Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt for Red October

24. POTULNIY’S ARREST

Leadership aboard a Soviet warship, aboard any warship, is from the top down. Obviously. But what’s not quite so obvious is that if the captain of a warship is suddenly removed like Bligh aboard the Bounty, the absolute authority devolves to the next in command, or whoever deposed the captain.

The big rub is that the other officers and crew have served under the captain and not the first officer or, in the case of the mutiny aboard the Storozhevoy, the zampolit.

Captains are to be obeyed instantly and without question. It has been a law in every navy the world over for the entire history of men at sea. And for good reason. It is only the captain who has been trained to command his ship. It is only the captain who has earned the trust and respect of his men by taking them to sea and bringing them home alive. It is only the captain who has the absolute authority of life and death over every man aboard. The starpom is only in training for the job, and the zampolit is nothing more than the Party hack.

Everyone knows the system and the law, but there’s probably never been a warship on which at least one of the crew has not thought about mutiny. Captains have to make dozens, if not hundreds, of decisions every single day their ship is at sea. If a captain is under stress, such as during a storm or time of war, his orders come even faster and must be instantly obeyed for the safety of the ship and his crew.

No one can agree with every order, nor can every order please everyone or even be understandable, say, to a kid fresh off the farm and out of boot camp.

Over time these kinds of misunderstandings and resentments can lead to a full-blown mutiny. Some little incident provides the spark, rage boils over, and a part of the crew takes over the ship. Like with the Potemkin sixty years earlier. People get killed. The survivors go to prison.

Another separate class of mutinies exists in which one of the men aboard ship, and it’s usually an officer, wants to make a statement, sometimes about a tyrannical captain, as in the case aboard the British sailing vessel Bounty, or sometimes, like this moment at a mooring in the Daugava River, a zampolit wants to make a statement about the rotten government he serves under.

Something dreadful has happened that Gindin, who has just dropped his black backgammon piece into the basket in the midshipmen’s dining hall, has no way of knowing. Only three men at this moment share that knowledge, Potulniy, Sablin, and Seaman Shein, the sailor in the projection closet. But everyone else is about to feel the consequences, which carry the very real likelihood that all of them will die.

Earlier that afternoon, when one-third of the crew had been given liberty to go ashore, Sablin had retired alone to his cabin to write a letter outlining exactly what he planned to do this evening. He was going to explain his purpose to the key officers and crew, who would take over the ship and first thing in the morning leave with the rest of the fleet. But instead of heading to the shipyard for his two-week refit, the Storozhevoy was going to lay off Leningrad, where Sablin would broadcast his statement to the Soviet people.

It was the same message he’d written to his wife, Nina, and had posted from Baltiysk four days ago just before they’d sailed up here. He carefully folded this letter and sealed it in a plain white envelope on which he wrote: Cptn. Potulniy.

Next, he called Seaman Shein to his cabin. Sablin had taken the young mechanic into his confidence before they’d left Baltiysk a couple days ago, promising that if the sailor could convince some of his friends to help with the mutiny Sablin would guarantee their demobilization when it was all over.

It meant that if Shein and his friends helped the zampolit they would get orders allowing them to leave the navy and return home. It was a no-brainer, except that Sablin didn’t have the authority. But the kids didn’t know that.

Shein’s only real worry is that Sablin might be planning to defect to the West with the ship. The seaman has learned to have a lot of respect for the zampolit, but he asks point-blank if Sablin is a foreign spy.

Sablin has to laugh. He claps the young man on the shoulder. “If I were a spy I would simply blow up the ship; I wouldn’t bother with a mutiny,” he says. “Nor would I bother to send a message to the people.”

Shein has listened to the tape-recorded message, which made little or no sense to him. He is just a kid from Togliatti, a small town on the remote Chinese border, who got into some trouble and was forced to join the navy or go to jail. What does he know about political statements? All he knows is that if he and the others help out, the zampolit will get them out of the navy.

“If this goes wrong, we’ll all be shot,” Shein argues. He’s frightened, and it shows. “The KGB doesn’t screw around.”

“No one’s going to get shot; trust me,” Sablin promises. “Anyway, if something like that happened it would only be the officers, not the enlisted men.”

“I don’t want to end up in a gulag, freezing my ass off, eating rats.”

“It won’t be like that, either,” Sablin says. “Are you with me?”

Shein nods a little uncertainly, still not 100 percent sure of anything, except that he would like to get out of the navy and return home.

“Good man,” Sablin says, beaming. He hands Shein the envelope addressed to the captain and instructs the seaman to go to the ship’s library and pick out a few books that Captain Potulniy might like to read.

Again Shein nods uncertainly, even less sure what’s going on. What does getting some books for the captain have to do with a mutiny?

“I want you to take the books and the letter down to sonar parts compartment two,” Sablin orders. It’s far forward and at just about the lowest point in the ship, except for the bilges, and at this hour of the evening, at a mooring, the compartment will be unmanned. “Then I want you to disconnect the phone and take it out of there.”

“Yes, sir,” Shein says. He’s really confused, but suddenly Sablin makes everything frighteningly clear.

“As soon as you have the compartment ready, let me know. It’s where we’ll keep the captain after I arrest him.”

Shein steps back a pace, the enormity of what they are about to do striking him in the gut. Arrest Captain Potulniy? The captain is not a bad man. In fact, Shein has never exchanged so much as one word with him. And it’s not the captain who’s at fault for what Sablin preaches is a failure of trust by Moscow.

Sablin pulls a Makarov 9mm pistol out of a drawer. “Take this, and when you’re finished belowdecks go directly to the midshipmen’s dining hall, and I’ll meet you.” He grins. “Right now Comrade Mauser is empty, but I’ll give you the magazine in plenty of time.”

“I don’t want to shoot anybody,” Shein complains.

“Not to worry, Alexander, you won’t have to shoot anybody,” Sablin says, getting to his feet. “I promise you. Now hurry and get the compartment ready for our guest; we don’t have much time left.”

Shein turns and leaves, but before he does Sablin can read the confusion and worry in the boy’s eyes. To this point Shein had been led to believe that Captain Potulniy was going along with the plot. There was going to be a mutiny, but in name only, because the captain himself would be a part of the conspiracy. It is a small white lie, in Sablin’s mind, but a necessary lie to ensure that everything goes well.

If Potulniy gets so much as a whiff of the plot before he is secured in the compartment below, he will sound the alarm and fight back. At that point all of Sablin’s carefully laid plans will be reduced to nothing more than an exercise in futility.

A dangerous exercise in futility, because officers who attempt mutiny and fail at it get their nine ounces. A 9mm bullet to the back of the head.

The next fifteen minutes while Sablin waits for Shein to report back that the sonar compartment is ready are difficult for Sablin, who paces his compartment. This part of the plot wouldn’t have been so critical if Potulniy had gone ashore this afternoon for a few hours of liberty. Sablin had planned on going with the captain and somehow ditching him in Riga.

How Sablin had planned accomplishing that part will probably never be known, but he was, if nothing else, a romantic, and ditching the captain ashore sounded swashbuckling.

But Potulniy refused. He had too much work to do aboard before they sailed for the shipyards tomorrow. Which was too bad, because Sablin had a real respect for the captain, and everybody knew it.

Shein appears back at Sablin’s cabin. “It’s done,” he says, a little breathlessly. His face is pale and his brow sweaty.

“Good,” Sablin says. “Now get yourself to the midshipmen’s dining hall and wait for me.”

“What about the bullets?”

“As soon as I’m finished with the captain,” Sablin says. “Now go!”

When Shein disappears down the corridor, Sablin takes a moment to compose himself before he rushes to the captain’s cabin and without knocking throws the door open.

Potulniy, in shirtsleeves, is sitting at his desk doing some paperwork, and he looks up in surprise. “What is it, Valery?”

“Captain we have a CP!” Sablin shouts. It is a Chrez’vychainoy Polozhenie, a situation.

“What has happened?” Potulniy demands, getting to his feet.

“Some men are drinking belowdecks, in the supply compartment,” Sablin reports. “Captain, I think they mean to do some damage unless they’re stopped.”

“We’ll see about that,” Potulniy snaps. “Come with me.”

He rushes forward and down ladder after ladder, deep into the forward bowels of the ship, his zampolit right on his heels.

Reaching the sonar compartment, Potulniy looks over his shoulder. “Here?”

“Yes, Captain, just inside,” Sablin says.

The captain pulls open the hatch and climbs down into the compartment. The moment his head clears the level of the deck, Sablin slams the hatch shut and dogs it down.

“Valery, what are you doing?” Potulniy shouts. At this point he has no comprehension of what is happening.

“Saving the Soviet Union,” Sablin calls back, and even to his ears the statement seems grandiose.

“What are you talking about? Let me out of here. That’s an order!”

“I can’t do that, Captain, not until later. For now, most of the officers and I are taking control of the ship.”

“Mutiny?” Poltuniy screams. “You bastards. You’ll all hang.”

“What I’m doing is just as much for your benefit as for the Rodina’s. Can’t you see?”

“I thought you were my friend.”

