He made the radio and sextant checks while approaching Manchouli. There was a minor westward course correction to make. Although he felt that the three hours had passed quickly and that he had had time for serene reflection, in fact he was constantly occupied. He had to check the instruments continuously—the rpm, the exhaust gas temperature, the fire warning lights, the compass, the artificial horizon, the radio signals from which he was taking navigational guidance. He would semi-automatically compensate for drift; and now he would be flipping on the camera switches.
At this altitude, topographical differences were exclusively a matter of color shadings. His route over Mongolia took him over high ground, about the altitude of the area surrounding Denver, Colorado, and the color of the ground was not noticeably different. The blues from the lakes, rivers, and oceans were interchangeable with the waters in the far west of the United States. The little traces of white were demure and skittish by contrast with the solid white patches of the Rockies. He knew that someday very soon we’d have a man in space. He’d be orbiting the globe at an altitude three times higher than his own. Whereas he could see several hundred miles, the astronaut would see a few thousand miles. At the nether end, he felt as unrelated to what went on below as if he had been flying over the United States. The spell would break, he knew, when the moment came to put an end to his synthetic security; but for the moment he felt completely estranged from the herdsmen and peasants below, and their harsh rulers, and all those paradoxes—men and women working by day assembling SAM missiles, and returning at night to ancient dwellings without indoor toilets or sources of water closer than communal wells.
Suddenly he experienced a fierce, unaccountable joy. He had maneuvered his aircraft west, beginning the long stretch across the Mongolian border, and the sun was now outside his peripheral vision. Flying in the same direction, he felt somehow that the sun was a personal satellite, moving behind him at the appropriate speed in order to expedite his mission. The aircraft was behaving with exemplary smoothness, and the air about him, at a temperature of minus sixty degrees Fahrenheit, was tranquil in its insubstantiality. But behind his serenity, he knew, was the fusion of two emotions. The first was that he was staking his life, and so requiting the sacrifice of Michael. The second was that, in Bermuda, Sally had indicated that, finally, she … understood. The two days had gone by with inexplicable, almost indecipherable synchronization of emotional and psychic concerns. They were truly as one, as much so when separated by a hundred yards on their bicycles as when they lay fused in bed, and he studied the moon’s irradiations on her lowered eyelids and lambent hair. She sensed that this next mission was distinctively dangerous, but her energies were for the first time given to convincing him that if in his judgment it was right to go forward, in her judgment, derivatively, it was right to go forward. That certification, which he had never had before, above all things lightened his burden, though, at a complementary level, it heightened his concern; because he cared now, more deeply than ever before, that he should return—to be with her, always.
The more he reflected on what lay ahead, the likelier he thought it that indeed he would be greeted by MIGs. He would contrive his flameout at 72,000 feet, two hundred miles east of Alma-Ata. He would descend to 45,000 feet—a most seductive height for the MIGs. There he would linger for ten minutes. He hoped that notwithstanding the strangeness of the tongue, he would be able to detect from the tempo of the language, over the radio, whether the instructions going out to MIGs were to intercept him. He would drift down slowly from 45,000 feet, hoping to spot the enemy aircraft. Without his engine, there would be no contrail. Perhaps he would ignite it for a minute or two, giving out that cloud trail, helping the enemy pilots to establish visual identification. As if he had succeeded in achieving ignition—only to suffer a successor flameout. He would continue fitfully in his descent. If at 25,000 feet he saw no MIGs, he would proceed down, looking simultaneously for terrain smooth enough to land on, and preferably close to farmers, or men driving automobiles, who would rush out to inspect the mysterious black intruder.
Making now his final southwesterly turn, he found himself gratifyingly on schedule. He had set his watch on Greenwich Mean Time, and his calculations showed him twelve minutes off schedule. Ahead of schedule, actually. He could, if he wished, adjust to the pre-indicated time of arrival. But not by reducing the rpm—the U-2 did not permit you to elect to fly more slowly. Either he would need to drift off course—to tack, so to speak, a little bit en route to the objective—or he would have to reduce his altitude. He decided to do neither, to proceed a few minutes ahead of schedule. If the radars and the MIGs were going to fetch him, they’d as likely do so if he landed at 9:50 as at 10:10.
