«Come on, citizens, let's go!» Lieutenant Bruskov raised his voice, and elbowed his partner in the buttock, since he couldn't reach any higher. «Should we take Nastya too?»
«I'm not going anywhere without Heinrich!» she said, latching on to Berg.
«Our train cars are leaving,» muttered Alex, as in a dream.
«Listen up, you!» Orest craned his head up at the uniformed giant. «I don't see your badges… Our cars are taking off. We've got valuable animals in there!»
Nastya weighed in, moaning, «Heinrich is kind, he loves birds…»
By the station entrance there hung a glass case, declaring, «Wanted by the Police.» Two sheets were stuck over the glass: «Vote for Gorlogryzov» and «Vote for Kuroschupov.» Lieutenant Bruskov angrily tore off Kuroschupov's poster, indignantly crumpled it up and tossed it into a trashcan. From underneath the glass, a badly-printed photograph of Berg stared out at them: «Wanted: Especially Dangerous Criminal.» Berg darted off to the side, jumped from the platform and onto the rails, and bolted across the lines. The policemen, coming to their senses, yelled out, «Stop! Stop!» and ran up to the edge of the platform. But here they stopped, as if rooted to the spot. Bruskov, in the heat of the moment, started to put one leg down, but abruptly drew it back, as if out of a cold river.
«Potapov,» he said to his hale partner, «you go after him, I'll handle the accomplices.»
Potapov held onto his paunch and squatted down, gathering himself to jump, but in the end couldn't manage such a feat.
Meanwhile the track-layers working the lines, strapping women in orange vests, with crowbars in their grease-smeared mittens, shrilly screamed, «Hey, we'll drop him!» and flung their crowbars at the barefoot man without a second thought, striking home on the first try. The bars mowed Berg down on the spot. The track-layers seized up the body, like a crosstie, and delivered it up to the platform at Potapov's feet.
«Carry him in to the station,» he ordered Alex and Orest.
Once they'd dragged the unconscious Berg into a cell, the circus performers were immediately sent in to see Major Gorlogryzov, the station chief.
Gorlogryzov sat monolithically behind a double-posted desk, under a portrait of Bill Clinton (the work of a local painter), austerely working his furry eyebrows. After five minutes of silence, he sharply demanded:
«How long have you known Tsarapkin?»
«Who's that?» Orest shuddered in surprise.
«Your companion,» Gorlogryzov venomously screwed up his eyes.
«Berg?» mumbled Alex.
«Oh, so he's also Berg, is he? Mm-hm, mm-hm, well, he's been Luciferov, he's been Hellkin, he's been Trolleybusov… but, if we go by his given name, he's Yuri Andreyevich Tsarapkin, born 1962, escaped from prison one month ago. Do you know Potma?»
The circus folk shook their heads.
«I was born there,» Gorlogryzov revealed, dreamily, then frowned. «But not in the prison zone, of course. Meaning in those parts.»
«Excuse me,» Alex said, tiredly. «We couldn't care less… We're circus performers, left behind by our train. We've been trying to catch up with it, by relay, all the way from Gnilukha. We met up with this Tsarapkin of yours, or Berg, on the road. It's all elementary…»
«No, it's not elementary,» answered Gorlogryzov, in an offended tone. «Do you have your documents on you?»
«What damn documents?!» Alex was on the verge of tears.
«We haven't got any documents, or any money, we don't have a goddamn thing on us!»
«You watch your mouth,» the major suddenly looked at Clinton's portrait. «We're people of faith here, and you go off invoking unclean spirits.»
«Comrade station chief, let us go,» moaned Alex. «For the love of Christ!»
«But how am I supposed to believe you without documents?» Gorlogryzov asked, growing pensive.
«How?» Orest gruffly answered, and all of a sudden started twirling about the room in a circle, performed a somersault and wound up in a handstand right on top of the astonished major's desk. «That's how!»
«Mm-hmm,» said Gorlogryzov inimically staring at Orest's inverted face. «Very nice. Stand up straight.»
Orest resumed a normal, two-footed stance.
«Bruskov,» said Gorlogryzov, «did any circus pass through here?»
«Yessir!» the lieutenant replied. «Just now a train set off for Communist Future.»
«So why,» smiled Gorlogryzov, «didn't you skedaddle out of here on that?»
«You arrested us, that's why!» yelled Alex.
«We detained you,» the policemen corrected her, in unison.
«But now how are we gonna get to this Future of yours?»
«Don't you be laying some other strange Futures on us,» pronounced Gorlogryzov, menacingly. «And anyway, for a long time now this ComFuture hasn't been ComFuture; it's now CapProspects — Capitalist Prospects.»
An excited Policeman Potapov burst into the office, crumpling sheets of paper.
«We caught us another Kuroschupov follower. Right in our john, making use of enemy pamphlets! Here's proof!»
«I had to pee,» came a heart-rending cry from the corridor. «That's why I was in there! I had to pee-e-e!»
Gorlogryzov jumped up and pounded on the table with his fist.
«Give 'im fifteen days! For disturbing the peace!»
His gaze fell on the unfortunate Alex and Orest.
«What, you're still here! You're free, I believe you for some reason.»
«Ha!» Orest squeaked. «Thanks a bunch! But where do we go now?»
The station chief was taken aback, but didn't come up with anything.
«Bruskov, see to the sending-off of our comrade actors.»
«Yessir!» the lieutenant clicked his heels. But soon enough, on the platform, he said to his charges, «Now what am I gonna do with you? Aha! Thisaway!»
Nastya was standing by the wanted poster display case, crying bitter tears, gazing at Berg's photo as if in supplication.
«I'll wait for you, Heinrich. I will. As long as it takes. I'll wait all my life, I will.»
Bruskov led the circus folk to the railroad yard, tarrying next to a train car with a little tablet on it that read, «Glass hauler.»
«Open up!» he demanded, rapping on the wall.
«Go to hell, you alkie!» echoed a voice from inside, in an Eastern accent.
«Police,» Bruskov clarified.
A dark, shaggy, unshaven head showed itself through a tiny window under the roof, disappeared, and bolts started banging within. The door slid open with a rumble.
«Everything is in order, chief, yes,» an Armenian stood in the doorway.
«Oh, yeah? Drugs, weapons?»
«They checked it out just yesterday. Took two bottles of brandy for inspection, yes.»
«We're gonna make you lose sleep. Another inspection.»
«Why lose sleep? I am as calm as Mount Ararat, yes.»
«Really? By the way, you'll be giving these fellas here a lift to Communist Future.»
«I do not get it, chief.»
«You know, it's going by Capitalist Prospects now.»
«You mean we will be sticking around there after all, yes?»
«More'n likely you'll just tear on through, but who knows…»
«Yes,» nodded the Armenian.
«Yes, indeedy,» sighed the policeman.
Alex and Orest picked up Mollie. Bruskov started to help, but the dog thwacked him in the face with a grimy paw. With a muttered «Bon voyage!» he pushed off for home.
Inside the car, wooden crates of brandy bottles towered from floor to ceiling.
«I am hauling them from Armenia,» said their escort. «Abroad. To Moscow.» He added, indifferently: «Hamlet.»
«The Danish prince,» Alex let out.
«Shakespeare,» Orest assented.