Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt For Red October (33 page)

“No one is sure, Admiral,” Markin whispers. “But it’s possible that a mutiny may be in progress aboard one of our ships in the Baltic Fleet.”

Gorshkov sits up in bed, and by the time he tosses the covers aside and gets to his feet Markin is there with his robe and slippers.

“Would you like tea?”

“Yes,” the admiral says, and he marches out of his bedroom, down a long corridor, through a glassed-in unheated porch to his office at the back of the house. During the day it looks down a wooded slope to a small stream from which he has pulled some trout in happier times.

Mutiny. Not in his navy!

He switches on the desk light and telephones Naval Headquarters. The duty officer, a young lieutenant, answers on the first ring.

“What’s going on?” Gorshkov demands. He doesn’t bother to identify himself. It’s up to his people to recognize his voice.

The lieutenant is obviously flustered, but it is to his credit that he maintains his composure. He’s reporting directly now to arguably the third most important man in the Soviet Union behind Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and Minister of Defense Andrei Grechko.

“Admiral, from what I have been able to piece together so far, a mutiny may be in progress aboard the antisubmarine vessel
Storozhevoy.
Apparently the
zampolit
enlisted the aid of several officers and a portion of the enlisted crew, arrested the captain, took over the ship, and left their parade formation mooring in Riga.”

Gorshkov closes his eyes for just a moment. This is every commanders worst nightmare. An organization,
any
organization, depends on an adherence to a chain of command. When that breaks down, only chaos can result. And when the breakdown occurs within a military unit, a heavily armed military unit, the chaos can turn deadly unless it is stopped.

Markin is there, unobtrusively, with a glass of tea in a filigreed silver holder, which he places on the desk at the admiral’s hand. The lieutenant lights a cigarette from a box on the desk and perches it delicately on the edge of a lage marble ashtray, a gift from the president of North Korea. Then Markin leaves, softly closing the door.

“How does this information come to us?” the admiral asks. “Tell me everything.” He will have to brief Grechko and Brezhnev, but first he needs answers.

“We’re not entirely certain that all the data is accurate, Admiral, but we’re told that a senior lieutenant from the
Storozhevoy
jumped ship around twenty-four hundred hours and reported to the captain of an Alpha submarine that his
zampolit
had mutinied.”

“Where is that officer at this moment?”

“The KGB has him in Riga.”

“What about the submarine captain?”

“He’s still aboard his boat, I think,” the duty officer says, though he’s obviously not sure. “Shall I have him arrested?”

“Not yet,” Gorshkov says. “What happened next?”

“The officer was taken ashore, where he told his story to the officer on duty, who in turn reported to the the port security people of Brigade Seventy-eight. It took a half hour for the officer’s report to be confirmed before the harbormaster was informed.”

Gorshkov closes his eyes for a second. “God in heaven,” he mutters. Was the system so bad that it created stupid men who were slow and made stupid decisions? Or were the men so bad that they had created the system? But he knew that every navy was the same, to one degree or another.

“Continue.”

“The harbormaster apparently telephoned the Riga KGB
Rezident,
who sent a man down to the dock to interview the officer, and to make sure that this wasn’t a hoax. Maybe the officer was drunk, or had gone
samovolka.”

Brezhnev would need to be impressed, but Minister of Defense Grechko would want all the facts.

“How long did this take?”

“From what I gather, about one hour from the time the KGB
Rezident
was—”

“What was the upshot of his investigation?”

“Whether or not the officer was telling the truth is yet to be determined, but it has been confirmed that the
Storozhevoy
sailed without orders and in the process collided with his mooring buoy and very nearly succeeded in running down a gasoline tanker.”

“Then what?”

“The ship is presumably still sailing north toward the gulf—”

“How did this come to headquarters, Lieutenant?”

“From Lubyanka, sir,” the duty officer says. “The Riga KGB
Rezident
telephoned his boss here in Moscow, who in turn telephoned us.”

Gorshkov is about to compliment the lieutenant for acting so quickly, but the duty officer isn’t finished.

“Naturally I didn’t want to disturb the admiral with hearsay, so I conducted my own investigation.”

“Which took one hour?”

“No, sir. Forty-five minutes. And
then
I made the call.”

“The
Storozhevoy’s
crew has mutinied and the ship is gone?”

“Yes, sir,” the young duty officer says.

Once again Gorshkov closes his eyes for a second. He wants to laugh, but he cannot. If the crew of a Soviet warship has mutinied, men will die.

“Listen to me, Lieutenant, and listen very carefully,” Gorshkov says.

“Sir.”

“First, I want a reconnaissance aircraft sent to locate the
Storozhevoy.
When the ship has been found, no action is to be taken against him, but I must be personally informed. Immediately. Not one hour later.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want the captains of every ship and boat at anchor in Riga to be awakened and ordered to prepare to get under way within the hour on my orders.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You will personally see to it that nothing of this incident is broadcast to anyone else for any reason. No matter who that might be. Do you understand that order?”

