Supermind
just the place for good old MVD men to come when they go off duty. A
nice, relaxing place full of fun and dancing and food and vodka....”
And he was thinking, at the same time: _Are they doing anything odd?_
“Russian, you know,” Her Majesty said, almost conversationally, “is an
extremely difficult language. It takes a great deal of practice to
learn to think in it really fluently.”
“Yes, I should think it would,” Malone said absently. _You mean you
haven’t been able to pick up what these people are thinking?_
“Oh, one can get the main outlines,” Her Majesty went on, “but a
really full knowledge is nearly impossible. Though, of course, it
isn’t quite as bad as all that. A man who speaks both languages, like
our dear Major Petkoff, for instance—so charming, so full of _joie de
vivre_—could be an invaluable assistant to anyone interested in
learning exactly how Russians really think.” She smiled nervously. Her
face was suddenly set and strained. “I find that—”
She stopped then, very suddenly. Her eyes widened, and her right hand
reached out to grasp Malone’s arm more strongly than he had thought
she ever could. “Sir Kenneth!” Her voice, all restraint gone, was a
hissing whisper. Malone started to say something, but Her Majesty went
on, her eyes wide. “Do something quickly!” she said.
“What?” Malone said.
“They’ve put something in Lou’s drink!” Her Majesty hissed.
Malone was on his feet before she’d finished, and he took a step
across the room.
“She’s already swallowed it!” the Queen said. “Do something! Quickly!”
The dancers on the floor were no concern of his, Malone told himself
grimly. He didn’t decide to move; he was on his way before any thought
filtered through into his mind. Officers and their ladies looked after
him with shocked stupor as he plowed his way across the dance floor,
using legs, elbows, shoulders and anything else that allowed him free
passage. Sometimes the dancers managed to get out of his way.
Sometimes they didn’t. It was all the same to Kenneth J. Malone.
Her Majesty followed in his wake, silent and stricken, scurrying after
him like a small destroyer following a battleship, or like a
ball-carrying grandmother following up her interference.
Malone caught sight of Lou, standing at the bar. In that second, she
seemed to realize for the first time that something was wrong. She
pushed herself violently away from the bar, and looked frantically
around, her mouth opening to call. Petkoff was a blur next to her;
Malone didn’t look at him clearly. Lou took a step....
And two men with broken, lumpy faces came through a door somewhere in
the rear of the restaurant, closer to her than Malone. Petkoff
suddenly swam into sight; he was standing very still and looking
entirely baffled.
Malone pushed through a pair of dancers, ignored their glares and the
man’s hissed insult, which he didn’t understand anyhow, and found his
view suddenly blocked by a large expanse of dark grey.
It was somebody’s chest, in a uniform. Malone shifted his gaze half an
inch and saw a row of gold buttons. He looked upward.
There, towering above him, was a face. It stared down, looking heavy
and cruel and stupid. Malone, his legs still carrying him forward,
bounced off the chest and staggered back a step or two. He heard a
hissed curse behind him, and realized without thinking about it that
he had managed to collide with the same pair of dancers again. He
didn’t look around to see them. Instead, he looked ahead, at the giant
who blocked his path.
The man was about six feet six inches tall, a great Mongol who weighed
about a sixth of a ton. But he didn’t look fat; he looked strong
instead, and enormously massive. Malone sidestepped, and the Mongol
moved slightly to block him. To one side, Malone saw Her Majesty
scurrying by. The Mongol was apparently more interested in Malone than
in trying to stop sweet little old ladies. Malone saw Her Majesty
heading for the bar, and forgot about her for the second.
The Mongol shifted again to block Malone’s forward progress.
“What seems to be such great hurry, _Tovarishch_?” he said in a voice
that sounded like an earthquake warning. “Have you no culture? Why you
run across floor in such impolite manner?”
The man might have been blocking his way because of Lou, or might
simply want to teach an uncultured _Amerikanski_ a lesson. Malone
couldn’t tell which, and it didn’t seem to matter. He whirled and
reached for a glass of vodka standing momentarily unattended on a
nearby table.
He tossed the vodka at the giant’s eyes, and scooted around the
mountain of flesh before it erupted with a volcanic succession of
Russian curses that shook the room with their volume and sincerity.
But Lou and Her Majesty were nowhere in sight. Major Petkoff was
staring, and Malone followed his line of sight.
A door in the rear of the restaurant was just closing. Behind it
Malone saw Her Majesty and Lou, disappearing from sight.
Malone knocked over a waiter and headed for Petkoff. “What’s going on
here?” he bellowed over the crash of dishes and the rising wave of
Russian profanity.
Petkoff shrugged magnificently. “I have no ideas, colleague,” he said.
“I have no ideas.”
“But she—”
“Miss Garbitsch was taken suddenly ill,” Petkoff said.
“Damn sudden,” Malone growled.
“Her friend, Miss Thompson, has taken her to the ladies’ room,”
Petkoff said. He gestured, narrowly missing a broken, lumpy face
Malone had seen before.
“You are under arrest,” the face said. Its partner peered over
Petkoff’s shoulder.
“I?” Petkoff said.
“Not you,” the face said. “Him.” He started for Malone and Petkoff
threw out both arms.
“Hold!” he said. “My orders are to see that this man is not molested.”
The guests had suddenly and silently melted away. Malone backed off a
step, looking for something to stage a fight with.
“On the other hand, Comrade,” one of the lumpy-faced men said, “we
have orders also.”
