The Memories of a Dead Pilot

            

Memoirs of a Dead Pilot

A Hero of Our Time, my gracious sirs, is indeed a portrait — but not of a single man. It is a portrait composed of the vices of our entire generation, displayed in their full development.
— Mikhail Lermontov
Times have been worse, but never more vile.
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark


The main characters of this story, along with the admirals, generals, officers, and warrant officers mentioned herein, have no real-life prototypes and are entirely my invention — created solely to tarnish our radiant past. And if at any point you should find yourself thinking that something like this did happen, or could have happened — do not trust yourself.
It did not happen.















Prologue
Everything hurts. I can’t see anything.
I open my eyes.
Shapes begin to take form around me. I see the source of the unbearable pain. The control yoke, driven into my chest, has pinned me against the armored backrest of my commander’s seat. My abdomen burns. Broken ribs, most likely. Internal bleeding has probably begun.
Let’s see how the rest of my crew are doing.
I slowly turn my head to the right.
Nothing remains of the navigator’s compartment in the nose of the aircraft. The impact of the glass radome against a concrete drainage structure reduced Captain Vasilyev’s workstation to a mangled mass of aluminum, shattered glass, twisted navigation equipment — and bloodied fragments of his body.
The flight engineer, who had been seated between me and the right-seat pilot during the final approach, is folded in half. The safety harness saved Gena Rybnikov from being hurled through the windshield, but the sudden deceleration slammed his face into the instrument panel and killed him instantly. His arms hang limp, and blood drips from his head onto the radio operator lying beneath him.
One minute before we struck the concrete well, Warrant Officer Onoprienko, our radio operator, who had been seated behind the right-seat pilot, tapped out a Morse report of our landing to the headquarters of the Fifteenth Flotilla of the Pacific Fleet. Then he rose from his station and crawled beneath the flight engineer’s seat toward the navigator’s compartment. Gena wanted to watch me land the aircraft on a single main gear strut. For him, not knowing was more terrifying than looking danger in the eye.
At the moment of impact, Onoprienko was thrown forward into Vasilyev’s compartment and crushed beneath collapsing navigation panels.
Second pilot Sergey Kovalenko sits headless. The torn fuselage skin sheared it off along with the headrest. His head lies on the radio operator’s table, eyes open. The headset has slipped to one side. The wind stirs his light-brown hair.
He was a handsome guy. Tall, broad-shouldered, fair-skinned. Even the tropical sun of Vietnam couldn’t tan him.
Sergey never did get the chance to tell me how much money the Vietnamese had paid for their flight aboard our aircraft from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City.
Before departure, Senior Lieutenant Rybnikov had crammed thirty people into a ten-seat pressurized cabin. We had no authorization to transport them. Still, I was certain no one would catch us in Hanoi. There simply wouldn’t be time.
The flight engineer brought the “unofficial” passengers aboard just before engine start. As soon as they were seated, we requested taxi clearance and rolled off the stand immediately.
I wasn’t worried about Ho Chi Minh City either. My plan was simple: open the cargo hatch and let the passengers disembark on a taxiway a couple of miles from the terminal.
But en route to the former capital of South Vietnam, we were ordered to land in the port city of Haiphong and pick up cargo that had arrived by sea from the Union.
That landing concerned me slightly. In Haiphong, we might be inspected — and the legality of foreign civilians aboard a Soviet Ministry of Defense aircraft could become an issue.
To avoid complications, I sent the second pilot to get a hastily prepared passenger manifest signed by the senior aviation authority at the military sector of Hanoi International Airport.
Major Khairulin looked intimidating, but for the right price he was willing to sign almost anything. I was sure my deputy would find common ground with him.
Fifteen minutes later, Sergey returned. He looked troubled.
“What happened?” I asked.
He reported briefly:
“Khairulin wants twenty percent of the money collected from the Vietnamese in exchange for his signature.”
He never had time to tell me the total amount.
There was little time before takeoff, and I decided we’d settle the financial matter after we returned from the mission. But now Kovalenko will never tell anyone anything — not me, not the military prosecutors.
The rescue crews running toward us from every direction will be surprised to discover small jungle dwellers inside the aircraft.
Strange that the Vietnamese aren’t making a sound.
Preparing for landing, I had burned off nearly all the fuel in the wing and fuselage tanks. That’s why we didn’t explode. Didn’t even catch fire. The impact that destroyed the cockpit and killed four crew members left the passenger compartment largely intact.
Yet no one is screaming in pain. No one is calling for help.
To hell with them.
After all, it was they — and our own pathological greed — that led to the death of my crew at the former American, now Soviet, airbase at Cam Ranh.
While the rescue teams make their way through twisted aluminum to reach me, I might as well recall how I ended up — both literally and figuratively — in a drainage ditch lined with concrete collectors.
Memories are not a good sign.
The brain must already understand that the body will not survive and has decided to replay the most significant episodes of my wayward life.

Chapter 1
On October 22, I arrived in Kamchatka to begin active service after graduating from the Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots. In my hand was an assignment order instructing me to report to the commander of the 304th Independent Long-Range Aviation Regiment and receive my posting.
I grabbed my suitcase and gym bag from the conveyor belt and stepped outside the terminal.
Yelizovo Airport greeted me with warm wind and light drizzle. In late October, central Russia already has frost, but here on the peninsula the trees still held their leaves — yellow, red, burgundy. Birds that hadn’t yet flown south circled low in flocks, rehearsing formation maneuvers.
Preparing for the long flight, I thought. From Kamchatka to Japan along the Kuril Islands is no short distance.
For some reason, I had been certain someone would meet the young officer arriving from the mainland. I hadn’t expected a staff UAZ with a warrant officer driver — that honor was reserved for senior officers, squadron commanders at least — but I had hoped for an orderly to escort me.
No one came.
My fellow passengers trickled out of the terminal and hurried toward the bus stop. After a ten-hour flight in narrow, overused seats, all they wanted was a warm shower and a decent meal.
The Yelizovo–Central Market bus hissed to a stop, took on the passengers from my flight, and rolled away down Zvezdnaya Street.
“Sir.”
A stern male voice behind me. I turned.
A police sergeant stood there. Two patrolmen lingered in the doorway behind him.
“Why didn’t you go into town?”
“I don’t need the town. I’m a pilot. I’m headed to the garrison.”
“May I see your orders?”
He softened his tone.
I handed him the document from my leather jacket pocket.
“You need the Number Eight bus. It runs every twenty minutes.” He checked his watch. “It’ll be here in three.”
The sergeant went back inside. I headed for the stop.

From the window of the rattling bus, I watched Yelizovo unfold in muted shades of gray and rust. Long, rectangular apartment blocks—four or five stories of weather-streaked concrete—stood shoulder to shoulder as if bracing against the wind. Their flat roofs sagged under the damp weight of Kamchatka’s autumn, and laundry lines sagged between balconies like tired signal flags. The streets were little more than patched asphalt and mud, crisscrossed by narrow footpaths worn into the earth by generations of boots.
Beyond the residential blocks rose the low, functional buildings of the garrison—warehouses, garages, administrative offices—indistinguishable in color from the sky above them. A smokestack exhaled a thin column of smoke that drifted sideways in the wind. In the distance, the dark hills formed a heavy backdrop, and farther still, snow-capped volcanoes hovered above the horizon, impossibly white and detached from the drab geometry below.
This was my first posting. Not the gleaming frontier of aviation glory I had imagined at the academy, but a disciplined cluster of concrete at the edge of the map. As the bus lurched toward regimental headquarters, I understood that whatever ambitions I had brought with me would have to survive here—between these buildings, beneath these mountains, under this enormous, indifferent sky.
________________________________________
The duty officer — a massive redheaded brute — met me in the lobby of a two-story building constructed in the mid-1950s and escorted me to the office of the commander of the independent missile squadron.
In the reception area, behind a heavy oak desk, sat a young and very beautiful woman in a cream shirt with junior-sergeant epaulettes, a black tie, and a short black skirt. Between the pedestals of the desk I could see her long, slender legs.
The officer accompanying me exchanged a few words with her, but I wasn’t listening. My attention was fixed on the hemline of that skirt.
She caught my hungry look, snorted contemptuously, and picked up the phone to announce the arrival of the young lieutenant.
The captain nudged me with his elbow.
“Don’t stare. She’s out of your league.”
Ten minutes later I left the commander’s office as co-pilot of Major Gribov’s Tu-16 missile carrier.
The secretary didn’t even glance at me on my way out. A mistake. At twenty-one, I was worth noticing. Had she seen the muscle beneath the uniform, known the potential invisible to the naked eye, perhaps she would have given me a little more attention. But neither my thick black hair, nor straight nose, nor well-shaped lips impressed her in the slightest.
Second pilot of an aging Tu-16 — not exactly a dream assignment. But no one offered me better.
I would spend four long years in that seat, brightening bachelor life with endless drinking bouts alongside fellow pilots and affairs with local beauties.
And there were always plenty of them around the garrison.
For reasons I never understood, tiny Yelizovo — granted city status only a year before my arrival — was unique in Kamchatka. Nowhere else, not even the regional capital, could boast a population where women significantly outnumbered men.
Why the men stayed away, I could never figure out.
The fishing on the Avacha River was superb. What tastes better than Kamchatka trout? What’s more exhilarating than battling an Avacha char that refuses to yield?
The hot springs of Paratunka, Nachiki, Malki — all within easy reach. The town was clean, compact, orderly, calm. Summers warmer than the nearby regional capital — Petropavlovsk. The climate was drier.
In spring the bird cherry blossomed; in summer, lilac. Flowerbeds everywhere. And the view of snowcapped Koryaksky Volcano and Avachinsky from town — you could charge admission.
There was even a zoo.
Yet somehow, among my many lovers, the commander’s secretary was never one of them.
________________________________________
I might have remained co-pilot another three or four years if not for my commander. He had served in the garrison so long he’d gone bald and grown stout. He reminded me of an old boar I’d once seen at my grandfather’s village — no longer inclined to measure his words.
Convinced his age allowed him to say anything, he told a political joke during a drinking session that would eventually free me from a triangle of card tables, different women's beds, and endless feasts.
Major Gribov told the joke during one of our drinking sessions among friends. It was about a phone conversation between a Party secretary and a village priest.
“Father,” the Party organizer said, “lend me your chairs. I’ve got a Party meeting tomorrow.”
“Not a chance,” the priest replied. “Last time your communists carved obscene words into them with pocketknives.”
“Oh, is that so? Then I won’t be sending you any Pioneer boys for your church choir.”
“And I won’t send you any monks for your Saturday volunteer work.”
“Fine. Consider the Communist Youth Union members gone from your future religious processions.”
But the priest had a trump card left.
“Then there will be no more nuns for your sauna.”
There was a pause.
And then the Party secretary burst into the receiver:
“For words like that, Father, you’ll be placing your Party card on my desk!”
We laughed that night — loudly, freely, without a second thought.
Not long afterward, my commander found himself the subject of an inquiry by our primary Party organization. An open Party meeting voted, by majority, to expel the unfortunate joker from the Communist Party. Shortly thereafter, he was relieved of command.
No one ever discovered which of the drinking companions had written the denunciation.
I was not a Party member at the time, and suspicion passed me by.
The day after the order relieving Major Gribov of his position was announced, I was summoned to the regiment commander’s office. The fact that the entire leadership of the unit was present came as a complete surprise.
“Comrade Colonel, Senior Lieutenant Grigoryev reporting as ordered.”
I stood before the commander’s desk on a well-trodden carpet, head slightly lowered, looking up from beneath my brow at the assembled brass.
Once, the military governor Zavoyko had stood on the rocky edge of Signal Cape, studying the Anglo-French fleet through a spyglass. I imagined myself in his place.
Why such pomp for me? I wondered. Am I about to be torn apart by heavy artillery fire — or will I walk out of here honored, like Zavoyko defending Petropavlovsk more than a century ago?
The chief of staff opened a cardboard folder bearing my name and began asking biographical questions, checking each answer against the contents of my personal file.
He examined me as though confirming I was truly the man I claimed to be. As though I might be an impostor who had forgotten his legend.
Apparently satisfied, he closed the red folder and placed it before the regimental commander.
The colonel rested both hands on it, his broad palms covering the embossed coat of arms of the Soviet Union. He surveyed his deputies seated along the walls, inhaled deeply, and said:
“Well then, Grigoryev. Your time has come. The Motherland, in my person, and the Party, represented here by the political officer and Party secretary, have decided to entrust you with command of a jet missile carrier.”
The grand tone sent a lump to my throat. He continued as if unaware of my rising pulse.
“However, we have several unresolved issues between us.”
My surge of joy cooled instantly.
“You will give me your word to fulfill the following conditions. First — you will join the Communist Party. A missile aircraft commander must be a Party member. That is a requirement of the Central Committee.
“Second — you will marry in the near future. That is also a Party requirement. When you fly along hostile shores, a family must be waiting for you at home.
“And third — though no less important — we want your promise to stop consuming alcohol in unimaginable quantities.”
I exhaled slowly.
None of this seemed impossible.
I solemnly promised to fulfill the first two conditions within six months — and to stop drinking beginning tomorrow.
“Why not today?” the political officer asked.
“Because a promotion needs to be properly celebrated, Comrade Colonel,” I replied.
The room burst into laughter.
And just like that, I stepped out of the shadow of another man’s cockpit and into my own.
At that moment, I believed I was rising.
I did not yet understand that every ascent contains the blueprint of its fall.

Chapter 2
The position of aircraft commander, along with the respect of those around me and a modest increase in pay, brought with it a host of new responsibilities.
I could no longer disappear for an entire weekend in Lyudka Salnikova’s bed or show up for the mandatory pre-flight medical fitness check with a vodka-swollen face. In the past, the doctor would sometimes say, while taking my blood pressure:
“Grigoryev, breathe the other way. Your fumes are making my eyes water.”
All of that ended at once. My reckless youth was over.
The day before the terrible tragedy that would radically alter my fate, I sat in the mission briefing alongside the other aircraft commanders, listening to where, when, and for what purpose my crew would be dispatched.
Service chiefs reported in turn on what we should expect from the weather, the likely adversary, our own logistics, and communications support.
Most of it barely concerned me. From the flood of information I extracted the only thing that mattered: the next morning at 0800 I would take off first, return to base four hours later, and another four hours after that I would be drinking beer in the officers’ dormitory with my friends, celebrating my first combat assignment.
So instead of absorbing the details, I studied the posters and diagrams hanging on the walls of the flight-preparation classroom — for the hundredth time — and once again marveled at other people’s carelessness.
Two dozen posters, each ten feet by six, described Tu-16 crashes from the past ten years. Nearly all were tied to piloting errors or poor decision-making. In scientific terms — human factors.
Studying other men’s mistakes, I told myself:
You won’t drag me into a mountainside that easily. I won’t let anyone get me killed. Not for nothing have they trusted me, at twenty-five, with combat patrols along the American Aleutian Islands.
I had flown those routes many times as a co-pilot. Back then my duty had been simple: do not interfere with the aircraft commander. Now everything had changed. The responsibility for preparing the crew rested on me.
The situation had changed.
I had not.
Inside, I was still the same careless bastard.
My crew devoted exactly one hour to real preparation for a flight along the American border. I should have spent far more time reviewing the regulations governing flight operations. I should have personally verified the readiness of each crew member.
I should have.
But more experienced pilots from other crews approached us and invited us to the garrison gym. I gave in. The entire crew went to play volleyball.
The final two hours of that workday I spent at a card table in the regimental doctor’s office, along with the communications chief and the squadron navigator. The doctor hung a sign on his padded, black-leatherette-covered door:
“Do Not Enter. Patient Under Examination.”
Our triumphant shouts — and occasional groans of outrage — were safely muffled from the rest of the unit.
________________________________________
The next morning I sat in the flight mess hall waiting for Lyuda, the waitress assigned to our squadron, to bring my breakfast.
Our brief affair had ended six months earlier, but she had developed feelings for me — something that came as a surprise. I had never imagined she was building her life plans around me.
In four years, I had slept with more than a few women. I wasn’t required to marry all of them. Certainly not Salnikova.
She had the figure of a guitar: broad chest, narrow waist, very wide hips. She was wonderful in bed. But I was embarrassed to take her to the Officers’ Club for dances or to a restaurant. Marriage? God forbid.
Gradually I reduced our meetings to nothing, hoping to remain on friendly terms. Unaware of the real reason for my cooling off, Lyudmila remained kind and attentive.
But when word spread through the garrison that I had married, her attitude changed abruptly.
Few knew why a committed bachelor had taken such a step. Returning from leave, I had reported to the regimental commander that I had fulfilled one of the conditions of our agreement. Unfortunately, he did not keep it confidential.
As a result of his indiscretion, the quality of service for my crew in the mess hall deteriorated sharply.
The squadron wits didn’t miss their chance:
“Valera, better not sit at the same table with you anymore.”
Or:
“That’s it, Grigoryev, your time’s up. Once you’re married, you eat last.”
On any other day, I might have ignored the teasing and waited until breakfast ended to speak privately with Lyuda. But that morning was special. I was due at final pre-flight instructions. I had no time to wipe away my former lover’s tears.
Trying to catch her attention, I raised one hand like a diligent schoolboy. Then the other. The pilots began to watch. Some even put down their forks.
When Lyuda passed my table again and said contemptuously,
“Grigoryev, you can lift your legs onto the table if you want — you’ll still be the last to eat,”
I replied loudly, enunciating each word, pouring into it every ounce of sarcasm I possessed:
“Lyuda, putting your legs up on the table — especially spread — that’s more your specialty.”
The squadron erupted.
The young woman, struck by the cruelty of it, dropped her tray. Plates shattered across the floor. She burst into tears and ran into the staff room.
Minutes later the mess duty officer sent another waitress to our hall. Vera came straight to our table and, while we chose our breakfast, leaned close enough for only me to hear:
“I always told her she’d get nothing from you but trouble.”

Chapter 3
Obeying the turn of the nosewheel steering handle, my Tu-16 taxied out of revetment “Post No. 4” and, leaving the terminal building with its neon Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky sign behind us, rolled slowly between the transport squadron’s parking ramp and the concrete shelters of the air-defense regiment. A few interceptor pilots on their way to their MiG-25s waved. I took it as a wish for a safe flight and returned the salute with my left hand. Not regulation—but seated in the commander’s chair I faced them with my left side; they wouldn’t have seen my right hand anyway.
We were first off that day.
After climbing to cruise altitude, I set course for the Commander Islands. The last strip of Soviet land disappeared far below, and we headed toward the American boundary. My mission was to test the air defenses protecting Eareckson Air Station.
It was a complex training profile.
From Yelizovo to Attu was a little over six hundred miles. In two and a half hours we could have gone there and back and reported mission complete before lunch. An experienced pilot would have done exactly that. I was twenty-six and decided to impress the senior commanders with initiative.
After the briefing I approached the squadron commander.
“I’ll approach the target not by the shortest route but in a wide arc,” I said. “I’ll show up on their radar screens from the Alaska side. It will triple the distance—but it will give us surprise.”
The lieutenant colonel looked at me in disbelief. His eyes said plainly: Why the hell do you need that?
In the brief pause that followed, I already regretted speaking. I was about to apologize when he shrugged.
“Prepare according to your plan. Under the flight commander’s personal supervision.”
________________________________________
On the final leg I was to enter the launch envelope of the K-10 cruise missile, simulate a strike against the American early-warning and signals-intelligence radar site, wait to be intercepted, fly alongside their fighters for a while, and then return home.
We executed almost everything as planned.
At our service ceiling we crossed the Kronotsky Nature Reserve—the active volcano, the broad lake, the geyser fields laid out beneath us like a relief map. We passed Bering Island, then flew northeast for more than an hour along the International Date Line.
Four hundred miles short of St. Matthew Island, we turned south and began our descent.
Three hundred miles from the target, I pushed the aircraft into a dive, slipping below the enemy radar beam.
At fifty meters—about 160 feet—I leveled off and accelerated to 900 miles per hour. Three minutes after descending, the copilot simulated the missile launch.
In reality we carried no missile—neither training nor live. They all remained back at base in a hardened underground bunker, sleek machines resembling scaled-down MiG-15s. But according to the scenario, a three-ton miniature aircraft had dropped from its pylon, climbed to sixty thousand feet, and from there plunged almost vertically onto the American radar, smashing the installation and scattering runway slabs for a hundred yards in every direction.
Fifty miles offshore I spotted two interceptors racing toward us.
Our small war game was over. We had been detected—and theoretically destroyed.
The navigator marked the point of intercept on his chart. I advanced the throttles to maximum, pitched up, and engaged the autopilot.
The fighters flashed past, broke hard, and settled into position off our left and right wings.
“Navigator, log it,” I said over intercom. “Four minutes after simulated launch, intercepted by a pair of Eagles from the 525th Fighter Squadron. Tail numbers zero-zero-eight and…”
I glanced at the copilot.
“Zero-zero-nine,” he read from the jet off our right wing. “Unit identified by squadron emblem.”
“What’s painted there?” asked the second navigator from behind me. He sat sealed in his compartment like in an iron sack, able to see nothing beyond his instruments.
“A sad-faced bulldog with green eyes and a cross-shaped bandage on his forehead. Two fangs sticking out—left one gold. Spiked collar.”
“Commander, do you really memorize squadron numbers and identify aircraft by their emblems?” There was admiration—and doubt—in his voice.
“I wish I had that kind of memory,” I said. “But it’s simpler than that. Under the bulldog, in big blue letters, it says ‘525th FIGHTER SQ.’”
Escorted by the F-15s, we climbed back to cruise altitude. The lead pilot saluted and signaled for us to open the bomb bay. I slowed slightly and relayed the request. When the green light illuminated—BOMB BAY OPEN—I raised my left thumb in a fist. He dipped beneath our fuselage, confirmed what he already knew—that our bay was empty—and returned to station.
We flew together for about thirty minutes. One hundred miles west of Attu I waved, turned toward Kamchatka, and the Eagles accelerated ahead, breaking downward in a graceful turn.
That’s it, I thought with relief. First combat assignment complete. Home.
The tension drained away. My thoughts drifted back to my recent leave.
________________________________________
Two months earlier, tickets in hand from the chief of staff, our crew flew to Vladivostok. From there we scattered—each to his family. I checked into the Hotel Chelyuskin on Leninskaya Street, right in the city center.
The medical institute’s disco became my primary objective.
After two weeks of drinking with students—and sleeping with nearly the entire female population of the medical faculty—I encountered something unexpected: a firm refusal from one future doctor. She declined to spend a night with me anywhere at all.
The rejection stunned me.
“How is that possible?” I muttered one night, walking down Partizansky Prospect. “A naval aviator told ‘no’? I’ve never heard that word from a woman—and I don’t intend to start.”
She proved more stubborn—and smarter—than I was. By mid-leave we were officially married.
There was another factor. Her father commanded the Pacific Fleet’s Coastal Defense. Though unrelated to aviation, he wore the rank of rear admiral—a title not common in the fleet.
The navigator’s voice broke through:
“Commander, descent point.”
“Roger. Beginning descent.”
I eased the control column forward and reduced the engines to idle. The cockpit grew quieter. The copilot stared absently at scattered ice floes through the side window.
Probably remembering something of his own.
I returned to Vladivostok.
The second half of my leave had become a honeymoon. We had no time for travel; her winter exams were approaching. My in-laws moved to their country house and left us their apartment. We spent most of our time in bed—alternating her lecture notes with practical study of human anatomy, paying particular attention to the structural differences between male and female bodies. We made no scientific breakthroughs, but the research was mutually satisfying.
I caught myself smiling.
“Commander, my radar screen just went blank.”
The navigator’s voice reached me not through the headset—but faintly, directly, through the helmet padding.
That detail snapped me back.
I looked at the instrument panel. Of the thirty gauges, only two mattered: the RPM indicators for the left and right engines. Both needles trembled at windmilling speed.
Both engines were out.
A chill ran down my spine. I checked fuel flow—zero.
“Shut off all electrical loads!” I shouted.
Then I glanced at the throttle levers—and understood.
Eight minutes earlier, descending from ten thousand meters, I had pulled the throttles back from cruise to idle—and slightly beyond, into cutoff. Without checking instruments, I continued down to three thousand meters. During descent, onboard systems—especially the powerful radar transmitter—had drained the batteries completely.
I pressed the air-start button. Nothing.
On early Tu-16 models there was no flight-idle lock to prevent the levers from moving freely through their full range. Lost in pleasant memories, I had shut down both engines.
When Stalin’s engineers designed this aircraft in the early 1950s, they did not imagine that forty years later pilots would be thinking not about turbine RPM—but about the rotational speed of a woman’s hips.
Killing me once would not have been enough.
The water rushed closer. The radios were dead. It was too late to bail out—and pointless. Even in individual rafts, at twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit, we would last perhaps two hours.
This is the end.
I had never ditched before. I knew what would happen. Without thrust we would flare eight to ten meters above the surface, lose speed, and drop. Water, for all its softness, would feel harder than concrete. The fuselage would split along rivet lines. Wings and tail would tear away. Spines would snap under vertical load. We would sink conscious, paralyzed.
Fear squeezed my chest. My shoulders twitched. Nausea rose.
The copilot gripped his yoke so tightly his knuckles were white. His face was drained of blood, yet sweat poured from him.
I took the controls, gently rocked them left and right, and said evenly:
“Let go.”
He placed his hands on his knees and closed his eyes.
I searched for a patch of water clearer of ice.
At the last moment I eased back. The aircraft settled, the fuselage touched, and we slid across the Pacific, crushing loose floes beneath the glass nose of the navigator’s compartment.
The ditching was successful.
Now we had to get out.
The navigators had already left their stations and stood behind us beneath the overhead escape hatches. Once we stopped, the copilot and I slid our seats back and jettisoned the hatches. I climbed out first and ran toward the tail, where the life raft had deployed.
The orange canopy inflated properly. I cut the retaining line, wrapped it around my wrist, and hauled the raft toward the cockpit.
Three crew members waited atop the fuselage, preparing to descend to the wing. Waves washed over the metal; a thin crust of ice had formed.
The copilot jumped first.
His boots slipped instantly on the sloped aluminum. He fell, slid, clawed at nothing—and disappeared beneath the surface. His heavy winter gear gave him no chance.
We froze—until pounding on glass broke the paralysis. In the tail compartment, the gunner and radio operator were trying to smash their side window with pistol grips. Their lower hatch opened downward and was already submerged. Without my command they had not bailed out—and with intercom dead, I could not give one.
The remaining navigator and I lowered ourselves carefully onto the wing. We pulled the raft alongside and ordered the weapons officer aboard first.
He jumped—fell short—struck the rubber tube—and plunged into the water. He caught the perimeter line as he went under. The navigator grabbed his collar; I hauled the raft tight, and together we dragged him in.
Behind us, the aircraft was sinking.
Water climbed above our boots. We scrambled into the raft and rowed hard.
As we passed the tail, I saw the trapped men firing their pistols at the glass. The detonations inside that small compartment must have been deafening. Their faces were wild.
I looked away.
“They know that glazing can withstand a 20-millimeter cannon,” I said. “They should save a round for themselves.”
“Their deaths—and his—are on you, Commander,” the navigator replied.
“Row,” I said. “If she goes under, we’ll be pulled down with her. We’ll talk about conscience later—if we survive.”
Thirty meters away, the Tu-16 lifted her nose, reared almost vertical, and slid beneath the sea. Air roared upward in great bubbles, raising a wave that slammed into us. I zipped the raft’s rubber door just in time.
The Pacific accepted three of our six.
Then it grew calm again.
Now we could only conserve strength—and wait.
Our fate lay in the hands of the long-range radar operator back at base. I was certain he had been tracking us and had already reported our disappearance.
I imagined the fleet mobilizing, ships and aircraft sweeping the ocean, certain they would find us, and said so out loud.
The soaked weapons officer muttered darkly, “Like hell they will.”
The navigator answered quietly, with bitterness:
“They’ll find us. The question is—when?”



