Felix was there with his compact movie-actorish looks and his readiness to laugh or spill tears or burst into rages; he emerged from the hangar in an immaculate white uniform his tailor must have worked around the clock to build.
Alex saluted him. It made Felix grin like a schoolboy. “Welcome to the toy shop, Alex.”
“Where’s our headquarters?”
Felix indicated the decrepit hangar behind him. “Right here, I’m afraid. Well then come in, all of you. My God that’s a big ugly monster of an aircraft.” He turned around with a casual wave that drew them all inside and walked through a small door cut into the hangar’s great sliding gate. Over his shoulder he added, “I’ve got Sergei off in search of billets for you and your friends.”
Alex suppressed a smile. Felix was playing the game to the hilt: he’d already taken over. They’d given him a new role-leader of men-and it looked as if it was the role Prince Felix had been waiting for all his life.
2
Black felt curtains overhung the hangar’s few small windows; the high naked lighting within was harsh even though the building was so huge that the farther corners were in shadow. “It used to be a service shop for aircraft on North Sea rescue patrol,” Felix told them. “They’ve moved most of that over to Scapa Flow now. It’s obsolete and cobwebby but it’s ours.”
The room wasn’t far short of an acre in dimension. Vertical steel supports sprouted from the cracked concrete floor here and there; the ceiling was a skeleton of metal and the roof above it was an arched tunnel of corrugated steel gone rusty in patches so that it looked like camouflage paint. Without the clutter of aircraft for which it had been designed the floor space looked infinite; the scale was intimidating, it dwarfed them all.
In the front corner a plywood partition seven feet high marked off an office that might have been used by the maintenance director at one time; it had an open doorway and Alex could see the end of a desk within. The remainder of the huge room was undivided except by the eight steel pillars-two-foot-square I-beams, the sort they built bridges out of.
It had been Vassily Devenko who’d obtained the use of it and he must have done a good deal of very fast talking because even if they’d intended to abandon the building they’d have wanted to demolish it for scrap.
Along the south wall under the blackout-draped windows were stacked dozens of wooden crates with consignment bills-of-lading taped to them. Two men in English uniforms with slung rifles stood sleepily near the door; they were not Englishmen, they were White Russians; Alex recognized them both from Finland. When they saw his face they both stiffened almost imperceptibly-the gesture of coming to attention; he nodded to them both as he went by them.
He made introductions; he said to Pappy Johnson, “Prince Felix is the man you’re going to train to drop the lump of sugar into the cup of coffee. He’s our lead pilot.”
Johnson was startled, then dubious, then polite: “Fine-that’s just fine.” He essayed a smile.
“You don’t mean to tell me I’ve got to fly one of those bloody four-engine battleships?”
“Felix is a first-class pilot-don’t let him fool you.”
Johnson was squinting. “You’re the Prince Felix Romanov that won a couple of air races.”
“In racing planes, Captain-not stinking huge blunderbusses.”
“You rated to fly multiengine?”
“I’ve flown twin. Never four.”
“You’ll get the hang of it,” Alex said. But Pappy Johnson did not look happy.
A short man-very wide but not fat-emerged from the corner office and strode forward in a British uniform with a colonel’s pips on the shoulderboards.
Felix said diplomatically, “Colonel Tolkachev has been showing me around.”
Tolkachev’s broad ruddy Cossack face was expressionless when he gave his formal salute. “Welcome to Scotland, Colonel.”
It was a studied slight: he knew full well what Alex’s rank was but Alex wasn’t in uniform and it had given Tolkachev the excuse to address him by the rank he’d held when Vassily had been the brigade’s general.
Tolkachev turned to John Spaight and clicked his heels. Spaight shook hands informally with the adjutant. “How are you, Tolkachev? Put on a little weight, I see.”
Tolkachev had been Vassily’s right hand and he was still Vassily’s man and there was no mistaking the enmity, it came off him in waves.
Tolkachev said, “I believe you will find the regiment in order.”
Regiment, Alex thought, picking up on it. No longer brigade. Well they’d been cut up badly in Finland.
“Where’ve you got the men billeted?”
“Across the field. They are smaller hangars than this one.”
“How many men on the roster?”
“Six hundred eighty-two combat personnel. Two hundred eleven support personnel.”
“All from the old outfit, are they?”
“We have had a few recruits. Some of the Poles came over-it looked like more action with us than they had where they were.”
“Is there still a company of Finns?”
“No sir. Helsinki recalled them to defend the border. They are fighting the Bolsheviks again you know.”
“Then we’re all White Russians with a sprinkling of Free Poles, is that it?”
“Yes sir.”
“You’ve done a remarkable job of keeping the unit intact.”
“That was General Devenko’s doing, sir.” Tolkachev wasn’t giving an inch.
“You’ve been here what, nearly a year?”
“That is right.”
“With what duties?” It was like pulling teeth.
“Miscellaneous defense,” Tolkachev replied. “We have fourteen pilots-the British supplied us with those light aircraft you saw at the end of the field. The air detachment has been flying air-sea rescue missions and spotter flights looking for enemy shipping in the North Sea. The rest of us have been manning antiaircraft stations along the coast, guarding rail shipments of war materiel, doing sentry shifts at Scapa Flow. We have done a good deal of combat training and parade-ground drilling-the General said we were going into action.”
“So you started commando training.”
“Yes sir.”
“How far along are they?”
“That would depend on the nature of the combat mission.”
Alex was tired; he’d need a clear morning head to get down to the details. “I’ll want a meeting of all field- grade officers at nine in the morning and a general formation at noon.”
“Very good sir.”
Alex turned to Prince Felix. “Well how are you then?”
Felix spread his hands wide. “Like a duck to water, old man. I’ve been flying those puddle jumpers.”
“I’ve been expecting a message from Baron Oleg.”
“It came this afternoon. It wasn’t much of a message. We’re to expect someone tomorrow evening.”
Then Oleg had kept his word. It would be someone from Spain, hand-carrying the contact drill for reaching Vlasov.
It would be none too soon. Without Stalin’s favorite Red Army general none of this was going to work at all.
3
