Bagnall snapped off a couple of shots at them as they ran, to no visible effect. “They’re going to flank us out,” he said in dismay.

Then another rifle spoke, from behind him and to his right. One of the running men dropped his weapon and crashed to earth as if he’d been sapped. That unexpected rifle cracked again. The second runner went down, too, with a cry of pain that floated over the flat, grassy land.

He tried to crawl to cover, but Bagnall fired twice more at him. One of the bullets must have hit, for the fellow lay quiet and motionless after that.

One of the Estonians behind the outbuilding popped up to shoot. Before he could, the rifleman behind the RAF men squeezed off another round. The Estoman crumpled. He must have dropped his rifle, for it fell where Bagnall could see it. “We have a friend,” he said. “I wonder if he’s Russian or German.” He looked back over his shoulder, but couldn’t see anyone.

The man in the farmhouse who’d fired first-or perhaps someone else using the same window-fired again. At what seemed the same instant, the marksman behind Bagnall also fired. An arm dangled limply from the window till it was dragged back inside.

“Whoever that is back there, he’s a bloody wonder,” Embry said. The Estomans evidently thought the same thing. One of them behind the outbuilding waved a white cloth. “We have a wounded man here,” he called in oddly accented German. “Will you let us take him back to the house?”

“Go ahead,” Bagnall said after a moment’s hesitation. “Will you let us back up and go around you? We didn’t want this fight in the first place.”

“You may do that,” the Estonian answered. “Maybe you are not who we thought you were.”

“Maybe you should have found out about that before you tried blowing our heads off,” Bagnall said. “Go on now, but remember, we have you in our sights-and so does our friend back there.”

Still waving the cloth, the Estonian picked up his fallen comrade’s rifle and slung it on his back. He and his hale companion dragged the wounded man toward the farmhouse. By the limp way he hung in their arms, he was badly hurt.

While they did that, Bagnall and his companions crawled backwards, not fully trusting the truce to which they’d agreed. But the Estonians in the house and barn evidently wanted no more of them. Bagnall realized he was withdrawing in the direction of the rifleman who’d bailed them out of that tight spot. Softly, he called,“Danke sehr,” and then, to cover all bases,“Spasebo.”

“Nye za chto-you’re welcome,” came the answer: he’d guessed right the second time. That wasn’t what made his jaw drop foolishly, though. He’d expected whatever answer he got to be baritone, not creamy contralto.

Jerome Jones yelped like a puppy with its tail caught in a door. “Tatiana!” he exclaimed, and went on in Russian, “What are you doing here?”

“Never mind that now,” the sniper answered. “First we go around that house full of anti-Soviet reactionaries, since you Englishmen were foolish enough to give them quarter.”

“How do you know they aren’t anti-fascist patriots?” Embry asked in a mixture of German and Russian.

Tatiana Pirogova let out an annoyed snort. “They are Estonians, so they must be anti-Soviet.” She spoke as if stating a law of nature. Bagnall didn’t feel inclined to quarrel with her, not after what she’d just done for them.

She didn’t say anything else as she led the RAF men on a long loop around the farmhouse. It went slowly; none of them dared stand while they might still be in rifle range. The house and barn, though, remained as silent as if uninhabited. Bagnall wished they had been.

At last, cat-wary, Tatiana got to her feet. The Englishmen followed her lead, grunting with relief. “How did you come upon us at just the right moment?” Bagnall asked her, taking her rising as giving him leave to speak.

She shrugged. “I left two days after you. You were not traveling very fast. And so-there I was. In half an hour’s time-less, maybe-I would have hailed you if the shooting had not started.”

“What about-Georg Schultz?” Jerome Jones asked-hesitantly, as if half fearing her reply.

She shrugged again, with magnificent indifference. “Wounded-maybe dead. I hope dead, but I am not sure. He is strong.” She spoke with grudging respect. “But he thought he could do with me as he pleased. He was wrong.” She patted the barrel of her telescopically sighted rifle to show how wrong he was.

“What will you do now?” Bagnall asked her.

“Get you safe to the sea,” she answered. “After that? Who knows? Go back and kill more Germans around Pskov, I suppose.”

“Thank you for coming this far to look after us,” Bagnall said. Odd to think of Tatiana Pirogova, sniper extraordinaire (had he been inclined to doubt that, which he wasn’t, the affair at the farmhouse would have proved her talents along those lines), with a mother-hen complex, but she seemed to have one. Now he hesitated before continuing, “If we can lay hold of a boat, you’re welcome-more than welcome-to come to England with us.”

He wondered if she’d get angry; he often wondered that when he dealt with her. Instead, she looked sad and-most unlike the Tatiana he thought he knew-confused. At last she said, “You go back to yourrodina, your motherland. So that is right for you. But this”-she stamped a booted foot down on the sickly green grass-“this is myrodina. I will stay and fight for it.”

The Estonians she’d shot had thought this particular stretch of ground was part of their motherland, not hers. The Germans in Kohtla-Jarve undoubtedly thought of it as an extension of theirVaterland. All the same, he took her point.

He nodded off toward the west, toward the smoke that never stopped rising from Kohtla-Jarve. “What do they make there, that they have to keep it hidden from the Lizards no matter what?” he asked.

“They squeeze oil out of rocks in some way,” Tatiana answered. “We have been doing that for years, we and then the reactionary Estonian separatists. I suppose the fascists found the plants in working order, or they may have repaired them.”

Bagnall nodded. That made sense. Petroleum products were doubly precious these days. Any place the Germans could get their hands on such, they would.

“Come,” Tatiana said, dismissing the Germans as a distraction. She set off with a long, swinging stride that was a distraction in itself and gave some justification to her claim the RAF men traveled slowly.

They reached the Baltic a couple of hours later. It looked unimpressive: gray water rolling up and back over mud. Even so, Jerome Jones, imitating Xenophon’s men, called out,“Thalassa! Thalassa!” Bagnall and Embry both smiled, recognizing the allusion. Tatiana shrugged it off. Maybe she thought it was English. To her, that tongue was as alien as Greek.

Perhaps half a mile to the west, a little village squatted by the sea. Bagnall felt like cheering when he saw a couple of fishing boats pulled up onto the beach. Another, despite the early hour, was already out on the Baltic.

Dogs barked as the RAF men and Tatiana came into the village. Fishermen and their wives stepped out of doors to stare at them. Their expressions ranged from blank to hostile. In German, Bagnall said, “We are three English fliers. We have been trapped in Russia for more than a year. We want to go home. Can any of you sail us to Finland? We do not have much, but we will give you what we can.”

“Englishmen?” one of the fishermen said, with the same strange accent the Estonian fighters had had. Hostility melted. “I will take you.” A moment later, someone else demanded the privilege.

“Didn’t expect to be quarreled over,” Embry murmured as the villagers hashed it out. The fellow who’d spoken first won the argument. He ducked back into his home, reemerging with boots and knitted wool cap, then escorted them to his boat.