In the Balance

The U-2 taxied to the end of the airstrip, bumped along the couple of hundred meters of badly smoothed ground as it built up speed-and at the end of one bump, didn’t come back to earth. Ludmila always relished the feeling of leaving the ground. The wind that blasted into her face over and around her little windscreen told her she was really flying.

And tonight she relished taking off for another reason as well. As long as the Kukuruznik stayed in the air, she was in charge, not Molotov. That was a heady feeling, like being on the way to drunk. If she did a tight snap roll and flew upside down for a few seconds, she could check how well he’d fastened his safety belt…

She shook her head. Foolishness, foolishness. If people-had disappeared in the purges of the thirties-and they had, in great carload lots-the German invasion proved there were worse things. Some Soviet citizens had been willing (and some Soviet citizens had been eager) to collaborate with the Nazis, but the Germans showed themselves even more brutal than the NKVD.

But now Soviets and Nazis had a common cause, a foe that threatened to crush them both, regardless, even heedless, of ideology. Life, Ludmila thought with profound unoriginality, was very strange.

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.