A Cold Flight To Nowhereville

by Steve Fletcher

  And perhaps, she reasoned, she might give him the benefit of the doubt until he did.

  Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan

  Katia had parked the truck in a nearby alley that was narrow and dirty, but that also wasn’t a place anyone would think to come. Hardin found the tall, deserted concrete apartment buildings oppressive, weighing on his spirit with the eerie, empty sensation of a ghost town. Concentrating on his work, he found set of tools behind the seat of the faded olive-drab truck and with some rusty box-end wrenches that had apparently been milled out of pot metal managed to pull the spark plugs. Three plugs were fouled; the antique six-cylinder appeared badly in need of a ring job on at least the first, second and fourth cylinders. He couldn’t find a wire brush, but there were any amount of old rags and he could make do with those. The truck itself looked very much like some old U.S. Army-vintage three-ton flatbed, and he wondered if the designers had cribbed a little from the Lend-Lease program trucks. Fortunately the old ZiS had a huge gas tank that seemed at least a third full; he wondered what sort of bureaucratic machinations were required to purchase gas in this country. He hadn’t seen anything that looked remotely like a filling station.

  His thoughts were gloomy and incriminating as he hung over the engine, a Troika clamped between his lips, working at an obstinate stuck plug with the wrench. Why didn’t you run from that fight? Why didn’t you drop to the deck and get into the storm? Because it didn’t even occur to you! You didn’t even think about running, you just went ‘oh, a one v. three! I can take ‘em!’ Well, you couldn’t. Because you had to be a big ace you’re stuck here with a girl that doesn’t want you around instead of having a trip home. That’s just swell, Hardin. Way to go. You acted like an arrogant chump and got yourself grounded. You didn’t even bother to make up an intelligent escape and evasion plan. What the hell is wrong with you? He was unused to such internal remonstrations but seemed unable to put them out of his mind.

  He was washing his oily hands in a thin trickle of cold, rusty water in the sink of the dingy apartment when Katia returned. She seemed in a better mood as she dumped her purchases out on the table. “I had to look all over to find the black market. I finally found a vendor who sold dried salo and bologna off the back of his truck, so I bought some. I found some instant coffee too, which is very rare but I thought we might need some.”

  Hardin picked up one of the rolls of bologna, glad for the diversion from his introspective and damning thoughts. The long, heavy rolls of meat were thick and hard-skinned and felt like blunt weapons. He didn’t know what to make of the packets of salo whatsoever and said so. “It’s a kind of cured pork,” she told him with a smile. “Tastes salty and rich when you spread it on some bread.”

  He’d been right. Her smile was pretty.

  She had bread, too, several hard crusty loaves of it, and several bottles of cheap vodka. “Looks like you did all right,” he said admiringly, “given that this town is mostly deserted and on the ass-end of nowhere.”

  “I had to find the market first,” she explained. “That’s where they sell these goods. They’re not usually sold in stores, and they were very expensive. Then I found a vendor that had some old Russian military equipment for sale and I bought a knapsack. I think it’s left over from the War.”

  He took the knapsack she offered and opened it, moving away from the table to shake the dust off. “Looks like this will do fine,” he pronounced, loading her purchases into it. She had also bought a folding shovel, matches, a ball of twine and a regulation military mess kit, which would provide something in which to heat water. “This is a good haul, Katia. If we’re on foot we’ll be cold but we shouldn’t freeze. You seem in a better mood,” he added after a moment.

  She shrugged. “I tried your suggestion and didn’t think about things. I still have no plan but I feel better.”

  “Roll with the punches, Katia. We’ll head back to Tyuratam, see what’s going on, and who knows. Something may suggest itself.”

  “What about your mood?” she inquired, watching him work to close the knapsack.

  “I don’t know,” he muttered sourly, leaning on the table.

  “Tell me?”

  He sighed. “I’ve been thinking about what an idiot I’ve been, mainly. Those kinds of things don’t occur to me very often. Except when I’m stuck in the middle of the Soviet Union.”

