I climbed down the narrow steps from the control tower at 2330 hours that Friday night, leaving the duty dispatcher and a communications sergeant in the greenhouse. The regiment had just completed a three-hour night flying exercise, the last training of a hard ten-day stretch, which had been marred by the poor flying weather that morning. Now the sky had cleared. A quarter-moon was rising over the snowy ridges to the east. The weather forecast for the morning called for thin, scattered ground fog, but no wind or overcast.
I would make my attempt in less than six hours, at dawn on Saturday, May 20. Appropriately Antonovich had just declared Saturday a holiday. At this moment he and most of the regiment’s pilots were in the sauna, drinking beer. I hoped they became very sleepy.
I strolled across to the concrete-block duty-alert building. Officially I had about seven more hours to serve before the section was relieved at 0700 Saturday.
A lanky Ukrainian sergeant sat at the operations alert desk. He hardly glanced up when I returned from the control tower. The first door off the hall was the officers’ dormitory. I peered inside, noting the double row of empty cots. As I had planned, my colleagues would be in the dayroom.
The door of the armory was made of steel and framed with heavy girders. Inside I touched the twin racks of AKM assault rifles and tested the padlock securing them. I opened the safe and deposited the bundle of secret intelligence folders the duty officer carried with him to the control tower during training operations.
In the hall I pulled shut the steel armory door and snapped the heavy padlock. Then I tapped the pocket of my flying jacket to feel the narrow file I would use later to jam this lock.
The officers’ dayroom was brightly lit, cheerful. The television and videocassette deck stood like an altar at the far end of the room, beyond the pilots’ roster blackboard. The two pilots on duty alert tonight were Major Vladimir Petrukhin and Captain Vladimir Voldeyev. They sat uncomfortably in easy chairs, dressed in their tight stratospheric pressure suits. Petrukhin nodded coolly as I entered the room. Voldeyev was a good fellow, not the world’s greatest fighter pilot, but a steady wingman. Typically he accepted the drudge work. Tonight he was laboring diligently on the next week’s flight schedule.
Petrukhin lounged in his chair, leafing through a sports magazine with colorful pictures. The three maintenance officers were grouped before the television, watching the late edition of Vremya from Moscow. Judging from the clean tea glasses around the electric stainless-steel samovar, they had just come back from helping secure the regiment’s aircraft for the weekend. Now they were waiting for the Friday night broadcast ofVzglyad, “Glance,” the new investigative show that was scheduled to report on the findings of the official investigation of the Tbilisi massacre.
“Zuyev,” Dmitri Karpov, the maintenance captain, called, seeing me enter, “where the hell are the videos? You promised something new tonight.”
I grinned, held up my empty hands, and shook my head. “Be patient,” I answered. “I just got out of the tower.”
Following my plan that week, I had bent regulations to rent another new Western movie from Malhaz. The duty section had already been treated to Sweet Dreams and a sexy French farce about a bigamist airline pilot. “I’ll go fetch the new movie as soon as Colonel Antonovich is in the sauna,” I added.
The two officers closest to the television groaned in unison. The news from Moscow had just ended with an announcement that Vzglyad had been canceled on the orders of the Central Committee, pending the “completion” of the Tbilisi investigation.
“Shitmouths!” Karpov cursed. “Glasnost, unlike turds, does not seem to float across the Moscow River.”
I looked at my watch. “I’ll go get us something decent to watch.”
“Not too decent,” Voldeyev called.
When I came back through the doorway of the duty-alert dayroom carrying the cake, the men cheered. This was a much better treat than a video. I cleared a place on the samovar table and sliced the cake into generous pieces. But I kept my eye on the right-hand comer, where I had placed the largest ripe strawberry. Before I invited the men to help themselves I took the untainted wedge for myself.
Major Sergei Stupnikov came in to check the flight schedule with Lieutenant Voldeyev. I could see the major had drunk a few beers in the sauna. His face was flushed, and his normal hearty laugh was boisterous. He immediately saw the cake.
“Where did that come from?” he shouted.
“A very pretty woman made it,” I answered. I hoped the men in the section would gobble up my gift before Stupnikov took a piece.
Stupnikov stood near the samovar table, shaking his head in admiration. “This is one beautiful cake,” he said. “Some lucky guy must be keeping a woman very happy to get a cake like this. Who is he?”
I forced myself to grin at my friend. “You know him very well,” I said.
He roared with laughter, took his copy of the flight schedule, and strode out of the room. A moment later I heard his old GAZ rattle away.
I smacked my lips loudly as I ate my small wedge of cake, then turned to stare out the window at the dark runway. The other officers were grouped around the samovar table, scooping up hunks of cake, laughing and talking. I had put aside twelve pieces for the soldiers in the guardroom. Hopefully they’d be fair and the whole section would eat a piece, including the men about to rotate the apron guard at 0400.
But there were still several pieces on the table. Petrukhin remained in his easy chair, now reading the new issue of Red Star.
“Comrade Major,” I called formally, “you don’t want to miss your cake.”
He looked up coolly, then smiled. “No, thank you,” he said, “but I really don’t care for any.”
My throat went tight and I felt my heart begin to thud. Petrukhin was a notoriously light sleeper. Unless he ate some of the cake, he’d be wide awake when I took off. And if I had to engage him in a dogfight, I would lose precious time. I could see my careful plan unraveling.
“These strawberries are fresh, Major,” I said. “There’s real butter in the frosting.”
Petrukhin barely looked up from his newspaper. “Thanks, but no,” was all he said.
Vladimir Voldeyev was already on his second piece. He would be no problem in an hour or so. But Petrukhin seemed unmoved by the tempting offer. In desperation, I tried to shame him into taking a piece. “Surely you’re not on a diet?”
Petrukhin folded the newspaper and lay it on the knee of his pressure suit. He stared at me for a moment, then smiled sheepishly. “Yes,” he said, “as a matter of fact, I am. You other fellows take my share.”
Before I could reply, Captain Karpov was smacking down his second piece. I took my tea glass and returned to the window. Petrukhin’s refusal to eat was disturbing. I knew he loved sweets. Even on a diet he would have accepted a morsel just for taste. I felt a cold sagging inside. Petrukhin was still a loyal Communist. The Osobists had brought him into their confidence. They had been following me for weeks. They had seen me buy the neozepam and interrogated all the pharmacists. They knew every detail of my plan. It was still not too late to abort. I had not yet reached the point of no return.