A Cold Flight To Nowhereville

by Steve Fletcher

  “Captain Dusengaliev reports it as a training accident, comrade General.”

  He scanned the report. “Dusengaliev…he was in charge of the radar station? I’m sure he’d like me to believe that. Well, he’s a lying bastard. Did he issue permission to fire?”

  Feshkov shrugged. “It doesn’t really say, though it can be read that way.”

  “That’s one hell of a training accident if missiles were fired. I want Dusengaliev here yesterday, and with him any of the pilots who were involved.”

  Feshkov scrawled a note on his pad. “It will take some time due to the distance. And they may have coordinated their lies.”

  “Just do it. Have you contacted Alma-Ata? Do they know anything about this?”

  “I spoke with one of the radar operators there. He knew nothing, but I think he was drunk.”

  “They’re all drunk down there. Get hold of what’s his name, Klimov, he’s in charge.”

  “Colonel Victor Klimov, sir, and yes, I shall.”

  “Find out if they had any jets out here. Or if they’re missing any. Then dispatch a crew to sweep that area and investigate.”

  “Again, comrade General, it will take time. It’s a large area.”

  Losing expensive aircraft was highly serious, and losing three was nothing short of disastrous. As much as he detested the ass covering that went on in his region, such was endemic to the military. And as commander of the Air Defense Forces in the Tashkent district, he was going to be in a good deal of trouble himself. What truth existed of the incident was not, he knew, going to be immediately forthcoming from Dusengaliev and his gang of stooges. That left him with few options that did not involve accusations of gross incompetence.

  Alma-Ata had better be missing an aircraft, for he could fathom no alternative to the incident. If they were not, where had it come from? What was it doing? And who was lying about it? That at least was a simple matter to deduce: they were all lying bastards. Investigations such as this were more about assigning blame than they were about determining truth, the ubiquitous chekists had seen to that over the course of decades. Ass covering had become a veritable institution. The reorganization of Air Defense Forces was not proceeding smoothly, things were an atrocious mess, confusion abounded, but as long as reasonable explanations could be produced and blame assigned, all was quickly forgotten. Especially in sleepy backwater regions such as his.

  “Feshkov,” he said, catching his aide at the door, “tell Colonel Bashkov I would like to speak with him.”

  A dozen years or so previously, when Mitrokhin had been lowly Major piloting Yakovlev fighters against the Germans, a young pilot had transferred into his unit. Matvey Bashkov and he became close friends over the years and missions that followed. After the war, Bashkov had married Mitrokhin’s sister and the two were now parents of a boisterous six-year-old son, Anatoly. Mitrokhin’s career was wife enough for him, but he dearly loved his nephew Tolya.

  Bashkov entered and closed the door. He was shorter than the General, with a stocky body type built for pulling G’s in fighters. His waistline had gotten accustomed to the pleasures and privileges of married life and was a constant struggle to rein in. “Another fucking mess from the 715th,” he said tightly, subsiding into a chair facing the General’s desk.

  “I take it you read the report?”

  The other nodded. “It reads like someone trying to cover his ass. It’s appropriately vague.”

  “That radar operator, Dusengaliev…you know him?”

  Bashkov shook his head. “No. Do you think he issued the order to fire?”

  Mitrokhin nodded. “Seems pretty clear to me. The order came from somewhere.”

  “Unless it was a live fire exercise that went wrong. The radar operator might not know about something like that.”

  Mitrokhin grunted and tapped the report. “This Dusengaliev has actually been rather clever. He knows there will be trouble over this. He’s left his report vague enough that I may make my own determination about the events.”

  “Mm, perhaps. Have you heard from the 715th yet? Anything from Lugovoe?”

  The General shook his head. “No. But they’re going to have more trouble figuring out what happened than the radar operator. We may not know much from them until we send a team to investigate.”

  Bashkov sighed, leaning back in his chair, “An order to fire missiles would be appropriate under certain circumstances. It just hasn’t happened in this region up to now.”

