“You’d better hurry. I’d like to see you in my office tomorrow, not in the morgue.” He turned from Hollis and Lisa and said to the students, “Continue your Halloween festivities.”
Hollis led Lisa into the rec room, where another two hundred or so students had been pressed close to the door of the bar. They parted quickly, letting Hollis and Lisa through.
They went out into the cold, damp air and took the trail back to their cottage. Neither of them spoke for a while, then Lisa said, “My God, I’m proud of you, Sam Hollis.”
“You did all right yourself.”
They reached their house and went inside. Lisa bolted the door, sank into the armchair, and stared at the dead fire. “A spark. Is that what they need? Or do they need a blowtorch?” She drew a deep breath and stared up at the ceiling. “I simply do not understand these people. No one does.”
Hollis replied, “That’s because they don’t understand themselves. But if the day comes when they do, when they stop worrying about how the West perceives them and start to become aware of who they are, then the first Russian Revolution will become nothing more than a prologue to the second revolution.”
“But when?”
“When they’re ready. When they can’t deny outside reality any longer.”
“I hope I live to see it.” She smiled grimly. “I hope I live to see tomorrow.” Lisa stood. “Let’s go to bed.”
“Go ahead. I need to be alone awhile.”
“All right.” She kissed him and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
Hollis shut off the lamp and sat in the darkness alone with his thoughts. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that after all was said and done, Alevy had simply betrayed and abandoned them. And Hollis could think of professional reasons why Alevy would do that—Alevy-type reasons. Yet, the feeling, if not the fact, remained with Hollis that Alevy for all his deviousness was not capable of this ultimate betrayal. Unless of course he felt he had been personally betrayed. And perhaps Lisa had betrayed Seth Alevy, her lover. Hollis didn’t know. And perhaps Alevy felt that Hollis had betrayed him as well. Sexual jealousy was as potent a force in the affairs of men and women as anything else and had brought nations and kings to ruin.
Hollis stared into the darkness. The time passed, and though he was tired, he felt no need for sleep. A strange confidence took hold of him, and he knew that one way or the other this was going to be the last day for the Charm School.
39
It had become cold in the cabin of the Mi-28. Alevy, Mills, Brennan, and O’Shea each took turns outside the helicopter, scanning the rim of the gravel pit with the night scope mounted on the Dragunov sniper rifle. With a roll of black tape, Mills had changed the helicopter’s identification number from P-113 to P-413, on the chance that other aircraft, or even the Charm School, had picked up radio traffic concerning the crash of 113.
The Aeroflot pilot began moaning in the darkness, and Brennan, who was outside the helicopter with the rifle, poked his head through the door and said to Alevy, “We should have brought a blanket for him.”
Alevy wondered at Brennan’s compassion for a man he had been prepared to throw out of the helicopter at a thousand meters. Alevy said, “It’s above freezing. He’ll live until someone finds him in the morning.” Alevy took another chloroform pad from his pocket and gave it to Brennan. “Put him back to sleep.”
Brennan went off into the darkness and came back a few minutes later. The pilot stopped moaning.
The next hour passed without incident. Captain O’Shea had the sentry duty and was scanning the narrow ramp road that led down into the pit. He suddenly lowered the rifle and jumped onto the rung step at the door. “Something coming down the road.”
Brennan leaped out of the helicopter and snatched the rifle from O’Shea. He knelt, pointed the rifle toward the road, and adjusted the focus toward the dirt ramp about a hundred meters away. O’Shea scrambled back into the pilot’s seat and prepared to take off.
Brennan tracked the movement, took aim, and fired. The silenced rifle coughed, and the flash-suppressed muzzle glowed briefly. Brennan stood and went back to the open door of the helicopter. “Big buck. Dropped him.” He added, “Very good rifle.”
At 1:30 A.M, Alevy said, “Let’s go.”
Bert Mills, who was standing sentry, jumped back into the helicopter and gave Brennan the rifle.
O’Shea started the two turbine engines and let them warm for a few minutes, scanning the gauges.
Alevy, sitting in the copilot’s seat, asked O’Shea, “Do you remember how to fly it?”
