With increasing anticipation Olnikov asked, “So they were not shot down?”
“No ... they broke off after Surin and Vitolkin turned and attacked. I believe they were at or near the limit of their return range and could not sustain the engagement.” He paused then went on instructively, “The mission of reconnaissance is to bring back intelligence, Comrade. The Nazi flight leader was foolish. But he was also lucky. Had they not broken off and run they would have been destroyed.”
“I see,” Olnikov said thoughtfully.
Kovpak took out a sheet of his official stationery and wrote orders granting Olnikov complete access to the Luftwaffe flight record archives.
“I appreciate the assistance.”
Kovpak signed the document, blotted it and replaced his pen. “If you return Monday to the building directly across the courtyard there will be a liaison officer on the ground floor ... give that to him and he will assign a German clerk to you. If there are any questions, please advise him to see me.”
“Thank you again Colonel ... I may have more questions, based upon what I find, or do not find.”
Kovpak considered his next statement carefully. “Comrade, our next meeting should not be here. I suggest you leave a sealed envelope at my apartment. In it, tell me where and when you would like to meet.”
Olnikov recognized the need for discretion. “I understand ... one more thing ... I almost forgot ... Comrade Vitolkin asked me to give you his regards.”
A smile formed on Kovpak’s face and it was easy to look pleasantly surprised. “It has been years. I hope he is well. Is he still in Moscow?” he asked, deliberately misrepresenting what he knew.
Golikov shook his head, “Lipetsk,” he corrected. “He was most helpful, as well ... good day, Comrade Colonel. I can see myself out.”
- # -
Kovpak wasn’t overly troubled when he found the envelope that had been slid under the door of his apartment. Although it had been five days since his meeting with Olnikov it was obvious the agent was keeping himself informed of things in Berlin – Kovpak’s new rank of Major General was included in the address.
The room Olnikov had taken was located in what served as a hotel for Soviet bureaucrats and after waiting for several minutes in the makeshift lobby to see who might be paying attention, Kovpak knocked on Olnikov’s door at 2100 hours.
On the fourth floor, the space in the mostly habitable building was little more than three meters by four. At one time perhaps elegant, it had been connected to two other rooms via doors that were now covered with crudely-fitted and painted lumber; the light fixtures had long ago been taken, leaving bulbs hanging from wires.
In addition to the simple bed, washstand and a wardrobe, Olnikov had acquired a table and a single swivel chair which he offered to Kovpak hospitably. “Comrade General,” he said as he gestured.
On the table were a number of maps – apparently the German clerk that had been assigned to him had helped him locate not only the Luftwaffe records but some of the maps prepared from aerial photographs.
Kovpak studied the maps and soon confirmed for Olnikov that it seemed as if the position of the engagement matched his recollection of events, but instead of providing additional information, he set out on a course of further deception he had formulated in the days since their last meeting.
Over the years, small, phantom bits of memory had come to him, similar to those he had discussed with Nuryev in the hospital in Chkalov, the most repetitive one being the very strange vision of standing in a snow-covered field and seeing a shape like an elephant – a baby elephant. With Nuryev’s arrival in Berlin, more of the dream-like images had come to the surface and he had become fairly certain that he did not bail out of a crippled airplane.
He had also correctly discerned the implication in Vitolkin’s message: Olnikov was dangerous. The only reason he could come up with for Stalin wanting to find his missing plane was whatever could still be in it might be hazardous to the First Secretary if it were recovered – which meant danger for anyone involved in the mission. I’m still alive because I may hold the key to finding the plane ... but what about after it is found?
With the intrigue surrounding everything that went on in the Communist Party and the Soviet military, Kovpak had decided he must put himself in charge of his own safety. And he had to operate with only what he had at hand in Berlin; there was only one person he could trust – Major, and soon to be Lieutenant Colonel, Anton Nuryev.
Olnikov’s next question surprised him. “Did you know you were taken to Chkalov from Orsk?”
Kovpak looked up and his brow furrowed in concentration for several moments as he thought how to respond. He had to be careful – the opening moves of this mental chess match with a man who reported directly to Stalin could not be undone. “I believe someone may have mentioned Orsk,” he said then gazed again at the map. “It made no sense to me at the time ... I attributed it to being where the train originated – not where I was put on it.” He shook his head in confusion. “Hmm ... I was in Orsk?”
“Yes,” Olnikov confirmed. “Someone found you and took you to Orsk.”
“I also know they found me with my parachute ... it was with my belongings at Chkalov. But as I said ... I cannot recall bailing out of the Airacobra ... or why I would have.”
He paused again then looked at the agent. “I wrestled with this for some time while I was in hospital, Comrade. I still cannot think of circumstances under which I would be found with my parachute—opened, mind you—unless I had bailed out of the aircraft.”
Olnikov started nodding slowly. “I have been told exiting an aircraft is hazardous.”
“And if I did indeed bail out, what you are looking for may have been utterly destroyed on impact ... have you ever seen a crash site, Comrade?”
The agent shook his head and looked somewhat concerned about this new possibility.
