Stanley raised his binoculars and focused on the big mansion about two hundred yards off. Purple shadows darkened the broad north terrace, but he could see some activity around the house. A few men and women sat in lawn chairs and someone was serving drinks. He wished they would all go inside.
He checked his Marine K-Bar knife to make sure it hadn’t slipped from its sheath, then ran his fingers over his camouflage paint — actually his mother’s green eye shadow, supplemented by a few swirls of brown eye pencil. The stuff held up pretty good in all kinds of weather, even when it was real hot and he sweated a lot. He wore his Uncle Steve’s tiger fatigues from ’Nam and his own black Converse sneakers.
He finished the Milky Way, stuffed the candy wrapper into his pouch pocket, and retrieved a Snickers. He froze. Two men were coming toward him on a gravel path ten yards off. He listened for dogs, but there weren’t any and he breathed a little easier. Even if the men spotted him, he could outrun them. He did the hundred-yard dash in ten flat pretty consistently, which he knew he could improve if he had a few Russkies behind him.
Stanley lay perfectly still as the two figures emerged between the plantings on the path. He recognized the short fat one with buggy eyes: Froggy. He’d seen Froggy in town a few times and on the beach once. Froggy had even spoken to Stanley’s freshman class a couple of years back. He was a cultural-affairs guy or something and spoke pretty good English. When the Russians used to be allowed to play tennis on the village courts, most of them hardly ever threw the ball back when you asked. But Froggy would waddle all over to get your ball, grin, and toss it back. Froggy was okay. Stanley tried to remember his name. Anzoff or Androv or something. Yeah. Androv. Viktor Androv.
The other man was one of those slicky boys: swept-back hair, a suit that looked like Stanley’s old First Holy Communion outfit, and dark glasses. The guy looked tough, though. Probably a killer, Stanley thought. A man from SMERSH.
The two men were babbling on in Russian, and Stanley could make out the word Amerikanski over and over again. He shifted his body slightly, pulled open his field bag and brought out a Minolta Pocket Autopak 470 camera. He framed his subjects and got off three quick shots. He returned his equipment to the bag and waited until they were a full minute out of sight before he got into a sprinting position. He listened. Everything was quiet.
Stanley dashed across an open piece of ground, covering about fifty yards in less than six seconds. He dove into a small, weed-clogged depression and lay still. He felt very exposed, but there was no other concealment around. He looked for listening bugs but couldn’t see any, although he thought this should be an obvious place for one. As his respect for the Russians’ security lessened, his cockiness grew. Well, he thought, maybe their security was good. They just hadn’t reckoned on Stanley Kuchik.
Stanley had been awed by his Uncle Steve’s stories about his escape-and-evasion course in Panama, and he had given Stanley his old field manuals on infiltration, recon patrols, and outdoor survival. Stanley had taken to it very naturally, when he’d practiced in the woods near his house, as though some feral instinct had been awakened by the pictures of men creeping through the bush.
He peered over the rim of the depression. The Russkies showed no signs of going inside yet. He didn’t think they would. It was still warm and pleasant. He’d have to proceed right under their noses.
Stanley knew that today was a Russian holiday. The Russians from the UN would be all over the place soon. He’d already spotted about a dozen walking around the gardens, plus the ones on the terrace. He’d planned this for some time… M-day minus six, M-day minus five… but now he thought he might have been foolhardy. Nuts, actually.
At least he hadn’t spotted any kids. Sometimes the Russkies brought their kids with them. The kids could be a pain because they ran wild in the woods and fields. When they weren’t around, he’d heard, they went to some kind of camp a few miles away, called Pioneer Camp, which was like a Boy Scout or Girl Scout camp. But he bet that instead of doing camp things, they learned how to spy.
Stanley thought about that for a while, then remembered his mission. He crept forward toward the open end of a drainage culvert where it stuck out below the steep drop in the lawn. The earth stank here and was covered with swamp grass and bulrushes. This was the farthest he’d ever come on the Russian property.
Stanley hesitated, then raised himslf up to the open culvert. He squeezed headfirst into the slimy clay and began crawling upgrade. He knew none of the other kids in the junior class could fit in the pipe. Being small had a lot of advantages.
As he got closer to the house, he saw that some weeping willow roots had found their way between the pipe joints. He used them to pull his way through at first, but at one point the roots were so thick he had to cut them away with his K-Bar. He heard chirping ahead and saw little red eyes looking back at him. He struck the pipe with the knife’s pommel and growled, “Beat it! Go away!” His heart was pounding and his mouth was sticky.
Stanley remained motionless and took stock. He had less than three inches on either side of his shoulders, and although he was not claustrophobic, he was beginning to get nervous. What if he got stuck? The fetid air was making him nauseous, and the total darkness was giving him the creeps. He felt oppressively confined and had the sudden urge to stand, break free, run in the open air. Sweat covered his body and he began shaking. He thought about going back but didn’t think he could get through those roots feetfirst. “Well, jerk, you can’t stay here.”
He resumed his crawl until he reached a juncture of several pipes. The air was better here and he took a long breath. He looked up into a vertical shaft that ran about twenty feet to the surface. There was a metal grating at the top, and he could see the first evening stars twinkling in the sky. “Piece of cake.”
He knelt on one knee and unclipped his flashlight from his web belt, turned it on, and pointed it up the shaft. He saw the first iron rung leading to the surface. He replaced his flashlight, took a long breath, and began the ascent, hand over hand, until he reached the metal grate. He pushed up on it and it scraped noisily across the concrete rim. He listened for a few seconds, then stuck his head up and looked around. A white flagpole rose up from the ground not ten feet away. There he spotted what he was after: the dark red flag of the USSR.
The flagpole was surrounded by a circular hedgerow about four feet high. He was concealed within the plantings, unless someone was looking down from an upstairs window. He scanned the second-story windows and the third-story gables, but could see nothing. He hoisted himself out of the shaft and low-crawled through the trailing pachysandra until he reached the base of the flagpole, then rolled over on his back. He drew his K-Bar knife and took a long breath. He listened.
He heard music coming through the partly opened French doors leading out to the terrace. Pretty bad music, he thought irrelevantly. The night was fairly still, though, and he wondered if they would hear the flag falling as the rope slipped through the pulleys. He put the knife to the halyard, but hesitated. Maybe he would just get the hell out of there. But then he looked up at the red flag with the yellow hammer and sickle, and the five-pointed star, snapping in a brief gust of wind, and he knew he couldn’t go back without it.