A Cold Flight To Nowhereville

by Steve Fletcher

  It seemed strange that he should be thinking of his work. It was not his true work. Not really. His true work had been completed a few weeks ago and the code phrase had been given that the transfer was to occur on the fourth of November. A few days to wait. He would pass the film to his handler when she arrived at the mess hall to make a delivery of vegetables, and then he would escape at his leisure. He would make his way south and slip across the border to Iran and be gone from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

  And until that day arrived, nobody would be the wiser.

  In all of his mercurial moods, the one constant for Yaroslav Ivanovitch Loginov was anger. It formed the steady and unyielding undercurrent to his being, a furious rage at a regime that assigned to itself the right to dictate the terms of his life. But there could be no overt expression of that anger, for those who did so met with quick liquidation. To become a member of some underground organization would have been, for him, insufferably pedestrian and frustrating. He required a different manner of expression.

  After the October Revolution, one of the most troublesome resistance movements had been the Basmachi Rebellion in and around the provinces of Turkestan and Tajikistan. Although the term Basmachi was a derogatory one used by the Soviets, the term stuck and served as a rallying point for some twenty thousand resistance fighters that battled the invaders in the years following the revolution. Although mostly eradicated by the middle 1920’s, the resistance continued sporadically until 1931 when Stalin finally squashed it flat. There wasn’t much information available to Loginov on the rebellion, but what he could find he read voraciously. How he longed to have been a part of that. Those were men! Not sneaking, scurrying mice hiding in rotting buildings and publishing their little subversive newspapers, but men who took up arms against the State. The former were minor annoyances, easily dismissed or overlooked, easily forgotten. He yearned instead for a way to cause lasting damage, to draw the State’s full and undivided attention to himself.

  Eventually he found one.

  He approached the north face of the plant, and as he drew near a door opened and a man stepped out. “Good morning, Yaroslav Ivanovitch.” The man lit a cigarette and stood to one side of the door, which he carefully closed. “How are you doing today?”

  “Ah, comrade Ushakov. It’s good to see you again.” He dropped his cigarette into the dust and stepped on the glowing tip.

  “I’ll bet it is,” the man replied, smoking and leaning back against the cement wall easily. “Seeing me must be just about your favorite part of the day.”

  Yaroslav felt a quick rush of adrenaline, a heat that entered his veins and quickened his senses. He loved the feeling; it gave him life, it lent a brief, intoxicating color to the grayness of his spirit. Yes, comrade, I’m ready for you. “Of course, comrade Ushakov,” he replied meekly, inclining his head respectfully to the other. “I quite enjoy our chats.”

  “Now why do you speak so?” The KGB officer drawled. “You don’t mean it. You’d as soon tell me to go screw my uncle’s goat. Why affect such humility? It really doesn’t become you, Yaroslav Ivanovitch. And you know I don’t believe it.”

  But everyone else does, you prick! And on this project you can’t touch me without evidence. “I can only be what I am, comrade,” he said. There was no crack in his façade of studied humility, not the slightest chink. “I’m a scientist. I work with propellants. I am not a complicated man—you know that.”

  “Yes,” he chuckled, “you are a simple man working on complex theoretical applications of chemistry.”

  Yaroslav nodded eagerly. “Yes! That’s it. Most of us are not complicated fellows, comrade Ushakov. Perhaps we need a certain simplicity of outlook to work with such advanced concepts.” It was all the most outrageous tripe, but this was a game and Yaroslav was not going to give his adversary the slightest advantage.

  Ushakov hiked his foot up on the wall, lounging against the concrete easily as he finished his smoke and lit a second. “What crap you’re capable of, Yaroslav Ivanovitch. You’re better than Pravda at spewing it. Even if that were true, it would be true for other scientists. Not for you.”

  “Ah, but the KGB will believe whatever they want to believe!” He affected an attitude of great daring, then pretended to think better of his rash statement. He stared at his boots and did not make eye contact with the other.

