The sergeant walked straight toward her but gave no sign of recognition. He did not look toward the whistle and slap of the hose, although his face seemed slightly pale. He drew his gun in approaching the prisoners and a guard stepped into his path.
“Halt! You can’t…”
“Major Kline’s orders, Corporal. He’ll see Marya Dmitriyevna Lisitsa next. Right now. I’m to show her in.” The guard turned blankly to look at the prisoners. “That one,” said the sergeant.
“The girl? Okay, you! Shagom marsh!”
She stepped out of line and went with the sergeant, who took her arm and hissed, “Make it easy on yourself,” out of the corner of his mouth. Neither looked at the other.
It was dark in the bunker, but she could make out a fat little major behind the desk. He had a poker expression and a small moustache. He kept drumming his fingers on the desk and spoke in comic grunts.
“So this is the wench,” he muttered at the sergeant. He stared at Marya for a moment, then thundered: “Attention! Hit a brace! Has nobody taught you how to salute?”
Her fury congealed into a cold knot. She ignored the command and refused to answer in his own language. “Ya nye govoryu po Angliiskil” she snapped.
“I thought you said she spoke English,” he grunted at the sergeant. “I thought you said you’d talked to her.”
She felt the sergeant’s fingers tighten on her arm. He hesitated. She heard him swallow. Then he said, “Yes sir, I did. Through an interpreter.”
Bless you, little sergeant! she thought, not daring to look her thanks at him.
“Hoy, McCoy!” the major bellowed toward the door.
The man who came in was not McCoy, but one of the Americanist Blue Shirts. He gave the major a cross-breasted Americanist salute and barked the slogan: “Ameh’ca F’ust!”
“America First,” echoed the major without vigor and without returning the political salute. “What is it now?”
“I regrets to repoaht, suh, that the cuhnel is dead of a heaht condition, and can’t answeh moa questions.”
“I told you to loosen him up, not kill him. Damn! Well, no help for it. Get him out. That’s all, Purvis, that’s all.”
“Ameh’ca Fust!”
“Yeah.”
The Blue Shirt smacked his heels, whirled, and hiked out. The interpreter came in.
“McCoy, I hate this job. Well, there she is. Take a gander. She’s the one with the bacteriological memo and the snap of MacAmsward. I’m scared to touch it. They’ll want this one higher up. Look at her. A fine piece, eh?”
“Distinctly, sir,” said McCoy, who looked legal and regal and private-school-polished.
“Yes, well, let’s begin. Sergeant, wait outside till we’re through.”
She was suddenly standing alone with them, eyes bright with fury.
“Why did you begin using bacteriological weapons?” Kline barked.
The interpreter repeated the question in Russian. The question was a silly beginning. No one had yet made official accusations of germ warfare. She answered with a crisp sentence, causing the interpreter to make a long face.
“She says they are using such weapons because they dislike us, sir.”
The major coughed behind his hand. “Tell her what will happen to her if she does that again. Let’s start over.” He squinted at her. “Name?”
“Imya?” echoed McCoy.
“Marya Dmitriyevna.”
“Familiya?”
“Lisitsa.”
“It means ‘fox’, sir. Possibly a lie.”
“Well, Marya Dmitriyevna Fox, what’s your rank?”
“V kakoin vy chinye?” snapped McCoy.
“Starshii Lyeityenant,” said the girl.
“Senior lieutenant, sir.”
“You see, girl? It’s all straight from Geneva. Name, rank, serial number, that’s all. You can trust us…. Ask her if she’s with Intelligence.”
“Razvye’dyvatyelnaya sluzhba?”
“Nyet!”
“Nyet, eh? How many divisions are ready at the front?”
“Skol’ko na frontye divizii?”
“Ya nye pomnyu!”
“She says she doesn’t remember.”
“Who is your battalion commander, Lisitsa?”
“Kto komandir va’shyevo baralyona?”
“Ya nye pomnyu!”
“She says she doesn’t remember.”
“Doesn’t, eh? Tell her I know she’s a spy, and we’ll shoot her at once.”
The interpreter repeated the threat in Russian. The girl folded her arms and stared contempt at the major. “You’re to stand at attention!”
“Smirno!”
She kept her arms folded and stood as she had been standing. The major drew his forty-five and worked the slide.
“Tell her that I am the sixteenth bastard grandson of Mickey Spillane and blowing holes in ladies’ bellies is my heritage and my hobby.”
The interpreter repeated it. Marya snorted three words she had learned from a fisherman.
“I think she called you a castrate, sir.”
The major lifted the automatic and took casual aim. Something in his manner caused the girl to go white. She closed her eyes and murmured something reverent in favor of the Fatherland.
The gun jumped in Kline’s hand. The crash brought a yell from the sergeant outside the bunker. The bullet hit concrete out the doorway and screamed off on a skyward ricochet. The girl bent over and grabbed at the front of her skirt. There was a bullet hole in front and in back where the slug had passed between her thighs. She cursed softly and fanned the skirt.
“Tell her I am a terrible marksman, but will do better next time,” chuckled Kline. “Good thing the light shows through that skirt, eh, McCoy—or I might have burned the ‘tender demesnes.’ There! Is she still cursing me?”
“Fluently, sir.”
“I must have burned her little white hide. Give her a second to cool off, then ask what division she’s from.”
“Kakovo vy polka?”
“Ya nye pomnyu!”
“She has a very poor memory, sir.”
The major sighed and inspected his nails. They were grubby. “Tell her,” he muttered, “that I think I’ll have her assigned to C company as its official prostitute after our psychosurgeons make her a nymphomaniac.”
McCoy translated. Marya spat. The major wrote.
“Have you been in any battles, woman?” he grunted. “V kakikh srazhyeniyakh vy oochast’vovali?”
“Ya nye pomnyu!”
“She says—”
“Yeah, I know. It was a silly question.” He handed the interpreter her file. “Give these to the sergeant and have him take her up to Purvis. I haven’t the heart to whip information out of a woman. Slim’s queer; he loves it.” He paused, looking her over. “I don’t know whether to feel sorry for her, or for Purvis. That’s all, McCoy.”
The sergeant led her to the Blue Shirts’ tent. “Listen,” he whispered. “I’ll sneak a call to the Red Cross.” He appeared very worried in her behalf.
The pain lasted for several hours. She lay on a cot somewhere while a nurse and a Red Cross girl took blood samples and smears. They kept giving each other grim little glances across the cot while they ministered to her.
“We’ll see that the ones who did it to you are tried,” the Red Cross worker told her in bad Russian.
“I speak English,” Marya muttered, although she had never admitted it to her interrogators, not even to Purvis.
“You’ll be all right. But why don’t you cry?”
But she could only cry for Nikolai now, and even that would be over soon. She lay there for two days and waited.