A flock of ivory white seagulls swooped down from the blue heavens, and Igor watched the graceful birds as they soared only a few centimeters from the surface of the placid waters. Father Dmitri had always said that there was much to learn from the basic laws of nature.
And the older Igor got, the truer this advice seemed to be.
City life had dulled his inner vision. For too many years, his duty had kept him locked behind walls of concrete, glass, and steel. Shuffling papers was no way for a man to live. Fresh air and a pastoral setting was a tonic that was as necessary as bread and water. Back in his Moscow-based office, he could picture the ringing telephones and scurrying aides as they rushed to fulfill yet another order of the day. Only last week, Igor had been one of these pathetic creatures.
It had originally been his wife’s idea to escape the city. They usually used their seaside dacha only in summer.
But when Igor began complaining of spells of dizziness and shortness of breath, Svetlana insisted that they leave Moscow earlier than planned.
Several projects that he had been working on were about to reach their conclusions, and Igor was tempted to postpone this visit. But fortunately Svetlana would hear no such nonsense. As Chief of Staff of Komsomol hospital, she was used to getting her way, and in this case, her diagnosis had been a correct one.
Igor hadn’t felt this good in years. Since leaving the city his appetite had returned with a vengeance, and he was even starting to sleep through the night again. Their dacha was comfortable, and was located close enough to a village that they could walk to get supplies, but was far enough away from civilization to ensure seclusion. A recently installed telephone kept both of them in touch with their offices, and they made a mutual pledge to use it sparingly.
A gust of fresh air whipped in from the gulf, and Igor filled his lungs with its salty essence. Now that he was quickly approaching retirement age, his years of continued quality service to the Rodina were numbered.
Of course, there was still one very special pet project that he wanted to see to its conclusion before he stepped down from his position of power. It had taken forty years to bring it to its current level of maturity and was already beginning to pay handsome dividends.
The meeting he had scheduled for this afternoon would bring his life’s work one step closer to being fulfilled, That was why his Svetlana didn’t dare intercede as he issued the invitations to the two men who would be responsible for getting the ruling Politboro’s permission to implement the plan that he would soon present to them. If all went as planned, his visitors would be arriving shortly. Svetlana had agreed to prepare a special lunch for them, and afterward, he would make his presentation.
His one worry was how Stanislav Krasino would react to his carefully prepared briefing. The deputy secretary had never been a professional soldier and was known to be a bit soft on defense issues. His position as first assistant to the general secretary made him an all-important ally, and Igor would do his best to convince the bureaucrat of his plan’s merits.
His other guest was a different story Admiral of the Fleet Konstantin Markov was an old friend and coworker.
During the closing days of the Great War, he had been at Igor’s side when they captured the German submarine construction facility at Keil, and knew well the great secret that it held. In the years that followed, Konstantin had been an invaluable supporter, always there to lend a helping hand when one of Igor’s projects hit rough waters. As a member of the ruling Politburo, the Admiral of the Fleet was one of the most powerful men in the entire country, and he would certainly greet Igor’s presentation with open arms.
Anxious to get on with the afternoon’s activities, Igor took one last fond look at the surging waters of the gulf before turning around and beginning his way homeward.
The path that he was following was little more than a goat track. Its narrow, earthen meander twisted through a series of massive boulders and crossed a sandy peninsula pitted with several tide-pools. A stand of stunted pines lay on the other side of this peninsula, and as he began crossing through them, his thoughts returned in time to the day he completed basic training and was sent home on a brief 24-hour pass.
Though he would have preferred to spend this time wandering the shores of his childhood playground, Igor remained in the village with his father. For the first time ever, they went out drinking together. The tavern keeper was an ex-navy man himself, and kept them occupied with breathtaking stories of his exploits in World War I. It wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning that they drank their share of potato vodka and dizzily headed back for home. Igor had to leave early the next mo ming and he remembered viewing the tears in his father’s eyes as he kissed his son goodbye This emotional parting would be forever etched in Igor’s mind, for it was the last time he would ever see his father alive. The muscular, close-lipped blacksmith was to die a hero’s death soon afterward in a frozen foxhole, defending Moscow from the invading Nazi hordes.
With no other relatives to speak of, the navy was to become Igor’s adopted family. He applied himself to his duty wholeheartedly, and soon gained a reputation as a dependable, hardworking sailor. It was while on convoy duty in the Norwegian Sea that he would see his first action. This came to pass when a German U-boat put a torpedo into the side of the cargo ship that Igor had been stationed on as a gunner’s mate. The warhead exploded just at the water line, inside the main hold.
Their cargo of Canadian wheat caught fire, and as the crew struggled to control the damage, Igor remained at his post even as the rest of the gun crew panicked and prematurely abandoned ship. It took a maximum effort on his part, but he succeeded in carrying up the shells from the magazine, loading them into the breach, and then sighting the cannon on the hull of the gloating Uboat.
Unfortunately, all of his shots went errant, until the senior lieutenant saw his plight from the bridge and personally went down to assist him. The officer arrived just as the Germans were preparing to fire another torpedo salvo. He fine-tuned the sights on the sub’s exposed conning tower and signaled Igor to fire away.
Miraculously, the shell smacked into its target, and when the smoke cleared, the now crippled sub was seen limping off for safer waters. Igor received an Order of Lenin third class for his efforts. He also assured himself future advancement in the Soviet Navy.
By the war’s conclusion, he was a full lieutenant assigned to a Spetsnaz squadron whose mission was to capture as much German naval equipment as possible. It was while serving with the special forces that he first met Konstantin Markov, who held the rank of captain third rank.
Markov was an educated, cosmopolitan man of the world who had been born and raised in the port city of Odessa. As the Spetsnaz prepared to move in on the outskirts of Kiel, Igor was temporarily assigned to Markov’s unit. The two hit it off splendidly from the very beginning. For the city slicker, Igor was like a breath of fresh air, while the worldly Markov represented everything that the young Estonian ever wanted to be.
They were at each other’s side on the morning that the Spetsnaz overran the defenses of Kiel’s naval production facility. Together they burst into the cavernous warehouse on pier 13, and viewed the dozens of miniature tracked submersibles that the Germans were preparing to deploy in the Baltic and elsewhere. A frightened design technician who had been hiding in an adjoining office explained that this 35-ton amphibious midget was to be powered by a 25-horsepower motor, giving it a submerged speed of 8 knots to a depth of 21 meters. It’s Caterpillar tracks were incorporated to simplify its launch from special bases, while two torpedoes were to be carried alongside them. It was Markov who asked the cowering technician the name of this vessel.