CHAPTER FOUR
_East of Darkness_
As one man, Dave Dawson and Freddy Farmer swiveled around in theirchairs and stared expectantly at the chief of the American Intelligenceservices. He did not return their look for a moment or two, however. AsAir Vice-Marshal Leman had done once or twice, he scowled silently offinto space as though thinking up the exact words he wanted to say.Eventually, he seemed to decide on them, and leveled grave eyes at thetwo youthful airmen.
"Just as Air Vice-Marshal Leman has said," he began slowly, "what littlewe know of all this Tobolsk business is practically useless without theother half of it. It was the worse kind of luck for Agent Jones not tocatch the name of the man he was supposed to contact in Tobolsk. True,Tobolsk is well behind the Nazi lines at the moment. And also, it isquite possible that he may be dead. As a matter of fact, we have everyreason to believe that this unnamed man is dead, or at any rate, thathe no longer lives in Tobolsk."
"And what do you mean by that, sir?" Dave wanted to know when the otherdidn't continue at once.
"From certain developments that have recently come to light," theColonel replied. "From--well, from the American angle of this crazy,mixed up mystery. Contrary to general belief, Yank Intelligence was morethan a little active long before the Japs pulled the knife on PearlHarbor. We knew just as sure as the earth grew little apples that UncleSam would be in this war up to his ears before very long. So we did whatwe could, short of causing the State Department to come down on us withboth feet. And--well, to use an expression that groans with age, itcertainly is a small world. And there is nothing so baffling, or sohelpful, as coincidence. It pops up in the darnedest places, if you getwhat I mean?"
"I can guess close enough, I think, sir," Dave said with a grin."Tobolsk again?"
"Take a bow, son," Colonel Welsh grinned back at him. "You just abouthit that nail right on the head. Tobolsk again is correct. One of myagents was working with Russian Intelligence until a few days ago. Hewas actually on the lease-lend end of the business, on the look-out forsabotage along the supply routes leading up through Iraq and Iran fromthe Red Sea. Well, to get on with the actual story, he was on his wayfrom Baku to Moscow by air when the plane he was in ran smack into astorm, came out of it nobody knew just where, and bumped head on into aflock of German Messerschmitts. And the plane--it was a Russiancraft--got shot down. My agent was the only one who came out of thecrash alive. He must have been born under a lucky star, because hedidn't so much as receive even a goose egg on his head, or a scratch anyplace.
"The aircraft crashed just before dark, and my agent didn't have thefaintest idea where he was, save that he was in the middle of somewoods. Anyway, he used his head and put as much distance as he couldbetween himself and the crashed plane. But after a while it got so darkthat he couldn't tell but what he might be just going around in circles.At least he realized that he was still in the woods. So he sat down towait out the night. And lucky for him he did. When daylight came again,he saw to his horror that he was less than a hundred yards from the endof the woods, and an equal distance from a German panzer divisionobviously camped and resting up from recent action at the front.Naturally, he realized then that he was well behind the Nazi lines. Buthe still didn't know at what part of the front."
Colonel Welsh paused and smiled grimly.
"There he was smack in the middle of the Germans, and wearing a suit ofclothes he had bought in Moscow a month before," he continued presently."It so happened that he didn't have any money. Nor did he have a gun ofany kind. All he had on his person were identification papers that wouldhave slapped him up against a firing squad wall five seconds after theNazis got their hands on him. So his first job was to destroy all hisidentification papers. And his second job to make sure the Nazis didn'tlay hands on him. Well, we can skip the next few days. He spent all ofthem, nights included, dodging Nazi patrols, and getting out from underthe hand of Death reaching for him. And then came the night ofcoincidence, we'll call it.
"He was groping his way northward across a field, with the idea ofsomehow slipping through the Nazi positions to the Russian side, whensuddenly the ground seemed just to drop out from underneath him. Oneinstant he was groping his way along, and the next he was out cold as aniced fish. When he opened his eyes again he found himself in the cellarof a bomb and shell blasted farm house. He was stretched out on a smellymattress, and a couple of thread-bare blankets were over him. He tookstock of what was what and realized instantly that he wasn't in Nazihands. Nazis don't give blankets to prisoners they pick up at night.Anyway, my agent decided to stay right where he was, and wait forwhatever was to happen next. And a body full of aches and pains helpedhim a lot to decide to do just that."
The Chief of U.S. Intelligence let his words come to a halt, and it wasall Dawson and Freddy Farmer could do to refrain from telling him tohurry up and get on with the rest. They held their tongues, however, andwaited with pounding hearts and tingling nerves.
"An hour or so later," Colonel Welsh finally continued, "an old man camedown into the cellar holding a chipped bowl of some steaming liquid. Itproved to be a bitter kind of tree root broth, but just the same ittasted mighty good to my agent. He accepted it, and drank it downwithout a word. Then he took a good look at this man and saw that hewasn't so old after all. He was no older than my agent, but war had madehim look three times his true age. My agent's first questions wereconcerning what had happened to him, and how he had come to be there. Myagent, of course, spoke Russian, but it developed that this man with theroot broth spoke English, too. The long and short of it was that in thedark my agent had simply stepped down an uncovered, abandoned well. Whyhe hadn't broken his neck is something that nobody will ever be able toexplain. Anyway, this man, who said he was a Russian, and named IvanNikolsk, said that he had found my agent at the bottom of the well. Andthat he was about to shovel dirt in on top of him, thinking him to be aNazi, when he saw that my agent's clothes were Russian made. So hehoisted my agent up out of the well and took him down into the cellar.And that was that. Nikolsk simply believed that he was saving the lifeof a brother Russian. And he'd hide him from the Nazis, who were allabout, at least until he'd found out more about the man whom he hadpulled from the abandoned well."