Kovpak’s voice lowered slightly. “I have. Too many of them. Wreckage can be scattered for hundreds of meters ... but some are nothing but charred craters ... with only a few small pieces of metal remaining. I have even seen one where the only thing that could be identified was the hulk of the engine. How you would even find such a thing in the Urals this time of year is beyond me.”
Olnikov could only agree. Even with what he knew now, finding Kovpak’s plane might require hundreds of men searching on foot and horseback in the deepening winter in an area of hundreds of square kilometers. But his task, at least for now, was only to report back to Stalin. “You have been most helpful, Comrade Colonel. It will not be my decision on how to proceed. If you recall anything, even the most minor detail, please get word to me in Moscow ... by secure dispatch, of course. We may meet again should the need arise.”
“Of course, Comrade,” Kovpak said then rose and picked up his coat and hat. As he opened the door he turned and added, “If I can be of assistance.”
“Thank you again, Comrade,” Olnikov said.
“Udači,” (good luck), Kovpak said as he stepped into the hall and closed the door. You may never find it, Comrade Olnikov, but I will.
- # -
Olnikov’s next meeting with Stalin was brief – surprisingly so. The Generalissimus seemed preoccupied but at moments very attentive as he listened to the agent’s outline of the facts surrounding Kovpak’s abruptly-terminated mission.
As the briefing ended it was apparent Stalin had agreed with Olnikov’s conclusion – that whatever might be left of Kovpak’s plane, if there was indeed anything, it would be difficult if not impossible to find in a veritable wilderness, particularly after several seasons of snow cover.
His task completed, Olnikov had been almost summarily dismissed – with an ominous warning that he not reveal anything to anyone under any circumstances.
He was not entirely surprised he was going back to his regular duty and as he walked out of the wing toward his own office he found himself very relieved that Stalin was not sending him to into the wildern
ess at this time of year to mount a search for a missing airplane.
But what might have been the real reason for finding the plane was a question hard to dismiss and as he exited his small office for the last time and descended the stairs he came to the conclusion that the General Secretary might not be finished with him.
CHAPTER 19
Berlin, Germany, Soviet Sector, October, 1946
With the early onslaught of what would prove to be one of the worst winters in history, the people of Germany were being subjected to not only the sociopolitical fallout of losing the war but an expanding disaster in terms of simple human survival. While bombs and artillery were no longer raining down on them, the forces of nature were making an already appalling situation much worse. Most of the Russian occupation forces in the Soviet zone had experience with the hard winters of their homeland, thus they fared better than their Allied counterparts and especially the German civilian population.
As Kovpak and Nuryev went about their routine duties, the silence from Olnikov seemed appropriate – apparently the story had been convincing enough and now, formulating a way to get to the airplane first was becoming something of a fixation for Kovpak.
He rightly assumed that without some insight or guidance, no one would go searching en-masse in the remote region – although he knew Stalin had ordered more absurd things in the past. But Stalin does not want anyone to know, he often reminded himself; having dozens perhaps even hundreds of troops and their officers engaged in such a task would invite all manner of speculation. He also believed he would be among the first to know if a search was going to be mounted – without him involved it would be a fruitless exercise.
In his apartment, Kovpak had assembled a collection of maps, charts and Luftwaffe aerial photographs that were far more detailed than anything the Red Air Force had available – and those, he had decided, would not return to the archives.
Now, after explaining his plan to an astonished Nuryev, they were exploring potential locations. To their combined surprise they had come to learn the Luftwaffe had been penetrating not only as far as Ufa, but had managed to photograph locations of important metallurgical production facilities many kilometers south and eastward, including Orsk.
“I may have mentioned this before,” Kovpak said as he closed his eyes in concentration, “but the memory is so strange ... and so impossible.”
“The snow?” Nuryev asked. “Standing in the snow.”
Kovpak nodded then something changed in his mind and he shook his head. “I am sure now it is not a dream. I was looking at a mountain, Anton. It looked like an elephant ... the head of a small elephant ... a very small one. I was ... I was standing ... I was in the snow, in a field.”
Nuryev studied his friend and mentor and could sense the struggle going on in the General’s mind. He decided to try another approach as if this absurd-sounding image might have been real. As he would debrief a pilot who had been involved in an incident, Nuryev even made it sound as if he were conducting an accident investigation. “Let’s start with that, General. It was a mountain. How high was it?”
Kovpak looked at his friend and realized what he was doing. He smiled slightly and his mind began to focus on the specific question instead of the flurry of confused thoughts. “I would say at the highest point ... perhaps a hundred meters.”
“And which direction were you facing when you saw it? Nuryev asked quickly.
Kovpak stared at the map. “I ... I cannot ... I do not know. It was overcast. There were higher mountains behind it,” he said, gesturing with a hand in the air. “And a valley between them. And I was in a larger valley.”
“Assume for the sake of argument that you put the plane down on some suitable surface in this area,” Nuryev said, circling a portion of the map with his finger. “Look at the terrain map, General. What direction would you have gone?”
Kovpak said nothing and Nuryev prodded. “You would not have climbed a mountain, correct? You were injured.”
