Chapter 3 Reindeer Herders

After an overnight train ride, Lee and Gerrymander had returned to Archangel, the city where Lee's friend was now a prisoner. The day was short, owing to the long journey from Moscow, but Ivan spent it trying to find out information. He didn't have a Duma man in Archangel and had to do most of the legwork himself, without revealing his cover. Lee fumed inside a hotel. He did not dare go out into the street for his Russian was so 'rusty.' Rusty? Something that had never been could not rust. He ate a couple of tasteless sandwiches for supper, waiting for Gerrymander, or Ivan, or whatever he called himself, to return from his 'hunt,' as Ivan put it. Hunting the admiral. The idea turned Lee's stomach, though the herring sandwiches didn't help his digestion any.

Ivan returned late in the afternoon. He had news. "He's here, but he'll be sent north soon. By plane. Only the top brass know where he's going."

"North?"

"Maybe to the submarine bases on the Kola Peninsula. Probably first to Murmansk, to land the plane. I understand it'll be a small jet. Only a few passengers. Mostly KGB men. And the admiral, of course."

"You learned a lot in a short time," Lee conceded. "I want to thank you. The admiral means more to me than just a superior officer. He's a friend." Knowing the futility of his question, he asked, "Can we reach him before he goes?"

"Absolutely not. Police stations here are tighter than a drum. We'll have to just follow him."

Lee stiffened up his shoulders. "When do we leave for—where did you say—Murmansk?"

"We need to look around Archangel a bit more first. I have to find out where he's going. And the best way to go north."

"You're not thinking of leaving me here, are you?" Lee was doubly concerned. On his own, he'd starve, or give himself away. Also, by not going along, he couldn't keep watch on Ivan, as he 'hunted' the admiral.

"No, I couldn't do that—you'd starve to death in this hotel."

"Just what I was thinking," Lee quipped, joking a bit. "I do know a bit more Russian than you give me credit for, though."

Gerrymander—Ivan—looked dolefully at him. "I hope your admiral hasn't learned enough to reveal any U.S. secrets to his Soviet captors."

"For the last time, Ivan, he's not that kind of man. You don't have to worry."

"Oh, but I do. I worry about both of you."

And not in a paternal way, Lee might have added. He eyed Gerrymander's gloomy, unapproachable face with a feeling of dread growing in him.

"I want to have this out in the open." Lee Crane had suddenly found the courage to brave the lion—Gerrymander—in his own den.

"What out in the open, Capt. Crane?" They were talking freer in Archangel than they had in Moscow. Lee was not sure why. Nevertheless, he felt they were more 'alone' here.

"What are your plans for the admiral, should we find him?"

"I hope to rescue him and send him back with you to your flying sub."

"And if something goes wrong in rescuing him?"

"You mean, if we hit a roadblock we can't go around?"

Lee nodded, adding, "Yes," in a tight way.

"Then I'm afraid I'd have to kill the admiral. He can't be allowed to live, if we can't get him free."

"Do you know what you're saying? Admiral Nelson is a powerful man in the United States. In the world, even. You just don't kill him. And if you think I'd let you—you're dead wrong." Lee paused for emphasis. "Who do you work for in the U.S.?"

"Central Intelligence."

"You've spoken with them?"

"I keep in regular contact."

"No one in the U.S. would order the admiral killed," said Lee.

"No one has—exactly, but I've been cautioned in my … ah … field work to guard against any possible leaks of information, military or otherwise. I interpret my orders in my own way, perhaps—"

"Perhaps!" Lee said, exploding. "I warn you now—nothing's going to happen to the admiral!"

Ivan looked at him dolefully. "I'll do what I can to make sure nothing does—unless it's unavoidable."

Lee clenched his fist and looked hard at the melancholy man. His warning had moved off his lips and into his eyes now, eyes that had a dangerous, desperate meaning in them, if only the spy could read it.

Ivan had a placid look on his face, unmoved by Lee's feelings, as if knowing he'd only be doing his 'job' if he had to kill the admiral. Nothing more than a few qualms ever ruffled his feathers. What agonies he might feel over Nelson's death were like certain elements in the makeup of air, trace amounts compared to what Lee would have suffered.

Crash

Early the next morning, the admiral was resting in his cell, his good left arm behind his head. His right hand felt stiff and he knew it would for a while. He was practicing some hand exercises the doctor had given him to strengthen his arm. Yegorov always checked in about this time.

