Arnie and Mikhail had chosen Rovaniemi to start their race because it provided a good cover story for their absence from Helsinki. Rovaniemi was a road and rail hub that sat on a direct invasion path from Russia to both Sweden and Norway. Conversely, it sat on the direct invasion path from Sweden and Norway to Russia. Any military plans would have to include intelligence such as the location of key bridges and their load limits, the location of existing airfields and types of aircraft they could accommodate, as well as a thorough reconnaissance of possible escape routes for downed pilots. It made perfect sense to everyone in the Soviet legation and the American legation that their military attachés would want to go there with his skis.
The Germans had encouraged the fire started by the Finnish commandos blowing up the ammunition train. They let the fire burn Rovaniemi to the ground in retaliation for Finland changing sides and joining the Russians. Most Rovaniemi had been made of wood. Now although the streets had been cleared of rubble, the town was still a charred ruin. Isolated stone and brick chimneys rising from the ashes like gaunt gravestones. Scraps of clothing, frozen solid, peeked out amid charred wood and crusted snow, along with an occasional broken kitchen utensil or bowl. Anything useful had been gleaned long ago by the townspeople, most of whom had fled to Sweden just before the town was turned to ash, an arduous journey during which 279 died. Another 200 died when they tried to return—from land mines left by the Germans. Many people lived in cellars. Arnie couldn’t help but feel proud of his Finnish heritage, because it was clear that these indomitable Finns had returned to Rovaniemi to rebuild it.
He spent Friday carefully watching for unexploded land mines and mapping roads, noting which were wide enough for armor to get through. He skied out to the frozen-over local reservoir and estimated how many soldiers it could supply with water and for how long. For damned sure, he thought, the Russians had been crazy to think they could use armor up here. The landscape was covered in streams, lakes, and bogs and looked like a roller coaster. All attacks—and all supplies—would have to move on one of the very rare roads. Supply lines would be stretched back for miles, totally vulnerable to air strikes—or the circular attacks of infantry moving through the woods on skis, precisely what the Finns had done to the Russians in 1939.
He was already organizing his assessment in his head when he checked in with the local police. He told them his real name, the scouting mission he was on, and that he would be around a night or two, then move on. He was reassured that they were firmly in the anti-Communist camp, unlike the Valpo, and maybe, Pulkkinen. After Louise’s remark about Pulkkinen’s English, he’d dug into everything they had on him and had pretty much convinced himself that Pulkkinen worked for the Valpo, not the MGB. What he wasn’t sure of was whether Pulkkinen was a Communist, like too many of his bosses.
Although Arnie had truthfully identified himself to the local police, he still registered under an assumed name at the bed and breakfast, posing as a returning expatriate Finn searching for family members after the war. This was to assure the local police that he was trying to hide secret work from the locals but had let the police in on the secret, flattering them. He assumed Mikhail, who was due to arrive on the evening train, had done something similar. It was kind of fun, all this cloak-and-dagger deception.
For Friday night, they’d chosen to stay in the same house on the outskirts of town, knowing it had only one room to rent. They both had a great time feigning reluctance to share the room when they arrived simultaneously “by coincidence.” Arnie used the same cover as the night before and Mikhail played a jolly apparatchik from the Allied Control Commission who was scouting the countryside for more of the vast amounts of matériel that were being shipped to Russia as part of Finland’s reparation payments. The woman letting out the room had made it clear, albeit politely, that she didn’t like Russians. When they were in the room, Mikhail commented on it.
“You’re gutting the place and they’re broke,” Arnie said.
“My dear comrade American,” Mikhail said. He had undressed to his long johns and was carefully laying out the clothes he’d put on in just a few hours. They’d agreed to leave at three thirty in the morning. “The Finns are lucky to remain unoccupied by the Red Army.”
“Because they would fight you to a standstill, like they did in thirty-nine.”
“That, like most mythology, is based on only a partial truth. They sued for peace because we were about to crush them.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I think because Stalin didn’t want to pay the enormous cost in lives”—he gave a knowing nod to Arnie—“notwithstanding the prevalent, and very mistaken, American myth of butchering our own soldiers. We could have crushed the Finns in 1944, but we probably would have lost thousands doing it. It is much better to have left Finland unoccupied but with very clear instructions to keep clear of the West, which means no American forces on Finnish soil. You see, we’re not afraid of the Finns. There are less than four million of them. What we’re afraid of is Finland allying with some country that has a lot of people and therefore could launch an army from Finland and be in Leningrad in hours. We’re OK with Finland being nonaligned, as long as there’s no foreign army in Finland threatening us as you do with your army in Germany. Norway is very unlikely to allow American troops there, despite them being firmly in the capitalist camp. And Sweden,” he grimaced, “they claimed neutrality but basically collaborated with the Nazis, primarily selling them high-quality steel. You’ll get little comfort from them. So, we keep you out of Finland and Scandinavia by virtue of your own ideals about never violating a country’s neutrality. Sort of ironic, don’t you think?” He chuckled. “There is also another irony, which I don’t think many of you Americans are in on.”
Arnie gave him a questioning look.