O’Shea forced a smile. “I do. But I don’t know how to take off.” He placed the cyclic stick in a neutral position and moved the collective pitch stick in the full down position. He twisted the throttle on the collective stick, at the same time pushing the stick forward. The helicopter began to become light on its wheels, and the torque effect caused the nose to swing to the left. He put pressure on the right foot pedal to bring the nose back to a constant heading. The helicopter rose vertically in a cloud of sand and gravel.
O’Shea let it rise, checking the torque gauge and the rpm as he held it steady in its vertical climb. The helicopter rose out of the pit and into the north wind.
Below, there was a flash of brilliant light as the phosphorus grenades exploded, consuming the pile of baggage and clothing.
O’Shea eased the cyclic forward, and the Mi-28 began a diagonal climb on a northerly heading. At eight hundred meters, O’Shea swung the nose west and adjusted the controls for a straight and level flight.
Alevy commented, “You’ve taken the excitement out of helicopter flying.”
O’Shea settled back in his seat. “I’ve got this thing tamed.”
“Glad to hear it.”
O’Shea said, “Bill and Bert, you spot for aircraft. They can’t see us without lights. Seth, find me the Minsk–Moscow highway or the Moskva River.”
Alevy looked out the windshield. The night had remained clear, and the starlight gave some illumination to the ground, though the moon was nearly set. Alevy scanned the terrain below, finally picking out the Moskva River, looking like a thin ribbon of tarnished pewter, winding through dark fields and forests. He said to O’Shea, “Slip south of the river.”
O’Shea turned to a southwest heading.
Alevy stared at the ground below, and within a few minutes he said, “There. The highway. See it?”
O’Shea craned forward. “Okay.” He swung the helicopter on a due west heading and followed the highway.
Mills called out, “Eleven o’clock, level.” To their front, coming toward them, they could see blinking navigation lights. The closing speed of the two craft was fast, and the lights were suddenly very near and coming toward them on a collision course. O’Shea banked the Mi-28 to the right, and the other craft, a mammoth Mi-8 cargo helicopter, shot past on their port side. O’Shea exclaimed, “Jesus…” He took a deep breath and said to Alevy, “If he spotted us without our lights, he’ll make a report. “We’d be less likely to arouse suspicion if we were running with our lights on.” He added, “If they’re looking for us, Seth, they’ll be using airborne radar anyway.”
Alevy replied, “I hope that where they’re looking for this helicopter is in the woods outside of Sheremetyevo. No lights.”
They continued west, land navigating between the Moskva and the highway, which ran roughly parallel to the river. Alevy looked at the airspeed indicator, which showed 120 kph. He said, “We should be seeing the lights of Mozhaisk soon.”
Brennan commented, “I don’t see any lights. Nobody lives down there.”
Mills leaned forward and pointed to the left. “There. Is that Mozhaisk?”
Alevy looked at the lights about five kilometers ahead. There weren’t many of them at this hour, but he could definitely pick out a string of lights that appeared to cross the Moskva River. That would be the Mozhaisk Bridge. Alevy replied, “There’s not much else around he
re, so that must be the town. Guide on that, Captain.”
“Right.” O’Shea corrected his heading and pointed the nose of the Mi-28 directly toward Mozhaisk.
Within a few minutes they could see the illuminated center of the small town where the two main streets crossed; the north-south street leading to the bridge and the east-west street, which was the old Minsk–Moscow road.
Alevy said, “Drop to about five hundred and follow the river.”
O’Shea descended toward the Moskva and passed over the bridge. At this altitude the river seemed more luminescent, reflecting the cold starlight and the last available moonlight. O’Shea commented, “I used to love river flying. Went up the Hudson in a Piper Cherokee once. Did the entire Colorado in a Cessna… now I’m doing the Moskva… in a borrowed Mi-28… a Headstone.”
No one spoke for some minutes, then Alevy said, “Reduce airspeed.”
O’Shea brought the helicopter’s speed down to ninety kph.
Alevy looked at his watch, then at his aerial map and said, “Gentlemen, we’ll be landing very soon.”
