Nobody talked about it at the time, hell nobody really ever talked about it much really but there was a time when Russia was starving. Not the first time mind you, but it was the worst famine in modern times at least. What caused it isn’t really important anymore, but suffice to say it was important to deny that there was a famine occurring at the time. Fedor’s mother and father were both party members of course; Fedor’s father in particular was the head of the local party head quarters so suffice to say he was as fanatical in his devotion to the state as he was in the denial of a famine.
Fedor and his brother, Karl knew little in the way of strife for their younger days. The privilege of a party official ensured they knew only a charmed existence, until the summer of 1932. First it was a mere aggravation, a restriction of sweets and the difficulty of obtaining free food in the corner market. Then the cupboards at home began to slowly grow increasingly bare, by that late fall they’d killed the dog and later the horse for food but things only got worse as winter dragged on. Still neither boy would dare to ask, would dare to question their father as to what exactly was going on. Father always knew best.
Karl was never a particularly fit young man, Fedor was always the more athletic of the two and the famine hit Karl far worse than anyone else in the family. He was sick, wasting away and early on it was clear the poor boy aged no more than fifteen was in dire straights. You could smell on the air, late in the evenings when the air was just right the smell of roasting meat. “Why don’t you just ask” questioned his mother, “Not us” was all his father would respond. Neither boy could puzzle it out at first, but Fedor would eventually get the picture.
Early in the morning Fedor awoke to find his brother still and cold in his bed, it was the first time Fedor had ever seen a dead body before. He didn’t know what to do, what to say to his parents to break it too them. Eventually their father would come, furious that Fedor had not attended to his chores. There were no tears that night; nobody spoke a single word of it at all. That night, he would see his father fixed at the window by the kitchen. His gaze intent and fixed on the snow bank outside where they had temporarily placed his brothers body, for the first time in many months his parents wouldn’t fight that night.
The next morning, there was food and mother talked about how she had gone down to the market and got the very last meat available in the entire city. Everyone pretended they believed this fiction, but nobody had any doubts what they were really eating. Nobody would ask later that spring, because many had made the same decisions. There were many buried when the ground thawed, many who were nothing more than lovingly polished skeletons.
Fedor enlisted into the Soviet Air Forces at an early age after graduating from the military academy, utilizing his father’s privilege to secure himself a position as a pilot. Most Soviet pilots were the sons of party officials, and to be frank the vast majority were fairly poor. Fedor was an exception, and a welcome one at that. He graduated top of his class, and received a posting on the northern boarder where he would soon find combat.
As soon as Russia opened hostilities Finland, Fedor was amongst the first pilots to meet the Finns in the air. It was a slaughter, as the streamlined l-16 he piloted was an easy match for the ancient cloth biplanes the Finnish threw against the soviet tanks with little effect. In short order, Fedor had earned himself eight kills and was certain he would finish the war as Russia’s most deadly pilot.
In January of 1940, Fedor would finally find himself a worthy adversary however. His flight of three L-16s encountered eight American made and American trained Finnish pilots during a large scale Russian counter offensive. During the initial merge, both Fedor’s lead and his own wingman would be downed by enemy fire leaving it a contest of five to one. A wiser man may have run, but full of anger and confidence Fedor turned back in with every intention of destroying all five of the remaining enemy aircraft.
He was good, but Fedor ultimately wasn’t good enough. Able to down two additional aircraft before the Finns were able to regroup, but from there on in Fedor was fighting a loosing battle. The l-16 you see had a weak wing, and after nearly twenty minutes of evading the opposition his l-16 finally began to buckle and the enemy guns caught up with him. Lucky for Fedor, his plane met its end at a relatively safe altitude and without delay he jumped away from the burning hulk to float down into one of the largest offensives of the entire war.
For nearly an hour he would wonder, lost completely before finally he located the remains of a burnt out T-26. He could hear gunfire from every direction, but every time he moved towards it he’d see only Finnish soldiers or the firefight would be too intense for him to safely make contact. So at first he was elated, certain he could find a map or maybe even a working radio to get back to his unit. The radio however, was of no use and there was simply no map to be found. He took one of the crew’s rifles, and their winterized uniforms before setting off into the frozen desert with only a vague recollection of his location from his pre-flight briefing.
Bodies were everywhere, but much to Fedor’s dismay most were Russian. Burned out vehicles, and the remains of other downed Russian fighters dotted the landscape but still he was unable to make contact with the soldiers of either side. After spending two nights out in the cold alone, he was more than willing to surrender but even then that opportunity never presented itself. Despondent and now certain of the gravity of the situation he did what he knew.