“Business, my friend. American capitalists will not loan money to any country under Soviet control. But they will loan money to Finland. So, the loans come in from America. Those loans, in hard currency dollars, help Finland make the reparation payments we forced on them in the 1944 treaty. Thus, American capital helps rebuild the Soviet economy. How’s that for a joke?” He laughed. “Had Comrade Stalin been born in New York, he would have been a Wall Street millionaire.”
Arnie went along with the joke. He had to own that it had never occurred to him just how clever the Soviets had been about neutralizing Finland. Then he sobered. “But if America and the Soviet Union go to war, would you violate Finnish territory to attack Norway?”
“Of course. First, we have not stupidly tied our own hands with a declared stance about honoring the 1944 Moscow Armistice. Agreements that don’t work for both sides should be torn up. Second, Finland was part of Russia until the revolution. We’d have every moral right to cross into Russian territory.”
What Mikhail was laying out for him gave Arnie a sense of foreboding. “Is this really accepted policy? At the highest level?”
“Yes.”
Arnie took it in. “You really think that way?”
“No.” Mikhail laughed again. “As a political person, I can see it is a useful excuse. The real reason we would violate Finish neutrality, or anyone’s sovereignty, or any part of international law, is that we will do absolutely anything to avoid a war on Russian soil again. Anything, my friend.”
“We don’t want to invade you.”
“Just drop atomic bombs on us.”
Neither said anything for some time.
Mikhail spoke first. “We are falling into the antagonistic paranoia of our masters. I often think of our meeting on the Enns.”
“Me too.”
“A good feeling.”
“It was a good time. The war was nearly over, and we’d won.”
“Do you miss it?” Mikhail asked.
Arnie paused. It didn’t seem right to say he missed something so horrible. He knew Mikhail had probably seen more fighting than he had, so would understand what he was about to say. Now was no time to be dishonest. It might be the last time they could speak from their hearts, given the way “their masters,” as Mikhail put it, were heading. “I feel terribly sad. All those dead kids. Dead friends.” He took in a breath. “But I saw Buchenwald.”
“And I, Auschwitz.”
“Worth fighting for,” Arnie said. Mikhail simply nodded.
After some silence, Arnie said, “But we were no angels.”
“You weren’t.”
“I meant we, as in both our countries.”
“I meant you, as in America. Who firebombed Hamburg, mostly women and children?”
“At least we didn’t rape our way to Berlin.”
“You never got to Berlin. You hung back while we did the dirty work.”
“There. You said it: dirty work.”
“Phhww. Who firebombed Dresden?” Mikhail asked.
“The British. And who murdered over twenty thousand Polish officers and intellectuals in the Katyn Forest and blamed it on the Germans?”
“And who firebombed Tokyo and leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atom bombs. Again, mostly women and children?”
With the dark humor of the frontline soldier Arnie said, “Yeah, can’t make an omelet without breaking an egg.”
Mikhail immediately laughed, ending the threat of a fight, but he chose to reply seriously. “We broke a lot of eggs, Comrade.”
Again, there was silence.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Mikhail said.
“I’ve never felt so alive.”
Mikhail nodded. “We truly do understand each other.”
They rolled out their maps. Arnie had one from the Finnish Army and Mikhail had one from the Red Army. Both men were good at reading topographic maps, having done it many times a day for most of the war. They’d both already worked out their general race route, which they now compared. They’d agreed back in Helsinki that each would choose his own way, but they knew they’d likely often see each other if the race was close. This was because terrain and conditions would force the same choice of route on both of them. Since they’d agreed to not use roads—and there were few roads this far north anyway—that meant using the frozen rivers and lakes as much as possible.
“One last thing we’ve never discussed,” Mikhail said. “We both know that we’ve been sitting on our asses for over a year.”
“And?” Arnie asked cautiously.
Mikhail dug into his pack and pulled up a round cylinder with German writing on it. He held it in front of Arnie.
Arnie smiled. “Pervitin,” he said. “The Germans ate it like popcorn.”
“Yes,” Mikhail said. He waited a moment then gestured, curling his fingers. “Come on.”
Arnie smiled and dug into his own pack. He pulled out a box of Benzedrine tablets.
“Bennies,” Mikhail said.
“Pep pills.”
“Tanker chocolate.”
They both laughed, but the question still was not answered. Finally, Arnie said, “Let’s agree that five milligrams of Benzedrine is about the same as three milligrams of Pervitin. OK?”
Mikhail nodded agreement. Thinking a moment, he said, “How about you take nine pills and I’ll take fifteen? That’s about one a day for you, if you chose to use them that way.”
They agreed, counted out their pills, and threw the rest away.
They decided to head east from Rovaniemi on the ice of the Kemijoki River. Because of the narrowness, this would pretty much keep each in sight of the other since they would be moving at about the same pace, conserving energy for the days ahead. Later that day, they’d turn south to the Näskänselkä-Isoselkä lake system, east of Ranua. This is where they’d split and truly begin racing, Mikhail on the east side and Arnie on the west. From there, they’d ski south on the Pudasjärvi waterways, then overland to the Oulunjärvi lake system, then due south again on the Kallavesi lake system to Kuopio. Five hundred kilometers—three hundred miles.