“We have another factor working in our favor,” Weiss said, leaning back in his chair and lighting a cigarette. Perspiration stained his shirt. “They’ve just reorganized their air defense forces—PVO Strany, that happened just a couple years ago.”
“I doubt their reorgs go any smoother than ours do,” Donaldson added.
“Right. Since they split the PVO off from the rest of the armed forces I’d be very surprised if they had their command and control completely figured out and working. I would just about guarantee it’s not, not down in that part of the world. Plus, aside from the Baikonur facility, there’s just not that much in that southern region they care about. The main focus is NATO and our bombers. They’re friendly with the Chinese, and there’s nothing going on in Afghanistan or India. That leaves them less concerned with their southern flank, and Nasser’s activity in Egypt helps that. In fact, the timing for an op like this couldn’t be better. It could even be if you flew east from Zahedan, over the border into Afghanistan and up into the Soviet Union that way, no one would pay any attention at all.”
“Hug the dirt across the border, then pop up and act like you belong there,” Bob Davis mused.
“I suppose we couldn’t ask the Shah to put up a T-33 to patrol the area and see what happens,” Captain Holveck mused.
Weiss shook his head. “No, probing them would be the wrong thing to do. That would just get them interested. We want them asleep for this op.”
Hardin lit another cigarette and directed his question at the Lockheed technicians. “What have you guys got by way of raw gear?”
“Raw?” Weiss asked.
“Radar Warning Receiver,” Donaldson explained quickly. “Lets you know you’re being painted by enemy radar.”
“We’ve got one of the Navy’s APR sets we’ve been playing with,” Frantz said. “There’s the gear on the U2, but I don’t think we’re going to get permission to retrofit either of those into a MiG. Not with the possibility of it being lost. I think RWR is a no-go.”
Hardin had reached the same conclusion. “Okay, no raw gear. So that means fly in under their radar and make the trip back on foot—and that is what a thousand miles one-way means for this bird—or fly above 20,000 feet and take my chances.”
“Even if you’re detected,” Captain Holveck mused, rubbing a hand over his chin, “if you’ve got the language you might be able to talk your way out of it. Say you got lost in the weather or something.”
Davis cocked an eyebrow. “They’d have to check the information with Moscow and I’m betting in that part of the world that would take time, especially if they’re trying to sort out a big reorganization of the air defense forces. If it’s one of their airplanes and it sounds like one of their pilots, they might not bother.”
“They might go ape, too.” Hardin examined the map, trying to formulate an intelligent flight plan. “Look. The target area you’ve got is right at the edge of the MiG’s range. To have any chance of getting even part of the way back, I have to fly at altitude. There’s no other way unless you intend me to walk all the way out.”
“We’re going to get to work on the tanks,” Frantz replied quickly. “We’ll get you some more legs, I promise. We’ll strip the MiG down and remove all the avionics we don’t absolutely need, and that’ll help too. It will be a flying gas tank.”
Hardin glanced around and found a ruler. He laid it down on the map along a north-northwest azimuth between Iran and Kazakhstan and studied it. “Without drop tanks I’m bingo fuel somewhere southeast of…Tashkent, maybe. Stripped down with F-86 tanks…that looks a little better. It’s still not all the way back but it looks better.”
“Most of the details still need to be worked out with the Brits,” Weiss announced, regaining control of the discussion. “And it does look like you’ll be flying as far as you can south, then crossing the border on foot into Afghanistan where you’ll be retrieved. But the first step is to find out if you’re willing to sign on with this op, Major. We could use one of the U2 pilots, but none of them have the language and we’d have to teach them. Or we could go looking for an Air America pilot with the language and then qualify them in the MiG. Either option is at least six months and by then the Egypt business may have settled down, so the Russians wouldn’t be as preoccupied. And that would also mean we’re mounting the op in the middle of the Russian winter. Not good. If we’re going to do this, the time is right now. But given that you’ve got the language and the most skill in the MiG, without you the matter’s academic and the Brits scrub the op. That’s pretty much the deal we’ve got.”
“Fly a Russian MiG off a carrier, a thing it isn’t designed to do,” Hardin said, ticking off points on his fingers. “Stick my head down and fly instruments through Iran. Refuel. Then head for the border and cross into the Soviet Union. Fly another thousand miles on instruments to the Russian’s secret space center and hope to God the Brits have figured out a place to land without getting caught and someone to contact. Then grab the plans to this rocket—I won’t even worry about how—and after all that, figure a way to get back without getting shot. At any point during this op I could, probably will, find myself with my ass in a sling. That’s your whole plan, isn’t it?”
Weiss looked distinctly uncomfortable now. “Well, I don’t know that I’d put it exactly that way…but that’s basically the plan, yes. How about it?”
At least they’d put it straight and hadn’t tried to soften the blow. Hardin reflected that someone would have to be out of his mind to take an assignment like that. The unknowns were past counting; he had no experience whatsoever with field operations and even less with the British MI-6 agency. For all he knew they could have been pencil-pushing idiots and this scheme the biggest fiasco since Dieppe. If he was caught inside the Soviet Union and identified, he would be tortured without mercy. No one would be stepping forward to claim him, either. No matter which way he examined the situation, the risks looked huge and the chances of success remote. This operation was going to take someone with a lot more balls than brains.
