“You like it here?” he asked her.
“Very much. Yes.”
“There’s a great feeling of freedom, isn’t there?”
She nodded, smiling at the world in general.
“Perhaps.”
“More than you could ever have in Russia?” the Saint said.
Such a challenge had been on his mind for some time, but he had hesitated again and again to put it to her for fear she would assume that his true mission all along had been to tempt her to defect from the communist world. But if ever there was to be a moment to risk disrupting the rapport they had begun to achieve, this might have been it.
He realized his misjudgement instantly, in a silence that could almost be physically felt.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “That wasn’t very subtle... I suppose in your position, especially if one has relatives, even close friends who might... face some unpleasant consequences, it makes it difficult even to think about.”
She stood straighter, slipping her elbows from the broad rail of the balcony.
“I have never thought in such a way. It is not only difficult, it is impossible.”
“Then why are you so touchy about it?” he asked gently.
“I should be. You are hinting at treason, not talking about a... a trip to the seaside.”
He put his hands soothingly on her shoulders.
“All right. We’ll let it pass, okay? This is no time or place to start arguing ideologies. We both have a job to do.”
He could feel the tension begin to fade from her body. She took her lower lip between her teeth for a moment and looked him in the face before she answered.
“Okay,” she said, and she had to start smiling again just because she’d used that American expression.
“See up there?” the Saint said, pointing. “That looks as if it could be the monastery.”
“Where they make the liqueur.”
“Mm-hm. And somewhere around here somebody’s making something else — and I don’t mean that stew and red cabbage you smell.”
“Booby traps, I think you call them.”
“Yes. Well put. Now you can unpack and freshen up and prepare to greet me properly upon my heroic return.”
“Where are you going?”
“Trap shooting, of course.”
She followed him back into the bedroom.
“I go with you.”
He hesitated for a moment, and shrugged.
“Okay, if you like. This is your affair as much as mine. We shouldn’t run into anything on the first reconnaissance where you’d be a liability.”
“Really! You forget who I am. In the Soviet Union we recognize no difference between the sexes.”
“Well, I do,” said Simon, “but then I’ve had my memory refreshed recently.”
“That was not what I meant. My English...”
“Your English is fine, and so are you. Now let’s get going so we can be back here in time for that supper. I have the distinct impression that if we don’t dine here we don’t dine anywhere, unless you’re up to a few unrolled oats from some farmer’s horse trough.”
They went downstairs and accosted the servant girl, who was still reluctantly applying her broomstraws to the smoothly worn wood of the entranceway, and Simon asked her if there were any factories in the area. He might have asked for dinosaurs.
“Factories, sir? Like where they make autos and things?”
“Any kind of factories.”
The girl shook her head.
“No. The only thing we make here is cheese, and there is no factory for that. It is done by the farmers at home.”
“Well,” Simon said, “in that case, thank you very much.”
“Bitte sehr. If you wish to see a factory you must go down to Zurich.”
Tanya turned back as she and Simon started away.
“I have a small radio that does not work. Can someone here fix it?”
“Nein. Es tut mir leid. We have no one to fix anything. If you want things like that, why do you come here?”
“Because I really love peace and quiet,” said the Saint.
He set a course that took them through the inquisitive village, across a little stream covered by a neatly built wooden bridge, and along a path that led straight up the slope of the surrounding meadow.
Tanya looked up ahead of them to the spot on the mountainside where man-made walls of gray stone were half hidden by evergreens.
“I hope you are not taking me on a wild-goose hunt,” she said, avoiding one of the manifold traces which grazing cows had left behind.
“‘Chase,’” Simon corrected her. “I didn’t really expect to find a transistor radio factory bringing prosperity to the peasants up here at the end of nowhere, but there just has to be some link with it.”
“At the monastery?”
“Yes. Think you can make it?”
“Of course. I can still be walking after you have dropped on your face.”
But she underestimated both the distance and Simon’s hard-muscled health. His sense of direction took them briskly on across the remainder of the Alpine meadow, past lovely patches of blue and yellow wild flowers, to the foot of a rocky trail that led through the dense forest that clung to the mountainside. A rustic sign with lettering carved precisely into it said: KLOSTER ¾ St.
“Three-quarters of an hour from here,” he said. “But if you’re in such great shape, we should be able to shave that to a half.”
He set off at a pace that would not have disgraced an energetic chamois. The slope was soon so steep that the path, such as it was, had to zigzag back and forth to maintain a reasonable gradient. Simon went on with springy steps, smiling to himself as he sensed Tanya’s increasing difficulties. He took a makeshift staff from some branches left by woodcutters and began to sing cheerily as they climbed on.
“Stop!” she cried at last; and he stopped and turned, with raised eyebrows.
“Am I that bad? It’s an old Tirolean song — perfectly respectable. I thought it went well with the scenery.”
“I can’t go on... so fast,” she panted shamelessly.
“Must be the thin air at this altitude,” Simon said, with devastating concern. “I should have remembered — it can get the greatest athletes down at first.”
She called him something unkind in Russian and flopped down on a pile of cut wood to rest.
“It can’t be much further now,” he said, after giving her a minute to catch her breath. “When we get there, just don’t say anything till I’ve decided what line to take.”
“Don’t you know what you are going to say?”
He shrugged.
“Only vaguely. It depends on what reception we get. But I have great faith in my ability to improvise. It hasn’t failed me yet.”
They came again to the stream they had crossed down in the meadow; here it had its source, gushing like a miraculous fountain from the rocks. Then, almost without warning, the cold stone of the monastery rose in front of the Saint and Smolenko. Whatever was inside the encircling walls could not be seen from where Simon and Tanya stood. Gates of massive hardwood braced with hand-wrought iron were solidly closed, and the only means of communication with the inside appeared to be a rusty bell with a pull-rope of plaited cowhide.