Ten days later, the Manchurian highway was dusty and forlorn. Guerrillas challenged Dugan.
"My name is An," said Dugan in bad Chinese, "and I am an unfortunate Soviet soldier."
The Chinese Communist guerrilla leader kept his Luger pointing straight at Dugan's abdomen.
"Prove it. Show me your papers."
"That is why I am unfortunate. I have lost my papers."
The chieftain was a sharp cookie, a tough rustic. His type appeared in all nations: the local man who had no education but much wit. When revolution stirred a country, this species floated right up to the top. Dugan realized that he would have to be careful.
"When the Great Red Army of Great Soviet Union withdrew from this area, I was left behind." He gestured. The sweep of his arm took in the Chinese village, the irrigation ditch along the good Japanese-built Manchurian road, the power-line pylons in the background.
"How left behind?" asked the leader.
"Left behind because of drunkenness. I was not conscious of myself."
"Then," said the Chinese, "you are a bad soldier. You are a bad Communist."
"You are a much better Communist than I," said Dugan cheerfully, "and I would be glad to learn from you. Give me a rifle and I will show you whether I like capitalists, imperialists, or landlords."
The Chinese kept to the point. "Come into the village. If you are a spy, I will shoot you. If you are a deserter, I will turn you over to our Russian friends and your own people will punish you. It is not decent to be so cheerful. Why do you laugh?"
"Comrade," said Dugan, "I am no Russian."
"But you told me you were a Soviet soldier." The Chinese looked puzzled.
"Do I look like one?" Dugan crinkled his eyelids together to make himself look more Asiatic. He let a rumble of irresponsible mirth come up from his belly to his throat.
"You look like no Russian to me," the Chinese conceded. "Of what place are you? Why did you say you were a glorious Soviet soldier?"
"But it is true. I am a Soviet soldier, but no Russian. Haven't you heard the telling, comrade, about the many nationalities of the Soviet Union?"
"Have heard."
"I am a Uighur."
"Never heard of them. Come along to the village."
The four other peasants fell into line. Dugan noted that their Japanese rifles were new and in good condition. Their cartridge belts showed little wear. They were dressed in the nondescript jackets and pajamalike pants of the Chinese peasantry. Their only uniform consisted of a white armband with a red star and the characters, "Democratic Self-Development Brigade," crudely stamped in ink. And their shoes, which were Japanese Army issue, and good.
Dugan walked beside the leader. Thus far, things were going well. Not as perfectly as he might wish, but well enough for him to be satisfied.
After leaving Sarah, he had spent six more days in Tokyo. Two in the hospital. Two more were spent in conversation with a nuclear scientist and an engineer.
Through the interviews, Dugan wore a mask. These men were too conspicuous to be trusted. Tokyo was full of Soviet agents and if the scientist or engineer had seen his un-American face, there might have been talking. As it was, they heard Dugan mimic the ripe Irish voice of his uncle Ed. The rest of their lives, they would suspect that some mick had been hiding behind the black mask. Their information, reduced to its crass essentials, was fairly simple. Dugan refused unnecessary information on the ground he might be drugged or tortured. He asked only what he should look for.
His last two days in Tokyo were spent in getting his equipment shipshape. Part of the equipment was in a matchbox in his pocket. Part was sewed into his Chinese cord-soled shoes.
One day's flying had brought him to Tsingtao. He had waited in the plane till it was dark and then, with his face bandaged, he had climbed into a light reconnaissance plane which, despite its Nationalist Chinese markings, had an American pilot. They had located Mukden, had flown northeast for another forty minutes. There Dugan had bailed out.
The rest of that night was spent in burying the parachute. It was hard to bury anything in China: the country was too full of people. Dugan packed the parachute, which was Japanese, into a nest of rocks at the bottom of a muddy ditch. Then he waited for dawn.
With daylight he checked his concealment.
It was all right, so he headed off down the road. His plan was simple. He intended to wander around the countryside, posing as an Asiatic from the Russian Red Army — a stupid private who had straggled behind and had been living unobserved in Nationalist Chinese territory for a year and a half. He could not claim to have stayed in the Communist zone because there were too many local events and personalities of which he was ignorant. If pressed, he would confess to living with a Japanese girl and to doing gardening, black-marketing, and drug-peddling. From the Soviet viewpoint, these offenses were sufficiently non-political to leave him fairly safe.