Kovpak scowled and his eyes darted back and forth a few times. “I believe I would have found and followed a river ... down river,” he said and pointed at several places on the map as he added, “but there are too many streams and rivers.”
“Do you recall this ... White Lake?” Nuryev asked, tapping his finger on a large lake on the map.
Kovpak tried but failed to remember what it might have looked like from the air. “I know we were near the White River. That was one of my landmarks on our chart.” He studied the map again near the small town of Pribel’skiy which the German’s had recorded as the location of their engagement.
“I know we ... it was Vitolkin and I ... I decided to get closer to the mountains ... to the east. Yes! When he caught up with me we flew almost straight toward the southern slope of Yamantaw.” Kovpak paused. “I remember now ... we turned south when I estimated we would have a due south course to Aqtobe.”
“How far did you fly? How long?”
“I do not know ... I know he, he fell back ... out of formation. When he recovered I saw his fuel leak and he ... yes, now I remember, I told him he could go due west to Salavat or return to Ufa ... yes, to Ufa, he chose Ufa ... and I would have had to have given him the heading.”
Kovpak drew a line on the map with a pencil from Aqtobe due north until it would have crossed an east-west line from Salavat.
“Orsk,” Nuryev noted, pointing to the map. “If you had gotten this far, you would have flown only a few kilometers west of it.”
Kovpak used a caliper to measure the distance from the last point he could recall to Aqtobe. “Five hundred and fifty kilometers,” he said.
“Less than two hours,” Nuryev said. “What was your altitude?”
“It should have been thirty-three hundred meters.”
“Could you have seen this – this, this elephant from that altitude?”
“I cannot see how ... I do not know,” Kovpak began, then the sudden realization he had seen it from the air made him take a breath and hold it. He raised his head and his eyes swung back and forth as he fought to sort out what was going on in his mind.
There was now a second image from his memory—one from inside the cockpit—a nearly flat, snow covered expanse with the same elephant more than two, perhaps three kilometers away in the distance below. He sat down, his mind reeling. “I saw it, Anton,” he said numbly. “I even circled to line up across the field.”
“So you had enough altitude to see it and then circle to land!” Nuryev said with some amazement.
“I must have,” Kovpak admitted slowly. “I was trying to see it again ... to home in on it across the space ... I ... maybe I was not actually standing in the snow.”
“And you still had power?” Nuryev asked, knowing he had been told something different years ago.
There was a confusing moment when Kovpak’s mind could not make all the details match up at the same time. His voice was almost at the level of a whisper as he said, “I have no recollection.” After a few more moments his eyes opened wide. “Wait! Wait! Remember the American’s advice about a prop overrun?”
“Ignore the manual and bail out,” Nuryev answered quickly.
“Which I think now I must have ignored.”
Nuryev saw his friend’s mind making more connections and he pressed on with the debriefing techniques he had come to use with pilots. “Your emergency landing procedures ... what procedures were you following? What did you see? What exactly did you do?”
Kovpak stared into the space in front of him and simply said, “You are a genius, Anton!”
- # -
Only a day after the revelations that came from their meeting, Kovpak put into motion the plan they had devised. He dispatched Nuryev on a mission to visit and report back on the readiness of three potential training and maintenance bases where a tour of British aircraft might stop – one of those chosen was Orsk.
During the three-week assignment Nuryev was well received at the bases he visited
and dutifully put together detailed reports on his observations. On his arrival back in Berlin, his first order of business was to hand Kovpak his report, consisting of dozens of pages of his official findings.
Later, in Kovpak’s apartment, Nuryev showed his friend and mentor a chart and a series of photographs he had taken from the air above the veritable wilderness that spread to the north and west of Orsk.
“It’s all but invisible above a thousand meters. I circled four times to get lower and take these,” Nuryev said.
Kovpak was speechless. Fixated on the black and white photographs, he struggled to make more sense out of what he was seeing.
“It juts out, making a loop in the Sakmara River – here,” Nuryev said, circling a point on the map with a pencil. “If you continued following the river you would have come to this village.”
The General seemed to be concentrating and Nuryev gave him a strange piece of news. “It seems deserted. Not one plume of smoke. No vehicles. No tracks that I could see and I circled it several times at very low altitude. Had there been anyone they would have come out to see.”
Kovpak stared numbly as more memories unfolded. “I was in a church,” he whispered. “Inside a church ... I thought it was another dream ... why would I be in a church?” he asked as if he had suddenly reached a conclusion. “There was no one there. There was nothing there ... nothing inside the church but dust ... and a painting ... a painting on the ceiling. I ... I remember now ... I broke up some dry wood ... from a window sill ... for kindling ... then I went outside and it started snowing.”
Nuryev nodded encouragingly. “There is just the one road leading southeast – if you wish to call it that. It’s not even on the map but it rises slightly up the valley to a ridge, here, where it intersects with this road.” He paused momentarily. “If you were walking up that road and came to this intersection, which way would you have turned? Up, to the east into the mountains or to the west, following the ridge?”
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