Chapter 4
We did not know then that the operator of the P-35 Saturn two-coordinate, long-range surveillance radar was occupied with entirely different matters.
Sergeant Konstantin Elizarov, twenty years old and fresh from a village somewhere deep in Russia, cared little for aircraft, ships, or military service in general. He had sent his two subordinates to the sailors’ mess hall for lunch.
“Bring mine back here. And make sure it’s hot. Otherwise you’ll be marching back to the galley again. Understood, rookies?” he asked sternly.
“Understood,” one of them muttered.
“Not ‘understood.’ ‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Repeat it.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” the sailor mumbled reluctantly.
“And one more thing,” Kostya added, softening his tone. “Don’t hurry back.”
Left alone at his combat station, the sergeant immediately phoned the garrison switchboard and asked for the operator he knew well.
“Svetlana,” he said, “get up here fast. I’ll be alone for about forty minutes.”
________________________________________
Three years earlier, Svetlana Mukhina had been serving in Vladivostok. Her father commanded a communications battalion that supported the Pacific Fleet headquarters on Ship Embankment Avenue.
After finishing high school, she flatly refused to continue her education. No matter how much her parents urged her to apply to one of the city’s institutes, she held her ground. It took her father little effort to place his spirited daughter at the battalion’s telephone exchange, under his own supervision.
About a year later, at a morning formation on the cramped parade ground between Fleet Headquarters and the Officers’ House, the battalion commander introduced a new arrival: twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant Viktor Fyodorov, assigned to military unit 35768 for further service.
Viktor had grown up in a builder’s family. As a teenager he often helped his father construct dachas outside Irkutsk, and he quickly developed a solid, muscular build. His hands were especially strong; people sometimes felt he could crush a brick in his palm. That physical strength gave him a confidence that often bordered on arrogance. The unmarried officer was appointed chief of the communications center.
In addition to his looks, he possessed a quick mind, a talent for storytelling, and an inexhaustible supply of jokes. Soon nearly all the young female operators under his command were in love with him. Svetlana was no exception.
Within a month Viktor became a regular guest in the Mukhins’ home. The relationship between the young lovers progressed rapidly. The lieutenant’s vanity was flattered by the fact that the commander’s daughter spent her entire lunch break in his office—lying with him on the leather sofa or perched on his knees. Svetlana was already dreaming of a wedding and a happy family life.
Nothing, it seemed, could interfere with their happiness.
It collapsed in a single minute.
At a family dinner, seated at the table were Svetlana, her younger sister Oksana, their parents, and Viktor. Raising a glass of wine, the handsome lieutenant proposed marriage.
Not to Svetlana, as she expected.
To her younger sister.
Oksana clapped her hands with delight, threw her arms around his neck, kissed his cheek, and accepted.
Tears shone in Svetlana’s eyes.
“What’s wrong?” her father asked with a smile.
“For joy. For my sister,” she answered, brushing away the salty drops.
Her parents exchanged stunned glances. They had not known how far her relationship with Viktor had progressed, though they had assumed he visited for her sake.
________________________________________
The lieutenant was not only clever but calculating.
When first introduced to his subordinates, he had shown no special interest in Svetlana. But once he learned that the cheerful, slightly plump operator was his commander’s daughter, his attitude changed sharply. Soon he began to regret his haste. Svetlana proved emotionally unstable and difficult to manage. Her desires always outweighed necessity. At times he even arrived late to formation because, in her opinion, he had not kissed her enough that morning.
The relationship became tiresome.
But breaking it off would have meant sacrificing prospects for promotion. He felt trapped—until he saw a way-out during Oksana’s eighteenth birthday celebration. He danced with the birthday girl all evening. The parents paid little attention.
After that, he met Oksana secretly, under the pretext of movies and dances with friends. He asked her to keep their meetings confidential, claiming he wished to avoid gossip. In truth, he feared Svetlana would discover the affair before Oksana was ready to marry him.
He counted the days. He was certain that sooner or later she would come to him pale and frightened after visiting a doctor. Her pregnancy would be his trump card.
Yesterday she did.
And today the engagement had been announced.
________________________________________
The next morning a storm broke in his office.
“How could you?” Svetlana shouted. “You’re a traitor. You swore you loved me. You lay with me on this sofa during the day—and spent your evenings with Oksana.”
She broke down, sobbing uncontrollably. Her heavy body shook; curses and self-pity mingled on her lips.
Her gaze fell on the metal ashtray on the small army cabinet beside the sofa. She seized it and hurled it at him. He ducked. It smashed into the glass door of the bookcase, showering his dark blue tunic with ash and scattering shards across the untouched volumes of Lenin.
“Bastard,” she growled.
She tried to rip the desk lamp free, but the cord held. Frustrated, she flung it to the floor.
Viktor realized silence would not restore peace. He brushed ash from his uniform, stepped toward her, and caught her wrists as she beat against his chest.
“Don’t be foolish,” he said quietly. “My marriage to Oksana won’t change what we have. If anything, it will make it easier. We’ll still meet at work—and at your home when we can.”
While she struggled to absorb his words, he released her hands, embraced her, kissed her, and lowered her onto the sofa.
Outside the door, the other operators listened. When they heard the familiar creak of springs, they exchanged disapproving glances and returned to their stations.
“Svetlana’s lost what little pride she had,” her friend Victoria concluded.
________________________________________
The arrangement continued. He slept at night with his calm, slender wife—and received her older sister in his office by day.
It might have gone on indefinitely had Fleet counterintelligence chief Colonel Medvedev did not intervene.
He summoned Lieutenant Colonel Mukhins.
“Good morning, Nikolai.”
“It’s rarely good when it begins in your office.”
“It’s not where it begins that matters,” Medvedev replied pleasantly. “It’s where it ends.”
After polite preliminaries, he asked about the battalion. Then about the family.
Mukhins understood immediately.
“In the family, things are worse,” he admitted. “My son-in-law is involved with both my daughters. The younger sees nothing. The elder—she’s beyond control.”
“How long will you tolerate this?” Medvedev asked coldly. “How long will this depravity continue in your battalion?”
The warmth vanished from his voice. Mukhins felt it like frost.
After a tense pause, the colonel said more gently, “Put your house in order. Two weeks. Or I will.”

Mukhin went straight to Colonel Razumov, head of Fleet Communications, who was bent over a chessboard when he arrived.
“I need a transfer approved,” Mukhin said. “For my elder daughter.”
Razumov lifted a knight and studied the position in silence.
“If a knight finds himself cramped between two pawns,” he murmured at last, “then one of the pawns must advance.”
He moved the piece with quiet finality.
“Yelizovo Airbase. Kamchatka. That should be remote enough.”
Mukhin inclined his head. “That will do.”
“Have her submit the request tomorrow.”
Razumov had long known about Lieutenant Fedorov’s behavior. He had simply chosen not to interfere. His own familiarity with the young female operators under his command made moral outrage inconvenient.
Ironically, his particular favorite—Victoria—was the very same woman who had so readily condemned Svetlana.
And while we drifted in a rubber raft on the Pacific, the bureaucratic chessboard was already being rearranged.
________________________________________
Within days, Svetlana was transferred to the distant garrison at Yelizovo.
She left Vladivostok embittered—against her parents, her sister, her former lover. On the transport aircraft she stared at the endless taiga below, mascara streaking her cheeks.
An officer stepped out of the cockpit into the cabin and locked the door behind him. He took the seat beside her and introduced himself.
“Lieutenant Colonel Leonid Skvortsov, Deputy Commander for Political Affairs. I’m flying with this crew as the navigator today. As a doctor of people’s souls, I feel obliged to ask—what’s wrong, beauty? Afraid of flying?”
“Flying’s fine,” Svetlana replied, brushing tears from her cheeks. “It’s my heart that hurts.”
“During my studies at the Lenin Political Academy,” he said with professional gravity, “I learned that the best remedy for a troubled heart is alcohol. Would you care for a little vodka—to guarantee a safe landing?”
“Why not?” she answered, wiping away the last of her tears.

After two glasses of vodka on an empty stomach, Mukhina was thoroughly drunk. She laughed too loudly at every joke the political officer made, and with each passing minute he seemed younger to her, almost boyish.
When he kissed her on the lips for the first time, her head spun. She offered no resistance as forty-three-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Leonid Skvortsov first allowed his hands small liberties, then larger ones, slipping them beneath her skirt. Encouraged by her pliancy and carried away by the warm rush of self-importance, he undressed her in clumsy haste, laid her across the passenger seats, and lowered himself on top of her.
Throughout it all, a strange sense of d;j; vu would not leave her. The same hurried words. The same breathless urgency. The same awkward, half-restrained movements dictated more by clothing than by feeling. And no tenderness whatsoever.
The only difference, she realized dimly, was the surface beneath her back. An old service sofa. Airplane seats. The kitchen table in her parents’ apartment while her sister was in the shower.
Nothing else ever changed.
No, Svetlana thought as she pulled her underwear back on and adjusted her bra, twisted sideways across her chest. This has to end someday.
She looked with open contempt at the political officer fastening his trousers. He was smiling smugly, humming his favorite tune under his breath:
There will be happiness for the people,
It will last for ages long,
For Soviet power is mighty,
Its strength forever strong.
“Perhaps Soviet power is mighty,” she thought bitterly, still not entirely sober, “but you, my friend, are not. In fact, quite the opposite.”
The thought amused her. She almost shared it aloud.
But Leonid had already placed the empty bottle and the two glasses back into his briefcase. Without a word—without even a glance at her—he unlocked the cabin door and returned to the cockpit, to continue fulfilling his duties as the officer responsible for the political and moral education of Soviet aviators.
The aircraft droned steadily eastward toward Kamchatka.

By the time the aircraft descended toward Kamchatka, another chapter of her private humiliation had been added to the ledger.
At her new duty station nothing changed. Unmarried officers ignored her. Married ones offered hurried encounters in cars or garages. “Quickly” no longer satisfied her. She wanted something different.
She chose Junior Sergeant Kostya Elizarov.
________________________________________
For months they seized every opportunity to be alone.
The P-35 radar station stood apart from other buildings, on a low rise, its massive rotating antenna sweeping the sky in endless circles. Inside, equipment hummed and clicked; beyond a hundred meters, there was no one.
Here she could be loud. No dormitory roommates. No prying superintendent. No whispers.
When my aircraft, descending with both engines shut down two hundred fifty miles from home, slipped beneath the radar beam and the glowing dot on the green circular display first dimmed, then vanished entirely—
Svetlana Mukhina was sitting on that very console, her skirt pushed high, her back pressed against the screen.
Elizarov was whispering promises of love and a shared future. She no longer believed such promises. He was younger than her by five years. She had lost count of how many young sailors had sworn to take her back to their villages after demobilization.
She felt good.
The antenna rotated above them, indifferent.
At last the sergeant, exhausted from standing, sat down. She settled onto his lap. He kissed her neck—and glanced at the radar screen.
He froze.
Sensing the change, she leaned back.
“Kostya? What’s wrong?”
“Where is he?” he whispered.
“Who?”
“Seven-one-six.”
She slid from his knees.
“Where was he?”
“When you came in, he was here.” He pointed to the screen. “Now he should be about a hundred miles closer. But he’s gone.”
Svetlana, seasoned by years in a communications battalion, understood at once.
“Report it immediately,” she said, fastening her blouse and straightening her skirt. She hurried down the iron ladder and ran toward the communications center.
Left alone, Elizarov lifted the direct-line receiver with a trembling hand.
“Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, this is Junior Sergeant Elizarov, long-range radar operator. Track seven-one-six disappeared from the screen ten seconds ago. Range two hundred fifty miles. Bearing one-zero-five.”
That was where he had last seen us.
After that, he had taken Mukhina by the waist, lifted her onto the console—
—and stopped watching the sky.


Chapter 5
After fastening every snap on the rubber hatch, I lay down on the floor of the raft. The inflated bottom kept us from direct contact with the icy water of the Bering Sea. But we had no source of heat. No alcohol. Not even a mouthful of vodka to rub into the navigator-operator’s frozen body. He had stopped answering our questions hours earlier.
We tried to warm him with our bare hands, rubbing his arms and chest until we were exhausted. Physically and morally drained, we fell asleep.
When we awoke the next morning, the young lieutenant was dead. His face had changed during the night. Not dramatically — but enough. Death had already begun to erase him, as if correcting an entry in a ledger.
The first navigator collapsed onto the cold body and howled. Vitaly had been like a younger brother to him. Dozens of hours they had spent together—bomb-bay controls, release angles, wind corrections, the thousand small calculations that defined their profession. He had taught him everything.
Then, suddenly, he raised his head and looked at me with naked hatred. He jabbed a finger into my chest.
“You—”
He paused, searching for words, but a deep, tearing cough rose from his lungs and cut the accusation short.
I did not need him to finish the sentence. I had already completed it for him a hundred times in my own head.
His eyes burned. Fever. Yesterday, trying to save his friend, he had worked harder than I had. He had gotten wet.
I was not concerned about food. The survival pack had been calculated to keep six men alive for ten days in the open ocean. Now there were only two of us. On paper, we had more than enough.
The real question was how long there would still be two mouths to feed. They had to find us by then. By my calculations, we were no more than a hundred miles from the peninsula. I even knew which direction salvation lay.
It made no difference.
He sat against the inflated side of the raft, staring at me. His green eyes, in the dim light, looked gray and lifeless.
I suddenly remembered the pistols. Each of us carried one in the left breast pocket of our flight suits. Eight rounds.
The thought did not comfort me.
Slowly, deliberately, I unzipped my jacket and reached inside. His pupils sharpened. Awareness returned to his face.
Careful not to provoke him, I slowed my movement. I drew the pistol, pointed it upward, and chambered a round.
His lips twisted into a crooked smile.
“You’re afraid of me, Valera?”
“No,” I said evenly. “I’m afraid of polar bears drifting on ice floes. If one tears the raft with its claws, we’ll die in its paws—more painfully than the operator did.”
“But easier than the radio operator and the gunner,” he replied. “Tell me honestly, Commander. Have you already forgotten them?”
“On the contrary,” I said. “I was remembering how they shot through their cockpit windows. We have weapons too. If necessary, we can use them.”
Silence. Then:
“You lied about the bears. The chance of meeting one is almost zero. You wouldn’t move a finger unless you heard someone breathing in this coffin of silence.”
He inhaled with effort.
“We both know I’ll die first. And you’re afraid I’ll shoot you before I go. For killing such fine men. You’re right to be cautious. I hadn’t thought of it myself—but now I see it’s not a bad idea.”
He studied me.
“I’ll make you a practical offer. Shoot me first. Throw my body into the sea. Tell the investigators I drowned with the co-pilot. No witnesses to your criminal negligence. The young navigator won’t be speaking to anyone.”
So he had been listening.
“You’re right about one thing,” I said. “I don’t fear bears. I fear dying men. In the late sixties our government believed that Mao, already old and dying, might drag two or three hundred million people into nuclear war just to avoid going alone. A dying man is unpredictable.”
I kept my voice steady.
“My pistol is cocked. Safety on. I’ll use it faster than you will. Think whatever you want of me. But don’t touch yours.”
“Then kill me,” he said contemptuously.
“No.”
“Why?”
“It’s one thing to shut down two engines by mistake. It’s another to execute a man in cold blood.”
“If I survive, I’ll tell them everything. You’ll go to prison.”
“I don’t exclude that,” I answered. “One day I may even forgive myself for the deaths of five men.” I stressed the number. “That would take years. Perhaps a lifetime. But I would never forgive myself for murdering one.”
________________________________________
To occupy my mind, I unpacked the survival kit.
Compass—useless for now.
Signal mirror. Flare pistol. I cracked open the hatch and looked up. Leaden clouds stretched from horizon to horizon, no higher than sixty meters.
Even if I heard an aircraft, neither mirror nor flare would help. The flare would vanish in gray layers within seconds. The mirror, without sun, was good only to examine the stubble on my face.
Fishing line. Hooks. Floats. Lures.
Which genius had packed this?
To fish with a float you need bait. To fish with a lure you need a rod. The sea was not a pond.
Knife. Absurd—no pilot flies without his own.
Medical kit.
I tossed it toward him.
“Find some antibiotics.”
“Pointless,” he said.
The hostility between us had thinned. I crawled over, opened the box, selected half a dozen tablets, and poured them into his mouth.
“Swallow.”
He shook his head weakly.
I mixed desalination tablets into seawater in an aluminum lid and held it to his lips.
“Drink.”
He swallowed twice.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked. “Do you really believe they’ll find us? And alive?”
“I’m no longer certain of anything,” I said. “But there’s nothing else to do. While I talk to you and sort through this junk, another day passes.”
I opened two cans of sausage spread—dog food, essentially—and slid one to him with my foot. Gave him crackers. Ate in silence.
________________________________________
The storm lasted two days.
We lay in total darkness, hatch sealed, waves throwing us up and down until our souls turned inside out. The raft groaned like something alive. Sometimes I thought it would simply decide it had carried enough of us and split open. Nausea without vomiting. Our stomachs were empty long ago. In that hell of pitching and rolling, I wanted to lose consciousness and wake up only when it was all over. Perhaps that’s what happened to the navigator, because from time to time his body would slump against me—just like the body of the dead operator had.

By the fourth day my belief in rescue was nearly gone. Fever consumed him. In delirium he called his wife. Spoke to his sons. I stuffed cotton in my ears and lay still.
What will happen to me if they find me?
________________________________________
The search and rescue operation for my crew began the very minute Colonel Maksimov, commander of the separate aviation regiment and the officer directing flights that day, ordered all aircraft currently airborne to return to base and instructed his deputies, the communications battalion commander, and the commander of the separate helicopter squadron of the border guard detachment to report to the command-and-control post.
After reporting by telephone to the Commander of Naval Aviation about the disappearance from the long-range radar screen of Captain Grigoryev’s aircraft, Maksimov bent over the map and, without addressing anyone in particular, asked:
“Sergeant Yeliz;rov reported that he last saw Seven-Sixteen at a range of two hundred fifty, altitude eight. What’s the rangefinder error at that distance?”
“Negligible, Comrade Colonel — no more than two hundred meters in range and six angular minutes in width,” replied the battalion commander of communications, Lieutenant Colonel Ilyin.
The colonel cast a sideways glance at the signal officer.
“My fault, Comrade Colonel — in azimuth about six hundred meters,” the battalion commander clarified.
“I don’t doubt that you’re at fault, Ilyin,” the colonel said coldly, “but the degree of your guilt will be determined by the military prosecutor’s office.”
“What are you accusing me of?” the lieutenant colonel asked, taken aback.
“That you had a sergeant in charge at the P-35 radar station instead of a captain, or at the very least a first lieutenant.”
________________________________________
While waiting for the helicopter squadron commander to arrive at the command-and-control post, Maksimov approached the chief of staff. The major was drawing circles south of the Commander Islands with a compass. Maksimov looked at the rings spreading from a marked point and quietly asked:
“Do you believe he went down in the sea?”
The major removed his glasses and looked the commander straight in the eye.
“If he landed in the Aleutian Islands with the Americans, you and I will go to prison. Do you understand that?” Maksimov asked again when no answer came.
The chief of staff wiped sweat from his broad bald spot with a handkerchief and finally replied:
“I don’t think he did that. He was just promoted, recently married well. He had a career ahead of him. I see no grounds for treason.”
“Military counterintelligence will quickly find grounds. Don’t forget — Grigoryev served four years under Gribov. And we didn’t expel that major from the Party for drinking or marital infidelity. Grigoryev could easily have absorbed his former commander’s apolitical moods.”
“And his wife?”
“What about his wife? Remember in ’76 when Viktor Belenko took off from Chuguyevka in a MiG-25 and landed in Hokkaido? He had a wife, a daughter, and was nominated for deputy squadron commander. None of that stopped him.”
“If Grigoryev had wanted to land in the Aleutians, he would have done it right away. No need to fly nearly a thousand kilometers back. He could have shot the crew so they wouldn’t interfere and landed calmly at an enemy airbase.”
“Well, God grant that you’re right. If we find wreckage in the ocean, we’ll get off with reprimands. If my suspicions prove true, we’ll be drying out hardtack.”
________________________________________
While they were talking, the assembled officers took their seats around the oval table, quietly discussing the incident. The meeting began with a report from the chief of staff.
The lieutenant colonel briefed those present on what was known at that moment, and over the next hour the officers coordinated the interaction of the aviation and naval forces of the Kamchatka flotilla. The chief of staff and the squadron’s senior navigator drew a circle with a radius of fifty kilometers, centered on the coordinates reported by Junior Sergeant Yeliz;rov.
The far half of the circle was assigned to the Tu-16 squadron for search operations, while the near half was divided equally between the Be-12 anti-submarine flying boats squadron and the border guard helicopter units. To assist the aviation forces, surface ships departed from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky naval base toward the presumed crash area.

My orange house floated much closer to home than they believed.
Alone now between ice floes and two dead navigators, I began to lose my mind.
I sang every song I knew. When I reached Grenada, the record stuck:
The squad never noticed
The loss of a man,
And “Yablochko” marched on
As only it can.
But one silent teardrop—
No bugle, no cry—
Rolled down like the raincloud
That wept in the sky…
Like the rain in the song, tears ran down my face.
Then I saw myself in an interrogation room. Captain Likhovtsev of the KGB opposite me. The portrait of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police, stared down at me from the wall. Prosecutors behind my back writing every word.
“What happened in flight, Captain Grigoriev?” he asked softly.
I explained. He repeated the question.
Suddenly he leapt up.
“Don’t lie! Engines don’t shut down by themselves! You turned them off! You are a traitor!”
He drove his fist into my forehead. I fell backward with the chair, hitting the floor.
A sharp, chemical smell flooded my head.
I opened my eyes and saw a naval officer in a white medical coat standing over me.
I opened my eyes.
A naval doctor in a white coat stood over me. Beneath it, a sea uniform.
Only doctors on warships wore white coats over their tunics.
They had found me.
“Lie still, lucky man,” he said. “At least while the IV is running.”
Warmth spread through my veins.
“Glucose?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I loved that submarine doctor as a condemned man loves the judge who commutes his sentence.
“What date is it?”
“The eighteenth.”
“One of my comrades died two days ago. The other five.”
He said nothing.
“How did you find me?”
On their return to base, submarines surface for the last fifty miles. A watch officer had seen an orange raft.
They wondered only one thing: whether anyone aboard was alive.
________________________________________
On the pier I saw Colonel Maksimov and Captain Likhovtsev standing under cold rain as sailors carried me down the gangway.
“There was no need for a stretcher,” I had argued.
The doctor disagreed.
“If you argue,” he said, “I’ll have you carried out through the torpedo hatch after your navigators.”
I complied.
While they transferred me to an ambulance and loaded the bodies of my comrades into a bus, I briefly described the catastrophe.
Likhovtsev ran to report.
Maksimov remained.
“Valeriy,” he said quietly, “I don’t believe in simultaneous engine failure. But I’ll stand by you.”
“Why?”
“Because in eighty-five percent of accidents, people are to blame. Usually pilots. But I’ll defend you because you survived.” He paused. “You didn’t shoot yourself. And you didn’t throw your dead men overboard.”
“Thank you for that, Commander.”


