Sapphire Skies

by Belinda Alexandra

  Svetlana shook her head. ‘No,’ she answered sharply, ‘because it was the government that killed her.’

  A shiver ran down Lily’s spine. ‘What do you mean?’

  Svetlana raised her eyes to Lily’s and enunciated every word clearly. ‘It wasn’t the Germans that executed her. Government agents killed her mercilessly without a trial. The President and Prime Minister may not be aware of that, but someone in the government must know the truth. It will be there somewhere, tucked away in their files.’

  Lily froze. She was now privy to information that could get her into trouble. Russia was more open than it used to be but possessing that sort of knowledge still put her and Oksana in danger. But she couldn’t stop at this point. She had to know what had happened.

  ‘The government killed Natasha?’ she repeated. ‘But, Svetlana, why would they have killed one of the Soviet Union’s best pilots in the middle of a war?’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Kursk, 1943

  In the spring of 1943, the German forces prepared for an attack on Kursk, a city south of Moscow. They called in air units from France and Norway as well as from parts of the Russian front. The Luftwaffe wanted to regain their supremacy in the skies, but the Soviet Air Force was now a foe to be reckoned with. We were experienced in combat and our factories were producing planes rapidly and of improved design.

  As a squadron commander, one of my roles was to train the new pilots who joined our regiment. I chose for my wingman a sergeant by the name of Filipp Dudko. I had perfected two manoeuvres: one was a climbing spiral that I used to evade attack; and the other was a snap roll that tricked a pursuing plane into overshooting and so becoming my victim. I needed a wingman who could stay with me no matter what I did. Filipp had quick reflexes, but something about him concerned me. Once, when we were on patrol, I spotted German Focke-Wulfs strafing a supply road. I led the squadron to a higher altitude so we could swoop down on the enemy aircraft. Our attack resulted in a fierce dogfight. Filipp kept my rear covered and we were able to scatter the planes. I was pleased with his performance, but when the squadron returned to the airfield and the pilots recounted the fight, Filipp was puzzled.

  ‘Was there a fight?’ he asked. ‘I thought it was an impromptu training exercise.’

  He hadn’t seen the enemy planes.

  ‘It’s a common problem with inexperienced pilots — and even experienced ones,’ Colonel Smirnov assured me. ‘Dudko will develop the ability to see approaching planes with practice. At least he didn’t get himself separated from you or move into your firing position. You’ve made a good choice with him.’

  There weren’t bunkers at our new airfield, which had been hurriedly built in anticipation of the push, and we were billeted in a village that had been liberated from the Germans. The house where Svetlana, Dominika, Alisa and I were staying was next door to where Valentin and Colonel Smirnov were billeted. I could see Valentin’s room from the attic of the house and sometimes I climbed up there to wave to him. Once, as a joke, he made signals to me using a mirror. But Colonel Smirnov caught him and threatened to throw him in the guardhouse. Valentin and I were in love but we were in the middle of a war. There were rare moments when we snatched a swim together in a river or made love, but most of the time our minds were engaged in fighting the enemy. I wanted to defeat the Germans quickly so that we could return to Moscow and begin a new life together.

  The house where we were billeted was owned by a woman named Ludmila who treated us with kindness. She put flowers in our room and gave us more food than the air force paid her for. She was fascinated by the idea of women combatants and when Alisa and I returned to the house at the end of the day she would ask us about our missions. If either of us had shot down a plane, Ludmila would want a blow-by-blow account of the fight. Nothing pleased her more than the idea that we’d killed Germans. At the same time she would fret, ‘They shouldn’t have sent young girls like you to the front.’

  One day, when Svetlana and I were about to go to the bathhouse to clean up, Ludmila called to us. ‘Come, I want to show you something.’ She led us to a house on the outskirts of the village. ‘My sister lives here,’ she informed us, knocking on the door.

  A woman younger than Ludmila answered and introduced herself as Rada. I thought that we were there to collect eggs or berries, but Rada had another reason for inviting us into her home. She showed us into the kitchen where the fire had been lit. Sitting by it was a young woman. Her head moved erratically from side to side and her tongue hung out of her mouth. In the apartment building in the Arbat where I had lived with my family, there had been a boy like that; he’d been born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck.

