“I am not sure how much Becker made clear to you,” he began.
“Very little. I am frank about that. He told of the … Rufus Institute? ; . . in America and how it wanted to study persons who … can expect to live for many years. The interest in history—there are more measures of intelligence than that. I went away feeling very unsure. When you telephoned from across the ocean, I wondered whether to make this appointment. But I will hear you, Mr. Cauldwell.”
“I am the man who founded the Institute.”
She studied him. “You must be rich.”
He nodded. “Yes.” Himself alert for any clue whatsoever: “I am a great deal older than I look.”
Did the breath hiss inward between her teeth? “To me you seem young.”
“As you do to me. May I ask your age?”
“I told Mr. Becker.” Starkness stood forth. “No doubt he, or you, or a detective of yours checked the public records.”
He lifted a palm. “Hold on. Please. We both need to be honest, but let’s not push ahead too hard. AlJow me a few questions. You are Russian by birth?”
“Ukrainian. I reached Denmark in 1950. By now I am naturalized.”
He made his lips shape a soundless whistle. “Almost forty years ago, and you must have been adult then.”
Her grin was taut. “You are searching for people who age slowly, no? How old are you, Mr. Cauldwell?”
“I wonder if we shouldn’t postpone that subject a while,” he said carefully.
“Perhaps … we … should.” Both of them shivered.
“I don’t want to pry,” he said, “but I had better know. Are you married? I am not, currently.”
The flaxen head shook. “Nor I. I have not married in this country. I got permission to change my last name. ‘Olga’ is common enough in Denmark, but the rest of it, nobody could spell or pronounce.”
“And ‘Rasmussen’ here is like ‘Smith’ in the USA. You didn’t want to be more conspicuous than you could help, did you?”
“Not at first. Things have changed since.” She sighed. “I have wondered lately if I might even go back, now when they say the terror has been ended. Never a day but I have longed for my motherland.”
“You could have too much explaining to do.”
“Probably. I did go away as a refugee, an outlaw.”
That was not precisely what I meant, he thought; and I suspect she realizes it.
“The Danish government knows, down in its archives,” she proceeded. “I said little to Mr. Becker, but you may as well hear. During the war I was a soldier in the Red Army. Many Ukrainians wanted to be free—of Stalin or of the Soviet Union itself, because we are the old, true Russians. Kiev was the seed and the roofof the whole Russian nation. The Moskaly came later. Many of us welcomed the Germans for liberators. That was a terrible mistake, but how could anybody know, when for more than twenty years all we heard was lies or silence? Some men enlisted with Hitler. I never did, I tell you. One resists the invader, whoever he is. But when the Germans retreated, they left parts of the Ukraine in revolt. Stalin needed years to crush it. Have you heard this?”
“I know something about it,” he said bleakly. “If I remember aright, the resistance movement had a headquarters in Copenhagen. Just the same, hardly a word about what was happening got into the liberal—“ no, in Europe “liberal” retained its original meaning—“the Western establishment press.”
“I had been discharged, but I had friends, kinsmen, people of mine in the rebellion. Some openly fought, some were sympathizers who gave what help they could whenever they dared. I knew I was under suspicion. If I did not soon betray somebody to Stalin’s secret police, they would come for me. Then it would be the labor camp or the bullet in the head or worse.” Anguish reawakened. “But how could I join the rebels? How could I shoot at Russian soldiers, my comrades of the war? I fled. I made my way to the West.”
“That was an awesome doing,” he said, altogether sincerely. It had meant hunger, thirst, hiding, running, walk-big, slipping past guard posts, surviving on what scraps of food she chanced to find, for a thousand miles and more.