General Sir Edward Muir was there with MacAndrews to see them off; Glenn Buckner and Brigadier Cosgrove were squeezed into the tag-end transport.

Alex sat surrounded by Prince Leon and Count Anatol and Baron Oleg-forced to submit to a pounding barrage of hopes, expectations, fears, questions, arguments. Now and then Irina would go by him or lean out of her seat and he would catch her private signals.

In one way there was good in it. Oleg in his blunt way and Anatol with his sarcasms as dry as wind through autumn oak leaves were challenging his plan by disputing parts of it, questioning others-probing tor vulnerabilities, trying to make holes in it; and he knew if he didn’t have ready answers for every question then he was going to have to make very rapid revisions. There was one form of question he was able to turn aside every time-the What if they, Suppose they sort of question. Those you could rule out for the most part because any battle plan had to take foreseeable contingencies into account and ignore the unlikely ones. A plan had to be made on the basis of the predictability of the enemy’s behavior; if the enemy unaccountably broke the pattern then the plan would fail. Every commander knew that and there wasn’t any way to forestall it.

They crossed the North Sea, droning in formation above an almost continuous sea of cloud. Alex knew it when the RAF fighters turned back after dark but he didn’t remark on it to the others.

The flight plan took them across a corner of Sweden where the Luftwaffe would have to violate neutral airspace to inspect them; the Swedes would be within their rights to force them down but there wasn’t much likelihood of that. Once over the Baltic they were reasonably in the clear. German radar was not nearly on a par with British and what equipment Hitler had was concentrated along the Channel coast; the overcast had been a boon but even if it had been clear the odds would have been with them in the thick night.

The flight was just over eleven hundred miles and would stretch the fuel capacities of the transports, even with their extra tanks. It was a shade more than an eight-hour jump with the bombers restricted to the cruising speed of the Dakotas and De Havillands. They made landfall at seven-fifteen.

PART SIX:

November-December 1941

1

At seven thousand feet Felix watched a thick layer of stratus coming up beneath the wings; then he was inside it and flying blind, concentrating on instruments.

The chart was printed in mauve ink for easy reading under the cockpit lights. Ulyanov said, “We must be in range of their tower radio by now.”

“Whistle them up then.”

Felix was sweating. Suppose the weather was socked in right down to the ground?

“… Tower. We understand you clearly. Conditions for landing are as follows. Cloud ceiling is at two thousand five hundred meters. Ground visibility is five kilometers or better. We are illuminating both sides of the runway with fire tins. We have a heavy snow lie but the runway has been plowed. Nevertheless ground temperature is minus four degrees centigrade and you must be on guard against thin patches of ice on the runway. This is understood?”

Concentrating on his instruments Felix only nodded and Ulyanov said into the radio, “Visitor flight understands, Kuvola Tower.”

Felix dimmed the cockpit lights to a minimum glow and switched on his landing lights. Snowflakes flashed past thickly in horizontal lines like tracer bullets. The high-wattage beams sliced forward through the snow and a grey tunnel formed behind each whirling propellor. He rubbed misty condensation from the glass and asked Ulyanov if he would care to predict how far off course they would be when they came out under the clouds. Ulyanov said, “I would be guessing, Highness.”

“Guess, then.”

They were out of the snow then but still in cloud and still descending on steady rails through three thousand feet, twenty-five hundred, two thousand. “I think we’re right on the mark, Highness.”

“We’d better be. You’ve been doing the navigating.”

“Yes Highness.”

The altimeter was a dial with a long hand and a short hand like the face of a clock: one for thousands, one for hundreds. The long hand was winding steadily around the dial: nine, eight, seven. The cone beams stabbed ahead and down and were absorbed in the murk. Six, five, and still in clouds. “High air pressure,” Felix said. “The altimeter’s off-keep your eyes open. Gear down-flaps twenty.”

“Kuvola Tower to Visitor flight. We can hear you. You should have us in sight momentarily. Over.”

The altimeter read 1,350 when she broke through under the dark cloud bellies. Ahead and a tack to the right he saw the twin rows of fires stretching toward a single point in perspective. He threw the bomber into a bank and sideslid across the sky to lose altitude. “Flaps forty.”

“Forty?”

“You heard me.” He wanted to hit low and slow; he wanted to touch down right at the near edge of the strip because if there was patch-ice on the tarmac he’d need every foot of space. “Flaps fifty.”

Five hundred feet and the lights were less than a mile ahead. He pushed the nose down and cut power back. “Maximum flaps now, Ulyanov.”

“Yes sir.”

“Tower to Visitor One. You’re coming in low.”

“Visitor to Tower. Any ground obstacles in my way?”

“Tower to Visitor. You are flying over a forest. Tallest trees fifteen to eighteen meters to within forty meters of runway.”

He leveled off when the altimeter read 250; he had to assume it gave him at least a hundred feet of ground clearance. The trees were quite clear under the landing lights now and he could distinguish the individual lights on the landing field-five-gallon drums full of sand soaked with gasoline and afire.

Ninety-five knots. She barely had airway. Pull the nose up even a fraction now and she’d stall dead. But he didn’t want to have to use his brakes any more than he had to. The last tree flashed underneath and he shoved the nose down and held it there for an agonizing eternity and cut the power and hauled the yoke back into his lap and she stalled out just where she was supposed to: came down very hard on her wheels and bounced ten feet in the air and settled down on three points. Felix put his concentration into steering her down the tarmac. She was still making eighty knots and he touched the brakes experimentally: felt them take purchase and stood lightly on them, slowing smoothly.

When she was down to taxi-maneuver speed he still had a quarter of the runway ahead of him and it pleased him. He turned toward the verge and followed the escort van toward the hardstands. Ulyanov said, “My congratulations, Highness.”

“Thank you.”

“You did that exactly as if she were a light craft.”

Ulyanov switched off and they untangled themselves from their equipment and climbed down through the belly hatch.

Bomber Two was making its run at the strip and they stood under the wing watching it come in. There was no wind but the air was sharp and fiercely cold. Felix waved the escort van away; it could pick them up later.

Young Ilya Rostov was flying Bomber Two. He brought her in a little too fast but there was room enough; he hit a little patch-ice and slewed around midway down the field and Felix thought he might ground-loop but Rostov brought the Fort under control and stopped her at the far corner of the strip. The van led Rostov into his parking space behind Felix’s craft and then turned and waited for Bomber Three.

That was Vinsky’s and Vinsky was a cautious pilot: he came in low and slow on full flaps and followed Felix’s example-deliberately stalling out over the end of the runway and dropping hard on his main gear. Bomber Three wasn’t making ninety knots when she landed but the force of the drop burst the great balloon tire on her starboard oleo. The wing tipped down and the portside tires slid on a millimeter of ice and that was the end of Bomber Three: she crashed through the fire-pots and slammed into the bordering trees at seventy miles an hour and burst into a pyre of flames.