Chapter 6
Outside the intensive care ward where I had been placed, KGB operative Captain Likhovtsev ordered an armed guard posted—a Border Troops soldier under KGB command.
When the hospital’s chief physician, Lieutenant Colonel Ivanchenko, learned of it, he promptly threw the border guard out, declaring, “I’m in charge here—not some security officer from an aviation unit.”
The head of fleet counterintelligence intervened. He phoned the hospital director and carefully explained how important the patient in the therapy ward—Captain Grigoryev, possibly a witness, possibly a suspect—was to the investigation. After a lengthy exchange, Ivanchenko agreed to a guard outside my door, but on three conditions: the guards would be unarmed, no more than two at a time, and they would be allowed to sit during their shift.
“What kind of nonsense is that?” the security chief protested. “Why the special treatment?”
“Because at night,” Ivanchenko replied, “only a doctor and a nurse are on duty. They bring their own food from home and heat it on electric hot plates. How do you intend to feed your armed guards? Or will you rotate them every two hours and keep my staff awake? Keep in mind that both the night doctor and the nurse remain on duty the next morning and continue their regular work. So it’s either two sailors from our garrison—or no one.”
For an entire week I did not leave my room. I ate, slept, used the toilet, and paced from corner to corner, rehearsing my defense in my head. Every phrase. Every pause. Every carefully measured word. Sometimes I would stop at the window, part the curtains, and stare gloomily at the garrison guardhouse next door.
Years ago some joker had nicknamed it “the Red Barracks.” There was nothing red about the two-story building—at least not on the outside—but in my fevered imagination I saw blood-red walls inside its cells and punishment chambers.
A criminal case was opened the moment I finished giving a brief account of how each of the five men in my crew had died. Long interrogations lay ahead. Whether I remained a witness or became a defendant would depend entirely on my line of defense.
The military prosecutor’s office and our regiment’s counterintelligence department believed it best to keep me isolated from well-meaning informers. They insisted on an armed border guard outside my room. But once again I was lucky. The chief physician intervened, and instead of a border guard, I got a more accommodating conscripted sailor from a neighboring anti-submarine squadron.
I needed information like air. What did the investigators know? What did they not know? The answer would determine whether they believed my explanations—or caught me in a lie and forced out the truth.
A border guard would have been far more difficult to manage than a bored sailor on watch.
It took Senior Lieutenant Filatov, the ground engineer of the missing aircraft, little effort to bypass the barrier meant to isolate me. He offered a bottle of vodka to the drowsy demobilizing sailor outside my door, and the young man agreed to forget about any nighttime visitor. My engineer found a perfect excuse: he had come to deliver fruit to his commander recovering from severe psychological trauma.
The prematurely graying lieutenant told me that after our disappearance every serviceman in the squadron, including enlisted sailors, had been questioned. The commission had examined every detail of our preflight preparation. Captain Likhovtsev had been informed not only about our volleyball game but also about the card game that followed in the doctor’s office.
That information was decisive. It allowed me to construct my defense. My unexpected visitor had thrown me a lifeline without even realizing it.
I’ll take responsibility for the minor sins—but never for the main one.
I thanked the engineer when he left, but I did not tell him he had saved me from prison.
A week after I was discharged, the regiment’s chief of staff summoned me.
“Valery,” he said quietly, “in the absence of witnesses, your explanation is impossible to refute. The regiment’s command fully supports you. But as you know, there is an independent ‘office’ in this garrison with its own tasks and its own views on everything—global and local. I don’t want to frighten you, but I must warn you: any day now they’ll invite you for a conversation.”
He rose from his desk and pointed to a map of the base and airfield hanging on the wall.
“Right here,” he tapped a small square near the bypass road a couple hundred meters from the northern end of the runway, “is their lair. About an hour’s walk from here at a leisurely pace. Have you ever dealt with them—or their colleagues—before?”
“God has spared me,” I replied.
“Well, may He continue to do so. Just don’t get nervous. The calmer you are, the fewer questions they’ll have. Understood?”
“Forewarned is forearmed. Thank you.”
“Go home and wait. You’re relieved from duty until the investigation is over.”
Five minutes before my appointed time, I approached the metal mesh fence surrounding the low building of military counterintelligence. I had never been there before and looked around with curiosity.
Clever men, I thought. Hidden in the woods. No one would wander here by accident. Five miles from regimental headquarters if you cross the runway—seven if you go around.
A doorbell was wired to the gatepost. I pressed it and wondered how the first interrogation would unfold—and what would follow it.
A few seconds later a sailor stepped out. A bayonet hung from his belt. The top button of his tunic was undone, and he held his cap in his hand.
Discipline isn’t their strong suit, I thought, preparing to reprimand him—but I never got the chance.
“Name,” he demanded curtly.
“Captain Grigoryev.”
“Follow me, Captain,” he said with a faint smirk, as if he knew something about my fate that I did not.
He led me toward a wooden gazebo about fifteen meters from the entrance.
Son of a bitch. Enjoying the chance to be rude to an officer. Which means he knows he won’t be punished for it.
As we passed the hexagonal structure with a table in the center and benches along its plank walls, he jerked his head toward the entrance.
“Wait here.”
Inside, I noticed a copy of the 1975 Disciplinary Code of the USSR Armed Forces on the table. Without sitting down, I opened it to Chapter Three and began reading the section titled “Disciplinary Measures Imposed on Soldiers, Sailors, Sergeants, and Petty Officers.”
I had just reached paragraph 48—“The following penalties may be imposed upon soldiers and sailors…”—when I heard the sailor’s voice behind me.
“Reading the Disciplinary Code? Waste of time. You should be reading the Criminal Code.”
He tossed the remark casually and walked back toward headquarters. A German shepherd that had accompanied him sat at the gazebo’s exit and fixed me with black, watchful eyes.
If this is meant to intimidate me before the interrogation even begins, then they have nothing. Otherwise, they wouldn’t bother with this little performance.
I sat down on the bench about a yard from the exit. I didn't know the dog's name. It was black, and I called it the first word that came to my mind.
“What is it, Blacky? They drag you into the game too? I don’t blame you. Service is service.”
I had the sudden urge to stroke the dog’s dark head but thought better of it. The headquarters door swung open and Captain Likhovtsev appeared.
“Captain Grigoryev,” he said with a syrupy smile. “Welcome.”
The moment I rose, the dog bared its teeth and growled softly.
“Oh, forgive me,” Likhovtsev said, his smile widening. “I forgot that our good Hans is guarding you.”
The genial expression vanished from his face.
“Hans. Get in place.”
The dog obediently trotted back toward its kennel.
The wooden floors of the counterintelligence office creaked treacherously beneath my boots.
Strange, I thought. I can’t hear the officer’s footsteps. Does he float? Gliding silently over the floor in those polished black shoes? Polished shoes in Yelizovo—where summer is dust, autumn and spring are mud, and winter is slush—are a curiosity.
Likhovtsev opened the office door and gestured for me to enter first.
There was no portrait of Felix Dzerzhinsky behind the desk of Major Solovyov, the head of the department. That was the first discrepancy from the dream I had seen aboard the nuclear submarine.
“Please sit down, Captain,” Solovyov said politely, indicating the chair in front of him. “Our conversation will be brief—but very important for your future.”
I sat on the edge of the chair and heard leather creak behind me.
Just like in the dream, I thought. Likhovtsev is sitting behind me.
“Captain Grigoryev,” Solovyov began, opening a folder, “how long have you been cooperating with foreign intelligence services?”
I stared at him.
So that’s it. It isn’t enough that I sank a missile carrier and lost five crew members. They want treason. They want a firing squad.
“I have never cooperated with any foreign intelligence service. I have never spoken to a foreigner. I never even showed enthusiasm for learning foreign languages. From school German I remember only ‘Ich hei;e Valery,’ ‘Wie alt sind Sie,’ ‘Nicht schie;en,’ and ‘Hitler kaputt.’ From flight school German I remember only that airplane is ‘Flugzeug.’”
“You joke. That’s good,” Solovyov said calmly. “Then explain why, among officers, you stated that a Turkish private earns two thousand dollars a month, while you, commander of a missile-carrying aircraft with five men under your authority, receive four hundred rubles—about forty dollars on the black market.”
They informed on me.
“You misunderstood me,” I said evenly. “I meant that Turkish soldiers defend their country for money. We defend ours for ideology. That’s why what we receive is called a ‘stipend,’ not a ‘salary.’”
“Who told you about Turkish pay? For what purpose? Who suggested you fly your aircraft to Japan?”
“I read it in the Ministry of Defense journal Military Review. An article about the Turkish Armed Forces. I don’t recall the issue. If my comparison was misinterpreted, I regret it. I believed that perestroika and glasnost allowed such discussions. I’ll be more careful.”
“More careful how?” Likhovtsev asked from behind me.
“I’ll be more selective about my friends.”
“You reason incorrectly, Captain,” Solovyov replied. “We will verify your statements. As for the crash—our department, together with the central KGB apparatus, will examine all your contacts and interview everyone you know. We will reach conclusions about your moral character in light of possible deliberate damage to the state.”
“We’re not finished, Captain,” Likhovtsev added, rising. “This is only our first meeting. For now—you’re free.”
I undoubtedly deserved far more than the five years in a hard labor camp promised by the fleet prosecutor. The blood pouring from the dying navigator’s throat, the frozen body of the young lieutenant, the drowning co-pilot’s final scream, the desperate attempts of the gunner and radio operator to escape the rear cabin—those were worth decades.
I held firmly to my version: both engines had failed during the transition from cruise power to low throttle. In my written statement I described the entire day before the crash, including the volleyball game and the two hours spent in the doctor’s office. On paper, it appeared that my crew had prepared for the flight only four of the allotted eight hours.
The investigators tried to use that fact when they failed to extract a confession. But the regiment’s leadership pushed back. The deputy commander for flight training testified:
“For a second-class pilot, the time was sufficient for a mission of that length and complexity—especially considering that in the previous four years he had completed this exercise sixteen times.”
When the investigators ran out of questions, I was sent to Vladivostok to await my fate. The command did not dare keep me longer in a garrison where five widows of my former crew still lived.
It was done just in time. The psychological atmosphere had become unbearable. At the symbolic funeral of empty coffins, the widows wept for their husbands and cursed me in the same breath. As if survival itself proved my guilt.
The hero’s welcome I had received in the first days after my rescue dissolved into emptiness.
The widows, dressed in black headscarves, would point me out to their children on the street.
“Look, son,” they would say. “There goes the man who killed your father.”

Chapter 7
It took more than a month for the commission’s official conclusions to be issued. During that time I was summoned three times for lengthy interrogations at the investigative department of the Pacific Fleet Military Prosecutor’s Office. Under house arrest, I could find no peace; the uncertainty weighed on me relentlessly.
While I waited, a trial took place in Yelizovo. Lieutenant Colonel Ilyin, who had allowed the duty officer of the radar station to leave his post during flight operations because of his wife’s illness, stood before the court, along with Sergeant Elizarov and telephone operator Mukhina.
The commander of the separate communications battalion was stripped of his rank and dismissed from the Armed Forces without a pension. The radar operator was sentenced by a military tribunal to two years in a disciplinary battalion. Mukhina, however, was acquitted; the court found no elements of a crime in her actions. Nevertheless, for “leaving her duty station during watch without causing an emergency,” she was discharged from the Armed Forces and returned to Vladivostok.
Svetlana called me in early February. By then I already knew I would neither be convicted for the deaths of my subordinates nor dismissed from service. Yet three months after the catastrophe, I still had not received a new assignment. Bored out of my mind, I sat idly in one of the fleet headquarters offices, shielded by my father-in-law from uncomfortable conversations with other officers.
Mukhina and I had never met in person, though through the criminal case files we knew of each other’s existence.
By some miracle she managed to reach me and suggested we meet. I politely declined at first, citing busyness, but she proved well informed—not only about my location, but about how I was spending my days.
“Captain, don’t play coy—it doesn’t suit you. I know perfectly well you’ve been doing nothing for three months. The trial’s over. They ruffled both of us against the grain, but we got off with a fright. Come on, let’s talk, raise a glass to the souls of the innocently dead and to the health of those convicted. Besides, I was indirectly responsible for your troubles. I’d like to apologize. Maybe even make amends.”
I made one last weak attempt to avoid the meeting.
“I blame no one but myself for the crash.”
She drew out the magic phrase in a pleading tone:
“Pleeease.”
And I surrendered.
Why not go? My wife was at the institute, my father-in-law on Russky Island with the marines discussing upcoming spring exercises, my mother-in-law either at home or shopping. I had nothing better to do. Two or three hours wouldn’t kill me.
“All right. Where?”
“Caf; Aigul, on 20 Sea Crew Street. Know it?”
“Are you joking? Right by the stadium, near the Military Investigative Department for the Vladivostok garrison. Of course I know it. I’ve been there more than once—between interrogations.”
“So, will you come? Or will the place remind you of unpleasant memories and spoil your appetite?”
From fleet headquarters to the caf; was a forty-minute walk, and the likelihood of running into my father-in-law there was zero.
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
Turning from Ship Embankment Avenue onto Svetlanskaya Street near the Military History Museum, I realized that most of the way to Aigul lay along a street bearing the same name as the woman who had invited me.
Interesting, I thought. I’m going to meet Svetlana, walking along Svetlanskaya, and I have no idea what she looks like.
I had forgotten to ask during our phone conversation and had only a vague idea of how I would recognize her.
I needn’t have worried. She was smarter than I had expected.
Inside the caf;, I immediately appreciated her ingenuity. She sat at a table for two by the window. In front of her stood an empty flower vase with a folded napkin propped against it.
On a pink scrap of paper, in neat handwriting, was written: SVETLANA.
I shifted my gaze from the napkin to her face and noted to myself: She’s not only clever—she’s attractive. Maybe I was wrong to resist this meeting for so long. Though nothing’s lost yet.
I sat down.
“Svetlana, how about a three oz of cognac in the morning?”
“Positively,” she smiled.
I called the waitress and ordered a bottle of Ararat cognac and a box of “Maritimes Classic” bird’s milk chocolates.
“Excellent taste, Captain. That’s a limited export edition,” the waitress remarked.
“A proper officer’s choice,” Svetlana added.
“Extensive experience with officers?” I asked lightly.
“Yes. And not always pleasant,” she replied evenly.
“I hope your experience with me will be better.”
“We’ll see.”
After the exchange of pleasantries, the conversation relaxed. The meeting of two people tied to the same tragedy unfolded in an easy, almost carefree atmosphere.
There were no dramatic apologies, no tears of repentance. After a few glasses of cognac, Svetlana told me the full, painful story of her first love.
The intimate details she omitted out of modesty I could easily imagine. As she spoke, I studied her carefully and thought that her brother-in-law, Lieutenant Fyodorov, had arranged his life rather well in that communications battalion surrounded by two dozen young telephone operators.
Like letting a goat into a vegetable garden, I thought. Put me there for a month—no longer. I’d die of exhaustion.
At some point my attention drifted, and she caught my wandering gaze. Switching to the familiar “you,” she asked:
“Valera, maybe we should continue this acquaintance at my place?”
She didn’t have to persuade me long.

It’s good to start drinking in the morning. By two in the afternoon we were standing under the shower, exchanging perfectly deserved compliments. A couple more hours in bed followed. I listened to the rest of her life story before heading home, agreeing vaguely to call sometime.
I knew we would see each other again. She understood perfectly well that I had no intention of divorcing my wife. Yet I did not watch the clock while holding her, nor rush to leave after the shower. She accepted me as I was and valued the fact that I could listen to a woman—not merely use her. Everything about Mukhina suited me, and I was confident I suited her.
Pity it’s all in the past.
A week after our pleasant introduction, I was summoned to see the Commander of Pacific Fleet Aviation.
Pressing my black service jacket, trousers, and cream-colored shirt, I left my father-in-law’s apartment and took a trolleybus. Forty minutes and a nickel for a bus ticket later, I arrived at the intersection of the 100th Anniversary of Vladivostok Avenue and Russian Street. The pale green headquarters building rose slightly above Russian Street, seeming taller than its three stories. To the right of the main entrance stood a veteran Ka-25 anti-submarine helicopter on a small pedestal, enclosed by an ornate metal fence. Beneath its coaxial rotors, on the engine intake, “01” was painted in red acrylic.
After showing my officer’s ID at the entrance, I went upstairs. I was received almost immediately.
Lieutenant General Yuri Gudkov was one of the finest pilots in the country. A distinguished graduate of the Nikolaev Naval Mine-Torpedo Aviation College at twenty, by forty he was already a colonel and Honored Pilot of the USSR; by fifty, a lieutenant general.
His mood told me my situation was not dire. Significantly, he asked not a single question about the cause of the crash. Instead, he left his desk, sat opposite me at a long table, and asked gently, almost fatherly, for a detailed account of how I had survived nine days on a raft.
I described our grim ordeal and my reflections on the emergency kit and how little I had known about survival before that ordeal.
After listening carefully, he instructed me to prepare an analytical report for fleet headquarters detailing the value of each item that had been with me at sea—how I had used it, and what had been most lacking.
“Waterproof suits,” I replied immediately. “The main problem was hypothermia.”
At the end of the meeting, he asked:
“Valery, if you were offered the position of Chief of Aviation Search and Rescue Service for the fleet, would you accept?”
In an instant, a thought flashed through my mind: I’ll spend the rest of my service life stuck in headquarters from nine to five. I’ll die of boredom in those dusty corridors—or worse, some fool like me will drown in the ocean, and they’ll kick me out, just as they did the previous holder of that post.
Even the prospect of rapid promotion to lieutenant colonel did not sway me.
Fate was offering me another chance to live, but I stubbornly refused to see it.
“Comrade General, if the alternative is any flying post, I will choose flying.”
“A pity,” Gudkov said. “In the entire history of Soviet aviation, no one has survived nine days in such conditions. Your experience could help others. And you yourself, as a living example, would give confidence to crews flying over the ocean for hours. But I respect your choice.”
He called the Chief of Staff and asked about me. After listening, he hung up, smiled meaningfully, and said:
“In a week, an order will come from Moscow. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.”

He was right.
A week later I received my new assignment: I was to report to a transport aviation regiment and assume duties as commander of an An-12 crew.
The 593rd Separate Transport Aviation Regiment was based thirty miles from Vladivostok, in the garrison of Western Knevichi. The transports stood along a taxiway perpendicular to the runway; along its length were parked the Tu-16 aircraft of the 183rd Missile Regiment. From the southern end, another taxiway led to the civilian airport, Vladivostok.
All flight personnel of both regiments lived in the small mining town founded in the 1920s and named after revolutionary Fyodor Sergeyev—better known as Comrade Artyom.
In the officers’ dormitory on Sevastopol Street, Building Five, I was to live out the remainder of my life.
How astonishing and unpredictable a man’s fate can be.
Twenty-seven years earlier, I had been born two miles away, in a maternity hospital on Partizans Street. The kindergarten I attended stood a three hundred yards from my childhood entrance; School No. 16, where I studied my first two years, two five hundred yards away.
The first nine years of my life had passed within six city blocks bounded by Frunze and Kherson Streets north to south, and Forrest and River Streets west to east.
Here too, at the Maritime coal mine, my grandfather once worked at the coalface. And my mother’s younger brother still drives a fuel truck at the local airport.
In the town of my birth, I was to live my final year.
On my way home from fleet headquarters, I stopped by Svetlana’s apartment to share the news. It felt almost festive, so instead of cognac I brought two bottles of champagne.
“For the next few years, I’ll be serving under the attentive guidance of your old acquaintance, Political Officer Skvortsov,” I told her, gently stroking her back.
She pressed herself against me, her head resting on my chest.
“By any chance, are you jealous of my past?” she asked.
“Only of your future,” I replied. “I leave tomorrow, and the day after you’ll forget what I look like.”
She pulled away.
“All of you men are possessive. Each of you has a wife waiting at home, and still, it’s not enough—you want your mistress to be faithful too.”
Not wishing to quarrel before parting, I recited a playful verse:
A youth once asked a sage,
“Tell me, wise man, I pray,
What is better than a beautiful woman?”
The sage pondered and replied,
“Two of them.”
She laughed, settled comfortably against me again, and said softly:
“All I can promise you, Valera, is a place under my blanket—whenever you want it.”

Chapter 8
Wise men sit in headquarters—especially those who wear generals’ epaulettes. By assigning me to a transport regiment, they solved a difficult problem with elegant simplicity.
The commission investigating the crash never reached a unified conclusion about the simultaneous failure of two engines in flight. The engineering representatives believed the aircraft commander—concealing the truth—was to blame. The experienced pilots working alongside them argued that, in theory, anything could happen. Citing the prosecutor’s decision not to open a criminal case due to insufficient evidence, they defended my innocence.
From that disagreement a brilliant order was born.
Officially, transferring a combat pilot to transport aviation was considered a demotion. For me, it was a reward—greater than a medal or an early promotion.
Secretly, every pilot in the USSR dreamed of such an assignment.
Whether you were a fighter pilot, a bomber pilot, an anti-submarine aviator—or, worst of all, a helicopter pilot—you dreamed of becoming a transport pilot.
You just didn’t admit it to yourself. And you certainly didn’t say it out loud among your comrades. You would only cast a furtive, envious glance at the ever-cheerful crews of transport aircraft who dropped by your flight canteen for lunch and think:
What a fool I was, enrolling in Tambov, or Barnaul, or Borisoglebsk, or any other Higher Aviation School for pilots. I didn’t know then—so you tell yourself that there was the Balashov Transport Aviation School. Or if I did know, in my youthful arrogance I thought its graduates were nothing but “bag men,” forever hauling something around in parachute sacks.
Back then, you imagined a pilot’s life as steep turns and practice missile launches, or hours skimming at treetop height in search of an enemy missile submarine, or flying ten miles above the earth. You pictured yourself strapped into a parachute harness, oxygen mask on your face, flying eight hours out over the ocean hoping to spot an American carrier group—and eight hours back.
Only after you have had your fill of the “charms” of combat flying, and compared them to what those supposedly contemptible “transport guys” do, do you begin to understand why you couldn’t drag them into retirement with a stick. Unlike your fellow combat pilots—who by their third or fourth year start calculating their length of service and figuring how many more flight hours they need, with the “one year of flying counts as two” benefit, to secure the maximum pension at the youngest possible age.
Of course I mourned my fallen comrades. But sometimes I caught myself thinking,
There’s no evil without some good.
In my heart I thanked fate—and my father-in-law—for the opportunity to occupy the position I had once only secretly dreamed of, and to command a crew I had never dared dream of at all.
The men accepted me as an experienced commander who had been through hardship. Their tact regarding my past astonished me. No questions, no hints, no reminders—and I was grateful.
Before my arrival, the crew had flown under Major Wojciechowski, the deputy squadron commander.
According to the navigator, my predecessor was slightly below average height, somewhat overweight, with a square face and thinning blond hair.
“In short, a typical Russified Pole,” Vasilyev concluded. “He’d overstayed his retirement by four years. And those four years were the longest of our lives. Under constant pressure of impending dismissal, the major found something to criticize every single day. In his view, we did everything wrong. We prepared for flights wrong, flew wrong, behaved wrong on deployments. And when, during rare moments of rest, quiet laughter arose in the crew, he seemed to think we were laughing at him—at the fact that he was twice our age, that he was Polish, that he was short, fat, greedy, and mean. On top of that, he was vindictive.”
Once, slightly drunk, the major had shared his philosophy of command almost verbatim:
“Promise a subordinate promotion. Let him treat you to vodka, bring women to your bed, carry your bag from headquarters to the aircraft and back. Let him serve you like a dog. And when the time comes to fulfill your promise, find some trivial fault and rub his nose in it. Say, ‘No, my friend, you handled such-and-such poorly.’ Or, ‘You failed to do what was required, so you don’t deserve advancement.’”
Vasilyev had felt sick listening to such revelations, but there was nowhere to go.
That wasn’t all.
On our first day together, the radio operator asked whether I smoked. I said no. Onoprienko then told me:
“In flight, Wojciechowski smoked constantly. One cigarette lit from another. A pack of Bulgarian TU-134 cigarettes would disappear in three or four hours. Sometimes, during approach, the cigarette burning between his lips would smoke directly into his eyes. He’d squint, twist away from the smoke—but never remove it. The aircraft’s ventilation system couldn’t handle the fumes. We coughed, had headaches, rubbed our streaming eyes—but endured it. We knew asking him to stop or complaining to command was useless.”
It became clear why the news that I didn’t smoke had been met with a collective sigh of relief. It felt as though my new crew had barely restrained themselves from shouting a threefold “Hurrah!”
After three months of training flights and the award of First-Class Pilot qualification, we received our first assignment.
We were to fly across the entire Soviet Union. If one ignored the refueling stops, the itinerary looked impressive: deliver military cargo from Vladivostok to Moscow, then unload commercial freight in Crimea, fly empty to Leningrad, pick up seven tons of paper from a mill for the fleet newspaper On Guard, and return to Vladivostok.
The chief of staff, who briefed us, did not specify the nature of the commercial cargo. So, I was surprised on the morning of departure to find two trucks under the open cargo hatch, loaded to the brim with Japanese electronics.
The passengers waiting nearby were arguing animatedly with the warrant officer overseeing the sailors loading the plane. Their gestures made it clear they were debating money.
The issue was simple: should the sailors be paid for loading commercial cargo?
They hadn’t noticed my approach, and I heard the businessman say:
“You military types have lost all sense. I paid three people at fleet aviation headquarters in Vladivostok, two on this base —and now I’m supposed to pay you and your sailors too?”
Turning to his companions, he added:
“And they all talk about defending state interests, but they take cash only. Try asking any of them for a receipt.”
His grim-faced bodyguard silently pointed toward me. The owner of the cargo turned, recognized me as commander, and explained the situation.
I called over the warrant officer and ordered him to proceed with loading. As for payment, I told him, we would discuss that after my return—in the regimental commander’s office. To prevent him from dying of fear while awaiting retribution, I added quietly:
“That is, if I still remember this incident after the trip.”
The warrant officer hurried off.
The businessman, about thirty, extended his hand.
“Pavel. Commercial director, OptTrade Far East.” He handed me his card and nodded toward two sturdy men. “My employees. They’ll fly with me to guard the cargo.”
“Armed?”
He nodded.
“Legally?”
He shook his head.
“Tell them to hand their pistols to the gunner. See that Tatar under the wing talking to his countryman? That’s him. They’ll get them back in Simferopol. No—wait. I’ll supervise personally.”
I called the gunner over.
“Take their pistols. Keep them in your cockpit until Crimea. Lock the cabin during stops. Clear?”
“Clear, Commander.”
During the flight to Moscow,  I reflected on my superiors pocketing considerable sums for arranging this trip.
They know how to make money with other people’s hands. I sit on a parachute for seven hours staring at prehistoric instruments, hauling cargo to Simferopol. Meanwhile, they sit in headquarters playing chess or poker and collect fees. Judging by our client’s indignation, they pocket it. And how legal is this cargo anyway? Could it be contraband?
I realized there was money to be made myself.

Before we began our descent from cruising altitude, I told my co-pilot that not long ago nearly the entire flight crews of a whole transport division had been sent behind bars.
He turned his head slowly, waiting for me to continue.
“They were based here,” I said. “At Chkalovsky.”
That was how I began telling him what the airfield was famous for among transport pilots—not only its connection to the cosmonauts and the glory of the space program, but something far darker.
The base provided air support to the USSR Cosmonaut Training Center and other components of the Soviet space program. In addition, the airfield played a key role as a major transport hub: the 8th Special Purpose Aviation Division operated a wide range of military transport aircraft from there.
It was from this very runway that Yuri Gagarin departed for the Baikonur Cosmodrome before his historic flight. And it was from here, on March 27, 1968, that the first man to journey into space took off on the fatal flight from which he never returned.
Yet among pilots the base was known not only for its size and its proximity to the Cosmonaut Training Center, but also for the unprecedented level of corruption that had flourished among Air Force transport crews during the Afghan war.
During the years of fighting in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union lost more than fifteen thousand soldiers and officers. The primary carriers of the zinc coffins returning from the war zone were the crews of the 8th Special Purpose Division.
No one knows exactly when these inhuman crimes began, but by the middle of the war rumors spread across the country that coffins containing the remains of soldiers killed in Afghanistan were disappearing from freshly dug graves. Military investigators soon uncovered the explanation for these seemingly incomprehensible crimes.
Participants in an extensive heroin network operating in Afghanistan decapitated the fallen soldiers, placing the heads on a pillow before a small plexiglass viewing panel so relatives in the Soviet Union could identify them. The remaining space inside the sealed zinc coffins was filled with packages of heroin.
In this manner, flight crews of an elite Air Force transport division delivered hundreds of tons of the most dangerous narcotic into the Soviet Union. Following an investigation by the military prosecutor’s office, nearly all commanders of the division’s two transport regiments were imprisoned, along with most of the navigators, co-pilots, and flight engineers responsible for the cargo, as well as several officers from the division headquarters.
The commission I had mentioned to my co-pilot did, in fact, exist at that airfield. It had been established in the late seventies and inspected only aircraft flying abroad. It served as an additional body assisting customs and border authorities in navigating the complexities of military transport operations.
Aircraft of Naval Aviation were never subject to its inspections. I knew this from my squadron commander, who had not only taught me to fly the An-12 but had also initiated me into certain subtleties of transport work. It was time to find out whether the amount of vodka I had drunk with him during my training had been worth the knowledge I received in return.
I walked toward my aircraft past the parking area of the 70th Test and Training Aviation Regiment, assigned to the cosmonauts, holding in my hand the departure clearance to Simferopol signed by the dispatcher. Pavel stood waiting beneath the wing. From anxiety, he was nervously biting his nails.
The base, long associated with high-ranking transport units and government flights, was hardly the sort of place where a civilian businessman would feel at ease.
“So, Commander? Are we flying?”
“Once they inspect the cargo.”
“Can’t we leave without inspection?” he asked, voice tight.
“Everything’s possible—for money.”
He opened his briefcase slightly.
“How much?”
“A thousand for the inspector. A hundred for each crew member. For silence.”
“There’s two thousand here. Please settle it.”
I slipped the money into my flight suit pocket and strode back toward headquarters.
When I returned at last, Pavel nearly embraced me in relief.
“I thought they’d arrested you. I was already looking around for an escape route.”
“Why would they?”
“You have no idea what you’re carrying. Videotape recorders for thousands of video salons in Crimea and the Krasnodar region. If you hadn’t arranged things, you might have lost your job. I’d have been killed long before trial. Weighted with a stone and dropped into the Golden Horn Bay.”
I smiled.
“Relax. We’re flying.”

