He had seen no path, felt no path underfoot.
Dugan froze against the trunk of the tree, breathing lightly and quietly.
The footsteps stopped, almost beneath him, and a perfectly clear man's voice said, in good Russian, "It sounds like sabotage to me."
XI. PURSUIT OF THE LOVERS
Dugan began tying his supply bag to the tree trunk. He had an advantage over the two of them, whoever they were; even if they were armed, he stood an excellent chance of putting them both out of action by luring them over to the tree with some odd but minor animal noise and dropping on them. He kept waiting for the second person to answer, but all he could hear was a soft sigh, singularly out of place in this fortressed woodland.
The first voice spoke again, in a much gentler tone: "I didn't mean it to sound cruel, darling… It was just a joke."
Dugan could not make out the answer, but it was a woman's voice, insistent, half-whispering, urgent. The man said, "Well, at least let us get off the path. The sentry is apt to be along any minute and what would he think if he saw the officer of the guard with a lovely girl like you?"
The two of them moved under Dugan's tree. Dugan, high up, grinned to himself like a triumphant ape. This was the way he liked espionage to go! Everybody cooperating.
The man and girl went on with their lovers' quarrel. Dugan gradually put their identities together. She was Irina Ivanovna Dekanosova, which would — by the Russian custom of using the father's Christian name as a modified middle name — make her the daughter of Ivan Dekanosov.
Old Dekanosov was, or had been, an expert engineer. He was in some kind of trouble, serious enough to make him an outcast, not serious enough to get him shot.