COLD WAR

The small airfield was half a mile from the nearest town. The inhabitants were used to military activity and so barely lifted their heads when aircraft flew over the fields. But the noise of the Boeing 747 made Heinz look up and squint into the early morning sun. As the aeroplane came down in the field two acres away he was more than a little surprised to see the famous livery, despite someone’s attempt to obliterate the colours.
‘Someone tried to cover them up,’ he was to tell a friend that night. ‘But they didn’t do a very good job. The rain must have washed it off. Can’t make paint properly in the West.’
Heinz leant on his pitchfork in the middle of the potato field as the three figures emerged and went quickly into the massive hangar capable of holding five Jumbo Jet aircraft.
He turned back to his work happy to have something to talk about that evening. If someone had told Heinz he was witnessing history in the making he could not have been more pleased. It was enough for him to survive from day to day, with the promise of a little good conversation in the evenings. Beyond that he had no concern for the doings of the outside world.
Inside the hangar, the Soviet general, Yuri Padrovovitch, extended his fat, liver-spotted hand to his guest, former United States Army general and presently U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Anthony Marshall.
‘You are on time. You should be in the Soviet services. Such punctuality.’ Both men laughed easily as Anthony allowed Yuri to guide him to his seat beside the table in the far corner.
‘You said you have something to offer which would make this trip worthwhile,’ General Marshall commented. ‘As you know, I am taking something of a risk by being here.’
‘In a minute my friend, in a minute. First you must taste this Crimean caviar. Nothing but the best for my new friend.’
The two men and their teams sat and ate, indulging in small talk which touched on everything apart from the frosty relations between the two superpowers. Both generals were men of infinite patience. Neither was about to be pushed by the other into a sudden or ill-advised comment. They were like poker players battling to see who had the toughest resolve.
About three quarters of an hour later the Russian touched the American lightly on the arm and suggested they move off to another part of the hangar.
As they strolled over the wide concrete apron Yuri Padrovovich started to speak in a low voice with a lilting menace. ‘We should always keep something in the bank for a rainy day.’ The Soviet officer let the words gather above their heads as a storm cloud grows on a dull, overcast day.
‘So. I didn’t think you believed in capitalism,’ his American counterpart commented.
‘Wise men have open minds.’
The two men reached the far corner of the hangar and sat down at a large oak table containing a bottle of vodka and two unopened bottles of Krug champagne. Without asking whether his new friend liked vodka Padrovovich poured two glasses and handed one across the table to his enemy.
‘I have always thought vodka aptly summed up the Cold War,’ he said after taking a deep draught of the colourless liquid. ‘It is cold and threatening on the outside but once hidden inside the body it contains a fire which is hard to quench. Where would both of us be without an enemy to wage war against, eh?’
Anthony Marshall drank slowly, allowing his eyes to roam the craggy distorted face of the man on the other side of the table. He had never met the famed Soviet General before and was intrigued to see how he had changed since the date of the faded photograph he had seen in the briefing documents.
Those pictures had been taken when the man had been a rising star in the Red Army during the Second World War. He had been tall and handsome with a fresh face and clear eyes. Anthony noticed the eyes were blue. ‘Ice blue,’ he thought to himself. The years since then had taken their toll on the handsome young officer. The briefing documents had told him that the title of General meant nothing. Yuri Padrovovitch was one of the three most senior men in the KGB.
Both men buried their heads in the pile of photographs and old documents the General had produced from a tattered leather briefcase.
Outside an owl hooted in anger as the guards disturbed it from its sleep in the barn on the other side of the landing strip. The two men in the uniform of Spetznaz soldiers, the Soviets’ elite fighting force, were prodding hay and turning over compost heaps to ensure there were no mad snipers waiting to interrupt this secret meeting. Anthony heard the owl hoot. It would not be the first creature to learn that these men were capable of turning night into day.
It was growing quite dark by the time they left the hangar. Yuri vigorously shook his new friend’s hand at the foot of the aircraft steps. ‘May your God go with you,’ he told Anthony, with a wide smile revealing large, nicotine-stained teeth. He looked like a cross between a mad wizard and Santa Claus.
‘We shall meet again, Yuri. One day, on the same side.’
‘Perhaps.’
Later that night, after Heinz had long ago bored his friends in the bar with his story of the secret aircraft, he slumped against the windowsill wondering why he had allowed himself to get drunk yet again. There would be hell to pay the following morning.
Dimly, through the cacophony of the customers and the violent, gusting wind tearing into the window, shaking the glass like a child angrily shakes a toy which has ceased to work, he heard the sound of the aircraft flying overhead. Heinz Kruger remembered he had forgotten to buy his son, Rudy, a present for his thirteenth birthday.