“A military victory would certainly help,” Fitzroy said. “The pity is, the Bolsheviks seem to be doing rather well. People want to know why. And we don’t need awkward questions asked in the House.”
“Easy,” Stattaford said. “Tell the blighters it’s not in our national interest to give such information.”
“We tried that. The House didn’t like it.”
“Don’t know why. Censorship worked jolly well in wartime.”
“War’s over. In peacetime they want straight answers.”
“So says the Manchester Guardian,” Weatherby said. “Not to mention the Daily Express.”
“Radical rags,” the general muttered.
“You’ve been very silent, Charles,” Fitzroy said. “Does the Treasury have an opinion?”
“The Treasury has seven hundred and fifty-seven million opinions,” Delahaye said. “The Tsar’s government borrowed seven hundred and fifty-seven million pounds from Britain to fight their side of the war. If our troops in Russia can persuade them to pay it back, I’m sure the British taxpayer will express a very heartfelt thank-you.”
“Prospects are poor, I’m afraid. Lenin and Trotsky say they won’t cough up a kopek.”
“Then why are we in Russia?”
Another pause for thought.
“I remember reading a letter to The Times,” Sir Franklyn said. “Something along these lines: If we withdraw our forces now, we should be letting down our loyal Russian friends. We came to their aid once. They need us more than ever now.” He looked around. “Maybe it’s the decent thing to do.”
“Honest broker,” Weatherby said. “That’s us. Hold the ring. Give the real Russians a fair chance. How does that sound?”
“Simple comradeship,” Stattaford said. “Shoulder to shoulder. Guarantee a fair fight.”
Nobody could improve on that. “So we’re doing the decent thing,” Fitzroy said. “I think the P.M. might like that. Thank you, gentlemen. Shall I ring for tea?”
FRIGHTFUL BRIGANDS
Seven Sopwith Camels hung in the sky. Suppose a peasant, half a mile below, straightened his back and saw the ragged arrowhead and heard their faraway drone, it would be as meaningless as luck, as irrelevant as flies on a wall. Long before they faded to a tiny blur, he would have gone back to his toil.
Griffin was at the point of the arrowhead. He had almost lost the sense of going somewhere. Nothing changed, nothing moved, except the Russian landscape which drifted backwards like a vast drab carpet being very slowly unrolled, and even that never really changed. Griffin was not a deep thinker. War had discouraged deep thought: waste of time and effort, why strain your brain when it might be dead tomorrow? But now he glanced down at the unrolling carpet, always the same old pattern, grey and brown, the bloody endless Russian steppe, as bleak as the sky, and he couldn’t shake off the foolish thought that this journey could last forever.
It was their fifth hour in the air, and he knew he was dangerously cold. When the R.T.O.’s lorries had taken his squadron to the airfield at Ekaterinodar, he had found seven Camels and a brigadier with fresh orders for him. “Fly your Camels to Beketofka, which is the aerodrome for Tsaritsyn. You can’t miss it. Go east and follow the railway line for six hundred kilometres. There’s a splendid little war going on at Tsaritsyn, you’ll like it.”
“And the rest of my squadron, sir?” Griffin asked.
“Seven Camels is all we have. Your other chaps remain here until we can arrange something. Don’t worry, you’ll get them all.”
Griffin chose six pilots and told them the plan. “Get a good night’s sleep. We’re off tomorrow, after breakfast. Take a toothbrush, that’s all. The lighter your load, the further she’ll fly. So move your bowels too.”
“Six hundred kilometres, sir,” Hackett said. “Camel’s range is two hundred, two-fifty with a big tail wind. Have we got a big tail wind?”
“Full tanks, cruising speed, watch your throttle settings,” Griffin said. “We’ll refuel twice. There are petrol dumps beside the railway.”
“Does each dump have an airfield, sir?” Jessop asked.
“No need. The entire Russian steppe is one long landing ground. That’s what I’m told.”
Nobody crashed, but the steppe was no bowling green, and the Camels bounced hard on landing and rocked like tightrope walkers. The pilots refilled their tanks, emptied their bladders, ate some chocolate, took off and did it all again two hours later.
Griffin checked his watch. Open cockpits were essential, they gave you a good all-round view, but by God you paid for it. Today’s wintry blasts were no worse than usual but five hours of them sucked all the warmth from a man’s body and the cold numbed his mind. Cold could be a killer. After a while it made a pilot shrink inside himself and forget his surroundings, which might be a stalking enemy or a sudden snow-covered hill.
Griffin waggled his wings and they all climbed three hundred feet. Now he had their full attention. Stick forward, into a shallow dive. Nothing as exciting as this had happened since the second refuelling when Jessop took off and nearly hit a passing swan.
Griffin nudged the dive more steeply, and the wind in the wires stopped singing and started howling. A small Russian town drifted into his line of sight. Spectators! Good. The altimeter needle fell through a thousand feet and he let it sink to six hundred before he led the flight back up, stick held firmly against his stomach and his backside pressed into the seat as they soared into a loop. Briefly, he put his head back and looked down at little white faces clustered in the town centre. The Camel escaped from the loop and dived. The white faces scattered. “Don’t panic,” he said aloud. Probably never seen a loop, he thought. Or a Camel. The flight levelled out at three hundred feet and got back on course. Nobody was warm, but nobody was sleepy, either.
Half an hour later, Tsaritsyn came in sight. A spur line took the railway to Beketofka aerodrome. A long train stood in the sidings, with steam up. There were canvas hangars, a windsock, several huts and sheds, a tented encampment, three lines of aircraft. A field next to the aerodrome was full of a cavalry camp. The Camels re-formed in line astern and prepared to land, and some people down there fired rifles at them and missed. Griffin cheered. After endless miles of empty steppe they had found the war again.
After the rough and bumpy fields where they had refuelled, Hackett was relieved to touch down smoothly on the turf at Beketofka, and he was pleased to see familiar faces in his ground crew. A sergeant fitter helped him down from the cockpit. “What have you got in the engine, Mr Hackett?” he asked. “Handful of marbles? Bag of rusty nails?”
“It’s a dozen gold sovereigns, sergeant. If you can fish them out, you can keep them.”
A rigger was twanging a wire. He made a face. “I know,” Hackett said. “Wait till you see the rudder cables. Treat in store.”
Colonel Davenport was the camp commandant at Beketofka. His left sleeve was pinned up at the elbow, he wore the ribbon of a D.S.O. and his face was as lined as crumpled paper.
“I leave the flying to you,” he told Griffin. “I look after good order and discipline. Got my hands full keeping out those thieving Russians in the next field. Steal the laces from your boots if you don’t kick ’em in the teeth first. Cossacks, you see.”
“I think they shot at us when we came in to land, sir.”
“Yes, they shoot at anyone they fancy. At Jews, especially. But that’s none of our business. Now: you’re here to buck up the White Army, right? So you report to General Wrangel. He’s the big chief in these parts.”