Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt For Red October (26 page)

At this point Sablin has every right to be paranoid, but he wants to prevent someone trying to find the recording of his speech and destroy it.

Finally, he sends men from each division to watch over their own equipment. Among them are several from Gindin’s gas turbine division who have as much enthusiasm for the project as everyone else.

“No matter what happens, you must keep in control of the engine room,” Sablin tells the kids who are by this time jumping all over the place.

They want to tell their stories about how rotten things are at home and how once they get back everything will be better.

“Of course life will get better once we have elected some proper leaders,” Sablin assures them. “But for now no one gets to the engines unless I give the order.”

“Yes, sir,” they chorus.

“Once everything is secure down there, I want you to get the engines ready to start on an instants notice. Can you do this?”

One of them nods. “Yes, of course. Our lieutenant is a good man; he taught us—” The kid stops in mid-sentence, a little embarrassed by the betrayal of an officer he actually admires.

“I understand,” Sablin says. “None of them will come to any harm. Anyway, this is just as good for them as it is for us.”

The embarrassment passes. They’re eager to begin.

“As soon as you’re ready, call me, or send a runner,” Sablin tells them. “Now go, and be careful.”

Sablin watches them with real affection as they scurry belowdecks to carry out his orders. He is alone for just that moment, and perhaps he listens to the sounds of the
Storozhevoy.
His ship now. An instrument, like the
Potemkin,
for a nation-changing revolution.

It’s chilly up on deck, in the open, and the fog has thickened. He might think that he is alone at this point in time. Not one person aboard this ship has any real idea what he is trying to do for them, for the Rodina. Nor, he supposes, will they understand what has happened even after it is all over with and the revolution has come and gone. Only afterward, when their lives have become materially better, might they stop from time to time to think of what part they played this evening.

When that happens they will feel proud. Sablin is utterly convinced of it, and he is filled with a holy zeal.

He takes a quick turn around the decks to make sure that everything is in order, then ducks through a mid-ship hatch and heads forward to his cabin. He sincerely hopes that when the time is right Potulniy will hear him out with an open mind. He wants to apologize to the captain for the rough treatment. Sablin has to keep reminding himself that under the circumstances there was no other way. Potulniy either had to be placed under arrest or had to be killed, and Sablin will make sure the captain understands just how humanely he was treated.

A crewman, whose name Sablin can’t remember, is standing guard in the corridor. He snaps to attention as Sablin comes around the corner. It’s obvious that the crewman is almost as frightened as he is excited. He’s had a little time to think about the situation that he and the others have gotten themselves into with their captain locked up and their
zampolxt
in charge.

“How’s it going, Seaman?” Sablin asks kindly. “No trouble here?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s good. Very good. Just keep a sharp eye.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy says. He might seem a little less tense now. After all, Sablin is their political officer. Who would know better than such a man?

Sablin enters his cabin and goes directly to his wall safe, where he’s locked the reel of tape on which he recorded his speech. But before he can retrieve it, he has another idea. He looks at his wristwatch. It is coming up on nine; the men from the midshipmen’s dining hall who voted with the black backgammon pieces have been locked belowdecks for nearly two hours. Maybe some of them have had a change of heart.

He sincerely hopes so. It would be better if he had all of the officers behind him.

“Stay here,” he tells the seaman at his door, and he heads down the corridor and below to the compartment.

The two armed sailors guarding the hatch stiffen to attention when Sablin comes around the corner.

“How’s it going?” he asks. “Are they giving you any trouble?”

“They were raising some hell to start with,” one of the kids reports. “But they finally shut their traps.”

“We made sure of it, sir,” the other sailor says.

“Open up.”

“Sir?”

“Open the hatch; I want to talk to them,” Sablin says. Discipline is already starting to get a little ragged. The sailors are taking time responding to clear orders. He expected it, but not so soon. Once they get under way in the morning he hopes moving into action will calm them down.

One of the sailors opens the hatch, and Sablin steps up, though he does not go inside. The nine men are looking at him. Some of them are leaning against the work bench; others are seated on the floor or on the two chairs. Gindin is standing in the doorway to the other section of the compartment.

