Romanov Succession (25 page)

“Now I remind you these airplanes are not peashooters. They are not designed to do aerobatics. You try doing a loop-the-loop and your wings will come right off. Just bear in mind Newton's Law. In a Fort you come down easy and smooth or you come down like a falling safe. There ain't no in-between. But you're going to learn how not to fly on a roller coaster. You'll learn a constant glide. The first time you try your hands on those controls you won't believe it can be done but you'll learn it.

“Bear in mind one other thing. These aircraft are rated to fly at twice the altitude you've been used to. At high altitudes lack of oxygen can cause a blackout and quick death. Use your masks.”

By now they were reeling a little; they'd filled notebooks. He said, “One more thing. About your parachutes. If you have to ditch and you've pulled the ripcord and the parachute does
not
open, here's what you do.”

He stepped aside from the podium and stood unsteadily, the muscles of his left foot making constant corrections in his balance while he twisted his right leg around his left, shoved both arms straight up in the air and wrapped his right arm around his left arm.

Then he said, “It won't do you a bit of good but it'll make it a little easier for the rescue party to unscrew you out of the ground. Okay let's take a five minute break.”

They stood up laughing.

He gathered them with the thunder of his voice. “Knock it off. Recess is over.”

They returned to the benches and Pappy Johnson leaned on the podium.

“The object of training is to get you misters into a condition where you can put a one-hundred-pound bomb on a postage stamp. Near-misses count in a game of horseshoes; they don't count here. Now we're going to make it a little bit easier for you because we're going to limit the training to low-altitude bombardment. That's because it'll simplify things for all of us if all we do is train you to fly one specific mission. So I'm not going to fill your heads with the tricks of high-altitude bomb placement or how to evade flak at ten thousand feet. Those things won't be your concern. Your problem is going to be strictly deck-level attacks.

“You're thinking the enemy will be able to hit you with rocks. Let me tell you misters that ain't your problem. At combat speed a B-Seventeen travels nearly two hundred yards in two seconds. You aren't likely to get shot down by rifles or machine guns from the ground. They won't even get a chance to start shooting before you've gone out of range.

“No. Your problem, gentlemen, when you're flying treetop in a B-Seventeen, is going to be a lot worse than that.

“You'll be going in low all the way. Flying in the grass where Uncle Joe Stalin won't find you. You're going to fly so low you'll have mud on your windshields. At that kind of altitude an aircraft can fly into thermal updrafts that act like concrete walls. It's going to feel as if the air's full of boulders. You're going to have to manhandle those Fortresses every inch of the way to the target and if you take your hands off the control yoke for a split second you're likely to find yourselves digging a tunnel with the nose of your airplane.”

He stood up straight. “I think it's time we went out and had a look at what a real airplane looks like. If you misters will follow me?”

11.

Baron Yuri Lavrentovitch Ivanov's house had been built for a titled cousin of Lord Nelson's. The drawing room was very high, very dark and very English—a soft dark polish of woodwork and padded leather.

Count Anatol took pride in his ability never to let feelings get the better of him but he had to fight the impulse to pace the room: he tried to force his mind into the discipline of reading but his eyes kept returning impatiently to the Seth Thomas clock on the oak mantel.

Finally the Baron came in quickly on his short legs; he still wore his topcoat. “My deepest apologies, Anatol.”

“I am not in the habit of being kept waiting.”

“A cipher came in through the bag. I have just decoded it. There has been a complication.” The Baron shouldered out of his coat and threw it across a chair; he tossed an envelope on a low table and dropped into a leather reading chair beside it. “Did you know that Stalin employs a double?”

Anatol felt his spine tighten. “No.”

