by Edwin Benson
“Yes.”
“Put up your hands, Amerikaner!”
STUNNED by the unexpectedness of the command from inside the room, Vorosh whirled around. Facing him was a Nazi lieutenant, and behind him were two soldiers.
“What are you doing there?” asked the Nazi officer in perfect English.
Vorosh reached around behind him in an attempt to touch the tele-radio. The officer leaped forward, tried to intercept his action. Vorosh lashed out with a fist, caught the officer on the side of the head. He reeled back, and Vorosh whirled around. He put his fingers in the eye sockets of the radio and flashed a desperate final message.
Wake up, Vanja. I am being attacked. Take over from here . . .
He shut the radio off. But now the lieutenant recovered, and he grappled with Vorosh. He whirled Vorosh around, then gasped as he saw what Vorosh held. The two soldiers leaped forward too, one of them diving for Vorosh’s legs. The skull went flying, crashed against the wall, split open, and smashed to the floor, a mass of wreckage. Tangled wires and tubes lay in a revealed heap.
Vorosh struggled, but he was helpless.
“So!” barked the enraged lieutenant. “Broadcasting secret messages through a concealed radio!”
Aghast at the disaster that had befallen the precious and irreplaceable tele-radio, Vorosh was filled with fury.
“Damn you!” he shouted. “That wasn’t a radio. It was Miss Nilchenko’s floating skull that she uses in her act. You’ll have to answer to Von Holder for this vandalism . . .”
The Nazi officer spat at him.
“Von Holder sent me to arrest you, Amerikaner! You’ll answer to him and maybe Miss Nilchenko will answer too, when he finds out that her innocent stage prop is really a broadcasting radio. I heard you speaking into it, Mr. Vorosh!”
Vorosh’s heart sank. If this man got back to Von Holder, Vanja’s life wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel.
He tore desperately at the soldiers who were holding him. A gun butt descended stunningly on his head. Dazed, he staggered, went to his knees.
A shot rang out, curiously muffled, and Vorosh, head spinning, saw the lieutenant go down, his face a blank mask of death. Surprise tried to penetrate the fog that beclouded Vorosh’s mind, and succeeded to an extent. He tried to fumble erect, was conscious of two more figures in the doorway.
RED flame darted from the hand of one, and one of the soldiers grappling with Vorosh sank wordlessly to the floor, blood gushing from his mouth. Vorosh hurled his body against the other Nazi, who was leveling his rifle at the door. He fell, off balance, and the two figures in the door came forward. A gleaming knife rose and fell. A gurgling scream was cut short at its source, and the last Nazi soldier died.
Vorosh felt his brain clearing now. He regained his feet.
“Who are you?” he gasped.
Both men were in civilian, clothes. One of them spoke.
“Don’t you remember me?”
Vorosh peered at him.
“For crying out loud! The officer who took me to General Vidkov when crashed in the haystack!”
The Russian grinned.
“Yes. But come now. We’ve got to hurry. The plane waits at the airport.”
“We can’t go yet!” gasped Vorosh. “Vanja . . . we’ve got to rescue her.”
“That’s being taken care of. Our men followed when she was taken from here. I’m sure they’ll get her as soon as possible. We have to trust to them. Our chance is very limited. We must go now. No telling whether anyone heard the scuffle in here, even if our guns have silencers.”
Vorosh put on his coat and hat and walked to the door with them.
“You certainly came in the nick of time,” he said. “It looked like the end for me. And if that lieutenant had gotten back to Von Holder with what he knew, the jig would be up with Vanja “. . . wait! We’ve got to take the skull with us!”
“Of course!” The other Russian hastily gathered the smashed skull and its revealed radio coils into a bundle and thrust it under his coat. Then they let themselves into the hall.
Down the rear stairs they walked, and into the alley. A taxi stood there, motor running.
“In!” said the Russian lieutenant tensely. “We’ve got no time to lose!” Vorosh piled in and the two men who had come so ably to his rescue climbed in beside him. The taxi drove off through the night.
