Hullo Russia, Goodbye England

by Derek Robinson

  “First things first. Make yourself useful and lower the blinds.”

  Skull did. Now even the letterbox view of blue sky was lost. The cabin seemed much smaller. His demons were going to love this.

  Nothing terrible happened for a while. Sometimes a small red or green light blinked. Silk clicked a switch and the light vanished. Needles flickered in softly lit gauges. Once, Silk turned a dial, held it briefly, then turned it back to its original position. “What was that in aid of?” Skull asked.

  “BBC. News headlines.”

  Skull gave up. He looked at the map. A horribly long way to Moscow, and Sverdlovsk was another seven hundred miles beyond that. Jesus wept.

  “Second pilot’s job is to switch over the fuel tanks,” Silk said, “but I don’t suppose you can use a sliderule.”

  “That’s right, I can’t.”

  “Then I’ll have to do it. I’m rotten at sums. What’s nine eights? Never mind. If I get it wrong there’s probably somewhere we can land, some Polish bog –”

  Tucker’s voice broke in. “The weapon’s hot, skip.”

  Skull’s fingers made a small tear in the map.

  “How hot is hot?” Silk asked.

  “Three degrees above safe.”

  “Three degrees.” Silk scratched his nose. “Three degrees, you say.”

  Skull cleared his throat. “Blue Steel?”

  “Yup. Blue Steel it is. The boys in the backroom keep a close eye on its HTP. That’s High –”

  “I know what HTP is.” Skull felt a small surge of optimism. Blue Steel’s Stentor engine ran on kerosene and High Test Peroxide. HTP supplied the oxygen to make kerosene burn in thin air; but HTP was more dangerous than TNT. It demanded airtight tanks and immaculate handling. A speck of dust might trigger a ferocious reaction. Then the HTP would leak a torrent of exploding oxygen that would ignite everything it touched. Crews were ordered to abandon a flight if the temperature of their Blue Steel’s HTP rose by five degrees. Skull relaxed. This might be a very short flight.

  “Could be a freak reading,” Silk told the rear crew. “Duff equipment, maybe. Any change?”

  Pause. Then: “Two point seven, skip.”

  “Gremlins. They get in everywhere.”

  “Two point six. Two point four.”

  Skull despaired. Even faulty equipment was against him. “What difference does it make?” he said. “It’s too late to turn back now. If the Blue Steel overheats, we’ll go to hell with it.”

  “Dear me,” Silk said. “That doesn’t sound like your normal cheery briefing, Skull.”

  A different voice said: “Morale here in the broom cupboard is very bad. If the second pilot can’t look on the bright side, one of us will shoot him.” It was Dando.

  Skull had a great desire to hit someone. He was strapped into his seat, yet he experienced a clumsy, helpless sensation: he was growing bigger, his limbs were expanding, lengthening, his fingers felt like sausages, his feet were remote. If he shut his eyes, his body might return to normal. It was all very exhausting. He fell asleep.

  A shout woke him.

  “Hey! What was that?” Silk was leaning forward. “At our nine o’clock. More or less.”

  “Gdansk is that way,” Tucker said. “Or maybe Kaliningrad. They’re both air defence centres.”

  “What was what?” Skull asked.

  “A splash of sun,” Silk said. “It leaked through the anti-flash screen.”

  Skull looked at the map. The red line crossed Denmark, entered the Baltic and turned south near the German-Polish border. Gdansk was fifty miles away; Kaliningrad twice that. “Our Thor missiles should have taken them out long ago,” he said. Silk was working on his sliderule. “Maybe it was a Canberra strike. Or an F-100,” Skull said.

  “Maybe it was an F-100 getting the chop at forty thousand feet. If it was, Soviet fighters are up in force. Put this on.” Silk gave him a black eye-patch.

  The elastic string cut into Skull’s face. He felt foolish, but Silk was wearing an eye-patch, so he said nothing.

