The biplane droned through the night. Snow-draped fields alternated with black pine forests below. Ludmila stayed as low as she dared: not as low as she would have during the day, for now a swell of ground could be upon her before she knew it was there. Her route swung wide around the Valdai Hills just to cut that risk.
The farther north she flew, the longer the night became, also. It was as if she drew darkness around the aircraft… though winter nights anywhere in the Soviet Union were quite long enough.
Her first assigned refueling stop was between Kalinin and Kashin, on the upper reaches of the Volga. She buzzed around the area where she thought the airstrip was until her fuel started getting dangerously low. She hoped she wouldn’t have to try to put the U-2 down in a field, not with the passenger she was carrying.
Just when she thought she would have to do that-better with power than dead stick-she spied a lantern or electric torch, swung the Kukuruznik toward it. More torches came on, briefly, to mark the borders of a landing strip. She brought in the U-2 with gentleness that surprised even herself.
Whatever Molotov thought of the landing, he kept it to himself. He rose stiffly, for which Ludmila could hardly blame him-after four and a half hours in the air, she too had cramps and kinks aplenty.
Ignoring the officer in charge of the airstrip, the foreign commissar stumped off into the darkness. Looking for a secluded place to piss, Ludmila guessed: the most nearly human response she’d yet seen from Molotov.
The officer-the collar tabs of his greatcoat were Air Force sky-blue and bore a winged prop and a major’s two scarlet rectangles-turned to Ludmila and said, “We are ordered to render you every assistance, Senior Lieutenant Gorbunov.”
“Gorbunova, sir,” Ludmila corrected, only a little put out: the heavy winter flight suit would have disguised any shape at all.
“Gorbunova-pardon me,” the major said, eyebrows rising. “Did I read the despatch wrong, or was it written incorrectly? Well, no matter. If you have been chosen to fly the comrade foreigncommissar, your competence cannot be questioned.” His tone of voice said he did question it, but Ludmila let that go. The major went on, more briskly now, “What do you require, Senior Lieutenant?”
“Fuel for the aircraft, oil if necessary, and a mechanical check if you have a mechanic who can do a proper job.” Ludmila put first things first (she also wished she could have lashed Georg Schultz to the U-2’s fuselage and carried him along). Almost as an afterthought, she added, “Food and someplace warm for me to sleep through the day would be pleasant.”
“Would be necessary,” Molotov amended as he came back to the Kukuruznik. His face remained expressionless, but his voice betrayed more animation; Ludmila wondered how hard he’d been fighting to hold it in. Her own bladder was pretty full, too. Perhaps confirming her thought, the foreign commissar continued, “Tea would also be welcome now.” Not before, ran through Ludmila’s mind-he would have exploded. She knew that feeling.
The major said, “Comrades, if you will come with me… He led Ludmila and Molotov toward his own dwelling. As they kicked their way through the snow, he bawled orders to his groundcrew. The men ran like wraiths in the predawn darkness, easier to follow by ear than by eye.
The major’s quarters were half-hut, half dug-out cave. A lantern on a board-and-trestle table cast a flickering light over the little chamber. A samovar stood nearby; so did a spirit stove. Atop the latter was a pot from which rose a heavenly odor.
With every sign of pride, the major ladled out bowls of borscht, thick with cabbage, beets, and meat that might have been veal or just as easily might have been rat. Ludmila didn’t care; whatever it was, it was hot and filling. Molotov ate as if he were stoking a machine.
The major handed them glasses of tea. It was also hot, but had an odd-taste-a couple-of odd tastes, in fact. “Cut with dried herbs and barks, I’m afraid,” the major said apologetically, “and sweetened with honey we found ourselves. Haven’t seen any sugar for quite a while.”
“Given the circumstances, it is adequate,” Molotov said: not high praise, but understanding, at any rate.
“Comrade Pilot, you may rest there,” the major said, pointing to a pile of blankets in one corner that evidently served him for a bed. “Comrade Foreign Commissar, for you the men are preparing a cot, which should be here momentarily.”
“Not necessary,” Molotov said. “A blanket or two will also do for me.”
“What?” The major blinked. “Well, as you say, of course. Excuse me, comrades.” He went back out into the cold, returned in a little while with more blankets. “Here you are, Comrade Foreign Commissar.”
“Thank you. Be sure to awaken us at the scheduled time,” Molotov said.
“Oh, yes,” the major promised.
Yawning, Ludmila buried herself in the blankets. They smelled powerfully of their usual user. That didn’t bother her, if anything, it was reassuring. She wondered how Molotov, who was used to sleeping softer than with blankets on dirt, would manage here. She fell asleep herself before she found out.
Some indefinite while later, she woke with a start. Was that horrible noise some new Lizard weapon? She stared wildly around the Air Force major’s quarters, then started to laugh. Who would have imagined that illustrious Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, foreign commissar of the USSR and second in the Soviet Union only to the Great Stalin, snored like a buzzsaw? Ludmila pulled the blankets up over her head, which cut the din enough to let her get back to sleep herself.
After more borscht and vile, honey-sweetened tea, the flight resumed. The U-2 droned slowly through the night-an express train could have matched its speed-north and west. Snow-dappled evergreen forests slid by below. Ludmila hugged the ground as tightly as she dared.
Then, without warning, the trees disappeared, to, be replaced by a long stretch of unbroken whiteness. “Lake Ladoga,” Ludmila said aloud, pleased at the navigational check the lake gave her. She flew along the southern shore toward Leningrad.
Well before she got to the city, she skimmed low over the lunar landscape of the German and Soviet lines around it. The Lizards had pounded both impartially. Before they came, though, the heroism and dreadful privations of the defenders of Leningrad, home and heart of the October Revolution, had rung through the Soviet Union. How many thousands, how many hundreds of thousands, starved to death inside the German ring? No one would ever know.
And now she was flying Molotov to confer with the Germans who had subjected Leningrad to such a cruel siege. Intellectually, Ludmila understood the need for that. Emotionally, it remained hard to stomach.
Yet the Kukuruznik she flew had been efficiently maintained by a German, and, from what Georg Schultz had said, he and Major Jager had fought alongside Russians to do something important: either he didn’t understand exactly what or he was keeping his mouth shut about that or both. So it could be done. It would have to be done, in fact. But Ludmila did not like it.
As the shore of Lake Ladoga had before, now the Gulf of Finland gave her something to steer by. She began to peer ahead, looking for landing lights: the next field was supposed to be not far from Vyborg.
When Ludmila finally spotted the lights, she bounced the biplane in a good deal more roughly than she had at the last airstrip. The officer who greeted her spoke Russian with an odd accent. That was not unusual in the polyglot Soviet Union, but then she noticed that several of his men wore coalscuttle helmets. “Are you Germans?” she asked, first in Russian and then auf Deutsch.
“Nein,” he answered, though his German sounded better than hers. “We are Finns. Welcome to Viipuri.” His smile was not altogether pleasant; the town had passed from Finnish to Soviet hands in the Winter War of 1939-40, but the Finns took it back when they joined the Nazis against the USSR in 1941.