  She shrugged and smiled. “I think the same thoughts sometimes, whether I have a reason to or not. Maybe we’ll get on after all.”

  Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan

  They left the apartment at full dark. Snow had begun falling heavily again, and even in the close alleyways the north wind was brutal, driving the snow horizontally against the windshield of the truck. As Katia slid into the driver’s seat the American stood on the rear tire and grabbed Ilia’s old green canvas tarp from the bed, brushing the snow away and folding it neatly before tossing it into the cab. “What’s that for?” she wondered.

  “I need to be prepared,” Hardin muttered, closing the passenger side door and brushing snow from his coat. “It’s kind of a new idea for me. Sooner or later we’re going to be on foot and I’d feel better about it if we had something to use as a shelter. I didn’t see a whole lot of trees on the way up here.”

  “No, there aren’t many in this part of Russia. I like the desert but I do miss the forests.”

  “To say nothing of the fact that evading pursuit will be more difficult in open terrain.”

  “The snow will help,” she murmured as she stepped on the starter and the engine cranked.

  “Sure! Give them a nice set of tracks to follow!”

  She scowled at him. “But we’ll be out of the snow a hundred kilometers or so to the south. This weather is a bit unusual for this time of year.”

  “Just my luck,” he grumbled, stuffing the folded tarp down into the knapsack.

  The engine caught and coughed to life. “It starts more easily. I should learn to do whatever you did!”

  “I cleaned the plugs. And you’re right, everyone should know how to take care of a car.”

  “Except nobody has them here,” she told him, releasing the clutch and easing the truck forward through the drifting snow of the alley. “Ilia’s truck was given to him by the Russians so he could deliver food and goods to the Facility. It’s a great gift. Only the very wealthy have automobiles, Party officials and the like.”

  “They’re a little more common in the States,” he grinned. “Most folks have a car these days. And a kid’s first car should always be a piece of junk like this.”

  “Why? Why not have a nice car for your first one?”

  “Because if you learn to drive on a piece of junk, you learn how to work on it. If you have to get under the hood every day to keep the thing running, you learn how engines work. That’s something every kid should learn.”

  “Was that your first car? A piece of junk?”

  “Actually my first car was a motorcycle. But it’s the same concept. I ride Indians and you typically have to fiddle with them to keep them running.”

  “What is that? An Indian?”

  “Type of American motorcycle. Big bike, V-Twin, long-stroke. They don’t handle very well but they’ve got power to spare and lots of low-end torque. I’ve always liked them better than Harleys.”

  Katia thought she would also, but not in the snow. She had heard of Harley-Davidson motorcycles before, but not Indians. The man who called himself John Hardin occupied her thoughts a great deal, for she had never met an American before. She had met Russian pilots and found them on the whole insufferable, possessed of the idea that anyone but a pilot was a second-class citizen and women existed only for their pleasure. They irritated her. Hardin was built like a Russian pilot, stocky and square, and although he had a day or two of stubble on his chin he definitely looked military. His shabby winter clothing did little to mask his appearance or his military bearing. But his attitude was different. He seemed to value her opinion and this puzzled her; in
her prior dealings with Russian men her gender always came first.

  Kingfish, even her handler, had been unable to see past the fact that she was female, and treated her as someone capable of only the most menial tasks. Kingfish, thirty years her senior, saw her as an object of sexual gratification only and this irked her beyond measure, for in her experience it was a typical Russian attitude. She was for comfort, nothing else. Here in Kazakhstan the attitude was even worse, and only rarely did a conversation fail to involve sex. The code phrases Kingfish had devised were by their nature insulting, for they operated on the assumption that the only acceptable interchange between a man and a woman was a sexual one. And it grated on her nerves that nobody thought twice about such phrases. Any phrases would have sufficed, her day, her work, her life, the weather, but it had to be sex—as though that was her only capability or value. The fact that she had refused a physical relationship with Kingfish did not mean she didn’t enjoy sex, but she would never allow herself such an indulgence when that was the only basis for the relationship. She attributed much of Kingfish’s mindset to her handler as well. Although their rare conversations were never flirtatious, he hadn’t placed any more stock in her abilities than anyone else ever had. She was a mule, a gopher, a Stepin Fetchit from the old American films that had circulated during the Great Patriotic War. Always it seemed that the men who had the ability to further her career, to give her more duties and responsibilities, refused to see past the wall of her gender.