  “And that isn’t true either. Rather, it may be for other chekists. But I’m not another chekist, Yaroslav Ivanovitch. I don’t believe what I want to believe nor do I believe what someone else wants me to believe. I find the truth. I see the truth, and that’s what I believe.”

  “Did not Pontius Pilate ask Christ, ‘what is truth?’”

  “He did. He should have asked me, I’d tell him. Would you like to know why I know you’re putting on an act?”

  Yaroslav’s demeanor was hang-dog, that of a condemned man awaiting his sentence. Inwardly, though, he felt glee at the game they played. It was very like chess: each maneuvered for advantage, each attempted to divine the schemes and thoughts of the other. “Because you’re a fighter,” Ushakov continued, exhaling a cloud of gray smoke and fixing him with his sharp eyes. “I can tell. I can feel it in you. Your manner suggests defeat, but I can feel the resistance of your will. You had me fooled at first, but now I know you better. You wish to fight back, to throw my accusations back in my face. And that, my friend, is most unusual.”

  “Comrade Ushakov, I am none of this. I promise you, I am not.”

  “Look there,” the KGB officer urged, jerking his head past Yaroslav towards a group of scientists moving along the road a half a kilometer distant, heading towards the MIK-2-1 building. “See them? They’re not like us, Yaroslav Ivanovitch. They’re like every other man, woman and child in the Soviet Union, broken. Their spirits are gone. They do their work, they scrape out a living, they pass their lives in cringing fear that one day I will be standing behind them, whispering to them that they must come with me. And when that day comes they greet the Lubyanka with gladness. Did you know that? They are relieved that the burden of freedom is gone from them—yes, the burden of freedom. They don’t struggle. They don’t complain. How does it go? Like lambs to the slaughter they go, don’t they?”

  Ushakov’s eyes were distant, fixed on the group of scientists without really seeing them. “Men who dream furtive dreams of happiness and feel guilty for doing so. Isn’t it strange, Yaroslav Ivanovitch, that here in the Soviet Union we produce in men what the Church cannot: total humility. Complete meekness. Abject, unassuming, obedient acceptance of whatever the Almighty decrees for them. But now it is I that am the Almighty, not the Church. How odd that is…how odd that men will fight against the will of their God but not against the will of the State.”

  Yaroslav considered the man’s argument. And it presented danger to him, for the argument appealed to his intelligence, made him wish he could debate the issue. Here Ushakov showed his true strength: all his considerable gifts were present here and now. Yaroslav had to skirt the issue with utmost care, for to debate a matter about which he had an actual opinion would reveal much about his character. And this man already had too many wits about him. “I’m not sure I understand, comrade,” he frowned, kicking at the sand. “But I’m certain the Party wishes it to be that way.”

  “Hmm. Perhaps. I wonder, though, if that was in the grand scheme…or if it just worked out that way.”

  Another invitation to debate, so cunningly presented! “I must confess I am a little uncomfortable with such thoughts.”

  Now his eyes were on Yaroslav again. “No you’re not. You think them all the time.”

  “Comrade Ushakov, I swear to you that I do not.”

  “Bullshit! I can feel it even now! I see what transpires behind your eyes! You think you can hide your feelings from me so easily?”

  Slowly Yaroslav dared to glance at the chekist. Now, you pig, perhaps I shall bait you a little. You have no proof of anything, not the first shred. I ki
lled Nikolai because I had to, he was going to tell Kalyugin everything. But you found no evidence, did you? If you were able to arrest me you’d have done so already. Soon I will be gone from here and with me all our most closely guarded secrets and you will be on your way to the Lubyanka. You can enjoy the benefits of socialism all by yourself! By the time you get the proof you need all will be over and done. And there was no proof. He had done his work too carefully. He had finished photographing the plans for the R-7 booster, sent his signal to his contact in the village, and was now a sleeper again, an agent gone to ground. Nikolai had been the only problem. He’d needed Nikolai’s help to access the classified first-stage booster data, and the chekist’s weaknesses had made him an easy target to blackmail. As soon as he wavered, Yaroslav had eliminated him.

