“Look, Colonel Elkins, what are you going to do with us?" I asked after he hung up.
“I don't know, damn it! I haven't decided yet. You come in here out of the blue with some cockamamie story about having sailed from Calcutta on a Chinese dope-smuggler run by an Egyptian who kidnapped the daughter of a Russian atomic scientist and you expect me to swallow it. What the hell kind of nincompoop do you think I am?"
"Doesn't the fact that I know our fleet's in action in the Gulf of Tonkin tend to prove my story?”
“I don't know that they are in action. As far as I know, you might just be making it up. The bloody admirals don't exactly take me into their confidence, you know!"
“But maybe you can check it out. Maybe—"
The phone again. Colonel Elkins picked it up and listened. His face underwent a reluctant change of expression.
“You found out I was right about the Gulf of Tonkin," I guessed after he'd hung up.
“Okay! But that still doesn't prove anything. I’m just going to have to hold you here, Mr. Victor, until I can check you out."
“Make it fast,” I urged him. “It really is important. I have to get this girl to Tokyo. Check with the highest authority you can find. They’ll confirm the legitimacy of my mission."
“I’ll do what I can,” he said sourly. He was still annoyed at my interrupting his war. Considering the mishsmosh he had on his hands, I didn't blame him. In Vietnam, often, it’s hard for an American to remember just who he's supposed to be fighting.
Still, in the end, Colonel Elkins didn't do badly by us. It was only a matter of hours before we were in a plane winging towards Tokyo. And if the flight was more eventful than I would have liked, it certainly wasn't the Colonel's fault.
The first excitement came just after takeoff. Glancing out the window, I suddenly became aware of bursts of flak perilously near our wings. I rushed up front to tell the pilot.
“What the hell's going on?” I asked him. "You don't have to fly over enemy territory to get to Tokyo!"
"We’re not over enemy territory, Mr. Victor." He spun the plane into a sharp bank, away from the flak.
“Then what the hell do you call that?" I exclaimed as a shell fragment shattered the window and passed between us, narrowly missing the end of my nose.
"That’s South Vietnamese anti-aircraft,” he explained drily. “You see, a while back we trained some pilots for South Vietnam. They were real eager-beavers and their first time out they strafed some of their own troops by mistake. Ever since, the ack-ack gunners shoot at anything that moves. They just aren't taking any chances."
"Some allies!" I observed.
“You can say that again, Mr. Victor|” He pushed the plane into a steep climb, racing for the point where we'd be out of range of the flak. “You can say that again!"
I went back to Anna Kirkov and watched the flak bursting beneath us. It made pretty patterns in the night sky. After a while, it died out and there was nothing to see but blackness.
An hour went by. Maybe less. I sat back and half-dozed, secure in the fact that my mission was accomplished. The sureness was premature. The sudden whoosh of a jet engine and machine-gun bullets pinging around the cabin had me diving for the floor.
"MIG at four o'clock! MIG at four o’clock!” It was the waist-gunner sitting in the blister a few feet away from me calling out over the intercom to the pilot. The MIG made another pass, its guns chattered once, and our gunner was silenced.
I crawled over to him. He was dead. I pushed his body out of the way and grabbed the machine gun. The MIG pulled out of its dive, circled and came in for another pass at our tail. Our pilot was fast. He turned sharp, ninety degrees. The maneuver put the plunging MIG right in my sights. I squeezed the trigger and kept squeezing it. I was rewarded by the sight of the MIG bursting into flames. A moment later bits and pieces of it were hurtling toward the ground in our wake. I sat back and breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“Good work, Joe." It was the pilot's voice in the gunner's earphones lying beside me.
I flicked on the speaker. "Joe’s dead," I, told him shortly. “The MIG got him at the same time he got it.” Let the gunner have the credit. He deserved it. Lord knew how many times he'd risked his neck before he caught it.
“Oh. I see." That was all the pilot answered.
The rest of the flight was uneventful. A few hours later we set down in Tokyo. There was a car waiting for Anna Kirkov and myself.
A short ride, and I was once again face-to-face with Charles Putnam. "Congratulations, Mr. Victor." His gangster face shot me what I supposed was meant to be a smile. “You have performed your mission well."
“I’m damn glad it's over," I told him honestly.
“It's never over, Mr. Victor. It's always only just beginning. One mission accomplished at great risk, and the result--" He spread his hands. “Still, your part of it is over, Mr. Victor. And my thanks to you is for the nation, for the world which will never know of your courage and the service you tried to perform.”
His words struck me as ambiguous, but I let them pass for the moment. “What will happen to Anna Kirkov now?" I asked him instead.
“She will be returned to the Russians. A car will take her to their embassy tonight. By tomorrow she’ll be on a plane to Moscow."
“What will they do to her?"
“I don’t know, Mr. Victor." He shrugged. “Unfortunately, that's not our business. I appreciate that you have sympathy for her, Mr. Victor. But you in turn must appreciate that she would not be worth an incident with the Russians. They know we have her and good faith requires that we turn her over to them."
“Good faith!" I remembered Potemchenko and his senseless killings and my voice was filled with bitterness. That bitterness would grow when I learned what else Putnam had to tell me. For now, however, it wasn't yet strong enough to keep me from grasping for a silver-lined straw. "Perhaps her father will intercede in her behalf,” I hoped aloud. “After all, he's an eminent scientist. The Reds might go easy on her if he asked them to."
“I'm afraid not Mr. Victor.” Putnam's voice was very tired. You see, Josef Kirkov is no longer in Russia.”
“What do you mean? Where is he?" He shut his eyes as if in pain. "In Peking."
“In Peking? But what—?"
“Josef Kirkov defected to the Chinese Reds,” Putnam told me wearily.
“But why?”
“We can’t be sure. He was an old-line Bolshevik, you know, an ardent Stalinist. Our best guess is that the senseless killing by Russian agents of the eminent Chinese scientist Dr. Suno Wong may have turned him against the Moscow regime. In any case, he was smuggled out of Russia with the help of Chinese embassy officials. The Russians know this, but they don't dare do anything about it."
"But doesn't this mean that he'll give China the secret of the atom bomb?"
“I'm afraid it does, Mr. Victor. And more besides. It's being very carefully kept under wraps, but our information is that the defection of Dr. Kirkov has shaken the Krushchev regime to its foundations. There are murmurs of inefficiency in high places. The treachery of Dr. Kirkov is being laid at the door of Nikita himself and it is being whispered that only a man too old and soft to rule would have let such a thing happen. Indeed, Mr. Victor, we can only guess at the possible repercussions this may have in the future."
As things turned out, we only had to guess for a couple of months. By the end of that time, the whole world knew the results of Josef Kirkov’s treachery-—-if not the bizarre events leading up to it. By the end of that time, two shocks hit the world in rapid succession. First, Nikita Krushchev was deposed. Second, following two days later, the Chinese exploded their first atomic device. That the first event was the result of the imminence of the second is a judgment few will share with me. But then few know the facts as I do.