Chapter 4

"Traffic Control, Helsinki, come in, please?" Mischa radioed. "This is Soviet military flight at 68 degrees 11 North by 26 degrees 1 West magnetic at 210 high. Advise overfly, over." He held up the ear of his headset to indicate he was receiving nothing but static. "I have a big fat bomb and I'm going to drop it on your president, Finland," said, Mischa through the mike, grinning.

"What did you say, Mischa?" Svetlana asked him, from the second seat.

"I said, 'have a nice day'," he told her.

"You did not!" Svetlana said, scolding.

"Huh! Yvgeny, why is the sun following us? It's still sitting there in my right vision. Shouldn't it be falling behind? Are you sending me in a circle, perhaps?"

"No, sir. INS and progress plot are in accordance, sir. We are on two four zero. I can check again., if you like."

"No, I trust you."

"Mischa, that time. It said 1130 hours, June 7, no?" asked Svetlana. "Back when Yvgeny was setting the navigation?"

"Yes, what of it?"

"It was about that time on June 7 when everybody disappeared. I remember it was my break and I went to the washroom. When I finished, the operation's room was empty."

"Really? How strange," Mischa replied, thinking, rubbing his jaw. "Yvgeny? Do you remember back on the Petrovska? I pointed out the clocks were wrong in both the bridge and chartroom. remember?"

"Yes, sir, I remember clearly. It was 1130 hours. The chart and radio log both showed June 7, when we knew it was only the 6th."

Mischa Yefremov looked at the sun again, then back to the compass. He stared out the window, again, for an appreciable time, down to the ground below, then back at the sun. "Yvgeny, confirm your fix, if you please. Use a ground reference if you have to. Then I want you to go up to the dome and take a solar fix. I then want you to work back through your tables to give us a time and date, given our current height."

"Yes, sir. It'll take a while. There is a river pattern near Rovaniemi that is easy to spot from the air. I will use that. It is coming up in about ten minutes by dead reckoning."

"No problem, take your time and do it properly."

"Mischa, what are you thinking? I can see in your eyes you're figuring something out. It is about the time, isn't it?" Svetlana asked him, apprehensive.

"Not, sure," he mumbled. "It's just not possible."

"Mischa?"

"Let Yvgeny work something out for me, Svetlana. He will have the answer, or at least, the question."

"You're not making sense."

"Nothing makes sense, my dear."

They sat in silence, Mischa staring fixedly ahead, while, Svetlana looked out the windows at the vista below. She saw the green of the forests dotted by sparkling blue lakes. She stared hard at the waters hoping to see the faint streak of the wash of some tiny boat that might indicate human life. Perhaps another aircraft might appear beside them, she mused? She hoped it wouldn't be a fighter of the Finnish Air Force with orders to shoot down this Russian intruder. Out of the corner of her eye, she was aware of Yvgeny Rostrimov shifting around, climbing into the plexi-glass dome behind the cockpit on top of the hull, ascending, then rushing back to his desk and banks of switches. She turned her head and saw him bowed over charts and books of tables, leafing through this and that, and scribbling calculations down on his dog-eared notepad.

"Captain?" she heard his voice through the headset. His voice was bland and businesslike, but she could hear the uneasiness behind the mask. "I have time and date. 1130 hours, June 7, 1959."

Yefremov nodded slowly, then mumbled a thank you. "It is not the world that has changed," he said. "It is we. We are locked in a moment of time, June 7, 1130 hours. Everywhere will be exactly the same - same time, same date. It is against the natural laws of the universe, yet it has happened. Our clocks are just a mechanical means of measuring time, see? You set a clock to whatever time you like and it just sets forth from that moment - showing whatever time it's been told. Otherwise, all clocks we have not reset will display what is the real time of the moment we live in, and that's 1130, June 7. The world has not changed at all and people are still there, it's just they have moved on from where we last saw them. It is like watching a train after it's left the station. The train, like people, has already left and all we can see is where they were."