“He suffered a severe breakdown shortly after the German attack. He had to be spirited out of Moscow to a retreat in the Kuybyshev. For more than two weeks in June and July the Soviet government was run by Beria and Malenkov. They employed a double to put in public appearances to allay suspicions in Moscow. Obviously this was no last-minute deception—they must have had the understudy well-trained and waiting in the wings for just such an emergency. For those seventeen days the top Soviet echelon was powerful enough to manage things in Stalin's absence. They kept the machinery functioning during the worst days of the panzer drive into Russia. They are stronger men than we have credited them.”

“It only confirms what both Devenko and Danilov have insisted on—we cannot merely assassinate the top man, we must eliminate the entire palace guard.”

“Quite. But that reasoning doesn't apply in the calculations of our people in Germany. They have been moving forward on the assumption that they need only kill Stalin. They feel there would be no further resistance to a German victory. The Grand Duke Mikhail is eager to see Hitler win it.”

“I know. That's why we did not take him into our confidence.”

“His people know something is in the wind. Rumors have ways of wafting across warring borders. They know we are up to something. That is why I had hoped one of them could meet us this week—I wanted to throw them off the scent. If you had told them to their faces that we were not trying to beguile Mikhail I think they might have believed it. Mikhail thinks of you as a friend—he trusts you.”

“He has gone over to the Nazis. He is hoping Hitler will put him in the Kremlin—Mikhail would rather have a puppet throne than none at all. I want to see Russia ruled by Russians, not by an Austrian house painter.”

“It is academic now what we tell Mikhail's group about our plans. It appears they have a plan of their own.”

“What?”

“Mikhail's people have concocted a plan to assassinate Stalin.”

“You are sure?”

“Quite sure. My informant says they plan to kill Stalin and make use of the double who has been so considerately prepared by Beria. The double will issue a few crucially wrong orders to the Red Army. The Germans will march into Moscow and the double will sue Hitler for peace. Only two men know about the existence of the double—Beria and Malenkov—and they are to be removed early on.” The Baron added drily, “You must grant it is an ingenious plan.”

Anatol was stunned; he wasted no effort trying to hide it. “How soon is it to take place?”

“As soon as possible, I should imagine. Why should they wait? Hitler is within three days' march of Moscow. If the Red Army withdraws from his front there will be nothing to stop him.”

Anatol watched the Baron's small expressionless face. “We must prevent it.”

“How? There is no time to effect our own coup ahead of them. Clearly Danilov requires several weeks yet before he is in readiness. And there would be no time to substitute Vassily Devenko's plan.”

“There is one way.”

“Forgive me but I do not see it.”

“It is quite simple,” Anatol said. “We must warn Stalin.”

12.

At five Alex presided over a ground-company meeting of field officers. The four of them stood on the tarmac beyond the shadow of the main hangar.

Across the field Pappy Johnson's pilots were swarming over the bombers like children. A nimbus layer filtered the highland sun's direct rays and even now there was a thin smell of winter in the air.

John Spaight and the two Russian majors wore gabardine jump suits with bellows pockets. Major Ivan Postsev and Major Leo Solov had worked in tandem since the inception of the Russian Free Brigade under Vassily Devenko in 1934; in combat they were remarkable. If one needed support the other would appear with his men—ready, knowing what his partner wanted of him; there would be no evident signal but each of them had that trick of soundlessly imposing his will on the other.

Physically they presented a ludicrous contrast. Postsev had the muscular strength of ten but to look at him you wouldn't have thought he'd have made it through the day: he was a cadaver—pasty and wrinkled. Solov was squat and had a smashed face; his ears were like scraps of beef liver; he moved with a dangle-armed roll. He was cautious by training but not by nature; with Postsev it was the reverse.

“We're going to be officer-heavy,” Alex told them. “That's the way I want it because when we go into operation we'll be in squad-size teams. I want an officer in command of each team. But for training purposes we're splitting the company down the middle. There'll be two platoons—one of you will command each of them. You're going to have to be ahead of the others because General Spaight can't be everywhere at once—you'll have to lead a good bit of the training yourselves. Any problems?”

Postsev said, “All our pilots seem to be in bomber training. Who is to fly the parachute training flights?”