Chapter 9
Torn by curiosity, the co-pilot requested taxi clearance and, over the intercom, asked me:
“So—how did it go?”
The navigator and flight engineer looked at me expectantly. So, Sergey’s lack of restraint meant I’d have to share the dollars with them too.
Ah, youth. I told you to keep quiet. Now the whole crew will know about the money.
Once a word is spoken, you can’t catch it back.
I addressed the crew:
“After we unload the VCRs in Crimea, everyone will receive a small bonus.”
In Simferopol, after saying goodbye to the passengers and their cargo, my crew began enthusiastically urging me to spend the night on that fertile Ukrainian soil. I believed it was safer for us to keep as far away from the mafia as possible. I had no doubt whatsoever that we had just parted company with an organized criminal group.
“No, boys. We’ll spend the night in the Leningrad region. Mount up.”
Night flight. The duty time allotted to the crew—from first takeoff to final landing—was nearly exhausted. Once we reached cruise altitude and engaged the autopilot, fatigue descended all at once. I settled deeper into my seat and drifted toward sleep beneath the steady hum of four turboprop engines.
I was just about to fall asleep when a bright flicker shimmered in the reflection of the instrument glass.
They don’t sleep themselves and won’t let me sleep. Those fighter pilots—curious as little children. Then again, no one else flies “whistlers.”
A short, thin young man entered the cockpit hesitantly. He looked no more than twenty, though I knew he was my age, give or take a year.
The passenger studied the instrument panel from behind the flight engineer’s seat.
“Need something?” I asked.
“I was curious how everything’s arranged here. It’s my first time on an An-12. I’ve only been in the cockpits of An-26s and Tu-134s before.”
“Feel better now?”
“Nope. Just as ancient as the other two,” he replied.
“As if your Yak-38 is the last word in technology,” I shot back, offended on behalf of the airplane I liked so much. “Better tell me about yourself. How did you end up assigned to Pristan? That hole’s worse than Khorol.”
“No connections. That’s why I’m flying horizontally across the whole Union with three other poor devils.”
“With three? Hold on.” I opened my folder and checked the flight assignment. “I was ordered to deliver six fighter pilots to Knevichi. What’s your name?”
“Oleg Nikiforov.”
“There you are.” I ran my finger down the passenger list. “You and five others are heading to the Far East with me.”
“No, Commander. Aksyonov and Grachyov from Leningrad are flying to Severomorsk. They’re assigned to the aircraft carrier Kiev. The four of us are split between the sister ships Minsk and Novorossiysk. They might not have known in Vladivostok that those two were reassigned north. The decision was made at the last minute—by phone.”
“I know how that works,” I said. “I’m not surprised to learn about changes to my orders from a passenger mid-flight.”
Senior Lieutenant Nikiforov returned to the pressurized cabin, and I once again settled into a comfortable position and fell asleep under the monotonous drone of the turboprops.
________________________________________
I don’t understand how I ended up in this dim half-darkness. Where am I? An empty room—or an office. Light filters in through a narrow window set just beneath the ceiling. Probably someone’s basement.
I try to move. I can’t.
I’m sitting on a chair. My legs are tied to its legs, my hands bound behind my back with a leather belt.
“So you’ve come to, our little migratory pigeon. Thought we were fools? Don’t worry. We’ll squeeze our dollars out of you through your eyes,” says one of the two thugs standing nearby.
Where have I seen those dull faces before? I try to remember—but don’t have time. Someone I cannot see pulls a transparent plastic bag over my head. When he tightens it around my neck, I begin to thrash. My eyes bulge from lack of air. My mouth opens, trying to suck in even a trace of oxygen.
Another second and I’ll die—
Someone shoves my shoulder.
I jerk upright and realize my body has slumped sideways in the seat and the headphone cord is pressing against my throat.
I look around with relief. The familiar cockpit surrounds me. Kovalenko is asleep. Vasilyev sits in the glazed nose, writing something in the logbook. Rybnikov, who woke me, squints slyly and says:
“You looked like you’d just seen your mother-in-law in a dream.”
“The political officer,” I reply, smiling.
But the smile quickly fades when I glance at the instrument panel.
All the navigation instruments are behaving strangely.
The radio compass needle slowly rotates in endless circles. The gyroscopic heading indicator shows we are flying east, though I know perfectly well that Leningrad from Simferopol lies almost due north. You can rename the city fifteen times—its geography won’t change.
Vasilyev leans out of his compartment. His face shows confusion.
“Same for you?” I gesture toward the instruments.
He nods.
“Where are we approximately?”
“Passing Velikiye Luki,” the navigator replies.
“Sergey.” I punch the co-pilot lightly on the shoulder to wake him. “Report to Pskov control that we’re over Velikiye Luki.”
He makes the call—but I hear no reply.
Which means the radio has failed as well.
“At least the engines are running,” the flight engineer remarks—whether hinting at my past or genuinely relieved, I can’t tell.
Suddenly, directly ahead, the clouds flare with blinding light. A column of brilliance several hundred meters wide hangs there for half a minute—then slowly fades.
In deathly silence we fly on for several minutes in an unknown direction.
Gradually the heading instruments return to normal. Static crackles in our headsets. Then the voice of the Pskov controller comes through, reprimanding us for failing to report passing the next waypoint.
Kovalenko is about to answer, but I press the transmit button first and apologize for our inattention.
“Why are you apologizing?” my co-pilot mutters. “You should’ve told them what happened.”
“And what exactly should I have said? About the bright light in front of our nose? Or the failure of instruments and radio? Until we reach a common understanding of what we saw, we report nothing.”
“What do you think it was?”
“Looks like a missile launch. Or a super-powerful searchlight.”
“Agreed—it looked like that. But the temporary failure of electromagnetic instruments doesn’t fit. Let’s think. The meteorologists gave no warning of thunderstorms in this area. So it wasn’t lightning. There are no magnetic anomalies here. No cosmodromes. It’s highly unlikely that air defense would launch a missile inside a civilian air corridor. I can explain it only as an encounter with an unidentified flying object.”
“Should’ve reported we missed the waypoint because of aliens,” the flight engineer suggests, barely suppressing a grin.
“And right after landing I’d be sent to a psychiatric hospital,” I reply. “I’ve never met a pilot who continued flying after talking about UFO encounters. They’re removed from flight status immediately. And if they insist, they’re tucked away in psychiatric wards—out of sight.”
The navigator nods approvingly.
“Only one or two cosmonauts ever spoke publicly about such things. But they’re People—with a capital P—almost gods while alive. And we’re just modest air cabbies.”
“Still joking?” the radio operator asks. “Better tell us what time you expect to land, cabbie.”
“At Pushkin airfield, glorious Leningrad region, our valiant crew shall safely land its winged machine,” the navigator intones grandly while calculating on his slide rule, comparing the logbook with instrument readings. Finally he announces: “Eighteen minutes.”
“Hooray,” the co-pilot says. “I thought we’d be flying forever.”
“It’s been a long day,” I conclude, “and it won’t end until we reach the hotel. So—enough chatter. Prepare for descent.”
Reducing engine power, I listen to the whisper of the propellers. There is something reassuring about flying an aircraft where you can visually confirm the engines’ work. I tilt my head slightly left and see the propellers through the side window.
For the rest of my life, I suspect, every time I bring an airplane down from cruise, I will glance at them and silently ask:
Are they still turning?

Chapter 10
The military hotel in the city of Pushkin was located in the very center of town, on the fourth floor of a nineteenth-century building. Climbing the steep spiral staircase to the reception office, I rang the bell for the duty administrator. While we waited for Her Majesty to appear, we had time to inspect the interior of our prospective residence.
The place had last been renovated either right after the Second World War—or perhaps after the First. Or possibly even earlier, after the Crimean-Turkish campaign.
We walked across creaking parquet floors, between dark-blue walls, peering through the tall doorways into ten-bed rooms.
A faint wave of nausea rose at the sight of iron beds with sagging wire-mesh springs. Though the smell drifting from the communal toilet at the end of the corridor may also have contributed. Its door hung from a single hinge, offering future guests a full view of the urinals and toilet stalls.
Altogether, the military hotel resembled a revolutionary-era dormitory. For complete authenticity, all that was missing was a sailor in a black pea coat with a Mauser in a wooden holster, sitting beneath a red flag by the entrance.
Seeing my crew and our six passengers at half past midnight, the stout administrator declared:
“Well, look what the wind blew in. I’ll warn you right away—no private rooms. I’ll only accommodate you with shared occupancy.”
“Handle the passengers as you see fit,” I objected, “but my crew cannot share a room with strangers. We’re carrying all flight documentation with us. It’s marked ‘For Official Use Only.’ Besides, our personal belongings may be of interest to outsiders.”
“Your documents could be stamped ‘Top Secret’ for all I care,” she replied calmly. “That’s none of my concern. Leave someone in the room when you go out. The administration bears no responsibility for guests’ property.”
“We’re planning to stay four days. What am I supposed to do—post an armed guard in the room every day?”
“Young man, do as you please. You’re free to leave and find a hotel more to your liking. I’m in charge here. If you stay, you’ll live where I tell you.”
I had encountered this brand of unobtrusive Soviet hospitality before and knew that further argument was not only useless but dangerous. The administrator could at any moment call the commander of the local garrison, and I would find myself accused of behavior unbecoming an officer.
“Let’s get out of here, boys. While the transport kindly provided by the airfield duty officer hasn’t driven off, we’ll try to find something better,” I told the crew.
Back in the minibus, we asked the driver whether it was possible to find accommodation at such a late hour.
“There are plenty of hotels in town,” he said, “but not all will suit your budget.”
“We’re not heading to the Intourist,” I replied, “but we don’t want to stay in a pigsty like that military dump either. Take us somewhere quiet, away from the city center.”
“I’ve got another idea,” our nocturnal escort said. “About a hundred meters from here, on the grounds of the former Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, right on the border between the Alexander and Catherine Parks along Podkapriznaya Road, they’ve opened a new hotel. Only ten cottages, built in Chinese style, with a small pagoda in the courtyard. There’s an observation platform up top—you can see the whole park from the balconies. Before the Revolution, members of the imperial court stayed there—adjutants, advisers, the empresses’ ladies-in-waiting. Construction began under Catherine the Great in the late eighteenth century. Recently, the Tsarskoye Selo museum administration converted the houses into private tourist cottages. You won’t even have to deal with staff every day. Each cottage has its own entrance. The only inconvenience is that after eleven at night, the entrance doors must remain locked.”
“That sounds more like an advantage than a drawback,” I remarked. “With subordinates like mine, it’s good to have additional levers of control.”
The half-asleep boys didn’t even smile. My joke was met with unanimous agreement: anywhere would do—so long as it was quickly.

Chapter 11
A phone call shattered a magnificent dream.
I was dreaming that my wife and Svetlana Mukhina were sitting together in a large whirlpool bath, embracing and caressing one another. When they saw me, they waved, inviting me to join them. I walked toward them, undressing along the way, stepped into the warm water and—
—the damned telephone began rattling.
Who could possibly need me on such a beautiful Friday morning?
The navigator didn’t even try to pick up, though the phone stood on his bedside table. Vasilyev knew perfectly well that if the call concerned us, it would be for the commander. One hundred percent.
The duty officer from the pulp-and-paper mill informed me that seven tons of newsprint for our fleet were ready and already loaded onto a truck. However, the driver had not come to work—his son was getting married that day. Therefore, the cargo could not be delivered to the airfield before Monday.
While I listened to this nonsense, my mind was occupied with a more practical question: how to keep the crew busy for the next three days?
“What are we doing this weekend, Vadim?” I asked the navigator.
“Let’s go to Leningrad.”
“And the others?” I still hesitated about leaving the boys unsupervised.
“They’ll entertain themselves. They’re not children,” he replied. He had known them far longer than I had.
“Fair enough. Then please invite everyone to our room. I’ve prepared a pleasant surprise.”
Vasilyev went to wake the others. I pulled the dollars from their hiding place inside a worn sock and counted out one hundred for each man. With some irritation I noted that I could have kept more for myself if my co-pilot Kovalenko hadn’t had a tongue like a broom. He spoke first and thought afterward.
After returning the remaining bills to their fragrant hiding place, I composed a short speech about the material interests of the crew.
Ten minutes later, still half-asleep, the boys stood around the table in the middle of my hotel room.
“If anyone didn’t get enough sleep, my apologies,” I began. “You can make up for it tomorrow and the day after. I gathered you early to announce two pieces of news.”
“Good and bad?” Kovalenko asked.
“No, Sergey, you guessed wrong. I have good news and very good news. Today we’re not flying. Departure is postponed until Monday afternoon. We have three days of rest. That’s the good news. Before I tell you the very good news, I want to say a few words.”
I emphasized the moment with a pause. They stood silently, unsure where I was heading.
“I’ve never asked how you handled ‘personal profit’ matters under Wojciechowski. That’s not my business. I’m your commander now. If we share the risk equally in flight, then any money that falls at our feet will also be shared equally. But remember: being a member of my crew is not only the privilege of receiving an equal share—it’s also the duty to keep silent about anything that goes beyond official matters.”
I looked at each of them in turn.
“Now each of you will receive one hundred dollars.”
I placed seven bills on the table. The last one I set before myself.
Nikolay Onoprienko picked up his note, held it to the light above the table, then put it back down.
“I don’t believe my eyes,” he said, rubbing them with his fists.
The boys burst into laughter, pocketed the money, and dispersed to their rooms. The navigator and I headed to the most beautiful city in Russia.
At least, that’s how I felt. In its magnificence, Leningrad yielded nothing to Paris, London, or Vienna. Built at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Tsar Peter Great, Petersburg had served as the capital of the Russian Empire for two hundred years. Each successive emperor or empress tried to make it resemble the finest cities of Europe.
Its buildings and bridges, palaces and museums—everything forming the city center—were, without exaggeration, of world historical and cultural significance.
Vasilyev and I strolled slowly along Nevsky Prospekt, admiring old fa;ades and modern shop windows housed within them, eating ice cream like children. The incomparable taste of creamy plombir coated in milk chocolate was as magnificent as the city itself.
Before buying it, Vasilyev suggested stopping at a caf; popularly known as “The Frog Pond,” just beyond the Griboedov Canal, and eating ice cream from saucers. I persuaded him to abandon the idea and enjoy a “Leningrad” bar on the go. I employed a cunning tactical argument: in Lermontov’s Masquerade, Arbenin poisoned Nina precisely with ice cream served in a saucer.
“And seriously,” I added, “I’d rather not sit on worn green sofas among students skipping class on such a marvelous spring Friday.”
Crossing the People’s Bridge over the Moika River, we reached Kazan Island, within a block or two of Palace Square. There, a poster caught our attention, inviting citizens and guests of Leningrad to visit an exhibition of nonconformist artists.
For a symbolic entrance fee, we entered with considerable skepticism.
I must confess: there were no Rembrandts among them.
Pausing before certain canvases, we exchanged quiet remarks. Most of our criticism boiled down to the conviction that we could paint a “Black Square” no worse than Malevich.
Some works could not be denied boldness of concept, but in pursuit of it the artists had forgotten technique. Others displayed solid technique, yet beneath the paint one could still see the penciled grid lines—vertical and horizontal. Whether the master was in a hurry or simply had no respect for the audience was hard to say.
Unwilling to admit our lack of taste, we continued searching for a piece that might satisfy us—“benighted dilettantes” daring to judge new art.
I had already begun regretting the five rubles I’d paid for admission when I found the one object that would later compel me to bring my entire crew here.
On a small table in the farthest corner of the hall lay a wooden board, about forty by thirty centimeters.
Glued to it was a double-page spread torn from a West German magazine. Professionally photographed sausages and smoked ham, frankfurters and bratwurst, grilled cutlets and poultry, lamb ribs and game fillets filled the page. In the background stood three bottles of horseradish sauce. The advertisement practically shouted: With this horseradish, you can eat anything.
And in the upper left corner of the varnished board, the artist had affixed a ration coupon issued by the Leningrad City Executive Committee—entitling the bearer to one kilogram of sugar for March 1985.
The depth of the idea pierced a Russian heart straight through.
Where was the justice?
In Germany—defeated by the Red Army and later plundered by the Allies—horseradish was advertised alongside an abundance of delicacies. In a city that had lost two-thirds of its population to starvation, forty years after victory, sugar was distributed by ration card.
One kilogram per month.
We left the exhibition subdued. We decided that on our next visit to Leningrad we would bring the boys.
Within weeks we had the chance. Again we flew to Pushkin and stayed for the weekend. I brought a modest sum of money and a firm intention to purchase the masterpiece.
I was met with disappointment—tempered by pride in my own taste.
When, surrounded by my crew, I asked the gallery administrator about the collage titled “Horseradish,” he spread his hands.
“It was sold long ago.”
“May I ask for how much?” I inquired, feigning casual interest.
“It’s no secret.” He checked the catalog. “Purchased by the Swedish National Gallery of Modern Art for forty-five thousand kronor.”
I had no idea whether that was expensive or not. But I understood that forty-five thousand Swedish kronor exceeded the thirty solid Soviet rubles I had brought for the purchase.
But that came later.
That evening, exhausted from tourism, Vasilyev and I returned to Tsarskoye Selo by commuter train.
Vadim laid his head on my shoulder and fell asleep as soon as we departed Vitebsky Station. I stared absentmindedly at the door leading to the next carriage.
At Shushary, a young man entered the vestibule. As the train resumed movement, his eyes swept the car and met mine. He smiled warmly. Without thinking, I smiled back.
He nodded invitingly and gestured with his hand.
Come here.
The simple phrase was easy to read on his lips.
I glanced around, assuming he was addressing someone else. No one stood behind me. Gently propping the navigator’s head against the window, I prepared to rise when the elderly woman beside me asked:
“Are you, young man, a homosexual?”
No suitable words came to mind for the half-extinct aristocrat. The insult robbed me of speech. I shook my head vigorously, lungs tight with indignation.
“That’s exactly what he wants from you,” she clarified calmly. “He noticed your friend asleep on your shoulder and took you for one of his own.”
“Thank you, ma’am. My friend and I are from the provinces. We don’t have that sort of thing there,” I managed hoarsely.
“It exists everywhere,” she replied with a note of regret. “Only in the provinces they still hide their orientation. Here, they flaunt it.”

Chapter 12
Saturday began with a lavish drinking session. The crew members who had remained in Pushkin decided to celebrate their first assignment under a new aircraft commander with a grand binge. Without saying a word to me about their plans, they bought ten bottles of vodka, two bottles of cognac, and twenty bottles of beer.
All of it was meant to be consumed that very day.
The task was not an easy one, so we decided not to postpone the event until evening. By half past ten in the morning we were already seated around the table in the radio operator’s hotel room.
By eight in the evening I could neither drink nor eat another bite and suggested to Vadim that we take a walk through Alexander Park.
As we passed beneath the arch of the Big Caprice, Vasilyev proposed climbing it.
“Why not scale the chapel while you’re at it? It’s right over there,” I cut him short. “I can barely keep you upright, and you want to scramble over ruins. Cool down, brave navigator.”
Poorly oriented in the dusk of an unfamiliar park, I accidentally led Vasilyev to the Mirror Pond, though I had intended to reach the White Tower.
“Where are we?” the navigator mumbled as I seated him on a white-painted iron bench at the base of a sculpture of a nude woman.
“I believe we’re by the Mirror Pond, in Catherine Park. At least that yellowish building across the water looks like the Upper Bath,” I said, glancing around, trying to understand how we had ended up here.
“And where were we going?”
“To see the White Tower. In Alexander Park.”
“Then you’re Sailor Zheleznyak.”
“Why Zheleznyak?”
“Because he, too, was heading for Odessa but ended up in Kherson,” Vasilyev laughed at his own joke.
“And ten grenades are no trifle,” I quietly completed the line of the old revolutionary song once the navigator’s professional comparison sank in.
“You say Upper Bath. Is there a Lower one too?” Vadim asked, hiccupping.
“There is.”
“And the difference?”
“The difference is that royalty bathed in the Upper Bath, and courtiers in the lower one. They called it the Cavaliers’ Bathhouse.”
“The Cavalry Bathhouse!” my drunken friend roared. “So they washed there with their horses.”
“I said Cavaliers’, not Cavalry.”
At that moment Vasilyev raised his head and noticed the marble statue standing on a pedestal a few meters behind us.
“Oh, now those are something,” he muttered, appreciating the sculpture in his own coarse way.
“So the dolphins at her feet escaped your attention, but that didn’t,” I replied dryly, turning his head along the path. “Look over there instead.”
Two charming young women were approaching us with an easy, unhurried gait. They were completely different and complemented one another well.
The brunette, with wavy hair and lively, sparkling eyes, was slightly above average height, with striking features. Mischief flashed in her glance. It was clear she worked in a large collective and wasn’t afraid to take initiative.
“Good evening, boys,” she said cheerfully. “You’re not too busy, are you?”
“For you, girls, we’re always free,” the navigator replied, bracing his hand against my leg to avoid sliding off the bench.
“Forgive us,” I interjected. “Vadim and I overdid it a little. But if we can help you with something, give us forty minutes and we’ll be fully operational.”
“I doubt that,” the second girl laughed.
She was a petite blonde with straight hair framing a pretty face. Her lips, outlined in pink lipstick, curved into a playful smile, revealing even teeth and a quick, mischievous expression.
“You tell us what the problem is,” I said, still undecided which of them I liked more, though certain I wanted to impress both. “Then we’ll assess our capabilities together.”
“This morning we arrived by bus from Moscow for a two-day excursion to Leningrad,” the brunette explained. “Our tour group spent the entire day in museums. Tonight they brought us to this town and put us in the same hotel where you’re staying. But it feels wasteful to sleep, so we’re gathering volunteers to drive back to Leningrad tonight to watch the bridges rise over the Neva. The bus driver says if we find twenty people, he’ll take us. If not, he won’t even put the key in the ignition.”
“And how many do you have so far?” Vasilyev asked thickly.
“If you agree, that makes four.”
“Not impressive,” I concluded after simple arithmetic. “Let’s do this: we’ll walk for an hour and return here. Meanwhile, try to recruit a few more. If you succeed, we’ll go with you. If not, we’ll invent an alternative to raised bridges.”
They agreed, and Vadim and I wandered down the broad alleys of Catherine Park among ancient oaks and antique statues.
To my surprise, after an hour the navigator felt considerably better. But what surprised me more was that when we reached the hotel, the girls were already waiting. It was obvious their recruitment campaign had failed completely. My suggestion of another walk was warmly received, and the four of us set off again.
Revealing a little about how we earned our living, I invited them to speak about themselves.
Marina took my arm and led me deeper into the dark park. Her family history was unusual and fascinating. Even her patronymic could intrigue anyone: Marina Sebastyanovna was not a common name in central Russia.
Sebasti;n Jos; Velasco had been only six years old when he and some fifty other Spanish boys and girls, together with wounded Soviet officers who had fought on the side of the Republican Army, were loaded onto a large steamship in the port of Barcelona.
It was 1938. Sebasti;n’s father, commander of a communist infantry regiment, had been killed in the Battle of the Ebro months earlier. His mother left him with her sister and went to the front to avenge the “Francoists.” The aunt placed the boy in an orphanage, from which the Russians later took him.
For four long days the cargo-passenger ship Adzharia sailed from Spain to Soviet Odessa. Strangers speaking an incomprehensible language brought the children food twice a day. At first he could not eat it. Everything tasted wrong. Hunger soon persuaded him otherwise.
From Odessa he was sent by train to Ivanovo. Within a month, pasta and boiled potatoes seemed the most delicious food on earth.
The son of a Spanish hero spent the next ten years in a boarding school. After the war he moved to Moscow, completed driver’s courses, and for the rest of his life sincerely believed the Soviet capital to be the best city in the world.
Marina spoke less willingly about herself.
“A typical Moscow story. Secondary school, the prestigious Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology, a marriage that brought little joy, a six-year-old son, and work. An engineering management position at one of the capital’s defense enterprises. I build space shuttles—Burans—at the Tushino Machine-Building Plant,” she clarified. “I have a loyal friend and three or four temporary girlfriends. Like everyone else. But the soul constantly asks for something more—festivals, dancing, carnivals, and of course adventures. Preferably with intrigue,” she concluded, laughing.
She paused, as if deciding how much to reveal to a chance acquaintance. We strolled in silence for several minutes before she stopped, turned to me, and repeated with a smile:
“The soul constantly asks for something more. Festivals, dancing, carnivals—and adventures. With intrigue.”
You’re a gift, I thought, rubbing my hands inwardly. There will be dancing. And adventure. And intrigue.
We decided to continue the evening at the girls’ place. It seemed safer; the inebriated members of our crew were less likely to track us down with offers of “one for the road.”
After several hours of conversation and coffee, my heart was pounding as if ready to leap from my chest. None of us wanted to sleep, yet it was long past time for bed. Everyone sensed it, but no one dared say it aloud. It was one thing for lovers to meet in a cozy apartment, another for such relations to develop swiftly—and with witnesses. Vadim and I were not overly burdened by principles, but our lack of experience in such arrangements was obvious. So I improvised.
“Vadim and I don’t want to leave,” I began cautiously. “You’re not inviting us into your beds, and it’s already two in the morning. So here’s my proposal.” I paused, hoping they would seize the initiative. “My friend and I will lie in one bed, and you two in the other.”
Even the greatest fool could hardly have devised something more absurd. But I assumed the ridiculousness would force the situation to resolve itself.
That is precisely what happened.
After a few minutes lying beside Vadim, I realized I had overestimated the girls’ boldness. They lay silent as mice. It seemed that if nothing changed, we would simply fall asleep like that. The situation reminded me of the old joke about hunters who brought vodka on a trip but carried it back untouched because they had forgotten the corkscrew.
I quietly rose, crossed to the other bed, gently took Tatyana’s hand, and pulled her from under the blanket. When she obediently stood, I immediately took her place. Slippers shuffled softly across the floor toward Vasilyev’s bed.
The rest of the night flew by faster than a jet fighter.
Chapter 13
The next day, toward evening, we were awakened by my former flight school classmate, Oleg Sergeyev. The Moscow girls had long since left for their excursion, leaving a note on the table saying they wouldn’t return before nine. Hoping no one would disturb us, Vasilyev and I had decided to sleep in their beds. We were mistaken.
Our uninvited guest was serving as a Tu-16 aircraft commander at one of the Black Sea Fleet airfields. Having arrived at the Pushkin aircraft repair plant on Friday afternoon, he had spent two days looking for me. Failing to find the commander in his room and receiving no clear answer from my crew about my whereabouts, he began knocking on every cottage in the “Chinese village.” At last, luck smiled on him.
I looked at him and thought: Why so friendly? We hadn’t been close during school. In the five years since graduation, we hadn’t met once. And now such warmth? He had even brought two bottles of cognac.
Everything became clear after the third shot.
After a few routine questions about family and health to open what promised to be a long conversation, Oleg began asking in detail about the deaths of my crew members in the Pacific. Vasilyev, who had been drinking with us until then, tactfully excused himself under a flimsy pretext.
I felt like throwing Sergeyev out of the room where the navigator and I had spent such a marvelous night. But despite the cognac already circulating through my blood, I understood that would be unwise. A captain would not undertake such expenses on his own initiative. Behind him I sensed the firm hand of the Committee for State Security. This conversation had been planned.
So—they were watching me.
I did not want to believe that yesterday’s drinking and the cheerful Moscow girls were also part of some operation to uncover “the truth.” Most likely, that was coincidence. But Oleg probed too insistently for me to take his sympathy at face value.
Fortunately, most people prefer talking to listening. Captain Sergeyev belonged to that majority. Realizing that I was not yet drunk enough to confess the truth about my aircraft’s crash—nor to sob into his shoulder about the cruel turns of fate—he began speaking himself.
The topic was hardly original. What do two drunken pilots discuss? Women—if they are friends. Aviation disasters—if they are former classmates and one of them has brought, along with two bottles of cognac, a portable tape recorder in his briefcase.
Oleg told me about the death of another classmate at Mongokhto airbase in the Khabarovsk region.
The 568th Tu-22M regiment was practicing paired night flights along a route. The wingman crew, commanded by Captain Turmanov, after takeoff, instead of transitioning to instrument climb, began visually searching for their leader, who had departed three minutes earlier. Straining to distinguish the glow of burning kerosene from starlight, the pilots failed to notice their aircraft slipping into descent.
At the fifty-eighth second, the ground proximity warning system activated, and a calm female voice announced the danger of continued descent. It was too late. The supersonic missile carrier, with full fuel tanks, was too heavy to alter its trajectory quickly. Two seconds earlier the crew had disengaged afterburner, and the aircraft’s engine nozzles struck the ground.
Leaving a broad trail of fire barely a kilometer from their home airfield, the aircraft disintegrated. Unburned wing tips, the upper tail section, a landing gear strut, and engine components were scattered hundreds of meters from the crash site. The cockpit was a tangled mass of wires and torn duralumin. The crew and fuselage seemed to have passed through a meat grinder.
Among the wreckage, the rescue team quickly found the heavy orange fireproof sphere known as the “black box” and the cockpit voice recorder. The objective data confirmed the initial version of events:
Fatal crew error in piloting technique.
It was hard to imagine the death of a man with whom I had studied four years in the same class section.
We had never become friends.
In our first year, over a trivial matter, we had fought behind the barracks. Or rather, grappled. After a verbal exchange, he struck me first. I responded by grabbing him and throwing him to the ground. For the remainder of our studies, I felt mild disappointment that his friends had intervened before I could properly return the favor. He landed a punch; I never did.
And now he had burned in the co-pilot’s seat. And it was not his fault.
Remembering our strained relationship, I realized I was sincerely sorry. With age, I understood he had been a good man. Many liked him—mostly those who disliked me. In youth I had thought that unfair, believing myself better. Time corrected that illusion. I was no better—often worse.
An even more dramatic disaster occurred at the combat training center in Nikolaev, southern Ukraine. On takeoff from the airfield nicknamed “Blondinka,” in broad daylight and simple weather conditions, the right wing of an identical aircraft tore off.
Seeing the increasing roll, the pilots tried to counter it with left stick. The two navigators seated behind them immediately assessed the situation correctly and ejected.
The younger navigator-operator reacted one second faster than the senior navigator. That second saved his life.
By the time the operator ejected, the roll had reached forty-five degrees. The hundred meters to which his seat was propelled by its charge proved enough for parachute deployment.
The senior navigator was less fortunate. Hesitating only slightly, he ejected when the roll had reached one hundred fifty degrees and, accelerated by the jet stream, slammed into the dry Ukrainian earth. His parachute never opened. In truth, nothing recognizable remained of him. The impact was so violent that separating flesh from clay was impossible.
The burned pilots were at least identifiable.
They buried the two pilots and the navigator as heroes. A squadron of fighters from an air defense regiment flew over the funeral procession. As the jets passed overhead, three of the eight MiGs broke formation and climbed sharply into the sky, symbolizing that although pilots are buried on earth, their souls ascend forever into the heavens.
The sole surviving crew member insisted on returning to flight status. When, a month later, he walked along the taxiway toward his new aircraft, every pilot and technician turned to face him and applauded.
Finishing his story, Oleg seemed to remember why he had come. But before he could return to the subject of my tragedy, the door opened. The charming hostesses entered, accompanied by Vadim Vasilyev.
I smiled at Sergeyev.
“It’s time for you to go. Thank you for the interesting conversation. And tell your ‘special officer’ I am not guilty of my crew’s deaths.”
“What special officer?” Sergeyev feigned surprise.
“You know which one,” I replied. “The one who sent you.”
Our uninvited guest left. The bewildered girls stood in the doorway, staring at me.
Marina recovered first. Closing the door, she sat opposite me and asked bluntly:
“Valera, what’s going on? Whose death were you talking about?”
I gave a brief account of my extraordinary raft drift among the ice floes with two frozen comrades. At the end I asked:
“Any more questions?”
“Yes,” Tatyana said quietly. “What is a ‘special officer’?”
“In the Armed Forces, that’s what we call counterintelligence officers. The term dates back to the Civil War, when Special Departments were created.”
“And what does counterintelligence have to do with you?” she asked.
“When they have nothing better to do, they look for work. They need to justify their inflated staffs. There are no spies in the fleet, but they have to keep busy. The investigation into my case ended half a year ago. I’ve already received a new command. Yet they’re still trying to catch me in a lie, sending ‘Olegs’ with cognac—as if cognac could change the past or make me slander myself. I don’t know what they’re counting on, but it won’t work.”
The Moscow girls sat pale, watching me with sympathy. The navigator, who had long known the whole story, said:
“Perhaps we should drink a little—to our combat commander?”
I poured the remaining cognac into four glasses and offered a different toast:
“To those who flew away and will never return.”
The girls burst into tears as if on cue. Exhausted from the long bus ride from Moscow, having spent a second sleepless night in our arms, and then wandering museum halls all day, they were hardly prepared to hear such things.
We had to console them the only way available—back in bed.