Today was different. The Soviet doctor didn't show up. Nelson got up and paced in front of the door, looking out of the glass panel, hoping to see him come down the corridor. It was the one familiar thing in his life, this hovering Dr. Yegorov, this KGB wannabee. He was a good Soviet party man, probably had been most of his life, about fifty-eight years. Nothing would change him now. Were the Soviet Union to fall tomorrow, Yegorov, the loyal, and slightly spineless, conservative, the Politburo man, the old Bolshevik, would still go on. He would attend rallies and political meetings, believe in the Marxist system, and keep a picture of Stalin—Stalin at the Yalta Conference—by the east-facing window of his bedroom. He was the kind of man who would always call the grand and stately St. Petersburg, Leningrad.

Instead of Yegorov, several men attached to the Russian secret police came to the admiral's cell and ordered him to put on his boots. Once outside, he entered a car parked in front of the police building. With each mile as they drove he knew not where, his worry increased. Finally, after about seven miles, the car pulled into a restricted parking area of the Talagi Airport. No one tried to make the car move out of the restricted area, the admiral noted, ruefully. If he had ever thought it before, he thought it now—the KGB were everywhere.

On the tarmac sat an Aeroflot Yakovlev Yak-40, a turboprop jet with a somewhat spotty safety record, as the admiral recollected. Over sixty feet long, it seated about thirty in more or less 'Russian' comfort—that is, tight gray seats three abreast in a no-frills Soviet fuselage.

Moving that way under guard, he hoped the nose of the plane didn't point north to the Kola Peninsula, where the sub pens were. Snow, cold, and in the summer such as now, rain, often made the huge finger of land, some parts of it lived in only by reindeer herders, berry pickers and mushroom hunters, nigh well inhospitable.

Entering the plane by the rear stairs, he took a seat on the aisle between two KGB men, one in a single seat on one side of the aisle, with his own window, and the other next to Nelson in the paired seats at the opposite window. Two other KGB men, speaking in muted voices in the back, had made the trip, too.

The Yak-40 taxied onto the runway, got clearance and withdrawing its wheel gear, lifted off into the cloud-dappled sky. Praying for a safe enough journey, Nelson sat back and watched as the plane crossed the White Sea. Once across, looking out of the starboard window, he could see the inhabited areas on the other side eventually give way to heavily forested regions. Turbulence bothered his arm, still in its sling. Rather blue-feeling, he laid his head back and tried to sleep. In this steel-gray cylinder, he felt cold.

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Excited talk woke him. He looked around and discovered something ominous. The plane was crashing, slowly, regally crashing. Its angle was nose-first. He could feel the G-forces now, overcoming cabin pressure. Ears popping, he lurched out of his seat, snatched the sling off his arm and threw it aside. Headed for the cockpit, he fell under the grips of two of the agents, men who had kept their wits. One, then the other, wrestled with him. It was quite a fight in the confines of the narrow plane amid the seats, all while the plane itself was plummeting.

Nelson took some bruises, but doled them out, too. One KGB agent who had not joined the fight had gone to open the cockpit door. Nelson surfaced and looked at the henchman's face, a battered face of many fights, some of them with knives. He swung his arm back and punched it. Staggering to a chair, the KGB man looked out of a window, nursed his jaw, and remained mute. Nelson crashed by him and poked his own head in the cockpit.

"What's happening!"

"Get back! Get back!" yelled the captain, scared to death. "The plane has lost control!"

Have you? the admiral wondered. "Let me get there," he said, tugging on the pilot's shoulder. The man looked back at him as Nelson screamed, "We're going to crash any second now! Give me the controls!"

The pilot shook his head and turned to stare back out of the plane's windscreen at the trees. He did nothing, touched nothing, only stared.

"It was supposed to be fixed," he muttered. "Fixed."

"We don't have time for that now." Nelson pulled the pilot out of his chair. Disposing of him on the floor in the tight quarters, after cold-cocking him, he took the pilot's seat, noting the absence of a flight engineer in the third cockpit seat.

The co-pilot, his hands on the controls, and thunderstruck by Nelson's actions, reacted, saying, "You know how to fly the plane?"

"No, but you do. And I can watch. We need two at the controls with those trees."

