The Romanov Succession

1.

The pale disc of the sun was vague in the grey November sky. In the distance beyond the woods he saw the Dakotas going over, vomiting jumpers toward the fifty-foot target circle. Alex watched the jumps as he ran.

The runway was 4,800 feet long and they were running three laps today. Going into the third lap ahead of Solov’s company of troops he felt the pull of the stiffened muscle of the bullet-pinked leg.

Breathing to run: let it all out, open the mouth wide, pull in as much as the lungs can hold—and hold it there for three strides; then expel it and do it again. It had taken him two weeks of running to get his wind back but now he had the rhythm and hardly noticed the weight of the combat pack on his shoulders.

It was more of a dogtrot than a run—you didn’t sprint for two and a half miles—but they were eating up the ground at a good clip and there weren’t any stragglers. Solov ran along at the rear of the column, keeping them bunched up, running the way he walked—with a pronounced roll, as if each leg almost collapsed before the other took his weight. Now and then he would yell at them; he began yelling in earnest when they got toward the end of the lap and the company put on a burst of effort and came tumbling off the tarmac onto the grass around Alex. A good many of them were hardly out of breath.

Solov gathered them in close-order formation and marched them across the runway to where their rifles were stacked in neat pyramids, muzzles skyward. They shouldered their arms and marched quick-time into the woods to the bayonet field and Alex charged with them, roaring in his chest, heaving the deadly spear into the dummies and yanking it out and rushing on to the next.

After bayonet drill the company sprawled on the grass and Alex went around talking to them individually. “How do you feel, soldier?”

“Very well, sir. Thank you.”

He went on. There was a young man—one of the very few who had joined the regiment since the Finland campaigns-sitting on the ground cleaning his bayonet. Alex stopped by him. “Keep your seat, Zurov. How do you like the training?”

“Sometimes it gets a little boring, sir. But I know we need it.” Zurov’s unformed face did not yet contain the lines that made a whole human being.

“You find the bayonet drill boring?”

“Oh not that, sir. It’s rather fun. Bayoneting straw dummies is only playing a harmless game, after all.”

Alex nodded and moved on to the next: “Everything all right, soldier?”

Solov came across the grass toward him, head and shoulders rolling. “They’re nearly ready, General.”

“Yes, I think they are.” Alex turned his shoulder to the others and went on in a lower voice. “You’ll have to wash Zurov out.”

“Zurov? He’s one of the brightest youngsters we’ve had in years.”

“He thinks of bayonet drill as a harmless game, Solov. Those who recognize that are the ones who have trouble facing the real thing—when the time comes to put his knife in a man he’ll hesitate.”

“Very well sir. I’ll have him assigned to orderly duties.”

“You’ve got eight minutes to move them to the hand-to-hand course. Better get them on their feet now.”

He walked away from the company in a mild gloom of depression. You had to thank God there were still men like Zurov—and when it came to the practice of war you had to give them the back of your hand.

Spaight came batting into the hangar office at half-past four. “Damn good. I only had six jumpers outside the target circle the last go.”

“That’s six too many, John.”

“It’s better than last week—and next week will be better than this one.”

“It’s going to have to be. We’re pulling out in twenty-one days.”

In the evening Alex watched Major Postsev and Prince Felix rehearse the men on Red Army regulations and behavior. One by one the men had to recite their false identities, the “friends” they had in the Seventeenth Red Army Division on the Finland border, the official reasons why they were traveling detached duty. It wasn’t only to get them in; it was a drill designed to get them out as well—if the operation went sour. It was the only way Alex knew to set it up: he wasn’t sending them in unless the back door remained open for them to escape if they had to. There would be tremendous risks for them but at least they had to be given the chance.

At half-past eleven when he left the hangar they were still at it. He walked out through the gate and along to the cottage and let himself in wearily. Corporal Cooper sat in the parlor drinking tea, watching the clock and the warm red tubes of the shortwave transceiver.

Alex went through to the back of the house. Sergei was in the kitchen—standing guard, stiffly zealous of Irina, unwilling to leave her alone in the house with Cooper. It amused Alex a little: she was capable of turning men like Cooper into quivering jelly if it suited her; she was in no danger from that quarter. But it wouldn’t do to belittle Sergei’s loyalty.

She was curled up asleep. In her hand were the coded notepad sheets for the night’s communiqué. He slipped them carefully out of her grip without waking her and retreated to the front of the house and handed the sheets to Cooper.

“Bit of a long message tonight, in’t it sir.”

It was long but there wasn’t much time left for his conversations with Vlasov. Actually the real danger was at Vlasov’s end—it wasn’t much risk for Vlasov to receive long communications but it put him in great danger to have to send long ones because they gave Beria’s direction-finders more time to zero in on the location of the illicit shortwave broadcaster. For the past six weeks Vlasov had taken the precaution of recording his transmissions on wire and attaching the wire-recorder to the transmitter so that if it were discovered he wouldn’t be there at the time. Every third or fourth night—they communicated at those intervals—he had to move the transmitter or set up a new one and his irritability was becoming more and more obvious even through the obstacles of codes and Morse key. Alex had found it necessary to bolster him with encouragements: It will be over soon, that sort of thing.

