Orchestra

Chapter 2-2

The crews of the bombers flew calmly on, untroubled, but inside, everyone was expecting the Soviets’ snub-nosed MiG-15s to appear out of nowhere and pounce. The B-29 echelon kept a formation that ensured each gunner could cover his neighbors with crossfire, and while everyone held the formation it would be hard for anyone to sneak up on them. With time, though, the Russian pilots developed a dogfighting tactic that brought them success. First a wave of interceptors would rush in. The American Sabres and the Russian MiGs would clash, pairs of opposing jets flying all over the place with incredible aerobatics. Then a second wave of interceptors would fly in from different directions and try to disrupt the bombers’ formation.

It was never the case that everyone made it home from a night flight. The Russian fighters merely had to disrupt the squadron, and then each bomber would have to fight its own battle, and fending off the enemy alone was not easy. Once they lost their formation, the slow and unwieldy bombers became easy pickings for the fighters.

In Vietnam, Colonel Creighton commanded a strategic wing and flew the new B-52. In the air they were covered by supersonic F-4 Phantoms, a plane which had just been introduced into active service. The subsonic MiG-17s and MiG-19s flown by the Vietnamese and Chinese were slower than the Phantoms, and the story was the same as it had been in Korea: at first the Americans felt safe and at ease in the skies above Vietnam, and at the high altitudes unattainable by the enemy’s fighters they would arrogantly comport themselves, completely carefree, as if they were the lords of the skies, conquerors of the heights.

No one would dispute that the strategic long-distance B-52 bombers were a technical marvel of that era. They could fly in any weather, they could easily cross an ocean and back, and their distance, speed, weight capability, and ceiling were impressive. The B-52 had no equal in the precision of its bombing, and furthermore, it was the first time a bomber had been equipped with rockets guided by on-board radar.

By every measure, the B-52 was a perfect plane, and when it was accompanied by F-4 Phantoms, it was well-nigh invincible. Not even the Soviet forces, let alone the Vietnamese or Chinese, were capable of opposing it. Later, when Vietnam had received the new MiG-21 supersonic fighters, and when the local pilots, slowly and with difficulty, had mastered the art of flying them, flying a B-52, too, became a dangerous job; the risks increased considerably. Later still, the Soviet Union equipped Vietnam’s anti-aircraft defenses with surface-to-air missiles. The need for fighter planes was reduced, and they gradually disappeared entirely.

We continued to sit in the restaurant of New York’s Yale Club on the twenty-sixth floor, but the colonel was somewhere else. He had forgotten all about me; he was absorbed in his thoughts and said nothing. Steven Creighton was still far away in the night skies above Korea, above Vietnam, seeing his comrades perish, and he was gripped by the same fear that he had felt then, his world growing dark and his thoughts gloomy.

“Maybe it’s time for me to go.” I spoke up in order to bring him back to himself. The colonel glanced at me in confusion, as if only half-awake. He looked around the room, apparently baffled, wondering where he was and what had happened to him. Then he pulled himself together, regained his composure, and nodded, as if he had made the entire journey back from there to here in an instant.

“Sorry, I got lost in thought,” he excused himself, and shook his head in shame. “Bad form to do that in company.”

“It’s no problem,” I reassured him. “I still don’t know whether the Russians actually fought in Vietnam or not. What do you think?”

“We all felt certain the Russians were fighting there, though we didn’t have any real proof. But the planes the Vietnamese had were Russian, and the way they flew left no doubt. They fought in the air like Russians – obviously the Russians had taught them how to fly and how to fight. We lost thousands of planes. And the pilots – what about them? If you weren’t killed, you still ended up a prisoner.”

“It wasn’t the Russians who started it,” I said, despite myself. I did not want to get into an argument. Petty arguments often lead to pointless hostility.

“North Vietnam started it, just like North Korea,” Colonel Creighton explained, convinced of the rightness of his position. “We couldn’t accept that, we had to get involved. Then the Russians came in as well.”

“Of course they did. Could they really have stayed on the sidelines?”

“No, they couldn’t, but that doesn’t make things any easier. We had to sort out the whole mess.”

I thought how ultimately the entire world had turned into an arena in which our two countries vied with each other. Sad as it was, our entire existence was stained by a merciless rivalry. Both they and we were subjected to a brutal struggle, and everyone suffered. How many lives were cut short on both sides; how cruel fate had been.

Nothing could be done now, however. We sat there quietly, neither of us saying anything. The atmosphere around our table grew strange at the Yale Club restaurant, where the Manhattan skyline was right there outside the glass and the crowds of people on the street far below were like ants. The gloom that hung over our table was understandable. I even felt remorse; it was my fault that this had happened. Yes, it sometimes happens that undesirable events result, uncontrolled and unexpected, from a chance conversation between two strangers stuck in an elevator, who otherwise would never have met.

