“Something like that. But it’s not a matter of hitting it two out of three or nine out of ten. You’ve only got one crack at it. What gives you the best odds of destroying it?”
Spaight came in and sat down on the bench, listening with interest. Pappy Johnson said, “Just one bus, right? Not a whole convoy of them.”
“We’ll start with one. What’s your opinion?”
“Well ideally you’d want a squadron of planes. That way you’d cancel out the chance of error.”
“You know how big our bomber force is, Pappy.”
“Three planes. Well that’s plenty, what the hell, one target? One lousy bus?”
“You’ve got to train my people to hit that target, Pappy. That’s your job.”
“Then I’d go in treetop and set delay fuses on the bombs. Armor-piercing noses on the bombs so they’ll penetrate the roof of the bus instead of bouncing off.”
“Treetop?” Spaight said. “In a four-engine bomber?”
“Skipper wanted to know the best odds. I’m giving them, General. I didn’t say it was the only way to do it. But it’s the best.”
He came awake just once. The sun was drilling right down through the nose perspex. Hard silver reflections shot back against his eyes from the ocean far below. John Spaight said, “Christ look at all that water.”
“That’s only the top of it.”
Pappy Johnson’s voice crackled on the intercom:
“You want to get out and walk back to Texas, General?”
“I wouldn’t mind. I’m beginning to get the feeling I’ve signed on with a pack of lunatics.”
“Just keep that in mind,” Alex said. “It’ll probably help explain some of the things you’re going to have to do.” Then he went back to sleep.
PART FOUR:
September—November 1941
1.
In the latitudes of northern Scotland there was daylight until after ten o’clock and they made landfall by twilight with the formation intact, the three Fortresses in a V-triangle with the three transports riding below and behind them.
Alex stretched his limbs one at a time in the confined space.
Spaight was muttering in the throat mike: “If you wanted a sardine why the hell didn’t you draft one?” Spaight had that trait: every morning he made a joke—a sour joke about the weather or a caustic joke about the food. Somewhere in him was a core of bitterness; underneath the hard competence there was dissatisfaction. Alex hadn’t got too close to it but he had the feeling Spaight had been born with an impulse toward perfection and felt unfulfilled whatever he did. He was introspective and if he’d been more of a golfing backslapper he’d have had two or three stars instead of one but the fact that he had one at all was testimony to his extraordinary talent for organizing people and commanding their loyalty. He lacked a head for imaginative tactics but he had the genius of a first-rate staff officer: if you told him what had to be done he would produce everything that was needed for the job and put it all in the right place at the right time. Spaight was married and thrice a father but he kept his family rigidly segregated from his professional existence and he hadn’t once mentioned his wife since they’d left Washington. He was a soldier and she was a soldier’s woman and that was the way the game was played.
Pappy Johnson came on the headset. “Picking up some radio chatter from the Channel. I’ll cut you in.”
Static in the earphones and then he picked up the voices, quite distinct—a very calm crisp Welsh voice, “Break right, Clive, the bugger’s on your arse.”
He could hear the banging of the cannons and the fast stutter of machine guns above the whine of pursuit engines and then the same voice again, still dispassionate: “I’ve taken some tracers—on fire. I’m bailing out. Due east of Dover—I can see the cliffs. Someone save me a pint of bitter and a pair of dry drawers.”
In his imagination he could see the Spitfires and Messerschmitts in the twilight wheeling among the barrage blimps; the Heinkels in ponderous formation lining up for London and the Hawks and Spitfires trying to get at them before they could drop their sticks of bombs through the swaying beams of the searchlights.
There was a break in the static and Johnson said, “Sorry, I’ve got to change the frequency and get landing instructions.”
Spaight said, “You’ve got to hand it to those bastards.”
They were dropping across the mountains of Scotland in slowly fading twilight; the hillsides were indeterminate, dark and heavy. The B-17 thundered lower between the ranges and finally he saw the lights of the runway through the perspex. The bomber descended toward them like a climber on a sliding rope.
The runway was rough; the plane bounced and pitched along the center stripe between the cannister lights. A small van came shooting onto the gravel and curved in to intercept, running fast down the edge of the runway with a big FOLLOW ME sign across its rear doors, Turning on its tail wheel the bomber went along slowly after the van, unwieldy and awkward on the ground. Pappy Johnson was complaining into his radio: “This runway’s got a surface like a goddamn waffle. This Jesus shit airfield wouldn’t get certification from the civil air board of the corruptest county in Mississippi!”
The FOLLOW ME van circled to indicate their parking place and Johnson cut the engines. It was dusk now and the tower was carping in a crisp Scottish voice: “Let’s get the rest of the wee birds down now, lads—we want to switch off these lights, don’t we now.”
He inched painfully to the hatch and lowered himself by his arms. The leg had gone very stiff. Ground crewmen climbed into the bomber and Pappy Johnson stopped by the running board of the van to look back at it the way he might have looked at a woman.
The driver gave a palm-out salute. He saw to their seating and drove them down the gravel strip and decanted them beside a wooden hangar, and sped away to meet the next plane.