  I expected Rada to ask us if we could obtain something for the girl — clothing, medicine, some item of food not available in the village. Instead she reached up to a shelf and handed us a framed photograph. It was a picture of a young girl about sixteen years old; a true Slavic beauty with high cheekbones and long blonde hair.

  ‘That was Faina before the war,’ Ludmila said.

  Rada wiped her hand over her face. ‘My beautiful Faina, my beautiful girl,’ she said, her voice breaking.

  Svetlana and I looked to Ludmila for an explanation.

  ‘When the Germans occupied our village they would take Faina to the woods,’ Ludmila said. ‘Rada used to try to hide her but the Germans threatened to kill the whole village, children and all, if she wasn’t surrendered. Even on the day of their retreat, the Germans couldn’t leave Faina alone. They raped her and then bashed her head with a rock.’

  The story made me sick to the stomach.

  Ludmila pointed to the pistols that Svetlana and I wore on our belts. ‘Promise me something, my courageous daughters. If either of you is ever in danger of being captured, you must shoot yourself rather than be taken prisoner by those monsters.’

  Faina’s story made Svetlana morbid. In our room that evening she asked me, ‘Could you do it? Could you kill yourself?’

  I didn’t tell her that I’d come close to having to do so a few days earlier when my plane was shot down and I’d had to crash-land in German-held territory. I just managed to pull myself from the wreckage when I heard trucks and voices heading in my direction. Fortunately for me, Filipp had seen me go down and landed his plane next to my wrecked one. I’d squeezed myself onto the floor of his cockpit and he’d whisked me away before the Germans arrived.

  To steel their nerves and intimidate the enemy, the pilots in our regiment liked to paint emblems on their planes. The high-scoring aces painted crosses on their cowlings to represent the kills they’d made, while others painted tiger stripes or jaws with sharp teeth. One of the pilots offered to paint a sapphire on my fuselage but Colonel Smirnov forbade it.

  ‘The German command knows who you are, Comrade Lieutenant. Believe me! German men do not like to be bested by women and there is a high price on your head. Keep the advantage of anonymity on your side. Your talent as a pilot is more useful to the Motherland than your celebrity.’

  It wasn’t only the Germans we had to fear. Each regiment had attached to it a political officer. Their role was to make sure that everything we discussed was in keeping with Communist ideology and no one was voicing ‘incorrect opinions’. When I was with the 586th regiment, the political officer was a woman. Although she disseminated Communist material and gave classes in ideology, she was also concerned about how we coped with separation from our families. In Stalingrad, we’d had a male political officer who, while not concerned with our emotional states, wasn’t particularly attentive to our beliefs either. At our new airfield, the political officer was a man named Lipovsky and I didn’t like him. He watched everything I did. ‘You are old enough to progress from Komsomol membership to full Communist Party participation,’ he told me one day. ‘Why have you not done so?’ Potential Party members had their backgrounds checked thoroughly. If I were to apply for Party membership, my father’s record would be uncovered. Fortunately, C
olonel Smirnov intervened.

  ‘Let her focus on the war first,’ he told Lipovsky. ‘You can see that she fights like a good Communist for the Motherland. When the war is over, she can think about politics.’

  With Lipovsky lurking around, I had to be careful. I was discreet about my little icon of St Sofia, which I kept hidden in my pocket. I crossed myself before take-off only when I was sure that Lipovsky wasn’t looking. I couldn’t afford trouble.

  In the middle of July our regiment was moved closer to Orël to assist the Soviet ground forces’ advance on German lines. Every inch of land was fiercely contested. We kept pressure on the enemy. One day we would gain air supremacy, then the next day the Germans would win it back. We flew so many sorties a day that I felt like a coiled spring that was being pulled tight. Valentin and I had hardly a moment together. Sometimes we would snatch a kiss and then part with a smile that said ‘after the war’.

  Colonel Smirnov called the regiment together one evening to tell us that the Germans had brought to the battle one of their best aces, the Black Diamond. He was an efficient killer with over ninety victories to his name.