“Should we get the madame up, sir?”

“No. She’s been working around the clock on this. I’ll decode the answer myself—it won’t be a long one tonight.”

It was in fact a very short one. It was not a response to his own broadcast; that would have to wait three days till after Vlasov had decoded Alex’s message and encoded his own reply. This was an eighty-second transmission which took Alex forty-five minutes to decode because he wasn’t nearly as practiced at it as Irina was. When he had it sorted out on his desk the message had a special importance.

2.

The smell of her talc was faint in the room. He fell gently onto the bed and into a sleep as swift as that of a marathon hiker who’d slipped his pack. When he came awake there was a vague recollection of a dream in which Vassily Devenko had been charging at him on horseback at the head of a thousand thundering Tatar Cossacks, their karakul hats bobbing in the dust, Krenk rifles spitting, Vassily’s saber flashing in the air.

It was still dark and Irina breathed evenly in sleep. He armed the sweat from his face and lay eyes up in the dark with no idea whether it was one or six in the morning. He saw Vassily at the head of the mess table laughing at something he’d just said to a Polish cavalry major. Vassily was talking about the Polish army and the German army—how Poland would mop up the battlegrounds with German bodies if Hitler were fool enough to attack. It was one of those moments Alex never forgot—a spark that glowed brighter whenever it was touched by the wind of association: the grey rain now beating against the invisible window, a certain taste in the back of his throat that might have been left there by the wine he’d had with supper. Beside him at the officers’ mess table a Polish captain had kept shifting the knife and fork at his place, lining them up along various parallels. Alex remembered the captain’s eyes: drab and uneasy while Vassily drummed on about squashing the Wehrmacht.

He was a bloody fool, he thought. Vassily Devenko the hero of Sebastopol. Well he’d acquitted himself superbly when it called for tenacity and horseback dash: a brave indifference to losses, the cruel Russian battering-ram conception of martial excellence. Vassily the electric, Vassily the magnetic. They’d all have followed him blindly through Hell: the high handsome face, the white mane, the great thundering voice that called them on to fight and win. But these things were only half of leadership. Vassily’s flair and his grand ambitions hadn’t been matched by tactical realism and that had been his flaw. In the end he was a bloody fool.

Then why the intense feeling that he had to have Vassily’s approval?

He still needed that: he needed to have Vassily speak to him in his dreams, he needed to hear Vassily say It’s brilliant—you have my admiration. But instead Vassily came pounding at him on horseback lofting his saber with merciless rage.

He turned on his side; he touched her hip and withdrew his hand, still jealous of Vassily, uncertain in the darkness, afraid.

The day had its little crises—a C-47 came in from the chute drop and blew a tire and ground-looped on the runway but it didn’t crack up; Calhoun groused about the dwindling supply of spare tires. Then one of the Russian-made 9mm tommy-guns malfunctioned and burst on the target line and the corporal had to be taken to the dispensary to have metal splinters dug out of his hand. One of Solov’s men twisted his ankle on the afternoon jump. At four Alex walked down toward the hard-stands to have a look at the high-octane supply; Calhoun groused about that too.

When Alex walked back toward the hangar he saw a dark green car move past on the road beyond the fence. It drew his attention because it moved too slowly. It stopped about eighty yards beyond the gate: the driver got out and lifted the right-hand flap of the engine bonnet to look inside. It was just a bit coincidental having a breakdown right across the road from the fence and the runway. Too far away to get an impression of the driver’s face. The car was a Daimler with a long snout and coupé coachwork. The driver’s back was hunched; he was reaching into the engine compartment and fiddling but it was quite possible he was looking at the base under his arm. Alex turned his line of march toward the gate.

The two sentries came to atttention and Alex said, “One of you hike up there and see if you can help him on his way.” But then the driver buckled the flap down and climbed back into the car and smoke spurted from the pipes when the engine caught. The Daimler moved away—quite slowly.

“If anyone else stops move them along.”

“Yes sir.”

The publican brought their steaks and Irina dimmed the little kerosene lamp on the table. Through the doorway there was a lusty racket from the saloon bar. The velvet blackout curtains made the room stuffy; smoke hung against the low ceiling. It seemed to affect her eyes but she went on puffing at the Du Maurier. No one else was dining in the room. The walls were cluttered with the obligatory gimcracks—copper mugs, shotguns, a pair of flintlock pistols, emblems of highland regiments, photographs of hunting dogs and golfers in plus fours. Logs burned cozily on the hearth opposite their table.

Silence separated them. It was only in public formalities that she was capable of pretending an emotion she didn’t feel. They cut up the Angus beef and ate it. Finally the awkwardness got too much for her. “What’s the matter, darling?” A new Du Maurier; he struck the match for her.

“Getting close to the time, I suppose. Tense—you can’t help it.”

“That’s not all of it. You used to look like this when—”

“When what?”

“I’m not sure. It’s not a happy look. You know, darling, it’s not hard to hide something but it can be very hard to hide that you’ve got something to hide.”

“What do you suppose I’m hiding?”

“Whatever it is it’s got to do with me—with us.”

