“Let’s,” she replied. She wasn’t sure how much dancing she was up for, not when she’d spent so long flat on her back. Even a little would be fun, though. She reached for his hand in the darkness as he was reaching for hers. They squeezed each other. The firm pressure felt good.
Two sets of blackout curtains kept lights in the dance hall from leaking out. Daisy wore a cloche straight out of the Roaring Twenties to hide as best she could how much hair she’d lost. As best she could wasn’t all that good; she’d been nervous about showing herself in public. She needn’t have been. Several other men and women were about as bald as she was. She recognized a man who lived only a few blocks from the Owl and Unicorn. They smiled and waved to each other.
Bruce didn’t get jealous, the way he had once before. He just asked, “Somebody you know?”
“Stuart? Only my whole life. I went through school with his kid sister,” Daisy answered. She looked around. “I don’t see Kitty here. I hope she’s all right.”
“Me, too,” Bruce said. “Well, if old Stuart cuts in on me, you can ask him. C’mon.”
Out on the dance floor they went. The combo on the bandstand played hot jazz, or what a provincial combo imagined hot jazz to be. Their front man had a trumpet, a sloping belly, and a balding pate with nothing to do with radiation sickness. Other than that, he resembled Louis Armstrong much less than he wished he did.
“He’d better be careful with that thing,” Bruce said, nodding toward the trumpet. “He’s liable to hurt somebody with it.”
“You’re a horrible man,” Daisy told him.
“Yeah, but I have fun. I try, anyway,” the American answered. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, people would also be gathering for New Year’s. They’d also be looking around to see who was there and who had died under atomic fire. And he would have been the one who’d visited it upon them.
Daisy wondered if he thought about that. How could you help it? Then again, how could you live with yourself if you did?
She didn’t want to think about it. She danced two quick numbers and a slow one, then felt herself drooping. Bruce noticed as soon as she did. “Want to take a break and grab a pint?” he asked.
“That sounds marvelous,” she said. They had to queue up for the beer. Standing wasn’t too bad. Bruce shoved money across the bar. The red-faced man behind it returned two pint mugs. One sip told Daisy she’d served better bitter. She wasn’t about to complain, though.
Bruce liked what they had here. From the things Daisy had heard about American beer, this was bound to improve on that.
They danced some more, then took another break. She did get to talk to Stuart. Kitty had come through the bombing. She was up in Wells-next-the-Sea, waiting tables at a cafe. That was good news.
The trumpeter with delusions of Satchmo counted down the seconds to midnight on his wristwatch. “Happy New Year!” he shouted when there were no seconds left to count. “Happy 1952!”
Everyone cheered. Men and women embraced. Bruce bent his head to kiss Daisy. She clutched at him greedily.
Not too much later, they slipped out of the hall. Bruce found the jeep without even lighting a match. There was more starlight now. It had cleared up, though it was colder than before.
“That was wonderful!” Daisy said as he started the motor. “Thank you so much! I had the best time.”
“It was fun, yeah.” She could just about see him nod. “Now…Can I work out how to make it back to good old East Dereham?”
“If you need to stop along the way to get your bearings, I won’t mind,” Daisy said. She felt flame on her face. Had she really been that brazen?
She must have been, because somewhere north of Yaxham he pulled off onto the shoulder. The brakes squeaked as the jeep stopped. They were as much alone as if they’d booked a hotel room.
“I don’t want to worry about a baby,” Daisy said, somewhere in the midst of the kisses and caresses. Not just her cheeks were on fire now. She burned all over.
“Then we’ll try some other things instead,” Bruce answered. And they did. The jeep’s seats were awkward. So was the steering wheel. They managed. His fingers and tongue were knowing and skilled.
She discovered he was circumcised, which Tom hadn’t been. He came before she quite expected him to, so she choked a little. She managed to laugh about it when she pulled away. She was still laughing as he started the jeep again.
19
Boris Gribkov gave the Tu-4 more throttle. The air base lay between Odessa and the Romanian border. It was winter here, as it was winter everywhere in the Soviet Union, but it wasn’t the kind of winter that piled snow in drifts a couple of meters high. You could fly here without worrying about clearing the runway first. Most of the time, anyhow.
“Everything all right?” he asked the copilot.
“All my instruments are where they’re supposed to be, sir,” First Lieutenant Anton Presnyakov replied. He was short and blond and seemed bright.
Seemed! Boris was having to get used to a whole new flight crew. He didn’t know how many men had got out of the Tu-4 that was hit above Bratislava. He did know he was the only one back in Soviet service.
He sent the engineer the same question over the intercom. “All good,” First Lieutenant Lev Vaksman said. Having another Jew in the crew faintly unnerved Gribkov, but what could you do? They were smart fellows-sometimes too smart for their own good-and often wound up in slots that took technical knowledge and skill.
“Khorosho. Up we go, then.” Boris pulled back on the yoke. The Tu-4 left the runway and climbed for the sky. It was an easy takeoff, not nearly so nervous-making as a lot of them. The bomb bays were empty, and the plane carried only half a load of fuel. All that meant the Shvetsov radials didn’t have to strain nearly so hard as usual to get airborne.
Presnyakov must have felt the same relief, for he said, “They should all be this smooth.”
“Da,” Boris agreed through the clunking noises of the retracting landing gear. He flipped on the intercom again to ask the radioman, “Are you in touch with the milch cow?”
“Comrade Pilot, I am,” First Lieutenant Faizulla Ikramov answered. He was an Uzbek, from somewhere beyond the Urals. His Russian held a slight hissing accent, but it was fluent enough. It would have to be, for him to sit in the seat he had. Not many from his folk reached officer’s rank. He was uncommonly able, he had connections, or more likely both.
“Milch cow,” Presnyakov echoed as they droned up toward their assigned altitude of 9,000 meters. “That’s funny, if you like.”
“So it is,” Boris said. It might be funny in ways the copilot, who was a youngster, didn’t suspect. During the last war, the Hitlerites had sent special submarines out into the North Atlantic loaded with food and fuel and fresh torpedoes for the U-boats that were trying to sever the lifeline between England and America. They’d called those supply subs milch cows. The Germans failed, but it was still a clever idea.
It was also an idea that tied in with what Gribkov and the men in the bomber with him were doing on this training flight. Some Soviet higher-up must have thought so, too, or he wouldn’t have tagged the other plane with the handle he’d given it.
Boris stared through the not quite perfect Plexiglas of the Tu-4, looking for the circling milch cow. He also kept an eye peeled for fighters. He didn’t really expect any-it was a long haul from even the closest American bases. But P-51s with drop tanks could come this far, and the Tu-4 would be in a world of trouble if a few did.
Anton Presnyakov pointed ahead and to the right. “There it is, Comrade Pilot!”
“You’re right.” Gribkov nodded. “That’s very good. Now we can just finish our climb and take station with it.” He asked the radioman, “Can you patch me through to them?”