  “A lost pilot would not be sufficient cause,” Mitrokhin retorted. “Lost pilots are not uncommon down here, you know. They get lost all the time. If Dusengaliev gave the order to fire, he pulled the trigger too quickly.”

  “So who’s missing a pilot?” the other wondered aloud. “Somebody must be. He had to come from somewhere.” He took up the report again. “There seemed to be a lot of bullshit going on. Said he was from…the 513th, but they’re not around here. So who was this guy?”

  The older man rose to stand by his wide window, looking out over the busy installation. “Hell if I know, but he was better than two of the other pilots trying to intercept him.”

  “Combat pilot with Korea time, perhaps. That is, if he even fired his weapons. From this report I can’t tell who fired on who.”

  “Perhaps,” the General murmured distantly, his eyes on the far hills. “Matvey, it is of utmost importance that I not fall under suspicion in this incident. If I become a person of interest to the KGB, you will be investigated as well as your family. Tolya will receive a permanent black mark in his file, and may not be able to enter a university. He will end up working in some plant somewhere like my father did, working and drinking his life away instead of reaching the potential in the Party I know he has. Our culture is changing but it’s not changing as much or as rapidly as Comrade Khrushchev would like us to believe. Tolya must be protected.”

  There was silence for a while. “A defection might do it,” Bashkov mused presently. “If it could be packaged that way. Rather sounds like one to me.”

  Mitrokhin returned to his chair. “Let me see that report…no, no good, the pilot was heading northeast, not down towards the border.”

  “An unfortunate typographic error. It does say the pilot was making course corrections and said he was lost. Claiming he was from the 513th doesn’t make his intentions look good at all.”

  There had been a few, not many but a few, defection attempts in the years following the war and at least one of those had resulted in the defecting pilot being shot down. It was not outside the realm of possibility. It might be feasible to package this incident as a defection his people had intercepted. Not only would that get him out of trouble, it might possibly even land him a commendation for prudent action.

  “Such an incident could easily be pinned on the 715th,” Bashkov continued. “It’s the worst organization in the region. Pushkin rarely knows which of his units are flying or in maintenance. His inventory reports are constantly being scrutinized.”

  “And if they’re not missing any pilots?”

  “Blame one of the dead ones. I’m sure Pushkin is cooking his books anyway. And from this report I can’t tell who was doing what.”

  “Mm,” Mitrokhin nodded. “Might be possible. I had considered the unit at Alma-Ata, but Lugovoe would be better. And it would help if the aircraft had wing tanks.”

  Jet fuel was carefully rationed, just enough was doled out to cover the given exercise. This was to prevent pilots from doing precisely what they were discussing, flying across the border and defecting. Even on a transfer of aircraft from one base to another, the flight route was planned to prevent an overabundance of fuel. Wing tanks would look extremely suspicious. The situation in the southern regions was more confused than anyone liked to admit in the two years since the reorganization had been announced, he could take advantage of that if the tales he was told weren’t lining up. And from the report he’d just read, the odds were not good that he was going to get anything Biryoz
ov—or the KGB—was going to buy. Pushkin wasn’t in anyone’s good graces due to his mismanagement of the 715th Fighter Aviation Regiment. He could take the fall. A defection would align most closely with the facts as he knew them, and there was nothing in Dusengaliev’s report to preclude that. Two days delay on Dusengaliev’s report was bad, but no report yet from the 715th was damning.

  The thought that nobody might be missing a pilot was troubling. But someone had to be, and if nobody admitted to it they were probably lying. There was just no other alternative.

  “Look,” Bashkov went on, “if you report a defection, it becomes instantly a KGB matter. Only they won’t be investigating you, you took appropriate action. They’ll be crawling all over the 513th, the 715th, 152nd and anyone else they can think of trying to find out who’s lying. It won’t take them long to figure out Pushkin’s dirty.”