No one responded. They were all professionals, Alevy reflected, and each of them had at one time or another pushed his luck to the limit in the performance of his respective profession. They were, each in their own way, cool, distant, and businesslike. They had calculated the odds and found them slightly better than Russian roulette with a five-chambered revolver. They were all damned scared but damned excited too. Alevy could almost feel the energy, the anticipation of actually seeing if a chalkboard play would work on the ground.
Alevy scanned the south bank of the Moskva River. “It’s somewhere in that pine forest there.” He said to O’Shea, “Lower and slower, Ed. Turn in over the forest.”
“Right.” O’Shea turned away from the river and cut his airspeed, dropping two hundred meters of altitude.
Alevy glanced into the rear and looked at Brennan and Mills sitting in the murky cabin, scanning the terrain from the side windows. He had never asked their motives for coming or given them any sort of recruiting pitch. He’d only outlined the plan and asked if they thought it was feasible and if they wanted to come along, and they said yes on both counts. And that was that.
Alevy looked out the windshield at the expanse of dark pine forest passing below. The forest ended, and he could see a broad rolling field, dotted with what he knew were stone monuments. Borodino Field. He said to O’Shea, “We’ve overshot it. Swing around.”
O’Shea brought the helicopter to a hover, then swung it around 180 degrees and made the transition back to forward flight. They passed again over the edge of the forest, and without Alevy’s saying anything, O’Shea cut the airspeed further and dropped to two hundred meters.
Mills saw it first. “There. Ten o’clock, one klick.”
They all looked to port and saw a cleared swatch of ground running through the thick, dark trees. Alevy caught a glimpse of a watchtower and noted there were no floodlights on the perimeter of the camp. This was the age of electronic motion sensors and sound detectors, personnel radar and night-seeing devices. Prison walls had gone high-tech, especially in the Soviet Union.
Alevy said to Brennan, “Let’s get the wind direction.”
“Right.” Brennan reached into the leather bag and found a smoke marker. He slid a section of the Plexiglas side window open, pulled the pin on the marker, and dropped it out the window.
O’Shea put the helicopter into a hover at two hundred meters’ altitude and watched the white smoke billowing through the trees below. O’Shea said, “Wind out of the north at about five knots. About eight kph.” O’Shea added, “The watchtowers may be able to hear the rotor blades now. If we’re going in, we have to be lit.”
“Right,” Alevy replied. He threw the switch for the navigation lights and the blinking boom light, then said to O’Shea, “You know what you have to do.”
“Right.” O’Shea went from hover to forward flight again, keeping the engine rpm up and the blades pitched at a high angle to obtain maximum lift at slow airspeed without stalling. He banked around to starboard, approaching the northern edge of the camp perimeter on a parallel run from west to east. They could all see the watchtowers now, spaced about two hundred meters apart along the edge of the cleared zone.
Alevy said to Brennan, “Hand me the canisters.”
“That’s all right. I can do it.”
“Hand them to me.”
Brennan took four unmarked metal canisters from Alevy’s overnight bag and passed them to Alevy. Alevy examined them a moment, then ripped a protective yellow plastic wrap off their top lids and turned a timing dial on each one. He slid open his vent window and dropped the first canister out, about five hundred meters outside the northern perimeter of the camp. He waited a few seconds, then dropped the second canister, followed by the third, then the last canister roughly opposite the northeast corner watchtower. He was sure no one in the towers could see anything falling from the helicopter. He said, “Okay, Captain O’Shea. Into the camp.”
O’Shea swung to starboard, and they came around, passing over the watchtowers and barbed wire at 150 meters’ altitude.
Alevy said, “The helipad is at the western end of the camp. Keep on this heading.” He hit the controllable landing light switch, and a bright beam projected from the underside of the fuselage. Alevy moved the lever that controlled the shaft of light, and the beam moved across the treetops. By now, Alevy thought, the Russians were trying to contact them by radio, but Alevy didn’t have their frequency. The Russians were very jumpy and deadly earnest about protecting restricted airspace, but here in the heart of Russia, Alevy hoped they would ask questions first and shoot you later. He hoped, too, if they had seen the smoke marker, they took it for what it was supposed to look like, a landing aid to determine wind direction, and not for what it actually was—a means to determine where to drop the four gas canisters so that the gas, when it was released, would blow over the camp. This was one case, Alevy thought, where their paranoia about being attacked by treacherous imperialist forces was not paranoia. He said to O’Shea, “We shouldn’t draw any ground-fire. But if someone down there gets trigger happy, be prepared to floor it.”
