Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt For Red October (34 page)

Sablin’s impassioned message to the people will never reach them.

Gindin sits on the deck, his back to the steel bulkhead, thinking about his father. It is early morning now. In a few hours the sky to the east will begin to lighten with the dawn. But that’s topsides. Here, in the small compartment, it could be night or day, except for the numbers on their wristwatches.

Some of the others are asleep on the floor. Their situation is essentially hopeless. They are at the mercy of Sablin and his armed crewmen just outside the door. Yet they must be feeling the pinch of no water by now. Or at least Gindin hopes so.

He can see his father’s face in the dim light. It is careworn, with a hint of the illness that has just ended his life. But in happier times he was an animated, happy man.

On the day the letter came announcing that Boris has been accepted into the academy, his father was grinning ear-to-ear as he dressed in his best clothes, his holiday suit. He knotted his tie just so, polished his shoes, brushed his hair, and kissed his wife on the cheek before he left the apartment for work.

Gindin remembers looking out the window as his father started down the street. But the old man didn’t get far before he crossed the street to talk to someone he knew. Later Gindin found out that his father was bragging to everyone he met about his son’s acceptance into the military school. He was going to be an officer! A Soviet navy officer! It was a red-letter day, in more than one sense. Boris was a good Communist and he was getting his just reward.

At work his father did the same, bragging to anyone who would listen.

Pushkin was a small town, so the word spread quickly that Boris had been accepted to the academy. By the next day he had become famous, the talk of the town, a Soviet hero.

But sitting with his back against the cold steel bulkhead he doesn’t feel much like a hero. He has been racking his brain all night to think of some way out of their predicament. He’s taken apart the water pump, but beyond that he can think of nothing else.

Earlier they’d banged on the hatch to get Shein’s attention. They’d hoped that somehow they could talk him into letting them go. Or maybe they could order him to open the door and then simply step aside. But he kept telling them to keep quiet; he didn’t want to listen to their threats or orders.

Gindin looks over at the others, some of them sleeping, heads cradled in their arms. He meets Captain Proshutinsky’s eyes.

“Quite a mess, huh, Boris?”

“Yes, sir,” Gindin replies.

He keeps going over in his mind what they—he—could have done differently in the midshipmen’s mess. Maybe if he’d realized sooner that Sablin was serious, that it wasn’t some kind of a political test, Gindin could have rushed the
zampolit
and knocked him on his ass. It would have ended the situation then and there.

Gindin can’t help but smile, thinking about his fist connecting with a superior officer’s chin.

He looks up and catches Proshutinsky’s eye again.

“What in God’s name have you got to be smiling about, Boris?” the captain lieutenant wants to know.

But it’s gallows humor, whistling past the grave. The old Russian proverb
all the brave men are in prison
seems apt at this moment. But how to explain that to Proshutinsky?

“I was thinking about my dad,” Gindin says. “I wish he was here. I’d like to ask his advice.”

Proshutinsky nods. “I know what you mean. I was sorry to hear about your father’s passing. We all were.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The
Storozhevoy’s
turbines have settled into a cruising speed, and by the feel of the ship’s motion Gindin knows that they are no longer in the river but have made it out into the open gulf. From there it is a matter of just a few hours before they will be out into the Baltic, in international waters. Then God only knew where Sablin would take them.

Sweden? Did their
zampolit
mean to defect to the West?

If that was the case, if Sablin tried to make a dash for the Swedish coast, the navy would not let him get that far. He would be ordered to come about or at least stop. If he refused such an order … Gindin lets the thought trail off for a few moments as he tries to figure out exactly what the Russian navy might do. Maybe the KGB would send ships after them. Or perhaps the air force would fly out.

Whatever happened, those ships and aircraft would be armed with live warshots, while the
Storozhevoy
had plenty of weapons but no missiles or ammunition except for the small-arms bullets.

What would his father advise? he wonders at that moment, but it dawns on him that his father wouldn’t have been able to give him much advice at all. This was a situation totally beyond the experience of a civilian.