“I am. Believe me, Anatoly, I am your best friend.”

“Then why are you doing this? Have you gone insane?”

“We’re going to broadcast on radio and television directly to the people.”

“Broadcast what?”

“A call for revolution. A return to the true meanings of Marx and Lenin. We’re tired of the lies, tired of the stagnation, tired of having no say in our future. Can’t you see—?”

Potulniy slams something that sounds like a piece of metal against the hatch. “You bastard! You miserable fucking traitor! Let me out now!”

Sablin steps back, his heart pounding nearly out of his chest, until he finally catches his breath. He makes certain that the hatch is truly locked, then turns and heads back up to the midshipmen’s dining hall, for the next part of the mutiny to unfold.

25. MUTINY

The act of mutiny is punishable by death in just about every navy in the world. Even failing to report a suspicion that someone else aboard ship is about to commit mutiny can be punishable by death. National governments take this crime very seriously.

Technically, mutiny is a crime of nothing more than disobeying a legal order. If the captain says, “Scrub the decks,” and the sailors refuse, they may be court-martialed for mutiny. The reason the crewmen disobey the order doesn’t matter; all that matters is that the order was a lawful one.

That means the captain of a ship has been placed in charge of the vessel and his crew. Every order the captain issues is, by definition, a legal one, unless of course it goes against all common sense or is clearly against the Geneva Convention. But even then the issue is almost impossible to prove, because the benefit of the doubt always lies with the captain. According to the British Royal Navy’s Articles of War (1757), which most nations, including the Soviet Union, adopted:

Probably the most famous of all mutinies was that of HMS Bounty in the spring of 1789, when First Officer Fletcher Christian and twenty-six sailors of the forty-four crewmen arrested Captain William Bligh and the eighteen remaining crew and set them adrift in a twenty-three-foot launch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That story and its aftermath have been the stuff of books, articles, novels, and, in the last seventy years or so, movies.

In at least one aspect the incident aboard the Bounty was similar to that of the Storozhevoy—how the officer who mutinied felt about his captain. Aboard the Bounty, Christian and Bligh were close personal friends, and aboard Storozhevoy Sablin and Potulniy had gotten along from day one. They had a mutual respect for each other. That’s one of the reasons the captain so blindly followed Sablin’s lead down into the bowels of the warship, where he could so easily be locked up.

When the Bounty sailed from Spithead, England, two days before Christmas 1787, she carried Captain Bligh, who was the only commissioned officer aboard, and a crew of forty-five men. Most crewmen aboard British men-of-war at that time were pressed into service. Very few of the ordinary sailors were volunteers. In fact, the author Samuel Johnson complained often and bitterly about the practice, writing that “no man will be a sailor who had contrivance enough to get himself into jail, for being in a ship is like being in jail with the chance of being drowned… and a man in jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.”

But it was different aboard the Bounty because every man in the crew had volunteered for the cruise. So there wasn’t supposed to be any trouble. At least that’s what Bligh and Christian thought at the beginning.

Bligh was a short, stout man with thick black hair, pale blue eyes, and a milky, almost albino complexion. But he knew what he was doing. He’d gone to sea at the age of sixteen as an ordinary seaman, but less than a year after he’d signed on he was given his warrant as a midshipman because he was bright, energetic, and earnest. He loved being in the navy, and he put every bit of his heart and soul into being the best officer he could be.

By the time Bligh had turned twenty-three his reputation was such that Captain James Cook tapped him to be the navigator for the famous South Pacific explorations of the fabled Tahiti and beyond. When the expedition was all over, Cook couldn’t write enough good things in the ship’s log about Bligh, and in fact the nautical charts that the young navigator drew from that expedition were so good, so precise, that many of them were still in use more than two centuries later.

Near the end of the expedition, Cook was killed by natives in the Hawaiian Islands, and it was Bligh who brought Cook’s ship, HMS Resolution, back to England, which was a pretty good bit of navigating for a man not yet twenty-five.

War broke out with France, and Bligh did a good job in the fleet, earning a promotion to lieutenant, got married to Elizabeth Bethman, was appointed master of HMS Cambridge, and got to know and become friends with Fletcher Christian, who taught him how to use the sextant and who, he wrote in his diary, treated him like a “brother.”

Then disaster struck in the form of peace. England cut its navy in half and Bligh, like just about every officer, had his pay cut in half. But his wife was rich and she had connections, so Bligh was given command of a merchant ship, the Britannia, which sailed to the West Indies and back on a regular schedule. Fletcher Christian also served aboard, and their friendship grew and solidified.

In 1787 Bligh was given command of the Bounty, technically HMAV (Her Majesty’s Armed Vessel) Bounty, for which he had to take another pay cut. Navy men were paid less than merchant marine officers. But he saw it as a chance for promotion. The deal was that if he made it back from the South Pacific in one piece he would be promoted to captain. And that was a big prize.

A lot of things were happening in the world at about that time. In Europe the French Revolution was getting off the ground, in America the Constitution was being voted on, and in England George III was being battered by the prestigious Royal Society to do something— anything—that would promote England scientifically or economically. The war with the colonies had been lost; it was time to get past it. England needed to save some serious face in the world arena. And Bligh, who needed to do the same for his own career, was just the man for the job.

The situation wasn’t all that dissimilar to Potulniy’s. He came from a naval background, and already as a sixteen-year-old he had been accepted to attend the Frunze Military Academy. He did his apprenticeship aboard a number of warships, and when the Storozhevoy’s keel was laid he was tapped to be the ship’s first commander.

That was a big opportunity for Potulniy to prove himself. A lot of things were happening in the world in 1974. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States was at its height, the United States had beaten Russia to the moon, and already the seeds of the people’s discontent with Moscow were like brush fires, easy to spot but difficult to extinguish.

And there were a lot of similarities between Christian and Sablin. Both men had been born to well-to-do families; both knew what they wanted to do very early on—Christian went to sea at sixteen, and Sablin applied for and was accepted to the Frunze Military Academy at the same age. Both were about the same height and build, both had dark hair and complexions, and both men were described by friends as being mild, open, humane, generous, and sometimes a little conceited.

Bligh and his crew were to sail the Bounty down to Tahiti in the South Pacific via Cape Horn at the southern tip of the Americas to take on as many breadfruit plants as they could carry and bring them to the West Indies. The plantation owners wanted something cheap to feed their slaves, and breadfruit, which grew in Polynesia but not in the West Indies, was just the thing. This trip was just as much political as it was humanitarian. The plantation owners were a rich and therefore a powerful political faction, and the king wanted to appease them.

The Bounty had started her life as a coal ship named Bethia. And despite the bad luck associated with changing a ship’s name, as soon as the collier had been converted into a warship she got a new name. In effect Bligh and his crew were the first to sail the Bounty, as Potulniy and his crew were the first to sail the Storozhevoy.

At 215 tons, the Bounty was ninety feet on deck and was armed with four four-pounders and ten swivel guns. Because space had been made to carry the breadfruit plants, there wasn’t a lot of room aboard for the young crew, who ranged in age from fourteen to thirty-nine.

Like with Potulniy and his crew there was a certain distance between Bligh and his sailors. It was a gap that was filled by Sablin aboard the Storozhevoy and by Christian aboard the Bounty. The ordinary crewmen liked and respected those officers, who both had sympathetic ears.

Bligh had learned early in his career that ships are run by men and that men needed to be well cared for if they were to do their jobs well. To combat scurvy, a disease resulting from deficiency of vitamin C that was very common in those days, Bligh made sure that sauerkraut was served at every meal. And he also knew that exercise was vitally important, so he brought aboard a blind fiddler named Michael Byrne to play music to which the men could dance. No one liked it, but the crew was kept fit. Just like the Russian farm boys aboard the Storozhevoy exercising every day up on deck, it was one of those systems in the military that worked.

The Bounty’s crew bitched about the food and they bitched about the exercise, but Bligh just stamped around on deck and swore at them. He wasn’t going to give any consideration to their complaints. He was the captain and that was the end of it. If they wanted to grumble, they could bitch to Christian for all Bligh cared.

But Bligh, like Potulniy, wasn’t a bad man, even though he was mostly aloof from his crew. For instance, he split the ship’s company into three watches, instead of the normal two, which was unusual for that day. It made duty much easier. The men could get some rest between watches. And after trying to get around Cape Horn for nearly thirty days, being pushed back into the Atlantic by storm after storm, he thanked his crew for a valiant effort, then turned tail and headed for the Pacific by the longer, but easier, route across the Atlantic and around the southern tip of Africa.

The Bounty arrived in Tahiti in the late fall of 1788 and had to remain at anchor for nearly six months until it was the proper season to harvest the immature breadfruit plants. This was Bligh’s big mistake. Six months with no sea duty, at an island filled with good-looking and very willing Polynesian women, for whom white men were a novelty, corrupted the crew. Compared to England, and especially compared to life aboard ship, Tahiti was a paradise. Many of the men had girlfriends, and in six months a lot of the relationships were just as strong as any new marriage. When it was time to leave, a lot of the men didn’t want to go. A few of them even deserted, hiding up in the hills, where they hoped to wait it out until the Bounty sailed away.

