This brave and loyal officer had flown several combat tours in Afghanistan. For years, he and his family had endured the harsh existence of primitive, isolated bases in the Far East and Central Asia. All those years he had flown, in good weather and bad, in blizzards, dust storms, and frozen fog. And the cruel physics of high-performance flight had inevitably taken a toll. The connective tissue of his abdomen was so distended that he had to cinch up his G-suit as tightly as a weight-lifter’s belt during his entire last year on flight status.
He was now receiving his final medical examinations before retirement. The standard pension for this officer’s long service to the Socialist Motherland would be 250 rubles a month. Today, in Moscow, a dinner in a cooperative restaurant costs 100, a decent overcoat, over 1,000. If he was very lucky, he would be retired with a “generous” disability bonus: an additional 50 rubles per month. In either case, the reward for his long and courageous service was poverty. Depending on his connections, he might also be fortunate enough to be granted a lease on a one-room apartment in a shoddy high-rise block of a microrayon near some reasonably prosperous city. But a lieutenant colonel Sniper pilot with a good combat record was probably not so politically astute as to have secured such luxurious retirement housing.
One of Lieutenant Colonel Frolov’s telephones rang, the muted double ring of the hospital’s internal switchboard. “Yes, good morning,” he said cheerfully, reaching for a small notepad. The person at the other end spoke for almost a minute, and I watch Frolov writing a neat, two-column list on the pad. The caller was from the Voyentorg, the military supply exchange that served all branches of the Soviet armed services.
But the Voyentorg in Moscow’s Central Aviation Hospital was clearly different from that in a motor rifle regiment in some forlorn garrison on the Mongolian border. Out there the troops might be lucky to find rusty razor blades one month and tins of bitter peach jam another. Supplies at the military exchange at my own base in Georgia had become increasingly scarce in recent months. Now officers’ wives had to wait in line for hours each week to buy their subsidized sugar and obtain the milk ration for their children. And when they did receive their supplies, their cabbage was often rotten and the milk sour.
But Frolov was not writing a list of sour milk. The column on the right side of his pad was headed, “Package with Salmon,” the other, “Package with Caviar,” the Voyentorg’s weekly offering to the hospital’s nomenklatura. From what I could read on his lists, both packages included East German salami, Hungarian frozen chicken and fruit compote, coffee from Africa, Darjeeling tea, chocolate candy, and sweet biscuits. The main difference was in the “luxury” item, smoked salmon from the Siberian Pacific or two hundred grams of Caspian sevruga caviar. In reality, of course, every item on both lists was a luxury far beyond attainment by all but a few of the privileged.
Frolov’s careful deliberation showed me he was human, after all. Maybe I had a potential ally in him. And I certainly was going to need all the influential allies I could find to win my discharge.
Only the day before here at the hospital, I had seen how an officer who did not have connections was treated. Major Beryozovoy was a middle-aged MiG-23 pilot, whom I had first met at Gudauta on the Black Sea. This poor old fellow was a “squeezed lemon” if ever there was one. He had given his all to the State. Now he had only two years remaining before retirement and wanted desperately to stay on the Black Sea. His fourteen-year-old son, Misha, was asthmatic and could not tolerate the long northern winters. The boy had almost died the year before on a visit to the Ukraine. Now the Air Force intended to transfer the major to the Transbaikal Military District deep in Siberia. So far he had been able to obtain a medical waiver. The major was a brave and honest Soviet soldier. Not a politician.
I had recently learned just how powerful the politically well connected rear-echelon bureaucrats were. My friend Valery, a decorated veteran of almost four years in Afghanistan, where he had served as a forward air-ground controller in the combat zone, confronted a typical staff-rat personnel officer. This arrogant idiot told Valery, “You may well be a hero of Afghanistan, but I have more power.” He held up a pencil in one hand, an eraser in the other. “Today,” he continued, pointing to a pilots’ personnel roster, “Ivanov is in Moscow and Siderov is in Siberia.” He erased the two names and reversed their assignments. “Tomorrow, things are different. That is my power.”
“Then it will be the Package with Caviar,” Lieutenant Colonel Frolov finally said. “Of course, I would like to exchange the salami for a double portion of coffee.”
I couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but I saw Frolov neatly cross out the salami and write “2” beside coffee on the caviar list. Frolov was proving himself astute. Caviar was doubly valuable, not only as a luxury item for barter here in Moscow but also as one of the few available Soviet commodities that could be sold for hard currency, valuta. Most caviar was exported, of course, but enough was doled out to the nomenklatura to help meet their hard-currency needs. Such transactions kept their children in Western clothes and their wives in French silk scarves and designer sunglasses.
At a higher level, the unofficial benefits of office increased with rank, as did ostentation. Raisa Gorbachev’s escapades with her American Express credit card were well known, thanks to glasnost. But another scandal was emerging about the Gorbachevs’ new luxury holiday villa in the Crimea. Apparently Raisa-herself a professor of Marxism-Leninism-had not been pleased with the dark marble entrance staircase. She had ordered it demolished and replaced with snow-white marble.
Frolov politely thanked the Voyentorg and replaced the telephone receiver. “Excuse me, Alexander Mikhailovich,” he said with an almost conspiratorial smile. “My son is due to take his eight-form foreign language examinations soon. We are planning a small party for him.”
More likely the “small party” would be a small prezant of Caspian caviar to the chairman of the examination board. Or perhaps Frolov could arrange a prescription for a hard-to-find medication needed by that chairman’s ailing mother. The possibilities were limitless within the network of influence and privilege bounded by Moscow’s Ring Highway. For men like Frolov, many doors were open. It was well known among my fellow pilots that doctors in this hospital would barter treatment with the German ultrasonic kidney-stone machine in the basement for access to good restaurants or entry to Beryozka hard-currency stores. Smaller favors were arranged with the discreet presentation of an appropriate prezant. Among the elite of Moscow, Kiev, Gorkiy, or a dozen other Soviet cities, influence and wealth were interchangeable.
There was an expression known to every Soviet citizen above the age often: Rukha ruku moyet, “One hand washes the other.” The opulence of this hospital’s Voyentorg was clear proof that this system was flourishing, despite all the sanctimonious nonsense about glasnost and perestroika.
Frolov was now neatly sorting the test pages and graph. He folded his fine, white hands precisely on the desk and smiled.
“Well, Comrade Lieutenant Colonel,” I said, as sincerely as I could, “how are my test results?”
Frolov shook his head. “We have some problems here, Captain Zuyev.” In his precise manner, Frolov lifted the chart with the plotted test results. “I am convinced these results are not valid.” He tapped the red peaks on the graph paper with the tip of an expensive imported pen. “These answers go far beyond the norms. Are you absolutely certain you read the questions carefully?”