At five Alex presided over a ground-company meeting of field officers. The four of them stood on the tarmac beyond the shadow of the main hangar.
Across the field Pappy Johnson’s pilots were swarming over the bombers like children. A nimbus layer filtered the highland sun’s direct rays and even now there was a thin smell of winter in the air.
John Spaight and the two Russian majors wore gabardine jump suits with bellows pockets. Major Ivan Postsev and Major Leo Solov had worked in tandem since the inception of the Russian Free Brigade under Vassily Devenko in 1934; in combat they were remarkable. If one needed support the other would appear with his men-ready, knowing what his partner wanted of him; there would be no evident signal but each of them had that trick of soundlessly imposing his will on the other.
Physically they presented a ludicrous contrast. Postsev had the muscular strength of ten but to look at him you wouldn’t have thought he’d have made it through the day: he was a cadaver-pasty and wrinkled. Solov was squat and had a smashed face; his ears were like scraps of beef liver; he moved with a dangle-armed roll. He was cautious by training but not by nature; with Postsev it was the reverse.
“We’re going to be officer-heavy,” Alex told them. “That’s the way I want it because when we go into operation we’ll be in squad-size teams. I want an officer in command of each team. But for training purposes we’re splitting the company down the middle. There’ll be two platoons-one of you will command each of them. You’re going to have to be ahead of the others because General Spaight can’t be everywhere at once-you’ll have to lead a good bit of the training yourselves. Any problems?”
Postsev said, “All our pilots seem to be in bomber training. Who is to fly the parachute training flights?”
“You won’t start jumping from aircraft for more than a month yet. By then we’ll have the air contingent sorted out and six of the pilots will be assigned to the paradrop transports. In the meantime you’ll be learning to jump from a rapelling tower.”
“Which brings us to a thorny one,” Spaight said. “We haven’t got a rapelling tower.”
“Tomorrow morning Colonel MacAndrews is sending us a dockyard construction team with a mobile crane. They’re going to tear one of those small hangars apart and use the girders to build a tower on top of this hangar. It’ll give us a hundred-and-twenty-foot slide drop. It’s a little shorter than usual but it’ll have to do. I’ve got MacAndrews’s word it will be ready to climb by Thursday morning.”
The regiment already had its obstacle course in the woods beyond the far end of the runway-coiled concertina barbed wire, trenches, inclined logs, culverts, climbing trestles, even a stream that came down out of the dark highlands beyond and flowed across the slope and down toward the Inverness flats.
Alex said, “You’ll have to sort out your drivers. Make sure they’re qualified on the vehicles they may have to commandeer. Most of the Soviet staff cars are Packards. The lorries and ambulances are mainly Daimlers and Mercedes.”
The two majors nodded. That equipment would be roughly the same as they’d had to contend with in Finland.
“All right. Now we’ve got a defector. Brigadier Cosgrove’s bringing him along tomorrow morning. You’ll have about ten days with him. He’s a Red Army officer-a lieutenant colonel. He crossed the line into Finland about three weeks ago. I don’t know what incentives the British have offered him to cooperate with us but I’m told he’s coming here voluntarily. I want you to pump him dry. Everything he knows. Make a note of every piece of information no matter how insignificant it may seem. We want everything from their order-of-battle to the gossip in his officers’ mess. When we go in we’ll be posing as officers and men from his battalion. You’ll have to know the names and ranks of every officer in that battalion and as many non-coms and enlisted men as he can give you. And not just names-physical descriptions, peculiarities, backgrounds, gossip-you’ve got to be able to behave as if you really know those people, in case you run into someone who really does know them. Once you’ve got the information you’ll pass it on to your men and be sure they’ve got it straight. Every night I want the men briefed on these things-and I want them awake enough to absorb it. All right?”
Major Solov said in his thick Georgian accent, “It would save time if we could detail subordinates to some of this. To continue the debriefings while we are in training during the day.”
Spaight said, “We can’t pull anyone out of training for that.”
Alex said, “I’ve got someone who can do it for us.”
At the hangar door Sergei appeared, beckoning; Alex excused himself and went that way.
“It’s the telephone. Brigadier Cosgrove, from Edinburgh.”
He closed the office door behind him before he picked up the phone. “Danilov here.”
“Bob Cosgrove. You may recall we discussed your meeting with a certain naval official?”
“I recall it.”
“It’s been laid on for this Friday-nineteenth September. It would be most appreciated if you could make yourself available in London.”
“What time?”
“Sometime in the evening. The arrangements are rather informal-I’m sure you understand.”
“Yes.”
“I should come by rail if I were you-one can’t promise good flying weather in London, can one. Not to mention the Luftwaffe. Do you recall the address I mentioned to you this morning?”
“Yes.” It was a Knightsbridge pub: Cosgrove had said, It’s a contact spot. I chose it at random. If we meet in London we’ll meet there. I’m giving you this now because I shan’t want to specify an address over the telephone.
Cosgrove said, “Five o’clock Friday then. We’ll have dinner and then confer with the Navy. Come alone, of course.”
He didn’t mean that the way it sounded; he meant Be sure you’re not followed.