He located the body of a young corporal, a healthy young boy who’s identification named him as a flight liaison officer. A pilot who’d washed out, only fitting thought Fedor as he carved the poor boy up. That night however he would know no comfort, only writhing pain and rolling cramps. Next morning he awoke exhausted and hungry, but he’d had his fill all the same. So he moved on, marching in the cold for another day still before finding a retreating soviet patrol that would see his return to his squadron.
When Fedor got back, nobody was happy to see his return. No familiar face or old friend said so much as hello, they only looked upon him with confusion. Later that night, they would come for him. Before he had even gotten a chance to shave, the doctors at the air base had made their reports and the military police had come for Fedor. Impersonating an officer, especially one as esteemed as the posthumously promoted Captain Ibragimov was a reprehensible act.
Unable to figure out exactly who Fedor was, they weren’t exactly sure what to do with him at first. Not that anyone would ever admit to believing his story of course, but it made at least a few of them curious. In the wake of the German invasion, Fedor’s case would be ‘accidentally’ filed as fit for active service and a return to full flight status only not as Captain Ibragimov. After two years in a labor camp, it really didn’t take much for Fedor to recant his identity and accept whatever they provided him with. Especially of course, if it meant he would be able to fly again.
Corporal Kalinin was in short order indeed flying a Yak-1, and just as he had claimed proved to be an exceptional pilot. Those who flew with him spoke of him in almost glowing terms and Kalinin would quickly accumulate a record of his own. In short order he earned himself a battlefield commission to Lieutenant, and proved his skill to the tune of eighteen kills before transferring to a Yak-3 near the end of the war and grasping at another six kills. By the war’s end he was a legend in his squadron, as highly regarded for his knowledge of party doctrine as he was for his capability as an aviator.
When the end of the war came, Fedor lost his excuse to ignore his “incident” in Finland. Attempts to reconcile events had gone poorly, ending in a string of self-destructive episodes in between flight line rotations. He resolved to discover the nature of the truth, deciding that even if he didn’t act the uncertainty would drive him mad. So he wrote a detailed letter describing his motives, pinned it to his desk and slipped out to answer his questions. He found the young man in a quiet army bar, and made fast friends with the junior officer. Inebriated, it was easy to lure the young officer back to his apartment with the promise of war photos.
In the early morning hours, he strangled the junior officer and partially consumed him raw as he had in Finland. At first there was nothing, and the pistol on the kitchen counter seemed a viable solution to the issue of guilt. The pain would come before too long, just as it had once more, and just as before Fedor was not the same man he was the night before. When he failed to show up for duty, his commanding officer came to look for the always-punctual Lieutenant. He found a dead body on the kitchen floor, and a strange young man putting on the Lieutenant’s clothes.
At first it seemed clear that this junior officer was a murderer, but forces inside the soviet intelligence apparatus took pause. This was a story they had heard before, and now they had evidence. The dead body was identical to the man claiming to be the lieutenant in all respects. So an enterprising intelligence officer saw fit to put this story to the test and solve the question once and for all, that night they found the body of another soldier still. By morning, they would know the nature of Fedor and see fit to put him to use.
The KGB was an easy choice, easy for Fedor because it was for the greater good. He was a terrible spy; so terrible in fact they wondered if dissection would be a better use of him. Nobody was really sure what to do with him until the Vietnam War began to loom, and Moscow wondered what a Soviet pilot could do against the Americans. So a body was procured, and reluctantly the KGB let Fedor leave for Vietnam. He would be asked to built an air wing suitable to evaluate the quality of American equipment and American pilots, he would be asked to go to war again.
Later on he would remark that the training of men, turning them into pilots was amongst the most rewarding experiences he would ever know. He took six North Vietnamese soldiers, men who were confident and aggressive. Only one of them could read, and none of them spoke Russian but he knew a fighter pilot when he found them. Fedor wasn’t really great with Vietnamese, and none of his pilots were much better but through a mixture of the two languages they came an understanding. It took two years, but by 1955 he had six pilots and six brand new Mig-19s.
The question would go unanswered however, as his pilots struggled to get their Mig-19s into an intercept position. The faster American bombers combined with the terrible performance of North Vietnamese radar meant that little if anything was learned before they were folded into running air strikes. Still Moscow needed to know, especially in light of a new fighter revolution.
After the failure of his first fighter group, it was clear that it would take a more initiative to produce a pitched firefight sufficient for Moscow to make a decision. So in 1960, the first F4 phantoms made it to Vietnam and Fedor wasn’t far behind. The two surviving pilot from his first air group would join him again as they took delivery of a trio of Mig-21s. This time, there would be a more direct Soviet involvement it was decided.
Twelve engagements in rapid order, all ending in either a kill or a standoff illuminated the F-4s weaknesses almost immediately and almost overnight the Mig-21 found a wealth of potential buyers the world over. Finally Fedor had gotten it right, and Moscow was delighted.