But Bligh would have none of that. He took a party and searched the island, finally rounding up the deserters after three weeks of tromping through the mountains and jungles. But he was a humane man. Instead of flogging them and then hanging them from the yardarms, as was the practice, he just had them flogged.

The Bounty finally weighed anchor in the spring of 1789, loaded to the gills with breadfruit plants and a very unhappy crew, miserable that they were being made to leave paradise. Bligh stormed around the deck, swearing and bitching, especially at Christian, all day long, every day, and yet each night Christian was invited to dine with the suddenly civilized captain.

Like Potulniy, who never suspected that Sablin would turn against him, Bligh never had the slightest suspicion that Christian would lead a mutiny. Such an act was utterly unthinkable.

A couple of weeks out from Tahiti, Christian decided to build a raft, jump ship, and somehow try to make it back to Tahiti, where he’d had a warm relationship with the chief’s daughter. He confided in one of the midshipmen, who warned that there were sharks in the water.

“Anyway, if you want to do something like that, why not do away with the old man and take the ship?” the midshipman may have said. “Most of the crew would be with you, sir.”

Christian ran the idea past a few of the crewmen, who agreed. That early morning of April 28, 1789, Christian broke into the arms chest, distributed the weapons to his supporters, and arrested Bligh.

The captain, still in his nightshirt, was brought up on deck, and the assembled crew was asked who wanted to get off the ship with Bligh. Thirty of them raised their hands, and Bligh pleaded that he had a wife and four children and asked for some kind of mercy.

“It’s too late for that,” Christian told the captain. “You have forced us through hell these past weeks, and now there’s no turning back.”

Some of the men who wanted to go with Bligh were forced to stay behind, because there was no room for them aboard the captain’s gig. So Bligh and eighteen of his crew were set adrift with enough food and water for only five days.

Sablin knew the story, of course, and the next parts must have given him some pause. Captain Bligh made it back to civilization after a forty-eight-day voyage in which he had to ration the food and battle storms, losing only one man when they tried to come ashore for provisions on an island filled with cannibals.

For that tremendous feat of seamanship Bligh was court-martialed, acquitted, promoted to captain, and given command of HMS Providence, plus an escort vessel, Assistant, and was sent back to Tahiti for more breadfruit. This time without trouble.

Bligh, on the one hand, wrote a couple of successful books about the Bounty mutiny and then was involved in two other mutinies, including one while he was governor of New South Wales in Australia in 1805. Bligh died in 1817, with the rank of Vice-Admiral of the Blue, a well-decorated hero.

The mutineer Christian, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. He conned the Bounty back to Tahiti, where they picked up the Tahitian women and a few Tahitian men, and eventually they made their way to the remote island of Pitcairn, where he burned the ship to the waterline to prevent anyone from escaping and reporting their whereabouts.

The Polynesian men and the white crew were unhappy almost from the start. And within less than three years five of the original Bounty crew, including Fletcher Christian, and all the Polynesian men, were murdered.

Then, one by one, the Tahitian women killed all but two of the original mutineers, leaving only John Adams and Ned Young. Young died of natural causes in 1800.

The officers and midshipmen looking down the barrel of the gun in the midshipmen’s dining hall could not even guess at what prospects Sablin was facing, except that all of them knew that an invisible line had been crossed that would change all of their lives forever.

No matter what choice any of them made.

Even the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice is specific on this point:

26. THE OFFICERS DIVIDED

Gindin has made his choice and is waiting for the other officers to make theirs—white or black. Some of them seem to have calmed down a little. Maybe they think that this is some sort of a joke after all, or maybe it’s simply that they are whistling as they pass the graveyard, gallows humor. Among the others only Lieutenant Sergey Kuzmin, the sonar systems officer from BCH-3, acts like he’s taking Sablin’s insane proposal seriously. Kuzmin had a bad marriage that will end in a divorce, but it hasn’t soured him on women, and he and Gindin often talked about the day they would settle down with a wife.

Kuzmin is the same height as Sablin, only his hair is blond and he has a tiny mustache. He walks up to the table and faces their zampolit eye to eye and drops a black game piece into the basket. Sablin doesn’t have the same reaction he had with Gindin; maybe it’s because he expected Kuzmin to vote against the mutiny or thought that because Gindin was a Jew and hated the system there was more hope.

Kuzmin comes back to his seat, and one by one all the officers cast their votes. Besides Gindin and Kuzmin, those voting against mutiny include Captain Lieutenant Nikolay Proshutinsky, who is commander of BCH-3, Senior Lieutenants Smirnov and Vinogradov, and Warrant Officers Gritsa, Khokhlov, and Zhitenev.

Which leaves Lieutenant Dudnik going along with the mutiny and midshipmen Viktor Borodai, Gomenchuk, and Kalinichev also each dropping a white backgammon piece into the basket.

Everyone has voted now, except for Gindin’s roommate and best friend, Firsov, who slowly gets to his feet and approaches the table where Sablin is standing. Vladimir is clutching a backgammon piece in his right hand so tightly his knuckles have turned white. No one is making any noise now, not because they are concerned about Firsov’s vote but because all of them are finally beginning to realize the enormity of what is happening. Gindin just wants his friend to drop the black piece into the basket and find out what happens next.

Firsov reaches over the basket and drops the game piece. But his body is blocking Gindin from seeing the color—white or black. When Firsov turns around to face the room it is impossible to tell from his expression how he voted, but Gindin is worried because Vladimir is not returning to his seat. He stands at Sablin’s left as if he wants to say something, as if he wants to explain to Gindin what he’s just done.

“This vote shows who is with us and who is against us,” Sablin says. He doesn’t seem as sure of himself as he did just two minutes ago. In fact, he seems resigned, which as far as Gindin is concerned is another bad sign. “I am giving you one last chance to change your minds. This is the most important decision of your lives.”

“It’s the most important decision of your life, Captain,” Gindin says from where he’s gone back to his seat at one of the tables. “You’ll kill us all if you go though with a mutiny. You should know this.”

“I’m doing this not to kill you, but to save your lives!” Sablin cries passionately. “You must be able to see this. Our government must be thrown out before it’s too late for all of us. We need another revolution, the time is now, and this ship will be the spark that begins it.”

Gindin is at a loss for words, finally. Maybe this is a test after all.

At length Sablin nods. He understands the situation, probably better than anyone else in the room, although his idealism will probably be his undoing. “I will ask those officers who voted against me not to stand in our way.”

No one moves a muscle; no one says a word.

He nods again. “Very well. I would like everyone who voted against us to leave the room.”

Still no one makes a move. “We were afraid of our own shadows,” Gindin recalls. And he wanted to find out how Firsov had voted.

Finally someone stands up, Gindin can’t remember who, but then he is on his feet with the others, and they shuffle out from behind the tables and timidly approach the door they came through. “We didn’t know where we were supposed to go,” Gindin says. “Certainly not to our duty stations. Maybe back to our quarters, or perhaps up on deck where we could have a smoke and talk about what was happening.” Sablin said they would not be leaving Riga until morning, so there was still time to do something. What that might be no one had a clue, but at least they had overnight to figure something out.

But Firsov is not joining the officers leaving the midshipmen’s dining hall. His backgammon piece was white. He has voted to go with Sablin. Firsov has voted to mutiny.

“I could not believe my eyes,” Gindin says of that moment. “It felt as if a speeding train had just run through my head.” Thoughts and emotions tumble end over end in his gut. A dozen questions he hasn’t even been able to form yet are seething to the surface from some cauldron deep within his Russian soul. He feels confused, betrayed, deceived, more frightened than he’s ever been to this point in his life. Why had Vladimir chosen to side with Sablin? It made no sense. Was Vladimir completely out of his mind? Was he flustered? “Maybe he was trying to save his own life,” Gindin muses.

A couple of the officers who’d voted to go along with the mutiny get to their feet and stand beside Sablin as if the zampolit’s rank or power might protect them.

Gindin wants to ask again what has happened to the captain, but the vastness of the chasm that has opened before him and the shock of Firsov’s betrayal strike him speechless for those few moments.

One of the officers opens the door. Metal chains have been stretched across the corridor to the left and the right, blocking them from returning to their duty stations or from going up on deck. The only path for them is through an open door directly across the hall and down a companionway to the next deck below. It occurs to Gindin, and probably the others, that they are being herded like sheep. Or, more darkly, like lambs to the slaughter.

Gindin’s fear spikes, yet he doesn’t call out in alarm. Nor does anyone speak, because a stocky enlisted man holding a large Makarov is standing in the corridor just beyond the chain to the left. He is scowling, and he looks as if he means business. Sablin has promised the enlisted men the moon. He is the one officer they can trust. They will do anything for him, even kill the other officers if it comes to that. Gindin and the others read something of that from the young man’s expression.

The first officers through the door into the corridor pull up short when they are confronted by the sailor with the gun and try to turn back, creating a logjam.