Then, he hoped, the Chinese Communists would turn him over to the Russian Communists. And the Russians would do what he wanted them to do. They would deport him to the Soviet Union. Once in Russia, with a new set of papers, he could head off for Atomsk. It might take a week. Or he might have to wait a year or two. How was he to tell?
Meanwhile, there was this new character to get used to. There were not many Uighurs left in the world, and almost certainly none in this part of Manchuria and adjacent Siberia. He would have to change roles to keep ahead of interrogation, but if he was simple and stupid and greedy enough, he might pass muster. He had decided to use his own middle name in its Russian version, and to present himself as Josif Nikodimovich Andreanov. If they asked him why a Uighur should have a Russian name, he could always give them some unpronounceables to worry over, and explain that he loved Russia so much that he took a Russian name.
Meanwhile, there were two jobs. First and urgently, he had to stay alive. Second and remotely, he had to get to Atomsk.
He let himself sag into the witless good nature of Josif Nikodimovich. Panting, he asked the Communist leader:
"Comrade boss, what is your name?"
The chief looked at him sharply and said, "Call me by the surname Wu."
"Comrade Wu, do we eat when we get to the village?"
"I eat," said Wu. "What you do, depends."
"I am getting hungry, comrade."
"If you had stayed with the Red Army, you would never have gotten hungry. When the whole world is glorious and rich like the Soviet Union, nobody will be hungry any more. You should have thought of that before you got left behind. How do I know that you're not a spy? You look like a Japanese to me."
Dugan-Andreanov was amused by the memory of Dugan-Hayashi, but he answered promptly, "All Japanese are running-dog turtles!"
The chief snorted a reluctant laugh. "You speak Chinese well."
"Poorly, comrade, poorly. But I have been behind the Fascist lines for more than two years and have had to stay hidden out with the common people. I was afraid that the Americans or the Kuomintang agents would notice me."
"At what place did you stay?"
Andreanov had a Mukden address ready, picked out of G-2 files in Tokyo. The neighborhood had been swept by several disastrous fires and was subjected to the no less fearsome Chinese labor draft. Its inhabitants were both poor and unsettled.
The leader said nothing.
They came to a point where the Japanese-built highway bridge had been. Its stone piers were still in position, but the steel I-beams had been pushed off into the river and the wooden superstructure presumably burned up as fuel. They left the road and followed the stream. Soon they came under the power lines. The wires between two pylons had been bunched together and a suspension bridge, one plank wide, had been hung from them.
The chief gestured for Dugan to go first, so as to remain covered. Dugan held back. "I am afraid of the electricity."
"No electricity in those wires. Go along."
"The bridge is not strong," Dugan whined. "Show me how to walk across it."
For answer he got a nudge with the Luger barrel.
It was not bad going, so long as he did not look down at the racing water forty feet below. The Chinese all crowded on the bridge after him. They had absolute reliance on the strength of the Japanese power cables overhead.
Once across, they went back upstream to return to the road.
Dugan panted, "Comrade, why is the big-road bridge destroyed?"
"We tore it down to keep the Fascists and Americans from invading us. You must know that the Americans want to enslave us even worse than the Japanese."
"So I have heard. But why not put explosives under the bridge so that you can keep on using it until you need to blow it up?"
"The little bridge is just as convenient."
"But if the electricity ever goes on, everybody on the little bridge will be killed."
"The electricity will not go on."
"How do you know, comrade? Somebody might connect a connection." Dugan sounded as plaintive as he could.
"You are a Soviet soldier. You should understand these things. Electricity must have a wire all the way. If the wire only goes part of the way, the spirit does not go through."
"But the wires are truly there. I saw them."
"They hang over the river, indeed," said the Chinese Communist chief, "but we took them down elsewhere. The wire was useful for other purposes."
"Why take it down? Why not use it for your own convenience? Put electricity through it."