  “We’ll find out who the pilot was,” he concluded. “Or we’ll get Pushkin to produce one.”

  “Yes,” he announced slowly, then his voice firmed. “Yes. I believe this was a defection attempt. I will present it to Biryozov as such, that we are conducting investigations to determine the pilots involved. And Bashkov—find a wing tank.”

  Tyuratam, Kazakhstan

  They neared the village after midnight. The storm had lessened, moving on to the north and leaving a blanket of unbroken white in its wake. Hardin wiped condensation from the windshield and peered ahead as Katia slowed, seeming to hesitate before driving into town. “Looks like everyone’s asleep,” he remarked, surveying the distant, sleepy collection of houses and buildings. “What would you expect to see if they were onto you?”

  She drove slowly towards town. “Lights, soldiers, you know.”

  “They wouldn’t be lying low, hiding, trying to catch you out?”

  Katia shook her head. “No, they don’t think like that.”

  “That’s helpful at least. Looks like you’re in the clear, Katia.”

  Hardin studied the buildings as Katia drove slowly into town, steering down the streets until she found the one she wanted. There wasn’t much to this place, buildings in various stages of dilapidation—that seemed characteristic in this benighted country—and a rail spur just to the north beside which sat an ancient-looking water tower. Good night, were they still using steam locomotives here? “This is where I work,” she whispered, gesturing to a building on their right. “That’s Ilia’s shop, the local store. He gave me a job when Kingfish died.”

  It wasn’t much to look at, concrete like much else he’d seen, single wooden door with an ‘Open’ sign still hung on it. “Do you like working there?”

  Katia nodded. “Yes, quite a lot. Ilia’s old but very sweet and everyone’s friendly. They treat me well.”

  She steered the truck into a dark alley behind the shop and cut the motor. “I live not far away. We’ll have to be careful that you’re not seen, though nobody should be awake. I suppose I could explain you as my boyfriend if I had to.”

  Distasteful as that may be. Hardin grinned.

  They stepped out into darkness, closing the doors quietly. “Follow me,” Katia whispered.

  “I can’t see shit,” Hardin hissed back.

  “There’s no moon out so yes, it’s quite dark. Take my hand so you don’t get lost.”

  “Yes, mom,” he muttered, slipping his hand into hers. Her hand was small and her skin rough from work, but he hadn’t expected smoothness. She led him down various alleys, keeping away from the main thoroughfare, until they reached a small house near the edge of town. She fumbled with a key in the lock and opened the door.

  It wasn’t much. Featureless plaster walls, a small living room with nothing separating it from the kitchen. Couch and chair, ancient lamp on an equally prehistoric end table, a tiny bathroom with a commode and shower, one small bedroom. In the States it would have been barely adequate for a studio apartment, but her house was neat and clean. “It won’t be what you Americans are used to,” she told him as she shrugged off her coat and hung it on a peg, “but by our standards it’s very nice.”

  “No complaints from me,” he smiled, hanging his coat beside hers. “I live in the bachelor officer’s quarters most of the time. This is just fine. I’ll take the couch.”

  Now she seemed more ill at ease. “Yes, I have some spare blankets. I have to go to work in the morning, so I will probably wake you up. But I’ll see what has been going on and if there’s any trouble.”

  Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan

  Fortunately the Chief Designer was on an extended trip to Moscow, so Ushakov’s fate was not immediately apparent. For his part he behaved like a model officer, checking with Kalyugin daily for instructions and carrying out his duties quickly and efficiently. He didn’t know what would happen if he were sent back to KGB headquarters. He suspected not much, once he’d calmed down, for his only crime was perhaps an overzealous defense of State secrets. He might be all right; he knew how the KGB operated. He also knew that the Lubyanka was not as thrilled with comrade Khrushchev’s reforms as his superior imagined. In fact his fate would likely be much better than it would be if Loginov actually succeeded in his plans, even if that were due to Kalyugin’s bumbling. What to do? Continue to disobey and get transferred out? Kalyugin would have him locked up or placed under house arrest and Loginov would still be in the clear. No, it was critical that he get Kalyugin cooled off so he could continue his investigation. But that meant behaving himself, at least for the moment. And that in turn meant giving Loginov a free hand. It was the devil’s choice.

