“Yes, we should,” Hugo said, thinking of ten-cent dead doughnuts, boiled horse stew, rotten eggs, his worthless rubles.

“I don’t want to get in trouble,” Wodziczko said. “They aren’t ours.”

“Certainly they are.”

Which stopped the conversation. For Hugo had not said it.

The light overhead threw down its harsh glow, circular, hazy, and making Hugo and Wodziczko targets to enemies outside its radiance. The only place for cover was straight ahead: the forest. The voice was coming from there.

“Put up your hands and approach slowly,” Hugo ordered. His rifle was parallel to the horizon, and his index finger, poking through a hole in his mitten, wrapped around the trigger. Silence. Not a creak of a tree, or a snapping twig. Then, from perhaps ten yards away, the voice continued.

“Soldiers of Detroit, you’re in Russia. Why is that?”

“You tell us,” Hugo said defiantly.

When the voice started again, it had moved five yards left. “Could it be that the pockets of the industrialists need to be lined with yet more gold?”

“No,” said Wodziczko.

“We don’t know and we don’t care,” said Hugo, realizing that he should move away from the light.

“Maybe the man next to you doesn’t care. You’ve read Molière, though, soldier. You tend to think.”

Hugo hadn’t quoted any Molière this evening. He had done so several nights ago.

“You wonder if the chocolate is actually yours. We both know the answer. It would be a reward.”

“Our reward is to kill,” Wodziczko yelled.

Hugo swallowed. On the one hand, the enemy was speaking to him, and thus needed to be eradicated. On the other, he liked this disembodied voice more than anyone in his company.

“We mean no harm,” the voice said. “Unlike your officers.”

Hugo’s eyes were adjusting. “How do you know so much English?”

“Tell me you respect your British commanders.”

Hugo was silent.

“We hate them,” Wodziczko cried out, and Hugo shushed him, which confused the tiny private.

The spectral voice continued, “General Poole is gone, and they tell you there is someone named Ironside coming who will make it all better. There is no Ironside coming. The patriarch doesn’t fix your messes anymore.”

Wodziczko looked with anticipation at Hugo. “Why aren’t you shooting him?” he whispered.

Hugo put his finger to his lips, still squinting down his rifle barrel. He needed the Bolo to speak a little more, and to stay in place. Also: he was curious how this argument ended.

“Your officers with their every order demoralize you. The party, however, it salutes you. Just as workers are the means of production, and management attempts to control it, so do officers attempt to control those who actually do the work on the ground. But now is the time to grab the broom of history and sweep away—”