“Pizdec,”
Gindin mutters. This situation was even beyond the experience of a military officer. Stuff like this wasn’t supposed to happen in real life.

He gets to his feet and walks back to the smaller compartment. He
has to take a pee, but he can’t bring himself to relieve himself in the corner like some of the others had. It stinks in here; he doesn’t want to make it worse.

He stares at the dismantled pump, thinking that there must be something else they can do. Something! Anything!

Proshutinsky comes to the doorway. “What is it, Boris? What are you thinking?”

“They’ll have to let us out of here sooner or later,” Gindin says carefully. The ideas are coming slowly.

“Da.”

Gindin turns to face the captain lieutenant. “No matter what happens, we must force the issue. We cannot remain locked up in here.”

“Someone could get shot and killed.”

“Yes, sir, I know that. But we have to do something. If we can get free we can release Captain Potulniy, and that would be a start. With the captain free we could fight back.”

Proshutinsky nods. “First we need to get out of here.”

Well before dawn Gorshkov arrives at the Kremlin, where he is passed through the Spassky Gate by the guards, who have been alerted by the admiral’s driver that he is arriving.

Brezhnev and Grechko have been notified that a matter of urgent national interest has unexpectedly come up. If the telephone calls had come from almost anyone else other than Admiral Gorshkov’s personal aide, the caller would have already been on his or her way to the prison at Lefortovo to answer questions about his or her sanity. Waking the Party General Secretary and the minister of defense at this ungodly hour is tantamount to suicide.

However, Gorshkov is not a man to be trifled with. If he were to declare that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, the Communist Party and all Soviet military forces would seriously consider resetting their clocks.

The armed, uniformed guards in front of the Council of Ministers Block come to attention and salute the admiral as he gets out of his car and enters the building, which is all but deserted this morning. Two
other long, black ZIL limousines are parked in front, one of them Brezhnev’s, the other Grechko’s.

Striding down the long corridor on the third floor, Gorshkov’s footfalls sound like pistol shots, echoing off the ornate walls and vaulted ceilings. His staff have been awakened and are on their way to their offices here in Moscow. He has received confirmation that the captains of every ship, submarine, and tender in Riga have been notified to light off their engines and stand by to sail on his orders. And the commanders of the various units of the Baltic Fleet Air Wing have been rousted out of their beds as well.

All the way in from his dacha Gorshkov tried to make sense out of the situation. The
zampolit
of a warship had arrested his captain and some of the officers and mutinied.

Some of the officers.

In Gorshkov’s mind that can only mean that the other officers must be going along with the insanity. And since the ship actually started his engines, slipped his moorings, and headed downriver to the gulf, a good portion of the crew must also be in league with the traitor.

It beggars the imagination. What does the fool think he can accomplish? Even if the ship actually reaches Sweden and the
zampolit
and the officers and crew who have gone along with his scheme ask for asylum, the Swedes will never grant it. The traitors would be on their way back to Moscow within twenty-four hours of reaching Swedish waters.

Brezhnev’s personal secretary, a pinch-faced older man whom Gorshkov has never seen wearing anything other than a dark suit, white shirt, and red tie, comes out of the small conference room adjacent to Brezhnev’s office and beckons.

“The Party General Secretary is waiting for you, Admiral.”

“Da,”
Gorshkov says, brushing past the man and entering the conference room where Brezhnev and Grechko are seated at the small mahogany table.

The door is closed and Gorshkov takes his seat across from the two
men, who are drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. Both of them appear to be hungover, and in fact Brezhnev is probably drunk. They’re both dressed in dark suits, but neither is wearing a tie.

“We’re here at your request, Sergei,” Grechko says. “What fire has got your ass?”

“We have a mutiny on our hands,” Gorshkov says without preamble.

Brezhnev’s eyes come into focus. “Mutiny?” he says. “What nonsense are you talking about?”

For the next five minutes Gorshkov explains to the Party General Secretary and minister of defense everything that he knows to this point. Neither man interrupts, but it becomes clear that both of them, especially Brezhnev, are frightened. Theirs is the same initial reaction that Gorshkov had.

