But alcohol-any alcohol, even beer-was off-limits for flight crews for the duration of the emergency. Tu-4s carried atomic bombs. They had to be ready to fly at a moment’s notice. Outrage by outrage, the fight the Americans had called the Cold War was heating up.
The base commandant made sure he got the point across. After summoning all his aircrews, Colonel Doyarenko said, “No booze. Fuck your mothers, you cocksuckers, do you hear me? No booze! None. Not a fucking drop. You know what will happen if you screw it up? You’ll go to Kolyma, that’s what. You think you’re far north now, assholes? There, you won’t see the sun for six weeks at a time. You’ll mine coal and dig for gold when it’s fifty below. You’ll find frogs and salamanders frozen in the ice for a thousand years and you’ll eat ’em raw, on account of they’ll taste like caviar next to what the camps usually feed zeks. No…goddamn…booze!”
Somebody didn’t listen. Put a bunch of people together and there’s always somebody who doesn’t get the message. One aircrew quite suddenly vanished from Provideniya. Boris didn’t know the MGB had hauled them off to the wrong side of the Arctic Circle. He didn’t know they were slamming picks into the permafrost and hoping for frozen salamanders.
No, he didn’t know any of those things. All he knew was, they were gone. An Li-2-which was almost as close a copy of the American DC-3 as the Tu-4 was of the B-29 (though the transport, unlike the bomber, was licensed)-flew in a new crew for the plane that found itself without one. Life went on.
Oh, he knew one other thing. No matter how bored he got here at Provideniya, he wouldn’t drink. Kolyma was a name Russian mothers whispered to scare kids who wouldn’t behave. It was the worst place in the world. A snootful of vodka wasn’t worth the risk of going there.
He read books. He played cards. He played chess. He watched the Northern Lights. When he got five minutes by himself, he jacked off. And he waited for the order to fly his Tu-4 against the Americans. He didn’t think he would come back. If they sent him against the U.S. proper, he didn’t see how he could come back. Well, if you were going to go out with a bang…
None of the planes from Provideniya had flown against the U.S. Air Force base in Alaska. That perplexed him enough to talk to the commandant: “Comrade Colonel, what are we doing here? Are we decoys, lined up like wooden ducks on a pond so the imperialists can waste weapons on us?”
“Don’t believe it, not even for a minute,” Doyarenko answered. “When the time comes, we will hit them, and we’ll hurt them when we do it, too.”
Unless they wipe us off the map first. But Gribkov didn’t say it. You didn’t want to borrow too much trouble. He did ask, “Well, sir, since we were closest to this Elmendorf place, why didn’t we fly against it?”
“Because we’re also closest to the American radars at Nome and on St. Lawrence Island,” Colonel Doyarenko answered. “They would have spotted us taking off, and the enemy would have been alert and ready for us. When the gloves come all the way off, if they do, we’ll have fighter-bombers pound those radar stations to blind the enemy. Then we can do what we need to do.”
“Ah, I see,” Gribkov said. “Where did the planes that hit Alaska come from, then?”
Doyarenko sent him a hooded look. That wasn’t anything he needed to know, even if he might want to. Then the colonel shrugged. “Well, what difference does it make? It’s not as if the Americans don’t already know we also have planes up on Vrangel Island.”
“Ah,” Boris Gribkov repeated. The island lay north of the Siberian mainland, between the parts of the Arctic Ocean the maps called the East Siberian Sea and the Chukchi Sea. There wasn’t even a gulag on it, which said something, though Boris wasn’t sure what. He hadn’t known the USSR flew bombers off of it, but he wasn’t astonished to learn as much. It was within range of Alaska, certainly, yet even more isolated and able to hold secrets than Provideniya.
The colonel went on, “I’ve heard the Tu-4s that hit the American air base flew over the ocean, no higher than a cat’s testicle above the waves. If you’re going to beat radar, that’s how you do it.”
“I serve the Soviet Union!” Gribkov said, which meant he’d do it that way if and when the bell tolled for him.
But Doyarenko hadn’t finished. “I’ve also heard-unofficially-that our Tu-4s were painted in U.S. Air Force colors.” He steepled his fingertips. “They do look quite a bit like the American B-29s.”
Gribkov couldn’t help snorting, but he managed not to guffaw. The Tu-4 was as close to a copy of the B-29 as Soviet factories could make. There was a story that, because the interior paint jobs on two of the interned B-29s that formed the Soviet plane’s pattern differed, Tupolev asked Beria to ask Stalin which scheme to use. The aircraft designer didn’t dare choose on his own. The way Stalin chuckled when he heard the question told Beria the answer.
That was what Boris had heard, anyhow. Was the story true? He had no idea. He’d never met either Stalin or Beria, and didn’t want to. But that the story could be told as if true spoke volumes abut how closely the Tu-4 resembled its American inspiration.
Something else occurred to Gribkov. “Isn’t it against the laws of war to fly a plane under false colors, sir?” he asked.
“Officially, yes,” Colonel Doyarenko answered, which told Boris everything he needed to know. Doyarenko went on, “But what’s the worst thing the imperialists can do to a plane like that? Shoot it down and kill everybody on it. And what’s the worst thing they can do to a plane plastered with red stars and with For Stalin! painted on the fuselage? Shoot it down and kill everybody in it, da?”
“Da,” Gribkov agreed. “Comrade Colonel, what if a Tu-4 plastered with red stars and with For Stalin! painted on the fuselage turns out to be a B-29 in disguise, though?”
Doyarenko opened his mouth. Then he closed it without saying anything. When he did speak, it was in musing tones: “If we can think of it, the Americans can, too. I’ll talk with Colonel Fursenko, the air-defense commander. The MiGs will have to be extra alert.”
“Yes, sir,” Boris said, his own voice not altogether free from resignation or worry. Extra-alert MiG pilots were liable to shoot down Tu-4s to make sure they didn’t let a B-29 sneak through. That might even serve the cause of the rodina. Whether it served the motherland or not, though, it wouldn’t do a Tu-4’s eleven-man crew any good.
No B-29s struck Provideniya. It was well below freezing, with snow flurries every other day or so. That didn’t keep groundcrew men from getting rid of the Soviet markings on the Tu-4s hiding at the airstrip here and turning them into bombers that looked even more like B-29s than they had already.
When Gribkov asked a sergeant about it, the man replied, “Sir, your eyes must be playing tricks on you. This isn’t happening at all.” He laid a paint-stained finger by the side of his nose and winked.
“No, eh?” Boris said.
“No, sir.” By the way the sergeant sounded, butter wouldn’t have melted in his mouth.
“All right.” Gribkov wondered if it was. But Colonel Doyarenko had to be right about one thing. Either way, the worst the Americans could do was kill him.
7
You got used to things. Vasili Yasevich supposed that was how people kept fighting wars. The horror built up to a certain level, and after that it wasn’t horror any more. It was just something you dealt with every day, the way people who made shoes dealt with the smell of leather.
Going through the wreckage of what had been Harbin was like that. Vasili did wonder how radioactive he was getting and what that was doing to his health now and in the future. Wondering was all he could do about it. If he tried to escape, Chinese secret police or soldiers who were just as radioactive as he was and didn’t seem to wonder about it a bit would have shot him. So he stayed there and he worked.