Blade was on the move for thirty-six hours out of the next forty-eight. He had sixty-three miles to cover, over terrain that held him to an average of less than two miles an hour. It was a matter of simple arithmetic to conclude that he had to keep going.
Blade moved steadily across the hills, with the agility of a mountain goat and with even more care for staying under cover. There wasn't much in these high, bare hills, but he used every bit he could find. There were not only the Russlanders to fear, there were the people of these hills, the herders and hermits who treated every stranger as an enemy. On the morning of the third day he walked down the last hill and five more miles through the forest, to his rendezvous with the Rodzmanian underground.
Blade's contact was a man named Piedar Goron, a logging engineer by profession. He could build or repair almost any building or machine that a logging camp might need-barracks, generators, spillways, even the great trucks that took the logs to the sawmills. A man that skilled had a good deal of freedom to come and go when and where he pleased, even under the rule of the Red Flames. Piedar Goron took full advantage of all that freedom, and a little bit more besides.
There were close to three hundred men in the underground network in this part of Rodzmania. Piedar Goron knew very few of them, and even fewer knew him. But he could give an order and know that it would reach all of them and be obeyed by all of them.
«The Red Flames may someday be able to figure out a way of dispensing with people like me,» said Goron. «But first they will have to find people who are both loyal to them and who are good engineers. Either that, or they will have to shut down most of the industry of Rodzmania. Neither will happen before all of us are many years older.»
Blade did not feel like replying. Whatever the Red Flames could or could not do in the end would make no difference to Piedar Goron. A man who put his life in danger as often as Goron did could not expect that life to be very long. Five years? Perhaps, with luck. Two years seemed more likely. If Goron had any children, they might live to see Rodzmania liberated from the Red Flames. He himself never would.
Goron handed Blade a mug of beer and drew one for himself. There was silence in the hut until both mugs were empty. Then Blade put his down and said, «Very well, I'm here. What do you say is next?»
Blade's briefing had covered a dozen different plans. He also knew that the choice among them could safely be made only with the help of the man on the spot.
Goron leaned back against the wall of the hut and lit his pipe. He made such a prolonged business of it that Blade began to suspect bad news. Goron only spoke after he'd taken several long draws on the pipe.
«There is no way any more to take you and Rilla out along Route Green. Two days ago the Russlanders sent a battalion of security troops into Dungorad and arrested nearly four hundred people.»
«How many of our-your people were among the four hundred?»
Goron shrugged. «The network in that area was so thoroughly disrupted that we do not even know that. I suspect we lost enough so that those who were not taken are lying very quiet for the time being. There might still be enough to support Route Green. But if the people are too frightened to even send reports, they will certainly be too frightened to help bring you out.»
That seemed likely. Flesh and blood could only stand so much, and when men and women had seen their neighbors dragged off in the middle of the night-well, what had happened was more or less inevitable.
«What about the other routes?»
«I think we would do well to rule out both Red and Gold,» said Goron. «They both run through the same province as Green, and I would recommend against going anywhere near it at the moment. We have a reliable report that two Russland rifle divisions have moved into the province.»
Two rifle divisions was enough to comb the province town by town and practically house by house. It meant somebody fairly high up in the Red Flame command was giving the orders.
It also meant two fewer rifle divisions the Eighth Army would be facing on the Gallic front. Fine. But that would not be much help to Blade and Rilla if they were caught, tortured, and shot while trying to make their way through those two divisions!
«All right. We'll cancel Red and Gold too. That leaves only Purple. Is it your recommendation?»
«Yes. We have also had to develop a new variation for Route Purple. This has not been transmitted to Englor, so you would not know of it.»
«When will I learn it?» said Blade.
«You and Rilla will still make your rendezvous with the escort at one of three established pickups-either nineteen, twenty-two, or twenty-nine. Twenty-two is prime, the others are backups. You will be briefed on Route Purple Two when you have met your escort.»
«I see,» said Blade. The local underground was imposing its own more rigorous standards of security. There would be mutterings in Englor when word of this got back there. But the local people were in the right. They knew better what were the dangers and what were the necessary precautions. A route that Special Operations HQ did not know was a route that no spy there could expose. A route that Blade himself did not know was a route he could not reveal under torture.
Of course this could make things awkward for Blade and Rilla. If they missed all three of the pickup points, they would have no way of learning how to get to the new extraction point at the far end of Route Purple Two. On the other hand, if all three pickup points were out, it would almost certainly mean the Red Flames had moved in. There would be no Route Purple left. Then the most likely route out of Rodzmania for Blade and Rilla would be through the poison capsules Blade carried in his pack.
«All right,» said Blade. It wasn't completely satisfactory, but then people who liked completely satisfactory solutions didn't often go into espionage work. «We'll use Route Purple Two.»
Chapter 13
Richard Blade lay on his stomach under a bush. He wore Russland Ground Forces camouflage battledress with the insignia of a Senior Sergeant in the Security Forces. He carried a Degorov automatic pistol in an imitation-leather shoulder holster. In fact, everything on his body was standard Russland issue. No one looking at him would be able to tell that he was not what he seemed.
The only unusual item of equipment was the pair of binoculars Blade held to his eyes. They were a compact pair, magnifying six times and including a range finder and an infrared attachment. They were rather more sophisticated than anything the Red Flames had. Anyone examining them closely would quickly realize that Blade was certainly not what he seemed.
Nobody was likely to try to make that close examination. Here in Rodzmania, even a private of the Russland Security Forces was a figure to inspire terror or at least discourage casual curiosity. Even senior officers of the Security Administration frequently carried out important missions disguised as junior officers, civil servants, or NCOs. Not even regular Russland military personnel were likely to ask embarrassing questions of men in Security insignia.
So Blade was confident of his chances of moving around freely and safely. Of course he might meet some real Security troops. That was always possible in any land where the Red Flames ruled. But the nearest large Security bases were on the Russland border sixty miles away in one direction, and in the town of Karbo ninety miles away in another. Here in the resort country it would be very bad luck to meet anything more formidable than Ground Forces men on leave or local Rodzmanian constables, who would not be willing to have anything at all to do with any Russlander if they could possibly help it.