  Hardin did not seem to be one such, at least thus far. She’d always been told that the American culture was horribly degenerate, and that people there only thought of sex all the time. But when John Hardin asked her questions he was interested in her responses. He cast things back at her, seemed to want her to think things through and then listened to what she had to say. She was beginning to enjoy their interactions, for she was unused to dealing with men that actually wanted to hear what she thought. His manner had been initially irritating, but he seemed to be making a conscious effort to control that. That impressed her. And she had to admit that she might have been a little too quick to assume he would treat her the way other men did. But in the time they had spent together his conversation was refreshingly free of sexual innuendoes, even when she spoke of Kingfish and their relationship.

  She also knew Hardin was not in anything like what passed for his normal state. He seemed lost and out of his element, seizing on any topic of conversation that presented a foothold of familiarity—automobiles, motorcycles, survival, escape and evasion. He was more prone to talk about those subjects, and on others he seemed unsure of himself, relying more on her. Would he become more obnoxious as he grew more familiar with this country? Probably. But his mind seemed to work a little differently than the men she had dealt with before. He noticed things, took them in and seemed to try to work them into his internal frame of reference. How easy it would have been for Hardin to take the attitude of her handler and tell her to screw off, he was going to fend for himself. He could have made his own way south to freedom instead of accompanying her on this more dangerous course. He could have taken the easy way out and followed the course he knew, escape. Why hadn’t he? Perhaps, like her, he had a dislike of failure. Perhaps it wasn’t so easy for him to throw everything aside and deal only with his own needs. Maybe this was a new experience for him—not being in an unfamiliar country, but the experience of failure. He had lost his jet, his method of escape, the object with which he was most familiar. In that aspect of the mission he had failed. Perhaps, like her, he wanted to salvage what he could of the mission.

  In a way they seemed to need each other. Each was the other’s buffer against failure.

  She took the truck on a circuitous route out of the dark city, but the snow was falling so hard and the wind was so forceful that she needn’t have bothered. Visibility was poor and as they left the lights of Kyzylorda behind she had to lean close to the wheel to see anything of the road in front of her. “Try watching the edge of the road,” Hardin offered. “It might be easier to see.”

  “I’m having trouble seeing even that,” she replied. “This is becoming a blizzard. It’s very unusual for this time of the year.”

  “You don’t get snow a lot down here?”

  “We do, but not usually before later in November.” She switched the wipers onto high. “January and February are the months for heavy snow.”

  “Makes me wonder how people get by out here.”

  “Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. That’s why the Soviets exile people down here. During Stalin’s time as many were sent here as to Siberia. But people make do. There is never enough food, even in the good months. In Tyuratam things are a little better because of the Facility, and the fact that exiles are not sent to Tyuratam. So there isn’t the usual overcrowding.”

  “What of your family? They ever sent out here?”

  She shook her head. “No. Most of my family was killed during the German occupation. There were years of great trouble in Ukraine, and after the Germans left it got worse. The Soviets were worse than the Germans ever thought of being.”

  “But you made it?”

  “I got lucky. I had a job in a different city from the rest of my family and I was able to hide from the Germans. My hometown wasn’t so fortunate. After the war I got a good job working for a popular General, so I avoided the purges that followed. But I saw dreadful things during those years.”

  “So you became an agent?”

  “I wasn’t an agent. Not really. More like a courier. I took photographs with a small camera and delivered the film. There wasn’t much to it.”

  The truck crept along at barely 60 kilometers per hour. She could not see well enough to push the ZiS to any more speed. “Why did you decide to do that?” he asked.

  “To do what?”