A punctilious waiter in a red waistcoat brought the bill, and we settled it – naturally, each paying for himself, as is the done thing among civilized people. Especially considering that I was spending money meant for official business. Unlike me, Creighton left the waiter a generous tip, but I was a simple Soviet man… No, not a prisoner, as the famous song goes, but I had been sent on a mission, and I could not allow myself to squander money, to carouse and live high on the hog. Now all that remained for us was to stand up, walk out, and say goodbye to each other forever. Nothing tied me to him; it had been a chance meeting at a place where our paths had crossed.

I said goodbye, left the hotel, and flagged a taxi. From the restaurant on the twenty-sixth floor, New York had seemed majestic and solemn, like a great big organ in a church, but down below, gloomy Vanderbilt Avenue resembled a dim subterranean passageway. At street level, the city looked anxious and agitated, passersby rushing along with exaggeratedly serious faces, as if everyone was worried about the exact same thing at the same time. Crowds of people swarmed around the entrance to Grand Central Station, where cabs in their black, yellow, and gray colors would fly in from everywhere and then speed off.

Among the passersby, from whom one got a clear whiff of the dull weekday grind, only a couple of young blacks brought life to the joyless scene. They flashed dazzlingly white teeth as they laughed heartily, making their leisurely way in brightly colored shirts and pants. With merry and exaggerated gestures they swept past us and then vanished, like clowns who had just been gaily performing at a carnival and then suddenly found themselves in Manhattan, among ordinary city folk at a random hour between breakfast and lunch.

I, too, had to quicken my steps, for before I flew out of New York the next day, there remained things to be done. On trips abroad, one day is never enough.

After I had eaten breakfast at the Yale Club restaurant, I spent the entire day in various visits and meetings, and I returned to the hotel only in the evening. In the spacious lobby, with its striped sofas and soft armchairs, a porter and some messengers were standing behind a wide wooden counter to the left of the entrance, dressed in colorful uniforms and round hats. Here I met Colonel Creighton again. The bellhop had just taken his luggage out of the elevator, and I took it upon myself to walk the colonel to his car. We stepped outside together and stood at the entrance under the wide awning that covered the sidewalk. The colonel was waiting for his daughter Cindy, who lived in New York, to come and drive him to the John F. Kennedy International Airport, where he would board a late-night flight to Seoul.

Creighton himself, incidentally, lived in San Francisco, and usually saw his daughter each year in September, when he would visit her in New York or, more often, she would come to California.

The colonel’s son Michael was also a military pilot, serving in a fighter wing at the Misawa Air Base in Japan. Each year in late August or early September, Colonel Creighton would go from San Francisco to New York to visit his daughter, and then he would fly on to South Korea. As a veteran of the Korean War, Colonel Creighton was entitled to visit Seoul once a year, and he would spend a week there as an honored guest, with all expenses paid by the South Korean government. Usually his son Michael would try to arrange his leave at the same time and fly from the island of Hokkaido to see his father. They would ordinarily meet in Seoul before the rainy season, though this year was an exception to the rule. This time Major Creighton had flown to San Francisco, the city where he had spent his childhood, and he had spent two weeks with his father and his childhood buddies. Father and son had then left for New York for three days, and that night they were to fly together to Seoul. From Korea, the major could easily return to his base on Hokkaido.

“I’m sorry, I never asked you where you’re from,” the colonel suddenly said.

I did not hide the truth. “The Soviet Union,” I answered.

“You’ve immigrated here?”

“No, I live there.”

“Oh, Lord!” Steven Creighton said, and slapped his forehead. “And there I was, running my mouth off! I can imagine what you thought of me.”

“No, no, it’s fine. After all, we were allies once.”

“Of course, of course!” the colonel nodded. Chagrin remained clearly visible in his face, but behind that chagrin one could guess at other thoughts that had just arisen and would not let him go.

Neither of us noticed a silver Ford turn the corner of 44th Street, jauntily pull up to the sidewalk, and stop sharply at the entrance to the hotel.

“Hi, Daddy!” A redheaded beauty jumped out of the car and, without slowing her pace, came up and kissed her father, deftly spun round on her high heels, and then opened the door for him.

The colonel meanwhile was frozen in a strange stupor. Only slowly did he come round, as if he had been pondering an urgent problem, seeking a solution for some pressing business.

“Daddy!” the young lady called to the colonel. She urged him on and danced impatiently on her long, slender legs. It was obvious at once that she regularly visited a gym to work out, went running and swimming, and in general paid a great deal of attention to her physique. I must admit, I very much admire sporting types, especially women, who take care of themselves and do not let themselves go.

The colonel, though, seemed to be somewhere else. He was far away from the Yale Club hotel, from Vanderbilt Avenue, from the city of New York, and from reality in general.