CHAPTER XII
One Bomber—Hellhound!
BERLIN’S streets were blacked out, and progress was irritatingly slow. But as they drove along the Russian secret service man explained the situation to Vorosh.
“We have arranged with several of our agents at the airport to have a bomber ready. We will take off in it, and will have all-clear signals. But we will have to fly fast and dark from there, because almost immediately the officials will realize that something is wrong. We may run into ack-ack fire.”
“Just let me get the plane into the air, and they won’t touch us!” said Vorosh grimly. “Will we have guns?”
“Yes. I’ve arranged for ammunition for all the guns. And the bomb-bays will be full also. We may want to drop a few bombs while on the way.”
“Good idea,” grunted Vorosh with satisfaction. “It’ll give me a great kick to give these butchers a taste of their own bombs.”
Vorosh subsided into silence as they drove along, thinking of Vanja. As he thought now, he realized just how slim her chance was of getting through. Before the skull had been destroyed, he had lulled Von Holder’s suspicions, and if he’d had a few minutes more, he might have even effected her release.
“We’re at the airport!” said the lieutenant.
The challenge of a sentry brought the cab to a halt, and the lieutenant stepped out. He presented papers to the guard, and after a few moments wait they were returned.
The cab proceeded toward a row of gigantic hangars; pulled up to a halt. Another sentry came forward, challenged them. The lieutenant spoke in Russian, and the sentry saluted sharply in the dark.
“This way,” he whispered.
He led the way forward, Vorosh following the lieutenant closely. They entered a hangar, deserted except for the looming bulks of giant Nazi bombers. One of them was standing before the great doors, apparently waiting and ready. The guard led them to it, and they climbed aboard.
“We’re all leaving this time,” said the lieutenant. “Our usefulness is ended here. Now if the rest arrive with Miss Nilchenko, we will be ready to take off . . . Boris, open the doors. We must be ready.”
The Nazi guard opened the doors, then came and stood beside the open door of the plane. In his hand he held a sub-machine gun. He passed several more to the lieutenant, who gave one to his companion.
VOROSH entered the control compartment, slid into the pilot’s seat. His practiced eye roved over the instrument panel. He smiled in satisfaction. Whoever had prepared this plane had done a good job of it. It was ready!
He peered anxiously through the great hangar doors toward the place that marked the entrance in the fence through which they had come. All was darkness along the road that led back to Berlin. Here and there a dim light showed, but the city was almost completely blacked out.
For perhaps ten minutes they waited tensely in the darkness, then Vorosh tensed. Coming toward the hangar on the run were a half-dozen figures.
The voice of the Nazi-dressed Russian guard, Boris, came in alarm.
“They’ve discovered us!” he called. “We’ve got to get out of here. Can’t wait any longer! Get the motors started, while we hold them off!”
Vorosh paled, felt a strange sinking sensation in his heart. Before him rose the image of Vanja Nilchenko, and suddenly he realized the truth. When he took off in this plane, he would leave behind him all that was worthwhile to him, personally. But even as he thought of this, he thought of the Nazi hordes overrunning Russia, of the death, destruction and misery they had caused. He thought too, with a sudden shock of horror, of what must have happened at his own beloved count
ry’s Pearl Harbor that very morning. Rage filled him.
Savagely he reached his hand out; snapped on the starting switches. In a few seconds the whine of the starters came, built up, until all at once the giant motors broke out into a roar. Almost immediately the plane began rolling forward.
The chatter of machine guns came from the still-open door. Vorosh saw four of the six running figures topple in grotesque death. The other two hurled themselves to the ground, and red flashes came from them.
A searchlight snapped on suddenly, swung around, caught the plane in its beam. Vorosh gunned the plane forward, his lips tight.
Then, in the same beam of light, he saw the cab approaching the outer gate.
He veered the plane around, shouting.
“It’s Vanja! I’m going to pick her up!”
The lieutenant was beside him, peering forward. His face was tense, but he did not disagree.
