Orchestra

Chapter 3-2

Anyone who has journeyed on the Yenisei knows the enchantment of its power and beauty. The Yenisei made an unforgettable impression on me, at any rate, when I was a student. I remember the roar it gave out in springtime as it surged toward the ocean, and how it would burst through fields of ice and beat on the sheer cliffs that rose above it toward the heavens. Behind those cliffs stretched an endless expanse of densely-forested hills – the taiga. The chain of hills disappeared beyond the horizon, and the further north one went, the farther apart the Yenisei’s banks were, as the river grew ever wider.

Krasnoyarsk was set in a valley split in half by the river. On holidays, a platform would be set up for the authorities on a bumpy stretch of waste ground in the middle of the city, between the stately building of the regional Party committee and the central park, and processions of the local population would be arranged, as a sign of unity and mutual esteem.

In those days, the main square was bordered by perfectly straight streets and sturdy stone buildings that had been built before the Revolution and during the years of industrialization. One had only to step a block away, though, to find oneself suddenly in a dreary Siberian trading post: unpaved streets full of puddles and potholes, with only the occasional passerby, gloomy houses darkened by time and made from logs as thick as a man’s outstretched arms, high fences, heavy gates, and tightly closed window shutters. The roads were lined by shallow ditches overgrown with weeds. Once darkness fell, the streets were abandoned; the local inhabitants would not even stick their noses out of their gates, as old Siberian memories had led them to fear ill-intentioned men. The little town of Krasny Yar that had once stood here had long been known as a place for marauders. Initially it was famous for Cossacks and seekers of fortune, while later on, forced laborers were settled there in large numbers, and the local transfer facility for prisoners was known across the country. Across the river Kacha, a sheer-faced mountain loomed over the city. For the edification of the townspeople, the cliff had been crowned with a shrine to St. Paraskeva, a solitary roof directed toward the heavens like a pointing finger.

After Germany, it was hard for the pilot to get used to the Arctic. This routine transfer from one place of assignment to another was more like exile: sad, melancholy Russia. After Europe, how horrible it is, ladies and gentlemen, to end up in the wild depths of Russia. The officers in the garrison, family men and bachelors alike, made no effort to hide the fact that they were living out of their suitcases. They found the place disorderly, and that dispirited them; no one wanted to settle in for long. Everyone seemed to be at a loss, as if caught unprepared by bad weather. Their aim seemed to be to wait out their time in the far north as if it were a downpour of rain or a blizzard – soon it would pass, and then they could go home. Even the locals who were born there lived in a fashion that seemed temporary, as if they might be ready to leave the next day.

The polar night fell on the garrison like an impenetrable wall. In the darkness, the fierce arctic wind would blow from the sea for weeks and bury the runway in snow. The soldiers on the airfield maintenance team would spend days clearing the concrete. They used special machines to melt the snow and ice, the nozzles of their flamethrowers roaring with hellish fire day and night.

As the polar night drew to its close, the local population waited impatiently for the sun. At the appointed hour, the edge of the sun emerged over the horizon and bathed the tundra in a faint copper light. The people of the settlement rejoiced at the light, and their rejoicing was genuine – but what did their eyes, which had grown so weary of the darkness, see? Besides the local countryside, the stony mounds and tundra, their view was not a pleasant one: shabby and squalid buildings with damp visible on the walls, steel drums strewn all around, black oil slicks, the dead earth stained with oil and diesel fuel, and trash heaps that had accumulated over many years.

Nikolai Shilin’s flights mainly took him over the sea near the Norwegian border. As soon as a pair of patrolling Soviet fighters appeared over the neutral waters of Varangerfjord, where lay the picturesque Norwegian town of Kirkenes, the Norwegians would come to meet them. The Norwegians would never act aggressively, but would go through friendly maneuvers, though they would stay close and show that they were watching.

Sometimes the Soviet fighters would set off for the north from the Rybachy Peninsula, where the skies were often swept by American spy planes taking off from the NATO bases in Scandinavia. The American planes would generally fly along the border at a considerable height, observing and listening in on the wide territory to the south of their course. Naturally, the ports, aerodromes, movements of ships, garrisons, docks, and submarine bases held their constant attention and interested them greatly. However, it was impossible to chase the Americans off while they were over international waters, let alone shoot them down. All one could do was give them a few minor hassles, putting a spoke in their wheels in whatever ways the Soviet pilots could come up with.

Usually the Soviet fighters would approach the large American spy plane so closely that one wrong move and an aerial collision would result. The Soviet pilots’ trick was coming as close as possible and flying right alongside in order to play on the nerves of the foreign pilots and their crews. The dozens of on-board electronic surveillance operators would abandon their control panels and monitors and gaze out the windows, wondering what the Russians were up to, for the Communists seemed to be totally out of control. Some would shake with fear, and everyone knows that a poor mental state makes for an unproductive worker; it is hard to do your job when you are constantly under the gun.