  He knew Ushakov had searched his workplace and his private effects without anyone’s knowledge. He had not found what he sought, that one piece of evidence he needed: the tiny Minox camera Yaroslav had so carefully squirreled away under a rock out in the steppe. You’re a failure, he thought gleefully. Oh, the colossal, stupid arrogance of the KGB! Even if I were to confess right now, you would not accept it. Your pride drives you to break me yourself, to catch me out, and nothing else will do. Maybe I’ll let on that I know what a complete zero you are. “You are an intelligent man, comrade Ushakov,” he murmured humbly. “Perhaps one day you will serve the Party as a zampolit on a harbor tug in Murmansk. Or maybe the political officer of a wig factory.” He twisted his wrist in an odd fashion, and a cigarette appeared in his hand. “Care for a smoke?”

  Ushakov came off the wall, grabbed the older man and threw him against the hard concrete. He knotted his hands in the collar of Yaroslav’s coat so tightly that his bones and veins stood out. “I don’t give a damn about Nikolai, you know that? He was dirty, you used him and you killed him. We would have executed him anyway and you just did the job for us. But what makes a man sell out the Rodina?” he hissed close to Yaroslav’s face. “What makes a man prostitute himself to the Imperialists? Is it money? Idealism? Maybe for some. Maybe some detest Socialism so much that they will sell their souls for another idea. And do you know I could even respect that? But that doesn’t apply to you, does it? No lofty ideals for you, not even money sways you. You sell out the Party because you’re an asshole, that’s all. You will turn our secrets over to the Imperialists because you’re an asshole, and because you enjoy being an asshole. Isn’t that right, Yaroslav Ivanovitch?”

  He slammed his fist into Yaroslav’s midsection and the older man collapsed, doubled over in agony and retching for breath. “If you tell anyone of our conversations, I will kill you outright and then plant evidence on you. See you tomorrow, Yaroslav Ivanovitch.”

  The rush of elation screamed through Yaroslav’s veins. Even the agony in his stomach had the sweet flavor of victory.

  U.S.S Bennington, CV 20

  CTF 79, Indian Ocean

  Hardin stuck his head into pri-fly, or primary flight control. Pri-fly was small, having just two seats made for the air boss and his assistant the mini-boss to control air ops aboard the Bennington. It bristled with electronic equipment and the view was impressive, so he stood for a moment watching the activity on the flight deck below. A replenishment operation was underway, and thick lines and cables bound the Taluga alongside. He could hear the shouts of the bosun’s mates, variously called deck apes, knuckle draggers and anchor crankers, as they heaved around on the lines and halyards, hoisting over sacks of provisions. Their orange Mae West life jackets were a bright contrast to the haze-gray flight deck.

  “Ten pounds of shit in a five-pound sack,” the mini-boss, a commander named Wilson was saying. “You watch. Five bucks says that one goes in the drink.” No air ops were ongoing and Wilson was occupying Holveck’s usual seat. Beside him sat a Senior Chief whose name Hardin didn’t know.

  “What a cluster-fuck,” the chief replied. “Whoops! Bend over, here it comes!”

  “I win my bet,” commander Wilson chuckled as a wave soaked the sack.

  Replenishment operations were more dangerous than they appeared. Fortunately the Indian Ocean was relatively calm today, but Hardin had been told of a rough-water refuel in ’53 during which a man had gone overboard and subsequently been crushed between the hulls of the ships when they came together unexpectedly. He was just as happy to be where he was and not heaving around on a line—calm seas or not.

  “Hey,” Hardin called to the commander, “where’s the boss?”

  “He’s up on the bridge,” Wilson replied, jerking his head that way.

  Hardin found Captain Holveck outside the bridge with a pair of binoculars in his hand, calling an order into the 1MC while a signalman stood by. Noting Hardin’s approach, Holveck dismissed the seaman who slipped past Hardin back into the bridge. The air was warm today, the skies clear and the sun’s heat oppressive. “Looks like fun, huh John?”

  “Not to me,” he grinned, pulling out a cigarette and offering a second to Holveck.