Enter John Hardin.
He felt a strange mingling of excitement and trepidation as he considered his options. There weren’t many. Refusing the mission was not, in this case, much of an option; to do so would certainly mean a quiet word to his next promotion board followed by a quick career death. But wasn’t that what being passed over for the U2 program meant anyway? It sure didn’t make him look very good. He was a snotty test pilot and that was it, a war hero relegated to some backwater test site in Nevada. His career had taken something of a downward turn following the war: a position he’d originally thought to be a good one was turning out to be less advantageous than he’d expected—his failure to land a U2 billet showed that. Maybe as a war hero, a fighter ace, he was viewed as too much of a maverick for promotion. Hadn’t that happened to others? He hadn’t placed much value on keeping up with careers other than his own, but seemed to recall hearing of some aces that found themselves mysteriously shunted aside in peacetime. He was reasonably confident of making lieutenant colonel, but he wasn’t very sanguine anymore about his chances at full bird. Maybe a risky op like this was what he needed. And he was supremely confident of his abilities to pull solutions out of the rectal database.
“What the hell,” he nodded. “I’ll do it.”
A few surreptitious glances were exchanged around the table. Major Hardin’s reputation had preceded him.
Groom Lake, Nevada
“Stick around for a minute, Bob.”
After the hot trailer had emptied, Bob Davis closed the door and returned to his seat. “More?”
Weiss ran a hand through his damp, thinning hair. “You probably figured out that one of our criteria for deciding if this thing was going to work or not was whether your pilot bought off on it or laughed at us. He’s got the best handle on that jet right now. He seems to have bought it, so it looks like a go to me. Now between you, me, and the wall, I’m a little more concerned about R-7 th
an I may let on to Sal. If this thing is half of what it’s cracked up to be it spells big trouble politically and strategically. We don’t have the technology to do heavy-lift like this thing does, and our rocket program has had enough troubles lately without this coming in on top of it. If R-7 actually flies, and that’s something ours aren’t doing too much of lately, the U.S. could look very bad very quick. Sal tells me it’s also not going to be the kind of thing we can bang out in a hurry while we play catch-up, they’ll have an advantage for a long time. The R&D on heavy lift just isn’t there. If the Russians do this thing and do it right, they’ll have a workhorse they can use for the next twenty years.”
He sighed. “Unfortunately, as I alluded, not everyone sees it the way I do and I’m a little out on a limb here with this op. The rocket program just isn’t getting a lot of traction in Washington. But as soon as the Soviets manage to put a camera in orbit, the shit’s going to hit the fan and we aren’t going to have an answer. I like to think I’m a little prophetic that way,” he smiled.
“The timing of this thing is very, very good and it looks like the DCI can successfully stonewall it if it goes south,” he went on. “Major Hardin looks like he’ll fit the part, his Russian’s passable, he asked some good questions and that’s important. Shows his mind works. But after he launches from the Bennington we are completely out of this. If he’s captured our position will be denial of all involvement. I don’t have enough backing to push this thing too far. We want to see what the Soviets have got there at Baikonur, but we don’t want to see it that badly, and if this doesn’t work out we’ll have to stick with whatever imagery the U2 can get us. We’ll present it to Ike that way. I’m not asking for your permission, Bob, but you do need to know it. And…” he paused for a moment, “it would be prudent from a planning perspective that Hardin not be irreplaceable.”
Davis nodded slowly. He would rather not consider exactly what that meant. Major John Hardin might have been a bit of a strutting peacock with a tendency to rub people the wrong way, but Davis squirmed at the idea of selling him down the river. If that was what Weiss was implying. But maybe it wasn’t. With the overflight program, you always assumed the pilot might not be returning home. And there was more of that chance here.
He understood that the mission was a gamble. And to the cognoscenti seated around the table it had been obvious that Weiss wasn’t risking a trained agent, although he was fairly certain Hardin had missed that. If anything went wrong, the British were going to take the heat all right, but the odds weren’t favorable enough to risk a fully qualified man. For a long shot like this, Weiss needed someone expendable.
“I don’t know that I’m completely comfortable with that,” he replied finally, “but no. He’s not irreplaceable.”
Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
I shall tell you why you are here, Pasha. It is because times have changed. In the old Days we extracted whatever confessions we pleased, we could beat our subjects, pull off their fingernails, knock out their teeth, crush their testicles, shove rods up their rectums, even kill them—who cared? It was even encouraged. But now, for the first time in my memory, Inspectors are abroad. They are examining the cells of prisoners, can you believe that? We cannot interrogate as we once did. And here it is worse, because these are scientists working on a great Project for the Party. There can be absolutely no coercion used here. We can’t extract meaningless confessions, which many of our comrades are so skilled at doing. Here we can only conduct inquiries to see if an interrogation is in order. That is why you are here, Pasha. Your methods are subtler than other interrogators, to whom this is a very new concept. In this inquiry I can give you as much time, within reason, as you need to interview these men. What I want from you is your trained opinion as to whether a deeper interrogation is warranted. But I can tell you that given the scrutiny the KGB is under, if we need to interrogate one of these men then you had better come up with a reason.