When he didn’t reply to that she said, “I suppose it’s still Vassily.”

“Perhaps it is. I had a dream about him—he was riding me down with a Cossack horde.”

“You feel you’ve betrayed him, don’t you?”

“It’s damned foolish of me. But he might have made this work. His plan. The odds were against it—more than they are with mine—but he might have done it. It was possible.”

“And he might have made me happy, isn’t that it? Part of it?”

He brooded at her hand—smoke curling from the cigarette in her fingers on the table. Irina said, “Odd that we always seem concerned for other people’s happiness. We want to make one another happy but we don’t seek happiness for ourselves—it’s too illusory. It isn’t what you want, is it? To be happy?”

“I don’t suppose it is. I haven’t thought about it.”

Then it was as if she changed the subject: “Vassily wasn’t cold. But he couldn’t love. His heart was too acquisitive—he had too much ambition. It’s a thing of the self, it doesn’t make room to let other people in. He was the same with both of us, you and me—he wanted our loyalty, our good opinion; he wanted to be admired.”

“I think we all do.”

“To the point of obsession?”

“Vassily was clever—he was shrewd, cunning. But he didn’t have good sense.” He wasn’t sure why he said that.

She said abruptly, “It might be a good idea if you tried to stop thinking of him as if he’d been your father. You’ve put yourself in an impossible position. You thought of him paternally but he thought of you as a dangerous rival. If he were alive he’d never grant you his approval, you know that. He was jealous of you—more afraid of you than you were of him.”

“Why?”

“Because he knew you had adaptability and compassion. I think he always knew you’d overtake him. He tried to keep you down with his thumb. When you broke with him and went to America he wasn’t heartbroken; he was afraid.”

She thrust her chair back. “It’s something for you to think about, Alex. If he’d lived he’d have had to end up subordinating himself to you.”

He held her coat for her. “Button up—it’s a cold night.”

“I’m a Russian woman.” She left the fur collar open against her shoulders.

He seated her in the Austin and went around to take the wheel. Pale ribbons of light from the slitted blackout headlamps threw a meager illumination across the dark wet paving. The engine ran a little rough—perhaps the plugs were burnt; perhaps it was only the chill. He adjusted the choke and made the turns up through Inverness.

There was a car in the mirror: it kept a steady distance. There weren’t many legitimate places for a vehicle to be going at this time of night under blacked-out curfew conditions. His muscles tightened, knuckles going pale on the wheel.

Irina turned around to look back. After a while they were on the open high road and she said, “I think it’s a Daimler coupé.”

It began to close the gap as they left the town behind—easing closer at a steady rate. The road ran up through swinging bends to a plateau inland from the sea; then it would be a reasonably flat run through eight miles of coastal plain to the gate of the base. The trouble was he wasn’t sure enough of the road to have a full-out run at it in the dark; in any case the Daimler was a far more powerful car and if they meant to run him off the road he couldn’t prevent their overtaking him.

He said, “Let me have the revolver,” He’d left it under the passenger seat when they’d gone in to dine; it was nervy enough being a Russian officer here, it wouldn’t do to walk into a public house festooned with weaponry.

He held his left hand out palm up and she fitted the hand gun into it; they were nearly at the top of the bends. “Slide down in the seat.”

“Perhaps I should have the gun while you’re driving.”

“Can you use it?”

“Not very well. I could make noise with it.”

“Let’s make sure who they are first.”

“We can’t race them in this little car.”

“I know,” he said. “We’ll do the opposite. Duck down now, Irina.”

He remembered the Daimler coupé that had stopped outside the fence this afternoon. Too much coincidence. He laid his thumb across the revolver’s hammer and slid forward on the seat until he could only just see over the wheel. The Austin chugged over the top onto the flats in third; he kept it in third and kept the speed down to twenty-five. The slitted lights of the Daimler bobbed over the crest and slid forward in the mirror, sinister and disembodied in the night. Alex crowded over against the left-hand edge of the road; the Austin whined along with a slight list because of the road’s crown. Irina had a graceless posture, far down and sitting on the back of her neck. He was sure she was smiling at the ludicrousness of it. He dropped the stick into second and let the Austin coast with the clutch all the way to the floor; the speedometer needle dropped toward fifteen and the Daimler came along quickly, pulling out to the right to go by. “Keep your head down now.”

It gave the Daimler several options but it was no good anticipating which the Daimler would choose; he was as prepared for any of them as he could be. When the nose of the car drew even with his eye he ducked all the way below the sill and touched the brake gently because this would be the time they’d fire and his braking might throw off their aim.

The bullet caromed off something in front of him and slid away with a sobbing sound; the Daimler roared away ahead.

He straightened to see through the windscreen. There was a silver slash across the painted metal two feet beyond the glass. The Daimler was fishtailing with acceleration but it might be trying to gain a little distance before slewing across the road and blocking him: so Alex simply stopped the car.

Irina began to sit up but he said, “Stay down.” He shifted the revolver to his right hand and put it out the window.

But the Daimler sped right on away, its single red taillight reappearing on a farther incline and then being absorbed into the night.

She sat up and adjusted her coat. “Wasn’t that rather pointless?”