  “You know. Become a British agent.”

  “You mean sell out my country, don’t you,” she replied, bridling and allowing her temper to show. “You might as well say it. Well, I haven’t sold out my country, and I don’t betray it. My country isn’t the Soviet Union, it’s Ukraine.”

  “Isn’t that a part of the Soviet Union?”

  “Not by choice. The Soviets colonized Ukraine against our wishes. Haven’t you heard that most of my country cheered the Germans as liberators? You have to belong to something before you can betray it, and I do not belong to the Soviet Union.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “What happened to my country was crude colonization, nothing more. The Soviet Union is a totalitarian state and I will not be used by it.”

  Hardin seemed to think about her statement. “So you have a beef with communism?”

  “The Soviet Union isn’t a communist state. True communism is like the Christian religion. Brotherhood of the people, brotherhood of the nations, equality, love. If that were the case in the Soviet Union I would embrace it. Comrade Lenin tried that but it didn’t work. He told the workers ‘you are now the owners of the factories!’ and the workers looted the factories and went home. Now the Soviet Union is a dictatorship, and I fight against it.”

  “And yet you call him ‘Comrade Lenin.’” She could feel his grin in the darkness of the cab.

  “Old habits die hard,” she grumbled. “The concept of comradeship a good theory, but it fails in practice. The word as the Soviets use it is meaningless. Don’t tease me about this, John. My feelings about it are very strong and I will probably bite your head off.”

  She could still feel his grin. “I noticed. Have a cigarette.”

  She accepted one and lit it from the match he offered. “Why, to calm me down?”

  “Works for me,” he replied easily, lighting one for himself. “I’m not teasing you, Katia, not really. I just don’t know a thing about all this. My only experience with Russians was flying against them in Korea. And then again this morning!”

  “I suppose I can live with that,” she said. If he was going to make an effort to be
civil, she could also. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. But these are things I have strong feelings about.”

  The American fell silent. Feeling a strange urge to continue the conversation she said, “I didn’t know Soviet fighters were involved in Korea.”

  “Mm,” he grunted. “Around the Yalu River. We called it ‘MiG Alley’ and there were big dogfights with Russian honchos that went on there. There came a point that we weren’t fighting the North Koreans any more.”

  “And were they good? The Soviet pilots?”

  Another grunt of assent. “They were pretty good. The ones with combat time in War Two were real good, they knew how to dogfight. The others not so much, they’d use whatever simple tactics they were taught. They were easy to handle. But we could tell when we were up against honchos with combat time because they were a lot harder to deal with and had a nasty habit of dropping on your six. The MiG-15 was a nice little jet.”

  “But you were good, yes?”

  “Yeah,” the American smiled, but his tone sounded almost rueful. “Yeah, I was good.”

  PVO Regional Headquarters, Tashkent

  Lieutenant General Oleg Mitrokhin, commander of 12th Army of the PVO, waved the teletype printout angrily and favored his unfortunate aide with a fine bad temper. “This report is two fucking days old! Where has it been for two entire days?”

  His aide, Denis Feshkov, was possessed of the noteworthy characteristic of being able to take the brunt of his general’s moods without flinching. “I’m sure I don’t know, comrade General. Captain Shepkin just received it, said I should bring it directly to you. Perhaps these reports take time?”

  “What takes time is coordinating the ass-covering,” Mitrokhin grumbled, returning his attention to the report. “Did you read it?”

  “I did, comrade General.”

  Mitrokhin scrubbed a hand over his lined face. He was a man of medium hight, perhaps on the shorter side of that, with piercing blue eyes and iron-gray hair. “Two fighters lost. Maybe three. And I’m just now hearing about it.” And new ones, expensive MiGs! It couldn’t be training junk they lost, no, it had to be the best and most modern aircraft the Soviet Union owned. It wasn’t as if he’d been just looking around for more problems either, the reorganization of the PVO was giving him enough of those. What the hell else could go wrong? Marshall Biryozov, commander in chief of the Air Defense Forces, was going to shit himself.