“You got it.” Buckner smiled a little. “I thought I had a tail the past few days.”
“You’re lucky I let you off the base at all.”
“Okay so you’ve found out my deep dark secret, Hell if you’d asked me I’d have told you. I’m the President’s boy, Alex-I got to keep in touch with the home office.”
“If I’d had objections to it you’d have heard them long before now.” Alex pushed his seat back. “We’re taking off this afternoon, Glenn. Shortwave only works at night. You won’t have a chance to talk to Washington before we go.”
He saw the impact of it and he went right on before Buckner could work up the anger to respond. “I promised to spell out the plan for you and I’m going to keep the promise right now. It happens the transatlantic cable was cut last week by an American depth-charge attack on a U-boat; otherwise I’d have strung you along until takeoff. But there’s no telephone to Washington now. Next week they’ll have the cable repaired again, won’t they. Fortunes of war, Glenn.”
“You’re a clever bastard.”
“Sure I am. Now there’s a string attached to what I’m about to tell you.”
“What string?”
“You’re going with us as far as our forward base. It’s in Finland.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“I’m glad you feel like that. You won’t be able to communicate with Washington at all until we’ve accomplished the mission. My radio people have strict orders to keep you away from all wireless gear.”
Buckner took it stoically. “Thanks heaps-pal.”
“Don’t try to make any phone calls, Glenn. I’ve had the outside line disconnected. Nobody communicates off the base without my authorization.”
“Thought of everything, haven’t you.”
“I always had a fair head for security,” he murmured, “Nobody’s sabotaging this operation now. Nobody.”
Buckner did a strange thing. He nodded and smiled. “If I were in your shoes I’d do exactly the same thing. I had my orders, Alex-but in the gut I’m on your side. I want to see you people pull this thing off. I remember Moscow under Joe Stalin-you know how it is. Now let’s hear the plan. Just for the hell of it.”
7
It was a motley flotilla: three massive B-17S, three American Dakota transports, two Canadian De Havilland transports. The British Spitfires would pick them up at the coastline and escort them to the limit of their fuel ranges. The remainder of the flight-past the Denmark straits and up the Baltic into Finland-they’d be on their own. The guns of the B-17S were turreted and loaded; belts of ammunition lay gleaming dully of Cosmoline beneath the gunners’ swivel seats. The aircrews assembled on the tarmac and Pappy Johnson walked among them wearing his mustard-collared flying jacket; he was flying right-seat in one of the transports this time but he was still the man they listened to.
“These aircraft are overloaded. I’d like you misters to remember that. You’re flying at maximum gross weight and then some. Do me the kindness of remembering to keep your noses down on the turns, all right? Let’s go then.”
General Sir Edward Muir was there with MacAndrews to see them off; Glenn Buckner and Brigadier Cosgrove were squeezed into the tag-end transport.
Alex sat surrounded by Prince Leon and Count Anatol and Baron Oleg-forced to submit to a pounding barrage of hopes, expectations, fears, questions, arguments. Now and then Irina would go by him or lean out of her seat and he would catch her private signals.
In one way there was good in it. Oleg in his blunt way and Anatol with his sarcasms as dry as wind through autumn oak leaves were challenging his plan by disputing parts of it, questioning others-probing tor vulnerabilities, trying to make holes in it; and he knew if he didn’t have ready answers for every question then he was going to have to make very rapid revisions. There was one form of question he was able to turn aside every time-the What if they, Suppose they sort of question. Those you could rule out for the most part because any battle plan had to take foreseeable contingencies into account and ignore the unlikely ones. A plan had to be made on the basis of the predictability of the enemy’s behavior; if the enemy unaccountably broke the pattern then the plan would fail. Every commander knew that and there wasn’t any way to forestall it.
They crossed the North Sea, droning in formation above an almost continuous sea of cloud. Alex knew it when the RAF fighters turned back after dark but he didn’t remark on it to the others.
The flight plan took them across a corner of Sweden where the Luftwaffe would have to violate neutral airspace to inspect them; the Swedes would be within their rights to force them down but there wasn’t much likelihood of that. Once over the Baltic they were reasonably in the clear. German radar was not nearly on a par with British and what equipment Hitler had was concentrated along the Channel coast; the overcast had been a boon but even if it had been clear the odds would have been with them in the thick night.
The flight was just over eleven hundred miles and would stretch the fuel capacities of the transports, even with their extra tanks. It was a shade more than an eight-hour jump with the bombers restricted to the cruising speed of the Dakotas and De Havillands. They made landfall at seven-fifteen.
PART SIX:
November-December 1941
1
At seven thousand feet Felix watched a thick layer of stratus coming up beneath the wings; then he was inside it and flying blind, concentrating on instruments.
The chart was printed in mauve ink for easy reading under the cockpit lights. Ulyanov said, “We must be in range of their tower radio by now.”
“Whistle them up then.”
Felix was sweating. Suppose the weather was socked in right down to the ground?
“… Tower. We understand you clearly. Conditions for landing are as follows. Cloud ceiling is at two thousand five hundred meters. Ground visibility is five kilometers or better. We are illuminating both sides of the runway with fire tins. We have a heavy snow lie but the runway has been plowed. Nevertheless ground temperature is minus four degrees centigrade and you must be on guard against thin patches of ice on the runway. This is understood?”
Concentrating on his instruments Felix only nodded and Ulyanov said into the radio, “Visitor flight understands, Kuvola Tower.”
Felix dimmed the cockpit lights to a minimum glow and switched on his landing lights. Snowflakes flashed past thickly in horizontal lines like tracer bullets. The high-wattage beams sliced forward through the snow and a grey tunnel formed behind each whirling propellor. He rubbed misty condensation from the glass and asked Ulyanov if he would care to predict how far off course they would be when they came out under the clouds. Ulyanov said, “I would be guessing, Highness.”
“Guess, then.”
They were out of the snow then but still in cloud and still descending on steady rails through three thousand feet, twenty-five hundred, two thousand. “I think we’re right on the mark, Highness.”
“We’d better be. You’ve been doing the navigating.”
“Yes Highness.”
The altimeter was a dial with a long hand and a short hand like the face of a clock: one for thousands, one for hundreds. The long hand was winding steadily around the diaclass="underline" nine, eight, seven. The cone beams stabbed ahead and down and were absorbed in the murk. Six, five, and still in clouds. “High air pressure,” Felix said. “The altimeter’s off-keep your eyes open. Gear down-flaps twenty.”
“Kuvola Tower to Visitor flight. We can hear you. You should have us in sight momentarily. Over.”
The altimeter read 1,350 when she broke through under the dark cloud bellies. Ahead and a tack to the right he saw the twin rows of fires stretching toward a single point in perspective. He threw the bomber into a bank and sideslid across the sky to lose altitude. “Flaps forty.”