Grishanov didn’t like what he saw now. This was a skillful man, and a courageous one, who had fought to establish missile-hunting specialists the Americans called Wild Weasels. It was a term a Russian might have used for the mission, named for vicious little predators who chased their prey into their very dens. This prisoner had flown eighty-nine such missions, if the Vietnamese had recovered the right pieces from the right aircraft – like Russians, Americans kept a record of their accomplishments on their aircraft – this was exactly the man he needed to talk to. Perhaps that was a lesson he would write about, Grishanov thought. Such pride told your enemies whom they had captured, and much of what he knew. But that was the way of fighter pilots, and Grishanov would himself have balked at the concealment of his deeds against his country’s enemies. The Russian also tried to tell himself that he was sparing harm to the man across the table. Probably Zacharias had lulled many Vietnamese – and not simple peasants, but skilled, Russian-trained missile technicians – and this country’s government would want to punish him for that. But that was not his concern, and he didn’t want to allow political feelings to get in the way of his professional obligations. His was one of the most scientific and certainly the most complex aspects of national defense. It was his duty to plan for an attack of hundreds of aircraft, each of which had a crew of highly trained specialists. The way they thought, their tactical doctrine, was as important as their plans. And as far as he was concerned, the Americans could kill all of the bastards they wanted. The nasty little fascists had as much to do with his country’s political philosophy as cannibals did with gourmet cooking.
‘Colonel, I do know better than that,’ Grishanov said patiently. He laid the most recently arrived document on the table. ‘I read this last night. It’s excellent work.’
The Russian’s eyes never left Colonel Zacharias. The American’s physical reaction was remarkable. Though something of an intelligence officer himself, he had never dreamed that someone in Vietnam could get word to Moscow, then to have Americans under their control find something like this. His face proclaimed what he was thinking: How could they know so much about me? How could they have reached that far back into his past? Who possibly could have done it? Was anyone that good, that professional? The Vietnamese were such fools! Like many Russian officers, Grishanov was a serious and thorough student of military history. He’d read all manner of arcane documents while sitting in regimental ready rooms. From one he’d never forget, he learned how the Luftwaffe had interrogated captured airmen, and that lesson was one he would try to apply here. While physical abuse had only hardened this man’s resolve, he had just been shaken to his soul by a mere sheaf of paper. Every man had strengths and every man had weaknesses. It took a person of intelligence to recognize the differences.
‘How is it that this was never classified?’ Grishanov asked, lighting a cigarette.
‘It’s just theoretical physics,’ Zacharias said, shrugging his thin shoulders, recovering enough that he tried to conceal his despair. ‘The telephone company was more interested than anybody else.’
Grishanov tapped the thesis with his finger. ‘Well, I tell you, I learned several things from that last night. Predicting false echoes from topographical maps, modeling the blind spots mathematically! You can plan an approach route that way, plot maneuvers from one such point to another. Brilliant! Tell me, what sort of place is Berkeley?’
‘Just a school, California style,’ Zacharias replied before catching himself. He was talking. He wasn’t supposed to talk. He was trained not to talk. He was trained on what to expect, and what he could safely do, how to evade and disguise. But that training never quite anticipated this. And, dear God, was he tired, and scared, and sick of living up to a code of conduct that didn’t count for beans to anyone else.
‘I know little of your country – except professional matters, of course. Are there great regional differences? You come from Utah. What sort of place is it?’
‘Zacharias, Robin G. Colonel -‘
Grishanov raised his hands. ‘Please, Colonel I know all that. I also know your place of birth in addition to the date. There is no base of your air force near Salt Lake City. All I know is from maps. I will probably never visit this part – any part of your country. In this Berkeley part of California, it is green, yes? I was told once they grow wine grapes there. But I know nothing of Utah. There is a large lake there, but it’s called Salt Lake, yes? It’s salty?’
‘Yes, that’s why -‘
‘How can it be salty? The ocean is a thousand kilometers away, with mountains in between, yes?’ He didn’t give the American time to reply. ‘I know the Caspian Sea quite well. I was stationed at a base there once. It isn’t salty. But this place is? How strange.’ He stubbed out his cigarette.
The man’s head jerked up a little. ‘Not sure, I’m not a geologist. Something left over from another time, I suppose.’
‘Perhaps so. There are mountains there, too, yes?’
‘Wasatch Mountains,’ Zacharias confirmed somewhat drunkenly.
One clever thing about the Vietnamese, Grishanov thought, the way they fed their prisoners, food a hog would eat only from necessity. He wondered if it were a deliberate and thought-out diet or something fortuitously resulting from mere barbarity. Political prisoners in the Gulag ate better, but the diet of these Americans lowered their resistance to disease, debilitated them to the point that the act of escape would be doomed by inadequate stamina. Rather like what the fascisti did to Soviet prisoners, distasteful or not, it was useful to Grishanov. Resistance, physical and mental, required energy, and you could watch these men lose their strength during the hours of interrogation, watch their courage wane as their physical needs drew more and more upon their supply of psychological resolve. He was learning how to do this. It was time-consuming, but it was a diverting process, learning to pick apart the brains of men not unlike himself.
‘The skiing, is it good?’
Zacharias’s eyes blinked, as though the question took him away to a different time and place. ‘Yeah, it is.’
‘That is something one will never do here, Colonel. I like cross-country skiing for exercise, and to get away from things. I had wooden skis, but in my last regiment my maintenance officer made me steel skis from aircraft parts.’
‘Steel?’
‘Stainless steel, heavier than aluminum but more flexible. I prefer it. From, a wing panel on our new interceptor, project E-266.’
‘What’s that?’ Zacharias knew nothing of the new MiG-25.
‘Your people now call it Foxbat. Very fast, designed to catch one of your B-70 bombers.’
‘But we stopped that project,’ Zacharias objected.
‘Yes, I know that. But your project got me a wonderfully fast fighter to fly. When I return home, I will command the first regiment of them.’
‘Fighter planes made of steel? Why?’
‘It resists aerodynamic heating much better than aluminum,’ Grishanov explained. ‘And you can make good skis from discarded parts.’ Zacharias was very confused now. ‘So how well do you think we would do with my steel fighters and your aluminum bombers?’
‘I guess that depends on -‘ Zacharias started to say, then stopped himself cold. His eyes looked across the table, first with confusion at what he’d almost said, then with resolve.
Too soon, Grishanov told himself with disappointment. He’d pushed a little too soon. This one had courage. Enough to take his Wild Weasel ‘downtown,’ the phrase the Americans used, over eighty times. Enough to resist for a long time. But Grishanov had plenty of time.
CHAPTER 12
Outfitters
63 VW, LOW MLGE, RAD, HTR . . .
Kelly dropped a dime in the pay phone and called the number. It was a blazing hot Saturday, temperature and humidity in a neck-and-neck race for triple digits while Kelly fumed at his own stupidity. Some things were so blatantly obvious that you didn’t see them until your nose split open and started bleeding.
‘Hello? I’m calling about the ad for the car … that’s right,’ Kelly said. ‘Right now if you want … Okay, say about fifteen minutes? Fine, thank you, ma’am. I’ll be right there. ‘Bye.’ He hung up. At least something had gone right. Kelly grimaced at the inside of the phone booth. Springer was tied up in a guest slip at one of the marinas on the Potomac. He had to buy a new car, but how did you get to where the new car was? If you drove there, then you could drive the new car back, but what about the one you took? It was funny enough that he started laughing at himself. Then fate intervened, and an empty cab went driving past the manna’s entrance, allowing him to keep his promise to a little old lady.