“I don’t give a fuck,” a Russian in a pilot’s cap waves his hand, after Urban starts talking to him in the airport bar, housed in a derelict trailer, where you can only get charcoal-filtered vodka or stale Petersburg beer. “Who’d want to live for ever? Either I live and get rich, or I go to the devil’s mother, fuck it all.”
Urban buys him a few vodkas and a bottle of coke for himself. It’s a glass bottle, something he hasn’t seen for years. The metal cap is rusty, but the coke is still all right.
“Hey, you, Czech brother,” smiles Kostya. “I’ll take you to Junja and you’ll travel like an American president with me. You’ll sit alone in the cabin, drink vodka, and look out of the window. Everyone knows Kostya and his aeroplane. They won’t shoot Kostya down, not the Junjans, or the Slovaks.”
“And how much do you want for that?” Urban enquires.
“So you’re one of those?” Kostya squints at him sternly through his pilot’s goggles. “A man offers you his heart on a plate, wants to help you and you ask how much? So, this is what Czechs are like: always the same. They measure everything in money. They don’t even talk to you, they don’t kiss you twice properly, and they only ask ‘how much’. What can I say? Give me a thousand bucks and wait for me here at ten.”
Kostya points out of the window.
“That’s our plane,” he says. “Oh my dear little grey dove, how many flights we’ve flown together over the taiga.”
The old An-2 biplane is dark green, but Urban gladly overlooks Kostya’s vagueness. He is more shocked by the price. In the end he gets it down from a thousand to seven hundred dollars.
“But cash in advance,” Kostya says hastily, and his eyes rest hungrily on the rough greenish bottles of vodka above the bar.
“I’m used to paying only at pay time,” Urban objects.
“And what about airport fees?” Kostya rounds on him. “And fuel? If you want to fly tomorrow, I have to get the aircraft ready right away, so nothing goes wrong. It’s a question of trust, Urban Urbanovich.”
Urban Urbanovich sighs, opens his wallet and counts into Kostya’s proffered hand seven one hundred-dollar notes.
“So, tomorrow at ten,” he takes leave of the pilot and goes to get some sleep in the caravan site hotel Zarya.
The next day he packs what little he’s brought and at ten he is at the airport. Some men are lurking round Kostya’s plane, loading something into it. Urban looks closer: mailbags.
He approaches the plane and clears his throat.
“What is it, mate?” asks one of the loaders. “What are you looking at?”
“Excuse me, please,” Urban hesitates. “But do you know where Kostya is? We were supposed to meet here at ten.”
“What Kostya?” a man with a stern moustached face seems puzzled. He looks like Stalin’s grandson.
“Well, Kostya,” says Urban. “The pilot of this plane.”
“I happen to be the pilot of this plane,” says the man and jumps down from the ladder. “I don’t know any pilot named Kostya.”
Urban turns pale.
“Yesterday, over there, in the bar, I met a pilot,” he says with a lump in his throat. “He asked seven hundred dollars to take me to Űŕģüllpoļ in this plane. I paid him and now I’m waiting for him.”
The pilot looks at his colleague and shakes his head.
“You fell for it, mate,” he laughs. “Oh, how you fell for it! But how could you be so stupid?”
“Don’t you have eyes to see?” asked the second man.
“This plane is too small; how could it fly to Junja? It would crash in the middle of the ocean without fuel. God, you’re stupid, brother!”
“And what did that Kostya look like?” asks Stalin’s grandson.
“About this tall,” Urban gestures. “In a leather pilot’s cap.”
“A leather pilot’s cap?” the other man shouts. “That was Konstantin Trifonovich. A geologist, a doctor of science! Yes, the geologists were here with their samples. We’re taking them now to St Petersburg with the mail. Oh, so you were conned by Konstantin Trifonovich?”
The men stop loading the mailbags. They laugh so hard that they bend double. When Stalin’s grandson notices Urban not laughing with them, he is abashed and becomes serious.
“Konstantin Trifonovich is a member of the Academy of Sciences,” he says. “He’s a famous scientist. At least in the airport bar.”
They both break out laughing again.
“His only problem is that he’s a boozer,” says Stalin’s grandson. “But he’s got his wits about him, the son of a bitch! He’s always conning someone. He said he was a pilot!”
Despite their fits of laughter, Urban remains grave. He has nothing to laugh about.
“And where can I find him now?” he asks formally.
“Try to find the wind in the tundra!” says the second man. “They all left at five in the morning in a launch.”
“Look,” says Stalin’s grandson. “My plane can’t make it to Junja. You need a bigger machine for that. A plane like a Lisunov, a Yak, or a Douglas. With extra fuel tanks to make it across the ocean. This is not a one-hour flight, mate. And no one will take you there for seven hundred bucks. If you need to get to Junja, you pay for it. No ordinary tourist goes to Junja now. But look, I know all the pilots this side of the Kola peninsula. I can find you one who might be willing to take you to Junja. Where are you staying?”
“Hotel Zarya,” says Urban.
“Right, I’ll leave you a note to tell you who to look for,” says Stalin’s grandson. “But it’s your baby afterwards.”
“And what do you want for it?” Urban asks distrustfully.
“Nothing,” says Stalin’s grandson. “I’ll get my percentage from what you pay the pilot. Don’t you worry about me, matie. And I hope you find what you’re looking for in Junja.”
Stalin’s grandson raises his eyebrows meaningfully, gets into the cabin and starts the engine. From the exhaust comes thick smoke, the propeller begins to turn. A second man bangs the cargo door shut and sits next to the pilot. The aircraft begins to move, rolls out onto the runway and is soon a mere dot in a clear sky.
* * *
Telgarth gets straight down to his meticulous macro-political and community work. He is grateful to the guerrillas for making him supreme commander of Űŕģüllpoļ—New Bystrica, because New Bystrica is only his first aim, the first conquered fortress. It is a microcosm, a laboratory crucible in which he can try everything out in miniature before doing the same for the whole country. Yes, Telgarth sees himself as the whole archipelago’s future leader. So far he’s made no mistakes in pursuing this aim; anyway, the local Slovaks have no one else like him.
All ethnic Junjans have to wear a white ribbon on their arms and to work all day clearing the ruins. They live together in the city market hall. Their flats have been requisitioned and given to Slovak families who were previously forced to live in shanty towns.
After the conquest of the city, Czech submarines anchor right in the city harbour to unload their cargo. Likewise, Czech transport planes begin to land at New Bystrica airport. Besides crates of humanitarian aid, the Czech aeroplanes also bring journalists, military instructors and observers. Telgarth has polite relations with them, but he is not overly friendly. For the time being he keeps to himself his negative attitude to the Czech plan to restore Czechoslovakia. The railways are in Slovak hands. Part of the humanitarian aid stays in New Bystrica; the rest goes by rail up north, where savage fighting is raging. Young Slovak commanders then fly in Czech planes back to Bohemia to take an intensive commander course; others take a course in sabotage and explosives. That, too, is a part of Czech humanitarian aid. Telgarth now limits it after seeing young commanders returning from Bohemia full of harmful Czechoslovak ideas.