Stanley brushed himself, straightened his clothes, and checked his gear. Everything was in place including the tightly girthed flag.
He looked quickly around. He was in the boiler room. Three huge furnaces stood across the room along with three hot-water tanks and oil tanks.
He opened a crudely made wooden door and passed into an unlit room. He found an overhead pull chain and turned on a single light bulb. He looked around. Stacks and stacks of boxes filled with canned foods lined the walls and formed aisles in the immense space. “Christ, they could feed an army.”
He turned on his flashlight and walked through the storage space, reading the familiar brand names until he came to a door. He listened, but could hear nothing. He opened the door and entered a room filled top to bottom with steel file cabinets. He selected one at random and pulled open a drawer, shining his light on the file tabs marked with Cyrillic lettering. He extracted a sheaf of papers and stared at the top one. “Crazy goddamned language . .” He stuffed the entire sheaf into his field bag and continued walking.
He could see basement windows, opening out to window wells, but there were bars over all of them. He knew he had to find a cellar door that led outside. He could faintly hear music, talking, and laughing in the room above. He continued prowling around the cluttered area.
His flashlight picked out something on the wall, and he steadied the beam on it, then walked toward it. He played the beam around the area and counted three large electrical panels. He opened one of them. Inside were two rows of modern circuit breakers. They were all marked in Russian, leading Stanley to believe that it had not been an American electrician who installed the new system. Stanley retrieved his Minolta and slid the close-up lens into place. He stood directly in front of the electrical panel and held the camera cord straight out to measure fifty centimeters. He framed the panel, stood perfectly still, closed his eyes, and hit the shutter button. The camera flashed. He moved to the next two panels and shot two more pictures. Now he had proof that he’d been in the mansion itself.
Stanley played his flashlight around and spotted something on the floor to the right of the electrical panels. He quickly moved closer to it and knelt. It was a big brute of a generator, Americanmade, bolted to the concrete above another floor drain. It wasn’t running and Stanley suspected that it kicked on automatically when there was an interruption in electrical service. He shined his light farther down the wall. There was a huge oil tank in the corner, probably diesel oil, he thought, to run the generator. “Christ, these guys don’t take any chances.”
He stood and played the light around, then moved across the room. Rising from the floor was an electric water-well pump, connected by a two-inch pipe to the water main overhead. The pump wasn’t running either, and Stanley guessed that it turned on if the generator did, or if the village water was shut off. Stanley scratched his head thoughtfully. “Food… fuel… electricity… water… Real shitheads… Ready for anything.” He began walking again.
He passed through an opening in a wooden wall and came to a room full of lawn furniture and gardening tools. He scanned the walls with his flashlight and finally spotted a set of stone steps leading up to an overhead door. “Okay, Stanley, time to go home.”
He unlatched the doors and pushed on the left-hand one. It opened with a squeak and he stepped up into the cool night air behind a stand of hemlock.
He found his last candy bar, an almond Cadbury, very expensive but his favorite. He chewed thoughtfully on the chocolate as he surveyed the hundred yards of brightly lit lawn. Beyond the lawn was a thick tree-line. He finished the chocolate, licked and wiped his mouth and fingers, and got into a four-point sprinter’s crouch. He waited, looked, listened, took a deep breath, and mumbled, “Okay, feet, do your thing.” He shot out of his stance, tearing at top speed across the open lawn toward the trees. He was less than five yards from the edge of the woods when he heard a dog bark, followed by a growl.
“Halt! Stop!”
“Sure — yeah — right.” He crashed through the undergrowth, into the woods. He came to a nearly vertical rise in the ground and took it in three long strides.
As he continued to run, the low-hanging branches of the maples whipped at his face and arms, and he felt a gash open above his right eye. A pine bough raked him across the mouth and he stifled a cry of pain. “Oh, screw this! Jesus Christ, never again… never… ”
One of Van Dorn’s Roman candles shot into the air and Stanley could see where it was fired from, so he changed course slightly and guided toward it.
There were easier ways out of the Russian estate, but Van Dorn’s place was his closest, and therefore best, chance. His only chance, really.
As he maneuvered through the woods, the maple and oak gave way to laurel and rhododendrons, and he knew he was approaching the borders of Russian territory. He ran into a coil of barbed wire and sliced his hand. “Jesus H. Christ!” He took his wire cutters and snipped out an opening, then passed carefully through. In the distance he thought he saw lights from the Van Dorn estate.
He could hear the Russians calling out behind him. And the dogs barking. A low stone wall suddenly rose up and he jumped it on the run, then slowed to catch his breath. He had technically crossed into neutral territory, an unused right-of-way that separated the two estates. No-man’s-land. He took a few steps toward Van Dorn’s place, but he found he was very shaky. A cold sweat covered his body and he was nauseous. He heaved and brought up some chocolate and acid. “Aaahh!” He took a few long breaths and began moving, half running, half walking.
Behind him he heard a sound like a shot and he ducked. Then the sky was lit with a parachute flare. The Russians had tripped one of their own flares, by accident or on purpose, but he was out of the circle of light and kept moving. He wondered if the flare would attract any friendly attention. But he didn’t want any attention, he just wanted to make it on his own and keep his rendezvous at Sal’s Pizza.
He came to a wooden stockade fence, with pointed pickets at the top, over ten feet high. The boundary of Van Dorn’s property. Stanley slapped at the fence. “Fucking Berlin Wall… ” About three inches of cedar separated him from freedom.
He began trotting east along the wall. He saw a rise in the land near the fence. From the top of the rise to the top of the fence was not the impossible ten feet but a more manageable seven or eight feet. He cut back toward the Russian estate to give himself a running start, then swung back toward the small mound of earth. A half-moon had risen above the distant trees and cast a pale light over the long and narrow right-of-way. Stanley looked to his left and saw six Russians and two dogs approach at an angle to his intended path. He knew he had only one shot, if that.
One of the Russians shouted, “Stop! Halt! Surrender!”
Stanley yelled back in a steady voice, “Up yours!”
The Russians released the dogs, and Stanley turned on his last burst of energy and speed. Both dogs lunged, but overshot him, reeled, and came back. Stanley hit the mound running, then jumped. His momentum took him up and forward, and he smashed into the fence but got his arms around the top of the pickets. The dogs leaped at him and one of them got hold of his sneaker. He kicked free. A Russian shouted, “Stop! Stop! We shoot!”
Stanley yelled back, “Sit on it, schmucko!” He pulled himself up and over the pointed pickets, hung for a moment, then dropped to the ground below, tumbling onto the rocky soil. American soil. End of game.
Stanley stood, turned, and began trotting away from the fence, laughing then crying, and finally howling in the moonlight and dancing. “I made it! I made it!” He jumped into the air and clapped his hands. “Stanley, you are the best!”