f age. The
skirt she was wearing was probably Russian, it looked sturdy and
durable, but the sweater was one of the new American fabrics. Her
shoes were probably western too, the latest flared heel effect. A
typical _stilyagi_ or _metrofanushka_ girl, he assumed. Except for one
thing--her eyes were cool and alert, intelligent beyond those of a
street pickup.

Paco said, "What do you think, Hank? This one will come back to the
hotel with me."

"Romeo, Romeo," Hank sighed, "wherefore do thou think thou art?"

Paco shrugged. "What's the difference? Buenos Aires, New York,
Moscow. Women are women."

"And men are evidently men," Hank said. "You do what you want."

"O.K., friend. Do you mind staying out of the room for a time?"

"Don't worry about me, but you'll have to get rid of Loo, and he
hasn't had his eighteen hours sleep yet today."

Paco had his girl by the arm. "I'll roll him into the hall. He'll
never wake up."

Hank's girl made a moue at him, shrugged as though laughing off the
fact that she had been rejected, and disappeared into the crowds. Hank
stuck his hands in his pockets and went on with his stroll.

The contact with the underground had been made.

* * * * *

Maintaining his front as an American tourist he wandered into several
stores, picked up some amber brooches at a bargain rate, fingered
through various books in English in an international bookshop. That
was one thing that hit hard. The bookshops were packed. Prices were
remarkably low and people were buying. In fact, he'd never seen a
country so full of people reading and studying. The park benches were
loaded with them, they read as the rode on streetcar and bus, they
read as they walked along the street. He had an uneasy feeling that
the jet-set kids were a small minority, that the juvenile delinquent
problem here wasn't a fraction what it was in the West.

He'd expected to be followed. In fact, that had puzzled him when he
first was given this unwanted assignment by Sheridan Hennessey. How
was he going to contact this so-called underground if he was watched
the way he had been led to believe Westerners were?

But he recalled their conducted tour of the Hermitage Museum in
Leningrad. The Intourist guide had started off with twenty-five
persons and had clucked over them like a hen all afternoon. In spite
of her frantic efforts to keep them together, however, she returned to
the Astoria Hotel that evening