Maintaining the status quo depends on a respect for the chain of command. When the system breaks down, the incident becomes like a virus that can quickly spread and destroy the entire body. The mutiny of the
Potemkin,
which led to the grand October Revolution in which the Soviet Union was born, is drilled into the head of every school-child; such a little thing to bring down the reign of the tsars.

“Do we know that the
Storozhevoy
has already reached the open sea?” Grechko asks. He has grasped the full implications before Brezhnev has.

“A reconnaissance aircraft is searching.”

“Has anyone tried to contact this fool?”

“Not yet. But that’s next.”

“So at this point we don’t know what he’s up to,” Brezhnev says. “He could be defecting, or he could just as easily be insane and plan on attacking us with his guns and missiles.”

“Either is a possibility,” Gorshkov concedes. “We don’t know yet.”

The telephone in front of Brezhnev rings, and he grabs it like a drowning man grabs at a life jacket.
“Da.”
He listens for a few moments, then looks up at Gorshkov. “Bring it in.”

“What is it?” Gorshkov asks when Brezhnev hangs up the phone.

“Your
zampolit
has broadcast a message to the people, from the ship.”

“Dear God,” Grechko mutters, but Brezhnev is actually grinning.

“But it’s in code. The idiot sent it in code on a military channel, so no one but our cryptologists can understand it.”

A moment later a young senior lieutenant with thick black hair and an impeccable uniform knocks once and enters the conference room. He walks around to Brezhnev, hands the Party General Secretary a thin file folder, then turns and leaves.

Brezhnev has the folder open and he quickly scans the first pages of the document before he looks up. He may be old, he may sometimes become befuddled or even drunk, but he is not stupid.

“Your
zampolit
claims here that he is no traitor,” Brezhnev says. “Interesting viewpoint, since he has arrested the legally appointed captain and stolen several tens of million rubles of state property.”

Brezhnev flips through several more pages of the decrypted message sent from the
Storozhevoy,
actually chuckling at one passage or another. But when he looks up at his minister of defense and Admiral of the Fleet he is not smiling.

Brezhnev lays the file on the conference table, seems to consider what he might say next, then slams an open palm on the tabletop, the sound sharp.

“Sir?” Gorshkov prompts.

“Find that ship, Sergei,” Brezhnev says, his voice low, menacing. “No matter what assets you must utilize, find the
Storozhevoy.”

“Da.
Then what?”

“Sink it. Kill everyone aboard.”

“Their captain is innocent; so are some of the officers.”

“No captain who loses his ship is innocent,” Brezhnev flares. He points a stern finger at Gorshkov. “You find that ship, Comrade! You find that ship and sink it. Now, this morning. The damage must be contained before the situation spins totally out of control.”

Gorshkov realizes all of a sudden that Brezhnev and Grechko are
frightened. It gives him pause. Everything depends upon a respect for a chain of command. That respect does not end with him; it ends with the Party leadership. With Brezhnev.

“As you wish, Comrade,” Gorshkov says. He gets to his feet.

Brezhnev looks up at him. “Ultimately this is your responsibility, just as losing the ship is the captain’s.”

Gorshkov has served the Party too long and too faithfully to be cowed by the rantings even of a General Secretary, but he holds his tongue. Brezhnev is frightened, and frightened men are capable of incredible cruelties.

“The
Storozhevoy
will never reach Sweden,” Gorshkov promises.

Lieutenant Vasili Barsukhov is flying left stick flat-out at 347 knots, less than one hundred meters above the surface of the river, in pursuit of the
Storozhevoy,
if such a fantastic story as mutiny can actually be believed. His copilot, Warrant Officer Yevgenni Levin, and flight engineer, Warant Officer Ivan Zavorin, monitor the navigational and engine instruments. Flying this fast and this low is inherently dangerous. All of them are dry mouthed. In this fog the slightest mistake could send them into the cold water of the river or the gulf.