Gindin spins around, but Shein has stepped out of the projector closet and he, too, is holding a big Makarov pistol in his meaty hand, and he, too, looks as if he means business. There will be no turning back. They have no other choice than to cross the hall and take the companionway stairs down to the lower deck, though what awaits them below is anyone’s guess, but Gindin is truly afraid for his life now. Not only from the authorities when word of the mutiny gets out but also from his zampolit and his armed crewmen.

Gindin makes a last, mute appeal to his roommate, but Firsov looks away. He cannot meet Gindin eye to eye. Vladimir is embarrassed, and Gindin believes that is a positive sign.

He turns back again to follow the other officers out of the midshipmen’s dining hall, and he feels a faint glimmer of hope that Firsov will come to his senses at some point and stop this madness from going any further.

It’s up to Firsov now.

Across the corridor they climb down the steep, vertical stairs about three and half meters to where another enlisted man with a pistol is waiting for them at an open door into one of the sonar parts compartments.

The situation is bizarre. No one says a word at first; no one is objecting; no one is giving orders. The officers climb down the stairs and one by one soundlessly enter the compartment.

When everyone is inside, the sailor looks in at them with utter contempt in his eyes. “Sit down,” he tells them. “Keep your mouths shut and no one will get hurt.”

Suddenly the situation is filled with high melodrama, like the American cowboy movies that the theaters sometimes show.

The sailor slams the door and dogs the latches, locking them in.

One of the officers bangs an open palm against the bulkhead. “Hey!” he shouts at the top of his lungs. “We’re in here; let us out!”

“Shut your mouth!” the sailor just outside the door shouts back. “No noise!”

“In one instant everything had been turned upside down,” Gindin says. “We were in the position of taking orders from an enlisted man with a gun. We had to obey his instructions. There was nothing else for us to do.”

27. THE GATHERING STORM

Sablin’s wife, Nina, has gotten the letter about the mutiny that her husband posted four days earlier at Baltiysk, but she’s not told anyone in authority about it. So far as Moscow is concerned, nothing has happened yet, nor is anything about to happen. It’s just another day after a holiday in the Soviet Union. Tomorrow morning everyone will get back to work. Yesterday, when Seaman Shein was ashore on liberty after the parade he sent letters to his sister and best friend back home telling them what he was about to do. His biggest worry was that Sablin was actually a spy and intended to defect to the West. Probably to Sweden. In that case they would be doomed. There would be no way out of it for any of them. Shein wanted to explain that he believed the zampolit was a man of his word, who merely wanted to send a message to the Russian people about their rotten government. In return for helping him, all the sailors were promised an early out from the navy. No one wanted to be a traitor. All of them loved the Soviet Union; so Shein maintained. But all of them wanted to get out of the military and go home. Was that so terrible?

And no one was really afraid of the KGB’s retaliation after this thing was finished, if they didn’t think about it too hard. Sablin was the zampolit; his word was practically the same as a promise from the Communist Party itself.

In the West the workers have to accept the fact that there will be rich people and that there will be poor people, Sablin tells Shein and the other enlisted men. It’s a fact of life that cannot be denied. But in a socialist system all that is supposed to be different. There cannot be rich people and poor people. We’re all alike! We must all be equal!

Communism is the highest form of civilization.

“So, what has gone wrong in Mother Russia?” Sablin asks rhetorically. “There is a clear contradiction between the words and the deeds in the Soviet Union. Everyone knows this in his heart of hearts. It is up to us to talk openly about the issues. Force Moscow to listen to the hearts and minds of our people.”

“What is the use of all this stupid window dressing?” Shein asks Sablin at one point. Shein’s comment is typical of the cynicism throughout the country. “When we go to war, who are we supposed to defend with all this fancy talk?”

None of Sablin’s enlisted crew think much about the consequences of their support of the zampolit. They’re going home soon, and that’s all that counts.

Even most of the midshipmen seemed sanguine. The crew thought highly of Captain Third Rank Sablin, according to Viktor Borodai. But the captain had warned Sablin more than once about getting too close to the enlisted crew. A warning that he never heeded.

For Seaman Shein it started one evening when Sablin called him into the dining room where the political lectures were given. The enlisted man had no idea what the zampolit wanted with him, but orders were orders.

“I have a question for you, Sasha,” Sablin says.

Shein nods uncertainly. He’s never been talked to like this by an officer. He doesn’t know what to say or how to act. This is new territory for a kid from Togliatti.

“How would you like to work for the KGB?”

It’s like a hot poker has been stuck up his ass. He’s disappointed and pissed off. After everything the zampolit has taught them about honor and equality and the true meaning of Communism, now he’s recruiting his crew to be spies, informers for the KGB.

Shein turns on his heel and starts toward the door. He may get in trouble for walking out on an officer, but he doesn’t have to stand there taking that kind of shit.

“Wait, Sasha!” Sablin cries. “You have to calm down! I was just making a little test. I don’t want you to be angry with me.”

Shein turns back. He’s confused. What’s he supposed to do? What in heaven’s name can Sablin want with him?

“I want you to sit down now,” Sablin says, his voice lower. “I want to talk to you. This is serious stuff.”

Sablin had an agenda from the start, and nothing in heaven or on earth would stop him. He meant to take his message to the people.

“Moscow has betrayed the October Revolution, so it’s time now for another revolution. All it will take is a bold stroke and positive leadership and the workers will rise up again. They will be with us, Sasha. I need you to be with me!”

That was three days ago, and this evening the first seeds of Sablin’s revolution are beginning to sprout.

Once the officers and midshipmen who had voted with the black pieces are safely locked up below, Sablin sends Shein down to the forward port compartment to stand guard over Potulniy in case the captain figures out a way to escape.

Next Sablin gets on the 1MC and calls a muster of all the crew on the quarterdeck for ten minutes after eight. This will be the moment of truth. A few officers and a handful of midshipmen cannot operate the Storozhevoy without the help of most of the crew. If he has the enlisted men behind him, Sablin knows that he has a real shot at doing this thing, actually disconnecting from the mooring in the morning and getting under way up to Leningrad, where he can broadcast his message of the new revolution directly to the people.

Most of the crew has already returned from liberty ashore. Those in the dining room watching the movie and those in their quarters or already up on deck having a smoke are the first to pull on their winter coats and form up on the aft deck. The others, either on duty or, like Shein, armed and guarding someone, have already been recruited by Sablin. They are his core supporters.

Now it is up to him to convince the bulk of the crew that what he is asking of them is not only necessary but also right and just and that they will have a real chance of succeeding.

The evening is turning surreal in more than one way. A fairly thick fog has formed so that the shore is mostly lost, but the quarterdeck is bathed in a strong white light from the spreaders, and straight overhead the stars are visible, as is a full moon. It’s as if the Storozhevoy and his crew have been transported to a distant universe and for all practical purposes are utterly alone.

Sablin hesitates at a midship hatch before going out on deck and heading aft to confront the crew. He is wearing his black winter coat, with officer’s shoulder boards, and a standard-issue Makarov pistol in a belt holster. His heart was racing earlier in the midshipmen’s dining hall when he was talking to the officers, but he’s calmed down now. In any event, the die has been cast and there’s no way of reversing the clock.

He’s about to step outside when he becomes aware that something is going on belowdecks. He can plainly hear that someone is shouting. It sounds like Potulniy.

Sablin turns and races downstairs as fast as his feet will carry him.

“Sablin is a traitor!” Potulniy shouts. His voice is faint, coming all the way forward near the bow of the ship, but the message is clear nevertheless. There’s trouble.

Coming around a corner, Sablin yanks the pistol out and plays with the safety catch. He’s not much of a shot, but he does know how to fire the weapon.

He pulls up short. Shein is standing at the end of the short corridor in front of the hatch to the sonar compartment where the captain is being held prisoner. The seaman has a dazed, frightened look on his broad peasant’s face. He looks like a deer suddenly caught in the headlights of an onrushing truck.

“Sablin is a traitor!” Potulniy shouts again.

Standing in front of Shein are three of the warrant officers who voted with white backgammon pieces: Gomenchuk, Kalinichev, and Borodai.

“What’s going on?” Sablin demands. “The crew has assembled up on deck. They’re waiting for me!”

“I tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen,” Shein stammers.

“Stop who?” Sablin shouts.

“Valery, is that you?” Potulniy cries. “Let me out of here. Don’t be a fool.” It’s more than obvious that the captain is hopping mad, and the warrant officers are clearly distressed. They didn’t count on this complication.

“A couple of sailors down here heard the captain and they tried to be heroes and rescue him,” Borodai explains. “We stopped them.”

But there is no one else in the corridor. “Where are they?” Sablin wants to know. He’s getting shaky again. “Have you locked them away?”

Borodai shakes his head. “There was no reason for it. They won’t cause any trouble now.”

“They’ll tell the rest of the crew!”

“Comrade zampolit, isn’t that exactly what you intend to do on deck?” Borodai asks politely. “By now just about everybody aboard knows that something is going on. So maybe you should get up there and explain the situation.”

Sablin’s heart is racing. He is torn with indecision, even though he knows what has to be done. “Shoot the next man who tries to release the captain,” he gives the order to Shein. “Do you understand me?”