Pavel Sergeivich Ushakov had built a reputation for himself in the Great Patriotic War as a master interrogator. He had accomplished his goals not by threats or torture or any of the other techniques so common to interrogators in that day, but by politeness. He was a gentleman and treated his subjects as such. He established a sort of bond, a camaraderie. This, he had found, resulted more often than not in his subjects unwittingly lowering their guard. Then by roundabout, oblique questioning he had been able to extract a great deal of information. Sometimes they told him things they wouldn’t even tell their wives. This technique was particularly effective on subjects already in a state of fear or deep anxiety, as most were. But there were numerous variations to his technique: one such was to bombard the subject with illogical or irrational questions and statements until he was mentally overwhelmed, telling Pavel Sergeivich what he wished to know in an effort to make sense of the situation. Confusion, as such, was a powerful ally when employed by a ruthless, capable and patient interrogator.
Although technically his methods were non-coercive, for he used no violence, he nonetheless was capable of bringing tremendous pressure to bear on his subjects. Inferior interrogators used coercion and bodily damage, sometimes killing their subjects. Those methods, for Pavel Sergeivich, were unbearably pedestrian and he scorned those who employed them. His battlefield was the mind, and he considered himself a master of his craft.
During the purges that followed the war, the Second Chief Directorate of the KGB had employed him as an interrogator. He had found his techniques as effective with the intelligentsia as they had been with German officers, perhaps even more so due to the state of fear the intelligentsia tended to be in when he saw them. Men under interrogation came to it expecting the worst; they expected to be sent to the vicious labor camps of the gulag where thousands perished each year. They came to him with the fear that their lives were over, and such was frequently the case. But Pavel Sergeivich’s disarming manner had done much to soothe them and put them more at ease. And then—without their awareness if he did his job skillfully—he would strike. But there were tough ones among the educated as well. An education did much to give one control of one’s mind.
He had risen to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel but he did not usually wear his uniform, nor did anyone outside of the Director of Security’s office know of his true position or rank within the 2nd Chief Directorate.
“Comrade Ushakov?”
Ah. Aleksei was at the door. Now he would see what, if anything, was up. “Come in, Aleksei. Sit down here with me. Oh—close the door, will you?”
The room they used for questioning the scientists was located in the Security building. It was drab and windowless, virtually empty of furnishings save for one desk and two metal chairs, all bolted to the floor. One was for himself and the other for his subject. The metal desk lent him a psychological advantage, imparted a sense of authority. The dull tiles on the floor smelled of dust and mildew, for the room was not often cleaned. On the wall behind the desk stood a white movie-projector screen, on which the desk’s gooseneck lamp shone. It provided a harsh, bright light at the interrogator’s back into which the subject was forced to squint. The cement walls were coated with cheap plaster, cracking even after such a short time due to the poor quality of the workmanship, and from the ceiling a bare light bulb provided the only other illumination. It hung by the electrical wire, stark and rude in this place of advanced research.
It was a bit heavy-handed, but the Director liked it.
From the desk’s single drawer he pulled out a thick file. It was Aleksei’s, given to him by the Director, and for the past hour he had been familiarizing himself with the contents. It was mostly filled with blank paper. Aleksei’s real file was not at Baikonur, it was somewhere else. This file was made to appear thick to lend Pavel Sergeivich a psychological advantage. From what information was present in the largely blank file there didn’t seem to be much amiss, but he had been able to formulate a few lines of questioning he might try. One never knew what would happen d
uring interrogations, and although he had developed the ability to predict with decent odds which ones would be strong and which weak he could still not be one hundred percent positive. But Aleksei, he had decided, would not be too much trouble.
He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, offering one to the young scientist who sat before him, his gaze steady. “Have a smoke, comrade. It’s a bit chilly today, is it not?”
“A bit, Pavel Sergeivich.”
He found Aleksei’s gaze interesting, and noticed as well that the young scientist had his hands clasped together, but with his index fingers steepled. Confidence. Why are you confident, Aleksei? You steeple your index fingers because you are not afraid. Is that because you are innocent of wrongdoing, or because you think you’re smarter than I am? The chair in which Aleksei sat was placed parallel to the door and Pavel Sergeivich noted that Aleksei’s leg was crossed over the other, his foot angled towards the door. A flight response when the foot is pointed towards the door. You wish to leave, don’t you? His preliminary conclusion from Aleksei’s bearing and manner was that he felt himself to be innocent, but would rather not have been where he was.
“So,” he mused aloud as Aleksei lit his smoke, “we have a chilly morning and one of our comrades appears to have had some manner of mishap. Unfortunate, eh?”
“Most unfortunate, Pavel Sergeivich.”
“Some people should not drink,” he sighed, exhaling smoke towards the ceiling. “Myself among them! What of you, Aleksei? Can you hold your liquor?” He chuckled.
“Actually, I do not drink much. I find it difficult to think clearly.”
A Cold Flight To Nowhereville Page 5