In the Balance

His eyes widened, but only momentarily. Then he said, “Maybe so, but those, I dare say, were out on the Russian steppe, not in the mountains.” He waited for her response; she nodded, yielding the point. He went on, “The danger is worse in the mountains, not only because of the terrain but also from gusts of wind. Your margin of error would be unacceptably low for a mission of this importance, especially since you will want to stay as low to the ground as you can.”

“What do you suggest, then? A flight by day? The Lizards are too likely to shoot me down.”

The German said, “I admit this. To protect you as you fly by day, though, we will sortie several squadrons of fighters-not to escort you, for that would attract unwanted attention to your aircraft, but to distract the Lizards from the area through which you will be passing.”

Ludmila considered that. Given the inequality between German planes and what the Lizards flew, some pilots would almost certainly be sacrificing their lives to make sure she and Molotov got through to this Berchtesgaden place. She also knew she had no experience in mountain flying. If the Nazis were willing to help her mission so, she decided she had to accept. “Thank you,” she said.

“Heil Hitler!” the Luftwaffe man answered, which did nothing to make her happier about working with Germans.

When she and Molotov went dip-clopping out to the airstrip next morning, she discovered the German ground crew had daubed the U-2’s wings and fuselage with splotches of whitewash. One of the fellows in overalls said, “Now you’ll look more like snow and rocks.”

Soviet winter camouflage was more thoroughly white, but snow drifted more evenly across the steppe than it did in mountains. She didn’t know how much the whitewash would help, but supposed it couldn’t hurt. The groundcrew man grinned as she thanked him in her accented German.

When she got a good look at the mountains toward which she was flying, she was glad she’d taken the Luftwaffe officer’s advice and not tried to make the trip by night. The landing field to which she was ordered lay not far outside the village of Berchtesgaden. When she set the Kukuruznik down there, she assumed Hitler’s residence lay within the village.

Instead, a long wagon ride up the side of the mountain-Obersalzberg, she learned it was called-followed. Molotov sat staring stonily straight ahead the whole way up. He said nothing much. Whatever went on behind the mask of his face, he kept it there. He glared right through the soldiers at two checkpoints, ignored the barbed wire that ringed the compound.

Hitler’s Berghof, when the wagon finally reached it, reminded Ludmila of a pleasant little resort house (the view was magnificent) swallowed up by a residence that met the demands of a world leader. Molotov was whisked away into the Berghof; Ludmila thought she recognized his German counterpart, von Ribbentrop, from newsreels during the strange couple of years when the Soviet Union and Germany held to their friendship treaty.

She wasn’t important enough to be lodged in the Berghof. The Germans escorted her over to a guesthouse not far away. As she stood in the splendid lobby, all she could think was how many workers and peasants had had their labor exploited to create it. She was primly certain no one in the classless Soviet Union cared to live in such unnecessary splendor.

Down the staircase came an officer in the natty black uniform and beret of the German panzer formations: a colonel, by the two pips on each braided shoulder strap. On his right breast he wore a large, garish eight-pointed gold star with a swastika in the center. He was lean and perfectly shaved and looked quite at home here close by his Fuhrer; just watching his smooth stride made Ludmila feel short, and dumpy and out of place. She swung the knapsack that held her few belongings over one shoulder.

The motion drew the natty colonel’s eye. He stopped, stared, then hurried across the parquet floor to her. “Ludmila!” he exclaimed, and went on in fair Russian: “What the devil are you doing here?”

She recognized his voice even if she hadn’t known his face. “Heinrich!” she said, trying hard not to pronounce it with an initial g as Russians often did. She was so glad to find someone she knew that, heedless equally of startled looks from her German escorts and, of what Molotov would think when the news got back to han, she gave Jager a hug he enthusiastically returned. “You’ve been promoted two grades,” she observed. “That’s wonderful.”

His grin was self-deprecating. “They offered me a choice: lieutenant colonel and the Knight’s Cross or colonel and just Hitler’s fried egg here.” He patted the gaudy medal. “Excuse me, the German Cross in gold. They thought I’d take glory. I took rank. Rank lasts.