“You won't start jumping from aircraft for more than a month yet. By then we'll have the air contingent sorted out and six of the pilots will be assigned to the paradrop transports. In the meantime you'll be learning to jump from a rapelling tower.”

“Which brings us to a thorny one,” Spaight said. “We haven't got a rapelling tower.”

“Tomorrow morning Colonel MacAndrews is sending us a dockyard construction team with a mobile crane. They're going to tear one of those small hangars apart and use the girders to build a tower on top of this hangar. It'll give us a hundred-and-twenty-foot slide drop. It's a little shorter than usual but it'll have to do. I've got MacAndrews's word it will be ready to climb by Thursday morning.”

The regiment already had its obstacle course in the woods beyond the far end of the runway—coiled concertina barbed wire, trenches, inclined logs, culverts, climbing trestles, even a stream that came down out of the dark highlands beyond and flowed across the slope and down toward the Inverness flats.

Alex said, “You'll have to sort out your drivers. Make sure they're qualified on the vehicles they may have to commandeer. Most of the Soviet staff cars are Packards. The lorries and ambulances are mainly Daimlers and Mercedes.”

The two majors nodded. That equipment would be roughly the same as they'd had to contend with in Finland.

“All right. Now we've got a defector. Brigadier Cosgrove's bringing him along tomorrow morning. You'll have about ten days with him. He's a Red Army officer—a lieutenant colonel. He crossed the line into Finland about three weeks ago. I don't know what incentives the British have offered him to cooperate with us but I'm told he's coming here voluntarily. I want you to pump him dry. Everything he knows. Make a note of every piece of information no matter how insignificant it may seem. We want everything from their order-of-battle to the gossip in his officers' mess. When we go in we'll be posing as officers and men from his battalion. You'll have to know the names and ranks of every officer in that battalion and as many non-coms and enlisted men as he can give you. And not just names—physical descriptions, peculiarities, backgrounds, gossip—you've got to be able to behave as if you really know those people, in case you run into someone who really does know them. Once you've got the information you'll pass it on to your men and be sure they've got it straight. Every night I want the men briefed on these things—and I want them awake enough to absorb it. All right?”

Major Solov said in his thick Georgian accent, “It would save time if we could detail subordinates to some of this. To continue the debriefings while we are in training during the day.”

Spaight said, “We can't pull anyone out of training for that.”

Alex said, “I've got someone who can do it for us.”

At the hangar door Sergei appeared, beckoning; Alex excused himself and went that way.

“It's the telephone. Brigadier Cosgrove, from Edinburgh.”

He closed the office door behind him before he picked up the phone. “Danilov here.”

“Bob Cosgrove. You may recall we discussed your meeting with a certain naval official?”

“I recall it.”

“It's been laid on for this Friday—nineteenth September. It would be most appreciated if you could make yourself available in London.”

“What time?”

“Sometime in the evening. The arrangements are rather informal—I'm sure you understand.”

“Yes.”

“I should come by rail if I were you—one can't promise good flying weather in London, can one. Not to mention the Luftwaffe. Do you recall the address I mentioned to you this morning?”

“Yes.” It was a Knightsbridge pub: Cosgrove had said,
It's a contact spot. I chose it at random. If we meet in London we'll meet there. I'm giving you this now because I shan't want to specify an address over the telephone
.

Cosgrove said, “Five o'clock Friday then. We'll have dinner and then confer with the Navy. Come alone, of course.”

He didn't mean that the way it sounded; he meant
Be sure you're not followed.

13.

“Really we need cloaks and beards, darling—we ought to be carrying black bombs with sputtering fuses.”

She sat up straight at the kitchen table and twisted her head to ease the cramped muscles. On the table the Clausewitz was dog-eared and the pad beside it was cluttered with pencil-printing and numerals in alternate lines; the numerals stopped two-thirds of the way down. That was as far as she'd got with it. It had taken nearly three hours to do that much.