Vorosh sent the plane thundering along the ground toward the gate. He saw three figures pile out of the cab and run through the gate. One of them shot the guard dead as he ran.
The big bomber wheeled sharply around. The three running figures pelted toward it. They reached it, but a hail of lead was sweeping from somewhere and one of the figures went down in a ghastly broken heap.
The other two reached the door and clambered in, assisted by Boris.
VOROSH took one look at the limp heap of the third figure, then gunned the plane down the runway. Searchlights were snapping on all over the airport now, and suddenly all the lights flashed on. The brilliance was in startling contrast to the previous darkness, but Vorosh laughed aloud.
“The fools,” he chortled. “Now I can see where I’m going!”
The giant bomber picked up speed, lifted slowly into the air. Vorosh gave it all he had, and it climbed leadenly into the clouds. A dozen searchlights followed, and machine-gun bullets whistled close. But suddenly they were out of range.
An anti-aircraft gun went into action, and an orange puff-ball blossomed a half-mile above them and to the side.
“Lousy aiming!” yelled Vorosh.
He sent the plane into a series of twisting evolutions that the bomber was never meant to perform. He shook off the searchlights momentarily, and taking advantage of the opportunity, sent the plane down in a screaming dive, then leveled off and came up at great speed. He was hedge-hopping for a time, then bore up. A single beam found him now, and an ack-ack battery began firing. But the bursts were high in the air, and wildly placed.
“We’ve made it!” he yelled. “They won’t stop us now!”
But even as he spoke, a slim shape streaked out of the black sky, and tracers whipped past the bomber. It was a Nazi fighter.
Vorosh sent the bomber into a series of elusive maneuvers, but the fighter came at them again. Once more he missed, and zoomed on past. But he came back. This time an answering burst of fire came from the bomber, and a hail of lead streamed out at the fighter.
Warned, the pilot veered his ship away, came back at another angle.
The big bomber was hard to handle. Vorosh knew the answer immediately. Overloaded. The bombs!
He peered down, saw that they had come from the airport in the direction of the city. They were directly over Berlin.
“Jettison those bombs!” he screamed at the Russian lieutenant. “We’ll be shot down if we don’t. We’re too heavy.”
The lieutenant nodded, disappeared back toward the bombardier’s position.
A moment later the bomber lurched, lifted perceptibly. Vorosh could almost hear the bombs screaming down from the open bomb-bay doors. He banked the big bomber a trifle, saw the fighter coming back at them. He bore toward it, gave Boris a chance at it with the sub-machine gun.
Down below giant bursts of light came as a dozen big bombs exploded. The flare illuminated the whole of central Berlin, and Vorosh’s lips held a tight, savage grin as he realized that Berlin had gotten an air-raid that was entirely without warning. He could see a great gout of flame rising from below, and he realized something vital had been hit.
The oncoming fighter had veered as its pilot realized what had happened and stared down, aghast. It was then that Vorosh swung the bomber in sharply and brought Boris up almost beside the smaller plane.
Flame lanced across the intervening distance, and the Nazi pilot slumped down in the cockpit. The motor began spouting black smoke; the plane tipped its wings down, then began a deadly spin toward the city below. Flame belched from it, and it slid down the sky a flaming torch of light and smoke.
Vorosh looked at his compass, set the ship toward the east, and gave her full throttle. The roar of the motors became a giant thundering song as the flaming city was left far behind. Ahead of them was darkness, and Russia.
VOROSH sat alone in the cockpit, staring straight ahead. He was afraid to look around. Before his mind’s eye loomed the grim sight of a limp figure sprawled on the ground of the airport. One of three . . .
Who?
He swallowed hard. Then he froze. Someone was clambering up in to the control cabin behind him.
Who?
A hand touched his arm. He turned, looked into Vanja Nilchenko’s violet eyes.
“Vanja!”
Vorosh put out one hand and took hers into it.