Felix was there with his compact movie-actorish looks and his readiness to laugh or spill tears or burst into rages; he emerged from the hangar in an immaculate white uniform his tailor must have worked around the clock to build.
Alex saluted him. It made Felix grin like a schoolboy. “Welcome to the toy shop, Alex.”
“Where’s our headquarters?”
Felix indicated the decrepit hangar behind him. “Right here, I’m afraid. Well then come in, all of you. My God that’s a big ugly monster of an aircraft.” He turned around with a casual wave that drew them all inside and walked through a small door cut into the hangar’s great sliding gate. Over his shoulder he added, “I’ve got Sergei off in search of billets for you and your friends.”
Alex suppressed a smile. Felix was playing the game to the hilt: he’d already taken over. They’d given him a new role-leader of men—and it looked as if it was the role Prince Felix had been waiting for all his life.
2.
Black felt curtains overhung the hangar’s few small windows; the high naked lighting within was harsh even though the building was so huge that the farther corners were in shadow. “It used to be a service shop for aircraft on North Sea rescue patrol,” Felix told them. “They’ve moved most of that over to Scapa Flow now. It’s obsolete and cobwebby but it’s ours.”
The room wasn’t far short of an acre in dimension. Vertical steel supports sprouted from the cracked concrete floor here and there; the ceiling was a skeleton of metal and the roof above it was an arched tunnel of corrugated steel gone rusty in patches so that it looked like camouflage paint. Without the clutter of aircraft for which it had been designed the floor space looked infinite; the scale was intimidating, it dwarfed them all.
In the front corner a plywood partition seven feet high marked off an office that might have been used by the maintenance director at one time; it had an open doorway and Alex could see the end of a desk within. The remainder of the huge room was undivided except by the eight steel pillars—two-foot-square I-beams, the sort they built bridges out of.
It had been Vassily Devenko who’d obtained the us
e of it and he must have done a good deal of very fast talking because even if they’d intended to abandon the building they’d have wanted to demolish it for scrap.
Along the south wall under the blackout-draped windows were stacked dozens of wooden crates with consignment bills-of-lading taped to them. Two men in English uniforms with slung rifles stood sleepily near the door; they were not Englishmen, they were White Russians; Alex recognized them both from Finland. When they saw his face they both stiffened almost imperceptibly—the gesture of coming to attention; he nodded to them both as he went by them.
He made introductions; he said to Pappy Johnson, “Prince Felix is the man you’re going to train to drop the lump of sugar into the cup of coffee. He’s our lead pilot.”
Johnson was startled, then dubious, then polite: “Fine—that’s just fine.” He essayed a smile.
“You don’t mean to tell me I’ve got to fly one of those bloody four-engine battleships?”
“Felix is a first-class pilot—don’t let him fool you.”
Johnson was squinting. “You’re the Prince Felix Romanov that won a couple of air races.”
“In racing planes, Captain—not stinking huge blunderbusses.”
“You rated to fly multiengine?”
“I’ve flown twin. Never four.”
“You’ll get the hang of it,” Alex said. But Pappy Johnson did not look happy.
A short man—very wide but not fat—emerged from the corner office and strode forward in a British uniform with a colonel’s pips on the shoulderboards.
Felix said diplomatically, “Colonel Tolkachev has been showing me around.”
Tolkachev’s broad ruddy Cossack face was expressionless when he gave his formal salute. “Welcome to Scotland, Colonel.”
It was a studied slight: he knew full well what Alex’s rank was but Alex wasn’t in uniform and it had given Tolkachev the excuse to address him by the rank he’d held when Vassily had been the brigade’s general.
Tolkachev turned to John Spaight and clicked his heels. Spaight shook hands informally with the adjutant. “How are you, Tolkachev? Put on a little weight, I see.”
Tolkachev had been Vassily’s right hand and he was still Vassily’s man and there was no mistaking the enmity, it came off him in waves.
Tolkachev said, “I believe you will find the regiment in order.”
Regiment, Alex thought, picking up on it. No longer brigade. Well they’d been cut up badly in Finland.
“Where’ve you got the men billeted?”
“Across the field. They are smaller hangars than this one.”
“How many men on the roster?”
“Six hundred eighty-two combat personnel. Two hundred eleven support personnel.”
“All from the old outfit, are they?”
“We have had a few recruits. Some of the Poles came over—it looked like more action with us than they had where they were.”
“Is there still a company of Finns?”
“No sir. Helsinki recalled them to defend the border. They are fighting the Bolsheviks again you know.”
“Then we’re all White Russians with a sprinkling of Free Poles, is that it?”
“Yes sir.”
“You’ve done a remarkable job of keeping the unit intact.”
“That was General Devenko’s doing, sir.” Tolkachev wasn’t giving an inch.
“You’ve been here what, nearly a year?”
“That is right.”
“With what duties?” It was like pulling teeth.
“Miscellaneous defense,” Tolkachev replied. “We have fourteen pilots—the British supplied us with those light aircraft you saw at the end of the field. The air detachment has been flying air-sea rescue missions and spotter flights looking for enemy shipping in the North Sea. The rest of us have been manning antiaircraft stations along the coast, guarding rail shipments of war materiel, doing sentry shifts at Scapa Flow. We have done a good deal of combat training and parade-ground drilling—the General said we were going into action.”