Shein nods that he understands.

Sablin gives the warrant officers a bleak look, then turns on his heel and, holstering his pistol, races back up to the assembled crew on the quarterdeck.

On deck, in the shadows just around the corner from where the men are assembled, Sablin stops a moment to compose himself. The message he’s going to tell these boys is the same one he told the officers an hour ago. Only this time he’ll use easier words, simpler sentences, more clear-cut concepts, and above all a flair for the dramatic and an appeal to their patriotism.

There’s probably not a boy among them, not even among the cynics, the self-proclaimed tough guys, who doesn’t get misty when the idea of defending the Rodina is presented to them. These boys have the black Russian soil beneath their fingernails and the sad Russian songs in their souls; they will jump at the chance to come to the Motherland’s rescue against all enemies—Americans or Moscow bureaucrats.

When Sablin steps out into the light, someone calls the crew to attention, and they snap to.

When Sablin takes his position at the head of the formation he does not guess that word of the mutiny has already spread like wildfire among the crew. Shein and the few other enlisted men Sablin has taken into his confidence have convinced the others that once this necessary business is over they can all go home.

Zampolit Sablin has given his solemn promise.

He hesitates for a moment, mustering the correct words. This is a singular moment in time. He actually feels the long history of the Russian navy stretching back four hundred years. He is becoming an important part of that history.

“We cannot go on like this any longer,” he begins. “You have been lied to. We all have been lied to, even the officers. The Rodina is on the verge of defeat. But the real enemy is not across the ocean, he is right here in the Motherland, and we must do something before it is too late for us all.”

Not one of the 150 enlisted men assembled says a word. No one moves a muscle. It’s obvious that they are surprised by what their zampolit is saying to them, even if they don’t yet fully understand what they are being told. But like Sablin they understand that this is a moment in time that none of them will ever forget.

“I offer no criticism of the Communist Party or of the October Revolution. Those are pure. But there are men in Moscow who are bringing the Rodina to her knees like a common whore. Your mothers and sisters have been told so many lies that they may have to go begging on the streets. They may have to get down on their hands and knees just to feed their families! To feed you fine boys!”

There is a stirring now among the assembly. Sablin is painting a dramatic, if dreary, picture of what will happen unless they do something about the sickness and corruption that has gripped Moscow.

“The people of Russia—your fathers and your brothers—have no rights! They’re starving while a few old men in the Kremlin drink champagne and eat caviar and blinis.

“Brezhnev and his pals are making fools of you. It is finally up to us, the men in the military, to protect our Motherland from the real enemy, and we must let the people know what we are doing.

“Russia must finally become the democracy that Lenin promised us, or else we will remain a backward country, a poor country with no opportunities.”

The first of the rumbling dissent begins, and Sablin’s heart picks up a pace. He has them now!

“We need new leaders to run the country! Leaders whom the people will elect! Honest men who are patriots, willing to do as we tell them, not as they tell us!”

Sablin is overcome by his own words.

“The Party leaders in Moscow are getting rich off the labors of your fathers and brothers, and the heroic sacrifices of your mothers and sisters. It must end now!”

The murmuring is getting louder. These sailors, most of them twenty or younger, are being moved by the zampolit’s impassioned words.

“I want you to follow me to Kronshtadt, where we will go on television and take this message directly to the people,” Sablin tells the crew.

“I have spoken with honest officers in many military units all across the country who agree with me. They have promised to rise up to support us, if we will only lead the way.”

This is a lie; the only person he’s told about his plans who isn’t aboard the ship at this moment is his wife. But the crew believes him.

“We’ll be lined up and shot!” someone shouts. It’s the same fear that Shein had expressed.

“No one will be shot,” Sablin assures them. “I’m an officer, and I’m giving you men a direct order. No one in the Soviet navy has ever been shot for obeying a direct order.”

“What if we don’t agree?” someone else shouts. “What if we just return to our cubricks? You can’t have a fucking mutiny without us.” The speaker is anonymous in the darkness and in the ranks, so he’s braver than those in the front row.

“That doesn’t matter,” Sablin says. “Because I’ve already told Moscow what we will do. If we don’t get out of here in the morning, the KGB will come aboard and arrest us all. You included. So make up your minds right now.”

No one says a thing.

“I want to know who is with me!” Sablin cries.

He strides directly to the first man in the formation and looks him directly in the eyes. “Are you with me?”

“Yes, Captain Third Rank!” the young man shouts without hesitation.

Sablin steps to the next man. “And you?”

“I agree,” the crewman responds immediately.

The polling of votes goes very quickly. In the end, not one of the crew is against the mutiny.

“You will not regret your decision,” Sablin tells them from the head of the formation. “Officers in all the fleets are standing by for word from us to join the revolt.”

28. CAPTIVE

Gindin and the five other officers and three midshipmen who voted against Sablin are locked in a compartment near the bottom of the Storozhevoy that is used as a maintenance depot for the ship’s main sonar stations. For the next couple of hours they are left to their own devices; in fact, they can hear no sounds of any struggle topsides, no shouting, no gunshots. Nor does anyone come to talk to them or threaten them. But that business is inevitable, and they all know it.

“This is a mutiny,” one of the officers says. “And we’re a part of it, whether we like it or not.”

“What are you talking about?” Vinogradov asks. “We’re not part of anything. We voted against Sablin!”

“Yes, but we did nothing to stop him.”

“Didn’t you see the guns? What did you want to happen, that we be shot down like stupid heroes?”

“Well, we’ll probably get our nine ounces in the end,” Vinogradov says. “Doesn’t matter whose gun it comes from, one of Sablin’s cronies from the crew or one of Brehznev’s pretty boys from the KGB.” He pokes a finger toward Gindin. “What do you think, Boris? Will we get out of this one alive? Or maybe this is a test. Just some sick joke that our zampolit has played on us?”

Gindin shakes his head. “This is no joke, and I think we have to find a way to get out of here before Sablin carries it too far.”

“He can’t get the ship out of here and sail to Kronshtadt without us,” Sergey Kuzmin says.

Some of the others are swearing, and a few of them are banging their fists on the metal bulkheads and the door. But they stop suddenly and look across at Sergey. Maybe he has a point and the situation isn’t as desperate as they first thought. If Sablin couldn’t get out of here in the morning when the rest of the fleet was leaving, someone would come over to investigate, and the jig would be up.

“I’m not so sure,” Gindin says. He is remembering the odd conversation he had with Sablin a couple of days ago. The zampolit came down to the engineering spaces and asked all sorts of questions about the engines and their control panels.

“Complicated machinery down here, Boris,” Sablin said. “It must be difficult to teach these boys how to do their jobs.”

“Not so tough,” Gindin replies. He’s proud of his crew. They are good sailors, for the most part, and he’s taught them well.

“They couldn’t be left on their own, if there was an emergency,” Sablin said. He is looking at gauges on the control panel. “Say if you were delayed for some reason, they wouldn’t know what to do. They’d be lost.”

“If it was a big enough emergency and our lives depended on getting under way, they could manage until I could get down here,” Gindin said.

Now, locked in the compartment, he realizes just how shortsighted he’d been.

“What are you talking about?” Vinogradov demands.

Gindin looks at his fellow officers. All of them have stopped their shouting and banging, and they’re all staring at him like he was a man from Mars. “If he has the enlisted crew with him, plus Vladimir and the other officers, he could do it.”

“What, start the engines and sail out of here?” Kuzmin demands.

Gindin has talked with some of the other officers who found Sablin’s behavior over the past few weeks just as odd as he has. The zampolit has been asking a lot of questions.

“I think so,” Gindin says.

“Who’ll navigate for him?” Vinogradov wants to know.

Gindin shakes his head. “He could head down the river, and once out in the open Baltic he just has to follow his nose.”

“So he follows his nose, Boris,” Vinogradov asks. “But to where?”

“Sweden,” Kuzmin breaks the sudden, dark silence.

“My God,” one of the other officers says softly. “The bastards insane. He means to defect. We’re all dead.”

“Not unless we can get out of here first,” Gindin says. “Sablin told us he wasn’t leaving until morning.”

“But there’s only nine of us,” Kuzmin points out. “If he convinced even half the crew to go along with him, there’s nothing we could do aboutit. There’s just too many of them. They wouldn’t even need guns.”

“If we can get out of here we’ll find the captain; he’ll know what to do,” Gindin says.

“If they haven’t killed him,” someone counters. “Or if he’s thrown in with the mutiny, and is just lying low.”

Some of the others start to object, but Vinogradov holds up a hand to silence them. “Shut up and listen to me. The captain would never go along with a crazy scheme like this, no matter how convincing Sablin is.”

No one says a thing,

“Has anyone seen him this afternoon?”

Still no one says a word. The compartment is absolutely still. They all understand that their lives hang in the balance of a great number of factors, most of which are totally out of their control.

“Maybe Sablin shot him and hid his body somewhere,” Vinogradov suggests.

“That’s not possible,” Gindin says.

“How do you know, Boris? How can you be sure? Are you willing to bet your life, all of our lives, on Sablin’s kindness? If he’s killed the captain, what’s to prevent him from killing us all?”