"We have no make-electricity engines." said the chief. "The Red Army took them away to Siberia. When you go home you can send me one."
"It was the same in Mukden," said Dugan-Andreanov. "Everything was taken away by my Army. That way the Fascist beasts will never be able to use Manchuria. It would take twenty years for them to rebuild it. You are perfectly safe."
Dugan hoped that he could put an idea or two into the chief's head, and leave him a worse Communist than he had found him. But Wu did not take him seriously. He agreed. "It is good that Russia took everything away like that. We Chinese do not need them. We have not yet progressed sufficiently far toward socialism. Better for the workers of Russia to use the Japanese Fascist machinery than for the Kuomintang and the American capitalists to come into our country and enslave us because of them. You have heard of what the Americans do, haven't you?"
"Many things. All bad," said Dugan.
"True. They have the lin-ch'ing. They take a person who is not of their race and they have the crowd kill him for entertainment. They keep millions of Negroes in their country just for that purpose. Nobody is happy in America. They are the richest country in the world but they are so cruel and oppressive it would make you weep to think of it. They do not even let their people know the truth of Stalin."
"What is it?" asked Dugan, innocently.
Wu looked at him suspiciously. "You say you are a Red Army man but you do not know the truth of Stalin?"
Dugan trotted faster to come abreast of the chief. "In Russia we know so many truths about Stalin that we can never decide which one is the greatest or the most illuminating among them."
That pleased the Chinese Communist. "Wisely put."
Dugan asked, "Have you ever seen the Americans oppressing people?"
"Have not seen it," said Wu.
"I have," said Dugan, promptly, "and they are fiendishly clever. They pretend to be friendly. They give food to the children so as to contaminate them with capitalism. They send medicines all over the world. When I was in Mukden I heard that they were feeding the Japanese. Probably for the same bad purpose."
Wu said, "Very likely."
The road had wound up from the river to the crest of a low hill. All around them the day was clear. The fields were much larger than most Chinese or Japanese fields. There was something to the look of the land which reminded Dugan of Western Ohio. But the houses were small, poor, and huddled. Wu pointed. Ahead of them was a big village. Guardboxes stood along the highway, built years before for the convenience of the Japanese road patrol. Two or three brick buildings loomed up — probably the Japanese-built post office, police station, and school.
"Our headquarters," said Wu. "You are my prisoner, and I will take you there."
"Whatever the comrade says, just so long as we eat. I desire to eat. When I was in the Red Army, I had delicious American food all the time."
"You are lying," said Wu.
"I swear to you it is true. Excellent pork. Many remarkable delicacies. Even the trucks which brought the food were American. Estiudebakhers, we called them. The newspapers did not say much about it but our officers explained that it was an American trick. They wanted to feed us good food so that we would die willingly fighting the Germans without the Americans having to get killed."
"You yourself fought Germans?"
"I have never been in the West," said Dugan, naively, "and I wonder why the Americans fed me, too. After all, America is run by a few capitalists, so why do they worry if their working-class people are killed? And if they sent us food for a trick, it was a very stupid trick, because they sent us too much. Have you ever eaten the Espam?"
"E-ssu-p'angT
"The most delicious of all meats. The Americans sent us terrific quantities of it. We soldiers ate all that we wanted."
"But you always do anyhow, in Russia," said Wu.
"Nothing like the American food. Never so much. Never so good. Not for poor soldiers like me. I am no Russian. I am not in the police or a Guards division."
Wu said, mildly, "Some things surpass my understanding. You have been away from the Party too long. When we discuss Communist principles, you will be able to resolve such problems. Believe in Stalin and everything will be all right."
"Can we eat and talk at the same time?" asked Dugan.
"First we talk to the boss," said Wu.
They had come into the village and were approaching the police building. The Imperial Manchukuo insignia had been beaten off with hammers. Pictures of Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and Sun Yat-sen were hung in front. They were on weather-beaten canvas.
When Dugan looked down from the pictures, he got the surprise of his life.
A man was standing in the doorway. A white man. Wearing an American Army uniform with Air Force insignia and captain's bars on his shoulders.
He waved to them and Wu saluted.