He was coming now to the Dzhungarsky Alatau mountain range. Two hundred and forty miles to go. Local time, 0930. From his cockpit in the U-2 he could not view the sky behind him, so he indulged himself in a leisurely turn and took a sextant reading on the sun. Reassuringly, he found it doing its duty: it was exactly where it should be, at 44 degrees 15 minutes.
“Ready to go?” he asked himself at 0943. “All set, Blackford. Er … good luck, old boy.”
He flicked the Air Starter switch. In a few seconds the engine coughed and went dead. He put the nose down, keeping a careful eye on the air speed. “Steady at .7,” he said to himself, observing his rate of descent at five hundred feet per minute. He had the radio set at the Alma-Ata tower number, but now switched to see if he could hear anything on the emergency channel. He was still 175 miles from the air base. He heard traffic, but came to no conclusions as to its meaning. He switched back to the Alma-Ata frequency.
At 9:48 he was at 50,000 feet. He found himself subconsciously, and quite unreasonably at that altitude, already looking about for a forced landing site.
At 45,000 feet he saw the contrails. Coming his way. Three of them.
He decided to simulate now an effort to fire the engine. He turned on the Air Starter, caused the engine to spurt a couple of times, then switched it again, choking off the engine and resuming his descent. He figured the rate of closure, given their speed of approach to him and his to them, at very nearly Mach 1.5, so it wouldn’t be long. Probably three to four minutes, at which point he would be down to between 42,000 and 43,000 feet. The MIGs were separating now, clearly in response to the squadron leader’s orders, which Blackford intercepted on the emergency channel easily identifying, by his tone of voice, the leader. One MIG was headed toward him, another to his right, the third to his left. The first would be on top of him by the time their paths crossed. Blackford decided to wait until 25,000 feet, just before the MIGs were at hand, to cough up the engine.
He estimated they were sixty seconds distant when he turned on the Air Starter switch and ignited the engine. He made a motion to climb, without, however, heading up as steeply as the aircraft could actually manage. He didn’t want to have them think that they had better get on with it and shoot him down lest he escape by climbing out of their range. The first plane now climbed directly over him. The other two had swung out and begun their U turns. On the emergency channel he heard in guttural English: “AIRPLANE DOWN AIRPLANE DOWN PURSUE THREE ZERO FIVE PURSUE THREE ZERO FIVE.” The first plane was now ahead of him, flying in the same direction, and he could see the tail marking, “ZNS 305.” The second and third were respectively a hundred yards on his left, a hundred yards on his right, parallel. Both pilots pointed to the lead plane. The lead plane descended—but at an angle unacceptable to a U-2. Blackford could not follow him down so steeply without structural risk—the “coffin” factor. He therefore maintained his own maximum permissible descent speed of five hundred feet per minute, and motioned to the pilot on the right by running his thumb graphically across his throat. On the radio he said: “AM DESCENDING AM DESCENDING AT MAXIMUM SPEED MAXIMUM SPEED.” There were rapid exchanges on the radio in Russian. When the plane on the right then veered away, in a maneuver Blackford knew to be consistent with positioning itself
to shoot down the U-2, Blackford lowered his two landing wheels, the international signal of submission. The import of the message was apparently received and accepted, because the lead plane promptly reduced the angle of descent, adopting the U-2’s glide pattern. They were at 15,000 feet when Blackford spotted the field. The lead plane began an approach turn, designated to bring them to the windward end of the strip at approximately 2,000 feet. They were headed toward the landing strip, at 1,500 feet, when the pilot on Blackford’s right pointed to the field, thrusting his finger down to instruct Blackford to land. At this point Blackford severed the AN connector, retrieving the fishing line. His airplane was now a glider. The lead plane zoomed up, to get out of Blackford’s way. He headed down to the runway, while his escort planes executed 360-degree turns to place themselves in parade formation behind Blackford. He focused on the landing. A U-2 could not land except by stalling. Any power would lift it off the ground. Obviously the stall would need to come at an appropriate distance above the runway. By the time he was fifteen feet over the ground, there were two escort jeeps carrying men with machine guns racing on either side of the runway to keep pace. He hoped he would not ground-loop. His escort detachment obviously didn’t know that the U-2 had no tricycle landing facilities, and that therefore the possibilities were high that when the heavier wing touched the runway, the plane would veer sharply. Blackford stalled the plane and the wing touched down, lazily. Blackford applied brake pressure, allowing the plane gradually to swing to the left, off the runway onto the grass. It came, finally, to rest.