“I don’t know.”

“If they meant us real harm they certainly behaved halfheartedly. To say the least.”

“They may be waiting for us. Up the road.”

But it was the road he had to take. After ten minutes he put the Austin in gear.

Now he went fast because if they’d set up an ambush he didn’t want to give them time for a clear shot. He got the Austin up to fifty and held it there in fourth; he couldn’t go much faster because the narrow road had sudden turns between the stone walls of the Scottish farms. Irina held the revolver and he used both hands on the wheel. He went into the turns fast and came out of them slow because they might have chosen a blind spot to wedge the Daimler across the road.

“Did you see their faces at all?”

“No. But it was only one man—the driver.”

“Strange,” she said. “I wasn’t frightened then. Now look at me, I can’t stop shaking.”

The Daimler was gone. He had to stop at the gate and be recognized by sentries and then he drove straight to the hangar and trotted to the phone inside: he got an outside line and rang through to Coastal Patrol. He had a piece of luck: MacAndrews was still in his office.

“It’s a Daimler coupé, dark green, with a closed rumble seat. I couldn’t make out the plate number but it’s heading southeast—it can’t be more than ten miles from here.”

“I’ll ring up the constabularies down that way. Afraid I can’t promise too much you know—it might have turned off anywhere.”

“I’d like to ask that driver a few questions. But tell them to treat him with care—he’s got a gun. Probably a pistol since he used it one-handed from the car.”

“We’ll stop him if we can. Sorry about this, General—rotten hospitality, isn’t it.”

He cradled it and swiveled in the chair to find Irina in the door with one shoulder tipped against the jamb. She looked oddly young: her face was flushed, her slack pose a bit ungainly, like that of a young girl ready to sprawl. “Take me to bed, darling.”

3.

The Bentley dropped Anatol at the curb and went in search of a parking space while Ivanov’s manservant carried Anatbl’s overnight bag into the house.

The diminutive Baron was in a rage because shrapnel from a five-hundred-pounder had chipped a corner off his house. It had razed the house two doors away but that wasn’t what angered him. “You simply can’t get that sort of cornice work done any more for any price. It can never be restored. It’s time to put a stop to this Hitlerian nonsense.”

“Yes well I suppose we are all doing our bit about that.”

But Ivanov went on with his invective until he recognized how silly it was; finally he dragged a palm across the bald peak of his skull and went in search of a cigar. When he returned he had restored his composure. “I know it is petty. But one resents such a thing as if it were a personal affront. War should be a matter for soldiers and battlefields.”

Anatol selected a chair. “What have you to tell me?”

“Nothing good. I have not been able to persuade Zurich to support us.”

Anatol kept his face straight but his words were bitten off. “They are fools.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps they are only apolitical men doing their duty. It is their responsibility to safeguard the Romanov fortunes regardless of what happens, regardless of who wins wars. If they were to back the Devenko plan it would require that the Romanov capital be depleted by vast sums. They have measured the risks and found them too dangerous. They are prudent men.”

“Then we have no alternative but to support Alex Danilov.”

“Yes—because he’s acceptable to the Allies. We have no other source of funds but the Allies now.”

“I detest being beholden to them.”

“If we succeed in Moscow we can repudiate them at our leisure,” Ivanov murmured.

“Perhaps. But what’s to prevent them from withdrawing their support at any moment?”

“One can only be optimistic about that.” Ivanov stared bitterly at a great jagged crack in the plaster ceiling. “The American Colonel has been in London for ten days. He finally obtained an interview with Churchill. Now I understand he is on his way to Scotland to be with General Danilov. Does that sound like the behavior of a man who is about to withdraw support?”

“Buckner is a nervous man. He jumps at shadows.”

“Then all we can do is try to keep him calm.”

“I don’t like it,” Anatol said.

4.

Brigadier Cosgrove showed up in a dreary overcast with Colonel Glenn Buckner in tow. Buckner looked the same and it disconcerted Alex; somehow you expected people to look different in new surroundings but the American looked exactly the same as he’d looked in Washington the first time they’d met: he even wore the same bulky blue flannel suit. Alex was surprised to realize it had been only about eleven weeks since that first meeting.

Buckner was ebullient. “I hear you’ve been working miracles up here.”

Cosgrove had with him an enormous case which must have weighed eighty pounds but he’d refused to allow anyone else to carry it off the plane. Now with his one arm he heaved it up onto Alex’s desk and undid the fasteners one at a time and flipped the lid back. The case was filled with stacks of identical manila envelopes. “Your men’s papers—the forgeries. We had the devil’s own time getting it done this quickly. You’d better have a close look—they seem all right to the chaps in my office but of course they’re not going to have to use them. You’ll know what to look for.”

“We’ll go over them tonight.” Alex peeled one of them open and shuffled through the cards and badges and oddments of paper. “I’m deeply grateful—it was fast work.”

“Nonsense old boy. Had to be done—you did a good job convincing me of that.”

Buckner said, “You’re looking damned fit for a man who got shot at again.”

“Shot at. Not shot up.”

“You were wounded the first time. I feel like I ought to grovel—I was supposed to have tight security on you.”

“No real harm done,” Alex said.