“My orders—” Petkoff began.
“Your orders do not exist,” the other lumpy man said. “We are to
arrest this man. Our orders say so.”
“You are fools,” Petkoff said. He spread his arms wider, blocking both
of them. Malone edged back against the bar, feeling behind him for a
bottle or maybe a bungstarter. Instead, his hand touched a sleeve.
A voice behind him bellowed: “Cease!”
The two lumpy-faced men goggled. Petkoff did not move.
Malone turned, and saw a tall, thin civilian with dark glasses.
“Cease,” the civilian repeated. “It is the girl we are to arrest! The
girl!”
“This is not a girl,” one of the lumpy men said. “Sir. We are to
arrest this man. Our orders say distinctly—”
“Never mind your orders!” Petkoff said. “Go and reduce your orders to
shreds and stuff them up your nostrils and die of suffocation! My
orders say—”
“The girl!” the civilian said. “Where is the girl?”
Malone darted forward. Petkoff caught him neatly with one arm as he
went by. “Until we decide what to do,” the MVD man said, “you stay
here.” Malone bucked against him, but could get nowhere. “Meanwhile,”
Petkoff said, “I am for letting you go.”
“I appreciate it,” Malone said through his teeth. “How about proving
it?”
“If you let him go,” a lumpy man said, “you will answer to our group
head.”
Petkoff tightened his hold protectively. Meanwhile, the civilian was
climbing up into a stratospheric rage.
“You are dolts, imbeciles, worms without brains and walking bellies
filled with carrion!” he said magnificently. “I have orders which I am
sworn to carry out!”
“You are not alone,” Petkoff said.
Malone took another try at a getaway, and failed.
“We take precedence,” a lumpy man said. “We can talk later. Arrest
comes first.”
“But who?” the civilian snapped. “I insist—”
“There shall be no arrest!” Petkoff screamed. “No one is to be
arrested at all!”
“I swear by the bones of Stalin that my orders state—” the tall man
began.
“The bones of Stalin are with us!” a lumpy man said. “Go and die in a
kennel filled with fleas and old newspaper! Go and freeze to the
likeness of an obscene statue of a bourgeois deity! Go and hang by the
ears from a monument four thousand feet high in the center of the
great desert!”
Inspired, the other lumpy man screamed “Charge!” and came for Petkoff
and the civilian. Petkoff whirled, letting go of Malone in order to
beat back this wave of maddened attackers, and Malone took the
advantage. He ducked free under Petkoff’s left arm and started around
the gesticulating, screaming, fighting group for the door at the back
of the restaurant. He took exactly four steps.
Then he stopped. The Mongol, his eyes red with a combination of vodka
and bull-roaring rage, was charging toward him, his hands outflung and
his fingers grasping at the air. “Warmonger!” he was shouting.
“Capitalist slave-owner! Leprous and ancient cannibal without culture!
You have begun a war you can not finish!”
“Ha!” Malone said, feeling inadequate to the occasion. As the Mongol
charged, he felt a wave of intense pragmatism come over him. He
reached back toward the bar, grabbed a bottle of vodka and tossed
several glassfuls into the giant’s face. The Mongol, deluged and
screaming, clawed wildly at his eyes and spun round several times,
cursing Malone and all his kin for the next twenty-seven generations,
and grabbing thin air in his attempt to reach the _Amerikanski_.
All of the customers appeared to have discovered urgent engagements
elsewhere. There was little for the Mongol to collide with except
empty tables and chairs. But he did manage to swipe one of the
lumpy-faced men on the side of the head with one flail of his arms.
The lumpy-faced man said “Yoop!” and went staggering away into
Petkoff, who spun him around and threw him away in the general
direction of the bandstand. The diversion provided Malone with just
enough time to start moving again.
Four uniformed men were making their way toward the ladies’ room from
the opposite side of the restaurant. They were carrying a stretcher,
which seemed pitifully inadequate for the carnage Malone had just
left.
He blocked their path. “Where are you going?” he said.
“You are American?” one of them said. “I speak English good, no?”
Behind him, Malone heard a yowl and a crunch, as of a body striking
wood. It sounded as if somebody had fetched up against the bar. “You
speak English fine,” he said, feeling wildly out of place. “Have you
been taking lessons?”
“Me?” the man said. “It is no time for talk. We got to get lady for
hospital.”
“Lady?” Malone said. “For hospital?”
“Miss Garbitsch her name is,” the stretcher-man said, trying to get
past Malone. The FBI agent shifted slightly, blocking the path. “We
wait outside one revolution—”
“One what?”
“When hands revolve once,” the man said. “One hour. Now we get call so
we take her to hospital.”
It sounded suspicious to Malone. He heard more yells behind him, and
they sounded a little closer. The sound of running men came to his
ears. “Well,” he said happily, “goodbye all.”
The stretcher-bearer said, “Vot?” Malone shoved him backward into the
approaching mob, grabbed the stretcher away from the other three men,
who were acting a little dazed, and swung it in a wide arc. He caught
an MVD man in the stomach, and the man doubled up with a weird
whistling groan, turned slightly in agony, and hit another MVD man
with his bowed head. The second man fell; Malone heard more crashes
and screaming, but he didn’t find out any details. Instead, he threw
the stretcher at the milling mob and turned, already in motion, racing
for the ladies’ room.
He had no notion of what he was going to do when he got there, or what
he was going to find. Her Majesty and Lou were in there, all right,
but how were they going to get out without being arrested, clubbed,