"That, that, makes absolutely no sense to me at all, Mischa." Svetlana looked at him. "What is this of trains and clocks? What has happen to us?" She looked at him, distressed and he held her hand, staring right back. "Mischa, do you know where we are?"

"We are where we think we are, and that's over Finland and heading for England. Imagine, my darling, living out your life in a tiny speck of time that never changes? The sun will always stay up in the sky like a Northern Summer. If you want to look at the night sky, we could fly South to the Antarctic. We refuel wherever we like - who's going to stop us?"

"Where would we land in the Antarctic, sir?" Rostrimov, asked, furrowing his brow.

"Who said anything about landing, huh? We throttle down and just cruise around. That would be something, don't you think?"

"I don't like it, Mischa. I want to know what's happened to us?" Svetlana said.

"The answers will come in time, Svetlana," Mischa replied. "Just have patience and enjoy the moment we are living in."

"You are taking all this too well, Mischa. You're scaring me."

"At the moment we can do little about it. Maybe sometime we can find a way back, but, until now, we just need to accept what is."

"Yvgeny, what do you think of all this?" she asked.

"I believe the Captain is correct, madam," he replied. "We..."

"Oh, to you the Captain is always correct," she snapped. "You must wake up to the fact this hero Captain of yours is not some God. The military, the Soviet system, has sucked away any independent thought you might have had. Like Mischa, you just accept everything you've been told and look to some uniformed idiot with more stars on his shoulders to tell you what to do. Without a superior, you are nothing!" she cried, before breaking down in tears.

Rostrimov sat silently, shock written all over his face. "Madam," he said, eventually. "Madam, do you have a better idea?"

Mischa grinned at her, before turning away. "Don't!" she snarled at him. "Don't you dare say a word!"

They droned down the Gulf of Bothnia with the coast of Finland just off to their left. They made landfall over Sweden to the Northeast of Uppsala. Mischa, again, radioed an 'advisory' of their passage to Swedish control. Once again, there was no acknowledgement.

They kept a constant cruising speed of 320 kph, although the '95 was capable of three times that in level flight. To have gone faster would've burned up far more fuel and, although the aircraft had an extraordinary long range, Yefremov told them he wanted to keep 'all options open.'

On Cold War surveillance missions, Soviet maritime patrol aircraft typically entered the North Sea via the top of Norway, taking a wide detour out over the Barents Sea. Although, by bilateral agreements, Soviet military traffic could overfly both Finnish and Swedish territory - providing they observed strict reporting protocols - few maritime surveillance patrols of any country care to announce themselves to countries likely to pass the information on to their rival alliance. Although, both Sweden and Finland were neutral, the Soviet Union had few reasons to trust their intelligence services. Part of the '95's mission in those days, was to probe Western detection assets and there was no point in giving them any assistance.

The constant droning of the '95 had almost a mesmerizing affect on Svetlana after a time, and, closing her eyes, dozed through most of the passage over Sweden. She woke to a shuffling beside her as Rostrimov took the first seat for an hour or so, but quickly fell back asleep. On long missions, Soviet pilots took spells, taking short naps to ward off fatigue in one of the fold down bunks located at the back of the rear cabin. It was not uncommon for them to take handfuls of uppers, such as Dextroamphetamine, to remain sharp. There was no supply of Dextro on board the '09', so Mischa had to do things the old fashioned way. When she finally awoke, they were through the Skagerrak and well out over the North Sea.

"Rostrimov?" Mischa called through the intercom. "Give me a heading for Southend."

"That's a little out of our way, sir."

"Yes, but I can't see any reason why we can't do a little sightseeing, no? How would you like a little cruise up the Thames? Svetlana hasn't been to England, before."

"Two, one, fiver, sir, ought to take us right up the river."

"Two, one, five, it is! You wait, Svetlana, I'll show you something - the great city of London!"