“I don’t know anything for sure,” Gindin admits. “Except that unless we get out of here we’ll never know.”

“If we try to escape, what will our chances be?” one of the officers asks.

“I don’t know that, either,” Gindin says. “But I know for sure that unless we try our chances will be zero.”

The sonar supply compartment is actually two small rooms, equipped with only one work bench, a small closet that contains the power supplies, repeaters, targeting computers, and other electronic equipment that supports the sonar stations, and drawers that contain some non-classified schematics, a set of spare parts and a few screwdrivers, socket sets, and other small maintenance tools and testing gear.

At this point there is no phone in the compartment, nor is there any way in which to signal someone else aboard the ship, other than by banging on the light blue steel bulkheads.

The second, somewhat smaller compartment contains only more built-in drawers that hold more tools and test equipment and some technical manuals, which are supposed to be kept three decks up in the library.

Gindin steps through the open doorway into this compartment and almost immediately spots a water pump bolted to the deck in one corner. Pumps like these are located throughout the ship to move potable water from the tanks below to the various compartments where it’s needed. The designers placed the pumps wherever they saw fit in order to minimize the lengths of pipe runs. It is one of those Soviet economy measures that aren’t very elegant and don’t look good but work.

Some errant thought enters Gindin’s mind from way back. It’s a lecture or a discussion at the academy about sabotage, what to look for, how to spot it, and how to prevent it. “This was a new territory for me,” Gindin says. “My job was always to make sure that all the mechanical systems aboard the Storozhevoy worked the way they were designed to work. Thinking about how to prevent Sablin from getting away from Riga by maybe sabotaging the ship was alien to me. And frightening.”

29. DISAPPOINTMENT

The mood among the crew is high with enthusiasm, but Sablin carries a tight knot in his gut. So many things can still go wrong with his plan that he can’t help but stop for a moment to reflect on just what it is that he has set in motion this evening. Two hundred officers and men are depending on him to get them through this ordeal. The burden is on his shoulders.

Sablin may be an idealist, but he’s far from being a stupid man. He knows that he will have one shot, and only one shot, at surviving this business. If he can convince the Russian people themselves to rise up in revolt, the Kremlin will be all but powerless to stop what he believes will be a groundswell—just like the revolt that toppled the tsarist government in October 1917.

He has worked out a plan for that.

Almost as soon as he had formulated his idea for the mutiny, Sablin began working on a speech that he would broadcast to the Russian people. He has recorded it, and once the Storozhevoy is in position near Leningrad and he has been given access to Russian radio and television, he means to broadcast his plea directly to the people. “…our announcement is not a betrayal of the Motherland, but a purely political, progressive declaration, and the traitors to the Motherland are those who would seek to stop us.

“My comrades want me to pass on to you our assurance that if our nation is attacked, we are fully prepared to defend it. Right now we have another goal: to take up the voice of truth…”

But first he has to get away from Riga and the rest of the fleet, and to do that he has to make sure that the ship is secure. For that they will need weapons.

The warshots for all the Storozhevoy’s combat systems—the rockets, depth charges, and ammunition for the deck guns—have already been off-loaded before he heads to his refurbishing berth. This is routine. But the ship has two armories of light weapons, mostly pistols and AK-47 assault rifles.

Sablin got a set of keys for one of the armories from their starpom Nikolay Novozilov, before the exec went home on leave. Now Sablin takes a few of the enlisted crewmen with him, and they retrieve all the weapons and ammunition they can carry.

Then he begins issuing the orders crucial for their survival until they can slip their mooring and get out into the open Baltic. First he posts two armed crewmen on the bridge to make sure that not only the ship’s controls are theirs but also that no one can sneak up and use the radio to call for help.

Next he sends several crewmen belowdecks to help Shein make sure no one tries again to release the captain. Sablin sends others to the sonar compartment where Gindin and the others who voted with the black backgammon pieces are under arrest and one young man with a rifle to guard his cabin.

At this point Sablin has every right to be paranoid, but he wants to prevent someone trying to find the recording of his speech and destroy it.

Finally, he sends men from each division to watch over their own equipment. Among them are several from Gindin’s gas turbine division who have as much enthusiasm for the project as everyone else.

“No matter what happens, you must keep in control of the engine room,” Sablin tells the kids who are by this time jumping all over the place.

They want to tell their stories about how rotten things are at home and how once they get back everything will be better.

“Of course life will get better once we have elected some proper leaders,” Sablin assures them. “But for now no one gets to the engines unless I give the order.”

“Yes, sir,” they chorus.

“Once everything is secure down there, I want you to get the engines ready to start on an instants notice. Can you do this?”

One of them nods. “Yes, of course. Our lieutenant is a good man; he taught us—” The kid stops in mid-sentence, a little embarrassed by the betrayal of an officer he actually admires.

“I understand,” Sablin says. “None of them will come to any harm. Anyway, this is just as good for them as it is for us.”

The embarrassment passes. They’re eager to begin.

“As soon as you’re ready, call me, or send a runner,” Sablin tells them. “Now go, and be careful.”

Sablin watches them with real affection as they scurry belowdecks to carry out his orders. He is alone for just that moment, and perhaps he listens to the sounds of the Storozhevoy. His ship now. An instrument, like the Potemkin, for a nation-changing revolution.

It’s chilly up on deck, in the open, and the fog has thickened. He might think that he is alone at this point in time. Not one person aboard this ship has any real idea what he is trying to do for them, for the Rodina. Nor, he supposes, will they understand what has happened even after it is all over with and the revolution has come and gone. Only afterward, when their lives have become materially better, might they stop from time to time to think of what part they played this evening.

When that happens they will feel proud. Sablin is utterly convinced of it, and he is filled with a holy zeal.

He takes a quick turn around the decks to make sure that everything is in order, then ducks through a mid-ship hatch and heads forward to his cabin. He sincerely hopes that when the time is right Potulniy will hear him out with an open mind. He wants to apologize to the captain for the rough treatment. Sablin has to keep reminding himself that under the circumstances there was no other way. Potulniy either had to be placed under arrest or had to be killed, and Sablin will make sure the captain understands just how humanely he was treated.

A crewman, whose name Sablin can’t remember, is standing guard in the corridor. He snaps to attention as Sablin comes around the corner. It’s obvious that the crewman is almost as frightened as he is excited. He’s had a little time to think about the situation that he and the others have gotten themselves into with their captain locked up and their zampolxt in charge.

“How’s it going, Seaman?” Sablin asks kindly. “No trouble here?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s good. Very good. Just keep a sharp eye.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy says. He might seem a little less tense now. After all, Sablin is their political officer. Who would know better than such a man?

Sablin enters his cabin and goes directly to his wall safe, where he’s locked the reel of tape on which he recorded his speech. But before he can retrieve it, he has another idea. He looks at his wristwatch. It is coming up on nine; the men from the midshipmen’s dining hall who voted with the black backgammon pieces have been locked belowdecks for nearly two hours. Maybe some of them have had a change of heart.

He sincerely hopes so. It would be better if he had all of the officers behind him.

“Stay here,” he tells the seaman at his door, and he heads down the corridor and below to the compartment.

The two armed sailors guarding the hatch stiffen to attention when Sablin comes around the corner.

“How’s it going?” he asks. “Are they giving you any trouble?”

“They were raising some hell to start with,” one of the kids reports. “But they finally shut their traps.”

“We made sure of it, sir,” the other sailor says.

“Open up.”

“Sir?”

“Open the hatch; I want to talk to them,” Sablin says. Discipline is already starting to get a little ragged. The sailors are taking time responding to clear orders. He expected it, but not so soon. Once they get under way in the morning he hopes moving into action will calm them down.

One of the sailors opens the hatch, and Sablin steps up, though he does not go inside. The nine men are looking at him. Some of them are leaning against the work bench; others are seated on the floor or on the two chairs. Gindin is standing in the doorway to the other section of the compartment.

“Is everything okay in here?” Sablin asks. The question sounds ridiculous even in his ears.

No one says a thing.

“It’s twenty-one hundred hours. Would you like some tea?”

Vinogradov steps forward. “Stick it up your ass!”

Sablin rears back. “I don’t mean to offer you any harm, or—”

“Get out of here before we tear you apart!” one of the other officers shouts.

“Traitor!”

“Bastard!”

Sablin looks to Gindin. He’d sincerely hoped at least Boris would have changed his mind by now. A man such as Boris should understand the real score, even if the others didn’t. But Gindin’s expression is stony.

“You’ll get us all killed,” Kuzmin says. “You’d better get out of here.”

Sablin steps back and slams the door.

30. RAGE

The hatch is dogged with an audible clang.

“You dumb bastards!” Gindin shouts. He can’t help himself, but he is overcome with a sudden rage. It doesn’t matter that he’s outranked by Captain Lieutenant Proshutinsky, and Senior Lieutenants Smirnov and Vinogradov; what they’ve just done is nothing short of insane.

“That’s enough, mister,” Proshutinsky warns.

“Do you understand what’s just happened, sir?”

