When she heard the newscaster say the word ‘Kozmin’ it pierced the armour of her inattention. She rushed to the television. Kozmin was the name of Slava’s mothership. But by the time she got there she caught only the last few seconds of the bulletin, and knew only that something had happened to a submersible from Petropavlovsk, and that it was serious enough for the Naval Headquarters in Moscow to issue a statement. Worse still, she knew that if the Kozmin was involved, Slava’s submersible was the only one on board.
Panicked, the first thing that Yelena did was call Slava’s parents. Slava’s father, Vladimir Valentinovich, had worked on the same Priz submersible, AS-28, from the beginning of its construction through its commissioning and sea trials, logging 17 years in it before his retirement from the Navy. He’d heard nothing, not even the news bulletin. He said he would call his friends who were still in the service and find out what was happening, and call her back.
Yelena didn’t even put the receiver down. She hung up using her finger and dialled the number for Naval Headquarters from memory. She demanded to know what was going on. They told her that they too knew nothing. She should keep watching the news, they said.
‘The news bulletins? But they may concoct some untruth! You are the official body!’ she cried into the phone.
‘We do not know anything,’ the operator said. ‘We are also watching the news.’
Even Kamchatka’s governor, Mikhail Mashkovtsey, was doing the same. Despite claiming to be an atheist, between bulletins he admitted that he was praying. When a news reporter called him to ask what he planned to do if the men were rescued, he promised them a reward. With admirable self-belief, he said to the reporter: ‘I have known for a long time that for many people a small merit certificate from the governor is more important than any material benefits.’
A friend of Yelena’s from her university days had been staying at the dacha and stepped in to shield the twins from their mother’s worry, but it could not have been long before they realised that something bad had happened. Yelena sat in front of the television, waiting for the next update, with her hand on the telephone ready for when Slava’s father called back. Finally he did, and he was unable to hide his despair from his daughter-in-law. His Naval friends had only been able to tell him what the media already knew. AS-28 was stuck some 200 metres underwater, trapped by fishing nets or other cables, and that so far the rescue efforts had been unsuccessful. But his anxiety was compounded by his experience with the Priz submersibles and with the Russian Navy. He knew that not a single one had ever been rescued, and that no means of rescue were available. What’s more, he’d calculated that – if they’d submerged with the standard equipment – there should be enough breathable air to last his son and the other six men only until around midnight on Saturday.
Yelena was starting to feel suffocated herself. She’d peered inside Slava’s Priz submersible soon after they’d met. She hadn’t gone inside, for the Russian Navy still clung to its superstitions and there remained a feeling that having a woman step on board was bad luck. She hadn’t wanted to anyway – it looked so claustrophobic. She could hardly believe that one man could squeeze inside there, let alone seven. Her chest felt tight at the thought of it.
She had no faith that the Navy would bring Slava back to her. She’d seen and heard too much. But how could she survive without him? She remembered when she first saw him, almost three years before, as though it was yesterday. She and some friends had been organising a party for a girlfriend and were on the hunt for nice men. It was around eight o’clock when they’d found him standing in a corridor with a bunch of other officers, smoking and passing cigarettes around between them. The girls had invited them along on the spot. Though Slava always denied it later, he’d proposed that same evening.
When Yelena called Slava’s sister, she got the same sense of inevitable doom. The Navy might be saying there was cause for optimism, but everybody that Yelena loved and trusted seemed to be saying something different. There was no hope, she knew. She would not be seeing Slava again. She had to get back to Zavoyko and confront this nightmare. Her friend agreed to drive her back, despite protesting that they would be better off waiting until morning.
Why hadn’t Slava just come home like he had said he wanted to? He’d called on Russian Navy Day, on 31 July. He’d just been awarded a merit certificate for ‘Good Settings Afloat’ by the Commander, and said that he was longing to join them at the dacha but that they’d been called out for a job again and couldn’t come.
Without him, she had nothing. They still didn’t have legal rights for the flat as they’d just moved in and the licence had not been issued to them yet. She was without a job and had the twins to look after with only 500 roubles (about £10) to her name.
Friday, 5 August
SS + 25 h 30 mins
Tatiana Lepetyukha let herself into the Orthodox church and knelt at her pew, the golden carving of the altar a dull glow in the dark interior. Evening mass was still half an hour away, but she began praying. She’d known something had gone wrong at precisely the moment at which it had happened. Her heart had told her. Now she needed to tune back into that same guidance.
When Father Yaroslav appeared, she talked to him about all that had happened. He counselled her to keep communicating with God and with her husband. Just as she was not alone in her prayers for the men, she must pray also for the other men aboard the craft under her husband’s command. She did so, fervently. After all, they might be in dire need of her prayers: she had no way of knowing if the others were all christened or not.
Tatiana had been fiercely religious ever since her father had died in 1992, the same year that her younger son, Roman, was born. She carried her faith proudly, and it helped her get through the long periods of absence from Valery. She now used that same strength to allow her to present a brave face with which to lead the other wives. She shuddered at the memory of Irina Lyadina, the wife of the Kursk’s commander, on television five years before, resolutely staying calm as all others around her collapsed. She sank her head and delved further into prayer that things would not turn out in the same horrific way as they had on the Kursk, but to be given the strength to act with similar leadership if they did.
Tatiana had been in the third year of her studies at Leningrad’s Medical Institute when she met the young Valery, who was attending the Leningrad Naval Academy. He’d waited until International Women’s Day, 1983, to propose. That was the happiest day of her life, but it had eventually led her to the opposite end of the country to Kamchatka, and – inexorably – to her desperate prayers in this church.
She’d not yet told the 13-year-old Roman about the danger to his father’s life. Unlike his elder brother Anton, a 22-year-old Naval officer, Roman wasn’t familiar with Navy service, and she didn’t want to cause him unnecessary worry. She did, however, call Anton back in St Petersburg, and told him what was happening. He was stoic, as she knew he would be. He had unflinching confidence in the service. When friends later heard his father was trapped and tried to give him comfort on the street, he laughed and told them that when his father came back ashore he would not understand why anyone was worried. More than anyone on the desolate peninsula of Kamchatka, it was her faraway son who was Tatiana’s strength.