“So you started commando training.”
“Yes sir.”
“How far along are they?”
“That would depend on the nature of the combat mission.”
Alex was tired; he’d need a clear morning head to get down to the details. “I’ll want a meeting of all field-grade officers at nine in the morning and a general formation at noon.”
“Very good sir.”
Alex turned to Prince Felix. “Well how are you then?”
Felix spread his hands wide. “Like a duck to water, old man. I’ve been flying those puddle jumpers.”
“I’ve been expecting a message from Baron Oleg.”
“It came this afternoon. It wasn’t much of a message. We’re to expect someone tomorrow evening.”
Then Oleg had kept his word. It would be someone from Spain, hand-carrying the contact drill for reaching Vlasov.
It would be none too soon. Without Stalin’s favorite Red Army general none of this was going to work at all.
3.
At six in the morning Sergei knocked and he struggled out of sleep, filled with random pains.
There was no shower and the bath water wasn’t heated because it had not occurred to any of them to light the boiler. He washed with cold water and sponged himself with a cloth; it was bracing if nothing else. When he had shaved he surrendered the bathroom to Spaight and got into his Russian dress-whites because of the regimental formation he’d scheduled for the day; and found his way into the kitchen where Sergei had eggs frying in the bacon grease.
It was a farm cottage that Sergei had rented: the little garden backed up on the airfield’s fence and the hangars were visible and within walking distance. The owner of the house was a Royal Naval Reserve petty officer serving aboard one of His Majesty’s destroyers; the wife and children were living thirty-six miles away with a sister-in-law in the town of Inverness.
It was a comfortable bungalow, very small rooms with everything in its place and chintz headrests on the armchairs.
“It’s a hell of a house to run a war from, Sergei.”
“Yes sir.”
He’d done eating and got into his second cup of coffee when Spaight stumbled groggily into the kitchen, suffering badly from the change in time. “Christ I feel like a quart hangover. I woke up trying to scrape the moss off my tongue. How you making it this morning?”
“Feeling no pain,” Alex lied. “Sit down and revive yourself on some of Sergei’s coffee.”
The cup was almost engulfed by Sergei’s huge hand when he set it down. Then he put his grave eyes on Alex. “Will there be soldierly duties for me as well, my general?”
Sergei was overage and overweight but he had lived his entire life for the single purpose of soldiering for Russia. Alex said, “You’ll fight with us, Sergei. We couldn’t do it without you.”
Sergei went back to the frypan beaming.
“John, I’m going to handpick you a parachute company. You’re going to have to equip them and train them for jumping.”
Spaight shot a quick warning glance to his left.
Alex said, “I’ve trusted Sergei many times with my life and he’s trusted me with his. You might listen when Sergei speaks—the British Expeditionary Force awarded him a DSM in the Ukraine.”
The Distinguished Service Medal was a citation the English didn’t take lightly. Spaight showed his surprise and then nodded. Sergei happily served up his eggs and ham-sliced bacon.
Alex said, “The heavier things are coming by convoy. Transports have a way of ending up in the Atlantic trench. It’s going to be another of your jobs to keep leaning on Glenn Buckner to deliver the goods we need—regardless of U-boats.”
“Tall order,” Spaight remarked. “What else?”
“You’ll be in overall command of training.”
Spaight pushed his empty plate away and swallowed the last mouthful. “Okay. Now you can tell me what I’m training them for.”
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“Paratroop commando tactics. The same drill we had at Bliss.”
“Uh-huh. With the two of us trading places. I’ve already said that’s all right with me—but I’d still like to know what kind of operation I’m preparing them for.”
“Just teach them to jump out of those Dakotas. The men have seen their share of combat in Finland—you won’t have to teach them a damned thing about handling rifles or digging holes or maintaining battle discipline.”
“That’ll speed things up. My God the times at Bliss I’d have given my left nut for a training cadre that had any kind of combat experience at all. Do you have any idea how much of a godsend you were to my command, Alex?”
“You’ve seen combat,” Alex pointed out.
“Twenty-three years ago in French mud. That wasn’t combat, that was a screwed-up slaughterhouse in the trenches.”
“I’ve seen your combat record.”
“Where the hell did you turn that rock over?”
Alex said, “You took a patrol a hundred miles inside German-occupied territory on an armed reconnaissance. You came back through the lines with four German colonels and one of the Kaiser’s major-generals for prisoner interrogation—and you didn’t lose a single man. That’s what I want you to train these paratroops for. That mission all over again. To get to the objective without being seen or shot at. To attain the objective without fuss and without noise.”
“Son—if I can call a major general son—that was a nice quiet little farmhouse in the Rhine country that the Boche were using for a rear-echelon officers’ billet. Like this house here. We had to put knives in half a dozen sentries just before dawn and that was all there was to it—we caught the brass hats with their pants down standing in line waiting for the latrine. That ain’t exactly the same idea as walking into the Russian goddamned Kremlin.”
“We’re not going into the Kremlin,” Alex said.
Spaight grinned. “Aha. That’s piece number one of the puzzle.”
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