The Yak-40 skimmed the tops of the trees, breaking boughs under its fuselage. Aloft for no more than a minute, the plane lost each of its wings in tandem. It skewed first right, then left. Plumes of smoke rose from the engines on either side. As Nelson and the co-pilot worked miracles with the hand controls, the admiral got the hang of flying the Soviet jet—he had flown Navy planes in Korea—and his skill relieved the co-pilot, who glanced back into the rear of the plane one last time. Here in the cockpit lay the captain, totally out, and two of the KGB men—Nelson's other conquests—on the floor. The remaining two were still in their seats. One had his head buried between his knees. He was moaning.

"We're about to hit!" shouted the admiral, pulling back on the hand controls. He had spoken his last words for a while.

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When he came to, prizing open his eyes, he coughed in the heat and blackness of the smoke-contaminated cockpit. The plane, or what he could see of it, was a twisted, smoking wreck. It had not exploded, though its nose had dug several feet into the sod between the trees. Nelson had never seen so many trees and branches of dark needles in his life. A huge forest of spruce, fir and pine lay stretched out for endless miles before him.

The light outside the mangled plane had an eerie look to it. Up this far north, day was very long. The eerie grayness meant it was very late. And very cold out.

Wedged into the buckled pilot's seat, he struggled to move his legs, afraid they were broken. Glass lay across his lap and chest. Several cuts, especially on his arms, burned and bled. He twisted slightly and saw the insensible form of the co-pilot. He was lying on his left side, a long, winding gash just below the hairline. Nelson couldn't see if any of the men in the rear of the plane had survived. The captain's neck was twisted at an odd angle, and was probably broken. He was dead.

Nelson eased himself out of the pilot's crumpled seat. Tearing his clothes on metal, he faced the rear of the Yak-40. Just an open hole, black-rimmed and smoldering, the steps twisted into a curlicue. He stepped over the captain's prone body and walked back to the gaping hole through the cabin. Jumping from the plane to the ground, he squinted and rubbed his eyes of the burning smoke filtering out of the plane and fouling the air. He gazed around, noticing the shredded wheels, and then up. The lofty pines trees were on fire. In time, falling branches would ignite the undergrowth. Luckily, under these conifers, it was minimal, so there was time.

He turned back to the plane. Coughing, resting his reddened palms on the jagged metal floor, he hauled himself back inside. Checking on each man in turn, he found two alive in the cabin, plus the co-pilot in the cockpit. He pulled and pushed the live KGB men out of the plane, rolling them onto the ground over six feet below.

He couldn't move after that. Falling into a seat near the sheared-off rear of the plane, and coughing into his hand, he closed his eyes. His strength sapped, all vitality had been ripped from his arms and back. It was easy to sit there and not make any motion, but the smoke, swirling about the cabin like a living thing, tore at his lungs and burned his throat. He wanted to be clear of it. With a will, and not his own diminished power, he forced himself up again. About to jump out of the plane, he remembered the co-pilot.

Kicking the twisted engineer's seat out of the way, he again checked the pilot for life. Still he found none. Nelson lifted the moaning co-pilot out of his seat, brushing off his torn harness, and pulled him to the floor. He paused, gathered breath and heaved. Staggering with the dead weight to the open end of the plane, he rolled the co-pilot into the tall green ferns below. Murmuring in Russian, the co-pilot lay where he had fallen. Nelson jumped down again and as he shook him by the shoulders, he groaned and reached for his leg. Broken.

Speaking softly, and rubbing his sore arm, the admiral said, "Успокойся, всё хорошо. Relax, everything's okay. Я здесь. I'm here." Wiping his eyes against one sleeve, he looked up and saw orange flames dancing in the trees overhead.

One of the KGB men stirred and looked up at him, then gazed at his comrade, both of them lying in the smoking brush.

"Get him out of here!" yelled the admiral. "The plane could blow at any minute!"

The KGB man struggled onto his feet and dragged his colleague to safety. Nelson gestured to him to help pull the co-pilot to safety, too. The man came over and the two of them lifted him up and got him away from the plane, then the KGB agent toppled off his feet. He sank down into the warm dark earth and pine needles, his head falling back.

Nelson looked around again and saw a thin thread of water snaking through the trees. Lurching from tree to tree in the shadowy forest, he came to a loud, fast stream. At its edge, he knelt and drank the cool, clear water, splashing it over his burned face and arms. Tearing off part of his shirt, he dipped it into the water and made his way back to the co-pilot, whose pleading eyes followed his every move. Kneeling again, he dribbled water into the co-pilot's mouth, then checked his leg, the right. It was neatly broken. No bone protruded from the skin for infection to set in.