“Any clues this time?”

“No. We found the car they’d used. Abandoned, no useful fingerprints. It had been stolen in Glasgow a day earlier.” Alex went around behind the desk. “I suppose I’d better ask why we’re being honored by this distinguished delegation.”

Buckner looked around the room as if it had fascinating decor. “You’re getting close to jump-off point. My boss asked me to be on the scene.”

“You won’t be going in with us. There won’t be much for you to see.”

Buckner shrugged. “You know how it is.”

Cosgrove hadn’t taken a seat. He scratched the stump of his arm through his shirt—he seemed to have a perpetual itch there. “I’ll push off then. I only wanted to be sure those papers reached you. Didn’t want to trust them to anyone else’s care.”

Buckner stood up. “Thanks for the lift, Brigadier.”

“No trouble at all.”

When the brigadier had gone Buckner went to the door and shut it and went back to his seat. “Now then.”

“What are you really here for, Glenn?”

“To throw a potential monkey wrench in your plans.”

A chill ran through him; he made his voice hard. “Would you like to explain that?”

“That’s what it’s going to take. Explaining. Have you got a few minutes?”

“I’ve got to, haven’t I.”

Buckner shifted—slumped down in the chair. “Have you been watching the dispatches from Russia?”

“I’ve seen the papers.”

“The press tends to put things in the best light. Just the same you must have got the drift. Moscow’s been in a panic. The streets alive with looters—Stalin’s had to impose Draconian regulations to restore order.”

Alex watched the American’s face. The gloomy voice droned on:

“This wasn’t in the press. A few weeks ago Stalin asked Churchill and Roosevelt to send troops.”

Alex knew that—from Vlasov. He said nothing.

Buckner looked up. “Can you imagine what it must have cost him to make that request? Asking us to send our armies to fight on Russian soil? He wants thirty Allied combat divisions.” He stabbed the arm of the wooden chair with his forefinger: “That’s how unreliable he thinks his own army is.”

“He brought it on himself.”

“Sure. Okay. A few weeks ago he ordered the marshaling yards cleared at the Kazan Station—it’s the only Moscow depot still in operation. He cleared the yards so he could load dozens of trains with the records and personnel of the Soviet Union’s ministries and agencies. Most of them have been evacuated to the Kuybyshev—most of the commissars and functionaries and government departments. Stalin’s moved his headquarters totally into the command bunkers under the Kremlin. In Moscow right now the only top people left with Stalin are Beria, Malenkov, Zhukov, Molotov, Vlasov, Dekanozov and General Novikov—he’s their air force chief.

“In the meantime all these evacuations out to the east have interrupted the flow of those Siberian divisions into the battle sector. Moscow’s been hanging by its fingernails. A week ago Stalin had a conference underground in the Kremlin to analyze the situation. It’s pretty bleak. The Germans are on the God damned doorstep. They’ve made holes in the Mozhaisk Line—the panzer columns are within twenty-five miles of Moscow and there are spots where they’ve actually got German tanks inside the outskirts of the city.

“Once Moscow falls the ball game’s over, Alex. It’s like London or Paris—the center of everything. Railroads, telephone, telegraph, highways. Take Moscow and you’ve got European Russia.”

Alex took his time responding. “You’re afraid the Germans are going to beat us to it.”

“They may. Then again they may not. That could be just as bad for you.”

“I don’t follow that.”

“Didn’t think you would. It goes like this. It’s snowing in Moscow now. It’s snowing in Leningrad. It’s even snowing down in the Ukraine. That’s the Russian element—winter.”

“It’ll stall the Germans,” Alex said. “We’ve counted on that.”

“Well the Germans have given Stalin a lot of help let me tell you. Hitler’s turned out to be a God damned stupid fool after all.”

“You’re talking about the atrocities now.”

“I sure am. He’s defeating himself where Stalin couldn’t have done it in a hundred years. They’ve been slaughtering civilians. Butchering Jews. Maiming little kids, raping Russian women. They’re teaching the Russians how to hate Nazis. They didn’t hate them before. They threw flowers at the Wehrmacht. But then the second echelon came in—the SS exterminators—and the word’s got out across the country. Hitler’s lost the support he had in Russia. He’s given the Red Army what they never had before. They’ve found the guts to fight.

“That pitiful God damned horse cavalry of Budyenny’s been stopping panther tanks in their tracks. It’s hard to believe but there it is.”

“I’m not getting your point,” Alex said.

“The point is, old son, if Stalin can hold the Germans all by himself then the Allies don’t need you.”

Alex contrived a hard smile. “You can’t have it both ways.”

“Can’t I?”

“You’re saying you can’t use us if Stalin loses and you don’t need us if he wins. The same conditions obtained when we started all this. Nothing’s changed.”

“You’re wrong. The whole—”

“Stalin isn’t whipping them,” Alex said, riding right over him. “He’s only doing a bit better than he was before. He’s had time to get over the surprise—he’s had time to bring in a million troops from Siberia and the SS has given him some help with his morale. Naturally the German advance has slowed down—their supply lines are long and it’s the dead of winter up there. So the Germans will sit in their trenches until spring and then they’ll finish the job—unless Russia’s got the kind of leadership the country will follow.”

