A Cold Flight To Nowhereville

by Steve Fletcher

  “And he didn’t want to do what you said. I think that’s all there was to it. He was just better than the pilots that made the intercept.”

  Dusengaliev didn’t want to fill out his report. With three fighters lost the PVO Headquarters would be looking for someplace to assign blame, and they wouldn’t have to look very far. He would be accused of being a hothead and forced to endure endless boards of inquiry while his competence was examined, then examined again. He swore and kicked the nearest tire of the van, certain that the outcome of that process would be an assignment to a worse shit-hole than this one. Probably the Lubyanka. Or maybe somewhere north of the Arctic Circle if he was lucky. “Well, I’ll report it as a friendly but non-cooperative. At least one-three-eight will get it worse than I will.”

  Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan

  Several more hours crept by as she alternately dozed and watched. Sometimes she would get out of the truck to walk briskly around the hangar to get her blood moving. From time to time she saw old vehicles pass on the distant road, but fortunately none were military.

  And if the courier didn’t come?

  She forced herself to remain calm. The events of the previous night had affected her more than she wanted to admit, though, and she knew she was not thinking as clearly as was her usual habit. Her handler’s words and actions had rattled her badly; she needed to get herself back under control. She was behaving like an amateur, and she wasn’t one. Her late, unlamented husband had told her that much of the espionage game was about waiting. Waiting for instructions. Waiting for news. Waiting for pickup. Waiting for drop off. Waiting for payment. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. And she knew this from her own experience, she hadn’t needed him to remind her. But now…maybe she did.

  On the far road some dilapidated jalopy had pulled over and stopped, smoke belching from its tailpipe. A peasant got out, waved, and then the jalopy continued on down the road. She saw that he wore a drab gray overcoat with his hands jammed down into the pockets and a worn leather usanka on his head, the earflaps pulled down. He was smoking a cigarette, the gray smoke he exhaled trailing off behind him. He looked like a kolkhoznik, a sturdy farmhand type, and she wondered if there were any collectives nearby. Apparently deep into his cups, he weaved his way into the snowy steppe separating the road from the airfield. Great. She was going to have to shoo a drunk away and who knew how much trouble that was going to be. And worse luck, this one was angling roughly towards her hangar. That was just what she needed, foot traffic at a deserted airfield. Wasn’t anything going to go right?

  The drunk staggered along the perimeter of the field, then out into the old snow-covered runway. To her consternation she watched as the man noticed her truck in the open hangar and began to weave uncertainly her way. She prayed he would not notice that she was attractive and try to take advantage of her. She rummaged around on the passenger’s seat for something she could use as a weapon and produced a heavy wrench.

  The drunk entered the hangar, came to the truck and peered owlishly in the window. He rapped on the glass. “Is this the way to Kyz..kyzl…is there a town this way?”

  “Yes,” she snapped. “That way. Now please leave.” He reeked of alcohol and cigarettes.

  “Oh good!” he sang out boozily. “My uncle Ivan said it was this way, but he doesn’t know his head from his ass.”

  Her heart stopped and for a moment she just stared. This was the courier? He’d given the code phrase meant to identify himself! But where was the aircraft he was supposed to be in? Why was he on foot reeking of vodka? Abruptly his entire appearance seemed to have changed in her mind. She no longer saw him as a drunken, ignorant peasant, though that was certainly his outward appearance.

  “Your uncle should work for the MVD,” she whispered.

  There was a moment of silence, neither seeming to know what to say or how to proceed. “I expected Kingfish to be a man,” the drunk said, now sounding not in the least bit inebriated.

  That stirred her temper and countered her sense of shock. “He’s dead,” she snapped. “I have taken over the operation. Is that a problem for you?”

  “Not for me, I don’t care,” he grinned. “Do you have the film?”

  “No,” she said in clipped, angry tones. “I don’t have it yet. Where…where is the aircraft you’re supposed to be in?”

