“It sure is.” Sukhanov set a hand on Vasili’s shoulder. Maybe he does like me, Vasili thought in surprise. The MGB man added, “Take care of yourself,” and ambled off.
Roman Amfiteatrov was still blathering away. He’d worked through the world news while Vasili talked with Sukhanov. Now he was praising the record aluminum output from shock labor gangs in Omsk. That did tell Vasili Omsk probably hadn’t made the acquaintance of an atom bomb yet. Whether the shock workers had really made all that aluminum was a different question. So was whether they even existed.
Down a side street off the square was one of the little unofficial markets the authorities grudgingly allowed. Babushkas sold strawberries and eggs and onions and golden cheeses they’d made themselves: that kind of stuff. You had to spend money there, but you could find much nicer things than you could in the state-run stores.
There stood David Berman, hefting a big white onion as if it were a grenade. “Dobry den, David Samuelovich,” Vasili said. “How’s the world treating you?”
“Oh, hello,” the old Jew said. He looked less…less disheveled than he had when Vasili brought Maria to his door. His clothes sat on him the way they were supposed to, and Vasili thought he’d run a comb through the scraggly tangle of his beard. “The world is…not too bad for me, anyhow. How is it for you?”
“?‘Not too bad’ sounds right.” Vasili drew Berman away from the onion stand so the babushka wouldn’t overhear. “And how’s your niece from way off in the west?”
“She seems to be settling in pretty well, thanks,” Berman answered. “You know how it is with young people. Or maybe you don’t, since you are one yourself. Sometimes it’s like we don’t quite speak the same language. But she’s a nice girl, mighty nice. She’s friendly.” He nodded, as if pleased with his own choice of words. “Yes, very friendly.”
“Good. I’m glad for you,” Vasili said. If that meant what he thought it meant, Maria was fucking David till he couldn’t see straight. And if it didn’t mean that, too bad for him.
“Don’t just walk off with that onion there,” the babushka said. “You want it, you got to pay for it.” Pay for it David Berman did. Vasili thumped him on the back. He lit a Belomor, happy with the way that was working out.
–
Daisy Baxter stood outside the chemist’s shop, waiting for Bruce McNulty to pick her up. She could see a few of the brighter stars-Mars shone bright and bloody, low in the southeast-but it wasn’t true dark yet. It wouldn’t be for a while, either; as spring advanced toward summer, twilight lingered late and then came again early the next morning.
Not many motorcars moved along East Dereham’s narrow, twisting streets. Civilians had a devil of a time getting petrol. Bruce, of course, was no civilian. He could fuel whatever machine he got at the unfailing tap of a U.S. Air Force motor pool. If he wouldn’t be using it for military purposes…he didn’t care.
Air-raid sirens began their warbling screech. Daisy said something that would have made Simon Perkins look as if he’d just bitten into a green persimmon. The Russian Beagle bombers got bolder by the day. They zoomed across the skies of eastern England like malevolent bats, dropping bombs here and there and then disappearing.
“Run for the shelter!” a man who was taking his own advice shouted to Daisy.
Antiaircraft guns went off in the distance. The tracers arcing across the sky put her in mind of Guy Fawkes’ Day. She knew she was taking a chance staying out in the open. But it wasn’t a big chance. A Beagle might target East Dereham. There wasn’t anything about the place that would really tempt one of the marauders, though.
Here came a jeep. “Hey, good-lookin’!” an American voice called. “Wanna come for a ride with me?”
“I’d love to!” She hopped in. She was getting used to the right side’s not holding the driving seat. She leaned over to kiss Bruce-who would see her while she did it?
He put the jeep in gear. More antiaircraft guns bellowed. More tracers scribed lines of fire overhead. Bruce chuckled. “Maybe we should’ve worn-what do you call ’em over here?-tin hats, that’s it. Don’t want fragments coming down on our heads.”
“I wasn’t fretting about it,” Daisy said. “All I was thinking about was you, and us, and us later on.”
She could still see his grin. “I like the way you think, babe.” He swung the jeep onto the road that led southwest. “And now, on to wonderful, historical Watton.”
“Oh, rubbish!” Daisy said. “There’s no history to any of the little towns and villages around here. That means Fakenham, too, or it did before the bomb hit. People live in places like these because they want nothing to do with history. Only sometimes it comes calling whether you want it or not.”
“I guess so,” Bruce said. How much history had he carried in his B-29’s bomb bay? On whom had it fallen, whether they wanted it or not? He wasn’t thinking about that now. He went on, “The combo playing at the dance is Freddy Cullenbine and His Smokin’ Five. How come that sounds familiar?”
“Weren’t they the band at Yaxham, the first time we-?” Daisy felt herself blushing. She didn’t go on.
“You could be right.” Bruce set a hand on her knee. “I wasn’t paying much attention to what their name was. I had other things on my mind.” The hand moved higher.
With a laugh, Daisy knocked it away. “While you’re driving, kindly drive.”
Watton was bigger than Yaxham, smaller than East Dereham. It thought it had history-it boasted, and boasted of, a clock tower from the seventeenth century. A sign in front of the tower-barely readable now, as the light was failing-said the clock had got a new face in the 1930s. The dance was at the town social hall, a few doors down from the gray stone tower.
Freddy Cullenbine did prove to be the pot-bellied trumpeter who wished he were Satchmo. If he lacked genius, he and his bandmates had plenty of enthusiasm. Bruce steered Daisy out onto the dance floor.
“You’re perkier than you were before,” he said after a while. “You don’t fold up after a couple of numbers the way you used to.”
“I’ve got my strength back, or most of it,” she said.
He squeezed her. “I’m darn glad you do.”
“I wouldn’t mind sitting the next one out, though,” Daisy said. “I could use a pint of bitter-maybe even two.”
“Now you’re talking, honey!” Bruce said.
This was better bitter than they’d served in Yaxham, though not, to Daisy’s thinking, a match for what she’d sold at the Owl and Unicorn. To Bruce, who’d grown up with bilgewater like Pabst and Schlitz, all English bitter was a revelation. He downed two pints in quick succession.
“It’s stronger than you think,” Daisy said. “Will you be all right to drive?”
“I’d worry about it if there was gonna be any traffic,” he answered. “The way things are, the biggest thing I’ve gotta watch out for is running over a sheep in the dark.”
She laughed. “Fair enough.”
Sweat gleaming on his broad expanse of forehead, Freddy Cullenbine worked as hard as any of the dancers. He eventually took a break and got himself a pint. “Louis Armstrong would never do that,” Bruce said, clucking in mock disapproval. “He’d have a bourbon instead.” That made Daisy laugh some more. She liked laughing with someone. She squeezed Bruce’s arm.
Then jet engines roaring low over the social hall made everyone inside think twice about the contrast between the good time they were having and the deadly game of hunter and hunted in the sky above. “I hope they get him,” Daisy said.
“Yeah, me, too,” Bruce replied. But how far did he mean that? The Russians in their Beagles were part of his guild, as it were. The RAF and USAF fighter pilots belonged with the men in MiGs who harried invaders of their airspace. Daisy started to ask him, then decided she didn’t want to know after all.
Getting out of the crowded, smoky, sweaty social hall was a relief. It was a relief in several senses, in fact; Daisy paused to spend a penny in the ladies’ loo. Bruce smoked a cigarette waiting for her to come out. “You should have eased yourself, too,” she said.