  The Vulcan zigged and zagged across Poland, into Czechoslovakia, and turned east towards the Ukraine. Its route was designed to avoid Warsaw Pact military centres, anywhere that was heavily defended. But nuclear bursts flared unexpectedly. The rear crew suggested strikes had been made on probable targets: Grudziadz, Bydgoszez, Poznan, Wroclaw, Czestochawa, Olomouc, Zilina, Miscolk... Sometimes blast rippled over great distance and height to rock the bomber. Often Dando told Silk he was jamming the VHF transmissions of Soviet fighter controllers. Otherwise pilot and rear crew had little to say until they crossed the border into the Ukraine and Hallett warned Silk to steer zero-two-zero in order to avoid the known hotspot of Lvov. That was when the Vulcan refused to change direction, the compass broke, and Hallett’s link to the navigational computer in the Blue Steel failed.

  Nobody got excited. Each man made his report. Silk said he would steer by varying the thrust and he throttled back the port outer engine. Hallett tackled the compass problem. Tucker tried to revive the Blue Steel computer. Dando found intense VHF activity ahead.

  “That’s the bitch about high-level penetration,” Silk told Skull. “Soviet radars can see you coming, two hundred miles away.”

  “I know.”

  “I know you know. I like sharing the misery, that’s all.”

  Skull picked up the map and put it down at once. After Lvov, there were still hundreds and hundreds of miles to fly before they got anywhere near Sverdlovsk. Below was Russia, the Great Motherland, Hitler’s Folly. Skull was an Intelligence Officer. He claimed to deal in facts. Was misery a fact? It must be a factor. How could men fly a thousand miles over Russia, hoping to dodge fighters twice as fast and nuclear-tipped anti-aircraft missiles they couldn’t outclimb, so as to kill a million strangers in some remote city, knowing all the time that the home they had left was history, was ashes, was dead in a flash? How can men do that without suffering paralytic misery? Skull opened his mouth to ask, but Tucker spoke first. MiG-21s were climbing, positioning for a stern attack. He had them on his radar. Dando’s jamming hadn’t worked.

  For twenty minutes, Silk jinked the Vulcan from side to side. Working the throttles was a crude alternative to using the flying controls but it was all he had. Tucker second-guessed a MiG’s attack, Silk dodged its fire. The fighter had to stay level and steady in order to hold its target. The swerving Vulcan flung back a stormy wake of air. Such flying was heavy on fuel. One by one, the MiGs gave up.

  “Next time they’ll collide,” Silk said. “With me, I mean.”

  Skull said nothing. Constant swaying and wallowing had made him sick. He had filled his handkerchief and it lay on his lap, soaking into his trousers.

  “We’re off track,” Hallett said.

  “And somebody down there loves us,” Dando said. “We’re radar-illuminated. Maximum jamming now.”

  The jammers were electronic but they generated a range of sounds. Some whined, some crackled, some bleeped. The crew welcomed them as signs that the gear was working. Skull’s head throbbed from his vomiting. One particular jammer made a furious, metallic tearing noise, like a train coming off the tracks. Skull’s jaws ached. The racket climbed to a screech, almost a whistle, sank and climbed again: a fire siren gone berserk. Simultaneously a mob with hammers was smashing glass, enormous sheets of glass that boomed as they shattered. The mob fought the train wreck. Skull took off his headphones. “No!” he cried. “Madhouse!” He ripped off his eyepatch.

  “Put that bloody thing on,” Silk ordered.

  “Go to hell.” Skull tried to undo his seat belt and failed. His hands were shaking too much.

  “Sit down. Shut up. You’re a crew member. Act like one.”

  “You maniacs can...” Now his head was shaking. At last he got the belt undone, tried to stand, remembered his vomit-filled handkerchief and grabbed it just as Silk’s fist hit him in the mouth and knocked him sideways. The loaded handkerchief fell behind his seat. There was a mode
st bang and all the lights went out.

  “Trust you to hit the fusebox,” Silk said. “And you owe me a fiver.”

  4

  It was only a split lip, but rank has it privileges and the Senior MO himself examined Skull, while a medic discreetly wiped away the evidence of vomit. No stitches were necessary. A strip of plaster, two aspirin. Avoid alcohol. Get some rest.

  Silk walked him to his quarters. “You forgot to do the debriefing,” he said.

  “Who cares? It was just a damnfool trip in a simulator.”

  “Of course it was. Still, you got quite excited, didn’t you? Pity it had to be cut short. Tell you what: let’s do it again tomorrow, double or quits, how about that?”

  Skull tried to kick him, but Silk dodged. Skull was looking ill: white about the chops, strained about the eyes. “You were always a rotter, Silk,” he said, “but now you’re an utter shit.”