Chapter 14
Human memory is a strange thing. I cannot feel my arms or my legs, yet the most inappropriate memories insist on pushing into my mind. Instead of my mother and father—whom I would like to see before dying—Kaliningrad surfaces in my thoughts.
A geographical point in Russia diametrically opposite my place of service. March. Still chilly. The snow has melted, yet there is none of the knee-deep filth common to most Russian cities. No matter how diligently state and party officials tried to drive out the German spirit and erase the memory of this land’s true masters, they failed. Built by Germans, K;nigsberg stood in sharp contrast to other regional centers of the country—its architecture, its cleanliness, the culture of its residents.
All this ran through my head as the seven of us wandered idly through the city in search of what we considered worthy adventures. One could hardly call visiting the Amber Museum or admiring the monument to Schiller a proper pastime. The girls ignored us completely. Neither our flight jackets with “Air Force” stitched on the sleeves nor our invitations to share a dinner smoothly transitioning into breakfast impressed the women of Kaliningrad in the slightest. Even the students of the Institute of Fishing Industry—whom we invited for a glass of amber liquid in the beer garden near their main building—turned us down flat.
We stopped by the bronze sculpture Fighting Bison. Two giants, muscles bulging, tails stiff, horns locked together, seemed ready to shove one another off the pedestal into the broken fountain below.
Our radio operator and flight engineer climbed onto the marble slabs and, grabbing the bronze tails, hung from them like two plump sausages.
“Enough of this kindergarten,” I said disapprovingly. “It would be a shame if a police patrol hauled you off while you’re perfectly sober.”
“Nothing’s biting today,” the navigator sighed.
“You didn’t show them your fishing rod,” the radio operator replied with a vulgar grin, jumping down.
“Fly to Ivanovo. In the city of weavers, you’ll be in high demand,” suggested the co-pilot.
“Let’s go back to the hotel. This city isn’t ours,” I said. “At least we got lucky with the rooms—even hot water. By the way, there’s a beer bar on the first floor. Anyone who wants can go. But everyone sleeps in the hotel tonight.”
“In our own rooms?” Sergei asked dreamily.
“However it works out—but within the hotel.”
“Valera, are you coming to the bar?” Vadim asked. Only he was allowed to call me by my first name.
“No. I’ll do some laundry. I’m almost indifferent to beer. Vodka with girls—like that time in Pushkin—that would be different. But as you see, there’s no one here.”
“I’ll stay with you. Let the youth frolic without the watchful eye of the older generation.”
The decision to wash clothes was timely. After four days on assignment, the collars of our cream shirts had turned the color of black coffee, and our socks could have stood upright beside our shoes in the hallway.
Stripped to our underwear, damp laundry hanging over chair backs, Vadim and I sat before the television drinking tea with biscuits. We had barely finished our first glasses when the radio operator, Nikolay Onopriyenko, burst into the room without knocking.
“Commander! We’ve picked up some great women in the beer bar!” he blurted out.
“What language, Comrade Warrant Officer,” the navigator teased. “You sound like a proper pimp.”
“Hold on,” I said. “First, I commend you for initiative. Second—why are you standing here? Bring them up!”
Nikolay shot out the door. Left alone, we quickly pulled on trousers, slipped into our still-damp uniform shirts, and hid our lack of socks with hotel slippers. We had just finished dressing when the door opened and the so-called “women” entered.
Their appearance caused a moment of mild confusion.
I was twenty-seven, the navigator twenty-nine, the engineer just over thirty, the radio operator twenty-five, the co-pilot twenty-two. The average age of the male half of the gathering barely reached twenty-six.
The four ladies in the doorway averaged about forty.
The imbalance was obvious. But retreat was no longer an option, and I invited them in.
We soon sensed their authority. Sitting on the sofa were leaders of trade union organizations from machine-building enterprises across the Soviet Union. Tired of endless conference sessions, these chairwomen had decided to relax at the bar—where they met our “young guard.” Evidently the radio operator and co-pilot had told them that the commander and navigator were older than the two of them. The women had expected men at least in their mid-thirties.
Instead, before them sat boys—and slightly older boys. A surprise. Whether pleasant or not, they had no time to decide.
I proposed a toast to our acquaintance.
“My name is Zhenya,” one said, offering her hand.
“And what shall we drink, boys?” she added with irony.
“As always—pure spirit, girls,” Vadim replied in the same tone.
I nudged him. “Don’t be rude, or they’ll leave.”
But those women were not easily offended. They drank the spirit, chasing it with canned fish, matching us shot for shot.
Soon they no longer seemed like such old cows as at first glance. I decided on two measures: first, to reduce the age gap and balance the numbers by sending the co-pilot away; second, to replace the spirit in my glass with water.
Sergei resisted at first—already well drunk—but I explained he was young enough to be these ladies’ son.
“And you?” he objected.
“The younger brother,” I replied lightly.
He slung an arm over my shoulder. “Commander, I wish you success with your sisters.”
The second task proved simpler. After Sergei left, I switched my glass with water for Gena Rybnikov’s glass of spirit. No one noticed—not even the flight engineer himself. When his turn came to toast, he stood with two glasses of spirit in his hands—his own and what he thought was mine.
Gena was not known for eloquence, but that evening he quoted a classic:
“As Mikhail Zhvanetsky said, ‘It’s not enough to know your worth—you must be in demand. And you, ladies, are exactly those who know how.’”
He drained his glass and, confident that relief would follow, swallowed mine in one gulp.
Silence fell.
Before our eyes, his face transformed into a living portrait of pain and astonishment. Eyebrows shot upward, eyes widened. Lips puckered toward his nose. His mouth opened in a silent cry, teeth snapping shut as if about to crack. His cheeks puffed. His face flushed crimson.
He turned slowly toward me, stared into my eyes, muttered a curse—and collapsed between the sofa and the table.
An awkward pause.
The women stared in confusion while Vadim, Nikolay, and I dragged our comrade into the bedroom.
The absurd episode proved a good omen. No one needed persuading to shift from drinking to dancing.
Vasilyev and Onopriyenko twirled their chosen partners in the center of our three-room suite. I remained on the sofa, unsure which of the two remaining beauties to favor. I placed an arm around each shoulder and felt their hands sliding over me, unbuttoning everything that had buttons.
After a brief dance, Vadim led his companion—grasping her where younger women usually have a waist—into the study.
Perhaps only the amount he had drunk explains why he failed to notice the glass door separating us. When the navigator sat on the desk, Nikolay abandoned dancing. He and his lady settled on the floor to watch events unfold in the study.
More absorbed in the kisses covering me from both sides than in observing Vadim, I missed the moment when things in the study went awry.
Natasha was kneeling before the desk, hands on the navigator’s knees, trembling. At first I didn’t understand what he was doing to her. Then I saw Vadim’s helpless, bewildered expression—and nearly fell off the sofa laughing.
The woman was being sick.
Within seconds, everything she had eaten and drunk that evening covered my friend’s legs and his still-damp shirt. I suspected he had anticipated more pleasant sensations.
My companions jumped up and led Natasha to her own room. Vasilyev, cursing all women and shaking his fist at us, set about cleaning the study. When he returned, Nikolay and I pinched our noses theatrically.
“Oh, to hell with you,” he muttered, retreating to the room where Rybnikov slept.
I turned the sofa into a wide bed and told Nikolay, “Call the ladies and tell them we’re waiting. And air out the study—that’s where you’re sleeping.”
Lying on top of the blanket, still dressed, I thought of how dull my life had been in Kamchatka. Then I remembered what Mukhina had done to me in Vladivostok—and suddenly realized I had fallen asleep, and someone was undressing me and doing much the same.
The only difference was that there were two of them.
They did not let me sleep a minute that night.
At six in the morning, a cautious knock sounded at the door. Wrapping myself in a sheet, I accepted a package from a sailor.
“What does it say, Valera?” Galya asked.
“It says that at your Gorky Automobile Plant, during a fire, all the trade union vouchers to the Sochi sanatorium burned up for the coming summer,” I replied, slipping back between the women.
“And what about the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant?” Lena asked, kissing me.
“It says you’ve been awarded the honorary title ‘Heroine of Under-the-Blanket Labor.’ The presentation of the Golden Phallus will take place upon your return from the conference.”
Galya laughed. Lena pinched me painfully. I yelped theatrically.
“And seriously,” I added, “I’ve been ordered to fly to Moscow in two hours. So, if you want to accomplish anything more, you’ll have to work hard on my exhausted body.”

Chapter 15
The first sensible thought that came to me after I closed the door behind my nocturnal guests was about the doctor.
How am I supposed to pass the pre-flight medical examination in this condition? Besides me, the navigator—who had been vomited on—the flight engineer, who had drunk far too much spirit, and the radio operator, who hadn’t slept all night, had all taken active part in the debauchery. The co-pilot might feel slightly better, but he was so young that under no circumstances could he go to the doctor in place of the aircraft commander.
I gathered the entire crew in my room and said:
“The cargo we were expecting turned out to be too heavy for our aircraft and has been sent by train. We’ve received orders to take off in an hour and a half. For subjective reasons, not all of us will pass medical control. Therefore, gunner and airborne equipment technician—put on my uniform and the navigator’s. From the emergency reserve take a liter jar of red caviar and, with its help, convince the doctor that Captain Vasilyev and I are in perfect health.”
There was no other way for us to leave Kaliningrad.
I started the engines; only minutes remained before the scheduled takeoff time. There was no time left to read through the pre-flight checklist. I taxied to the holding point. Without stopping at the runway threshold, I pushed all four engines straight to takeoff power.
Just after retracting the landing gear and flaps, at a little over five hundred meters above the ground, Gena Rybnikov asked:
“Commander, did you move the cabin pressurization valve to the closed position?”
Everything inside me went cold. I looked at the lever.
Of course. I forgot.
I sealed the cabin and remembered how, two years earlier, the crew of an identical aircraft, after drinking all night, had received orders in the morning to fly from Ufa to Pskov.
After pulling aboard, through the forward emergency hatch, the gunner who had stood in front of the aircraft during engine start, the commander, in his haste, forgot about pressurization. At eight thousand meters, in level flight, from lack of oxygen, the crew and passengers first fell asleep—and then lost consciousness.
Cutting corners, skipping mandatory radio check points, the “Flying Dutchman” drifted toward Moscow.
Two MiG-31 interceptors were scrambled from Pravdinsk. After circling the transport aircraft several times, the air defense pilots reported seeing the An-12 crew at their stations—but whether they were asleep or dead, they could not say.
The ghost aircraft would likely have continued over central USSR airspace until it ran out of fuel and crashed somewhere in the Baltic forests.
But a miracle occurred.
A fourth-year cadet from the Balashov Flight School, undergoing summer training with that crew and temporarily serving as co-pilot, awoke from the bitter cold. He tried to shake the commander and the flight engineer awake. Failing that, and having no idea where the aircraft was, he switched to the emergency frequency. With guidance from ground controllers, he managed—roughly, but successfully—to land at a military airfield near the village of Kipelovo in the Vologda region.
The commission investigating the incident named those responsible. All involved in creating the preconditions for the flight emergency were dismissed from the Armed Forces—including the heroic cadet and the doctor who had signed off on the fitness of both pilots and the navigator.
________________________________________
We leveled off at cruising altitude. Far below, neat Lithuanian villages drifted past; a freight train hurried eastward; three kilometers above us, a jet airliner flew toward Europe, leaving four white contrails in the sky.
I imagined the scene inside.
Flight attendants serve breakfast. Passengers choose between chicken and fish. The captain sits in a pressed white shirt and black tie, four thin gold stripes on his epaulettes. He sips his morning coffee, calculating how much he’ll earn this month. The first officer watches the clouds below and checks the instruments while the captain eats. I wonder—do pilots flying international routes sleep with their long-legged stewardesses? Probably not. For something like that, you could be dropped from the elite crews and spend the rest of your career flying to Surgut or Urengoy with perpetually drunk oil workers on board.
Ah, life. A year ago I envied transport pilots who could get up during flight, walk through the cabin, play cards with passengers or chess with the radio operator. Now I look at that snow-white liner flying the opposite course—and envy again. Envy is a mortal sin, both in Christianity and in Islam. I shuddered, banishing thoughts of Cain and Abel. I should humble my pride and not speak ill of those who achieved more, as theologians advise. But I don’t want much—just once, during a flight, for someone to bring me a cup of coffee. I’d remember it for life.
I was unbearably sleepy. I tried every trick I knew: rubbing my ears; pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth; breathing pure oxygen. Nothing helped. I nudged the already dozing Rybnikov.
“Gena, give me some matches.”
He fumbled in his pocket. “What for? You don’t smoke.”
I pointed to the oxygen mask. “I want to set the oxygen on fire.”
“Go ahead,” he said, handing me the box. “We’ll have something to do all the way to Moscow.”
The radio operator, overhearing, cut in:
“What are you planning to do till Moscow? Play cards? I’m in.”
“No,” Gena replied. “The commander wants to ignite pure oxygen. I told him we’ll just spend the rest of the flight putting out the cockpit fire.”
“Brilliant conversation,” the navigator interjected. “Especially if the squadron commander decides to listen to the cockpit recordings afterward. You’ll all get it.”
I stuck two matches between my eyelids. My eyes watered, but wouldn’t close.
Then I banged my forehead against the control column.
So—I had fallen asleep with my eyes open.
I removed the matches and looked at my co-pilot. Sergei was snoring softly. Gena had fallen asleep again the moment he handed me the matches. I glanced into the navigator’s compartment. Vasilyev was awake but holding his navigation ruler upright so that if he nodded off, he would hit his face against it.
To fight the drowsiness, I stood up on the emergency hatch between my seat and Sergei’s.
“Kovalenko!” I shouted into his ear. “Wake up! Crawl to the navigator and don’t let him sleep until descent. Otherwise we’ll end up in Vorkuta instead of Moscow—and they’ll issue us prison uniforms.”
The young man startled awake, wiped drool from the corner of his mouth, and reluctantly left his seat, crawling forward.
“What brings you here?” Vasilyev asked.
“The commander sent me. To entertain you.”
“A wise commander,” Vadim said with a sly smile, glancing at me from below. “Since you’re here—entertain.”
The co-pilot told an old joke about a passenger aircraft crew with a new stewardess. When he finished, Vasilyev grimaced.
“That joke has a beard.”
“What does that mean?” Sergei asked.
“It means everyone in aviation knew it before you were even born,” I replied. “But here’s a fresh medical one…”
After I finished, Sergei asked:
“Is that a hint?”
“No. A direct threat. Make jokes about commanders’ wives again and I’ll deal with you the same way.”
His innocent joke had struck a nerve. My young wife lived forty kilometers away, visiting only on weekends. What she did Monday through Friday—only God knew. I hoped it wasn’t what I was doing.
I drove away the gloomy thoughts. It was time to descend—and to think how to stay in Moscow for two or three days. I wouldn’t mind seeing the engineer girls we’d met so successfully near Leningrad a month earlier.
I leaned toward the flight engineer and whispered:
“Gena, we need to break something on the aircraft. Vadim and I desperately need a couple of days in the capital.”
Rybnikov thought for a moment.
“It’s time to change the wheel tires anyway. We planned to do it at base. Let’s do it in Moscow—no difference to us. On landing, brake harder. That’ll give you three days. By the time they bring new tires from the warehouse and we replace them, plenty of time will pass. Just leave the rest of the guys to help me.”
I nodded.
Approaching slightly high on the glide path, I set the aircraft down on the concrete. Simultaneously with reversing the propellers, I clamped the wheel brakes fully.
“Wheels are smoking,” the tail gunner reported. “Black streaks behind us.”
I released the brakes. We couldn’t risk even one tire exploding. That would mean replacing a wheel drum—classified as a landing incident—and the engineers wouldn’t let me off easily.
We rolled safely to the parking stand. I informed the engineering representative of the need for maintenance and went to headquarters to file a request for a Tuesday departure.
I preferred not to think about how I would justify myself back in Artyom. Especially the conversation awaiting me with the deputy political officer.
He had disliked me from our first meeting. I was the only aircraft commander who refused to submit reports detailing each crew member’s behavior at foreign airfields after returning from assignments.
Leonid had invented this disguised form of denunciation long ago. Some commanders filed bland formalities to avoid harming subordinates; others, hoping for promotion or an extra foreign trip, described everything in minute detail—sometimes embellishing. Lieutenant Colonel Skvortsov held the regiment’s threads firmly, rightly believing that information was power.
My refusal stemmed not from moral integrity—I did not possess much—but simple calculation. I saw no personal advantage in aligning with him.
They weren’t going to send me abroad because of my stained past. I was too young for promotion, and they had no grounds to demote me.
So, sensing temporary stability, I spoke to him without servility.
Once, attempting to break my resistance, he invited me for a “friendly” talk.
“There’s information, Valery, that on business trips you don’t miss a single skirt. You sleep around.”
He paused, waiting for my reaction. I weighed my options: joke—or counterattack.
His next words ended any chance of peaceful coexistence.
“I could call your father-in-law.”
“Call him,” I replied. “And while you’re at it, call the military prosecutor and explain how you organized the transport of red caviar from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to Voronezh—and how much you made reselling it. Don’t forget to inform the Special Department.”
“How dare you speak to me like that, Captain?”
“You’ll endure it, Comrade Deputy Political Officer. Just like Svetlana Mukhina endured you when you took advantage of her on passenger seats over the Sea of Okhotsk. Or Olga Morozova in the back seat of your Volga in your garage. Before calling my father-in-law, call your wife and tell her all this. Then call the fleet’s political department and repeat it.”
His face turned blotchy red. He wanted to shout—but instead hissed:
“Go, Grigoryev. But remember—I won’t forget this.”
“I won’t either,” I nearly replied—but held my tongue.
I could have poured fuel on the fire—mentioned the alcohol siphoned from aircraft de-icing systems, the bribes circulating for lucrative assignments. Instead, I chose to save that knowledge for a more suitable moment.