“I know.”
Suddenly a beam of light rose into the air about a hundred meters to their front, then passed slowly over the fuselage, illuminating the cabin and, Alevy hoped, the familiar Aeroflot logo. Aeroflot and the Red Air Force being about one and the same, Alevy thought, that should cause no suspicion. The beam held them as they dropped altitude. O’Shea said, “That’s probably the helipad light.”
“Okay.” Alevy moved his landing light beam toward the spotlight, and he could see now, not three hundred meters to their front, the large natural clearing in the forest. Alevy worked the landing light switch and flashed the international codes for “Radio malfunction, permission to land.” He said to O’Shea, “Okay, Ed, let’s take it in.”
O’Shea began a sloping descent toward the helipad. “This is it.”
The ground light moved away from them, and the beam dropped, sweeping back and forth over the grass clearing, showing them the way.
Brennan was scanning with the night scope on his rifle, and Bert Mills said to him, “Is there a welcoming committee waiting for us?”
Brennan replied, “There’s nobody on the field. I see a log cabin at the edge of the field. Guy there on a flatbed moving that spotlight. He’s got an AK-47 beside him. But I don’t see much else.”
O’Shea banked to the right so he could make his final approach into the wind.
Mills asked O’Shea dryly, “Is this going to be as exciting as the last one?”
“No.”
O’Shea reduced power and passed over the log cabin at fifty meters, heading for the center of the large clearing.
No one spoke.
Alevy felt his heart speeding up, and his mouth went dry. He cleared his throat and said, “There will be no money in this for you, gentlemen, no medals, no g
lory, no official recognition, no photo opportunities at the White House. There will just be a hell of a bad time down there and maybe an unmarked grave in this Russian forest. So I thank you again for volunteering.”
None of them responded.
Alevy looked at his watch. It was 2:03 A.M. The camp would be sleeping, unaware that release from their long captivity was close at hand.
O’Shea pulled back on the cyclic stick, and the helicopter flared out, hung a moment, then settled softly onto the grass helipad of the Charm School. O’Shea said aloud but to himself, “Nice landing, Ed.”
40
The helicopter sat in the center of the field, its engines still turning. Brennan and Mills dropped down below the window.
Seth Alevy looked at his watch. It was just 2:05 A.M. He said to O’Shea, “Captain, you will lift off not later than three forty-five, with or without passengers, and that includes any or all of the three of us. Understand?”
“Understood.”
“Shut it down.”
O’Shea shut off the engines, and the blades wound down.
The beam of light coming from the vicinity of the radio cabin about a hundred meters off played over the helicopter, picking out the cockpit, the cabin windows, the Aeroflot emblem, and finally the registration number, P-413, on the tail boom.
Alevy climbed back into the cabin and slid open the portside door. Brennan said, “Good luck.”
Mills added, “You look Russian.”
Alevy jumped down, put on his officer’s cap, and strode purposefully toward the searchlight and the log cabin. He said to himself, “I hope so.”
The man behind the light shut it off, came down from the flatbed, and walked toward Alevy. As he drew within ten meters, Alevy saw he was a young KGB Border Guard carrying an AK-47 at port arms. The KGB man stopped and issued a challenge. “Halt! Identify yourself.”
Alevy stopped and replied in brusk Russian, “I am Major Voronin.” Alevy strode up to the man, who had come to a position of attention, the AK-47 still at the ready across his chest, his finger on the trigger. Alevy stopped a few feet from him. “I’m here to see your colonel,” Alevy said, not knowing if Burov used that nom de guerre here or used Pavlichenko, which General Surikov had indicated was Burov’s real name. Alevy snapped, “Are you deaf, man? I’m here to see your colonel!”