By 1978 the western intelligence services knew he existed, they didn’t have a name or a photograph but they knew the Russians had someone special. By the late 70s Fedor had slowly matured into a capable field agent, though his failing with languages plagued him still. In the winter of that year, the F-14 had been deployed for two years but nobody really knew as much as they cared to about this cutting edge American interceptor. The plan was to assume the identity of a US Intelligence officer stationed in Great Britain, after meeting him whilst on holiday in Rome.
Fedor had plenty of time before the officer was even going to take holiday, a few months at least to relax in Rome and acclimate. It was almost a vacation, so his handler didn’t think anything when Fedor seemed to find a woman to his liking. He liked her bank accounts to be specific, because by now Fedor was starting to worry. He feared what would happen to him if he lost his edge, what if he decided to do something else? He knew the KGB wouldn’t let him retire, he knew he could never go back to being just a civilian or even just a pilot. So when he cleaned out her bank accounts, he made damn sure his handler never caught on.
He began a pattern of dumping bank accounts, before they had always just emptied the bank accounts into charities but now Fedor had a charity of his own. He never really seriously considered retirement, but you see feeling as though you have no choice in the matter can be downright suffocating. He found himself curious at not just living in a capitalist society, but rather in participating in it.
Fedor knew better than most, he could see the nation leaning before it fell. So when things ground to a halt, its no surprise he made sure his file was amongst the first to be incinerated in the KGB’s ovens. The men who knew him, knew enough to just forget. He wasn’t the only one who walked away of course, just about everyone seemed eager to forget their resumes as they left.
Not everyone forgot though, not everyone was willing to let him go. Some remembered the briefings; some just heard the KGB had “ a guy” so to speak. So when the SVR got back on its feet, they decided to go looking. At first they just wanted him back, but as they looked and Fedor hid their attitude began to change. The fear began to grow that he was hiding because he had something to hide, not just because he didn’t want to be found.
Rumors came, that an old war buddy had somehow gotten a hold of him. He had asked Fedor, to come to the graduation of his grandson from the air force Academy. Fedor wasn’t foolish enough to come, but he at least sent a letter to the young man. The FSB detained the cadet, and saw fit to expel him from service entirely.
Now it was personal, in the expulsion of a young cadet Fedor saw everything that had destroyed his beloved Soviet Union. He saw power mad criminals with badges, men who tried to turn privilege into profit at the expense of those they were empowered to protect. Fedor couldn’t fade away yet, he could start again just yet. He had a young man to avenge.
It didn’t take long for Fedor to find the man who was after him, by this point in the game Fedor was prepared to out wait his foes. He lay quiet in ambush, stringing poorly conceived cover names along in a bread crumb trail even the wettest FSB thug could follow. Fedor came crashing down on the man like a ton of bricks, taking a shotgun to his kneels and both hands before feeding him so much acid the man couldn’t tell reality from the sound of Fedor’s voice. All it took was a little conversation, to learn of his file and how to erase it.
He made sure the FSB operative would be found, he made sure to leave him somewhere public so everyone would know exactly where the count stood. Fedor was out of the game, and would defend his status with enough violence to ensure he was just better left alone.
Fedor had purchased a small executive airline some years early, and by 2008 he was finally starting to relax. It was too easy though to be honest, and while he found the life of an anonymous commercial pilot relaxing it was a little too easy. Soon enough he’d begun stepping away, leaving the day to day business decisions in the hands of others as he sought out something to occupy his time.
Alaska was a wonderful place, where a man could find easy work as a bush pilot. The work was challenging, always different and wherever he went Fedor was just accepted without question. He was their bush pilot, he was –their- pilot. It was the first time in his life he’d felt comforted by others taking ownership in his presence before, and it was the first time he felt like he could be happy.
Irina Ivanov was the daughter of Fedor’s original case officer, the man who gave him a chance to prove his story before being doomed to a bullet in the head. He owed her father a debt his whole life, one he’d never been given the chance to repay. He knew Ivanov when she worked at the KGB as an archivist, where he enjoyed a polite relationship. There was a lot of false smiles, and asking questions nobody cared to hear the answers to but that’s just how it was.
Ivanov sent him an email something out of the blue, through an old anonymous email account he’d left with an arms dealer some years prior. The only fact more surprising than the fact that she cared enough to contact him, was why. Her son had died, an FBI agent named for her father. He had never even known Felix had joined the FBI, but now he was gone and she knew what she wanted from Fedor. She wanted him to find the bastards that took her boy away, and educate them in the classical Stalinist sense of the word.
Fedor felt obliged to repay the debt he owed. Late one afternoon a basket of fruit would arrive at Ivanov’s house, a message the old KGB mother would know all to well. All was well, the request had been accepted.