“Just tell me that you’re real and that you’re here, safe and sound,” he said. “I nearly died as I sat here thinking that you . . . that you weren’t one of the two who got safely aboard.”
Vanja’s features softened regretfully.
“Poor Alexis. He will live long in Russia’s memory.”
“How did they rescue you?” asked Vorosh. “And what happened back there in Von Holder’s laboratory when I awakened you from the hypnotic trance?”
“I realized instancy that something had happened to you,” she said. “I no longer had any contact with you. But really, nothing happened after I came to. Von Holder had already disconnected the electrodes, and he said I had answered satisfactorily, and that he would return me to my hotel.”
“Wasn’t there anybody else in the room with you?”
She looked puzzled.
“No. That is until a moment later when Alexis and Ivan came in and shot Von Holder dead.”
“Shot him!” Vorosh exclaimed, then smiled with mirthless lips. “Good! That was one Nazi I wanted to see shot.”
“Well, that’s all there was to it. We left the building, got into a cab, and drove to the airport, just in time to be seen by you and picked up. Now we are here. . . but tell me, what happened when you hypnotized me?”
Vorosh grinned, told her the way he had answered the questions Von Holder had put to her, and of the important visitor that she had had, and what his reaction had been to the answers to the questions. As he finished, Vanja’s eyes gleamed.
“I owe you my life. That was a clever thing that you did. And Russia owes you a great deal too. You accomplished our mission in one brilliant act.”
For a long moment Vorosh stared ahead.
“Where do we go from here?” he asked finally. “What do we do?”
“What do you want to do?” asked Vanja softly, looking up at his set features.
Vorosh shrugged.
“America is in the war now, and somehow, I’d like to fly for my own country. America is my country, even if I came originally from Russia. Perhaps you don’t understand that . . .”
“But I do!” she interrupted. “I understand it perfectly, and . . .” her voice became a little wistful “. . . sometimes I wish that I too were American.”
Vorosh turned to her.
“Vanja,” he said. “I’ve discovered something tonight. Something I must tell you.”
“What is it?”
“I’m in love with you, and I want you to be my wife. Say that you will, and I’ll take you back to America with me, and you can be a citizen of the country I love. And you’d love it too . . .”
She looked at him.
“Yes, Peter, I have an a
dmission to make too. I’ve been in love with you for a long time. And I want to be your wife . . .”
VOROSH turned in his seat, and gathered her in his arms. He kissed her on the lips, then lifted his head and stared into her eyes.
She drew away, her eyes deep and serious.
“But we can’t marry yet. After all, I am a Russian, and I am in the Russian Intelligence Division for the duration. And I have much more work to do. If John Zymanski really is on the track of something new, as I understand from General Vidkov, I will be very busy. But whatever happens, we can’t get married until after the war.”
Vorosh regained silent a moment, then he drew her to him again and kissed her once more.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s the way it must be. And what you’ve said has clarified things in my mind too. You have your duty here, and you are officially in the service of your country. I am in the service, right now, of no country at all. My country is at war. I should be doing my part, just as you are. At first I thought I could join the Russian air force, and that would be doing the right thing. Now all that has changed.
“The Japs have attacked Pearl Harbor. They’ll go further than that. They’ll take the Philippines, attack Alaska . . . even the United States itself.
“I’m a fairly good pilot. And with my story justified—Briggs will no doubt be able to help me, knowing now that I was telling the truth—I can return to America and join the American Air Force.”
Vanja smiled at him, returned his kiss.
“That is what I wished you to say,” she said. “We must both do our share, then when it is all over, we can think of our personal happiness. You can come for me, and we will both go to live in your wonderful America.”
Vorosh tightened his arm around her slim shoulder.
“You bet I’ll come for you!” he said.
* * *
THREE weeks later Peter Vladimir Voroshilov, once more the Pete Vorosh of Buffalo that he had been before the amazing stratosphere storm had come to snatch him into incredible adventure, walked up the gangplank of an American Clipper ship at Lisbon. As he slid back into a seat in the big ship, a voice came from across the aisle.