  Silk gave a grunt of surprise. He had never heard Skull use that word before. “Right first time,” he said. “It’s a shitty job, so it takes an utter shit to do it.”

  “You flatter yourself. Scrambling a Vulcan on QRA isn’t a job, it’s a charade, it never makes a damn bit of difference, because nobody’s going to drop the bloody bomb. You’re getting paid to be frightened, like the Soviets, it’s a balance of terror. Where’s the war in the Cold War? Doesn’t exist. Can’t exist. So – no glory, no victory. Just a perpetual output of fear. What a monumental waste.” The plaster had fallen off, and Skull’s lip was bleeding.

  5

  The late afternoon had turned grey and cold. RAF Kindrick looked dull and functional. Well, RAF airfields were not made to look thrilling. Silk decided to spend the night at The Grange. No point in being married to a five-star heiress unless you drank her claret from time to time. He changed into his best uniform, and as he walked to the Citroën he met the rear crew. All three.

  “Hullo!” Hallett said. “No cello?”

  “I met a Polish vicar who tried to blackmail me for gross moral turpitude,” Silk said, “and a passing spy brained him with the cello.” He kept walking.

  “So don’t tell us,” Dando called. “See if we care.”

  He drove through the Lincolnshire countryside, now starting to lose its leaves. Skull’s profanity stuck in his mind. He’d have given long odds against that ever happening. Maybe the poor sod was losing his grip.

  Stevens came out to meet him.

  “Don’t say anything,” Silk said. “The queen is in the parlour, eating bread and honey.”

  “Her ladyship is in the gazebo, sir, for which there is no rhyme in the English lexicon.”

  “I bet there’s no rhyme for ‘lexicon’, either.”

  “Try ‘Mexican’, sir.”

  Silk headed off, then stopped and came back. “Talking of Mexicans,” he said, “what happened to the Pole?”

  “He’s in limbo, sir.”

  “I see. Dead or alive?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Silk set off again, in no hurry, wondering what he would do if Zoë punched him in the eye or, worse yet, started crying. It was a woman’s secret weapon, sobbing and weeping. He had no defence against sobbing and weeping. A double DFC was no bloody use against sobbing and weeping. He ran up the gazebo steps in order to get it over with quickly, and she smiled, gave him a hug and a good kiss. “I should have knocked,” he said. “You might have been up to no good with the American piano-player.”

  “Not impossible. He’s great fun.” She had been writing. She scooped up the pages.

  “Sounds ominous. Don’t tell me –”

  “Tell you? I shan’t tell you, Silko.” She slid the pages into a briefcase. “If I decide to have a fling with someone, I certainly shan’t consult you first.” He felt as if a large stone was settling in his gut. “You didn’t ask my permission,” she said. “That would have been a very peculiar conversation, wouldn’t it?”

  “I didn’t know it was going to happen. Anyway, you told me to have a hobby.” He looked at the bed. After a long, hard day defending the realm, surely he deserved a reward.

  “Listen here,” Zoë said. “You must understand that you matter more to me than anyone. I hate mountains. They frighten me. I would climb any mountain to save you. You alone. We had some lovely years when we were in love, and young, and lust conquered all. We’re not in love now. I’m very fond of you, but given the choice between a day in politics and a day with Silko, I’ll take politics every time. Now beat it. I’ve got a load of letters to answer and a train to catch.” She kissed him, very thoroughly, and pointed to the door.

  After that, he didn’t want her claret. He drove to Tess Monk’s farmhouse instead.

  A man was washing the windows, a thin chap with not much hair. He didn’t look around when the car stopped. Silk sat and watched; there was nowhere else he wanted to go.

  After a while Tess came out. He wound his window down. “Please buzz off,” she said.

  “He’s making a rotten job of it,” Silk said. “I can see the streaks from here.”

  “I’ll set the dog on you.”

  “Dog’s asleep. I can hear him drooling. Or have you left a tap running? Who is this bloke, anyway? He’s obviously not a window cleaner.”

  She ran a finger along the line of his jaw. “Clean-cut. It’s the only clean thing about you, Silko. Everything else is corkscrew. Well, this is straightforward. He’s my husband. Just out of prison.”

  “You said he was dead.”

  “Did I? Must have got that wrong.”