Chapter 16
My phone call to the Tushino Machine-Building Plant, where Marina worked, caught the woman by surprise. It was nice to hear the flustered speech of the Spanish beauty, especially the part where she said that not only did they remember us, but they very much wanted to see us.
We agreed to meet by the fountain opposite the Bolshoi Theatre.
When we stepped out onto Theatre Square, the girls were already waiting for us with four tickets to the ballet.
That evening they were performing Spartacus. Or, as seasoned theatre-goers would say, they were “giving Grigorovich’s Spartacus.”
While the gladiator, performed by Irek Mukhamedov, dashed across the stage and fought the Roman commander Marcus Crassus, portrayed by Alexander Vetrov, I discreetly stroked Marina’s leg and thought, The sooner we get to bed, the better.
According to the plan for our meeting, immediately after the ballet we were to go to the Spanish beauty’s apartment for a friendly dinner.
My friend’s husband, Pyotr, every Friday after work would set off for a two-day hiking trip in the forests around Moscow. He loved sleeping in a tent on the snow, sitting by a campfire singing songs to the accompaniment of a guitar, drinking tea from a metal mug, melting snow in a kettle instead of water.
Marina told me all this during intermission in the theatre buffet. We sat at the bar on high stools, discussing her husband’s hobby over coffee with cognac.
I expressed deep doubt about the credibility of his stories.
“Your Petya is probably lying somewhere in a cozy apartment right now, in a warm bath,” I told her. “Some little darling is caressing him under the water. And he’ll spend the night with her under a warm blanket, not in a sleeping bag on the snow. Then on Sunday evening, returning from this ‘grueling hike,’ he’ll tell you and your son how the damp firewood wouldn’t catch, how wolves howled all night somewhere near the tents, and how it was freezing in the sleeping bag by morning. And that he’s terribly tired and just wants a quick shower and bed.”
Slightly taken aback by my vivid imagination, she shrugged indifferently.
“Frankly, I don’t care whether he’s in the forest with friends or in a bath with a mistress. As long as he gives me a break from his presence. At least two days a week.”
The third bell rang. Intermission was over, and we returned to the auditorium.
We didn’t mention Pyotr again that evening. I thought that I too didn’t care whether he was warming his freezing body with his breath in a sleeping bag or not. What mattered was that his wife would warm me with her beautiful body all night. Let Spartacus finish dancing.
The final chords of the ballet faded. The slaves lost their last battle. The Romans lifted the captured leader of the uprising onto the tips of their spears and carried him off the stage. The curtain fell. The expected miracle did not occur; evil once again triumphed over good.
The audience stood applauding for a long time, while we, driven by carnal desires, hurried between the rows of the stalls. We wanted to retrieve our coats from the theatre cloakroom and get as quickly as possible to the small two-room apartment on the northwestern outskirts of the capital.
We devoured dinner so hastily that it became slightly embarrassing. Tanya asked:
“Guys, are you from some starving region? You already had a decent snack at the theatre buffet.”
“Tanya,” Vadim replied, “we’re not from a starving region—we’re from Primorsky. The proximity of China has influenced our development. The reproductive instinct among Far Easterners is stronger than among the rest of the citizens of the Soviet state. So the faster you eat, the more time we’ll have for the favorite pastime of the Chinese.”
“Well then,” Marina said with mock offense, “I cooked dinner, tried to surprise you with my culinary creations, and all you can think about is bed.”
But Vasiliev wasn’t listening anymore. He picked up the petite Tanya in his arms and carried her into the hostess’s son’s room.
Marina wanted to clear the dirty dishes from the table, but I took her hand and pulled her toward me.
“Leave it. In the morning, after we’re gone, you’ll have time to erase the traces of the nomads.”
She sat on my lap, wrapped her arms around my neck, and said softly:
“After we met in Pushkin, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“I was sure we would,” I replied, “but I was afraid the meeting would be a cold one.”
She kissed me and went to prepare the bed.
When I came into the bedroom after my shower, Marina was lying under a terry sheet watching television. Seeing me wrapped in Pyotr’s bath towel, she laughed, turned down the volume, and lifted the sheet, inviting me to join her.
Half an hour later, I went to the bathroom intending to lie for a while in the hot water.
“Will you be back soon?” Marina asked lazily.
“Sleep. When I return, I’ll wake you and we’ll continue.”
“If I fall asleep, just start. Don’t wake me. If I like it, I’ll wake up and join you. If not, you can tell me in the morning how it went.”
“You little devil. I try so hard, and you mock me.”
“Then try harder. There’s no limit in that department.”
Filling the tub with hot water, I switched off the light, drew the curtain, and, leaving only my nose above the surface, sank to the bottom. I resembled a submarine in the territorial waters of a potential enemy at periscope depth. Continuing the analogy, I thought that this submarine had suddenly fallen in love with a foreign destroyer. Better not get caught in the anti-submarine nets of emotion.
“I wonder what Tanya and Vadim are doing? Maybe I should go check?”
But before the captain of my submarine could reach a final decision, the door opened, the light came on, and Tatyana entered the bathroom.
Not noticing the closed translucent curtain, she began carefully examining herself in the mirror, washing traces of her lipstick from her neck and chest.
The navigator did a good job, I thought. What sticky lipstick. From her lips to Vadim’s, and from his to her body. I wonder how far that red trail goes.
Watching the young woman in the bathroom gave me great pleasure. Hidden under the water and momentarily forgetting that I loved Marina, I waited to see whether Tanya would decide to take a shower and discover me there.
After finishing her inspection, she turned toward me and pulled back the curtain. She gave a quiet cry—more from surprise than fear—and stepped back, covering her chest and lower body with her hands. Like a dragon from a Russian fairy tale, I rose from the depths, foam sliding down with the water from my head.
Correctly assessing my intentions, the fragile creature tried to open the door and slip away. But I distinctly remembered that she had locked it from the inside when she entered.
“Well then, Zabava Putyatishna, caught?” I whispered with a smile, approaching her.
Leaning against the door and trying gently to stop me, she reluctantly removed her hands from herself and placed them on my chest. In her eyes I saw that she had no doubts about my intentions, though she had no idea why I had called her by the name of a Kievan princess.
“Don’t, Valera. Let’s just stay friends.”
“We will. Just on a different level. Ordinary friends are good—but close friends are much better.”
She wanted to say something more, but I pressed my finger to her lips, placed her hands on my shoulders and, saying, “We’re only wasting time,” lifted her by the waist and set her on the washing machine opposite the mirror.
She looked at me pleadingly; her lips trembled, as if tears might spill at any moment. Trying not to let that happen—and not to yield to the plea in her blue eyes—I turned off the light and pulled her close.
Before returning to Marina’s bedroom, I lifted the limp Tanya in my arms and lowered her into the still-warm bathwater.
“You won’t tell Vadim about this, will you?”
“Of course not. Why would he need to know? Soak a little and calm down. Nothing terrible happened.”
Marina was sleeping diagonally across the bed. I couldn’t lie down beside the granddaughter of a Spanish hero without waking her.
“Why were you gone so long?” she asked, embracing me. “I’ve already managed to sleep. Now I won’t let you.”
This won’t be easy, my inner voice sighed. Time to pay for the pleasant moments with Tanya. What are you doing, submarine, lying on the seabed? Surface—show the true fighting spirit of an officer of the Soviet Navy.
But my vessel was not destined for battle. Behind the wall came the sound of the elevator stopping on our floor, and after a short pause, a cautious ring at the door.
“My husband,” Marina whispered in horror. “Quick—grab your and Vadim’s things and go to the kids’ room.”
From the bathroom came the sound of a toilet flushing. Then a naked Tanya tiptoed into the children’s room.
With shirt and trousers over my shoulder, I took our coats from the hanger in the hallway. Behind me, fastening her robe and trying to stall for time, stood the unfaithful wife, speaking to her husband through the door.
“Petya, is that you?”
“Who else would it be?” came his irritated voice.
“Wait a minute, I can’t find the key to the bottom lock.”
“The spare is in the right pocket of my work trousers. They’re hanging on the rack. Get it, if you’re not completely helpless.”
“On the contrary, very capable,” I whispered, kissed Marina on the cheek, and, clutching all our belongings, slipped barefoot into the children’s room.
From under the blanket, frightened eyes looked at me.
“Who is it?” Vadim asked quietly.
“Our cuckold is back from his hike,” I whispered in reply and pressed my palm over my mouth, urging silence.
I stood there draped in clothes, my ear pressed to the door, trying not to miss a single word of the conversation between husband and wife, while my pale bare backside reflected the moonlight filtering through the sheer curtains.

Chapter 17
“What happened, Pyotr? Why did you come back at night?” Marina’s voice drifted in from the kitchen.
“Last night one of my friends went to chop firewood for the campfire and hacked his leg with an axe,” the weary tourist began. “We carried him through the forest for ten kilometers, taking turns, all the way to the railway station. Then we waited for an ambulance and accompanied him to the rural hospital. After that, I caught a ride to the ring road and walked home from there. None of us had taken money for a taxi. The metro’s closed from one to five in the morning. So I tramped through the night city with my backpack for two hours.”
You should have gotten lost on the way, I thought angrily. Or gone to chop wood yourself instead of your friend Kondratyev.
“I need something to eat,” Pyotr continued. “Lyonya went for firewood so we could cook dinner over the fire. After what happened, you understand, dinner wasn’t exactly a priority.”
“I’ll fix something quickly,” Marina replied, then, not waiting for questions about the mountain of dirty dishes on the table, added, “The girls and I were celebrating the tenth anniversary of our department. Lena Kuzmina and Olya Rasputina went home, and Tanya’s sleeping on Dima’s couch. She had a bit too much to drink and decided to stay. You know yourself—it’s dangerous for a young woman to walk around Moscow late at night, especially if she’s been drinking.”
“And where’s our son?” her husband asked irritably.
“With Tanya’s mother, along with her boy.”
“I don’t like this friendship of yours. What could you possibly have in common with that single mother?”
“Petya, don’t start. I don’t like your weekend ‘forest hikes’ either. But I don’t keep you at home. Your leisure with your friends is your business; mine with mine is mine. There are four used ballet tickets to the Bolshoi on the fridge. Would any of your forest wanderers go there with you? Don’t bother answering—I already know. They avoid places like that. For them, songs by Vizbor and Vysotsky around a campfire are the height of culture. And yesterday I watched Grigorovich’s Spartacus with the girls and got enormous pleasure.”
Especially after the ballet ended, I flattered myself silently.
While Marina balanced on the razor’s edge between peace and scandal, the hungry tourist devoured everything he could find on the table. His mood improved considerably. He yawned, stretched sweetly, and decided that four in the morning was a better time to sleep with a beautiful wife than to argue with her in the kitchen.
“All right, don’t get worked up. If we’re so different, we’ll just have to keep putting up with each other’s interests.”
“That applies more to you,” she answered in an offended tone, continuing to wash the dishes.
“Come here. I’ll ask your forgiveness.”
“You can do that in the morning, after you’ve slept. You’re too tired now to see your ‘forgiveness’ through to the end.”
He went to bed. Marina finished washing up, quietly peeked into our room, and, finding me behind the door, issued strict instructions on how we were to disappear from the compromised safe house.
“You’ll leave at six. I won’t get up—I don’t want to wake him accidentally. Tanya can sleep until I wake her. We’ll meet tonight at the Prague restaurant and celebrate your departure.” She took something from the pocket of her robe and continued, “Here, scout—your underwear. You dropped them in the hallway while escaping. Good thing I noticed and picked them up while he was taking off his rubber boots.”
I began kissing her while unfastening her robe. I wanted her for a few more minutes. But she slipped from my arms and, for the first time uttering the word we had carefully avoided, said:
“I could never understand why I fell in love with you at first sight. Now I do. It’s your indestructible spirit of adventure, your love of risk, your constant need to find trouble. I couldn’t live with you—I’m too much the same. But having you as a lover—that’s a gift of fate.”
She left. I set my wristwatch alarm for six and lay down on the children’s fold-out couch under the blanket with the others.
How quickly those two hours of sleep passed. It felt as if I had barely closed my eyes when the alarm chirped in my ear:
“Wake up, Commander—the Motherland awaits new feats.”
Good thing I hadn’t shoved my hand under the pillow; otherwise I might have overslept and run into Petya at the sink around nine in the morning.
“Morning, brother,” I would have said, clapping him on the shoulder.
“What brother?” he would have snapped.
“What do you mean what? Milk brothers, obviously—since we’ve both been nursing from the same breast.”
With such idiotic reflections in my head, I tried to gently wake Tanya, who was lying between me and the navigator.
I lightly stroked her thigh. She turned toward me and found herself in my arms. But the old couch creaked treacherously, and so, pulling her with me, I slid down onto the floor.
She rode me like a bold horsewoman on a hot steed, eyes closed, head thrown back. Her straw-colored hair fell to her shoulders and in the moonlight from the window seemed almost white. Tanya was so absorbed in her sensations that she didn’t notice how Vasiliev, peering at us from beneath the blanket, shook his fist at me and turned back to the wall.
Vadim and I left the apartment without incident. Back at the airbase, we slept a few hours at the hotel and in the evening met the girls at the Prague restaurant. The soft light-brown sofas with their trademark striped cushions behind every guest seemed more suited to intimacy than to dining. Nevertheless, we didn’t think about that. We talked about trifles, joked a lot, laughed.
That evening I realized what quality in Marina impressed me most. Her sense of humor.
By twenty-seven I had heard thousands of jokes and could tell hundreds myself. But the one I heard from Marina eclipsed them all.
Ignoring another joke from Vadim, Marina, without a hint of a smile, told her own, as casually as if she knew hundreds like it.
“A phone rings,” she began without preface. “‘Hello, is this the fabric store?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you have printed cotton?’ ‘We do.’ ‘Something cheerful?’ ‘So cheerful you’ll wet yourself.’”
Perhaps I loved the joke because I worshiped the storyteller. Or perhaps because I had never heard a woman tell something so sharp.
But they will have to wait for that arrival all their lives.
Our Moscow girls will never know the truth about why the cheerful guys from Artyom suddenly stopped flying in.
And the bitterest part is that they will think Vadim and I were traitors. Used us and left us—that will be the first thought, and it will be fair.
No one will call them and tell them what happened to us.
The wives and relatives of the crew will be informed first about the tragedy at Cam Ranh airbase. Mukhina will hear from her father where I disappeared to. The many girlfriends of my “eagles” in Artyom will learn of their deaths as well. Perhaps even in Yelizovo, on Kamchatka, the waitress Lyuda Salnikova will shed a tear for me.
But in Moscow—where our dearest friends live—there will be no one to bring the sorrowful news.
________________________________________
Chapter 18
After returning home, trouble began. A white stripe of joy was followed by a black stripe of reckoning.
I had always compared life to a zebra, but only recently did the deeper meaning of that banal comparison dawn on me.
Everyone knows about the alternating stripes along its sides, but not everyone lets their gaze travel to the end of its body. And if someone dares, they will discover that after all those stripes, at the very end of the zebra, there is a large backside. And that’s where we all end up eventually, regardless of how many white or black stripes we had along the way.
The first to attack me was the security officer seconded to our glorious transport regiment from the Committee of Deep Drilling. It suddenly “seemed” to him that the rubber on six wheels at the airfield near Moscow had been burned deliberately by me.
But I had spent four and a half years at flight school studying aviation disciplines, while he had studied at a border-guard academy the glorious exploits of Sergeant Karatsupa and his faithful mongrel Indus, who during their service in Primorye had supposedly captured nearly three hundred spies and saboteurs.
Using the difference in our educational backgrounds, I wrote three pages detailing everything about that landing—weather data, glide slope angle, runway length, and so on. The special officer glanced at my explanation, promised to show it to aviation specialists, and never returned to the matter. Soon he had bigger concerns.
The second problem was of a different sort. At the next Communist Party meeting I was sharply criticized. Once my comrades had taken their seats, the secretary of our primary organization spoke.
“On today’s agenda, comrades,” he said, “is one item: the political immaturity of Comrade Grigoriev.”
I stopped doing the crossword in Ogonyok magazine and listened with interest to what exactly I was accused of.
The party organizer opened a folder ominously titled Case File and began to read:
“After returning from a business trip, Comrade Grigoriev Valery, being considerably intoxicated, stated in the presence of fellow servicemen the following, I quote: ‘One must truly hate one’s own people to force pilots, at minus thirty degrees Celsius’—excuse the crude word, but it’s written here—‘to shit outside.’ What did you mean by that, and whom were you referring to, Valery?”
A suppressed chuckle ran through the ranks. Nearly a hundred Party members of our regiment, who had intended to read magazines and newspapers during the usual tedious meeting, now followed the developing scandal with curiosity.
The communications chief behind me muttered, “Valera’s done something again.”
“Let’s see how he wriggles out this time,” his neighbor replied.
I turned, gave them both a contemptuous look, and said quietly, “Don’t celebrate too soon.”
Then aloud, without standing, I said:
“That’s a lie.”
“Which part is a lie, Comrade Grigoriev?” the organizer asked, taken aback. “You deny saying those words? Please stand and explain yourself.”
“The lie,” I began, rising, “is that I was drunk when I said it. It was three weeks ago, after we returned from Semipalatinsk. Have you ever been there, Comrade Organizer? Not at the city airport, but at the military one near Komsomolsky settlement, by the nuclear test site?”
“You know perfectly well I haven’t. I’m a professional political officer, not a flight crew member.”
“So you always sleep in your own bed with your wife and use a warm toilet with a white bowl cleaned by her?” I continued sarcastically. “As for me, staying in the crew barracks, unable to find a toilet inside at night, I discovered a wooden shack fifty meters from the entrance. A path trodden by pilots like me led to it through half a meter of snow. Of course there was no light. Running electricity to an outdoor toilet would be a luxury. Opening the door by moonlight, I saw a pyramid of frozen excrement rising from the hole in the floor. You see, Comrade Organizer, at minus thirty human waste doesn’t drop down—it grows upward in a cone. Not wishing to injure my tender, dearly beloved backside on that cone, I relieved myself outside and used snow instead of toilet paper. As you know, toilet paper is also in short supply at the end of the twentieth century.”
“Wiped with snow?” the regimental doctor interjected. “That’s healthy for pilots. If introduced into daily practice, it would significantly reduce hemorrhoids.”
The room erupted in laughter.
“Upon return,” I continued, “I told this story at headquarters. I could hardly have been drunk in the middle of a workday. One of my comrades reported that story to you.”
I sat down.
“You misunderstand everything,” the organizer said, trying to regain control.
“Perish the thought, with my limited intellect,” I muttered.
He moved to the world map and began a lecture about enemies surrounding the Motherland and the need for strategic missiles rather than warm toilets.
When he finished, instead of shouting “Hurrah!” I asked:
“And how long will these ‘temporary’ hardships last? When will the Soviet people finally live like human beings?”
His answer was predictable—detente, future prosperity.
I should have kept quiet. But some demon of defiance made me blurt out:
“Hope I live to see it.”
He accused me of stubbornness, even hinting at betrayal.
No volunteers stepped forward to condemn me, but two prepared technicians spoke about village life, bathhouses, outdoor toilets.
We voted. Not on guilt—only on the degree of it. The result: a reprimand.
To hell with you, I thought. A reprimand isn’t an ulcer. It doesn’t affect my pay.
After the meeting my crew approached me, looking uneasy, assuring me none of them had informed on me.
“I know,” I said. “Find the one who did.”
“Don’t look for the snake that bit you,” the navigator said. “Look for the antidote.”
“Who said that? Omar Khayyam?”
“Maybe Khayyam. Maybe me.”
“Vadim,” I replied, “the best antidote to a snakebite is the snake’s death.”


Chapter 19
A few days after that ill-fated meeting, when its memory had begun to fade from my mind, I was sitting in the pre-flight briefing room solving a chess problem on a miniature magnetic board. Playing against myself as Black, I was trying to neutralize White’s attack in a Queen’s Gambit.
My radio operator, Nikolay Onoprienko, entered the room, scanned the occupants, and headed straight for me. He pulled up a chair and sat opposite. Leaning over the chessboard and pretending to study the position, he said quietly:
“Commander, you were reported. By Major Borisenko’s radio operator—Semyon Zorin.”
“What are you talking about, Nikolay?” I asked, without looking up from the board.
“The Party meeting.”
I instantly lost interest in the game, though I kept moving the pieces.
“Tell me everything. How do you know?”
“His wife told me yesterday. He flew out to Kamchatka in the morning. Once I saw they’d reached cruising altitude, I went over to his place. His wife, Vera, is home with a baby. We have a very close relationship.” He stretched the word. “We spent a couple of hours in bed. Just before I left, she asked whether you’d been hit hard at the meeting. I said not too badly and asked how she knew anything about it. Vera’s young—she’s not even twenty yet—and trusting like a child. After making me swear to keep quiet, she said she’d known long before the meeting that someone was going to be flogged. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out her husband Semyon is the snitch. I clearly remember him standing among the pilots when you were cursing that damned Semipalatinsk after your trip.”
“You’re sure there isn’t someone else besides you and her lawful husband sleeping with her?” I asked coolly.
“She’s only been married two years. And they don’t even have a phone in the apartment—she couldn’t coordinate multiple lovers’ schedules even if she wanted to. I’ve seen nothing suspicious in the year we’ve been… involved.”
“You’re quite the strategist,” I said dryly. “The baby isn’t yours, I hope?”
“No. I can’t swear it’s Semyon’s, but it’s definitely not mine.” Nikolay shifted under my stare.
“How can you be so certain?”
“I first slept with her when she was already two or three months pregnant.”
“Fine. Where is Zorin now?” I asked aloud, while thinking to myself: Time to settle accounts.
“In the gym, probably. Our squadron’s playing basketball against the second and third squadrons.”
“Good. Let’s join them. Coming?”
“Judging by the look on your face, I’d better stay here,” he replied, rising.
“As you wish.”
I packed away the chess set, slipped it into my navigator’s briefcase, and headed for the gym.
________________________________________
I changed in the locker room and entered the court with about ten minutes left in the game. The men on our bench waved me over urgently. We were down by six points, and they were counting on my fresh legs to turn things around.
But I had something else in mind. The important thing was to get on the court during the same shift as Zorin. The rest I would improvise.
Semyon played well. Young, strong, agile—he grabbed rebounds, passed cleanly, cut toward the opposing basket, opened himself for return passes. If we had two more like him, we’d never lose to the combined second and third squadrons.
After another successful attack by our opponents, I replaced our exhausted chief of staff. At twenty-eight, I moved differently than forty-two-year-old Major Gryzlov. Gradually we closed the gap.
With just over two minutes left, Zorin leapt high under our basket, caught the ball, landed, and prepared to charge downcourt. I was directly behind him.
As he took his first explosive step, I stepped on the heel of his planted foot.
His body surged forward. His right hand bounced the orange ball once against the floor. His eyes searched for teammates. But his left foot remained pinned to the floor by my sneaker—the one with the English inscription: Made in China.
He screamed and collapsed unconscious.
His calf muscle, once elongated, slowly tightened into a hard knot behind his knee. A hollow formed where the tendon had torn.
Not bad, I thought coldly. A ruptured Achilles tendon. Micro-surgery required. If he doesn’t reach an operating table soon, he might limp for life. And even a brief loss of consciousness will ground him permanently. They’ll remove him from flight status and dump him into some communications battalion.
I stood over him with the others, lamenting the unfortunate accident. It had happened too fast, in too much confusion. The official explanation was simple: the tendon couldn’t withstand the sudden load.
Medics arrived, examined him, and confirmed the likely diagnosis. Two orderlies carried him away on a stretcher.
By lunchtime, the entire regiment was discussing it.
Nikolay sat beside me at the mess hall table. When we were alone, he whispered:
“You’re ruthless, Commander.”
“It wasn’t me,” I lied. “Pure coincidence.”
“Of course. Absolutely pure.” He forced a smile and shuddered slightly, as if brushing away an unpleasant thought.
“Cheer up,” I said maliciously. “While Zorin’s in the hospital, Vera will be alone for three weeks. You’ll make the most of it. Cry together over poor Semyon between… exercises. Women love pitying their husbands. Especially in another man’s arms.”
________________________________________
Chapter 20
The events of the past two weeks had frayed my already shaken nerves, and I decided to visit my wife and her wonderful parents in Vladivostok.
After calling to announce I’d arrive Saturday morning, I left Friday evening for the capital of Primorsky Krai.
Svetlana Mukhina had been calling my dormitory every night. She treated me with almost maternal care—asking whether I’d had dinner, whether my room was warm enough. Perhaps she was hinting that I might invite her over for a couple of days. I pretended not to understand. The last thing I needed was domestic scandal on top of official ones.
No, Svetochka, I thought, rattling along in the last bus from Artem to Vladivostok. Hotel staff should know only one wife—the legal one. I never bring temporary attachments into my den. Visiting them—that’s another matter. Flowers, champagne, cognac, chocolates—and everything else I have to offer. Unlimited use. Within your allotted time.
Of course, I told her none of that.
Instead, I rang her doorbell with a smile and a light heart. The trill echoed through her apartment. She opened immediately.
I stood in the dim hallway holding the traditional gentleman’s set: red roses and champagne. Chestnut hair framed the face that visited my dreams more often than any other. Her pale green eyes sparkled; her lips were moist and inviting.
Stepping inside, I said evenly:
“Well, here I am.”
As if no weeks had passed.
She pressed her face into my chest and wrapped her arms around me.
“At last,” she whispered. “I see you again.”
________________________________________
Later, at my in-laws’ apartment, the welcome was equally warm.
Eventually we stood by the window of his study, overlooking Golden Horn Bay. Boats traced lines across the water. At anchor stood the pride of the Pacific Fleet—the large anti-submarine ship Admiral Zakharov.
Its beauty was shadowed by recent tragedy.
Preparing for a long autonomous deployment, fully armed and supplied, the ship had waited for departure orders. Just after midnight, a turbine blade sheared off, pierced the engine casing, ruptured a fuel line. Diesel flooded the engine room. At four in the morning, fire erupted.
Flames raged inside the hull for twelve hours. Fireboats and half the city’s fire engines fought it from sea and shore. The threat of ammunition detonation forced evacuation of nearby districts.
When I finished recounting the story, my father-in-law asked about my regiment.
I told him the truth: AN-12 crews trading fish and caviar in European Russia; AN-26 crews siphoning off de-icing alcohol.
He listened carefully as I explained the blister system, the half-liter per minute accounting rate, the arithmetic of theft—three tons per crew per year. The quiet agreement not to steal in summer months—those without the letter “R” in their names. The headquarters’ cut from every twenty-liter canister.
“Across the entire country?” he asked.
“From Kamchatka to the Carpathians.”
“And you?” His voice became neutral. “Are you in the fish business?”
“No.”
“Then where did the fifteen hundred dollars you gave my daughter come from?”
I told him briefly about the businessmen and their cargo.
“Be careful,” he said quietly. “If they suspect you of crossing them, they won’t kill you. They’ll simply ruin you. And I won’t be able to help.”
After a pause, he added:
“You should try for international flights. Same money. Less risk. Cleaner morally. Instead of stealing from thieves, the state would pay you officially.”
“They don’t let me fly abroad.”
“Too many enemies?”
“Influential ones.”
“The political officer?”
“Yes. Lieutenant Colonel Skvortsov.”
My father-in-law asked a few more questions—about routes, about Sakhalin, about jurisdiction. I understood that the matter was being quietly set in motion.
When he finished, the women entered and suggested a walk along the embankment.
After they left us alone, I embraced my wife.
“My dear,” I said softly, “how I’ve missed you.”
I lifted her into my arms and carried her into the room that served her both as study and bedroom.

Chapter 21
A convenient opportunity to place Lieutenant Colonel Skvortsov under attack did not present itself for nearly a month.
The assignment given to the crew of Lieutenant Colonel Malyshev, the deputy regimental commander for flight training, was perfectly suited to acquiring and reselling a large batch of salmon and red caviar. They were ordered to take on bord twenty crates of defective anti-ship missile components from the Sakhalin airfield Leonidovo and deliver them to three manufacturing plants located along the Ural Mountains—Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, and Perm. The estimated duration of the trip was seven days.
The crew—whose navigator was our political officer—covered the distance from Artem to Sakhalin in two and a half hours and landed at Sokol airfield, built by the Japanese back in 1943. The nearby settlement bore the name of Leonid Smirnykh, a battalion commander killed there at the very end of the war. The Japanese had once called the place Kamishikuka—“Near the Hills Before One’s Eyes.” The airfield was home to the 777th Fighter Regiment flying Su-15s.
The aircraft technician secured five hundred pounds of chum salmon caviar and two tons of pink salmon between the military crates.
Leonid Skvortsov counted the barrels, paid the local fishermen, and stepped outside to smoke by the boarding ladder. A Jeep, which had been faithfully serving in the local garrison since the late forties, drove up to the plane. The crew commander climbed out holding the flight manifest. A blue stamp—CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF—and the duty officer’s crooked signature were already on it. Fifteen minutes remained before engine start.
Malyshev stopped beside the political officer and pulled out a cigarette. His hands trembled slightly. After breaking two matches, he leaned toward Skvortsov’s cigarette for a light.
“You all right?” Skvortsov asked, producing his lighter.
“My heart’s acting up,” Malyshev said.
“Drink less,” the political officer replied.
“It’s not the vodka. I’ve drunk more and never felt this. But now… something’s wrong. Pulse is racing—twenty-eight beats in fifteen seconds. A bad feeling. The fishermen didn’t say anything strange to you?”
“What were they supposed to say?”
“Maybe they saw something suspicious. Strangers around the airfield.”
“No. Just that the Leonidovka River is full of salmon and next time they’ll bring as much red fish as we can carry.”
Malyshev was about to ask something else when his attention was drawn to a black Volga speeding toward the aircraft along the main taxiway.
The tires shrieked. The car skidded to a stop beneath the wing of the An-12, leaving thick black streaks on the concrete. Frozen in place, Malyshev dropped his cigarette.
Three doors flew open. Four men stepped out. The driver reversed under the tail section, while two military prosecutors and two representatives of the fisheries inspectorate approached Malyshev and presented their credentials.
Malyshev spat onto the concrete after his cigarette, turned to Skvortsov, and said quietly:
“That’s why my heart was aching, Lenya. Now you see?”
________________________________________
During the two-hour delay of the flight to Chelyabinsk, the illegally exported cargo was unloaded onto the apron and a confiscation report was drawn up. The senior official of the inspection group promised serious trouble for everyone involved once the crew returned to base.
While Malyshev remained away on his trip, the materials prepared by the Sakhalin prosecutor’s office were forwarded to the Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Pacific Fleet.
Colonel of Justice Vorobyov summoned all officers and warrant officers who had participated in the flight for questioning. After briefly outlining the accusations—thickening the colors, as prosecutors tend to do—he invited each of them to submit written statements detailing the role played by every crew member in the affair.
Still hoping to avoid scandal and somehow maneuver out of the situation, the political officer ventured:
“Perhaps we could resolve this unfortunate incident among ourselves. After all, the military prosecutor’s office is meant to defend servicemen’s interests in disputed matters—especially when the claimant is a civilian organization.”
As Leonid spoke, Colonel Vorobyov’s face turned steadily redder. When Skvortsov finished, the prosecutor exploded with such fury that it seemed the windows might shatter and the ceiling collapse.
“The Military Prosecutor’s Office defends the law—not thieving servicemen. The law, I repeat specifically for you, Lieutenant Colonel. Is that clear?”
“Clear,” Skvortsov answered bleakly.
The crew members, eager to shift responsibility onto the chief architect of the fish business, described in detail how the deal with the Sakhalin fishermen and the Sverdlovsk middlemen had been arranged.
But since Vorobyov had not been tasked with eradicating the “fish business” altogether, he ultimately signed a decree refusing to initiate criminal proceedings and forwarded the file—with his comments—to the Pacific Fleet Aviation Headquarters.
The comments were taken seriously.
Without further hearings, Lieutenant Colonel Malyshev was demoted from deputy regimental commander for flight training to squadron commander.
Lieutenant Colonel Skvortsov, deputy commander for political affairs, was transferred to serve as navigator on a TU-16R reconnaissance aircraft at the Romanovka airbase.

