In the Balance (79 page)

“I could learn—”

“No.” Now the Jewish fighting leader’s voice turned hard. “If you want to fight them, there are ways you can be more valuable than with a gun in
your hand. You’d be wasted as a common soldier.”

“What, then?”

“You’re serious about this.” To Moishe’s relief, it was not a question. Anielewicz studied him as if trying to figure out how to field-strip some new kind of rifle. “Well, what could you do?” The fighting leader rubbed his chin. “How’s this? How would you like to tell the world how much of a liar the Lizards have made you out to be?”

“You could arrange for me a broadcast?” Russie asked eagerly.

“A broadcast, no. Too dangerous.” Anielewicz shook his head. “A recording, though, just possibly. Then we might smuggle it out for others to broadcast. That would make the Lizards blush—if they knew how to blush, that is. Only one trouble—well, more than one, but this you have to think about especially hard: once you make this recording, if you make it, you have to disappear.”

“Yes, I see that. Zolraag would not be pleased with me, would he? But I’d sooner have him angry than laughing as he surely is now.” Russie let his mouth hang open in an imitation of a Lizard chuckle. Then, in a sudden, completely human gesture, he stabbed a finger out at Anielewicz. “Could you arrange for me to vanish into the same place where Rivka and Reuven have gone?”

“I don’t even know where that place is,” Anielewicz reminded him.

“But that’s more of your not knowing so you can’t talk in case you’re interrogated. Don’t tell me you can’t arrange to have me sent there without ever learning directly about that place, because I won’t believe you.”

“Maybe you
should
disappear. You’re getting too cynical and suspicious to make a proper
reb
any more.” But amusement glinted in Anielewicz’s pale eyes. “I won’t say yes to that and I won’t say no.” He waggled his hand back and forth. “For that matter, I don’t even know for certain if I can arrange for you to make this recording, but if you want me to, I’ll try.”

“Try,” Russie said at once. He cocked his head, peered sidelong at the Jewish fighting leader. “I notice you don’t say you’re worried about smuggling the recording out of Warsaw once it’s made.”

“Oh, no.” Anielewicz looked like a cat blowing canary feathers off its nose. “If we make the recording, we’ll get it out. That we can manage. We’ve had practice.”

Ludmila Gorbunova stared at her CO. “But, Comrade Colonel,” she exclaimed, her voice rising to a startled squeak, “why
me?”

“Because your aircraft is suited to the task, and you are suited to be its pilot,” Colonel Feofan Karpov replied. “The Lizards hack all sorts of aircraft out of the sky in large numbers, but fewer
Kukuruzniks
than any other type. And you, Senior Lieutenant Gorbunova, have flown combat missions against the Lizards since they came, and against the Germans before that.
Do you question your own ability?”

“No, Comrade Colonel, by no means,” Ludmila answered. “But the mission you have outlined is not—or should not become, let me say—one involving combat.”

“It should not become such, no,” Karpov agreed. “It will be the easier on account of that, though, not the more difficult. And having a combat-proved pilot will increase its chances for success. So—you. Any further questions?”

“No, Comrade Colonel.”
What am I supposed to say?
Ludmila thought.

“Good,” Karpov said. “He is expected to arrive tonight. Make sure your plane is in the best possible operating condition. Lucky you have that German mechanic.”

“Yes, he’s quite skilled.” Ludmila saluted. “I’ll go check out the airplane with him now. Pity I can’t take him with me.”

Back at the revetments, she found Georg Schultz already tinkering with the
Kukuruznik
. “Wire to one of your foot pedals here wasn’t as tight as it could have been,” he said. “I’ll have it fixed in a minute here.”

“Thank you; that will help,” she answered in German. Speaking it with him every day was improving her own command of the language, though she had the feeling several of the phrases she now used casually around him were unsuited for conversation with people who didn’t have greasy hands. Feeling her way for words, she went on, “I want the machine to be as good as it can. I have an important flight tomorrow.”

“When isn’t a flight important? It’s your neck, after all.” Schultz checked the feel of the pedal with his foot. He was always checking, always making sure. Just as some men had a feel for horses, he had a feel for machines, and a gift for getting them to do what he wanted. “There. That ought to fix it.”

“Good. This one, though, is important for more than just my neck. I’m to go on a courier mission.” She knew she should have stopped there, but how important the mission was filled her to overflowing, and she overflowed: “I am ordered to fly the foreign commissar, Comrade Molotov, to Germany for talks with your leaders. I am so proud!”

Schultz’s eyes went wide. “Well you might be.” After a moment, he added, “I’d better go over this plane from top to bottom. Pretty soon you’re going to have to trust it to Russian mechanics again.”