“Well,” he thought, “here we go.”
He flipped the Arm switch. He opened the cockpit cover, put his foot over the side, and then reached over and flipped the destruct switch. He was on the ground and surrounded by armed men when, sixty-five seconds later, the explosion occurred. There was no shrapnel. But a barked order into a walkie-talkie brought a fire truck, sirens raging. A hose was trained on the tail section of the aircraft until the smoke was gone. The MIGs roared down, at intervals of about a minute.
Blackford calmly devoted himself to detaching first his face plate, then his helmet. He looked up at the fifteen or eighteen men surrounding him, several with automatic weapons. One man was obviously in charge. Blackford smiled, executed a salute intended rather as a greeting than an obeisance, and said cheerfully:
“Could I please use your telephone?”
CHAPTER 23
On April 14, addressing the Supreme Soviet in Moscow, Nikita Khrushchev announced that an American spy plane had been brought down by Soviet fighters, that the evidence was conclusive that the pilot was an “important agent” of the Central Intelligence Agency, and that the trial of the American spy by a military court, pursuant to Soviet law, would proceed in a fortnight. He said that such an “unprecedented aggressive act” against the sovereignty of the Soviet state revealed the true intentions of the United States to reject coexistence, and that this aggression by the United States would deeply influence the attitude of the Soviet Union at the forthcoming summit conference in Paris. As for the spy, the Soviet Union would not divulge his name, lest any knowledge of his anti-Soviet activities during the preceding decade influence the court. Soviet law, Khrushchev finished darkly, authorizes the death penalty for such behavior as the prosecution would allege the American had engaged in; “but the verdict, of course, will be that of the court.”
The U. S. State Department press officer in Washington issued a message to a press chamber swollen with bodies from every news agency, to the effect that flights undertaken in the area to which Chairman Khrushchev alluded were motivated by a desire to collect high-altitude meteorological information, that the aircraft was under the control of NASA, and that it was incorrect to assume that the United States policies sought anything other than coexistence and peaceful solutions to such outstanding problems as the future of Berlin. State Department and White House spokesmen refused to give further details other than that our ambassador in Moscow had been instructed to demand access to the pilot, whose name the State Department declined to disclose.
On April 29, Tass announced that the verdict against the American spy was execution. The Military Division of the Soviet Supreme Court had granted him a week’s period during which his court-appointed attorney, the distinguished Dr. Valerian Ryleyev, would have leave to appeal to the Soviet Supreme Court for a reduced sentence. Rufus put in for a White House meeting, which was set for 1:45 at the Oval Office, with the Secretary of State and the Director of the CIA also in attendance.
The President looked grave. “We can’t let them shoot that kid.”
Rufus replied that he didn’t think it likely they would do so, but that the time was certainly appropriate to initiate the suggestion of an exchange. The publicity that had been given to Hans Steiner and his spy ring was incessant. Great public curiosity had been aroused as to his activities, and there was intense interest in what would be revealed at the trial. “It might be useful,” Dulles said, “at a certain moment to leak the suggestion that the ‘crimes’ attributed to our pilot, who was after all tried in the customary Soviet manner—no outside observers—might have been staged in order to distract attention from the activities of Hans Steiner.”
“We won’t have to leak it,” Ike said. “The columnists will jump for it, you watch.”
