Combat Part 10

"Perhaps I'm an exception." Hank didn't like this at all. The C.I.A.

men had been of the opinion that the KGB was once again thoroughly checking on every foreigner.

"If the KGB is already onto you, Henry Kuran, then you might as well give up. Your mission is already a failure."

"I suppose so. Will you have a chair? Can I offer you a drink? My roommate has a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka which he brought from the boat."

There was an amused light in her eyes even as she shook her head.

"Your friend Paco is quite a man--so I understand. But no, I am here for business." She took one of the armchairs and Hank sank into another opposite her.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"The committee has decided to a.s.sist you to the point they can."

"Fine." Hank leaned forward.

"Tomorrow your Progressive Tours group is to have a conducted tour of the Kremlin museum, Ivan the Great's Tower, and the a.s.sumption Cathedral."

"In the _Kremlin_?"

She was impatient. "The Kremlin is considerably larger than most Westerners seem to realize. Originally it was the whole city. The Kremlin walls are more then two kilometers long. In them are a great deal more than just government offices. Among other things, the Kremlin has one of the greatest museums and probably the largest in the world."

"What I meant was, with the s.p.a.ce emissaries there, will tours still be held?"

"They _are_ being held. It would be too conspicuous to stop them even if there was any reason to." She frowned and shook her head. "Just because you will be inside the Kremlin walls doesn't mean that you will be sitting in the lap of the extraterrestrials. They are probably well guarded in the palace. We don't know to what extent."

Hank said, "Then how can you help me?"

"Only in a limited way." She pulled a folder paper from her purse.

"Here is a map of the Kremlin, and here one of the Palace. Both of these date from Czarist days but such things as the general layout of the Kremlin and the _Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets_ do not change of course."

"Do you know where the extraterrestrials are?"

"We're not sure. The palace was built in the Seventeenth Century and was popular with various czars. It has been a museum for some time. We suspect that the Galactic Confederation delegates are housed in the _Sobstvennaya Plovina_ which used to be the private apartments of Nicolas the First. It is quite define that the conferences are being held in the _Gheorghievskaya sala_; it's the largest and most impressive room in the Kremlin."

Hank stared at the two maps feeling a degree of dismay.

She said impatiently, "We can help you more than this. One of the regular guide-guards at the facade which leads to the main entrance of the palace is a member of our group. Here are your instructions."

They spent another fifteen minutes going over the details, then she shot a quick glance at her watch and came to her feet. "Is everything clear ... comrade?"

Hank frowned slightly at the use of the word, then understood. "I think so, and thanks ... comrade." He, as well as she, meant the term in its original sense.

He followed her to the door but before his hand touched the k.n.o.b, it opened inwardly. Paco stood there, and behind him in the corridor was Char Moore.

The girl turned to Hank quickly, reached up and kissed him on the mouth and said, in English, "Good-bye, dollink." She winked at Paco, swept past Char and was gone.

Paco looked after her appreciatively, back at Hank and said, "Ah, ha.

You are quite a dog after all, eh?"

Char Moore's face was blank. She mumbled something to the effect of, "See you later," directed seemingly to both of them, and went on to her room.

Hank said, "d.a.m.n!"

Paco closed the door behind him. "What's the matter, my friend?" he grinned. "Are you attempting to play two games at once?"

The morning tour was devoted to Red Square and the Kremlin.

Immediately after breakfast they formed a column with two or three other tourist parties and were marched briskly to where Gorky Street debouched into Red Square. First destination was the mausoleum, backed against the Kremlin wall, which centered that square and served as a combined Vatican, Lhasa and Mecca of the Soviet complex. Built of dark red porphyry, it was the nearest thing to a really ultramodern building Hank had seen in Moscow.

As foreign tourists they were taken to the head of the line which already stretched around the Kremlin back into Mokhovaya Street along the western wall. A line of thousands.

Once the doors opened the line moved quickly. They filed in, two by two, down some steps, along a corridor which was suddenly cool as though refrigerated. Paco, standing next to Hank, said from the side of his mouth, "Now we know the secret of the embalming. I wonder if they're hanging on meathooks."

The line emerged suddenly into a room in the center of which were three gla.s.s chambers. The three bodies, the prophet and his two leading disciples flanking him. Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev. On their faces, Hank decided, you could read much of their character. Lenin, the idealist and scholar. Stalin, utterly ruthless organization man.

Khrushchev, energetic manager of what the first two had built.

They were in the burial room no more than two minutes, filed out by an opposite door. In the light of the square again, Paco grinned at him.

"Nick and Joe didn't look so good, but Nikita is standing up pretty well."

Trailing back and forth across Red Square had its ludicrous elements.

The guide pointed out this and that. But all the time his charges had their eyes glued to the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, settled there at the far end of the square near St. Basil's. In a way it seemed no more alien than so much else here. Certainly no more alien to the world Hank knew than the fantastic St. Basil's Cathedral.

A s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p from the stars, though. You still had to shake your head in effort to achieve clarity; to realize the significance of it. A s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p with emissaries from a Galactic Confederation.

How simple if it had only landed in Was.h.i.+ngton, London or even Paris or Rome, instead of here.

They avoided getting very near it, although the Russians weren't being ostentatious about their guarding. There was a roped off area about the craft and twenty or so guards, not overly armed, drifting about within the enclosure. But the local citizenry was evidently well disciplined. There were no huge crowds hanging on the ropes waiting for a glimpse of the interplanetary celebrities.

Nevertheless, the Intourist guide went out of his way to avoid bringing his charges too near. They retraced their steps back to Manezhnaya Square from which they had originally started to see the mausoleum, and then turned left through Alexandrovski Sad, the Alexander Park which ran along the west side of the Kremlin to the Borovikski Gate, on the Moskva River side of the fortress.

Paco said, "After this tour I'm in favor of us all signing a pet.i.tion that our guide be awarded a medal, _Hero of Intourist_. You realize that thus far he has lost only two of us today?"

Some of the others didn't like his levity. They were about to enter the Communist shrine and wisecracking was hardly in order. Paco Rodriquez couldn't have cared less, being Paco Rodriquez.

The _stilyagi_ girl had been correct about the Kremlin being an overgrown museum. Government buildings it evidently contained, but above all it provided gold topped cathedrals, fabulous palaces converted to art galleries and displays of the jeweled wealth of yesteryear and the tombs of a dozen czars including that of Ivan the Terrible.

They trailed into the Orushezhnaya Palace, through the ornate entrance hall displaying its early arms and banners.

Paco encouraged the hara.s.sed guard happily. "You're doing fine. You've had us out for more than two hours. We started with twenty-five in this group and still have twenty-one. Par for the course. What happens to a tourist who wanders absently around in the Kremlin and turns up in the head man's office?"

The guide smiled wanly. "And over here we have the thrones of the Empress Elizabeth and Czar Paul."

Un.o.btrusively, Hank dropped toward the tail of the group. He spent a long time peering at two silver panthers, gifts of the first Queen Elizabeth of England to Boris G.o.dunov. The Progressive Tours a.s.sembly pa.s.sed on into the next room.

A guard standing next to the case said, "Mr. Kuran?"