Ramil, Hanna, thanks for your excellent feedabck. I'm currently working through the points Ramil made, I'm about in the middle of the second post. Definitely a lot of changes are to come.

About consulate...I don't think Peter as a true American would know whether there is a consulate or an embassy or must or must not there be one in Minsk at all. He's never gotten involved in such stuff and he just doesn't know so he acts naturally, trying to do what he can do even though there was no American representative in the city. Minsk is the capital of Belarus, btw. Sort of a large city.

About suspiciosness and stuff -- yeah I agree, but there was no way to call authorities in a godforsaken hamlet at that time. Only a local policeman, and definitely not in the middle of the night. So the old man would definitely call him in the morning if not for the war. Maybe later I'll run the local policeman and Peter into each other. But then, they had to let him in, I think. And only then try to call a policeman. I guess I should make this point in the story somehow but I simply don't know how. Peter doesn't speak Russian so he can't be aware of what the Russians say. Maybe the argument of the old man and the old woman could have sounded like this indeed:
- You old fart, who do you think you are? What is this scarecrow you let in?
- Umm, darling, relax. The dude doesn't speak Russian and he showed up at the doorstep completely naked. I guess he is a german spy, but Pasha, our local policeman, must have been dead drunk now, so it's late and I'll let the stranger in now, and tomorrow morning I'll call Pasha before he gets tipsy again. I hope we'll get some kind of reward.
- Oh, sweety, you're so smart. Go ahead. But what will wi tell Pasha? Maybe we'll try to learn something now? What if I'll call this new school teacher, she told someday that she knows German and English. Maybe she can learn something about him? Frankly, the language he spoke doesn't resemble German, I've heard them a lot and the language he spoke was definitely not German. So it might be English. Maybe I'll call Ann?
The old woman's face visibly relaxed and he said "I'll go ahead and call her myself, you give the man some stuff from that pot we use to feed pigs....", she stood up and headed for the door..
Huh?