  The colonel explained his technique to us. ‘The Black Diamond avoids dogfights,’ he said. ‘He uses the element of surprise and moves perilously close to his target before firing, preventing the pilot from taking evasive action. Of course, I don’t encourage the newer pilots to adopt the Black Diamond’s technique. Debris from the plane you’ve destroyed can catch you too. The Black Diamond has gone down a few times, but only because he’s been hit by debris. He’s never been downed by one of us.’

  One day Filipp and I were flying on patrol with Alisa and her wingman when we spotted German Junkers accompanied by fighters heading towards our troops. We had the advantage of altitude and I instructed Alisa and her wingman to engage the fighters while Filipp and I attacked the bombers. I couldn’t protect Filipp forever. He needed combat experience. I ordered him to get into the firing position and to take aim at the outermost Junker. I saw he kept his nerve and waited until he was in a good position before firing. He hit the Junker, which burst into flames and broke apart. Flaming debris spun to the ground.

  ‘Don’t stare at it,’ I told him over the radio. ‘Watch your back.’

  I passed above the bombers and turned around, intending to help Filipp make another strike on the Junkers. Something made me look rearwards. Approaching from behind was a Messerschmitt that hadn’t been part of the fighter formation. Where had he come from? Out of the sun? I knew who it was. I was glad Filipp wasn’t with me: he would have missed seeing the Black Diamond for sure. Unfortunately for the German ace, he had chosen for his target a pilot who had spotted him in plenty of time.

  I turned my plane hard before he was close enough to take a fatal shot and swung around behind him. The hunter was now the prey. ‘So you don’t like to fight, Black Diamond?’ I said. ‘You like to have it your way.’

  The Black Diamond threw himself around the sky with me on his tail. I was determined to down him. The Black Diamond sensed that too. He tried to lure me over the frontline and closer to the ground, where I’d be vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire.

  I pushed my plane to maximum speed, lined the Black Diamond up in my sights and hit my gun button. The bullets sprayed along his fuselage. At first I thought they hadn’t penetrated the armour but then smoke began to pour out of the engine and the Black Diamond’s plane went into a dive.

  I flew upwards to avoid fire from the ground and circled to see what had happened. The Messerschmitt was heading for a field a short distance over the line. Why doesn’t he bail out, I wondered. Then I realised that the Black Diamond intended to save his plane and land it. At that speed he’d surely be killed.

  To my astonishment he landed without it breaking up. I circled again and saw him climb out of the cockpit, unhurt. But there weren’t any troops to protect him where he had landed. He watched me swooping towards him and, with no escape possible, straightened himself, presenting his chest to take my fatal bullets.

  At the beginning of the war, downing an enemy plane was enough of a victory. Now the war was a bloody battle where every factor counted. But as I approached, I saw that the Black Diamond was a handsome man. Not in an Aryan way; instead, he was tall and dark like my brother, Alexander, had been, with a broad chest and hefty legs like tree trunks. He lifted his hand to his forehead and saluted me. I switched on the fire button, but I couldn’t press it. I held the Black Diamond’s gaze for a moment, then I returned his salute and climbed high into the sky.

  The shock of the encounter wore off when I returned to the airfield, and the magnitude of my blunder hit me. Valentin had returned from another mission and he and Sharavin were examining the damage to his plane. I taxied alongside them. Valentin’s Yak was riddled with bullet holes and the tail badly dented. It was a miracle he had made it back to the airfield. I didn’t know if I had been unable to shoot the Black Diamond because of his resemblance to my brother or whether simple weariness had clouded my judgement. But I realised that in not finishing him off, I had left a dangerous beast roaming in the forest; one that could kill my beloved Valentin.

  When I wrote out my report, I didn’t claim the Black Diamond as a victory, although to have done so would have earned me another medal and much glory. When Alisa asked me about the plane I had pursued, I told her that it had got away.