  From time to time he saw Loginov here and there, sometimes walking with Aleksei. The bastard knew he’d been squashed, all right. A few times the man even waved cheerfully when nobody was looking. It drove Ushakov to distraction, but there was nothing he could do about it. His only chance now was to intercept the transfer. The woman Katia had no doubt returned to Tyuratam by now, but he could not be certain that a direct transfer was still planned. He could not approach the village, he could not question anyone nor could he have Osipov do it. However, he could monitor the goings on at the mess tents when the locals made their deliveries, that was not outside the realm of possibility. Most of the time he should be able to be close enough to at least see what was going on, when his other duties did not interfere.

  At the moment, that was all he could do.

  Tyuratam, Kazakhstan

  Hardin spent the days in stifling boredom, restricted to Katia’s house with the blinds pulled shut. He didn’t dare burn the omnipresent kisiak in her small fireplace when she wasn’t there, smoke from the chimney would certainly have started talk, and it was fairly cold inside. There was nothing to do but read the few Russian novels Katia had lying around, including a massive copy of The Brothers Karamazov. It was a brutal read, for his command of Russian was almost entirely spoken, but he kept at it. And it kept him more or less busy during the endless days.

  Katia had returned after the first day in a good humor. There had been a soldier asking questions of Ilia, but nothing since and the security at the gate seemed to have returned to normal levels again. She insisted that the KGB was never underhanded or secretive in their dealings with the populace and it was a good sign. It meant the investigation was off, at least temporarily. Though she was of the opinion that from what she knew of this Colonel Ushakov, someone else was pulling his strings.

  She was growing more comfortable after several days with a male roommate. They were drunk most evenings and under the influence of alcohol she talked volubly, telling him of her life, her home, her experiences as an adolescent during the war, early friends and boyfriends. He told her of his own growing up in Brooklyn, though there was less to tell. His life had been for the most part relentlessly normal. She had a healthy distrust of men, that didn’t take a psychologist to figure out. But the more time they spent together, the less that seemed to apply to him and he wasn’t sure why.

  She was cuter than he’d once thought. By now, due to the clos
e proximity of their quarters, he’d seen her in various states of dishabille and knew that she was very slightly on the chubby side but hardly the plow horse he’d imagined women in this country to be. Her skin tended to be rough and she wore no makeup, but her hair was long and thick and her breasts full and pretty. Her dark eyes had a bewitching twinkle when she laughed, which she did often when she was drunk. And he found her derriere quite interesting. She intrigued him more than other woman had and he found that curious. What was different about her? That she was Russian and he hadn’t met a Russian girl before?

  What was different about Katia was that for some unfathomable reason he already knew her better than he had any woman. Their conversations had been open and free of the kind of superficial flirtation he was accustomed to—and perhaps, in ignorance, he had expected from her. Another product, no doubt, of his hitherto inflated ego. He wondered if he had used that flirtation as a sort of barrier, something to protect himself from that which he neither wanted nor knew how to handle. But there was nothing of that with Katia. She was not one to be flirted with, nor would he have felt comfortable in doing so. She drew him in and fascinated him with the complexity of her psyche. The more he learned of her, the more he wanted to know. But to her, he was a problem, another issue with which she had to deal. It was an endlessly depressing thought.

  “I think it will be difficult to leave here, when I must,” she remarked as they sat together on the sofa, she with a leg folded under her facing him. “Pour me some more vodka?”

  He shrugged and complied. His command of the language had grown immensely from exposure to her. Graham Smith was good but not a native speaker, and Katia was a good teacher. “This is your home. Sure it will be hard. Haven’t you gotten attached to places before?”