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By Root 984 0

“Naturally,” Kirnov said. He hitched his chair closer and beckoned Zofia to sit down with us. “First, to all your questions— there are no trip wires where you will be walking, no patrols, no searchlights. The nearest watch-tower is fifty meters from your starting point. That sounds risky, but it is the essential safety factor. Our man will pay a call to this watchtower at exactly 11:10. He will find something wrong with the way the tower is being manned. He is an officer, he does not have to be logical. He will bring the entire crew to attention and berate them for five full minutes—inspect their rifles, criticize the timing of the searchlight, accuse them of every kind of negligence. At this time, the patrol will be on the other side of the watchtower. They will not see you or hear you. There is no moon tonight. On the Austrian side of the border, on a hilltop beyond the woods, there is a house. There will be a light in the window. You walk straight toward the light. This is important, because you are right—there are mines everywhere except where you will walk. As long as you walk with your eyes on the light, never deviating, you will be all right.”

“If I am raking, I’ll be walking backwards.”

“Yes, but Zofia will be walking normally. She will be your guide. Of course you’re right about the raking—we have to hide the footprints so that it will not be known that anyone went across. That’s why it takes two persons, one to guide and one to rake. Otherwise, our rich officer would not have the opportunity of spending his dollars.”

Zofia smiled proudly at Kirnov. “Satisfied?” she asked me. “With Sasha’s good intentions, yes. Do you mind if I ask how well you know this officer you’ve paid?”

“Very well,” Kirnov said. “Oh, very well.”

“You’ve dealt with him before?”

Kirnov turned solemn. “I do not use a girl like Zofia, who is like my own child, as a guinea pig. If I had the slightest doubt that things will go exactly as I have told you, I would not let her leave this cottage. You can believe me when I tell you that.”

Zofia rose and put her arms around the little man. “Yes,” she said, “you can believe that. Now, Sasha, your tea.”

We ate our cold meal in silence by the light of an oil lamp. Zofia kept stealing glances at me. I rewarded her with no smiles, and gradually her air of happiness dissipated. Kirnov produced two large Havana cigars and offered me one. I refused—the idea of smoking a cigar before going over the top was the final touch of incongruity. Kirnov cut his Havana carefully and lit it with a splinter of its wooden wrapping. As he smoked I noticed that he wore a ruby ring on the index finger of his right hand. I realized that his dandyism—the double-breasted blazer, the suede shoes, the precise speech, and now the ring and the Havana—had annoyed me from the start. If headquarters is right in their suppositions about him, he belongs to another era of Russian secret agents. Kirnov belongs in E. Phillips Oppenheim, not in the KGB.

Zofia cleared the plates, giving Kirnov an adoring look as she did so. A guitar hung on the wall, and she took it down and struck the strings. “Sasha taught me to play when I was a little girl,” she said. Smiling at Kirnov, she played a tune I did not recognize. He closed his eyes in pleasure. When she finished, he said, “I always see your mother when I hear that song. A woman of gold.”

“Have you always known each other?” I asked politely. There seemed no point in adding to the bad atmosphere. I was committed to them for the rest of the evening.

“Always,” Kirnov said.

Zofia, with the guitar in her lap, said something in Polish. Kirnov shrugged.

“Sasha was always a friend of my parents,” Zofia said. “He is my godfather and Tadeusz’s too, which is a little strange because he is of course a Jew. My father and mother did not mention this to the priest when we were baptized, and Sasha had no hesitation in promising to raise us as believers in Christ because he saw nothing wrong in revering a fellow Jew.”

“Zofia, no blasphemy. I take my duty seriously. If all those millions of Christians