“You’re being insubordinate.”

Gindin turns to the others. “Don’t you get it?” he demands. He thinks that he’s going insane. Or maybe the others are crazy.

“What are you talking about, Boris?” Kuzmin asks. “Sablin is a traitor. What, are we supposed to treat him like a tsar? He’s going to get us killed.”

“Exactly,” Gindin agrees. “Unless we can somehow get out of here and stop him.”

“That’s the point—,” Kuzmin starts to say, but then he realizes what Gindin is trying to tell them. Kuzmin averts his eyes. “Shit,” he says. “Pizdec.”

The other officers aren’t sure.

“We had a chance when Captain Sablin had the hatch open,” Gindin explains. “We could have rushed him and the guards. We might have been able to get out of here and grab their weapons.”

The officers are silent for a long time, each with his own dark thoughts. Gindin is thinking about his own vote. If he had voted with the white backgammon piece, pretending to go along with Sablin, he would be free right now, with the possibility of doing something to stop the insanity.

Maybe that was Firsovs thinking.

Right now all Gindin and the others have is hope.

31. REVOLT

If he cares to admit it to himself, Sablin is shaken by the reaction to his offer of a little humanity. It was just some tea, after all, not some political statement. On the way back to his cabin he can’t help but think about the letter he sent to his wife, Nina. In it he’d outlined his plan and his reasons for going through with the mutiny, but he never expected the kind of anger he got from his own officers.

He believes that given the chance Gindin and the others might have actually done him bodily harm. He shakes his head. The Kremlin would not be amused when they found out what was going on. But his own officers?

If he couldn’t explain the necessity for what he was doing to Gindin and the others, how could he explain it to the Russian people? He was starting to get seriously worried.

When he reaches his cabin the young sailor standing guard can’t help but notice that something is wrong.

“How’s it going?” The kid uses Sablin’s own words back at him.

Sablin looks up and manages a slight smile. “No problems,” he says. “It’s going to be a quiet night. We’ll get under way first thing in the morning with the rest of the fleet.”

“Yes, sir.”

Inside, Sablin once again walks over to his safe, but he just stands there. An almost overwhelming lethargy may have overcome him, as he realizes perhaps for the first time the enormity of the thing that he has set in motion. All of his life he has been a good Communist. Despite his student letter to Khrushchev, which very nearly derailed his career, he has been the textbook-perfect zampolit. Almost like a Baptist minister, he has tended to his flock, guiding them through the minefields of understanding, appreciating, and believing in the system they were born into.

Now he’s not so sure.

He has reached down to twist the dial for the first number in the combination when he is distracted by a commotion in the corridor. He looks up as someone pounds on the door.

“Captain Sablin!” they are shouting.

In three steps Sablin is across the cabin and he flings open his door. The sailor who has been standing guard has been joined by another sailor, Seaman Aleksei Sakhnevich, who is red faced and all out of breath.

Sablin’s heart is in his throat. “What’s happened?”

“It’s Lieutenant Stepanov and some others in his cabin! They’re talking about freeing the captain and coming to arrest you!”

It’s as if Sablin has stuck his finger in a light socket. “How do you know this?” he demands.

“They’re in the lieutenant’s cabin and the door is half-open! I heard them talking when I walked past!”

“Are you sure?”

“They’ve got guns.”

“Stay here,” Sablin tells the sailor guarding his cabin. “You, come with me,” he tells Sakhnevich, and they race down the corridor.

Lieutenant Stepanov was one of the officers who hadn’t reported for the meeting in the midshipmen’s dining hall. He was on duty, and Sablin had planned on talking with him and the few others, all of them warrant officers, who’d also been aboard ship but absent later this evening. What could a handful of officers do to interfere with the rest of the ship?

At the lieutenant’s cabin, Sablin pulls out his Makarov pistol, kicks open the door, and bursts inside, Sakhnevich holding back in the corridor.

It’s Lieutenant Stepanov and Warrant Officers Kovalchenkov and Saitov, and they all have pistols. They look up in alarm as their zampolit, brandishing a gun, comes through the doorway.

“What’s the meaning of this meeting?” Sablin cries, and his words sound stupid even in his own ears.

Stepanov steps back, raises his pistol, and thumbs the safety catch to the off position. “You’re a traitor!” he shouts.

“I’m trying to help!” Sablin pleads. “Most of the officers and all the sailors are with me! We have to do this!” He is pointing his pistol in the general direction of Stepanov and the others, but he’s neglected to switch the safety off. His weapon is not ready to fire.

“It doesn’t matter, because this mutiny will soon be over,” one of the warrant officers blurts out.

“What are you talking about? We’re getting out of here in the morning, and I’m going a make a broadcast to the people. It’ll be up to them to decide who is right.”

“This ship is going nowhere under your command!” one of the others shouts. He, too, has raised his pistol and is pointing it directly at Sablin’s chest. His face is white, but whether it’s from rage or fear even he doesn’t know for sure.

The four men are facing each other, like gunfighters at the OK Corral. All it will take is for one man to make a mistake and blood will be shed in this tiny compartment.

“I order you to put down your weapons,” Sablin tells them in a measured voice. He is catching his second wind. Whatever fate is in store for him, he feels the first test is now.

“No,” Lieutenant Stepanov replies coolly. “We’re all going to wait here until help arrives. Then you will be arrested and the captain will be set free.” He shakes his head. “Thank God you weren’t dumb enough to kill him!”

“There is no help coming—”

“Yes, there is!” Kovalchenkov shouts. “Lieutenant Firsov is leaving the ship—”

“Shut up, you stupid fool!” Stepanov cries.

Sablin is rocked back on his heels. All of his planning, everything he has worked for, is disappearing before his eyes.

He turns to see if Sakhnevich is still there, but the corridor is empty. Sablin’s heart sinks even lower.

“Grab him!” Stepanov shouts, and suddenly Sablin is rushed, hands are plucking at his sleeves, someone is trying to take the pistol out of his hand, and he is shoved up against the bulkhead, his head banging against the steel plating.

Sablin manages to break free for an instant and he raises his pistol, meaning to fire a warning shot overhead, but Seaman Sakhnevich is suddenly crowding into the cabin with three other young sailors.

Stepanov and the warrant officers are armed, but not one shot is fired as the sailors roughly pull and shove them away and manage to drag their zampolit out into the corridor and slam the door.

One of the sailors produces a key and locks the door from the outside. There’ll be no escape for the three officers now. The Storozhevoy is a sturdy Russian warship; there’ll be no shooting their way out for the three officers.

Sablin’s heart, which has been pounding practically out of his chest, is beginning to slow down as he catches his breath.

Firsov.

The name crystallizes in Sablin’s mind.

There’d been absolutely no doubt which way Firsov had voted. The young senior lieutenant of the electrical division had dropped a white backgammon piece into the basket. He was for the mutiny. He had grasped perfectly what Sablin was trying to do.

Gindin was a disappointment, but Firsov was solidly behind the plan.

Sablin focuses on Sakhnevich. “Good work, Aleksei,” he says. “Thank you. But we have to find Lieutenant Firsov, before he gets off the ship.”

“Maybe he’s already gone,” Sakhnevich says.

“If that’s the case I need to know it immediately. The entire operation depends on it.”

Sakhnevich and the other sailors are rooted to their spots. They’re not quite sure what to do. They realize that this situation has the potential to change everything. Their lives could literally be hanging in the balance.

“Now,” Sablin urges. “Before it’s too late. Find him!”

32. DESERTER

Crouched in the chilly darkness at the massive anchor hawsehole near the bow, Senior Lieutenant Vladimir Firsov is at odds with himself, as he has been ever since he’d first begun to suspect what Sablin was up to. That was weeks ago when Sablin began asking questions about how the electrical systems aboard the ship were supposed to work, that and the zampolit’s not-so-subtle comments about what a mess the bureaucrats in Moscow had made of Lenin’s fine ideas.

Firsov has acted as head of the ship’s Communist Party Club. That meant that he ran meetings once a month for the dozen or so men aboard who were already members of the Party or had been nominated for membership. This is a big deal in the Soviet Union and an even bigger deal in the military. Being a member of the Party opens all sorts of doors, and with them come privileges.

Because Firsov is a Communist Party cell commander, the zampolit has treated him especially well. Firsov is one of the chosen few, with a fine future ahead of him.

But hunched down and shivering now he isn’t so sure of anything except for the look on his friend Boris Gindin’s face in the midshipmen’s dining hall. Boris was disappointed, and that hurt more than anything Firsov can ever recall. He has a great deal of respect for his roommate. Firsov hopes someday to explain what he did this evening and why.

Gindin never thought about Firsov’s Party membership until much later, but by then it was too late to bring it up. “I thought that at first Vladimir might have shared Sablin’s ideas, but later, after he’d had time to calm down and think things through, he might have had a change of heart, so he jumped ship to call for help.

“Maybe he realized just how dangerous a situation Sablin had gotten us into and decided to warn somebody what was happening before it was too late.”

Or maybe Firsov was even smarter than that.

