On Yefgenii’s twentieth birthday there were drinks in the bar. Kiriya led the toasts. Despite his own pain, he could admire Yefgenii’s triumphs: it was white envy. He kissed him on both cheeks. “Congratulations, Kapetan Yeremin.” Pilipenko threw an arm round his shoulders. Yefgenii Yeremin had become the youngest kapetan in the VVS.
Glinka was still a starshii-leitenant. His eyes drifted to Skomorokhov’s. Both men had the same look of a gap in them that’d never be filled.
The next day, once airborne, they tested their guns as usual and then Yefgenii led them over the Yalu. From 15,000 metres they swooped into a squadron of Sabres. In the first pass he got one but his wingman was killed. “Glinka, get on my wing!” Yefgenii’s head swept round the cockpit. “Glinka!”
Glinka was climbing out of the battle. Yefgenii saw him crossing above. Two more MiGs were battling a Sabre pair. Glinka looked down and saw Sabres converging on his leader. It was a simple move to tilt in their direction and open fire but instead he turned away and kept on climbing.
Yefgenii was alone and vulnerable. A pair of Sabres had seen him and were swooping in behind. He jerked his aircraft into a sharp evasive turn and in doing so he spotted Skomorokhov turning in from the edge of the battle. “Sko! Get the fuckers off me! Sko!”
Skomorokhov watched Yefgenii’s MiG curve along the horizon. Two Sabres were banking round behind him. Cloud matted the sky and the land. Against white, the aircraft stood out in isolation. Their dance was the only living thing in creation. They were cut off from the world.
The leading Sabre opened fire on Yefgenii. “Sko!”
Skomorokhov tilted away. He watched over his shoulder. His heart was pounding. Sweat chilled on his skin. To desert a comrade was unthinkable but so was losing his place at the top of the mountain.
Yefgenii pulled round. Tracers were flashing past his cockpit. He saw a Sabre climbing onto Glinka’s tail. “Glinka, check six!”
Glinka snapped his MiG into a turn. The move was so sudden and violent that the airflow ripped away. Yefgenii glimpsed Glinka’s wings glinting in the sun. They were tilting up to the vertical. For a split second the MiG hung in perfect stillness on its side. Then the wings shuddered and it stalled. Glinka plunged straight down and struck one of the Sabre pair that was closing on Yefgenii. The Sabre’s wing sheared clean off. It spun away and on the second or third rotation its fuel tank ruptured. Glinka’s MiG divided into a thousand nuggets and Yefgenii could even imagine them tinkling as they sprinkled into the air.
Someone shouted “Taran!” It might’ve been Skomorokhov but Yefgenii couldn’t be sure. Taran, the ramming maneuver — on any other day he’d’ve laughed at the suggestion. The zveno was scattered and disorganized and Yefgenii ordered them to run for home.
“Taran!” Skomorokhov repeated in the crew hut. He wore a strange expression as if he found the whole thing hilarious. His heart was still drumming from his betrayal. He hated himself for it but wasn’t glad that Yefgenii had survived. He felt he’d learned that his competitive drive knew no moral limit and that this was a thing to be proud of.
Kiriya turned to Yefgenii. “Yeremin?”
“It wasn’t a ramming maneuver, sir. It was a fuck-up. I’d call it a midair collision.”
In his office Kiriya considered his report to Moscow. The officials there would know nothing of the sortie apart from his dispatch. His account would enter the records. It would become history; it would become the truth.
With one act, Glinka’s life would be defined, and it was up to Kiriya to choose the definition. He began to write. Cornered by the Americans, Glinka committed the supreme self-sacrifice, the ramming maneuver. He took one with him rather than surrender. This was the stuff of comic books. Kiriya was recommending Glinka for a posthumous Order of Lenin. He’d be remembered as a great hero and a great pilot.
As winter approached, the flying days became shorter, but it wasn’t long before Yefgenii overtook Skomorokhov. The news came down from the tower. Skomorokhov nodded. He felt the other men’s eyes on him. He was deposed from his royal status and now he knew they’d all see him the same way he saw himself — as tubby and balding.
As Yefgenii returned to base, frost glistened on the edges of his canopy. Sweat chilled under his suit. When he took off his mask, his breath condensed into a small cloud. He had more kills than any pilot in the 221st. He was a Hero of the Soviet Union, had won the Order of Lenin and only Pepelyaev and Sutyagin had more jet kills in the entire VVS.
Kiriya would often seek him out in public places so that the ground crews could see them talking together, the boss and the spectacular young hero, in a mutual reflection of celestial glory. He’d taken to calling him “Yo-Yo”. Kiriya chose to believe that he was the Sun to Yefgenii’s Moon; the boy shone with a brightness he supplied.
Anyone who got a kill wanted to report it first to Yefgenii. His approval had begun to count more than Kiriya’s. He couldn’t go anywhere on the base without someone calling out a greeting. At dinner, the rookies would keep a place for him at their table, and be crestfallen if he gravitated to a rival clique. If he approached, their hearts would race, like teenagers with a crush.
Pilipenko had accepted him as his equal in the air despite his junior rank, but, now that Yefgenii had surpassed them all, Pilipenko was at a loss to relate to his status. The best approach was not to consider him a man at all but a myth. His gifts were inscrutable, his achievements imaginary and his name could only be whispered, never said aloud.
When with swooping hands they’d recount their stories in the bar, it was Yefgenii’s everyone wanted to hear. Skomorokhov would follow with one of his own — the day he became an ace, how he became a double — but it was never enough. At one time he’d been a prince; unburdened by Kiriya’s responsibilities to command, he’d been in a position to dispense grand favors. A word of praise to a young pilot would be greeted with fawning appreciation. A stinging put-down to a runt would win laughter.
To a group of rookies Skomorokhov recounted how he was bounced by a pair of Sabres and ended up with smoke in the cockpit but still made it home. He received no looks of wonder. Instead the rookies turned to Yefgenii for his reaction. Skomorokhov flushed with resentment. “Yeremin, ever flown with worse viz inside the cockpit than out?” No one laughed at the joke.
Yefgenii hadn’t called him “sir” or “Major” for weeks. “You know, Sko, I think the superior pilot uses his superior judgment to stay out of situations that test his superior ability.”
Skomorokhov flung his vodka glass into the fire.
Now, as Yefgenii climbed into the east, a dusting of snow lay across the fields below. The peaks of the Changbai Range were shrouded in fog, but the Yalu remained clear, the dividing line between the offices of mortals and the arena of those who wore wings. His sharp eyes hunted two more kills and a share in another and when he landed back at Antung the runway was hard as stone with bands of frost fringing its shoulders.
The widow had instructed the other women not to return to their barracks until at least an hour after dinner. They knew it was so he could visit her but no one dared object. He was the glory of the 221st encapsulated in one man. To deny him would bring misfortune.
They had sex in her bunk and as usual he withdrew before the end. Her fingers inched down his body, teasing him; she laughed; then she took him in hand and in mouth and in a few seconds he came.