  “Had a couple problems there,” he admitted sheepishly. “In fact, I’m kind of stuck.”

  Another setback! Despair lurked at the fringes of her psyche. “What’s with your accent?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. “Where are you from?”

  “Brooklyn,” he replied easily. “A few blocks away from ProspectPark.”

  It took a moment for the words to register and the shock to take hold. Her eyes flew wide. “You’re…an American?”

  “Last time I checked,” he smiled.

  “But…what were you flying? And how…”

  “Look,” he interrupted, “I can tell you all about it. But don’t you think we’d better get somewhere a little less suspicious?”

  “Yes, get in.”

  He climbed in, and a wave of frigid air entered the cab with him. She studied him as he pulled his usanka off, seeming to relish being out of the wind and cold. His hair was short and military in appearance and he had at least a day’s growth of stubble on his chin. “Your hair is too short for a kolkhoznik,” she murmured as she stepped on the starter, pulling out of the hangar and accelerating slowly along the ramp to an access road.

  “Yeah, I’m Air Force. To answer your question I was flying a MiG-17. But I mixed it up with some MiGs over Uzbekistan and one of them got a lucky shot off. I took it as far as I could before I had to bail.”

  “A MiG-17,” she breathed in wonder as mental gears belatedly shifted and the pieces to a larger puzzle slipped into place. “I didn’t expect that—not you, not that. In fact I don’t think I expected anything less. I thought you might be one of our transport pilots, flying an Antonov perhaps, or maybe British…but not an American jet pilot. How is it possible that you fly a Soviet jet aircraft? How is your intelligence so good?”

  “You’re going to have to slow down a little. I’m keeping up with most of what you’re saying but not all of it. I’m working for the British. Sort of. At least since yesterday.” She felt the man watching her.

  “But you flew so far into the Soviet Union?”

  “Well, I told a bunch of lies doing it, but yes. Now it’s my turn to be confused. So what happened to this Kingfish?”

  She spoke a little more slowly so that he could understand. “Kingfish died a year ago. I was his backup.”

  “I can think of someone who’d like to know that,” he muttered. “And you don’t have the film?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. There’s been a problem and my contact hasn’t been able to make the drop.”

  “Like I needed more of those. What’s the problem?”

  “The KGB seems to have become aware that something is going on. It’s going to make getting the film more difficult, but not impossible.”

  “What do you mean? What are they aware of? Do you mean in Kyzylorda or Baikonur?”

  “Baikonur,” she replied tightly. “Not Kyzylorda. It’s nearly a ghost town and quite old. If there’s a KGB presence at all, it’s a small office and they’re not interesting in making their lives more difficult. The trouble is at Baikonur.”

  “But your contact has the film?”

  “Yes, he has it. I have to get it from him before he is arrested.”

  The man sighed. “Well, it sounds like one of us has her work cut out. I suppose we might as well be introduced. I’m John Hardin.”

  She looked at him, pleased with the diversion of conversation. “John Wesley Hardin? The American outlaw? I’ve heard that name!”

  “Yes, I get that a lot. So you hear about that stuff over here?”

  She nodded. “American cowboys are very popular in Russia. Children hear stories about cowboys and Indians, and outlaws like
Jesse James. It’s frowned upon, but the stories are still told. Oh…my name is Katia.”

  The white steppe sped by as the old truck rattled along the road. The sound of its exhaust was a noisy rumble inside the cab, soothingly familiar to her. It was beginning to snow again but the wind had abated, and large white flakes drifted down on the windshield. The man looked out the window at the passing countryside, a grimace on his face. “Well, Katia, it would appear that I have nowhere to go and all day to get there. I guess it’s just as well you don’t have the film yet, because I honestly don’t know what I’d do with it without that jet.”

  “That was the only way out?”

  “That was my only way out. I knew I was going to have to walk a ways, but I wasn’t planning on walking the entire way to Iran.”

  She smirked. This one is arrogant, he thinks only of himself. “Escape overland was always my only option. Now it looks like I’ll have some company.”