Clamping his lips together over his own pain, he tore another piece from his shirt to make a bandage for the co-pilot's leg. His wound burned like fire, as if the bullet was still in there, lurking behind the surgical stitches. Fiery sensations ran up his arm, across his neck and down his back. Blinking warm eyes, he knew he had some fever.

He could hardly explain how anybody survived the crash, but it had certainly jarred him.

He looked up in surprise at one of the KGB men resting on an old log and pointing a gun at him. A gun! If he made any sudden movement—though he was too exhausted for that—the agent would have shot him. His efforts that day had been immense. His body refused to give him any more. He rolled into the needles and ferns on his back beside the sleeping co-pilot and slept, too.

When he woke again after only a few minutes' respite, the gun was still there, and the trees and brush were still burning. The time had come for some coordination of efforts.

He struggled to sit up and said, "We need to get out of here before the fire catches us all."

That seemed to put a bit of a spark into the agent. He rose up, shook his buddy awake and got him on his feet. Then he noticed the admiral trying—this time, futilely—to lift the co-pilot and drag him further away from the wrecked plane. Winded, Nelson had to lay the co-pilot back down. He fell back a step.

"Put that gun up and help me," he ordered.

"Leave him," said the KGB man, standing there. "We can get away."

The admiral looked up at the man, almost ready to laugh.

"What?"

"Leave him. He'll die, like the others."

"I saved him," said Nelson, with characteristic firmness, "so I'll decide what to do with him."

"Then you carry him."

At a trifle past fifty, the admiral was in good shape. He worked out on board Seaview and at home in Santa Barbara—for a certain number of hours each day. But the idea of carrying a man as big as the co-pilot, almost six feet tall and thicker than he, through these woods, made him pause. In answering the KGB man, though, he said, "If I have to."

The gun wove into view again. The other KGB man joined the first. Their clothes were in shreds, their hair burned, and their faces alternately red, black and blue. The admiral, looking no better, studied the situation. He could barely walk. His arm hurt. The co-pilot had a broken leg. The KGB men had no patience for saving him, but to leave a man to die?

"I can't let him die," he murmured more to himself than to the others. He was trying to think of the best way to lift him again when the two agents bent down and hoisted the co-pilot to his feet. Crying out, the co-pilot sank towards the ground again. The admiral leaped in as quick as he could and lent a hand in keeping the man upright.

With no words, but deep grunts, the KGB men took the co-pilot between them and began walking away. Not sure what had happened to cause this miracle, the admiral, pausing for only a minute, started following. Somehow or other, perhaps by his hearty example, he had spurred these ruthless and unyielding men to carry their comrade. Stiff-necked and proud, these two highly trained killers staggered under the load of a man who they had deemed had no particular use any longer, now that the plane he had once helped to fly lay in a jillion smoldering pieces in the burning woods.

Forest

The Russian woods. Tall, tremendous, thick, green and resinous. A spruce smell. Spicy. Dark and acrid, a bitter burning in the nose. Low bushes, lots of ferns grew at the base of the huge sentinels. There was a secret here. Long ago, when the trees had started to age, they whispered the secret, but the four men couldn't communicate with them. For generations, here in the cold northern land, the air had kept the secret.

Amid hundreds and even thousands of trees, Nelson slogged through ferns and pine needles, through mulchy low areas, and over drier ridges. Even with his daily treadmilling on the Seaview, or the jogging at Santa Barbara, his legs had not been tested like this. How many miles had it been? Twenty, twenty-five? Too many to reckon, and the rough forest terrain made it seem like a hundred more.

Here it was, midday on his fifth Russian day, and still not a soul in sight. Only the trees.

He kept slightly ahead of the two KGB men who were dragging the co-pilot along between them. This young man bore up under his trial well. He hardly cried out even when his rough handlers lugged him across a log or through rank brush. The admiral felt badly for him. He had only been following orders—the delivery of another Soviet prisoner.

They rested every half-hour or so for the co-pilot's sake, a man who identified himself to the admiral at one of these rest stops as Stepan Drovik.

"Как поживаешь? How are you doing?" the admiral asked, resting against a boulder.

"Так себе. So-so. I'm in a lot of pain with my leg."

