Chapter 19

Catalina's childhood home was an old, sprawling villa just outside the village. It was a magnet for artists, musicians, political radicals and those who a later generation would call 'beatniks.' The professor himself was a kindly, bespectacled man with a well-trimmed beard. Catalina's Mother was an older version of her daughter, a big ball of energy who loved to party and paint impressionist paintings.

'Oz' was swept up into their orbit. He was a veterin of the 'anti-fascist struggle, ' a hero of the Spanish Revolution who had fought alongside 'the comrades of the CNT, ' and he'd been a fighter pilot who'd shot down 'Nazis and their Spanish, fascist lackeys.' Self effacing, and naturally humble, 'Oz' found the adulation a little hard to cope with.

For all the theorising and militant speeches made, the 'circle of the struggle, ' the informal Anarchist collective they styled themselves as, only 'Oz' and Catalina had actually put their bodies on the line.

Most of the 'circle' 'Oz' decided, were no more than intellectual dilletantes and weird artists who'd no more clue about fighting Fascists than he could paint a Picasso. 'Oz' told Catalina that many of them thought they could blow the Nazis down with hot air.

Catalina understood what he meant. She'd tried to explain to him about the 'propaganda struggle' and how 'to educate the masses' was just as important than shooting Nazis. But 'Oz' said, all he wanted was a good plane to shoot the fuckers out of the sky.

She helped him write an application to join the French Air Force, the Armee de l'Air, but was turned down flat. 'The Armee de l'Air does not enlist foreign nationals.' It said that maybe he might be interested in the French Foreign Legion. 'Oz' wasn't, he'd no ambition to be a 'ground rat.' He was a skilled, trained, pilot, he reasoned, and the infantry was for those who couldn't do anything else.

He finally wrote to the Australian Military Attache in Paris, behind Catalina's back. He wasn't sure how she'd take it and didn't want any dramas. The reply merely acknowledged his letter and that the Royal Australian Air Force had nothing to offer him. It was even more terse than the French reply. He still flatly refused to see the British Consul in Marseille. 'It'd be a cold day in Hell before he'd have anything to do with British.'

He began to think about his old friends, in particular John Greenhaugh. He hoped he'd got away on that Soviet ship. He imagined he would've been dropped off somewhere with his Spanish lady. Perhaps they were living it up in London? He knew there were two RNZAF training squadrons permanently based in England. John would have signed up with the fighters. He couldn't imagine him being kept on the ground for long.

And John wasn't on the ground. At that very moment he was thundering across the Russian steppe in a formation of Il2 'Sturmaviki.' He was 'training the trainers, ' those senior Russian pilots who were going to teach young Russian air recruits how to fly 'the flying brick.'

'Sturmavik' was Air Force slang for a ground assault aircraft. Previously, it had been applied to the I16bis, a stop-gap version of Polykarpov's famous fighter with a bomb rack and more armour plate for the pilot. But the I16bis 'flew like a barn door' and was 'as slow as a Fergusson tractor.' You can't load more weight onto an airframe and expect the same performance, John had repeatedly told the Russian engineers. But the Air Force hierarchy wanted more bang for the buck and aircraft with respectable performances were burdened down with heavier guns and bombs.

For, John realised, Russian Generals wanted aircraft that could pound tanks and strongpoints on the ground. They wanted 'flying infantry support weapons, ' not fighter aircraft. It was expecting too much of an airframe to perform both roles in 1939. But, in response to the argument that a 'sturmavik' had to make it through a cordon of enemy fighters to perform their role, the Generals only response was to build more 'sturmaviki, ' to overwhelm the defence with numbers.

It was the same policy of 'usure' that had obsessed the French on the Western front in the 1st World War. Then, the French army was to grind down the enemy in wasteful, pointless battles, by sheer weight of numbers. The Russian Generals were proposing the same thing with young, barely trained pilots in heavy, unmaneuvrable aircraft incapable of defending themselves against the crack Luftwaffe 'Jagdstaffeln.'

John could see the stupidity, the callous indifference to casualties, that this implied and it appalled him. But he was bucking a trend in the Russian military philosophy that had existed, perhaps for centuries. Russia's greatest resource was manpower. No matter they lost a battle, there was always another army that could be raised, and another behind that.

The young 'Ivan' of the Russian military didn't want to die. But, the Soviet army and system instilled him with a sense of honour and duty that urged him into supreme acts of courage and sacrifice. There was a certain fatalism about the Russian character, an acceptance that this was the way it was and there was no turning back. The engineers and technicians at the Red Air Force Tactical Research and Weapons Institute at Novgorod got on with the job and kept their private doubts to themselves.

But John was not Russian and it wasn't in his nature to keep his mouth shut. He made his opinions known to anyone who found the time to listen. But, even if they nodded respectfully, John found that was often as far as it went. Russian officialdom was sludgy with inertia and, from experience, few were willing to step out of line. The only fast track to the decision-makers possible was the GPU, the all-powerful intelligence arm of the secret police, the NKVD. Only they had a direct line to the Soviet Politburo and the Armed Forces Command.