  “Hmm,” he agreed absently, refusing to allow himself to be baited. Katia could have done with a good argument. “Looks that way, doesn’t it? Guess we’ll figure out the best way to do that later. What of the contact at Baikonur?”

  “He wasn’t supposed to escape at all! If he wasn’t in danger he was to remain in place. Now that all has changed I don’t know what he’ll do, but his escape will be up to him.”

  “What of this area? Is there much military or KGB presence here? Everything I saw on the way in from Iran looked a lot like this place.”

  “No, not much. There are some military installations farther south, and more as you get closer to the borders. Around here most of the military and the KGB is at Baikonur.”

  “How are they at tracking escaped prisoners?”

  “Not good at all. Here in the Soviet Union nobody ever tries to escape, so the KGB is very bad at tracking anyone down. They’re lazy. Nobody escapes from the gulags, but it isn’t because there aren’t opportunities, it’s just because nobody will try. If they would, the KGB wouldn’t know what to do.”

  “Well, that makes me feel a little better about things. Does anyone in this country ride motorcycles?”

  “The Army has motorcycles. The kolkhozniks do not. Why? Do all Americans ride motorcycles?”

  “This American does. If I can steal one, we might not have to walk the entire way.”

  “First I need to decide what to do with you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, your accent for one thing. It’s a little odd and I haven’t quite figured it out, but I think it will draw attention to you. I have to return to Tyuratam and figure out a way to get the film from my contact. My home is—or was—there, but my actions the last day or two will make me too suspicious to go back to my home, I think. At least I don’t dare go there for long.” Her thoughts were drifting and she controlled them with an effort. “You don’t have to come with me. The apartment in Kyzylorda should be secure if you wanted to remain there. But you wouldn’t really want to talk to anyone. Although…your impersonation of a kolkhoznik wasn’t bad. In fact, it was quite good, and it could be that your accent might not call much attention to you after all if you acted drunk like you did—especially since they have sent so many here, from so many places. But to talk to people would just start gossip.”

  He shook his head. “You’re forgetting I stirred up a hell of a lot of trouble this morning. The PVO knows that one of their own jets shot down two others and vanished into the weather. They will be looking for the wreckage, and depending on how fast reports travel in this country and how much they know about your contact in Baikonur already, someone’s going to add the numbers up. It shouldn’t take them very long to find out nobody’s missing an airplane. If they do they’ll close the roads and you won’t be able to get back. I’m hoping they don’t think to look for the wreckage this far north.”

  “You shot down two aircraft? While flying a Russian jet?” She marveled. “Did they know you were American?”

  “I don’t think they knew what the hell I was. I do a good impression of a lost pilot. I think at least one of their pilots thought I was a friendly, but the controller was being a bastard and ordered them to shoot me down. With the furball I was in,” she frowned at his American term but gathered the jist from his context, “and with any luck they won’t be sure who was shooting at who. I assumed they’d figured out I was Western when they ordered the shootdown.”

  Katia considered his statement and shook her head. “It’s not unusual for the Russian military to behave like that…they’re very linear in their thinking. I don’t think you can assume they knew you were a Western pilot. Not if you were speaking their language and flying their aircraft. They would not think it possible that Western intelligence is so good. I find it very difficult to believe myself. It is more likely they wanted to question you and the controller didn’t want to take no for an answer. I really don’t know how fast the reports would travel. They would probably file a report with their headquarters quickly, but what happens to it then I don’t know.”

  “Might depend on whether they decide to do an investigation first,” he mused.

  “If the report reached Baikonur I think they would figure out what’s going on, but it would probably have to go through unusual channels to get there and things do not happen quickly in the Soviet Union. The Facility is a State secret and I think that would take time. But you’re right, we have to assume someone will figure things out. You had better come with me to Tyuratam.”