Rufus turned to Secretary Herter. “Mr. Secretary, I wonder whether you’d agree it might make sense to have someone from outside the Administration approach the Soviets? Things have got pretty heated, and what we intend might work faster through a third party.”
“Who did you have in mind?” Herter asked.
“Dean Acheson.”
The President winced. “Just so I don’t have to talk to him. Thinks he’s so goddam smart. No, I didn’t read his book and I don’t intend to. Who was in charge at Yalta? Who was around when the Soviets established their eastern empire? When they got the atom bomb? I think you got a point, Rufus.”
The Director intervened. “On the other hand, Rufus, if our calculations are correct, they’re going to want to go quickly with this.”
“I think they do. But if they’re talking to Mr. Herter, or to one of our ambassadors, they’ll feel that they’re talking with people in a position to negotiate, and maybe they can make some public points. If Mr. Acheson goes in, he can say that he has one offer to make, and he can even say something about how he’s not associated with the administration Khrushchev is so hot and bothered about.”
Eisenhower tapped on the table. “Okay. We’ll go with that. Rufus, you and Herter approach him. Now, let’s get onto the question of our immediate response to the capital sentence.”
Herter pulled a sheet of paper out of his briefcase. “I have a draft statement, Mr. President. It could be issued from my office or from the White House.”
Eisenhower put on his glasses and started to read.
“Hmm. The usual things.… It won’t do too well under scrutiny by the press. I think on this one we’ll just have to freeze. Say that our concern is exclusively with the safety of our ‘pilot’ and that we can’t talk about him or anything involving him until we have passed our position through to the Soviet authorities via our ambassador … I like that.” He grunted. “I like that: ‘The U. S. Attorney General does not intend to ask the jury for a death sentence against Hans Steiner.’ Nice. Let those bastards have it. And by the way”—he took off his glasses and looked up—“if anybody wants to propose nationalizing the television networks, pass the goddam bill and I’ll sign it. I like to watch the news. I mean, it’s important. But if I have to listen to that bastard Umin one more time, I’m going to be carted back to Walter Reed. Did you hear what he said about me—when was it, night before last? ‘If we didn’t have a full-time golfer in the White House, maybe the United States could search for peace instead of inventing Soviet spies.’ Son of a bitch. Hey—don’t like to brag, Allen, but I shot a seventy-four yesterday. Full-time golfer! If I were a full-time golfer I wouldn’t
be playing with a handicap of twelve. Yeah”—he handed the statement back to Herter—“we’d better issue it out of here, otherwise they’ll just come over and give Hagerty eternal hell anyway. You’ll have to pass around the word: everybody is to clam up on this one.”
“Fortunately, Mr. President, there are very few people who are in a position to throw any light on it,” Dulles said.
“That’s right.” He looked up: “Rufus, I’ve got to hand it to you. If it works. All right?” He stood up, and simultaneously pushed the button on his desk. The President’s men filed out.
Mikhail Menshikov had been around a long time. Smiling Mike, he was called, not to his face. He’d have smiled at a hanging. An old Bolshevik, Menshikov was skilled in the art of survival. It was known that his addiction to vodka and women would keep him from ultimate power. This was one reason for his strength. He knew everyone in the Kremlin, and they knew that he expected to climb no higher rung on the ladder than the one on which he now so comfortably reposed, though there had been hair-raising moments the preceding fall during Khrushchev’s hectic visit, when Menshikov was in charge of all Washington arrangements, even though the volcanic Chairman slept at Blair House. He had known Dean Acheson—
“… well, is it fair to say we have known each other more or less forever, Dean?”
“It is certainly fair to say that it seems forever since we first met, Mikhail.”
“Ah, Dean, you are always making the jokes at our expense, but we have a good relationship, you and I. We are friends, is that correct?”
“No, Mikhail, that isn’t correct. We are professionals, and as professionals we know that when there is no audience whose response we seek to stimulate, it saves a great deal of time and effort merely to say to each other what we have to say to each other.”
“Of course, Dean, of course.” Menshikov smiled and reached over to fill Acheson’s teacup. “You have on your mind?”
Marco Polo, If You Can Page 21
