Petrov also announced that the rescuers had managed to shift the stricken Priz submersible 30 metres from the accident site using grappling hooks dragged from vessels searching the area. There was no way that the journalists could know that the hooks had yet to snag the submersible at all, let alone drag it anywhere. Russian rescue planes were on their way, he added, although they would never arrive. But what everyone really wanted to hear was how long the sailors could survive on the air supplies that they had on the seabed. Here Petrov continued the long and distressing sequence of mis-information that would keep the families on tenterhooks for the next three days, as estimates of remaining air in official press releases swung between two and 48 hours.
Because of the building media frenzy, Vladimir Kuroyedov, head of the Russian Federation Navy, was on high alert. He’d recently suffered a string of embarrassing incidents. In January 2004, he’d invited President Putin on to a Typhoon-class nuclear submarine to witness two ballistic missile launches from Delta IV-class subs. Television news crews had been on board, cameras rolling, to record the great event. But the launch time came and went with no action, and for 20 minutes they waited, Putin seething. Both launches had failed entirely.
Then, just last month, the day before the Navy Day celebrations on 26 July, Kuroyedov had suffered the embarrassment of having the lead ship in their festival parade – the Neukrotimy (‘Indomitable’) patrol boat – sink right in the middle of St Petersburg. Officials had planned to demonstrate the blowing up of a dummy mine during the traditional Sunday ceremony. The device had 30 kg of TNT inside, less than the amount packed in a normal mine but still enough to make a splash that would to reach the spectators on the river bank. The ship had sailed up the River Neva, which cuts through the city, to prepare for the big event, but as the sailors were laying the dummy mine the current swept it up against the vessel’s hull, where it exploded with enough force to rupture a weld and send water flooding into the engine room. The vessel was promptly retired from the line-up.
With such a catalogue of recent humiliations, the last thing Kuroyedov needed was something else to go wrong.
Friday, 5 August/Saturday, 6 August
SS + 39 h
Thick in the chaos of Moscow’s Friday afternoon traffic, Captain Jon Holloway glanced at his watch for the fifth time that minute. The embassy’s black Volvo wasn’t even moving and he needed to be at the airport. He wasn’t just late for the flight – he didn’t even have a ticket yet. As soon as he’d taken Admiral Avdoshin’s hint that the Royal Navy’s offer would be accepted, he’d asked the office to get him on a plane to Petropavlosk. The reply had come back that the flight was now full.
Holloway knew that the mission might depend on his ability to smooth the communications between the Russians and his own people, but in order to help he had to be there. He needed to be in Petropavlovsk to meet the UK rescue team, and this evening’s Aeroflot flight was the only way of making it. Every time he closed his eyes he saw an image of the business class cabin, newly filled with journalists hungry to broadcast the drama and the attempted rescue – a rescue that might fail for the lack of a diplomatic middleman. His one hope of getting the flight had been to reach the airport early and try to talk his way on board, but his day had become an endless rolling barrage of diplomatic notes arranging flight clearances, visa facilitations, and requests for personnel and equipment. And now, finally on his way to the airport, the traffic. It was Friday night, and the whole of Moscow, it seemed, was decamping to its dachas.
With only an hour and ten minutes before the flight was due to depart, Holloway’s car pulled into Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. Victor, the small, moustached driver who’d been with the embassy since the end of the Cold War, drove past the turning for the flashy international departures building and turned towards the 1970s concrete of the domestic terminal instead. Dumping the diplomatic car in a loading bay, Holloway and Victor hurried upstairs to the Aeroflot ticket office, easily identified by the long queue that stretched out of the door and along the corridor.
Holloway marched straight to the door and up to the desk, where a harassed-looking woman was dealing with some distraught customers. He barged the queue, ignoring the grumbling and resentful stares. There were no objections. In a curious mix of Old Soviet and New Russian mentalities, the very fact that someone was trying to barge a queue was usually assumed to mean that the person had the authority to do so.
‘Dyevyshka,’ Holloway said, interrupting with the formal address, ‘Girl’, while passing his dark pink diplomatic card in front of her. She glanced down at the photograph and the Russian inscription saying the bearer was a diplomat and must be accorded every assistance.
‘I must have a ticket for the flight to Kamchatka. The British Navy is assisting in the rescue operation of a submarine. I must be there to act as liaison.’ A flicker of recognition passed behind the clerk’s eyes. The news had been all over Russian television all day, though Holloway had only had a chance to glimpse the reports in passing.
The lady raised her eyebrows, and turned to her computer, her shoulders already shrugging. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I think the flight is full.’ A few seconds later she nodded. ‘There are no more seats, I’m afraid.’
‘I understand that. But seven Russian sailors are trapped on the seabed and are running out of air. You have to let me go and help them.’
The lady behind the desk looked at him for a moment, then shook her head again. There were no more seats, she insisted. The flight was full, but there was another one in the morning. Holloway did not budge, and repeated the situation in stronger terms. He hadn’t mentioned the Kursk, but the memory hung in the collective Russian unconscious and he was banking on it to convince her to pull some strings.
She began checking her computer again, and Captain Holloway felt the knot in his stomach loosen a fraction. He knew that when an Aeroflot flight was full it didn’t necessarily mean all the seats were taken. Although they may have stopped selling tickets to the general public, a few places would be kept back for emergency flights by state officials.
Finally the lady looked up.
‘Well, sir, I have in fact found you something,’ she said. She scribbled a message on a scrap of paper. ‘You must go immediately downstairs to the cashier to pay.’ She pushed the note over to Holloway, and turned to the other customers who were already pressing in behind him.
As Captain Holloway hurried towards departures, Dmitriy Podkapayev of the Russian Navy’s Search and Rescue service was pacing the hall in front of the gate. He’d been travelling all day, making his way from the Scientific Research Institute in St Petersburg, home to the deep sea diving and rescue unit at which he was based. Beneath a squall of white-blond hair, his normally jovial face was tense. He’d been among the crew of one of the Priz submersibles that had tried to mate with the ninth compartment of the Kursk, where the survivors had clung to life for perhaps three days after the explosion. If they’d succeeded, a few of the crewmen might have still been alive. But for some reason they’d been unable to lock on to the hatch – either the seal was somehow obstructed by damage, or weak batteries on the submersible cut short their attempts.