Buckner was shaking his head. “You don’t get this yet. The United States is gearing up for war. We’re too late and too slow because we’ve still got too many fools in Congress but we’re going to be in it—maybe six months from now, maybe a year. You’ve got to see it from the President’s point of view. What we need is whatever gives us the best odds that Hitler won’t nail down a quick victory. After the next twelve to eighteen months we’ll be able to handle it.”

“And?”

“We’re bound to support whatever forces offer the best chances of keeping Hitler off balance. Any interest we take in Russian internal politics is purely a secondary matter. The war takes precedence. And if Stalin proves he can hold the Germans to their present lines then we’d be fools to rock the boat by trying to overthrow the people who are containing Hitler for us.

“As of right now we’re still supporting you. It could change. If I get orders from Washington between now and the time you people go in, I’m going to have to scrub your operation.”

Buckner attempted a smile that was evidently intended to be reassuring. “Look, we’re in a position of luxury. We’re not in the war. We can play with it from a distance—we can still take the chance with you. It would be different if we were in the war, say, or if Stalin managed to wipe out Guderian’s army in the next ten days. Or if Hitler took Moscow. It isn’t all that likely to happen, is it, but if it does you’ve got to be ready to stand down. Understand?”

It had taken a great effort of will for the Americans to get off the mark in the first place: it was always easier to deal with the devil you knew; even if Roosevelt didn’t like Stalin at least he though he knew how to treat with him. The Whites were an unknown quantity to Washington and the President was prepared to deal with them only so long as he had time to feel out their intentions. If the lines around Moscow remained static it might not risk too much to have a sudden replacement of the Moscow regime—but if something else should change the picture then Washington no longer would have the latitude to risk upsetting everything.

But Alex had no intention of scrubbing the program. Nobody was going to stop it now—not Roosevelt and not Hitler and certainly not a nervous War Department colonel.

What he said was, “We’ll just have to hope nothing changes the status quo in the next couple of weeks, won’t we.”

“I suppose we do at that.” Buckner could be trusted not to be trusted: it was a form of understanding.

“You filled Churchill in. You owe us the same courtesy.” Buckner let it hang in the air and when it elicited no response he said, “Somebody took a shot at you in Boston. Somebody took another shot at you just a few days ago. Suppose the next one doesn’t miss? What happens to this operation?”

“The operation goes ahead on schedule. With me or without.”

“Then you’ve briefed your subordinates?”

“No.”

“Now I call that double-talk, Alex.”

“It’s like a blackmail scheme,” Alex told him. “The plan’s written down—every detail. In a safe place. If something happens to me it’s delivered into the hands of the White Russian coalition. They can select my successor and proceed with the minimum delay.”

Buckner said, “For Christ’s sake.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Is that any way to run a military operation? Jesus Christ.”

“Come on Glenn. Spit it out.”

“You’ve given us the overall plan. Grudgingly but you’ve told us. Your dispatch a month ago pretty much covered as much as you wanted to let us see. You’re going to draw the Soviet High Command out of the Kremlin and hit them from the air and take over communications and headquarters on the ground. Now I want the God damned details and I’m not stepping out of this room until I’ve got them.”

“Then you’d better make yourself comfortable.”

“Is that a flat refusal?”

“Not at all. But you’ll spend the better part of the next week in this room before you find out anything from me. I’ll spell out the whole design for you when I’m ready to. It’ll be well in advance of our D-day. But it won’t be today and it won’t be tomorrow.”

Buckner blinked. “You know sometimes I think I’d have got more cooperation out of that bastard Vassily Devenko.”

“You might have.”

“I could pull your airplanes out right now, Alex.”

“No. Not while this thing has a chance of working. Don’t make threats you can’t carry out—it doesn’t help either of us.”

Buckner stood up abruptly. “You got a place to billet me where I’ll be out of the way?”

“We’ll find something.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want to miss a thing.”

He sent Sergei off with Buckner and went back into the office. Sensations of trouble rubbed against him. Buckner acted the fool but some of it was sham; he was cleverer than he seemed. He was Roosevelt’s running dog and if he received instructions to interfere actively he’d be an antagonist to reckon with—it would be unwise to be disarmed by his blustering buffoonery. He had to be handled with extreme caution. He had to be told the plan; he had to be told soon enough to reassure him and late enough to prevent him doing anything about it.

String him along, he thought—Just keep stringing him along. And hope Buckner didn’t tumble to it too soon.

5.

On the twenty-fourth the political echelon of the Russian Liberation Coalition arrived on the tarmac and Alex was on the field to meet them with his officers—a welcoming party from which Irina detached herself to make her private greetings to her father.

The contingent numbered twenty-eight White Russian dignitaries; most of them were of noble birth. There were two Princes—old Michael from Zurich and the Coalition’s leader, Prince Leon; Felix in his dress-whites made a third prince. There were five counts, Anatol among them, and seven Barons including Oleg Zimovoi and the diminutive Yuri Ivanov who would be the new government’s Minister of Finance. General Savinov was in the party, red-faced and redolent of gin. There was one sixty-seven-year-old Admiral who had once commanded the Black Sea Fleet; and an assortment of well-dressed men most of whose faces he knew—the administrators and specialists who would take over key functions in the Russian bureaucracy.

