him and gesture either backward or forward with rude, red hands. Hugo began to imagine they were saying, “Don’t you understand? I have to walk on these hands back to the stop you missed.” Which started to amuse him. Especially when he discovered that if he hit the clutch and played the handbrake just right, he could cause boarding passengers to spin down the aisle like children’s tops.

The squawking from the pinched little passengers bounced off him like flecks of birdseed. It occurred to him that it made no difference what he said or did. “Next stop, Michigan Avenue,” he called. “Changing lines here for the Gratiot Corridor and Port Huron.”

Which made Private Wodziczko laugh and cry out, “Jefferson Avenue. Grosse Pointe Park next stop.”

“Hello!” Hugo yelled, for his ideas were being stolen.

By the time the sun set, and Hugo was off duty, he had heard not a single word of gratitude aboard the trolley except, he thought, for one. Quite a few Russians, upon seeing him, nodded and quickly said, “Brekher,” which he supposed meant “thanks.” In fact, it meant “scab.”

So it went with attempts to maintain the electricity, the gas, the factories, the hospitals, the schools, the sawmills, the groceries, the cafés. Poole did not notice, for he was directing rehearsals of Pinafore. When he learned that the people of Archangel were beginning to grouse, he made a firm decision, put into action immediately.

The CIGS received a telegram from him: “Declared martial law today. All going smashingly.”

In successive telegrams, General Poole asked for more troops, reminded the CIGS about the drive toward Moscow, asked again for more troops, and more or less (in the exasperated eyes of his superiors) gloated over the contents of his handkerchief every time he blew his nose.