  My error in judgement had left me with much to worry about. Only the previous week news had come to us that some inexperienced pilots of Pe-2 bombers had accidentally attacked our own ground troops. Those responsible had been shot as traitors. I’d known that those pilots hadn’t betrayed the Soviet Union. Most likely they’d made navigational mistakes because they weren’t used to the intensity of combat. If anyone had seen me spare the Black Diamond — nearby ground troops, talkative peasants, a pilot on another mission — and Lipovsky found out, I’d be shot too.

  Early the following morning, I was called into readiness-one and sat in the cockpit of my plane with Svetlana next to me on the wing. The heat of the day hadn’t reached its peak and we took turns reading to each other from Anna Karenina, although we skipped the parts where the characters ate lavish meals. We missed Ludmila and her cooking. At our new base we were back to eating in a mess bunker and sometimes, when the fighting was intense and it was difficult for supplies to reach us, we had soup with bread for all our meals. Lately, we had only had bread and soup once a day. It was not enough sustenance for us to maintain the strength we needed for fighting. Our airbase was surrounded by fields of sunflowers that had gone unharvested, and the pilots and mechanics alike would gather the seeds in our breaks for the cook to add to the bread. We collected mushrooms and berries too, but it was risky to venture into the forest in case of mines.

  I looked up from the novel for a moment and surveyed the sky. Valentin had left on a sortie with Colonel Smirnov and six other pilots to cover ground troops during an advance. By reading I could keep my mind off worrying about him. I wished that I’d gone as his wingman that morning. I could protect him from the Black Diamond if he was up there. And if for some reason I didn’t see the German in time, I would cover Valentin with my own plane and take the bullets for him.

  The din of engines interrupted my thoughts, and Svetlana and I turned to see the planes returning. These days, to come back from a mission was triumph enough and I waited to see if the planes would do a victory pass over the airfield. But they landed straight away and from a high altitude. Something was wrong. I counted the planes: seven. One was missing. Whose?

  I wasn’t supposed to leave my plane when I was in readiness-one but alarm bells were ringing in my head. I loosened my parachute and jumped down from the cockpit, straining my eyes to see the numbers on the planes. It was Colonel Smirnov’s Yak that hadn’t returned.

  Valentin struggled out of his cockpit and staggered towards the hangar. He said something to Sharavin that made the mechanic’s shoulders slump.

  ‘Valentin
!’ I called, running after him.

  He turned, his face deathly pale. ‘Leonid … Colonel Smirnov … he went down in flames.’

  Everything became hazy. I couldn’t speak. The look of despair in Valentin’s eyes was unbearable.

  ‘He fought to the end, Natasha,’ he said. ‘He aimed his plane for a German transport truck on his way down. I heard his screams on the radio as he was burning alive. He begged me to look after his wife and his infant son.’

  A feeling, like a cold shadow, swept over me. ‘Valentin, did a fighter shoot him down or was it ground fire that got him?’

  Valentin held my gaze. ‘It was the Black Diamond. The Black Diamond killed Colonel Smirnov.’

  Valentin was made regimental commander and I was in a dilemma. The fighting had grown even more intense and Valentin needed every bit of his mental and emotional strength to focus on the task. Should I tell him about the Black Diamond in an attempt to alleviate my conscience, but risk him making errors in judgement that could cost other lives? I decided not to, for the same reason that I’d never told him about my father’s arrest and execution. Sometimes ignorance kept you safe. If I was arrested, at least Valentin could say that he didn’t know about my past or the Black Diamond. It wasn’t guaranteed to save him — but it might. I had no choice but to stay quiet.

  Yet I was doomed.

  I realised it one evening when I was heading towards my bunker after the last sortie of the day. Walking through a field of sunflowers to reach it, I caught a glimpse through the stalks of a black car on the other side and a man standing next to it, watching me. Our eyes met and my blood turned to ice. I knew the first time I saw him that I would not forget his gaunt face, red hair and cold eyes. It was the NKVD officer who had arrested my father.

  As we stared at each other in recognition, I was tempted to fall to my knees and beg him to have mercy. If I must die, then let me die for the Motherland and not for crimes against the State. But when he turned away and climbed back into his car, I knew it was finished. My arrest warrant had been signed and my execution was imminent.