Sapphire Skies Read Online Free PDF Page A

of vodka, but he poured himself one anyway. Finding Natasha’s plane after all these years had brought on a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with his age or his state of health.
    Taking a nip of the burning liquid, Orlov cast his eye about the apartment. He stared at the red wallpaper, the teak side tables and the amber-tinted glass that separated the living room from the kitchen. He had not changed anything since his wife, Yelena, had passed away from a stroke ten years earlier. It was Yelena who had decorated the apartment; Orlov had been too busy with his work at the space centre to pay attention to domestic life. Homes were the creations of women; even though the women in his life had a habit of not staying around as long as he would have liked. He had been only five years old when his mother died.
    The sky outside the window darkened and Orlov watched it for a while, wondering if another thunderstorm was on the way. His mind drifted to Leonid. His son’s wife, Irina, had asked Orlov to come and live with them. She was concerned about him being alone when his health was failing. Orlov had refused. What good would an old man be to Leonid and his family? If he was a woman, that would be different. He could mend clothes, prepare meals, help with the shopping. But an old man with nothing but memories would be a burden.
    Orlov had often wished that he could be one of those people who gave themselves freely to their loved ones, whose presence lit up a room. But a lifetime of secrets and guarding his thoughts had made him too introspective. Yelena had understood and accepted that about him. Even Leonid didn’t seem to bear any grudge about having an emotionally distant father. Only Natasha had been able to open up that side of him. Natasha …
    Orlov stood and walked to the sideboard. He took out the copy of Doctor Zhivago from the drawer and opened it to the page where he kept the photograph hidden. It had been taken in 1943 and showed him and Natasha standing by his fighter plane. They were looking at the camera but in front of them was a map spread out on the plane’s wing. They were both smiling. For a moment, Orlov was startled to think that the handsome young man with dark hair and chiselled features was once him. It was during the battle for Kursk and the tension of flying several sorties a day had made them war weary. Yet in the photograph he and Natasha looked radiantly happy.
    ‘The absurdity of youth and being in love,’ he mumbled.
    Ilya Kondakov had told him that now they had recovered the plane, the next step was to search the forest for Natasha’s body. He was drawing plans for how far she might have drifted with her parachute. It wasn’t considered chivalrous to shoot a pilot in their parachute; their downed plane was enough of a victory. But the Great Patriotic War had been a bloody battle with atrocities committed by both sides. The other possibility was that Natasha’s parachute had been damaged when she exited the plane and hadn’t opened for her. Orlov didn’t like to think about that too much.
    He returned to the couch and poured himself another glass of vodka. When Natasha went missing, he’d fantasised that she had bumped her head and suffered amnesia. In his daydreams she was safe and well, living among some peasants. All he had to do was find her. He did not accept that she could have survived the crash and not come back to him. Every morning he had woken up wondering if this would be the day that she returned. After years of waiting with no sign of her, Orlov had gradually accepted that he had to make peace with the unresolved and get on with his life. But it hadn’t stopped him searching.
    As the vodka put fire in his veins, he thought about the events of that last day he had seen her. Their regiment had been deployed to Orël Oblast, where German forces were concentrating for a planned offensive. The weather was unbearably hot, so instead of sitting in their cockpits, the