His behavior was indeed very odd. His daughter’s eyes opened wider than the door of the car, and she seemed quite unable to make any sense of her father’s strange demeanor. He himself did not notice her astonishment, and was in no hurry to say goodbye to me and get into the car. He gazed absently about him.

Moving slowly, as if with difficulty, the colonel turned to me. “When are you heading back?” He asked the question stiffly and timidly, as if something important to him hinged on my answer.

“Tomorrow. I’m taking a roundabout route, though. I’ll only get back to Moscow ten days from now.”

“Are you going to Italy?” the young lady suddenly asked. My, she was uncommonly attractive. Her pure skin shone like fine porcelain and her eyes were dazzlingly bright.

“How did you guess?” I asked, in great astonishment. She had knocked me off balance; it was as if she already knew something about my movements around the world.

“It’s the Venice film festival,” she said, speaking as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “I’d been planning to go myself, for my job.”

“Are you not going, then?” I asked, with a mixture of hope and a sinking feeling.

“It didn’t work out this year. Maybe next year if things go well.”

Honestly, Cindy had stunned me with what was either female intuition or a lucky guess, or a keen sense. In any case, her intuition had not misled her. Her unexpected question had been right on target. Perhaps, for some inexplicable reason, Cindy had tuned into my own thoughts and could tell which way they were going.

Scientists in Division X examined the noetic symptoms that relate to intuitive understanding. We studied the nature of random guesses, coincidences, prophetic dreams and the gift of foresight. We arranged experiments, gathered statistics, and searched for natural laws. And now this young American lady had shown an interest as if she was experiencing a premonition of things to come.

Yes, I admit that I had business in Europe, but it was not about that. When my superiors at Division X had sent me abroad, they decided to kill several birds with one stone. On the way back from America, I was to remain in Italy for a time on an intelligence-gathering mission. Cindy naturally could not have known anything of my plans to gather intelligence, nor of the reasons why I was taking this particular route.

Firstly, passengers coming from the USA did not attract special interest. Secondly, at the film festival it would be easier to disappear among the crowds, or at least to attract less attention. Thirdly, I would not need to fill out yet more forms, obtain visas, and generally be conspicuous at the border. Fourthly, there were material benefits: government accountants labor tirelessly to reduce costs, and if two trips can be combined into one, money is obviously saved. Not to mention that I had some selfish interests of my own, for if a person got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit the Venice Film Festival, with the state paying for it, O lucky man, it would be foolish to refuse: Venice, the island of Lido, a hotel room booked, all-inclusive. Any way you looked at it, it was a dream come true. However, the Americans did not need to know any of these details. I had no intention of involving the Creighton family in my plans.

Meanwhile the colonel was sadly shaking his head and continuing to mutter, “It’s a pity I didn’t meet you before. A real pity!” His sadness seemed boundless, sincere, overwhelming, and inextinguishable. He stood still among the rushing passersby, like a player unsure who to pass the ball to. Then he went on, timidly, as if afraid of being met with a refusal, “Forgive me, sir… But if you could… I know how ridiculous it sounds, but… there’s no other possibility. There won’t ever be one. I know it’s an awful lot to ask. I don’t want to trouble you, but please listen for a moment, I won’t keep you long. This is something that’s really important to me. Afterward Cindy can drive you wherever you want to go. Please!”

His daughter said nothing; she was staring at her father silently, as if seeing him for the first time. She could not understand what was going on with him, and was completely baffled by his behavior. The colonel, too, stood there motionlessly, as if his fate was in the balance, as if his life depended on my answer. What can I say; we had been brought together by a mysterious whim of chance, but now it was I who had the power to move forward toward the mystery, or take my leave of him and walk away.

I glanced down Vanderbilt Avenue and found no answer there as it stretched away, narrow, gloomy, and sullen. To be honest, I failed to find any answer, no matter how hard I tried to look for it.

“I need to make a phone call,” I said in a rather guarded tone, without particular enthusiasm. I was now being forced to change my plans on the hoof.

“Thank you, sir.” The colonel sighed with relief and bowed ceremoniously. “You can call from the car, we’ve got a radio telephone.”

I called the place where I was being expected and put my meeting back to a later time. Meanwhile Colonel Creighton had shoved his bag into the trunk. We sat together in the back seat, and he placed a narrow case on his knees.

“What’s that?” I asked out of nothing beyond mere curiosity.

“A flute,” Colonel Creighton answered. “I play it sometimes.”

The car set off, the streets and avenues of Manhattan shining through the window. I felt a light dizziness, as if the reality around me held a promise of bold new experiences: my nose for these things rarely let me down. I frankly had no idea what was to come, what risk I might be taking, but better that way than the horrible monotony of everyday routine.