The Colonel paused to shrug slightly, and make a littlethis-probably-sounds-nuts gesture with one hand.
"Well, the two of them started talking back and forth, of course," heresumed his story presently, "and my agent learned a few things abouthis lifesaver. One, that Nikolsk had been born in Moscow but had livedmost of his life in Germany. And two, that Nikolsk had almost lost hislife in a railroad train wreck just before the invasion of Poland. Andthree, that--"
"Good grief!" Freddy Farmer interrupted with a gasp. "The same chap thatAgent Jones met!"
"One and the same," Colonel Welsh admitted with a nod. "He told my agenthow he had been arrested by the Nazis and thrown into prison, where healmost died as the result of his train wreck injuries. But he survived,somehow. He survived the questioning and beatings he received. And, likeJones, he refused to let a Nazi internment camp finish him off for good.He managed to escape almost three years later and make his way out ofGermany, and across German-occupied Poland and German-occupied Russia tothe little village of Tobolsk. There he hoped to meet a life-longfriend. But he never met him. When Nikolsk finally arrived, his friend,and most of the village's inhabitants, had simply disappeared from theface of the earth. But--"
Colonel Welsh leaned forward slightly and tapped a forefinger on thedesk top.
"Ivan Nikolsk had survived things that you could not even put intowords, for there are no words in any language to describe themadequately," he said. "But though he came out of it all with his life,he came out of it with only part of his brain. It didn't take my agentlong to see that Nikolsk went off the beam completely every now andthen. He would be making sense, when suddenly his speech would startrambling all over the place. And even then, almost a year later, he hadthe certain belief that his
friend would return to Tobolsk, and he wouldbe able to see him."
"Did he tell your agent _why_ he wanted to see his friend?" Dawson askedeagerly.
"No," Colonel Welsh replied. "That's one of the questions he wouldn'tanswer, though my agent asked it more than once as he heard more andmore of the strange story. It's funny, but though Nikolsk had saved myagent's life, and believed him definitely on Russia's side, he couldn'tget it out of his head that my agent might rob him of his great secret.Yes, you're guessing it. Nikolsk's secret knowledge of the Nazi warplan that he had learned while in Germany. Oddly enough, he told myagent every detail of his meeting with Agent Jones. Of how he had tornthe secret information in half, given half to Jones, and destroyed thehalf that he kept. He told my agent all that, but he wouldn't tell him_one word_ of what the information was about. And do you know _why_?"
"Didn't trust your agent, obviously," Freddy Farmer spoke up.
"Yes, that's my guess, too," Dawson added.
"No," Colonel Welsh said with a vigorous shake of his head. "True, hedidn't tell my agent what his half of the information was because he wasafraid of being betrayed. But he wouldn't reveal anything about theother half--_because he had forgotten it_!"
"Forgotten it, for cat's sake!" Dawson exploded. "But--?"
"Just what I am about to explain," Colonel Welsh cut in. "He swore blindthat what he knew was of no use at all without the half that he hadgiven to Jones. And to get it all together he had to see either Jones orhis friend. He felt that Jones was dead, but--but he still held to thecrazy belief that his friend would return to Tobolsk one day, and thattogether they would place in Joseph Stalin's hands something morevaluable than a hundred armored divisions, or a thousand squadrons ofaircraft!"
As the echo of the last died away, a tingling silence settled over theroom. Dawson had the insane urge to pinch himself hard just to make surehe wasn't sleeping through a very cockeyed dream. He knew, and had seenfor himself, many of the upside down things that come out of war. Butthis dizzy tale was a new high for everything. When he tried to mull itover, and gain some sense from it, it simply made his brain hurt.
"This is certainly something, sir," he mumbled, and gave the Colonel asearching look. "And you are going to say that your agent didn't learn adarn thing, and had to leave it that way? Gosh! I think I would haveslung Nikolsk over my shoulder and high-tailed to Moscow as fast as Icould, and counted on Joseph Stalin, himself, getting him to talk."
"Don't worry," the Colonel said, with a grim, smile, "my agent thoughtof that idea, too. But, of course, it was impossible. He even suggestedthe idea, but Nikolsk would have no part of it. He insisted that whatlittle he might be able to tell Stalin wouldn't help at all. He _had_to wait for either his friend, or Agent Jones, to turn up. And he wasgoing to park right there in Tobolsk, keeping out of the way of theNazis, until either of those things happened."
"So I would say," Freddy Farmer spoke up as though talking to himselfaloud, "that this friend was the _third_ man who possessed part of theoriginal information. Either that, or Nikolsk had sent another copy ofall of it to him, in case something should happen to him. And Jonesshowing up with a torn half would prove to the friend that Nikolsk wasfinished. And--"
"No doubt the truth of the matter, Farmer," Air Vice-Marshal Leman tookup the talking. "This friend was in the know about some of the business,if not all of it, no doubt. But Moscow had received not one single word,which proves what we fear. Namely, that Nikolsk's friend is dead, andwill never return to Tobolsk."
"But there is still Agent Jones!" Dawson cried eagerly.
Colonel Welsh and Air Vice-Marshal Leman exchanged a long look. And itwas the R.A.F. Intelligence chief who finally spoke.
"Yes," he said softly. "There is still Agent Jones."