Alex was alarmed by Prince Leon’s appearance. The old man had lost a great deal of weight. The hands dangled from his sleeves and his skin had gone the hue of veal. His movements were uncertain: he prodded the tarmac with his cane and hesitated before he put his weight on it. His weary eyes were shattered by bloodshot lines but when he came before Alex he straightened up and stabbed a finger forcefully into the air by way of greeting; and he beamed.

He’d sent the unsuspecting Buckner out to observe field training for the day. The hangar was cleared and the visitors arranged themselves on the benches; Felix joined Alex at the podium and after a suitable interval of chatter Alex brought the assemblage to order.

“We’ll be going over your individual duties in detail in the next few days with each of you. In the meantime I’ll outline the general scope of things.

“We leave here in four days’ time in eight aircraft. Our destination is a landing field on the Finnish mainland. Several of you have been in consultation with the Finnish government and I’ve made a few specific arrangements of my own. As you know the diplomatic situation’s confused because Finland is at war with the Soviets again. The Finns are no longer neutral—they’re a belligerent power. The Allies have severed formal relations with Helsinki but they won’t declare war on Finland unless the Finns enter a pact with Hitler, which seems unlikely at the moment—the Finns don’t want any part of Hitler, they only want to get back the ground they lost to Russia two years ago. Part of our arrangement is that when we’ve taken power we’re to cede that territory back to Finland. In return for that pledge the Finns are supporting this operation.

“The Soviet leaders will be on a certain train at a certain time. We know the train’s schedule—we know where to find it at a given time. We intend to stop the train by bombing it from the air. Then our ground troops will administer the coup de grâce. We’ll have Stalin’s corpse to prove we’ve done the job.”

He had to wait for the taut murmur to die away; then he went on:

“The Nazis control the approaches to the Baltic Sea. So we’ve got to carry everything with us by air. Our bombers will fly with full bomb-loads and auxiliary fuel tanks and we’ll have to stuff the transports to their maximum weight limits. For that reason I ask that you leave behind anything that isn’t absolutely vital.

“The operation—code name Steel Bear—is scheduled to take off from the Finland airstrip on a date you’ll know well in advance. The flight plan requires a nonstop flight to a target of approximately one thousand kilometers—six hundred miles—not a tough run for these planes. We’re timing our approach to coincide with the arrival of Stalin’s train at the target point. Of course it may be a bit late—they’ve had to clear the rails of snow every day for the past two weeks—but we’re prepared to circle the target area until the train appears. There’s ample fuel for that. If our bombers are challenged by Red fighters they’ll respond with the proper Red Air Force recognition code for that day.

“Our first-echelon of parachute commandos will have taken off twelve hours previously. The parachute drop will have been made by night into fields as close as possible to the target areas assigned to each team. There are a half dozen teams. One key target is the wireless transmitter towers on the Moscow-Noginsk road—they’ve become the center for outgoing transmissions since the towers on the west of Moscow were bombed by the Luftwaffe and the Nazis cut the western telephone networks. The telephone lines to the east are wired through a subsidiary central switchboard on the Noginsk line; that switchboard is the target of Major Solov’s team of paratroops. Both the switchboard and the wireless transmitter station are piped into the Kremlin. By taking these two points we cut the Kremlin off from contact with units outside Moscow, and we inform those in the Kremlin of the coup d’état.

“As some of you know we’ve been working with the assistance of a man inside the Kremlin. He’s a member of the General Staff, I can reveal that much. He will be ready to join us at the communications center the moment we have captured it and confirmed the death of the Soviet leaders. The general and I will announce that we’ve jointly taken command of the military forces of Russia.

“Major Postsev’s team will secure the Krivoy airfield, the nearest field to Moscow that’s in use at present. Prince Felix will land there after having bombed the train. He will proclaim the liberation. We’ll warn the Red Army commanders in the Kremlin that if they don’t join us we’ll cut off their communications—they’d lose control of their armies and the Germans would be able to take Moscow in a matter of hours; they’ll have little choice.

“Our advance line of combat personnel will move into the Kremlin wearing Red uniforms. According to plan this should take place approximately twelve hours after the bombing of Stalin’s train. Prince Felix will arrive in the Kremlin when it’s secured and the lines of communication then will be restored. By this time your echelon will be airborne en route to Moscow. You’ll be driven from the Krivoy airfield to the Kremlin. In this manner we expect to provide continuity in governmental administration with an interruption too short to allow the Nazis to take advantage of it.

“Most of the Soviet departments have been evacuated to the Kuybyshev but Red Army headquarters remains in Moscow and that’s our key. Once we have control of the armies the other departments must fall into line. Within a few days many of you will travel on to the Kuybyshev to assume control of your agencies. There will be revolutionary resistance and partisans to contend with—it can’t be helped—but the German threat will guarantee our success. We’re presenting them with an ultimatum and they’ll have no time to organize resistance; they’ll have the simple choice—go along or go under.

