Every once in a while the conversation drifted into – then for him, quickly back out of – more personal areas. He learned she had once been married to Elanore Calder’s younger brother, which was somehow supposed to explain why ‘El’, as she called her, was her best friend and why she was always hovering when events like tonight’s took place. He decided again to keep his curiosity in check and not explore how that relationship had survived.
They had a few good laughs over her stories about Houston’s social set, including a few of the people at the exhibit gala; she also told him quite a bit more about the Calder family than he had already been able to uncover before coming to Houston.
He learned her big sister-ish sister-in-law was an authentic native Texan, married to the man who had gradually turned his father’s relatively small but successful aeronautical engineering firm into a major software and aerospace technology conglomerate.
Kirkland was also surprised that despite her close relationship to the Calders, she was a white-knuckled flyer. For her, commercial passenger jets were scary enough and although she had travelled with the Calders in their bigger single-engined turboprop a few times, small planes made her distinctly uncomfortable.
As the dinner conversation proceeded Catherine found getting to know more about the man seemed like some kind of a chess match. He had a way of deflecting questions that resulted in her telling him things. She got him to describe a few things about his home on Long Island only by talking about her original home in Florida where her parents still lived. When she told him that her mother worked part time in real estate and her father would soon retire from the postal service she learned he lived alone but not really alone; in addition to the housekeeper-cook that came three days a week there was a family living in a home on the property.
After telling him about her degree from the University of Florida, she pried out a little more about his education and learned he graduated from Oxford and that his economics doctorate was from Georgetown. The fact that he was a visiting professor at UCONN was another curiosity she asked more about then realized his reluctance to talk about it came from the fact that, as he explained, statistics were incredibly boring to ninety-nine-point-nine, nine, nine, nine, etc., percent of the population.
Talking about their work commutes and traffic led him to reveal he sometimes used a boat to get across Long Island Sound when he was teaching in Connecticut. In nice weather the ten-mile trip could take less than ten minutes each way; in really bad weather the drive was a hundred mile round trip in dreadful traffic and he would sometimes be forced to take a hotel room near Stamford.
Kirkland managed to avoid talking more specifically about his business and especially his clients other than to say had been busier as a result of the publication of Hector Feliciano’s Lost Museum. The intrigue surrounding that revelation successfully diverted their conversation away from his life and back to the subject of artworks and how WWII had impacted their ownership in often disturbing ways for museums and owners around the world.
But as midnight approached, they realized they were the only remaining diners in the restaurant and they agreed it was time to leave. The waiter was dutifully corrected after handing the bill to Kirkland and soon after Catherine signed the credit card slip they left.
As she drove back to the museum they were both trying to not appear too forward in what had been, thus far, a mostly professionally-oriented evening. In their own ways, each knew they had ventured into the edges of a very unexpected and powerful whirlpool with potentially good or bad future consequences; for both, caution born of past missteps was overcoming the effect of the margaritas.
Before she turned onto the street for access to the parking ramp she let herself take a capricious leap and asked if he was going to be leaving for Long Island in the morning.
“Not tomorrow,” he answered with a hint of curiosity then decided to take a chance of his own. “Is a Yankee’s offering to exchange cell phone numbers acceptable behavior in these parts?”
Without waiting for an answer he retrieved a business card and a gleaming Krone pen from an inside pocket then reached forward, holding the card on the sloping dash while he wrote something on the back.
Catherine glanced long enough to see him write two phone numbers and for the first time she noticed the Patek Phillipe watch fully exposed on his left wrist. Appraising must pay very well, she thought.
“Trade?” he suggested. “The first one is my cell – the second rings my GM’s desk.” He offered the card to her and added, “Cell phones don’t work everywhere but they have ways to reach me anytime, anywhere ... I have one of those satellite pagers.”
Pleased and not the least embarrassed at his invitation, she opened the glove box between them, lifted out a wallet and removed one of her business cards. “My cell is on there. I’m permanently attached to it,” she admitted.
He read it as he spoke toward the dashboard and gestured in the air with the pen. “I have a meeting with a client here in the morning. Then I have to be in Dallas for an appointment Friday morning ... but I can be back here that afternoon.”
When she looked at him uncertainly he offered, “I’ll take you to dinner somewhere I’m relatively sure you’ve never been.”
In Texas? What does he know about Texas? she thought then decided not to ask. Catherine, don’t let this one get away, she could almost hear as if Elanore Calder were whispering in her ear. “Okay, Professor Kirkland – on one condition.”
When he heard her agree Kirkland actually felt his pulse quicken; she could have asked and gotten almost anything and in this most delicate of now-purely social negotiations the chance to see her again overcame his normal caution in dealing with business clients – and their friends. “Agreed,” he said, mustering a confident look instead of grinning like a smitten teenager.
She raised an eyebrow and with a barely-concealable tone of curiosity asked, “Why did you come to Houston.”
He didn’t hesitate. “As long as you won’t call me ‘professor’.”
She made a show of trying to decide then nodded once. “Agreed.”