  “Drunk, drove too fast, crashed, you told me.”

  “You looked as if you wanted to know.”

  “Prison... What was he in for?”

  “Fornication on Sundays.”

  “That’s not a crime.”

  “Then don’t tell him. You’ll break his heart.” She reached in and turned the ignition key, and tweaked his ear and walked away.

  Now Silk had nowhere to go, nothing to do, nobody to do it with. He drove back to the airfield, too fast. For once, speed did not dissolve anger. His life seemed to be one battle after another: with Tucker over the bookie, with Stevens over who’s boss, with Freddy over ... he wasn’t sure what. And in one quick day he’d lost his girlfriend or mistress or something, and then his bloody wife wouldn’t even let him fight about it. What was wrong with Zoë?

  He went into the mess. Hardly anyone there, and the only face he knew was the adjutant, who took his pipe out of his mouth and said. “You look like a pig in an abattoir, old boy.” He put his pipe back and got on with the crossword. Silk walked out and got in his car and drove back to The Grange. Stevens opened the front door.

  “Wing Commander Skelton telephoned,” he said. “You should watch the BBC news.”

  They both watched it. President Kennedy told the American people that Soviet SS-4 Medium Range Ballistic Missiles had been secretly installed in Cuba, that Washington DC and other cities were within their range, and that a naval blockade of the island would begin in 48 hours.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Silk asked.

  “I couldn’t possibly say, sir,” Stevens said.

  A HICCUP AWAY FROM WAR

  1

  The Cuban Missile Crisis was a bombshell with a very long fuse behind it.

  The gangster, racketeer and dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba in December 1958. Castro and Ché Guevara led their revolutionary forces into Havana and formed a new government. Washington quickly recognised it, and 1959 passed off fairly smoothly. Castro reduced rents, took over the US-owned Telephone Company, redistributed land. He wasn’t a Communist, he was a reformist. He made some angry anti-American speeches, but the US still bought a lot of Cuban sugar. President Eisenhower said he was ‘perplexed’ by Castro’s statements and he reaffirmed the commitment of the US to ‘the policy of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries, including Cuba’. Officially, Washington had no big difficulties with Castro – except on one point: it blocked arms sa
les to Cuba.

  Well, the island must be able to defend itself. Castro said he would buy wherever he could. That had to mean the USSR or its allies. Now the fuse began to burn.

  For all Eisenhower’s public declarations, his administration had already begun to think that Castro must go. On the island, hundreds of Batista’s men had been tried for atrocities, and many were executed. Large numbers of Batistianos fled to Miami, where they plotted to reverse the revolution. In March 1960 Eisenhower ordered the CIA to train Cuban exiles ‘against a possible future day when they might return to their homeland’: the first hint of military force. Eventually, four training bases were set up in Florida, plus others in Puerto Rico, Panama, Nicaragua and Guatemala. The CIA was working on plans to assassinate Castro. And Washington was thinking blockade.

  Cuba had to import oil. Soon, under pressure from Washington, the big US oil companies cut their supplies. Inevitably, Castro turned to Russia. Texaco, Esso and Shell operated refineries in Cuba but they refused to process Russian oil. In June 1960 Castro nationalised them. A week later, Eisenhower cancelled the Cuban sugar quota. Russia stepped in, agreed to buy Cuban sugar for five years and to provide $100 million in credit. By the summer, arms were reaching Cuba from the Eastern Bloc and Castro was nationalising US-owned businesses – 26 in August, all American banks in September, a further 166 US firms in October. Washington banned almost all trade with Cuba. That left Castro with no friend but Russia. Early in 1961 he declared himself (and Cuba) for socialism.

  As if to test Castro’s wisdom, the new President, Jack Kennedy, approved an invasion of Cuba. In April 1961, the CIA sent 1,400 armed exiles to land on the Bay of Pigs, provoke a rising and overthrow Castro. The Cuban army was waiting. The raid was worse than a disaster; it was a farce. Perhaps it persuaded Kruschev that Kennedy lacked backbone.

  In 1962, Cuba was always in the headlines. Kennedy’s presidential campaign had claimed that the US suffered from a missile gap. There was no such gap, but Kennedy had created the scare and now he was stuck with it. There were more and more reports of a Soviet military build-up in Cuba, and they were true.