“Is everything okay in here?” Sablin asks. The question sounds ridiculous even in his ears.

No one says a thing.

“It’s twenty-one hundred hours. Would you like some tea?”

Vinogradov steps forward. “Stick it up your ass!”

Sablin rears back. “I don’t mean to offer you any harm, or—”

“Get out of here before we tear you apart!” one of the other officers shouts.

“Traitor!”

“Bastard!”

Sablin looks to Gindin. He’d sincerely hoped at least Boris would have changed his mind by now. A man such as Boris should understand the real score, even if the others didn’t. But Gindin’s expression is stony.

“You’ll get us all killed,” Kuzmin says. “You’d better get out of here.”

Sablin steps back and slams the door.

The hatch is dogged with an audible clang.

“You dumb bastards!” Gindin shouts. He can’t help himself, but he is overcome with a sudden rage. It doesn’t matter that he’s outranked by Captain Lieutenant Proshutinsky, and Senior Lieutenants Smirnov and Vinogradov; what they’ve just done is nothing short of insane.

“That’s enough, mister,” Proshutinsky warns.

“Do you understand what’s just happened, sir?”

“You’re being insubordinate.”

Gindin turns to the others. “Don’t you get it?” he demands. He thinks that he’s going insane. Or maybe the others are crazy.

“What are you talking about, Boris?” Kuzmin asks. “Sablin is a traitor. What, are we supposed to treat him like a tsar? He’s going to get us killed.”

“Exactly,” Gindin agrees. “Unless we can somehow get out of here and stop him.”

“That’s the point—,” Kuzmin starts to say, but then he realizes what
Gindin is trying to tell them. Kuzmin averts his eyes. “Shit,” he says.
“Pizdec.”

The other officers aren’t sure.

“We had a chance when Captain Sablin had the hatch open,” Gindin explains. “We could have rushed him and the guards. We might have been able to get out of here and grab their weapons.”

The officers are silent for a long time, each with his own dark thoughts. Gindin is thinking about his own vote. If he had voted with the white backgammon piece, pretending to go along with Sablin, he would be free right now, with the possibility of doing something to stop the insanity.

Maybe that was Firsovs thinking.

Right now all Gindin and the others have is hope.

If he cares to admit it to himself, Sablin is shaken by the reaction to his offer of a little humanity. It was just some tea, after all, not some political statement. On the way back to his cabin he can’t help but think about the letter he sent to his wife, Nina. In it he’d outlined his plan and his reasons for going through with the mutiny, but he never expected the kind of anger he got from his own officers.

He believes that given the chance Gindin and the others might have actually done him bodily harm. He shakes his head. The Kremlin would not be amused when they found out what was going on. But his own officers?

If he couldn’t explain the necessity for what he was doing to Gindin and the others, how could he explain it to the Russian people? He was starting to get seriously worried.

When he reaches his cabin the young sailor standing guard can’t help but notice that something is wrong.

“How’s it going?” The kid uses Sablin’s own words back at him.

Sablin looks up and manages a slight smile. “No problems,” he
says. “It’s going to be a quiet night. We’ll get under way first thing in the morning with the rest of the fleet.”

“Yes, sir.”

Inside, Sablin once again walks over to his safe, but he just stands there. An almost overwhelming lethargy may have overcome him, as he realizes perhaps for the first time the enormity of the thing that he has set in motion. All of his life he has been a good Communist. Despite his student letter to Khrushchev, which very nearly derailed his career, he has been the textbook-perfect
zampolit.
Almost like a Baptist minister, he has tended to his flock, guiding them through the minefields of understanding, appreciating, and believing in the system they were born into.

Now he’s not so sure.

He has reached down to twist the dial for the first number in the combination when he is distracted by a commotion in the corridor. He looks up as someone pounds on the door.

“Captain Sablin!” they are shouting.

In three steps Sablin is across the cabin and he flings open his door. The sailor who has been standing guard has been joined by another sailor, Seaman Aleksei Sakhnevich, who is red faced and all out of breath.