He inhaled and held it for a moment with his eyes narrowed as he considered how to explain without actually answering. “Alright,” he began then exhaled as if giving in. “I’m here on behalf of a client ... a very private client.”
“And?” she prodded, realizing she should have asked who had invited him to the private showing. Somebody I know knows this man, she told herself.
“The one I’m meeting in the morning,” he answered, putting her question off teasingly with a raised index finger. “One condition, one question, one answer,” then he smiled slyly, took her right hand and barely kissed it.
She could feel the warmth of his breath as she heard him add, “If I stay here any longer I fear you’d learn far too much.”
Instead of letting her hand slip from his, she turned further, leaning closer and putting her other hand behind his neck, pulled him gently toward her. He didn’t resist and she closed her eyes and kissed him temptingly. When she managed to overcome the urge to pursue the almost delirious feelings she backed away slightly and took in a deep breath. “You make a compelling argument, Pro—Michael. It’s Michael ... not Mike?”
Kirkland smiled. “As long as it’s not Professor ... but only my nephews call me ‘Uncle Mike’.”
With her eyes unavoidably soft she almost whispered, “So ... Friday?”
“Friday – if you can get away early in the afternoon, around three? I’ll ring you ahead,” he said softly, still close to her. He lifted her chin slightly, kissed her again then watched her eyes barely open when he pulled away. As if giving himself sound advice he said barely above a whisper, “I’d better get out of here.”
The implication behind the statement and especially the way he said it only amplified her feelings but she managed not to say anything that might reveal what was going on in her mind. She smiled quickly as if agreeing to put a stop to
such ideas and put the car in gear.
Kirkland undid the seatbelt and began to extricate himself from the very low car then bent down to look at her from the curb. “And, I’m buying ... and I’ll drive,” he commented almost sarcastically. “And thank you for dinner ... good night.”
“You’re welcome ... I’ll see you Friday ... good night,” she responded with a warm smile.
“Friday,” he said then closed the door. Instead of standing there waving like some smitten fool watching her drive away, he turned and walked briskly into the parking ramp then jogged up the stairs to the second level with his mind on nothing more than Catherine Cruz and what to do to suitably impress her.
CHAPTER 4
Moscow, USSR, January, 1942
With almost no light coming through the windows from the stone-gray late afternoon skies, Col. General Mikhail Leonov, Lt. General Alexsandr Krylov and Lt. General Andreyev Golikov stood looking over a long table scattered with maps, charts and various documents illuminated only by incandescent lamps around the perimeter and a single ornate chandelier centered above the ornate table.
Instead of meeting in the Kremlin, they were convened in a large room in Stalin’s isolated “number one” dacha some five kilometers to the southwest and well beyond the view and curiosity of others. The first General Secretary of the Communist Party had ordered the dacha’s staff out and sent the three officers there to ensure they could confer in secrecy and without interruption.
Leonov stepped to the ringing phone on the small table at the side of the room and after answering and listening without offering any responses, he finished the call by simply saying, “Yes, Comrade,” then turned to face the other two men, pausing in thought and finally saying as if it were bad news, “It is worse than I expected – eight months, no longer.”
“Eight months?” Krylov asked incredulously, wondering how it would be possible to have planes ready and pilots trained in such a short period.
Golikov looked back and forth between the other men in amazement. “But ... even following our present timetable we have little or no margin for error.”
Leonov didn’t react to his subordinate’s concerns and he simply stared at the items on the surface of the table. After a few moments he looked at both of the men and added quietly, “There is no option, Comrades.”
As the most senior of them it was he who faced the most immediate, ruthless and capricious wrath of their great leader should the mission fail. He knew in his mind, if not his heart, that the odds of success had been improved by careful planning on the part of his trusted fellow officers, but they now had to begin executing the plan in a minimum amount of time.
Leonov picked up a decanter and poured more wine into his glass, then looked at his officers as he poured for them. There was a long-held familiarity among the tiny, secretive splinter he had formed and with no party apparatchiks or staff anywhere to be found in the entire house, formality was relaxed.
“Alexsandr, you should start assembling your pilots at once. They will have precious little time ... and it will be in England.”
“England?” Krylov asked with even more surprise.
“They can begin training there immediately,” Leonov said as he bent down and wrote a date and a contact name on a piece of notepaper. “There will not be sufficient aircraft here in time for them. Here ... this is the RAF officer you will coordinate with. He will be at the British Embassy day after tomorrow ... he will be expecting you.”
Krylov took the paper and read the unfamiliar name. He quickly recognized the Sofiyskaya 14 address of the embassy directly across the Moskva River from the Kremlin but what concerned him most was the rapidly approaching date.
The senior officer sipped his wine before continuing. “As we should have anticipated, much has changed in a short time. Comrade Stalin just confirmed it,” he noted with a tip of his head toward the phone. “A British aircraft carrier will be assigned to the arctic convoy route in September. We cannot affect its departure date. But twelve planes can be placed in the below-deck hangar and brought to Keg Ostrov intact. There will be no delay for assembly and testing. Unfortunately for your pilots, they will have to accompany their planes on the voyage.”