"I'm sorry. It must be hard trying to keep up with us."

"It is." Stepan, lying on his side, seemed curious about him, the admiral noted. "Who are you?" he asked the red-headed stranger. "You are American, yes? Why are you a prisoner?"

"I think if you don't know, Stepan, then it's better I don't say."

Stepan looked irritated, moping in a very Russian way, with furrowed brow and slightly pouting lips. "If you say so."

The admiral smiled, amused. He rubbed his hurting calves and looked out into the sodden forest. The sky had opened up on the four travelers several times that day, soaking the trees and the pine needles and the spruce boughs. Their clothes were more than damp and their spirits abysmally low, especially those two Soviet secret police. These men were used to results, not to prisoners who landed planes, to broken legs, or to dripping forests!

Their eyes upon him, so were their guns. Neither man had lost his weapon in the crash. Nelson, without much time, hadn't searched them when he pulled them from the wreckage. He wished he had now, even if the aircraft had exploded. He didn't like people holding guns on him.

Sighing, he decided it was again time to go, so he stood up and bent to lift Stepan to his feet.

"No, I must stay here. Hurts too much to walk," Stepan cried.

"Я помогу тебе. I'll help you," Nelson said, getting his good left hand under the co-pilot's back and pulling him up. Using the boulder as a lever, Stepan Drovik helped the admiral lift him, but immediately sank down again, too much in pain and too exhausted to move.

"I can't … I can't," Stepan murmured. "Leave me here."

"It can't be far to a village." Nelson had tried that ruse before to make Stepan get up. He turned to the two KGB men. "Help me with him," he said, unnerved by their inhuman silence, their hard-staring eyes. He repeated the order, but still no response came from the men holding the guns. "Get up!" he yelled.

Reluctantly, the men shouldered their responsibility again, stood up and brought Stepan to his feet. Nelson turned and led the way again. Presently, one of the agents said, "We are near a village. I see smoke rising from their fires."

Nelson looked in the direction he was pointing to. Jaded from the long walk, the indecisive rain and the unearthly coldness of the two men guarding him, he laughed, a little insanely. He also saw the smoke now. It was about time!

Recovering quickly from his melt-down of relief, he said, "We'll go down and find help." It was the most logical thing to do. All four men were hungry. A warm fire and a bit of something hot to drink would help lift spirits all around.

He spoke with a military finality that neither of the two KGB agents could resist. The man who first saw the smoke nodded at Nelson and gestured with the gun to move out while they pushed the co-pilot into a walk.

Stepan stopped the other men cold. "Nyet!"

"What?"

"Leave me here, Admiral. I can't walk any more. Send help back for me."

"Alright," Nelson said, realizing Stepan couldn't go on and must rest. Helping the co-pilot to sit down, he spoke quietly. "Всё будет хорошо. Everything's going to be alright. Положись на меня. Depend on me."

Stepan smiled warmly and grasped the admiral's hand. It was a firm shake. He closed his eyes, lay back against a rock and watched the other three men go down a hill towards the village. His gaze stayed on Nelson's back the longest. The man was right, you could depend on him. Strange, and even eerie, to depend on a stranger, an enemy. Strange, too, he didn't think of the American as his enemy. He couldn't say the same for his Russian comrades, the secret police, the men who freely waved guns about in the quiet forest.

With no electricity, indoor plumbing, or telephone service, made of just about every building material available to man, including wood, mud or clay, sticks and hides, and some pegs to hold it all together, the village was a collection of huts and sheds and dogs and bobbing children. He had seen a few such places in his travels, primitive, but looking at the kids running about with their dogs—and a few goats—left no doubt in his mind that they at least wouldn't trade their home for any other under the sun.

Let the dogs and their young friends play. It was summer after all. Winters were long and bone-chilling. He had had his winter experience years ago at the maritime school in Archangel. He knew what Russian cold felt like.

At one of the larger huts, the two KGB men stopped and rapped on what passed for a door, made of thin boards and battens. Nelson followed them inside, waiting in a tired silence as a crowd gathered. Hides decorating major portions of his body, the headman walked up and grunted at his guests.

"Our plane went down," said one of the agents, called Yuri. That was all, no last name. He nodded back the way they had come.

The tall headman nodded. The admiral put a hand on Yuri's arm. "The co-pilot?" he said.

