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now productive of timber and skins, making good use of natural assets and giving work to the people; Khruschev’s ploy had apparently worked, making good conscientious Russian citizens from what had been an
idle pack of troublesome political pariahs. He should have been so lucky in other fields! Anyway, visits from controlling officialdom fell off in direct proportion to the scheme’s success.
    In fact, all the Jews had wanted was a little peace to follow their own whims and ways of life. The climate might change but they never would. There in their logging camps at the foot of the mountains they were now more or less content. At least they were not pestered and there was always more than enough left over to make the living good. Hard but good. They had all the timber they needed to build with in the summers and burn through the winters, meat aplenty, all the vegetables they could grow for themselves, even a growing fund of roubles from forbidden trading in furs. There was a little gold in the streams, for which they prospected and panned, occasionally with some success; the hunting and fishing were good, flexible work rosters ensured a fair distribution of labour, and everyone had a share in what was available of “prosperity” and the good things of life. Even the cold worked in their favour: it kept busybodies out and interference to a minimum.
    Several of the settlers were of Romanian stock with strong family ties in the Old Country. Their political views were not in accord with Mother Russia’s. Nor would they ever be—not until all oppression was removed and people could work and worship in their own way, and restrictions lifted so that they might emigrate at will. They were Jews and they were Ukranians who thought of themselves as Romanians, and given freedom of choice they might also have been Russians. But mainly they were people of the world and belonged to no one but themselves. Their children were brought up with the same beliefs and aspirations.
    In short, while many of the resettled families were simple peasants of no distinct political persuasion, there were a good many in the new villages and camps who
were anti-Communist and budding, even active fifth-columnists. They clung to their Romanian links and contacts, and similar groups in Romania had well-established links with the West.
    Mikhail Simonov—fully documented as a city-bred hothead and troublemaker, who’d been given the choice of becoming a pioneering Komsomol, or else—had gone to just such a family, the Kirescus of Yelizinka village, for employment as a lumberjack. Only old man Kazimir Kirescu himself, and his oldest son, Yuri, knew Jazz’s real purpose there at the foot of the Urals, and they covered for him to give him as much free time as possible. He was “prospecting” or “hunting” or “fishing”—but Kazimir and Yuri had known that in actual fact he was spying. And they’d also known what he was after, his mission: to discover the secret of the experimental military base down in the heart of the Perchorsk ravine.
    â€œYou’re not only risking your neck, you’re wasting your time,” the old man had told Jazz gruffly one night shortly after he took up lodgings with the Kirescus. Jazz remembered that night well; Anna Kirescu and her daughter Tassi had gone off to a women’s meeting in the village, and Yuri’s younger brother Kaspar was in bed asleep. It had been a good time for their first important talk.
    â€œYou don’t have to go there to know what’s going on in that place,” Kazimir had continued. “Yuri and I can tell you that, all right, as could most of the people in these parts if they’d a mind to.”
    â€œA weapon!” his great, lumbering, giant-hearted son, Yuri, had put in, winking and nodding his massive shaggy head. “A weapon like no one ever saw before, or ever could imagine, to make the Soviets strong