After his afternoon at Tempelhofer and Staaken he found himself regretting that such interesting inspections — for he was primarily an aviator — were not his sole mission abroad.
“These German pilots,” said Major Patterson, “are spreading German commercial aviation from London to Peking and from Stockholm to the Alps.
“They have nothing to compare with our Air Mail, but they are so far ahead in passenger transportation that it would take the rest of the world from three to five years to catch up.”
“The planes seem to move in and out of their airdromes with the regularity of railway trains,” remarked Reading. “Tell me about the line from Königsberg to Moscow — what kind of passengers travel over it?”
“That is an important question, particularly in view of the job you are engaged upon now,” said Patterson smilingly. “It’s hardly a secret here in Berlin that a very large percentage of them are diplomatic couriers between Moscow and Berlin — and undercover agents, mostly Soviet Russians, traveling between the two capitals.
“Many of them go through here to London and other European centers, and, at least until recent months, quite a few have gone on to New York and the Latin-American ports.
“A few business men, and still fewer tourists, make up the rest of the passenger lists. Often the planes — there’s one a day each way — are so loaded with freight and mail that there is no room for travelers.”
They were in the waiting room at Tempelhofer, waiting for an attendant to bring the attaché’s car. Major Patterson casually picked up the passenger register and glanced at the day’s list. A name caught his eye.
“Let’s go, Reading; here’s the car,” he said.
Patterson slowed down to light a cigarette as they passed out of the airdrome gate, and as he handed his case to Reading he smiled and said:
“Perez! Your friend got in from Paris this afternoon and is booked to leave on the express to-night for Moscow, via Königsberg. Plane leaves two hours after midnight, gets to the Prussian terminal a little after sunrise, and is due at Trotzky Field late in the afternoon.
“I heard one of the pilots remark that the ship is booked solid, but you’d best wait until to-morrow night anyway. I gather that has been your intention — not to keep too close to him until he gets to his destination. After dinner to-night I’ll tell you about our undercover man in Moscow and how you are to meet.”
“I have a hunch,” said Reading, “that I had better not lose too much time in following him into Russia. He seems to be in a hurry. But to-morrow night will be soon enough, I think. If we had been fellow-passengers to-night he might have got to thinking too intently upon coincidences of travel.”
IV
The trimotored metal monoplane, carrying twelve passengers besides its crew of pilot and mechanic, and more than a ton of freight and mail, took off and headed through the night toward the Baltic. Reading found himself thinking of what night-bombing raids might have accomplished during the war had these planes been developed then.
Sunrise dissipated a low down fog over which they had been flying, and there was no need for landing lights at Danzig, where they stopped briefly for fuel and clearance through the customs office of the Danzig Free State. An hour and a half later they were at Königsberg, ancient stronghold of the Prussian kings.
Then, after a quick continental breakfast, off for Smolensk, the first stop in Russia. The plane did not stop at Kovno, the capital of Lithuania, but dropped mail on the airdrome there.
On across little Latvia and over the Russian border, with a fair tail-wind helping them toward the Soviet capital at a rate of more than a hundred miles an hour.
The twelve hundred-mile journey from Berlin, consuming more than two days by train, would be made in about fifteen hours’ elapsed time.
Reading observed with keen interest the trench scars and shell holes in the country over which he was flying — left untouched as relics from warfare between Russia and Germany and civil wars between the Red armies and the military remnants of the monarchy. Unlovely terrain for a forced landing, he reflected.
The pilot, who had fought in the Russian campaign of Hindenberg, had skirted carefully along the border between Latvia and Poland. Neither German nor Russian planes were permitted to fly over Polish territory, and this made a slight detour necessary.
A forced landing meant confiscation of the plane and arrest of its occupants. When there was an opportunity to fly high over fog this detour rule was ignored. If Poland didn’t know it was being flown over, what was the difference?
As the plane approached a landing at the far end of the Smolensk military airdrome, which the Soviet government permitted commercial planes to use, the mechanic drew curtains over the cabin windows.
Travelers were not permitted to make close observations of the military establishment at Smolensk, an important key of offense or defense in Soviet strategy, particularly if Moscow needed to be defended against invasion.
Despite that he believed in the skill and carefulness of the pilot, Reading felt vaguely uncomfortable in this blind descent from the clouds to the ground. He knew, of course, that the pilot’s cockpit was not curtained.
Two-thirds of the way from Smolensk to Moscow the plane flew over Borodino, where the Napoleonic invasion of Holy Russia won its fatal victory and blundered on to Moscow and eventual disaster. If Napoleon could have invaded with a fleet of large planes, establishing bases behind him as he advanced—
A patriotically red sun was low in a hazily pink Russian sky when the plane landed on Trotzky Field.
As it wheeled to come down against a light breeze Reading, gazing over the almost Oriental sky line of Moscow, caught sight of the massive old Kremlin, behind whose walls the Soviet government lay intrenched — and without which walls its experiment in communism would have ended in its earlier stages.
Soldiers of the Red army were on guard at Trotzky Field, it, like the one at Smolensk, primarily a military airdrome. Reading’s baggage and papers were examined much more thoroughly here than at Berlin, and his passport examined carefully.
Himself the last passenger to turn over his passage ticket he found himself alone in a small office with the sharp-faced young man whose duty it was to check in the arrivals for the Deruluft company.
Patterson had instructed him to find a moment alone with this man, who now smiled shrewdly. “Captain Reading, I have taken the liberty of ordering a car for you and reserving quarters at the Savoy. Shall I call at your room at nine o’clock? My name is Alexander Moldenko.”
“Thank you; I shall expect you. Come directly to the room without announcing yourself at the desk.”
There was a knock at the office door, and the pilot of the trip, Hans Pohlig, entered. Speaking the careful English taught at German universities, he addressed Reading:
“If Captain Reading will consent, the pilots of our company who are in Moscow will be honored to have him at dinner tomorrow evening. You will perhaps desire to rest to-night.”
“Thank you,” replied Reading. “I shall be glad to come — but I must warn you that my German is limited and my command of Russian non-existent.”
Pohlig smiled. “Some of my brother pilots speak a little of your language, and I shall be pleased to act as your interpreter. Where may I call for you at seven o’clock to-morrow?”
“At the Savoy Hotel, if you please.”
“Thank you; I shall be there for you at that hour.”