  She felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. It’s not supposed to go this quickly! This American has changed everything! Somehow she had convinced herself that the arrival of the courier would go unnoticed, that he would be in some kind of transport plane and that the Soviet military would not be alerted to his actions. She would have time. Even accounting for the setback at Baikonur, she had thought that she would have plenty of time to devise a plan to smuggle the film out—and that she would at least be dealing with a Russian! Not an American! She had hoped that the massive, unwieldy Soviet system would remain asleep until all was over…but now it showed signs of rousing itself. Now she might very well have little time left.

  Didn’t the Americans do anything quietly?

  Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan

  Ushakov was summoned to Kalyugin’s office shortly after nightfall.

  The Director of Security’s normally chilly office seemed even colder tonight as he closed the door behind him and took a seat facing the large man. Somehow he doubted it was simply the temperature he was feeling: something had gone wrong. Kalyugin had learned of something!

  “I would like an explanation for the roadblock you set up using soldiers of the 217th,” the Director demanded icily.

  His heart sank and a chill rippled through him. Who had talked? Probably one of the useless officers had gotten pissed off at Timofeev and tattled to Kalyugin. He cursed inwardly. He had gambled that the matter would be kept quiet, it hadn’t, and now he had some serious explaining to do. He would have to choose his words carefully, for the actions he had taken were clearly insubordinate. Kalyugin might be an idiot but he wasn’t so thick as to accept disobedience without consequences.

  He sketched out his suspicions about the woman, Katia.

  “So you were suspicious? How did you develop these suspicions? How did you learn of her?”

  “I had a few of the villagers questioned,” he responded quietly, keeping his temper in check. No sense denying it or trying to make it sound better than it was.

  “Against my direct instructions, you had them questioned!” Kalyugin shouted. “Are you prepared to produce your evidence? No, you’re not! Because you have none! Not one shred of evidence! Nothing even remotely suspicious! A young woman dresses like an old one so our idiot soldiers will not rape her, and you see this as evidence of espionage! Where have you been spending your career, under a rock? Where do you get your authority to do these things?”

  “I apologize, Comrade Direct
or.” He forced an unfelt humility into his voice with a tremendous effort. In fact, he was shaking with anger and frustration. “I overstepped my bounds. I merely took actions I felt to be prudent.”

  “Prudent in Beria’s day,” Kalyugin stated in clipped tones. “Not in this. Comrade Khrushchev’s reforms have the force of law, damn it! The KGB must now answer to the Central Committee! Your actions are reckless, insubordinate and self-serving. You have taken a dislike to a learned scientist, one who cannot be easily replaced, and have decided to manufacture what ‘evidence’ you need to have your way with him. Well, no more. I have had enough of your headlong pursuit of phantom spies.”

  He was silent for a moment. “The Chief Designer is away on business. As soon as he returns I intend to speak with him about the feasibility of finding a replacement for you, one who is able to follow my instructions. The increased security precautions I put in place at your urging will be discontinued as they have born no fruit.”

  No, no, no! For the first time, Ushakov felt the situation was getting away from his control. “Comrade Director, I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior. I assure you I will take extra care to ensure your wishes are followed precisely in the future.” Somehow he had to head this off! He could not be transferred now! Not with the situation as far advanced as he was certain it was. He had to get Kalyugin to change his mind!

  The Director’s voice thawed—a micron. “We will see. When the Chief Designer returns I shall speak with him, then we shall see. You are dismissed.”

  With a profound frustration sinking into the pit of his stomach, as well as no small trepidation over what the KGB might do to him, he left Kalyugin’s office and went out the back door of the building for a smoke. A single light was glowing feebly in a fixture overhead and the wind was bitterly cold, but he neither noticed nor cared. His thoughts wheeled chaotically. This was nothing short of a disaster. And in truth he had been pursuing the matter with a heavy hand, and might have suspected Kalyugin would find out. If he’d thought the matter through a little more. If he’d been more careful. If he’d been smarter. If he’d been an actual detective instead of simply playing one.