Krylov’s mouth opened slightly at this revelation and he leaned over and uncovered one of the maps on the table. As he pointed at Keg Ostrov he said, “That means if they arrive ... without damage,” he cautioned, “weather permitting, they could be readied to depart for Smolnya the following day.”
Leonov nodded then began laying out the foundation of the orders that would be coming from him in the coming weeks and months. He turned to Krylov with a kind of resignation in his voice and asked, “How many of them are still alive?”
“As of three days ago, all twenty,” Krylov said. He could see the immediate relief in the General’s face and added, “Yes, it is good news. And I have five alternates if need be.”
Leonov nodded as he pursed his lips and made a slight smacking sound through them. Pilots were hard to keep alive and the irony of having to take some of the best out of combat was not lost on him. “I will sign the orders tonight.”
Being the logistics officer for the mission Golikov could still hardly believe what he had learned about the British naval convoy. “A carrier in the Arctic,” he whispered shaking his head. “It sounds utterly foolhardy to me.”
Leonov pointed out the obvious with a wave across the assembled maps. “The U-boats have been taking their toll. The British want air cover for the convoys. So they are sending a carrier. We can use that to our advantage.”
Both of his officers looked at him with shared concern. The arctic routes were exceedingly dangerous and not only because of the German U-boats and air patrols; the weather was almost as treacherous. Leonov looked at their expressions and said flatly, “We cannot meet Comrade Stalin’s timetable any other way ... if we were fortunate enough to have two or three more months perhaps we could use an alternative ... but not today. No ... no,” he said as he shook his head slightly. “No, comrades ... for us ...” he inhaled deeply before going on, “for us the cargo will be ready in Leningrad in September.”
He paused for a moment or two, seemingly reluctant to say more then added quietly, “An alternate plan is already in place but that is not your concern. Frankly I see the alternate having little chance of success ... perhaps in year it would be workable.”
Given the new orders Krylov was now faced with not only the logistics of getting twenty pilots to England to train in the new airplanes in a short period of time, but to see that twelve of them and twelve planes were on board a British warship without incident. If that wasn’t daunting enough, they also had to somehow arrive safely at a port in Arkhangelsk that might be overrun by the Finns or the Nazi’s sometime in the future.
“Who will be in command?” Leonov asked.
“His name is Kovpak ... Major Alexsandr Kovpak.”
Leonov was somewhat surprised that he actually recognized the name of an individual fighter pilot but he was also pleased to find out someone of that stature and reputation had been chosen. He nodded seriously in agreement.
“He also reads and speaks English,” Krylov added. “One other does as well.”
“Good,” Leonov said enthusiastically. The language issue was just one of the problems they faced in getting Lend Lease aircraft into service. The Soviet teams responsible for assembling aircraft now starting to arrive in Ivanovo spoke no English and the British technicians and engineers who were working on the Hurricanes spoke no Russian. By some miracle of chance, a member of each team happened to speak French and painfully slow progress was being made.
Bureaucratic issues only added to the inherent logistical delays. Leonov had been told flight testing of one aircraft would begin ’perhaps in April’ and no more than six would be available by June at the earliest; with the grudging cooperation of the RAF and the British Navy the timetable for Stalin’s mission was now possibly – but just barel
y – going to be met.
“Do not confide in him or any of them about their mission objective until they have returned to Smolnya,” Leonov ordered calmly. “The less they know the less they can say to some curious British airman ... or sailor.”
Krylov nodded. “As far as any of them will know, they are to become proficient and then deliver the aircraft to a location they will learn of when it is necessary for them to know.”
“I will have quarters set apart for them well before they arrive. They can have no outside contact,” Leonov added.
In addition to secrecy, Leonov’s intricate plan relied on a personal opinion he had formed. He and Krylov had spent three days with a handful of U.S. Army Air Corps pilots as they demonstrated their planes and he had developed significant respect for the brash American officers and the aircraft they flew. He also knew Krylov had been among the delegation to the United States that evaluated Lend Lease aircraft and they shared the same opinions of the potential.
The desperate need for more rapid progress in aviation was not lost on him; the Luftwaffe was sending improved aircraft into the fight and it would take time for some of the emerging Soviet advancements to match them.
Leonov also knew the air war over Western Europe had evolved into a different form of combat than the one the Soviets faced. The British and Americans were engaging Nazi aircraft at very high altitudes where the P-39 proved ineffective, but in the eastern European front where the battles raged closer to the ground, he was not alone in considering the strange tricycle-geared but heavily armed airplane to be a potentially valuable weapon – in properly-trained hands.
The need for the planes and the decision to use them also enabled a convenient cover story to ensure that curiosity about the secret mission would be minimized; under the Lend Lease program, additional P-39’s would be coming from the United States via Abadan, Iran and having a cadre of trained pilots and ground crews located there was an eminently practical step.