Chapter 22
The Romanovka airbase lay on the very shore of Peter the Great Gulf. The Tu-16R reconnaissance squadron stationed there was tasked with flying along Japan’s western coastline and the eastern shore of the Korean Peninsula, monitoring the waters of the Sea of Japan and the Korea Strait.
From time to time, crews from our transport regiment provided radio support to low-flying reconnaissance aircraft. Our relay plane stood in the farthest revetment on the regimental ramp and was always under armed guard. Special equipment had been installed in its cargo bay for intercepting radio communications of potential enemy aircraft. The pilots had access only to the cockpit; the specialized gear was operated by officers from the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense. They usually arrived from Vladivostok two hours before takeoff and left under armed escort immediately after landing.
One day, during such a flight, I had grown thoroughly sick of tracing elongated ellipses stretched along the Japanese islands. I hated the oxygen mask fastened to my flight helmet—a mask that could not be removed from takeoff to landing during these missions. There were still forty minutes left before completion of the assignment when an order came over the encrypted channel:
“Return to base immediately.”
That was highly unusual.
Even more unsettling was the group of officers waiting for my aircraft at the revetment. Alongside the intelligence officers stood the regimental commander and chief of staff. Such a reception promised nothing good.
What have I done wrong this time? I replayed the flight in my mind. If I’ve compromised military intelligence, they’ll burn me alive in a crematorium.
The propellers had barely stopped when I unbuckled my parachute, tumbled out through the forward emergency hatch, and ran, half-bent, to report the order to abort the mission.
Before I could finish, the commander waved his hand impatiently—as if to say, Shut up, Grigoriev, this isn’t about you—but aloud he asked:
“Valery, did you hear anything unusual over the radio?”
Realizing something extraordinary had happened—but, thank God, not to me—I answered in dry, official language:
“No, Comrade Colonel.”
“If you remember anything, report immediately.”
“What happened, Comrade Commander?” I asked, forgetting protocol now that it was clear I wasn’t about to be reprimanded.
“Two of our reconnaissance aircraft were photographing a new Japanese tank-landing ship. Under the defense doctrine adopted by Japan after World War II, they are not permitted to develop offensive weapons—such as the vessel recently launched. Our government needs detailed photographs to file a formal protest.
“The reconnaissance aircraft located the ship today in neutral waters, seventy kilometers off Sado Island. They descended to extremely low altitude and began photography. The radio-intelligence specialists aboard your aircraft were ensuring uninterrupted contact with fleet headquarters. They were also recording communications between the Japanese fighters escorting our planes and their command post.
“A flight of four F-15s attached themselves to our aircraft after their first pass over the ship. One pair stayed above the lead plane, which was filming from sixty meters. The second pair hovered over the wingman, flying slightly behind and forty meters higher. The lower edge of the cloud layer in the target area was between eighty and one hundred meters.
“The wingman periodically lost visual contact with the leader when entering the clouds. On emerging from the cumulus once again, the wingman saw a bright flash where the lead aircraft should have been—and then the aircraft itself.
“It was in a spin. One wing gone. Engulfed in flames.
“Both pairs of Japanese interceptors immediately headed back toward their coast. The remaining Soviet aircraft circled alone at thirty meters above the water. They spotted a dark oily slick, burning debris—and a Japanese patrol ship approaching the crash site.”
As the commander briefed me—perhaps hoping the details would magically refresh my memory—the intelligence officers departed from our ramp.
“Grigoriev, until an official telegram arrives regarding this catastrophe, you are not to discuss it with anyone. That’s an order. Understood?”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel.”
“Carry on with post-flight duties.”
“Yes, sir.”
________________________________________
A week later, the promised telegram arrived from fleet headquarters. The chief of staff gathered the pilots in the mission briefing room and read it aloud.
In addition to the details I already knew, it included a transcript of radio communications between the Japanese interceptor flight leader and their ground control.
From Niigata Air Base—call sign Sakura—the following commands had been issued and acknowledged:
Ground Control: “Two-Four-Three, acquire the target.”
(Pause.)
Pilot: “Sakura, Two-Four-Three. Target acquired.”
(Pause.)
Ground Control: “Two-Four-Three, intercept the target.”
(Pause.)
Pilot: “Sakura, Two-Four-Three. Target intercepted.”
(Pause.)
Ground Control: “Two-Four-Three, lock the lead target with missile radar.”
(Pause.)
Pilot: “Sakura, Two-Four-Three. Lock achieved.”
The chief of staff finished reading and informed us that the Japanese had recovered the bodies of three crew members and handed them over to our representatives. The fate of the remaining three men remained unknown.
He then offered his assessment:
“As you understand, the tape recordings from Captain Grigoriev’s relay aircraft contain no command to launch a missile. Nor is there any report from the fighter pilot confirming destruction of the intercepted target. Three explanations are possible.
“First: the missile, having acquired our aircraft with its heat-seeking head, launched itself—detached from the pylon—and struck the target.
“Second: the fighter pilot, overcome with hatred, fired on his own initiative.
“Third: the Japanese employed concealed control channels for their combat aircraft that our radio intelligence failed to detect.
“Given the quality of Japanese equipment and the discipline of their personnel, the first two explanations are highly unlikely. However, Japanese diplomats, in justifying themselves before our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will undoubtedly choose one of them.
“That is all. Dismissed.”
________________________________________
In the corridor afterward, the pilots surrounded me, questioning me about the flight. Once they were satisfied I knew no more than they did, they dispersed—though not without joking that the Soviet government might at least reward Grigoriev for bravely sleeping through an entire relay mission.
I joked back that I treated commendations and reprimands with equal indifference.
I can’t remember the last time I was praised.
But I do remember my most recent reprimand. And here’s what it was for.

Chapter 23
It was a highly controversial case. In a normal society, such an act might have earned a decent commendation. But in ours—where everything stood on its head—the opposite happened, and I was, as they used to say in the old days, “given a thorough dressing-down.”
My crew was assigned to deliver about a ton of assorted cargo and one passenger to Iturup Island in the Kuril chain. At headquarters I was warned that we were to spend the night there and, the following morning, pick up sailors due for demobilization, return cargo, and the same woman passenger for the flight back.
Until 1945, the island had belonged to Japan. Using Korean and Chinese prisoners of war, the former owners had built several military airfields there. We were to land at the most unique of them.
Its peculiarity lay in the fact that it had been carved straight through a mountain ridge, stretching from the island’s eastern shore, washed by the Pacific Ocean, to its western side, facing the Sea of Okhotsk. It was a pilot’s dream. The wind always blew along the runway—either from the sea or from the ocean. Sheer cliffs up to one hundred meters high shielded the strip from crosswinds.
The fleet command maintained a garrison of twenty-eight men there, headed by a major. In the General Staff’s plans, the base was designated a “jump airfield,” meaning aircraft flying combat missions over the ocean could refuel there. Thanks to the solid rocky foundation beneath the runway, there were no restrictions on the maximum takeoff weight of landing or departing aircraft.
In good weather the airfield was visible from thirty, sometimes even forty kilometers away. I approached from the Sea of Okhotsk side, admiring the majestic panorama of Bogdan Khmelnitsky Volcano. A thin plume of smoke rose from its crater. Near its foot nestled the island’s largest settlement—Kurilsk. My right-hand pilot studied the Catherine Strait and Kunashir Island beyond it. Only the poor navigator remained buried in calculations. We planned a straight-in approach, and Vasiliev needed to determine precisely the point to begin descent.
About seven kilometers from the airfield, I noticed a group of people standing near the runway threshold. They waved hats, sometimes tossing them into the air. They were unmistakably overjoyed at our arrival. I had never been welcomed like that anywhere.
We flew over their heads at ten meters, landed, and began braking. The tail gunner informed us that the greeters were running down the runway after us. It looked like collective madness.
But when I learned what cargo we had brought them, everything fell into place. Thirty medium-sized wooden crates contained one hundred and eighty film reels for their cinema projector.
The airfield commandant greeted me warmly and entrusted the care of my crew to his deputy. He then devoted all his attention to our passenger. My chief of staff had warned me that she was not just any woman but a cashier carrying a large sum of money—six months’ salary for the entire garrison. What he had either failed to mention or deemed unnecessary to add was that this cashier, by a “happy coincidence,” was the commandant’s wife.
When the warrant officer acting as deputy told me this, it became clear why the “dear guests” had been delegated to “second-tier personnel.”
________________________________________
While the sailors unloaded the aircraft and the technician refueled the tanks, I took a walking tour of the airfield with the warrant officer. There was little to see: a sailors’ barracks, headquarters, a mess hall, and four wooden outhouses on one side of the concrete strip; fuel tanks buried up to their necks on the other. A flock of sheep grazing nearby completed the unimpressive landscape.
“I see even the sheep aren’t guarded by dogs,” I remarked.
“Where would they go?” he replied, pointing to the smooth cliff faces. “Even mountaineers couldn’t climb those.”
“Tell me, Kuzmich,” I asked, “why is there a fuel tank in front of the barracks?”
“That’s our major’s invention. We call it the ‘garrison guardhouse.’ When a sailor gets drunk or goes AWOL to the village, we lock him in the iron tank. You probably didn’t notice, but holes have been drilled in the lid so they don’t suffocate. The lid’s bolted down. No guard required. Like the sheep. He sits there for a few days, gets fed once a day, howls from boredom or begs forgiveness.”
“And what does higher command think of that? It’s not exactly legal.”
“The main thing for them is that no one’s died here during the current commandant’s seven years. So they turn a blind eye.”
________________________________________
Later we drove ten kilometers along the beach to the village of Rybachy. The island had no real roads; only a narrow strip of wet sand at low tide was passable. At high tide, the sea reclaimed it.
On the way back I noticed tank turrets mounted every two hundred meters on concrete bunkers, their large-caliber guns seeming to follow our truck.
“Coastal defense,” the major explained. “Three levels underground—barracks, kitchen, supplies. Ten sailors per position in wartime. In peacetime, two or three. They cover each other with overlapping fire. The Japanese have never accepted losing these islands. No peace treaty even now.”
Then he added, with pride:
“The whole system’s commanded by Rear Admiral Mikhail Kapustin. Excellent man. When he inspects the island, he stays with me.”
“I know him too,” I said calmly.
“You’ve flown him somewhere?”
“No. He’s my father-in-law.”
The major was silent for a moment.
“Must be easier casting curses on your enemies with connections like that.”
“Not without its advantages,” I replied.
________________________________________
The accident happened the next morning.
While I was requesting departure clearance, I saw sailors lifting my right-hand pilot onto a grazing horse. No saddle, no bridle. Sergei wrapped his arms around the horse’s neck and squeezed with his legs.
“Stop that circus!” I shouted.
The sailors rushed the animal from all sides. The frightened horse reared. Sergei slipped, fell—and before he could get up, the horse stepped squarely on his leg.
The medic announced with professional solemnity:
“Fracture of the tibia and fibula.”
It was obvious without him.
We splinted the leg. The commandant approached with the flight sheet.
“Clearance received. But perhaps you should report the incident?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why so categorical?”
“They’ll forbid takeoff. If I wait for another aircraft, he could lose his leg. It’ll take at least ten hours to send one from Artem and back. Every hour matters.”
“Why are you sure they’d send another plane?”
“Because without a right-hand pilot, I could set course for Hokkaido instead of Vladivostok. Twenty minutes to Japan. Three hours home.”
“And what’s stopping you on a normal flight?”
“Nothing. But the generals think differently. If a commander decides to defect, the crew will drag him from the controls and beat sense into him, and the right-hand pilot will land the aircraft. Today I’d be alone at the controls. The whole crew would be my hostages. Some staff officer will imagine my betrayal. They don’t care about his leg. They care about their chairs.”
________________________________________
I took off without reporting the injury.
Approaching our home base, I requested an ambulance—claiming a passenger was ill. That guaranteed a full reception: the regimental commander, chief of staff, and a representative of the Special Department. All that was missing was a brass band.
When they saw that the “passenger” was my right-hand pilot with a shattered leg, the storm broke over my head.
The summary was simple:
“Give a brief explanation now. Submit a full written report by tomorrow.”
A few days later, the fleet aviation commander’s order was read aloud:
“Reprimand Captain Grigoriev for violation of flight safety procedures.”
As always, the officers joked afterward:
“Now you just need one from the Minister of Defense to complete the collection.”
“Well, another melon’s fallen. We thought this time Valera would finally get a medal.”
No one dared say openly that any normal man would have done the same.

Chapter 24
For six months I flew only to airfields in the Far East. The right-hand pilots changed with every assignment. Since my crew was now considered “unsynchronized,” we were not allowed on long-distance missions. In the autumn, Sergei returned from medical leave. Both bones in his broken leg had healed well, he passed the medical board, and we were restored to combat-ready status.
At that time, the fleet’s anti-submarine aviation began receiving new Ka-27PL helicopters from the factory. Our regiment was assigned to escort them and transport the equipment issued to the new rotary-wing machines.
We flew to the Bashkir town of Kumertau, which forty years earlier had been called Babay. The first time I heard that, I immediately remembered my childhood.
“So that’s why my parents used to frighten me with the Babayka. Those monsters came to bad children at night from this godforsaken place. Fate indeed. Who would have thought I’d end up here myself?”
Kumertau housed the aviation plant that produced Kamov’s coaxial-rotor helicopters. While technicians accepted the new machines and pilots test-flew them before ferrying them to the Far East, we transport crews were dying of boredom.
The business trips were dull, completely unprofitable, time-consuming, and forced us to work like mules on the return leg. The helicopters had limited ferry range; they required frequent stops for refueling and crew rest. Escorting them from the Southern Urals to Vladivostok, we hopped across the Asian part of the USSR like grasshoppers, from one airfield to another.
Those months could have been erased from memory—if not for my crew’s remarkable ability to find adventure where none should logically exist.
________________________________________
One particularly dreary evening, we were sitting in the restaurant of the Kumertau Hotel at the intersection of Mira and Pushkin streets. Beneath the long tablecloth, at our feet, stood a five-liter canister of pure alcohol. The radio operator periodically refilled a vodka carafe with ninety-six-percent spirit.
We drank it undiluted in small shot glasses and chased it with Bashkir lamb ribs roasted over open flame.
Around twenty men sat at other tables. All wore identical black quilted jackets and tarpaulin boots. There was also one very attractive young woman in a fashionable dress and short Italian high-heeled boots. Three grim-looking miners with hands permanently blackened by coal dust sat with her. They ate dumplings and drank vodka, occasionally exchanging brief phrases. They paid her no attention, as if she were furniture—a decorative vase at most.
From time to time, the miners glanced toward the entrance. Strong young men would come in, scan the room, and leave almost immediately.
The tension built for about half an hour. We sensed something coming but had no idea what.
Finally, one of the young visitors strode to the center of the hall and, standing behind one of the miners, kicked the oak chair out from under him.
The miner hit the floor, sprang up, and punched the aggressor square in the face.
A fight erupted.
The attacked man’s companions leapt in. Three policemen rushed from the lobby where they had been casually stationed. Swinging rubber batons, they drove the four combatants outside. The rest of the patrons calmly followed, abandoning food and drink.
We moved to the glass wall, parted the curtains, and watched the brawl expanding in the center of town.
It became clear that the three miners had been lured into an ambush. The chair trick was a crude provocation. A large group of young men waiting outside fell upon them.
But as friends of the miners poured out of the hotel, the fight turned into an evenly matched battle. Nearly forty men fought without shouting, without pointless profanity—methodically trying to inflict maximum damage.
On the hotel steps stood the three policemen and the lone woman. She wrapped herself in an expensive angora sweater, but it did nothing to stop her trembling—whether from cold or fear.
Our radio operator quickly assessed the situation.
“Commander, permission to be absent until morning?”
“Go,” I said. “Just don’t get into the fight.”
We watched as Nikolay approached the woman from behind, whispered something in her ear, and casually disappeared into the dark streets of Kumertau.
Five minutes later, she followed.
We waited to see if anyone pursued him. No one did. We returned to the table and continued drinking.
________________________________________
The next morning Onopriyenko told us the story.
The woman’s husband had been sentenced to eight years for armed robbery. From the entire gang, only he had been identified. He refused to name accomplices—not from loyalty, but because the legal difference between “armed robbery” and “banditry” would have added at least five more years.
The young gang members interpreted his silence as honor. Through corrupt guards he sent out a note—a malyava—asking only one thing: that his young wife remain faithful during his imprisonment.
Eight years of daily surveillance.
In a small town long divided into criminal territories, the gang beat or intimidated any man who tried to take advantage of her situation.
Few dared risk their health for a night with her. Mostly rival gang members or tightly bonded miners. An invitation to the cinema often became an excuse for another clash.
Yesterday was no different. The men fought their “global” problems. She, dying of desire, was once again drawn into someone else’s war.
When a stranger whispered, “Follow me,” she obeyed.
How they spent the night could only be guessed. But judging by the look of our radio operator—like a March tomcat returning from a neighboring roof—it was clear he hadn’t slept at all.
________________________________________
Chapter 25
Strange how, in anticipation of death, the mind mostly recalls flight emergencies, drinking bouts, and love affairs. Yet there was also service unrelated to flying. And that too brought unpleasant surprises.
All aircraft commanders and support engineers were required to serve duty officer shifts once a month. The rotation was fair: even dates for pilots, odd for engineers.
Being undisciplined and morally unstable, I rarely completed a shift without incident.
Once, a sabotage group of marine combat divers parachuted onto our airfield and “mined” all aircraft with dummy explosives as a training exercise. I was severely reprimanded for missing the “diversion.”
Another time, sailors smuggled five women into the barracks. I spent half the night dragging them from under beds. I succeeded—and still received a reprimand.
But the worst case happened near the end of what had been an uneventful shift.
While counting the service weapons stored in the armory with my replacement, we discovered one Makarov pistol and sixteen rounds missing.
The logbook showed that the warrant officer on duty at remote Checkpoint No. 3 had not yet returned his weapon.
Calmly, I explained this to my replacement and suggested he sign the handover report and let me go home.
He refused.
I explained again:
“You bear no responsibility. Sign for the weapons physically present. The missing pistol is on the warrant officer. Even if he lost it, sold it, or drank it away—that’s his problem.”
He refused again.
It was 6:40 p.m. The second-to-last bus left at 7:00.
“No car. If you don’t sign in five minutes, I miss it. The last bus is at eleven. I’ll sit here four extra hours because of your stubbornness. Do you understand?”
“No.”
That was all.
“Fine,” I said. “You’ll accept the duty in one minute.”
I took my pistol from its holster, stepped into the armory, chambered a round without removing the magazine, disengaged the safety, and—looking at the pale engineer—fired between the pistol rack and the ammunition safe.
The captain bolted from the room faster than my bullet.
The blast in the small armory sounded like artillery. Smoke curled upward. The slide chambered another round.
The chief of staff entered cautiously.
“Valera, you all right?”
“More or less. My ears are ringing.”
“Place the pistol on the safe. Slowly.”
I obeyed.
In the regimental commander’s office, I explained that exhaustion and stubborn stupidity had driven me to forget the magazine while performing a control trigger pull.
The commander studied me as if deciding whether I was an idiot or pretending to be one.
Finally he said to the chief of staff:
“Don’t issue him a weapon again. Send him home in my car. Immediately.”
“But there are no unarmed shifts—”
“Then don’t assign him. Schedule him for more flights. Keep him away from base.”
He waved us off.
A real scandal was beginning to ignite in the unit.

Chapter 26
The Party–KGB elite not only stood as a solid wall against any dissent, supporting one another, but also intertwined through family friendships. Naturally, our Party secretary was the best friend of the regiment’s KGB operative. They celebrated family birthdays together, marked every revolutionary and religious holiday, went hunting and fishing, picked mushrooms and berries—in short, their two families lived as one.
Gradually, love blossomed between the Party leader and the counterintelligence officer’s wife. They began meeting regularly in a rented apartment on the outskirts of town. At first, deceiving their unsuspecting spouses was easy. But growing feelings filled their hearts, and soon their tender glances became noticeable. It no longer resembled friendship.
Unwilling to wait for a dramatic climax, the chekist’s wife announced over breakfast:
“I’m leaving you for Dmitry. We’ve loved each other for a long time.”
Stunned by such treachery, the major of military counterintelligence could think of nothing better than to go to the regimental commander and share his family drama. He expected support—imagined the colonel summoning the Party secretary for a conversation, the three of them finding some delicate solution, perhaps even saving both families.
The commander chose differently.
Unwilling to serve as a buffer between two locomotives racing toward each other, he immediately informed both the chief of counterintelligence and the head of the Pacific Fleet’s political department. Thus he set two powerful organizations against one another in defense of their subordinates.
At the Fleet Military Council—alongside combat readiness reports—the “moral and political climate” in our transport regiment was examined. When Fleet Commander Admiral Krasnov expressed displeasure over this sordid affair, the head of the political department rose and declared plainly:
“People, regardless of position, cannot be forbidden to love.”
After that elegant move, counterintelligence’s prepared arguments about betrayal and moral corruption lost their force. The chief of counterintelligence chose silence—but did not bury the case. He waited for a mistake. Perhaps he even laid traps.
The scandal gradually subsided. Garrison gossips grew bored. For a time, even the principals of the drama breathed easier.
________________________________________
On January 9th, Party secretaries and political officers from Knevichi garrison gathered in the officers’ sauna to commemorate “The Day of the Shooting of Workers on Palace Square by Tsarist Troops.” Bloody Sunday was observed with satsivi, shashlik, and red wine. Georgian cuisine was supervised by our new political officer’s driver, Sergeant Givi.
How a son of the Caucasus ended up serving in the Far East remained a mystery. Unlike most sailors, he possessed the rare ability to keep his mouth shut and was loyal to the political officer like a dog. The political officer had brought him along from a previous posting. When I first saw Givi, I thought: What secrets must a man carry to drag a sergeant across Primorye?
After a good steam, the red-faced commissars sat at a long table, wrapped in white sheets. They drank chacha under the toast, “To our meeting!” Later they switched to wine—the chacha Givi prepared tasted too much like Russian moonshine.
Toasts circled the table. When it came to our Party secretary, he rose, clutching his slipping sheet in one hand and holding a glass of wine red as workers’ blood in the other.
“To our Party’s might!”
Some applauded. None could refuse such a toast.
Well drunk, he added as he sat:
“Our boss is a good man. Didn’t hand me over to the KGB boys. I’ll give him two bottles of wine for that. He’ll tear counterintelligence apart for me. Let them know they’ve always walked under the Party—and always will. We’ve had them, we have them, and we’ll keep having them. And their wives too.”
He laughed at his own vulgarity.
Within an hour, a tape recording of those words lay on the desks of both the chief of counterintelligence and the head of the political department.
The fate of both husband and lover was sealed.
By mutual agreement of the “high contracting parties,” both officers were transferred to remote garrisons with demotions.
As my father-in-law later joked, what offended the political chief most was the valuation of his support at two bottles of wine.
“Had he said two crates of Armenian cognac,” he laughed among admirals, “I might have forgiven the drunken bravado. But no one’s ever priced me so cheaply. I’ll grind the little bastard to dust.”
And he did.
Within a year, the regiment’s entire counterintelligence and political leadership had been replaced. I had no open enemies left.
Time to move on to foreign flights.
Well—almost no enemies.
My enemy number one remained alive.
It was myself.
Even when Lady Luck turned her face toward me and removed my adversaries—as in the adultery case—I would pull a stunt like firing a pistol in the armory, making such a grimace at her that she turned away again.
“Fine,” I would think. “Turn away all you like. I’ll come at you from behind and have my way regardless.”
But for now—forward. Another flight. New adventures.
This time not far. To the Romanovka garrison, where the Soviet aviation industry’s latest bastard child—the carrier-based Yak-38—had appeared.
It would be interesting to see it take off and land without a run.
Though more accurately—we flew to Pristan airfield. The garrison itself, five kilometers away, did not interest us.
________________________________________
Chapter 27
From Knevichi airfield to Pristan was twenty-five kilometers in a straight line. The entire flight—from engine start to shutdown—took twenty minutes.
While waiting for our cargo, we stepped under the wing and stared curiously at the marvel of engineering.
A carrier-based fighter taxied past. It looked strikingly like the British Harrier. For that reason NATO classified the Yak-38 as “Forger”—meaning falsifier, counterfeiter, liar. The name spoke volumes. Copied from the enemy and launched seven years late, it proved not an improved version but an inferior one. A ton and a half heavier. Nearly half the range. Engines so weak that in hot climates it could not lift off from a carrier deck.
The vertical takeoff pad lay a hundred meters away—a square of metal plates. The Yak aligned into the wind. We saw the pilot open lift-engine doors and rotate the nozzles downward.
He brought all four turbines to takeoff power. The aircraft rose five or six meters and hovered. The roar was deafening.
Then, as the main nozzles rotated to forward thrust, the nose dipped slightly, the aircraft edged forward—then suddenly pecked sharply downward and fell.
The ejection seat fired.
The Yak struck nose-first, broke in half, and exploded.
Fire trucks screamed toward the wreckage, spewing foam.
The pilot descended by parachute. Wind drifted him toward the flames. Realizing he would land in fire, he pulled the risers, half-collapsing the canopy, doubling his descent speed, and hit the concrete hard.
The parachute fell beside him—but the wind caught it again, dragging his limp body toward the burning wreckage.
When the silk ignited, the canopy collapsed. The pilot lay just beyond the spreading fuel fire.
Three sailors with a hose approached, spraying water. One grabbed the pilot by the leg and dragged him across the concrete like a sack of sand. His helmeted head bounced along expansion joints. A wristwatch slipped from his gloved hand. One firefighter pocketed it.
Medics were summoned.
“He’s alive,” I thought with relief.
The entire catastrophe lasted two minutes—but stirred memories of my own crash and of my father’s fate in these same waters.
Beyond the runway lay Peter the Great Gulf.
It was over these waters, in the late 1950s, that my father’s promising career collapsed.
He had served as navigator on an Il-28 bomber. During fleet maneuvers, his formation conducted a torpedo training attack. Mistaking the wake of Admiral Fokin’s boat for the target buoy, the lead aircraft dropped its torpedo—and my father’s crew followed.
The admiral’s boat had been the “enemy.”
All three crews were arrested.
The flight leader was discharged without pension. The lead navigator vanished after tribunal. One navigator was promoted. My father received an official reprimand:
“For attempted attack on the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.”
Thus he served nearly thirty years under that shadow.
________________________________________
History, as Herodotus believed, moves in cycles.
But I would add—a correction for wind.
The spiral not only rises; it drifts.
Three decades later, in the same skies, the navigator’s son—a pilot—would receive his share of punishment. Some deserved. Some not.
The Yak-38 crash changed nothing in our plan.
We loaded cargo and took off toward the strait, climbed, turned over a nameless bay, and set course for Mongokhto airbase.
Passing over Romanovka garrison, I rocked my wings in salute to the heroes serving in that hole.

