Part 24 (2/2)
”Did you get it all?”
”Yes sir.”
”For all the d.a.m.n good it'll do us,” Buckner growled. ”Keep it to yourself, will you? I wouldn't like it bandied about Was.h.i.+ngton that I let three doddering old playboys make an a.s.s out of me.”
”What now, Colonel?”
”The purpose of this little quiz session was to pry Danilov's plan out of them. It didn't work. There's one more thing to try. Pack us up, Hawkes, we're going to England.”
PART FIVE:.
November 1941.
The pale disc of the sun was vague in the grey November sky. In the distance beyond the woods he saw the Dakotas going over, vomiting jumpers toward the fifty-foot target circle. Alex watched the jumps as he ran.
The runway was 4,800 feet long and they were running three laps today. Going into the third lap ahead of Solov's company of troops he felt the pull of the stiffened muscle of the bullet-pinked leg.
Breathing to run: let it all out, open the mouth wide, pull in as much as the lungs can hold-and hold it there for three strides; then expel it and do it again. It had taken him two weeks of running to get his wind back but now he had the rhythm and hardly noticed the weight of the combat pack on his shoulders.
It was more of a dogtrot than a run-you didn't sprint for two and a half miles-but they were eating up the ground at a good clip and there weren't any stragglers. Solov ran along at the rear of the column, keeping them bunched up, running the way he walked-with a p.r.o.nounced roll, as if each leg almost collapsed before the other took his weight. Now and then he would yell at them; he began yelling in earnest when they got toward the end of the lap and the company put on a burst of effort and came tumbling off the tarmac onto the gra.s.s around Alex. A good many of them were hardly out of breath.
Solov gathered them in close-order formation and marched them across the runway to where their rifles were stacked in neat pyramids, muzzles skyward. They shouldered their arms and marched quick-time into the woods to the bayonet field and Alex charged with them, roaring in his chest, heaving the deadly spear into the dummies and yanking it out and rus.h.i.+ng on to the next.
After bayonet drill the company sprawled on the gra.s.s and Alex went around talking to them individually. ”How do you feel, soldier?”
”Very well, sir. Thank you.”
He went on. There was a young man-one of the very few who had joined the regiment since the Finland campaigns-sitting on the ground cleaning his bayonet. Alex stopped by him. ”Keep your seat, Zurov. How do you like the training?”
”Sometimes it gets a little boring, sir. But I know we need it.” Zurov's unformed face did not yet contain the lines that made a whole human being.
”You find the bayonet drill boring?”
”Oh not that, sir. It's rather fun. Bayoneting straw dummies is only playing a harmless game, after all.”
Alex nodded and moved on to the next: ”Everything all right, soldier?”
Solov came across the gra.s.s toward him, head and shoulders rolling. ”They're nearly ready, General.”
”Yes, I think they are.” Alex turned his shoulder to the others and went on in a lower voice. ”You'll have to wash Zurov out.”
”Zurov? He's one of the brightest youngsters we've had in years.”
”He thinks of bayonet drill as a harmless game, Solov. Those who recognize that are the ones who have trouble facing the real thing-when the time comes to put his knife in a man he'll hesitate.”
”Very well sir. I'll have him a.s.signed to orderly duties.”
”You've got eight minutes to move them to the hand-to-hand course. Better get them on their feet now.”
He walked away from the company in a mild gloom of depression. You had to thank G.o.d there were still men like Zurov-and when it came to the practice of war you had to give them the back of your hand.
Spaight came batting into the hangar office at half-past four. ”d.a.m.n good. I only had six jumpers outside the target circle the last go.”
”That's six too many, John.”
”It's better than last week-and next week will be better than this one.”
”It's going to have to be. We're pulling out in twenty-one days.”
In the evening Alex watched Major Postsev and Prince Felix rehea.r.s.e the men on Red Army regulations and behavior. One by one the men had to recite their false ident.i.ties, the ”friends” they had in the Seventeenth Red Army Division on the Finland border, the official reasons why they were traveling detached duty. It wasn't only to get them in; it was a drill designed to get them out as well-if the operation went sour. It was the only way Alex knew to set it up: he wasn't sending them in unless the back door remained open for them to escape if they had to. There would be tremendous risks for them but at least they had to be given the chance.
At half-past eleven when he left the hangar they were still at it. He walked out through the gate and along to the cottage and let himself in wearily. Corporal Cooper sat in the parlor drinking tea, watching the clock and the warm red tubes of the shortwave transceiver.
Alex went through to the back of the house. Sergei was in the kitchen-standing guard, stiffly zealous of Irina, unwilling to leave her alone in the house with Cooper. It amused Alex a little: she was capable of turning men like Cooper into quivering jelly if it suited her; she was in no danger from that quarter. But it wouldn't do to belittle Sergei's loyalty.
She was curled up asleep. In her hand were the coded notepad sheets for the night's communique. He slipped them carefully out of her grip without waking her and retreated to the front of the house and handed the sheets to Cooper.
”Bit of a long message tonight, in't it sir.”
