The Romanov succession

“Get it fast,” Alex told him. “You’re going to be in the air fourteen hours a day.”

“Shee-yit.” Johnson was leaning against the sill on both hands. After a moment he gathered himself and turned about. “I got two problems right off, Skipper.”

“Name them.”

“First thing, I don’t speak but two words of Russian. No, three. Da, nyet and tovarich. ”

“And your accent’s atrocious,” Spaight remarked drily.

“How’m I supposed to train fifteen Russian pilots?”

Spaight said, “They’ve been attached to the Royal Air Force for a year and before that nearly all of them were flying combat in China or Spain. English is the international pilots’ language. You won’t have trouble with that.”

Pappy absorbed that. “The other thing ain’t so easy.” He turned to Alex. “Ain’t enough high-octane around here to taxi those Forts once around the ballroom. How can I teach them anything if I can’t get them off the ground?”

“You’ll have gasoline by the beginning of the week. In the meantime you’ll have your hands full setting up a ground school. Only five of them have ever flown bombers.”

“Five’s a lot better than none. One more thing then. Where’m I going to find grease monkeys who’ve laid eyes on a B-Seventeen?”

“Colonel Buckner has three ground-crew chiefs on the way here from Boeing. They should arrive tomorrow. Any more problems?”

“Is there anything you forgot to take care of?”

“We’ll spend the next seven weeks finding that out.”

“Well here’s one for starters. You’ve given me pilots but what about navigators and bombardiers, gunners, all that stuff? A Flying Fortress takes a combat crew of ten, Skipper.”

“We’ll wash at least thirty of the ground troops out of training thirty days ahead of D-day. You’ll have those thirty days to make air gunners out of them. I know it’s not enough time but do what you can. We’ll have Red Air Force markings on the planes and the plan doesn’t include shooting our way in. You might run into a stray Luftwaffe plane but I doubt it.”

“Fair enough. But-”

“As for navigators and bombardiers you’ve got a pool of fifteen experienced fliers to draw from and you’ve only got six airplanes. Three bombers, three transports that don’t need bombardiers. Your copilots will have to double as navigators but their problems won’t be acute-it’s a simple flight plan once it’s in motion. If the weather’s bad we won’t go in anyway, we’ve got to have optimum weather for the mission. Six pilots, six copilots-that leaves you three spare pilots. They’ll be your bombardiers. Next question?”

“No. But if you’re fixing to take over the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with three B-Seventeen bombers and sixty-eight ground troops then you have got the balls of a brass gorilla.”

6

The grey Bentley had handsome Coventry coachwork and a high kneaded leather seat in which Count Anatol Markov sat bolt erect. At the count’s elbow was a telephone to speak with the driver but there was no need for that. The car had picked him up at the customs gate and now moved him almost without sound through the streets of north London and across toward Highgate.

Anatol observed dispassionately that bomb damage in this sector didn’t seem severe. Here and there a house had been shattered and twice they had to detour around cratered streets but north London had hardly been turned into rubble; either the newspapers had exaggerated the Luftwaffe’s efficiency or other areas of the city had taken the brunt of Hitler’s air war.

The Bentley made the left turn off the Archway Road at Highgate Wood and slid smoothly to the curb before a high Victorian house faced with genteel stonework and brick. Count Anatol’s index finger pried the watch out of his waistcoat pocket and snapped the gold crested lid open. It was four-fifteen.

“Ivanov” was a name like Smith or Jones or John Doe: a common pseudonym; but it happened that Ivanov was Baron Yuri Lavrentovitch’s real surname and that this was the only common thing about him. His grandfather had been a minister in the government of Alexander III and the genius for finance could be traced back a dozen generations in Ivanov’s lineage.

The Baron was bald except for a grey monk’s fringe that went around the back of his head like a horseshoe. His physiognamy was that of a Mediterranean Scrooge-fleshy at cheek and jowl but querulous at jutting chin. He wore a dark Saville Row suit with mother-of-pearl buttons down the center of the waistcoat; it had been tailored to the millimeter but it wouldn’t have convinced anybody that he was English. He was no bigger than a twelve-year-old schoolboy.

Count Anatol towered over him but it didn’t trouble the Baron. “Sherry perhaps?”

“I had my fill of it in Spain. I would prefer whisky.”

Ivanov spoke to a servant in English that was too quick and slurred for Count Anatol to follow. When the servant left the room Ivanov settled into a Queen Anne divan that dwarfed him ludicrously. He had made no effort to scale the furnishings of his house to his own proportion; it appeared to be a matter of complete indifference to him.