“That sums up the operational plan. We’re ready for questions now.”

6.

He looked up from the desk and Buckner was there, leaning casually in the doorway with one stiff arm up against the jamb. “Well?”

“Pack your things, Glenn. We’re moving out.”

“Not without filling me in first.”

“Happy to. Take a seat while I finish this.” He went back to the assignment rosters.

When he looked up Buckner was sitting there with his hands folded across his flat belly. The picture of wry patience.

It was nearly noon. In Washington it would be about seven in the morning. Alex said, “You’ve been communicating with Washington nearly every day.”

“Sure.”

“Using the Navy shortwave from Scapa Flow, right?”

“You got it.” Buckner smiled a little. “I thought I had a tail the past few days.”

“You’re lucky I let you off the base at all.”

“Okay so you’ve found out my deep dark secret, Hell if you’d asked me I’d have told you. I’m the President’s boy, Alex—I got to keep in touch with the home office.”

“If I’d had objections to it you’d have heard them long before now.” Alex pushed his seat back. “We’re taking off this afternoon, Glenn. Shortwave only works at night. You won’t have a chance to talk to Washington before we go.”

He saw the impact of it and he went right on before Buckner could work up the anger to respond. “I promised to spell out the plan for you and I’m going to keep the promise right now. It happens the transatlantic cable was cut last week by an American depth-charge attack on a U-boat; otherwise I’d have strung you along until takeoff. But there’s no telephone to Washington now. Next week they’ll have the cable repaired again, won’t they. Fortunes of war, Glenn.”

“You’re a clever bastard.”

“Sure I am. Now there’s a string attached to what I’m about to tell you.”

“What string?”

“You’re going with us as far as our forward base. It’s in Finland.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“I’m glad you feel like that. You won’t be able to communicate with Washington at all until we’ve accomplished the mission. My radio people have strict orders to keep you away from all wireless gear.”

Buckner took it stoically. “Thanks heaps—pal.”

“Don’t try to make any phone calls, Glenn. I’ve had the outside line disconnected. Nobody communicates off the base without my authorization.”

“Thought of everything, haven’t you.”

“I always had a fair head for security,” he murmured, “Nobody’s sabotaging this operation now. Nobody.”

Buckner did a strange thing. He nodded and smiled. “If I were in your shoes I’d do exactly the same thing. I had my orders, Alex—but in the gut I’m on your side. I want to see you people pull this thing off. I remember Moscow under Joe Stalin—you know how it is. Now let’s hear the plan. Just for the hell of it.”

7.

It was a motley flotilla: three massive B-17S, three American Dakota transports, two Canadian De Havilland transports. The British Spitfires would pick them up at the coastline and escort them to the limit of their fuel ranges. The remainder of the flight—past the Denmark straits and up the Baltic into Finland—they’d be on their own. The guns of the B-17S were turreted and loaded; belts of ammunition lay gleaming dully of Cosmoline beneath the gunners’ swivel seats. The aircrews assembled on the tarmac and Pappy Johnson walked among them wearing his mustard-collared flying jacket; he was flying right-seat in one of the transports this time but he was still the man they listened to.

“These aircraft are overloaded. I’d like you misters to remember that. You’re flying at maximum gross weight and then some. Do me the kindness of remembering to keep your noses down on the turns, all right? Let’s go then.”

General Sir Edward Muir was there with MacAndrews to see them off; Glenn Buckner and Brigadier Cosgrove were squeezed into the tag-end transport.

Alex sat surrounded by Prince Leon and Count Anatol and Baron Oleg—forced to submit to a pounding barrage of hopes, expectations, fears, questions, arguments. Now and then Irina would go by him or lean out of her seat and he would catch her private signals.

In one way there was good in it. Oleg in his blunt way and Anatol with his sarcasms as dry as wind through autumn oak leaves were challenging his plan by disputing parts of it, questioning others—probing tor vulnerabilities, trying to make holes in it; and he knew if he didn’t have ready answers for every question then he was going to have to make very rapid revisions. There was one form of question he was able to turn aside every time—the What if they, Suppose they sort of question. Those you could rule out for the most part because any battle plan had to take foreseeable contingencies into account and ignore the unlikely ones. A plan had to be made on the basis of the predictability of the enemy’s behavior; if the enemy unaccountably broke the pattern then the plan would fail. Every commander knew that and there wasn’t any way to forestall it.

They crossed the North Sea, droning in formation above an almost continuous sea of cloud. Alex knew it when the RAF fighters turned back after dark but he didn’t remark on it to the others.

The flight plan took them across a corner of Sweden where the Luftwaffe would have to violate neutral airspace to inspect them; the Swedes would be within their rights to force them down but there wasn’t much likelihood of that. Once over the Baltic they were reasonably in the clear. German radar was not nearly on a par with British and what equipment Hitler had was concentrated along the Channel coast; the overcast had been a boon but even if it had been clear the odds would have been with them in the thick night.

The flight was just over eleven hundred miles and would stretch the fuel capacities of the transports, even with their extra tanks. It was a shade more than an eight-hour jump with the bombers restricted to the cruising speed of the Dakotas and De Havillands. They made landfall at seven-fifteen.