Westfield cottages was a private nursing home set among a beautifully manicured garden just out of Southend on Sea on the Essex coast. Mary Ashburton had resided there for the last five years. She suffered from depression and at times in her life had become suicidal. She'd been a tutor in Russian at the University of London and had even done some work for the War Department during, and immediately after, the war, translating communications from the Soviet Embassy. Her episodes of depression had gradually got worse and her daughter, fearing her mother would be sectioned by the State Health authorities and locked up in a mental institution, had persuaded her to commit herself into Westfield as a much more humane option. She had her own detached cottage, where she had a modicum of independence, and 24 hour care provided at great expense from her own resources and that of her daughter's family.

Mary enjoyed life there. She had plenty of books and she'd taken up gardening. If she had any complaints, it was some of the other residents. She'd always enjoyed her moments of solitude, where she could read, think, work on her garden, and other people had been a distraction. But now, June the 7th, it was a beautiful Summer's day and there was no-one around to disturb her. It was so gloriously quiet at Westfield Cottages, Mary could hear her own heartbeat, amid the twittering of the birds in the trees. The dialogues that had constantly crowded her consciousness had receded to quiet murmurings and, today, she had the time to listen. She felt at peace for the first time in a long, long, time.

She had fixed herself some 'elevensies' from the deserted kitchen and had gone out into the garden to sit with her cup of Earl Grey tea and Boston bun with fresh, clotted, cream when she became aware of a low hum somewhere, far off, out the sea. It was just so unusual a sound, she looked up into the sky, cocking an ear to work out from where it was coming from. It was persistent, wavering slightly in pitch in the light sea breeze. She thought it sounded like the approach of a speeding train, but there hadn't been anything on the distant railway track for four days. She got up and walked to the gate at the bottom of the garden, where there were views out to the mouth of the Thames. Far off, she could see a smudge of thin, black smoke, very low down over the sea. As she watched, it took the form of an aircraft with long wings studded by curiously fluttering propellors. Mary furrowed her brow, as the plane came closer, still low down, and the sound increased in volume to a deep rumbling. She held onto the top of the wooden gate, and could feel the old timber begin to vibrate. The plane came closer and closer until she could make out the fuselage and a cabin. It was silver and the sun reflected bright sparkles that hurt her eyes. To Mary, she thought it was about to land in her garden and she thought of fleeing until common sense told her there was no point running.

Then it was heading for the river. The sound increased in volume until it filled every crevice, every space inside her head, a vicious, evil snarling. As it skimmed past low over the water, she could plainly see the red star on the swept back tail fin.

"Russian!" she squealed in delight. "The Russians!" She bounced in joy, and ran back to her cottage for her hat and coat.

"There!" Mischa pointed. "That is where the Queen lives - Buckingham Palace. She is related to the Tsar, you know. And there, that is Big Ben and Tower Bridge over there."

"That is a big place for one person to live," Svetlana said. "What does she do all day?"

"Oh, order the servants about, sit on a big throne, have her hair done, take tea with dukes and lords - who knows? We could make you Queen of England," he grinned. "And you could live in a big palace like that."

"And you could be my King!" she grinned back. "What should we make Yvegeny? We'll have to give him something to do."

"Deputy King! You would like to be Deputy King of England?" Mischa asked him.

"If I could have some pretty servant girls, sir."

"Sure, we'll find you some girls, no problem!" he declared.

"This is a dream," Svetlana said in wonder. "We're actually flying up the Thames river over London, England. If I die today, it'll be worth it."

"See? I told you you'd like it. I flew airliners here back in the thirties. We used to land at an aerodrome over there to the North. I suppose it's gone, now. Likely they have built a new one somewhere."

"You meet many English girls, sir?" Rostrimov asked him.

"A few," he shrugged, distractedly. "We aircrew were not suppose to mix too much with the locals, but, what can I say? We were all young then and horny. Where there is a way..."

"I'm sure you found it, Mischa, Svetlana said, teasing. "I'm sure you left a trail of broken hearts and half Russian children running around."

"Perhaps," Mischa said, wistfully.

"And I'm sure I don't want to hear about them," she added, frowning.