"Maybe we can break Vassily's hold on him," said Anna.
"You don't think so," said Remo.
"How do you know?"
"You didn't say it like you meant it. Well, let's get on with it."
Getting into Russia was not nearly as difficult as getting out. Nobody ever tried to break in, least of all from its surrounding countries. Anna insisted they not go through formal channels on the entrance even though she had the highest clearance. They reached Dulsk in a day.
"It would have taken us a week, if the Russian government authorized speedy entrance," she said. "I don't know why your intellectuals find communism so attractive. Couldn't they imagine everything run by your post office?"
The road leading to Dulsk was like a strip of asphalt through Kansas, a rutted strip of asphalt. Anna kept looking at the road and then at the map and then saying, "Good, I thought so."
"You mean it's a big deal to find someplace here?"
"No, no. I came from a village not unlike Dulsk. And yet, I think it was very much unlike Dulsk. I am hoping it was unlike Dulsk."
She looked up ahead.
"How far can you see, Remo?"
"Farther than you."
"What do you see ahead on the road?"
"Road," said Remo.
"What kind of road?"
"Like the one we're on. Asphalt."
"Wonderful. I thought so. I thought so."
"What's wonderful?"
"The answer to Vassily Rabinowitz' powers. They just may not be so exceptional. I want to warn you now, threaten no one in the village, and absolutely do not let anyone know I am an official of the Russian government. We will say we are friends of Vassily Rabinowitz, who has sent us. That is the only reason we are entering Dulsk. Do you understand?"
"Not a word," said Remo. What could a road have to do with an answer to extraordinary hypnotic powers?
On the side of the road, Remo stopped at what looked like a farm stand. He didn't know they had them in Russia. Several tractors sat in the fields, with men sleeping on them. In one small dark patch of earth several people labored with perspiration dripping off them.
"Those are private lots. The tractors are part of the collective. We send them new tractors every year because the old ones rust."
"Don't they oil them?"
"Sometimes, but basically they just drive them out into the middle of the field to look as though they are busy, and if a government official comes along they start them up again. Many of those tractors have never been in first or second gear since they drove them there."
"It looked automated," said Remo.
"It is. Some genius of a man came up with a report that automation does not improve farming. He should have said that it does not improve farming in Russia."
At the roadside stand, Anna bought some potatoes and bread and a piece of meat wrapped in an old used slab of wax paper.
She smelled the meat.
"Almost fresh," she said. "Good meat."
"Why are you buying that?"
"You want to eat dinner, don't you?"
"They don't have restaurants?"
"Certainly they do. Do you want to drive to Moscow?" The roadside stand was actually a converted tiller which someone had found could hold vegetables if all the blades were flattened. It also prevented it from rolling around and made it quite steady.
Remo looked at the meat. He shook his head. He didn't want to eat dinner.
With every asphalted mile of road passing underneath their car, Anna became happier. She even sang Remo some of the songs from her childhood. He could see she loved her country, even though it was populated by fifty percent men. The male population did not bother her. It was the way it ran things that bothered her.
"What is so important about an asphalt road?" Remo asked.
"Ah," said Anna. "You would not see it because you're an American, precisely because you're an American."
"Right. I don't see it. A road is a road."
"In America, Remo. But in Russia, a dirt strip is a road. A muddy length of roughly flattened area without trees is a road. A bumpy asphalt strip here is a major highway."
"So? So there's a major highway to Dulsk," said Remo.
"That is where I have you at a special disadvantage. Do you know what Dulsk produces?"
"Sure, every American studies the economy of Dulsk in grade school," said Remo. The car they were using was a rackety oil-leaking imitation of an American 1949 Nash, a car that had not survived the competition. It was communism's claim that they were more efficient because they didn't produce a hundred different kinds of things when one product would do.
In a way they were right. It did make sense. But the reality was that there were very few cars in Russia and they all stank. As Sinanju always maintained, logic was not the greatest strength of the human mind.
"Even if you lived in Russia, Remo, you would know of no major thing that ever came out of Dulsk. Dulsk is one of our many backward little villages, without electricity, without paved roads, and which tourists are never allowed to visit."
"But we are on a paved road," said Remo.
"Exactly. How did Dulsk manage to get one? More important, on this major road, why was there no major battle fought between us and the Germans in World War II?''
"The front moved back and forth here many times, Remo, but I have yet to read a report of a major battle."
"So?"
"So use your brain, Remo, even if male hormones are flowing through it," said Anna. "Think. Think. What are we here for? Why do we come to Dulsk to find a way to stop Vassily Rabinowitz? Why have I been saying the answer is here?"