It was long but there wasn't much time left for his conversations with Vlasov. Actually the real danger was at Vlasov's end-it wasn't much risk for Vlasov to receive long communications but it put him in great danger to have to send long ones because they gave Beria's direction-finders more time to zero in on the location of the illicit shortwave broadcaster. For the past six weeks Vlasov had taken the precaution of recording his transmissions on wire and attaching the wire-recorder to the transmitter so that if it were discovered he wouldn't be there at the time. Every third or fourth night-they communicated at those intervals-he had to move the transmitter or set up a new one and his irritability was becoming more and more obvious even through the obstacles of codes and Morse key. Alex had found it necessary to bolster him with encouragements: It will be over soon, that sort of thing.
”Should we get the madame up, sir?”
”No. She's been working around the clock on this. I'll decode the answer myself-it won't be a long one tonight.”
It was in fact a very short one. It was not a response to his own broadcast; that would have to wait three days till after Vlasov had decoded Alex's message and encoded his own reply. This was an eighty-second transmission which took Alex forty-five minutes to decode because he wasn't nearly as practiced at it as Irina was. When he had it sorted out on his desk the message had a special importance.
KOLLIN X KOLLIN X FINAL CONSPIRATOR APPREHENDED X INTERROGATIONS HAVE REVEALED MUNICH CONNECTION GERMANS AND RUSSIANS X NETWORK SMASHED X STEEL BEAR DOUBLE STILL MISSING BUT WE ARE IN THE CLEAR X FIELD TRIALS REAFFIRMED FOR FRIDAY FIFTH X HOPE FOR OUR SUCCESS X KOLLIN X CARNEGIE.
The smell of her talc was faint in the room. He fell gently onto the bed and into a sleep as swift as that of a marathon hiker who'd slipped his pack. When he came awake there was a vague recollection of a dream in which Va.s.sily Devenko had been charging at him on horseback at the head of a thousand thundering Tatar Cossacks, their karakul hats bobbing in the dust, Krenk rifles spitting, Va.s.sily's saber flas.h.i.+ng in the air.
It was still dark and Irina breathed evenly in sleep. He armed the sweat from his face and lay eyes up in the dark with no idea whether it was one or six in the morning. He saw Va.s.sily at the head of the mess table laughing at something he'd just said to a Polish cavalry major. Va.s.sily was talking about the Polish army and the German army-how Poland would mop up the battlegrounds with German bodies if Hitler were fool enough to attack. It was one of those moments Alex never forgot-a spark that glowed brighter whenever it was touched by the wind of a.s.sociation: the grey rain now beating against the invisible window, a certain taste in the back of his throat that might have been left there by the wine he'd had with supper. Beside him at the officers' mess table a Polish captain had kept s.h.i.+fting the knife and fork at his place, lining them up along various parallels. Alex remembered the captain's eyes: drab and uneasy while Va.s.sily drummed on about squas.h.i.+ng the Wehrmacht.
He was a b.l.o.o.d.y fool, he thought. Va.s.sily Devenko the hero of Sebastopol. Well he'd acquitted himself superbly when it called for tenacity and horseback dash: a brave indifference to losses, the cruel Russian battering-ram conception of martial excellence. Va.s.sily the electric, Va.s.sily the magnetic. They'd all have followed him blindly through h.e.l.l: the high handsome face, the white mane, the great thundering voice that called them on to fight and win. But these things were only half of leaders.h.i.+p. Va.s.sily's flair and his grand ambitions hadn't been matched by tactical realism and that had been his flaw. In the end he was a b.l.o.o.d.y fool.
Then why the intense feeling that he had to have Va.s.sily's approval?
He still needed that: he needed to have Va.s.sily speak to him in his dreams, he needed to hear Va.s.sily say It's brilliant-you have my admiration. But instead Va.s.sily came pounding at him on horseback lofting his saber with merciless rage.
He turned on his side; he touched her hip and withdrew his hand, still jealous of Va.s.sily, uncertain in the darkness, afraid.
The day had its little crises-a C-47 came in from the chute drop and blew a tire and ground-looped on the runway but it didn't crack up; Calhoun groused about the dwindling supply of spare tires. Then one of the Russian-made 9mm tommy-guns malfunctioned and burst on the target line and the corporal had to be taken to the dispensary to have metal splinters dug out of his hand. One of Solov's men twisted his ankle on the afternoon jump. At four Alex walked down toward the hard-stands to have a look at the high-octane supply; Calhoun groused about that too.
When Alex walked back toward the hangar he saw a dark green car move past on the road beyond the fence. It drew his attention because it moved too slowly. It stopped about eighty yards beyond the gate: the driver got out and lifted the right-hand flap of the engine bonnet to look inside. It was just a bit coincidental having a breakdown right across the road from the fence and the runway. Too far away to get an impression of the driver's face. The car was a Daimler with a long snout and coupe coachwork. The driver's back was hunched; he was reaching into the engine compartment and fiddling but it was quite possible he was looking at the base under his arm. Alex turned his line of march toward the gate.
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