The Blue-Eyed Shan by Stephen; Becker

won’t slow us up. The basement here is like a department store. I bashed in a door and there it was. American leftovers somebody forgot to sell off.”
    â€œNo champagne, I suppose? A hamper of cold chicken and a few bottles of Mumm’s. A picnic at the border, while Lin Piao sulks because he wasn’t invited.”
    â€œI always preferred Bollinger,” Olevskoy said, “about five years old. Never trust a champagne over ten or twelve years old. Here we are. And one for the whore.” To the girl he said, “Whisky. You know whisky?”
    The girl’s gaze darted from man to man. She nodded hesitantly and then astonished them: she giggled.
    â€œTo victory,” Olevskoy said.
    â€œNot funny.”
    â€œNo.” Olevskoy drank off the small cupful. “To defeat, then.”
    â€œTo defeat.”
    â€œFuneral baked meats and Scotch whisky.”
    â€œâ€˜Did coldly furnish forth the marriage table.’ You remind me of Hamlet, you know. You look as I always imagined him.”
    â€œAnd why not? Am I not a prince? And my ancestors were Scandinavian.” Olevskoy accepted a cigarette.
    Yang’s brow rose. “You never told me that last.”
    â€œThe original Russians were a Swedish tribe. My line goes back to Ivan Kalita Moneybag—”
    â€œYou cannot be serious.”
    â€œI never joke about my family. You can look it up. And from Ivan back to Nevsky, Vsevolod, Igor and Rurik.”
    Yang said, “Mon Dieu.”
    â€œGood idea. We ought to stick to French now. March into Tonkin chattering away like Parisians.”
    The men replenished their cups. The girl sat like a child at a puppet show, only sipping from time to time. Olevskoy raised his cup and said, “Tonkin!”
    General Yang raised his and said, “Pawlu!”
    Olevskoy checked. “What the devil is that?”
    â€œNot ‘what,’” Yang said. “‘Where.’ Pawlu is a place. It is a small, happy village either in China or in Burma, and it is where we are going, and for once in our lives we shall visit decent people and do no harm.”
    The argument lasted half an hour; the quarrel for the rest of their lives. Olevskoy stormed off with his juvenile concubine and appeased anger, lust and ennui at once by taking her in cold fury; she seemed to respond, which eased him, and when she breathed finally, “Ah! Foreign devil!” he chose to take the hackneyed compliment for truth. Calmer, he joined his fellow officers at the evening meal and made small talk correctly. A prisoner, he learned, had been taken, a sniper, and was under guard in the former laundry.
    General Yang’s kidney had commenced to twinge again.
    The Red Bandits seemed to be regrouping; at any rate there were no reports of lightning dashes or encirclements.
    Olevskoy rose when the general rose; the formal nod, replacing bows and salutes among this motley command, was offered; Olevskoy retired to nurse his grudges, helpless now short of outright mutiny, doomed to a mysterious and primitive village called Pawlu instead of the cosmopolitan Hanoi he longed for, the vin rouge and the poules de luxe and perhaps a commission in the Legion.
    At the third dawn of this fleeting conquest the occupying troops assembled in the grand plaza before the governor’s yamen. Rolls were called. One hundred and two men remained. Also thirteen vehicles of which seven were rachitic or tubercular. Arms and ammunition galore, another irony: they might never again fire a shot in anger. Olevskoy carried the carbine and the American .45, being fond of the latter. The Luger, he felt, was grossly overestimated. An American .45 stopped anything. This he proved before the caravan moved out.
    General Yang received reports with satisfaction, saw personally to the safe stowage of fuel, and delivered a pithy lecture on smoking in the vicinity of same: he would personally execute any man found smoking within ten