Sometimes the Soviet fighters would fly around the American planes in an annoying dance, like the mosquitoes that plague the tundra in the summertime. The fighters would suddenly pop up on one side, then on the other, or fly at close quarters in order to cut the spy planes off, for the latter were slow to maneuver.

In this endless quarrel, however, some tears fell unseen. With each new model of spy plane, the Americans could fly higher and higher. The Soviet interceptors struggled to rise into the stratosphere, since at that altitude their engines would stall. Their on-board gear was made lighter, therefore, in whatever way possible, including removing the outboard fuel tanks, which naturally had the downside of making their flight time shorter.

On top of that, to rise to the stratosphere, pilots had to replace their ordinary comfortable flight suits with special garb that would ensure their safety at high altitudes with full pressurization. This clothing made it harder for them to move around; it was very uncomfortable, and obstructed their vision, making it harder to fly the planes. Fighter pilots tried, as a result, to use these high-altitude suits as seldom as possible, and that made it difficult in practice for them to intercept foreign planes at high altitude.

The most recent spy-plane models proved a hard nut to crack for the Soviet fighters. The Americans could stroll around the stratosphere unhindered; they could even go right into Soviet airspace without any consequences. Old hands in Soviet air defense recalled, like a bad dream, something that had befallen them long ago: in the mid-1950s an American spy plane had taken off from Norway, flown over the Baltics, Belarus, and Ukraine, and landed at an air base in Turkey. While it was in the air, the Soviets had tracked it and shot at it, but they just could not reach it: it made a clear mockery of the USSR’s capabilities. Soviet air defense felt completely humiliated, and generals tumbled from their posts like ripe pears. Senior leadership pushed aircraft engineers to use their brains and come up with new technology quickly, but such a thing simply could not be forced. Air defense, accepting their powerlessness, developed surface-to-air missiles instead and gradually mastered this new technology. Soon the Americans no longer felt safe in the stratosphere.

Meanwhile, in the skies above Northern Europe, as well as in Germany, there was never a dull moment. Besides interception flights or routine patrols, Shilin occasionally had to accompany Soviet aerial reconnaissance when the so-called Tupolevs – heavy long-distance bombers equipped with electronic equipment – would set off toward foreign bases and required fighter cover. The spy planes would generally take off as a group of three, and the fighters would fly in two by two from other airfields and catch up with them while they were over neutral waters.

Naturally, the Soviets would be picked up by foreign radar operators, who stood watch around the clock, and foreign interceptors would accompany them for their entire journey, handing off responsibility to their counterparts as each zone was crossed. As the Tupolevs traversed Cape Nordkinn and banked to go around the continent from the north, NATO personnel would immediately try to guess where they were headed, whether south toward the Norwegian Sea, the British Isles, or the Baltic coast, or west toward Iceland. In any case, they were closely monitored, and NATO fighters would maintain a parallel course, sometimes coming very close to them and deftly maneuvering. It was clear that the NATO personnel had received first-rate training. The Americans, incidentally, came to intercept them more frequently than others, and they were not easy to shake off. The Soviet pilots had to keep their eyes open.

However, just as the pike serves to prevent the smaller fish from growing complacent, the escorting fighters would not allow the interceptors to move around freely when the latter sought to hassle the reconnaissance planes. It was an exciting game, a real dogfight, albeit without a shot being fired. The large, heavy reconnaissance planes remained unfazed and calmly held their course, and the nimble fighters swept from side to side around them at lighting speed.

Normally these flights passed off without incident. When the interceptors noticed the escorting fighters, they would meekly keep to one side or even fly alongside the Soviets like an honor guard. Air defense would usually start to get nervous around the Lofoten Islands, in the vicinity of which were some military bases, ports, airfields, and direction-finding stations, and where NATO ships plowed up and down the sea. What really annoyed air defense, however, was when the hatches at the bottom of the Soviet spy planes were flung open, which meant that they were engaging in aerial photography. The American pilots would sometimes riskily dive under the belly of a spy plane to block the lenses, and then the escorting Soviet fighters would rush to the rescue and drive the insolent foreigners off, like dogs chasing strays from their turf.

Suitcase in hand, the pilot slowly walked down the forest road. The snow-covered forest stood motionless in its winter sleep, but the sounds of birds pointed to the imminent arrival of spring. Buntings gave out a lively trill, and to a keen ear it sounded like the very changing of the seasons. A woodpecker naggingly attacked a dry pine tree, the sound hammering the surrounding silence. The little drummer seemed to be telling its mate that it was high time now to start a nest, while at the same time it unequivocally staked out its territory against its rivals.