Sablin’s heart is in his throat. “What’s happened?”

“It’s Lieutenant Stepanov and some others in his cabin! They’re talking about freeing the captain and coming to arrest you!”

It’s as if Sablin has stuck his finger in a light socket. “How do you know this?” he demands.

“They’re in the lieutenant’s cabin and the door is half-open! I heard them talking when I walked past!”

“Are you sure?”

“They’ve got guns.”

“Stay here,” Sablin tells the sailor guarding his cabin. “You, come with me,” he tells Sakhnevich, and they race down the corridor.

Lieutenant Stepanov was one of the officers who hadn’t reported
for the meeting in the midshipmen’s dining hall. He was on duty, and Sablin had planned on talking with him and the few others, all of them warrant officers, who’d also been aboard ship but absent later this evening. What could a handful of officers do to interfere with the rest of the ship?

At the lieutenant’s cabin, Sablin pulls out his Makarov pistol, kicks open the door, and bursts inside, Sakhnevich holding back in the corridor.

It’s Lieutenant Stepanov and Warrant Officers Kovalchenkov and Saitov, and they all have pistols. They look up in alarm as their
zampolit,
brandishing a gun, comes through the doorway.

“What’s the meaning of this meeting?” Sablin cries, and his words sound stupid even in his own ears.

Stepanov steps back, raises his pistol, and thumbs the safety catch to the off position. “You’re a traitor!” he shouts.

“I’m trying to help!” Sablin pleads. “Most of the officers and all the sailors are with me! We have to do this!” He is pointing his pistol in the general direction of Stepanov and the others, but he’s neglected to switch the safety off. His weapon is not ready to fire.

“It doesn’t matter, because this mutiny will soon be over,” one of the warrant officers blurts out.

“What are you talking about? We’re getting out of here in the morning, and I’m going a make a broadcast to the people. It’ll be up to them to decide who is right.”

“This ship is going nowhere under your command!” one of the others shouts. He, too, has raised his pistol and is pointing it directly at Sablin’s chest. His face is white, but whether it’s from rage or fear even he doesn’t know for sure.

The four men are facing each other, like gunfighters at the OK Corral. All it will take is for one man to make a mistake and blood will be shed in this tiny compartment.

“I order you to put down your weapons,” Sablin tells them in a
measured voice. He is catching his second wind. Whatever fate is in store for him, he feels the first test is now.

“No,” Lieutenant Stepanov replies coolly. “We’re all going to wait here until help arrives. Then you will be arrested and the captain will be set free.” He shakes his head. “Thank God you weren’t dumb enough to kill him!”

“There is no help coming—”

“Yes, there is!” Kovalchenkov shouts. “Lieutenant Firsov is leaving the ship—”

“Shut up, you stupid fool!” Stepanov cries.

Sablin is rocked back on his heels. All of his planning, everything he has worked for, is disappearing before his eyes.

He turns to see if Sakhnevich is still there, but the corridor is empty. Sablin’s heart sinks even lower.

“Grab him!” Stepanov shouts, and suddenly Sablin is rushed, hands are plucking at his sleeves, someone is trying to take the pistol out of his hand, and he is shoved up against the bulkhead, his head banging against the steel plating.

Sablin manages to break free for an instant and he raises his pistol, meaning to fire a warning shot overhead, but Seaman Sakhnevich is suddenly crowding into the cabin with three other young sailors.

Stepanov and the warrant officers are armed, but not one shot is fired as the sailors roughly pull and shove them away and manage to drag their
zampolit
out into the corridor and slam the door.

One of the sailors produces a key and locks the door from the outside. There’ll be no escape for the three officers now. The
Storozhevoy
is a sturdy Russian warship; there’ll be no shooting their way out for the three officers.

Sablin’s heart, which has been pounding practically out of his chest, is beginning to slow down as he catches his breath.

Firsov.

The name crystallizes in Sablin’s mind.

There’d been absolutely no doubt which way Firsov had voted. The young senior lieutenant of the electrical division had dropped a white backgammon piece into the basket. He was
for
the mutiny. He had grasped perfectly what Sablin was trying to do.