“I shouldn’t think so,” Jack said.
There was still one piece that Bobby couldn’t wrap his head around. “But we’re fighter pilots.”
“So?” the colonel said.
“The general will be in a transport, won’t he?”
The colonel’s smile got bigger. “We’re in a war, son. Who knows where the front will be by the time the summit takes place? Gotta protect General Marshall from a potential German air attack. It would be stupid to let him fly naked, without fighter support.” The colonel winked.
Then he leaned forward. “The summit’s taking place in Chelyabinsk. I want you three to remember.” He pointed at Bobby. “This one here has a photographic memory, or so I’m told. But that doesn’t mean we’re not counting on the rest of you, too. We need to know everything you see. No detail is too small.”
Jack nodded. “We’ll take good notes.”
“No, no notes,” the colonel scolded. “This is the Soviet Union. Their NKVD is no joke. They catch wind of why we’re really there, you three won’t make it out of the country alive. Understand?”
Bobby replied for all. “Yes, sir, we understand. When do we leave?”
“Summit’s in two weeks. You leave in five days.”
Bobby nodded at that. Five days was plenty of time to sober up.
By the time the three American aviators were dismissed, the Russians’ planes were already prepped.
Bel, Katia, and Lenka were now covered up in full-body flight suits. They were just climbing into their Airacobra cockpits when Jack, Bobby, and Wally walked up to wave good-bye. Katia and Lenka smiled and waved back, but Bel jumped back off the ladder and trotted over to Jack. “Come, I need to show you,” she said, taking his hand, mischief in her eye.
She and Jack ran through the snow and disappeared into one of the hangars. Some moments later, they reappeared and then separated, Bel to her plane and Jack to the company of his two friends.
“What was that all about?” Wally asked.
“She wanted to show me something.”
“Oh yeah? What?”
“Her panties.”
Wally gaped at him.
“She said a deal’s a deal,” Jack continued. “And she wanted me to know that she, too, has nice legs.”
“Did she?” Bobby asked.
“Bobby, boy, I think I’m in love.”
“Yeah? Well, join the club.”
The engines roared above, and the three pilots looked back toward the runway. The Airacobras were lifting up just in time, speeding toward the ocean, their metal finish gleaming as they rose up into the cold sunlight.
Bobby couldn’t wait to follow them, across the sea and deep into Russia.
CHAPTER 36
THE CONDUCTOR
Madame Nadia put down her baton and looked out at her orchestra. They timidly avoided her eye, expecting her to berate them at any moment.
That was her instinct. Their concert in Alexander Gardens had sounded awful, and today’s rehearsal was no better. The young musicians were sufficiently skilled at their craft to impress a group of uncultured proletariat, but they would need to do far better if they hoped to impress an American general, or Josef Stalin himself.
Madame Nadia had berated the children dozens of times already, to no avail. She couldn’t rap their knuckles, either; that might detrimentally affect their playing abilities. She considered paddling them, but that would require making them get up and leave their instruments, and the lesson would be lost. So what was left? What could she do? She had to reassess.
“That’s enough for now,” she told them. “Let’s take a break for lunch.”
The children looked relieved. And then began the scrape and shuffle of putting down instruments and folding up music.
Madame Nadia turned her back on the orchestra and walked out of the auditorium. Her office was only a hundred feet from here, but her mind was a thousand miles away, in Chelyabinsk. How would Josef Stalin react to their performance? He wouldn’t be pleased, she was sure. On the other hand, perhaps his expectations would be as low as that of the proletariat they’d just performed for in the park. After all, they wouldn’t be presenting a full concert in Chelyabinsk; they’d be performing only a sort of background music during the summit’s opening dinner.
No, Madame Nadia decided, hoping for an uncultured audience was a fool’s game. She had to find a way to impress them, regardless of their level of sophistication. Perhaps the piece was the problem. The Rite of Spring was difficult to perform, and it wasn’t exactly easy on the ears. It was clear that many of her young musicians didn’t like it. Who was to say Stalin or the American general might not feel the same way?
Madame Nadia had chosen the composition because it showcased a living, famous Russian composer. But perhaps that, too, was a mistake. She thought she was being patriotic, but in truth she had no idea how Stalin felt about Stravinsky. After all, Stravinsky had never returned to Russia after the Revolution. Perhaps he was a czarist. Perhaps, in her desire to seem patriotic, Madame Nadia was unwittingly celebrating an enemy of the State. That wouldn’t just lead to a cold reception at the summit; it would also lead to a one-way trip to the Gulag. By the time they arrived in Chelyabinsk, it would be July—the summit was set for July 4 in order to honor their American guests. That gave them just enough time to rehearse a new piece of music.
Madame Nadia reached her office and sat down behind her desk with a sigh. She’d made an enormous mistake. But it wasn’t too late to fix it. She began rummaging through her desk drawers for sheet music. Peter and the Wolf? Prokofiev was still living in Moscow, and the kids loved his little musical drama. But she was performing for adults. She tossed it aside. She considered The Nutcracker next, another child’s favorite and another ballet like The Rite of Spring. She tossed that, too, in the discard pile. Tchaikovsky, though, was a good choice. Everyone loved Tchaikovsky, and he died before the Revolution, so he couldn’t be criticized as being anti-Bolshevik. But which piece?
The echo of a door knocker interrupted Madame Nadia’s thoughts. It was the auditorium’s stage door, and the sound made her drop everything. That door was the address she’d given for donations. She stood up and brushed her hands down the front of her dress. Then she checked her hair in a hand mirror. Her bun had come undone. She hurried to reknot it as the knocker echoed once more. She put down the mirror and hurried to the stage door.
She didn’t need donations, not really. But potential benefactors didn’t have to know that. The trip to Chelyabinsk had already been paid for by the Soviet government. A patriotic fervor was gripping Moscow, especially since the Siberian divisions had miraculously delivered them from the Nazis’ clutches this last winter. Everyone was eager to do their part by working hard and donating to the war effort.
Madame Nadia had been sly in associating her orchestra with war morale, and she wasn’t about to deny anyone the satisfaction of pledging a donation. Even though her orchestra didn’t need the money, she sure could use it. It was her way of making a few extra rubles on the side. There was nothing wrong with it. So long as it remained a secret, no one would be hurt, and everyone would win.
She arrived at the stage door, hesitated a moment, put on her most serene smile, and swung it open. Greeting her were two teenagers, a boy and a girl, dressed smartly if not in the latest fashion. They were not quite what Madame Nadia had expected, but she had to be careful. You never knew, after all, who had money these days. Perhaps they were the children of important Party officials, bearing a gift from their parents.