Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(192)

"Well, tonight is not possible. They've left."

He gasped. "Left where?"

"Back to Berlin. Ran out of supplies. They'll be back tomorrow. We'll talk to her then."

Ouspensky took one step back. "Sir, she won't be coming back tomorrow."

"Of course she will."

"Yes. But though I am not a betting man, I will bet that Alexander Belov is no longer in your custody."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Brestov said, rubbing his head. "Belov is in the camp brig. We'll wait for Karolich and then look into it."

"Call the next checkpoint on the road," said Ouspensky. "Have them at least stop the truck until you know Belov is still here."

"I'm not doing anything until my lieutenant gets here." When Brestov tried to get up, he sloppily knocked a number of papers off his table. "Besides, I liked that nurse. I don't think she is capable of what you say."

"Just check on your prisoner," said Ouspensky. "But if I am right, perhaps the commandant could do me a small service and speak to Moscow on my behalf? I'm supposed to be getting shipped out tomorrow. Perhaps a commutation of some sort?" He smiled thinly and beseechingly.

"Let's stop counting the eggs until they've hatched, shall we?"

They waited for Karolich.

There was the sound of doors banging hard against the sides of the truck and then a loud thump as if something fell or was run over.

"Geez, what was that?" exclaimed Penny. "Tania, oh my, did you run over a dog?"

They stopped the jeep and all got out onto the empty road and hurried to the back. The doors of the jeep were swinging open. They stared at them mutely.

"What in heaven's name happened here?" Penny asked.

"I think I must have forgotten to lock them all the way," replied Tatiana. She looked deeper inside the truck. Her backpack was gone.

"Yes, but what did you run over?"

"Nothing."

"Then what was that noise?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

She turned around. A bulky form was lying some twenty meters back. She ran to it.

It was her backpack.

"Your backpack fell out?"

"We must have hit a nasty bump in the road. Look, everything is all right."

"Well, let's get back in," said Martin. "No use standing idly on a dark highway."

"No, you're right," said Tatiana, and then she rushed over to the side of the road and retched, pretending to throw up. They gave her a flask of water to clean her mouth, and stood solicitously by her side. She said, "I'm sorry, I guess I'm not feeling as well as I thought. Martin, would you mind driving the rest of the way? I think I'll lie down in the back."

"Of course, of course."

They helped her in. Before Martin closed the doors, Tatiana looked at them fondly. "Thank you both. For everything."

"Not to worry," said Penny.

Martin, being most careful, locked the doors from the outside. Before he was in the driver's seat, Tatiana opened the hatch to the litter compartment. Alexander was looking at her. The truck pulled away from the roadside.

Martin was driving cautiously--at some thirty kilometers per hour. She knew he wasn't comfortable driving on foreign roads in the dark.

Tatiana heard the muffled talking in the cabin through the small pane of glass. Alexander got out of the compartment and pulled out Karolich's sub-machine gun.

"You should have left the backpack on the road," he whispered, nearly inaudibly. "Now we'll have to throw it and it will be harder to find."

"We'll find it."

"We should leave it."

"All our things are in it. We also have to take this." She pointed to the smaller canvas bag and the ruck.

"No. We will have to make do with one backpack."

"This one has pistols, grenades, a revolver, and rounds for all your weapons."

"Ah."

He stood on his tiptoes, reaching for the latch that kept closed the hatch in the roof.

"Let me get out first," he whispered, "you'll hand me our things, I'll throw them down, and then I'll pull you up." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Once he threw down the backpack, her nurse's bag, the weapons, and pulled her up onto the roof of a moving vehicle from which they were going to jump down a black slope, Tatiana nearly reconsidered. The slope looked like a bottomless pit, but in less than seventy minutes of comfortable driving they could be in the French sector.

The wind was ripping through her hair and she could hardly hear him, but she heard him well enough. "Wehave to jump, Tania. Push off as hard as you can, land in the grass. I go first."

Alexander didn't even take a breath or count or look back. He just sprang off from a crouching position and jumped, the bag of ammo on his back. He was down the slope and she couldn't see him.

Holding her breath and tensing her body, she crouched and jumped. She fell awkwardly and hard. But she fell onto the grassy slope, into bushes, and rolled down underbrush, not concrete. Because it had rained, the ground was soft and muddy. Clambering up to the side of the road, she saw that the truck had not stopped. It continued moving down the highway. Something hurt. She didn't have time to think what it was or where. She began to run back, every once in a while stopping and whispering, "Alexander? Alexander?"