Chapter 28
News awaited us at home.
At morning formation, the regimental commander read a brief order received the previous evening from Fleet Aviation Headquarters:
“Two crews are to prepare for a transfer flight to Vietnam.”
“Two? Since when? It’s always been one,” murmurs spread through the ranks.
Everyone understood from the outset that only one crew would actually go on the month-long assignment. The second would serve as backup, in case of unforeseen circumstances.
The chief of staff announced the names of the aircraft commanders who would begin preparations that very morning. As usual, my name was not among the fortunate.
After formation, I approached the commander directly.
“Comrade Colonel, why is my crew once again not scheduled for a foreign flight?”
With a sly smile he replied:
“You’ve just returned from Mongokhto. We can’t possibly send you on another long mission.”
Calling my one-day hop—with two landings at fleet airfields—a “long mission” was, at best, creative interpretation. We hadn’t even bothered to claim the standard travel allowance of two rubles and sixty kopecks.
But arguing was pointless. He understood perfectly well. So did I.
I did not participate in the well-established system of gifts and favors. I did not go hunting or fishing with the leadership, did not sweat beside them in saunas discussing the virtues of the latest switchboard operator or headquarters secretary. I was not part of the inner circle.
________________________________________
I brought the news to the squadron parking area. The crew waited aboard the aircraft. After sending the gunner and the air-descent technician away, we sealed ourselves inside the passenger compartment for a war council.
First, I laid out the conditions.
Full pay preserved at home. All expenses abroad covered—food, lodging, ground transport. Plus fifty U.S. dollars per day overseas.
Including travel days, that meant sixteen hundred dollars per man.
“For that kind of money,” I concluded, “you’d have to fly sixteen months at home. So—how do we eat this pie without choking?”
Following naval tradition, I gave the floor to the youngest—Sergei Kovalenko.
“We should buy gifts for everyone who influences the selection,” he said.
“First, the selection’s already been made—not in our favor. Surprising you missed that. And second—shall we buy gifts for the regimental commander, chief of staff, political officer, communications chief, chief engineer, and the KGB operative? And will you personally deliver them? No? Thought so.”
I turned to the radio operator.
“We wait until they pick the crew and aircraft—and then sabotage the aircraft,” said Warrant Officer Onopriyenko.
“Brilliant,” the flight engineer sneered. “If we’re caught, it’s prison. And even if not, they’ll just swap planes with us and leave us with the broken one.”
“Correct. Not an option. Gena?”
“No ideas.”
“Navigator?”
A silent shake of the head.
“Then listen. Chess strategy. Three pillars of a successful opening. First—rapid mobilization of forces. That’s what we’re doing. Second—pawn placement. You’re not pawns, but I must position you. Third—the center. We strike unexpectedly, at the most central pieces.”
Departure was next Thursday—one week away. By lunchtime today, leadership would designate the main and backup crews. They would have four and a half days to prepare before Wednesday’s inspection commission from Vladivostok.
“Monday—we strike the primary crew. Tuesday—the backup. Leave them no time to recover. Tomorrow I want proposals. Navigator, quietly begin preparing. If we rip this out of their teeth, it’ll be at the last second.”
Luck favors those standing firmly on their feet.
On Friday, we had nothing new—until Monday.
After lunch, rumors spread: the right-seat pilot of the primary crew could not find his flight logbook.
He searched headquarters until evening formation. Without success.
That logbook contained everything—exam results, flight hours, medical certifications, parachute jumps, training records, performance reviews. His entire professional identity.
At 1700, the colonel delivered a speech straight from the 1940s—about moral codes, brotherhood, “die yourself but save your comrade.”
Then he asked us to search the grounds around headquarters.
For two hours officers combed every meter of land. At dusk, a modest electrical technician spotted it.
The logbook floated in the swampy water of an abandoned bomb shelter. The rusted door was locked; the key long lost. The officer listed as responsible for the shelter was unknown even to our fifty-year-old colonel.
There was no point retrieving it. No time remained to restore it.
The colonel scanned the gathered officers, beckoned me close.
“Tomorrow morning your crew begins preparation as backup. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“Where were you today? I didn’t see you in headquarters.”
“On the aircraft. Performing scheduled maintenance.”
He studied me.
“All right. Go.”
________________________________________
Tuesday was a frenzy of preparation. We were three days behind but had to be ready by Wednesday at 0900.
The route was complex. We could not fly eastward past China—the range was insufficient, and Beijing denied refueling rights. So the navigator prepared a western route across half of Asia: from Vladivostok to Tashkent, then over Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Burma, Laos, and finally Vietnam.
Maps covered his desk.
“You did all this when?”
“At home. Saturday and Sunday.”
“Hero.”
“Don’t be modest, Commander,” he replied. “You didn’t waste time either.”
________________________________________
That evening, walking to the bus stop, I saw the former backup crew—now promoted to primary—heading toward the international airport.
Celebrating.
In the only bar in town where military patrols ignored officers in uniform.
I boiled with righteous indignation.
“Let me just get home.”
In my dormitory room, I locked the door and dialed the Fleet Aviation political chief.
He was still at his desk.
Without giving my name, I reported:
“Comrade General, the crew departing on a state mission to Vietnam the day after tomorrow is currently drinking at the Vladivostok airport bar.”
I deliberately chose the harshest wording.
The machine started.
The general contacted my colonel immediately. The colonel found them in the bar—two empty mugs and two full ones before each.
“Wait in the car,” he told them.
That night, after angry exchanges and a report back to the general, the decision was made.
________________________________________
The next morning, the commission tested both crews.
We received top marks.
Perhaps inflated.
After reporting readiness to the Aviation Commander, the general asked the colonel:
“Where did you find your falcons yesterday?”
“In the airport beer bar.”
“Then the backups fly. As I understand it, they’re no worse prepared.”
He hung up.
The colonel looked at us and murmured:
“That’s the strange part.”
________________________________________
When summoned to his office, he formally assigned the mission to my crew.
I left feeling like Octavian Augustus after a triumph.
But I concealed my joy.
In a month, I will return here. And though I was a rear admiral’s son-in-law, that was still less than being Julius Caesar’s grand-nephew.
Someone might eventually connect the dots.
But proving it?
As Stalin’s prosecutor Vyshinsky once said:
“Confession is the queen of evidence.”
And I would never confess.


Chapter 29
I ran the eight hundred meters from regimental headquarters to the aircraft parking area. A trifle.
Inside the pressurized cabin, the copilot, navigator, flight engineer, and radio operator were playing preference. The gunner and the air-descent technician were locked in a backgammon battle.
“We’re flying,” I announced, squeezing into the cramped compartment. “That’s the good news. The second part is slightly worse—we have almost no time to prepare.”
“We’re ready,” the navigator replied lazily, reluctantly setting his cards aside.
“We’re ready for the transfer flight. Not for the business trip. That’s a significant difference. So listen carefully.”
I turned to the copilot.
“Seryozha, change into civilian clothes and get to the baby-food store. Buy as many packages of ‘Malysh’ powdered milk as you can carry. Not less than a parachute bag full.”
He nodded silently.
“Radio operator, gunner—you’re responsible for finding and buying a seawater desalinator. As much as possible. Vadim, condensed milk—get as many cans as you can haul. Gena, you’ve got a friend in the clothing warehouse—buy uniform naval shirts. And all of you—scrape your corners. Anything uniform-related that isn’t worn to rags must be on board tomorrow.”
The radio operator looked at me skeptically.
“Commander, that’s a strange assortment. Desalinators, baby formula, condensed milk, naval shirts?”
“Kolia, have you been to Vietnam? No. Neither have I. But seasoned transport pilots say two or three kilos of desalinator can easily be traded for a VCR or a gaming console. Two cans of condensed milk equal one bottle of rice vodka. One uniform shirt—five bottles. Understand? Customs in Tashkent won’t let us carry alcohol, but condensed milk? No problem. And shirts are untouchable.”
“So we specialize in electronics and vodka?” the navigator asked.
“Vadik,” I replied gently, “we specialize in money. What brings the money is secondary. Personally, I’d prefer pearls and women’s gold jewelry. But if electronics pay better—we deal in electronics.”
The meeting was over.
Five minutes later only the flight engineer and I remained beneath the aircraft.
“Gena, we need to talk.”
He stood on the ladder sealing the door with plasticine, trying unsuccessfully to press his brass seal into two pieces of string. The sun had melted the plasticine; it spread uselessly.
“Forget it,” I advised.
“I’ve already spat on it. Didn’t help.”
“No, I mean forget the seal. Nothing will happen to the aircraft overnight.”
“The duty officer will wake me at night if he sees it unsealed.”
“Fine. Suffer—and listen. Can you get mercury?”
“Mercury?” He stared at me.
I nodded.
“It’s the most valuable barter item in Vietnam. I don’t know why they need it, but they say it’s worth more than gold.”
“Commander, I can get mercury. But first—it’s worth more than gold here too. Second—it’s dangerous. If customs catch us with baby formula or desalinator, we’ll get reprimands. With mercury—we go to prison. Or worse, poison ourselves.”
I paused.
“All right. Forget it. For now.”
________________________________________
On Thursday, with a refueling stop in Irkutsk, we reached Tashkent. We spent the night, cleared customs and border control without incident, and took off for Karachi.
Threading carefully between snow-covered mountain peaks that seemed almost to brush our wings, we aimed for the Ganges valley as quickly as possible.
Recently, a Moscow crew returning from Hanoi had crashed in these mountains.
Departing Karachi on their final flight, they had passed between Peshawar and Islamabad at eight thousand meters when they entered a violent thunderstorm. Pakistani air traffic control, instead of allowing deviation around icing zones, demanded strict adherence to the assigned corridor. Constrained by terrain, the crew spotted a broad band of hail too late to turn back.
Hailstones the size of chicken eggs punctured the oil radiators of three engines. During the turn, the damaged engines failed one after another. Losing seventy-five percent of thrust, the aircraft descended in a bank and struck a mountain near Chitral.
The cockpit recording captured them swearing at everything and everyone when they realized it was the end. Even investigators accustomed to such material found it chilling. For the pilots who later listened to the tape, it was unbearable.
Usually, crews die in silence. Pilots fight until the last second. Sometimes there’s no time even to press the microphone. Occasionally, a single rough word slips out—a word that can be translated as “That’s it,” or “We’re done,” or simply “Damn.”
But rarely does a crew lose hope so early. After the second engine failed, their chances were already zero. When the third propeller feathered automatically due to falling oil pressure, they understood completely.
For four minutes they cursed as they descended from eight thousand to five thousand meters.
They had an accurate weather forecast. Perhaps greed tempted them—an unplanned overnight in Karachi would have cost each crew member fifty dollars for a hotel. Or perhaps the Russian “maybe we’ll slip through” sealed their fate.
They chose to fly through the storm without an alternate.
________________________________________
We reached Karachi safely, refueled, and headed for Mandalay.
Flying over northern India, between the winding Ganges and the Nepalese border, I looked at the Himalayan peaks and drifted into history.
A century and more ago, sepoys—Muslim and Hindu mercenaries—rose against British rule here. The spark had been a rumor that rifle cartridges were greased with pig and cow fat. For Muslims, pigs were unclean; for Hindus, cows sacred.
Strange coincidence—the uprising followed soon after the Crimean War. I indulged in conspiracy theories: perhaps agents of Tsar Alexander II had whispered into the right ears.
Long flights produce peculiar thoughts.
I pictured Vereshchagin’s painting of sepoys tied to cannon barrels and blown apart—a colonial method of execution.
Fifty kilometers later, my mind shifted again.
Somewhere below, six Russian pilots rotted in an Indian prison.
Their An-26 had been hired by a British citizen in Sri Lanka to transport crates to Madras. Approaching India, the client ordered descent to “one thousand five hundred” and demanded the cargo ramp opened. Consulting his map and knowing the drop system, he released the crates over jungle.
The fatal mistake? Units.
The Brit meant feet. Our crew flew to 1,500 meters.
The cargo drifted far off target and fell into the hands of government forces.
The crates contained weapons.
The aircraft landed safely in Madras. The client paid in cash and disappeared. The crew was arrested that evening.
India’s Supreme Court sentenced all six to death. Only traditional Soviet-Indian friendship halted the executioner’s axe.
________________________________________
Strange thoughts again.
Sergei slept. The radio operator had gone aft to play backgammon with the engineer. Communications were handled by the interpreter temporarily assigned to us.
He had the sweetest duty of all—flying only abroad. Apart from handling English radio exchanges, his only invisible task was to record everything that happened within the crew while outside the Motherland, then report to military counterintelligence upon return.
Thank God I wouldn’t have to drag him around Vietnam. And thank the Communist Party that the air traffic service of the Democratic Republic had trained in the Soviet Union and could conduct radio in Russian.
We crossed Bangladesh.
One hour to Mandalay.
Refuel—and, if weather and fuel cooperated, straight on to Hanoi.

Chapter 30
Our first morning in Vietnam.
We met the local military authorities and learned the scope of our upcoming work. As expected, this was no resort assignment. The short hops would have suited a smaller An-26, but the cargo was always so abundant that even our hold—three times larger than the little Anton’s—sometimes proved insufficient.
On that fateful flight, I was tasked with transporting air conditioners from Haiphong to Ho Chi Minh City. The dispatcher warned me in advance:
“Take as many as possible.”
“How many are there?”
“A ship arrived from Odessa. Imagine how many units it can carry.”
No sooner had I stepped out of dispatch than I was surrounded by locals. How they learned about my flight, I have no idea.
They were remarkably well informed. They knew my final destination. Men and women pressed money toward me from all sides, begging to be taken to Ho Chi Minh City the next day.
Without slowing my stride, I walked through the crowd to our airport hotel. A Vietnamese soldier with an automatic rifle stood at the entrance to the one-story barracks. A few steps from the door, my entourage halted as if an invisible wall had risen between us.
That wall was called a sentry.
He stood like a monument, as though he had spent his life guarding Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow or Ho Chi Minh’s in Hanoi. Had I not watched closely, I might have missed the slight movement—the barrel of his Kalashnikov tilted toward my would-be passengers. They retreated instantly.
Like mesmerized bandar-logs before Kaa the python, I thought, recalling Kipling.
________________________________________
I found my copilot and drew an invisible circle around the group sitting on the ground outside.
“They fly with us tomorrow. Make a passenger list. Tell them we’ll go to Ho Chi Minh via Haiphong. Collect the money. Eight a.m. sharp. Clear?”
“No. How many passengers? And how much do we charge?”
“They’re skinny,” I calculated. “Fifty kilos each, maybe. We can cram thirty into the cabin. As for price—I’ve no idea. For now, take whatever they offer, but no less than two hundred thousand dong each. And one more thing.”
I scanned the crowd and selected the prettiest girl.
“I’ll choose a little monkey for myself. Put her on the list—no payment. She’ll compensate me in full.”
“Can I?” the copilot asked dreamily.
“Another time.”
________________________________________
When I stepped back across the invisible boundary, the crowd erupted again. I grimaced and whistled sharply through my fingers. Silence.
“You understand Russian?”
Nods. Someone ventured, “Understan’, commander.”
“Thirty will fly. Decide among yourselves.”
I beckoned the girl. Head lowered, basket in hand, she approached obediently.
“Student?”
A nod.
“Want to visit your mother in Ho Chi Minh City?”
More nodding.
I lifted her chin and examined her face. By local standards, she was pretty. Only her childlike height troubled me—she barely reached my shoulder.
Sergei circled her critically.
“Your girlfriends get younger every time, Commander. You’ll end up in kindergarten.”
“No,” I replied. “I’ll stop at senior high school.”
We laughed.
“She flies tomorrow,” I announced clearly to the group.
The Vietnamese murmured in approval. The girl fell to her knees and kissed my hand. I lifted her gently.
“You’ll have time to kiss more than that.”
Whether she understood, I cannot say. She nodded vigorously enough to make me worry her head might detach.
That evening and half the night we spent under the mosquito net above my bed. By morning she was sitting near the hotel entrance. Not wanting to disturb my sleep, she had slipped away and waited outside, afraid I might forget her.
We both got what we wanted.
________________________________________
Over breakfast, I philosophized.
“Vadik, do you know what Americans died for here fifteen years ago?”
“For an idea,” he replied through rice.
“Wrong. You and I fly for ideas. They fought for free sex.”
He stared at me.
“Think about it. In the States, you compliment a woman—she calls the police. They call it sexual harassment. Prostitutes cost a hundred dollars an hour. Here? Five. Suggest sleeping together—no more dangerous than asking the time.”
He shook his head.
“Your conclusions…”
“Women first. Ideology second.”
He sighed.
“Finish eating. We have work.”
________________________________________
At Cat Bi airport in Haiphong there were no taxiways. After leaving the concrete runway, we stopped on a small asphalt patch before a shabby terminal. Two ZIL-157 trucks loaded with air conditioners waited on a large white “H” painted on black bitumen—Helicopter.
After relieving myself near the edge of the pad, I was approached by a Vietnamese lieutenant in tropical naval uniform—blue shorts, blue cap, short-sleeve shirt. He looked like a camp counselor.
He informed me he was ordered to accompany ten tons of cargo to Ho Chi Minh City and complained about the absence of loaders.
I ordered the flight engineer to have our passengers load the plane.
“I was told I’d fly alone with the cargo,” the lieutenant ventured.
“One more question like that,” I cut him off, “and you’ll load all ten tons yourself.”
He apologized immediately.
________________________________________
The navigator returned from meteorology, grim.
“Did you order an alternate?”
“Yes. Cam Ranh. But I advise against takeoff. A warm front will pass over Ho Chi Minh by our arrival.”
“All fronts are warm here,” I joked.
He read aloud:
“Heavy showers. Surface wind thirty meters per second, gusts to forty. Cloud base one hundred meters. Visibility two hundred meters in precipitation. Possible lightning.”
“Why risk it?” he pressed. “Remember the Moscow crew.”
“Our situation is different. What do we do with our jungle residents? We took their money.”
“Fly back to Hanoi.”
“And refund them how? The airport official already took his twenty-five percent cut.”
He frowned.
“Besides, tomorrow all Hanoi will call us bad pilots. We can’t explain a tropical warm front to them. The Rubicon is crossed. We go forward. And we have Cam Ranh as alternate. The Moscow crew didn’t.”
He remained unconvinced.
“If we divert to Cam Ranh,” I added, “I hear there are plenty of Russian women there. Waitresses, nurses, finance clerks. Probably bored with their own men.”
He snorted despite himself.
________________________________________
While the passengers—“ants,” as I called them—carried the Baku air conditioners aboard, I lectured him about Cam Ranh’s history: built by the Americans in the mid-sixties, B-52 operations, Johnson’s speech declaring the flag would fly forever. I predicted they would return one day—not by war, but by rent.
We spoke of dolphins trained for sabotage, of the Chinese invasion of 1979, of how Vietnam granted us the base after Beijing’s pressure and our fleet’s movement into the Yellow Sea.
“Where do you know all this from?” he asked.
“Read Pravda sometimes,” I replied. “Instead of Playboy.”
________________________________________
The flight engineer approached with a stack of pink banknotes bearing Ho Chi Minh’s face.
“What’s this?”
“Dong,” he said.
“I can see that. Where from?”
“While the passengers carried two hundred air conditioners, I siphoned two hundred liters of kerosene from the belly tank and sold it to the ZIL drivers. They happened to have a barrel.”
I exhaled. The shortage could always be blamed on headwinds.
“Cargo secured?”
“Yes. Passengers seated.”
“Then forward,” I said. “Toward our decorations.”
Epilogue
We saw the first signs of the approaching warm front one hundred kilometers from the destination airfield. Wisps of cirrus clouds began drifting toward us. I requested the actual weather from Ho Chi Minh military sector control. The controller reported that rain had not yet reached the runway but was expected any minute.
At forty kilometers out, we began our descent, cautiously slipping beneath the massive overhang of cloud. Entering it was out of the question. The thunderstorm activity inside a tropical warm front is so violent that a single lightning strike could burn out all onboard electronics.
Still hoping luck would favor us, I requested a straight-in approach.
With twenty kilometers remaining, the first heavy drops struck the cockpit glass.
A pity we won’t make it before the downpour begins. I’ll go down to my minimum.
“Descend to sixty meters,” I ordered.
“Sergei, search for the approach lights. I’ll wrestle this mad wind on the glide path.”
The sixty-ton aircraft pitched and rolled like a small boat in a stormy sea. Gusts shifted constantly, denying me a stable correction angle. I countered the yaw, turning the control wheel left and right in rapid succession. Rain lashed the windshield so heavily that even the fastest wiper setting couldn’t keep up.
Below one hundred meters, I prepared to go around. My left hand rested on the throttles, ready to advance them from flight idle to takeoff power at decision height.
“I see runway lights! Ten degrees right!” Sergei called, joy in his voice.
“There are still six hundred meters to the field,” the navigator added. “Too early for runway lights.”
I wanted to believe my copilot. I banked right and nudged the control column forward, lowering the nose toward the glowing “high-intensity lights.”
I hadn’t yet leveled the wings when the aircraft shuddered from a tremendous impact and rolled further right.
Instantly I slammed all four engines to takeoff power and pulled left, hauling back on the controls. The propellers bit harder and harder into the dense Vietnamese air. Reluctantly, the aircraft obeyed. We began to climb.
“Thank God we’re alive,” said the radio operator.
“I thought that was the end,” the navigator admitted.
From the cargo hold came the flight engineer’s voice:
“This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning. The entire right main landing gear has been torn off. All four wheels. There’s a one-square-meter hole in the fuselage floor. Hydraulic fluid is pouring out.”
So we wouldn’t be retracting the gear.
Landing on one main gear leg had never been practiced. Landing without a nose wheel was easy enough. Even a belly landing was manageable. But one main gear? Once below 150 kilometers per hour, the damaged fuselage would strike concrete and we’d lose control.
I’ll figure something out over the alternate.
“Navigator, course to Cam Ranh?”
“Forty-five degrees.”
“Copilot, inform control we’re diverting.”
“You were so eager to go there,” the navigator muttered.
“Yes. Under different circumstances.”
________________________________________
Over Cam Ranh, control instructed us to enter a holding pattern and burn fuel down to emergency reserve. They described the runway and its surroundings in detail.
American engineers had built it with a crown and drainage ditches on both sides, leading into concrete collection wells every hundred meters. These wells rose a meter and a half above ground level.
“If you touch down near the bonfire we’ll light,” the controller said, “even if you veer off the runway, you’ll miss the wells.”
“A bonfire?”
“They’re stacking old aircraft tires. When you’re ready, we’ll ignite them. The smoke column will be visible from the other side of the ocean. They’re B-52 tires.”
“Don’t worry about seeing it,” he added. “Worry about how you’ll land.”
________________________________________
Ten minutes before landing, they set the tires ablaze. The black smoke was so dense that without wind pushing it aside, I might not have found the base at all.
With no hydraulic fluid, I couldn’t deploy flaps. I flew the lowest possible approach.
Crossing the threshold, I ordered all four engines shut down.
Now we depended solely on inertia and gravity.
And ground effect—the aerodynamic phenomenon every pilot knows but cannot explain to his wife.
The An-12 skimmed a meter above the runway, refusing to land. After an extra six hundred meters, it touched down on the left main gear and nose wheel simultaneously.
I hauled the controls fully left, trying to keep us balanced on two wheels. The aircraft ignored me.
The right side of the fuselage slammed into concrete with a shriek like a mortally wounded prehistoric beast. We slid off into the drainage ditch so cleverly designed by our former enemies. At enormous speed, the aircraft’s glass nose struck a concrete well.
We stopped.
That’s it, I told myself.
But I was wrong.
________________________________________
Fire engines and a water truck arrived. A brave soul climbed onto the truck’s tank, jumped onto the wing, and ran toward me with a fire extinguisher. He smashed it against the fuselage as instructed by the label. Nothing.
He cursed, threw it aside, demanded a hose.
Yellow smoke seeped from the warped passenger door.
Two officers appeared with axes.
“Chop around the window! No structural members there!” one shouted.
They broke through the fuselage. Air rushed in.
Flames followed.
Until that moment, smoldering insulation lacked oxygen. Now it had plenty.
Water poured into the cabin.
When the fire truck ran dry, chaos followed. Orders shouted. Cables snapped. Vehicles bogged in mud.
Inside the fuselage lay my illegal passengers in layers.
Bodies were carried to the concrete. A doctor checked each pulse.
None beat.
If I could have spoken, I would have told the boys:
Those who didn’t suffocate, you drowned.
But it wasn’t their fault.
________________________________________
A crane arrived. Welders cut my seat free from twisted metal. What remained of Sergei and the flight engineer had already been removed. The navigator would come later.
They avoided my eyes.
“Easy now!” someone shouted.
The crane lifted me by my seat. Pain returned with savage intensity. I groaned.
“The commander’s alive!”
They lowered me between an ambulance and a pile of thirty corpses.
The doctor checked my pulse.
“Hurry, Larisa. We may not make it.”
He cut the harness straps while the nurse sliced through my parachute webbing.
They loaded me into the ambulance.
Larisa sat beside me, wiping sweat from my forehead with a sterile cloth, tears streaming down her face. She told me the tail gunner survived. The cargo escort survived but broke both legs jumping down. The loadmaster was crushed by shifting air conditioners.
I was grateful for her tears. For her pleading. For her beauty in that final moment.
I died in the ambulance, two hundred meters short of intensive care, choosing not to cling to this life any longer.