  “Not to them, either,” Holveck muttered, lighting his smoke and indicating the men on the deck. “Especially since they just soaked the mail. It happens. Damn.” He stared at his cigarette in sudden distaste.

  “Oops,” Hardin grinned. “I’m smoking specials. Sorry.”

  Holveck fixed him with a quizzical eye. “This is what they smoke? Boy.”

  “You get used to them. Sort of.”

  “They must dip them in shit first. Kind of taste like that crap the Koreans smoked, don’t they?”

  “I haven’t thought of those in a few years. What were they, Bakseung or something?”

  “I used to smoke some called The Great East Gate. They tasted more like the Great East Latrine, but the name was terrific.” He chuckled at the memory.

  “I remember those. A few packs of Lucky Strikes could sure grease palms back in those days. We used to get some Chinese brands from the 82nd Artillery every now and again, but I don’t remember what they were called. They weren’t good either.”

  “Hookers, slickey boys and bad smokes. I can’t say I miss Korea much. Here. Take these and have a look over there.” Holveck handed him the binoculars and indicated a bearing aft.

  Hardin focused the binoculars and spotted a grimy fishing smack, far distant of the task force. “What’s that? A fishing boat out here? How close are we to India?”

  “Not that close and that’s not a fishing boat. Soviet AGI, an intelligence trawler.”

  “I’ve never heard of those. Are they common out here?”

  “Pretty much so, yeah. This one’s been on us since Indonesia. The Buckley’s keeping her off.”

  Hardin examined the unprepossessing trawler through the binoculars. It was singularly unimpressive, a small, dirty vessel with a rust-spotted hull, but it bristled with complicated-looking antennae. “What are they doing out there?”

  “Following us. Reporting our positions to Moscow and gathering intel on the fleet. They listen to our transmissions, pick up our garbage, that kind of stuff. With this business in Egypt, Moscow is watching our movements more carefully.”

  “Do they think we’re getting involved?”

  “They’re probably wondering. Egypt is a powder keg. The Israelis haven’t invaded yet but could just about anytime since Nasser won’t back off, so Moscow is wondering what we’re doing down here. Our presence here, John, could be considered provocative and I don’t know that the fellows back home were considering that.”

  “So our Russian friends are shadowing us.”

  Holveck sighed uneasily, dropping his voice. “They’ll be following us to the Gulf, too, which might make getting you off a little problematic. If we hide your launch in an air op, they’ll report to Moscow that we’re demonstrating air superiority and Moscow will accuse Washington of saber rattling. So I think what we’ll probably do is have the Buckley keep the trawler at a distance and launch you at night, no radio transmissions of any kind, and then we’ll head back for Australia.�
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  “Are they going to detect me?”

  “Not as long as you don’t transmit. They may spot your afterburner and they may not, it will depend on whether they’ve got someone watching us at the time. They’ll know we’re keeping them away for some reason, but we typically run them off when they get too close to the group so I think we’ll probably get away with it. And if they do manage to spot us launching an aircraft at night they’ll probably put it down as a recon mission.”

  Hardin stared out over the water at the distant AGI. The Buckley had moved almost directly between the smack and the Bennington, obscuring most of the Soviet vessel from view. “Does that thing worry you?” Holveck asked after a while.

  He shook his head thoughtfully. “Nah. Not worry. More like…”

  The trawler didn’t worry him—not exactly. If it had he would not have admitted it. But he wasn’t prepared for the murky feeling that now seemed to possess him. On the flight line at Suwon, pre-flighting the jets before a combat mission over North Korea, he had felt a similar sensation. Inspecting his jet, walking slowly around as he examined the flight control surfaces, talking with the crew chief, smoking a final cigarette at the butt kit with the other pilots…what exactly the feeling was remained unclear to him, but now he felt the same uneasy sensation of approaching combat. It seemed odd to him then, that even with the ten-to-one kill ratio that U.S jets had established after the first rough year, he should feel that queer sense of…what? He hadn’t been sure then. He wasn’t prepared for the feeling to resurface now.