It took days to reach Rhykov, John and Benin's 'facilitator.' His role in their lives was to ensure their well-being, their 'co-operation' and ultimately to ensure they didn't 'defect' back to the West. Just how much 'clout' he had in Stalin's secret police, John and Benin weren't sure. In fact, what rank he had, if indeed there was military style ranks in the service, they didn't know. But a word from him gained Benin a place on the teaching staff at the University, a job she found she had talent for.

Rhykov, they had a feeling, knew everything that went on in their lives. He'd turn up at times when their relationship was under strain. He knew what to say and he'd access to the finest vodka in Russia. The GPU's system of part-time informants ran deep into their lives, Benin was certain. She wondered just what those dossiers contained. What opinions she'd expressed went flying straight to Moscow to be filed into the archives of the Kremlin? Would they come back to bite them? If John was no- longer of use, what was going to happen to them and their child? Would they simply be spirited back to the West? Benin didn't think so. John's knowledge of Soviet aviation technology would be far too beneficial to Western intelligence circles. Like it or not, they were in Russia for a long stay. Perhaps they'll never be let go?

And, Benin had often asked herself, what would they do in the West anyway? What country could they settle in? New Zealand? She wasn't sure where that was but knew it was far from everywhere. She understood it was full of sheep and farmers, had small cities and a very staid, English culture. She didn't even know if they had Universities, or the Ballet.

Spain was out of the question now that Francisco Franco was in charge. A large swathe of Europe had adopted a militant fascism and was busy gobbling up anything they could chew. Czecho- Slovakia was being dismembered, Poland was being hounded over the Danzig Corridor and accused of all sorts of barbarities against ethnic Germans. Abysinia in the Horn of Africa had been brutalised by the Italian Army and Air Force. Mussolini vowed to make the Mediterranean 'an Italian lake, ' and talked of 'the New Roman Empire.' At least Russia was safe from the Nazis, Benin thought. It was far too large a country to be conquered by anybody.

Rhykov turned up a week after John had made the call. John explained his feelings about the direction the RAFTRWI was taking. He told him the Red Air Force needed an 'air superiority fighter' that could win the war in the air for the 'sturmaviki.' He didn't feel right about approving the Il2 if it was going to be sent in, unescorted, against Messerschmitts. Rhykov listened to every word John said without interruption.

"When do you think Russia will go to war with the Germans?" Benin asked when John had said his piece.

"Ah, if I had a crystal ball," he replied.

"But you're planning to?"

"We try to plan for everything," he evaded, "but we will see what Herr Hitler has in mind. Meanwhile, we may have other fish to fry."

"Who?" demanded Benin.

"Others," he said, "that have bad intentions towards the USSR."

"Such as?"

"Oh, I don't necessarily mean war," he said, "maybe we lean on them a little?"

Benin got no more out of him. He claimed he may have been a bit too 'candid' already and 'we'll see what we shall see.'

As for John's complaints, Rhykov said he'd make some 'inquiries' and convey his views to the big shots.

"As I understand, it's a question of strategy and having the right tools for the job. We are not ostrichs with our heads in sand," he grinned, "but Generals think they know how to win wars. Stalin, he thinks he knows because his people keep telling him he's right in everything. It maybe not a good idea to tell one's boss he doesn't know anything, right? John, you need to be more, ah, diplomatic, yes? You need to learn to grovel a little, maybe? You piss Mikoyan off, yes? He is, ah, liked by big shots, sure, but he's also good designer of aeroplanes. He knows how to make planes go fast. Lavochkin, Gurevich, Gudenov, Petlyakov and all the others are good designers. You maybe tell them a little of what they want to hear and then maybe they'll hear what you want them to, no? Is this right?"

John thought the logic inescapable.

Jana was being kept away from John deliberately. She knew this instinctively because she was raised with the Soviet mindset and knew the games the bigshots played. She was a 'distraction' to him.

She was a distraction to everyone, it seemed to her. That's why she'd been kicked out of the plum projects and sidelined with the 'go nowhere' orders of Polykarpov. She didn't feel resentful towards John. This was not his doing. Like everybody, he was just doing what he's told.

Polykarpov's project was a depressing place to work. All the staff there, including the designer himself, knew that they were given an impossible brief. To turn an old aeroplane into a first line combat aircraft.

Instead of laughter, jokes, as well as the serious discussions he'd had with John during the Yak 1 project, her colleagues here spent the long days bitching. It was wearying on the spirit and she hated it.

She waited for the time when the plug was going to be pulled, as they were all sure was going to happen soon. The Ministry couldn't keep allocating resources to projects that weren't going to produce results.

At the end of the Month they were going to have a pilot's meeting. Theoretically, all the test pilots were to get together to share ideas and to draw up a collective report. This report was to go to the project director who was supposed to include the pilots' opinions in his overall Monthly report to the Ministry.

In reality, little time was spent on business and it'd lately become an opportunity for the pilots to socialise, to get drunk together. It seemed that test pilots' views carried little weight, so why bother wasting time on reports?