The scorn in that should have stung. In fact, it did, but less than it would have before Ludmila saw the obsessive care the German put into maintenance. She just said, “We’ll do it together.” They checked everything from the bolt that held on the propeller to the screws that attached the tailskid to the fuselage. The brief Russian winter day died while they were in the middle of the job. They worked on by the light of a paraffin lantern. Ludmila trusted the netting
overhead to keep the, lantern from betraying them to the Lizards.

Bell above the center horse—the one in shafts—jangling, a
troika
reached the airstrip about the time they were finishing. Ludmila listened to the team approaching the revetment. The Lizards mostly ignored horsedrawn sledges, though they shot up cars and trucks when they could. Anger filled her. More even than the Nazis, the Lizards aimed to rob mankind of the twentieth century.

“Comrade Foreign Commissar!” she said when Molotov came in to have a look at the airplane that would fly him to Germany.

“Comrade Pilot,” he answered with an abrupt nod. He, was shorter and paler than she’d expected, but just as determined-looking. He didn’t bat an eye at the sight of the beat-up old U-2. He gave Georg Schultz another of those the cut jerks of his head. “Comrade Mechanic.”

“Good evening, Comrade Foreign Commissar,” Schultz said in his bad Russian.

Molotov gave no overt reaction, but hesitated a moment before turning back to Ludmila. “A German?”

“Da
, Comrade Foreign Commissar,” she said nervously: Russans and Germans might cooperate against the Lizards, but more out of desperation than friendship. She added, “He is skilled at what he does.”

“So.” The word hung ominously in the air. Behind his trademark glasses, Molotov’s eyes were unreadable. But at last he said, “If I can talk with them after they invaded the
rodina
, no reason for those who are here not to be put to good use.”

Lucimila sagged with relief. Schultz did not seem to have followed enough of the conversation to know he’d been in danger. But then, he’d been in danger since the moment he rolled across the Soviet border. Perhaps he’d grown used to it—though Ludmila never had.

“You have the flight plan, Comrade Pilot?” Molotov asked.

“Yes,” Ludmila said, tapping a pocket in her leather flying suit. That made her think of something else. “Comrade Foreign Commissar, your clothing may be warm enough on the ground, but the
Kukuruznik
, as you see, is an airplane with open cockpits. The wind of our motion will be savage … and we will be flying north.”

To get to Germany at all, the little U-2 would have to fly around three sides of a rectangle. The short way, across Poland, lay in the Lizards’ hands. So it would be north past Leningrad, then west through Finland, Sweden, and Denmark, and finally south into Germany. Ludmila hoped the fuel dumps promised on paper would be there in fact. The
Kukuruznik’s
range was only a little better than five hundred kilometers; it would have to refuel a number of times on the journey. On the other hand, if travel arrangements for the foreign commissar of the Soviet Union went awry, the
nation was probably doomed.

“Can I draw flying clothes like yours from the commandant of this base?” Molotov asked.

“I am certain Colonel Karpov will be honored to provide you with them, Comrade Foreign Comntissar,” Ludmila said. She was just as certain the colonel would not dare refuse, even if it meant sending one of his pilots out to freeze on the fellow’s next mission.

Molotov left the revetment. Schultz started to laugh. Ludmila turned a questioning eye on him. He said, “A year ago this time, if I’d shot that little hardnosed pigdog, the
Führer
would have stuck the Knight’s Cross, the Swords, and the Diamonds on me—likely kissed me on both cheeks, too. Now I’m helping him. Bloody strange world.” To that Ludmila could only nod.

When the foreign commissar returned half an hour later, he looked as if he’d suddenly gained fifteen kilos. He was bundled into a leather and sheepskin flight suit, boots, and flying helmet, and carried a pair of goggles in his left hand. “Will these fit over my spectacles?” he asked.

“Comrade Foreign Commissar, I don’t know.” Ludmila had never heard of a Red Air Force flier who needed spectacles. “You can try them, though.”

Molotov looked at his wristwatch. Just getting to it under the bulky flight suit was a struggle. “We are due to depart in less than two hours. I trust we shall be punctual.”

“There should be no trouble,” Ludmila said. A lot of the mission would be flown at night to minimize the chance of interception. The only problem with that was the U-2’s aggressively basic navigational gear: compass and airspeed indicator were about it.

As things happened, there was a problem: the little Shvetsov engine didn’t want to turn over when Georg Schultz spun the prop. In the seat in front of Ludmila’s, Molotov clenched his jaw. He said nothing, but she knew he was making mental notes. That chilled her worse than the frigid night air.

But this problem had a solution, borrowed from the British: a Hicks starter, mounted on the front of a battered truck, revolved the propeller shaft fast enough to kick the engine into life. “God-damned sewing machine!” Schultz bawled up to Ludmila, just to see her glare. The acrid stink of the exhaust was perfume in her nostrils.

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 foreign commissar, 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.”