Yuri brushed his hand off. Nelson sighed and glanced about the large room, with its hide-covered walls to keep out the cold and stark, hide-covered furniture. A girl of about sixteen came over and offered him a cup of water. He nodded thanks, taking the wooden cup from her and then a seat she gestured to on a low bench. Drinking the clear water, he thought about the co-pilot 'out there' alone with his injury. Would the agents remember him before it turned dark? Though there was always the glow from the 'unsetting' sun, spruce and pine limbs made shadows that no amount of light could fill.

Reindeer people. Hospitable, though guarded. Tali, the headman, stooped over Nelson and took his shoulders. He looked deeply into his face, even reaching out a hand and fingering his jawline, as if he was purchasing him. Nelson made no move. He had worse to worry him. When the co-pilot was safe, he could think about escape. But if this giant of a man learned who he was, he and his villagers might decide to help the two border police. All of them knew these woods far better than a retired naval officer from Santa Barbara, California.

Nelson tried to recall his Russian cultural history. The northern people were an independent-minded lot from the beginning to time, owing scant allegiance to the Muscovites far to the south. He might be able to use that independence, but then again, if they thought he was an enemy of their people, of the Russian people, they might just as soon kill him as try to free him. For now, he kept quiet about his national origins and hoped the KGB men did the same. Yuri went and took a seat by the central fire.

"We're trying to get back to Archangel," said the agent.

A long talk followed between the agents and Tali. Nelson parsed what he could of it. He hadn't eaten any of his food yet, but when he could get a word in, he said, "The co-pilot?" He was talking to Yuri, who nodded around a plate of food and at last informed the headman about Stepan.

The admiral waited in hungry silence while the headman stepped outside the hut and gave orders to fetch in the co-pilot. Yuri finished his plate of meat and so did Oleg, the other agent. Now Nelson, so hungry he could have eaten a northern brown bear whole, piled into his reindeer stew with some abandon, while the same girl refilled his water cup. Oleg and Yuri looked at him and laughed shortly, then they left the hut on a walk around the village. Tali had a radio unit for emergency use and the two men made a very important call to headquarters in Archangel. In need of a rescue party. Gone for about a half-hour, they came in again speaking Russian at a fast clip. Nelson, who had been dozing against a wall, woke up the instant they appeared and asked about Stepan.

"Did the men bring in the co-pilot?"

"Da," said Oleg, before taking a seat on another bench against the opposite wall.

"He's in another hut," said Yuri. "Rest easy about him, Admiral. You've done the heroic thing long enough by him."

"I wanted him to live," Nelson replied, a little gravely. He recalled the crash. The burning stench of flaming metal and wiring, the spicy-smelling trees afire, and the halved plane he had kept aloft for a few critical moments before relinquishing control to the forest. "He's off my mind now," he finished, meaningfully. With the co-pilot safe in this village, Stepan had no more call on him. The prisoner could now think of himself, and of fleeing his captors.

The three men were not alone. The headman's wife, daughter and mother were in the central area of the hut, watching the strangers with avid eyes. The babushka, or grandmother, in a shawl, rocking back and forth in a handmade, bent-twig rocker, eyed the three men with evident suspicion and dislike.

"We radioed headquarters, Nelson." That took the admiral aback. He would have thought the nearest radio must have been hundreds of miles away, in the northern city of Murmansk. Yuri went on, "It will not take our comrades long to find us. We're very near the sea, which I'm sure may be of some comfort to you. Though it's a false hope if you think it will help you."

What he could gather out of that speech made Nelson, usually not a violent man, want to shove his fist down Yuri's throat. He desisted on account of the ladies present.

"I've not been hoping too hard," he said. "I know where I am, and the strength of the Soviet Union."

"We are a very close-knit breed, Admiral. The Soviets watch out for each other."

"Like the way you almost let Stepan die?"

"Aptly put, Nelson. You have a grasp of the Soviet situation."

"I ought to! After crashing in these woods, in a Soviet plane, I ought to know everything there is to know about the Soviets!"

The night was trying. Wolves howled in the near distance, and the log under the admiral's head was hard. Pine boughs were not meant to be slept on either, no matter what the camping books said. The resinous conifers made his scalp itch and his skin, even under the torn sweater and shirt, feel clammy and sticky. Topping it off, the KGB men slept in turns. And why? The one who was wide awake held a gun on him, and both men made a show of it.