“Maybe it was Vladimir’s strategy to try to save us all,” Gindin recalls. “Maybe he volunteered to go over to Sablin’s side to penetrate into the zampolit’s circle in order to find a way out of the mess.”

It’s not known for sure what Firsov’s actual motivations were on that evening or exactly what he was thinking at that moment near the bow of the ship.

Someone shouts something from aft, toward the starboard side of the superstructure, and Firsov turns toward the noise. He heard his name! Somehow they know! Sablin has set men to look for him!

Someone else shouts something.

Firsov rises up just tall enough to look over the side of the bulwarks. An Alpha submarine, low in the water, dark, menacing, is at the same mooring as the Storozhevoy. He can make out a dim red glow from the open hatch at the top of the sail. The sub’s captain will know what to do.

Firsov looks over his shoulder to make sure that there’s no one to see him, and he wiggles through the hawsehole, the filthy seventy-centimeter mooring line getting his uniform dirty, and scrambles down to the bow deck of the sub.

33. THE ALARM

Sablin is hanging over the rail at the bow of the Storozhevoy trying to peer through the fog at something going on in the water below, just to the starboard side of the submarine sitting low in the water, his decks just a meter or so above the surface of the water.

It is a few minutes before 2300, and by now the entire ship has been thoroughly searched from stem to stern and from top to bottom. The sailors and officers have checked every single compartment, crawl space, and locker where a man could possibly hide.

Senior Lieutenant Firsov is not aboard. Kovalchenkov and the others locked in Stepanov’s cabin below were right. Firsov has somehow gotten off the ship and is sending for help. Right now Sablin thinks he knows how it was done.

There is something going on below. He can make out a dim red light coming from the open hatch at the top of the sail. The Storozhevoy’s mooring line goes almost straight down. A man such as Firsov could have easily have crawled through the hawsehole, shimmied down the mooring line, and made it to the deck of the sub.

But would the submarine’s commander or anyone else aboard believe such a wild story about the zampolit arresting Potulniy and taking over the ship?

A brief flash of white light from below illuminates someone scrambling down into a small launch tied up to the side of the sub. It’s like a pulse of a strobe in Sablin’s eyes, an image of a slightly built man in a navy uniform getting into that little boat.

Moments later the small boat’s engine comes to life, and the launch heads away from the submarine.

Sablin rears back. He can hear the speech he means to broadcast as if the recording were playing right now through the ship’s 1MC.

“…we are demanding that our ship be recognized as a free and independent territory. We are demanding daily broadcasts on radio and television for thirty minutes. Our goal will be to oppose the current regime…”

Words and bits and pieces of his speech buzz inside his head like insects around a night-light.

“We are neither traitors to the Motherland nor are we adventurers who seek recognition for our deeds.”

He looks over the rail again, but the launch is long gone, lost in the fog on its way ashore.

To report the situation aboard the Storozhevoy!

To call for help!

To stop them!

“…the people find themselves trapped in a stagnant atmosphere of blind obedience to authority…

“…it’s political tyranny and censorship… Our people have already suffered much… we have laughed a million times, but our laughter is mixed with tears at the thought of the Motherland’s future.”

He turns and looks up at the superstructure, the windows of the bridge. No light is showing, but he has posted guards up there. All he needed was a few more hours before morning reveille, when the entire fleet was scheduled to drop their moorings and head to sea. The Storozhevoy would have slipped away with the others, entirely unnoticed.

He has to figure that once Firsov gets ashore he will alert the Riga naval duty officer and the harbormaster. If the Storozhevoy is caught here, still tied to the mooring, there will be no way out.

The only chance for them is to get the ten or fifteen kilometers downriver to the Gulf of Riga, then past Saaremma Island and out into the open Baltic, where at least they’ll have room to maneuver.

That’s exactly what has to be done! And done right now!

Now that Sablin has a plan to deal with this unexpected emergency it’s as if a liter of adrenaline has been dumped into his system. He crosses the foredeck as fast as his feet will carry him, slams open the hatch, and takes the stairs two at a time up to the bridge.

The armed guards he has posted hear him pounding up the stairs, and they raise their Kalashnikov rifles in alarm. With the way things have been going around here tonight, there’s no telling what might be coming their way. They’re plenty scared now that they’ve had a few hours to think about things. But they’re also fatalists, as many Russians, especially small-town country boys, are.

Russians have three principles, so the old proverb goes. Perhaps, somehow, and never mind. It’s hard to make a decision.

But it’s their zampolit, and they lower their weapons in relief.

“Has anyone tried to come up here?” Sablin demands.

“No, sir,” one of the sailors replies.

Sablin is furiously weighing his chances now. If they sail out of here and make it to the open sea, he’s all but certain the Soviet navy won’t fire on one of its own ships. If they can get that far before the river is blockaded, they’ll have a real chance of pulling this thing off. But if they stay, if he goes below and releases the officers he’s put under lock and key, the captain will arrest him and turn him over to the KGB. They might even arrest everyone who supported the mutiny and keep the Storozhevoy right here in the middle of the river for everyone in Riga to see until a replacement crew could be rounded up and brought down.

There’s no choice, not really. He’s started this business, and he will see it through. Once he gets his message to the Soviet people, the Kremlin won’t be able to touch them.

“Go below and round up the bridge crew,” Sablin orders the two sailors. “Get them up here on the double; we’re leaving tonight!”

The young crewmen might be confused, but they have their orders and finally they know what to do. They don’t have to think about anything else except doing what they’re told to do. They turn crisply and race down the stairs, as Sablin snatches the ship’s intercom phone off the overhead and calls the engine room.

It buzzes once, then again, then a third time. “Come on,” Sablin mutters impatiently. “Pick it up!”

Outside the bridge windows the fog is so thick that he can see only a few meters beyond the Storozhevoy’s sweeping bows and nothing much of the city except for the halos of some lights.

Someone answers the call. “Engine room, aye.”

“This is Captain Third Rank Sablin; do you recognize my voice?” Sablin demands.

“Yes, sir,” the young man answers after a brief hesitation.

“Start the engines! All four of them!”

No one responds.

“This is an order! Start all four engines now! I need full power as quickly as possible! Call me on the bridge when everything is ready!”

Sablin slams the phone back on its bracket and looks around the bridge at all the electronic equipment, switches and dials, the wheel, the engine telegraph, radar, controls for the weapons systems. He’s not an engineering officer, nor is he a bridge officer or navigating officer or communications officer or weapons officer. He is the zampolit. If the crew will not follow his orders, the Storozhevoy will stay here tonight.

“…I don’t think there is any argument that these days the servants of the state have already become the masters of the state…”

Sablin can hear the words of his speech as if he were broadcasting the recording at this very moment.

Someone comes up the stairs in a rush, and Sablin turns out of his daydream as three sailors appear in the doorway with the two guards. He recognizes them, but he can’t recall their names at that moment, though he knows that they are part of the normal bridge complement.

“We must leave now,” he tells them. “Take your posts.”

“What about the engines?” one of the sailors asks.

At that moment the ship’s phone buzzes. Sablin yanks it from its bracket. “Bridge!”

“The engines are ready for full power,” one of the engine room crew reports.

“Very well; stand by to answer bells,” Sablin gives the same order he’s heard Potulniy give before. He hangs up and turns to his bridge crew. “The engines are ready. We have to get out of here now.”

“Where?” the helmsman asks.

The other two are hurriedly powering up the electronic equipment, including the vital navigation radar they’ll need to get under way.

“Downriver, out to the gulf.”

“Yes, sir,” the young crewman replies. “But first we’ll need someone on the bow to take in our mooring line and untie it.”

Sablin figures that will take too much time. Someone from one of the other ships is bound to notice something funny going on, and the alarm will be sounded. He makes another decision and turns to the guards.

“Find an ax, get out to the bow, and cut our mooring line. Be sharp about it.”

“Yes, sir,” the two men chorus, and they disappear again down the stairs.

34. BETRAYAL

The first thought that comes to Gindin’s mind when he feels the vibration in the deck, which means the engines have started, is disbelief. This cannot be happening. The engines were never supposed to be started without a gas turbine officer physically present. Those were standing orders that everyone understood. Besides, a thousand things could go wrong that ordinary enlisted men wouldn’t know how to deal with.

The second thought that comes to Gindin’s mind is betrayal. He’s given his men the best of everything within his power as a Soviet navy senior lieutenant. He’s covered for them with the captain. He’s given them extra privileges. He’s seen to it that they could take their leaves ahead of just about everyone else aboard ship. Sometimes he’s been tough on them but never unfair. Never that.

Now they have betrayed him, by taking up arms with the zampolit and starting the engines.

Everyone else in the sonar compartment has felt and heard that the engines have started, and they all shoot Gindin dirty looks, as if he is to blame for this latest development.

He wants to tell them that he was just doing his duty, teaching his men their jobs. But he holds his tongue, sick to death at what this means. Sablin will try to get out of here tonight. Something has gone wrong, and very likely they all are facing a death sentence.

Captain Lieutenant Proshutinsky gives Gindin a baleful look. “Boris, perhaps you have trained your men too well.”