“Yes, sir,” the duty officer says unhappily. Like a lot of other people this morning, he is caught between a rock and a hard place and he knows it.

“Now, move it, Lieutenant,” Gorshkov says, and he slams down the telephone.

Markin appears at the door. “Will we be dressing in full uniform or civilian attire with medals this morning, sir?”

“A civilian suit. No medals.”

A light northwest wind is blowing from the open gulf as the
Storozhevoy
passes the last sea buoy marking the river channel. The fog, which had cleared for a little while, thickens again. Stepping out onto the starboard wing, Sablin can look straight up and see stars, but dead ahead the ship’s bows are only avague outline.

Continuing at this speed out into the gulf blind is tantamount to suicide. It’ll be dawn in a few hours, but in the meantime if the
Storozhevoy,
with his sharply flaring, heavily armored bows, collides with another ship, there will be injuries and deaths. That is a certain fact.

Sablin’s original plan was to sail out almost due west until they cleared Saaremaa and Hiiumaa islands before shaping a course north and than back east to the narrow opening into the Gulf of Finland and from there continuing the four hundred kilometers to Leningrad, where he would broadcast his tape-recorded speech directly to the Soviet people.

But Firsov has jumped ship and has undoubtedly told the Riga
harbormaster about the mutiny. The word will have reached Moscow by now and it will not be long until someone comes after them.

Sablin takes another look up at the stars, then steps back into the enclosed bridge. The two men look up, trying to gauge from the expression on his face how things are going. But he’s holding himself in check, making sure he does not show his uncertainity to his men.

“Has anyone tried to contact us by radio?”

Their navigation radar is still off, so Seaman Maksimenko has nothing to do except study the paper charts and listen for radio messages. He shakes his head. “Nothing, sir.”

“If they try to contact us, don’t answer. No matter what is said, don’t answer.”

Maksimenko and Petty Officer Soloviev are alarmed.

“Are you leaving us?” Maksimenko asks.

“Just for a minute or two,” Sablin says. “I need to get something from my cabin. If anything comes up, page me on the 1MC.”

“But, Captain, we are sailing blind,” Soloviev says from the helm. “We passed the last sea buoy, and now I am running only on the compass and the fathometer.”

The only two pieces of information that the helmsman can rely on at this point are the compass, which shows him that they are heading just slightly west of north, and the fathometer, which shows the depth of the water and that will warn them if they get too close to land. Before they can make their turn to the west to get past Saaremaa Island they must reach Kolkasrags, which is the Latvian headland at the northwesternmost point of the Gulf of Riga. It’s more than two hundred kilometers away. It will take another six or seven hours before they get there.

Sablin is thinking at the speed of light. They have passed their first two serious hurdles, taking over the ship and making it downriver to the gulf. They can do this if no one loses his head.

“You may turn on the radar set every fifteen minutes, but only long enough to make sure we’re not on a collision course with any other ship.”

Soloviev is relieved. “Thank you, sir.”

If anyone is looking for them, the moment their radar starts emitting, the game will be up. Sablin just needs his luck to hold a little while longer.

“And don’t aswer the radio, no matter who it is,” he warns.

Soloviev and Maksimenko nod their agreement, and Sablin leaves the bridge and hurries down to his cabin.

A potentially very large problem they might encounter is uncertainty about their intentions. In order to clear the islands, so that they can make the turn into the Gulf of Finland toward Leningrad, they have to sail directly toward Sweden. If a recon aircraft is sent up to find them or if they are tracked by their radar emissions, it will appear to Baltic Fleet Command that the
Storozhevoy
is trying to defect.

Such an act is even worse than mutiny. It is treason.

The only way that Sablin can think to prove that he is not planning on sailing to Sweden is to broadcast his message right now. Because of the damage Firsov has done to Sablin’s plan, he can no longer afford to wait until the
Storozhevoy
reaches Leningrad.

All of the crew not under arrest are at their posts. Sablin has called
boevaya trevoga,
battle station. No one wants to be hanging around their quarters this morning. Too much is happening. Everyone is too keyed up even to find Gindin’s stash of
spirt.

Sablin reaches his quarters without encountering a single soul, which is spooky. The
Storozhevoy
is barreling up the coast toward the open Baltic Sea, his engines spooled up to top speed, and yet the corridors and companionways are deserted. No one is hanging around smoking a cigarette; no music plays from the seamen’s mess; no one is making jokes.

Once he has his safe open, he removes the taped message and retraces his steps up to the radio room, where a midshipman and an ordinary sailor are sitting in front of their radio equipment. For the first time Sablin draws a blank on their names. He knows their faces, but he cannot dredge up their names or anything else about them from his memory. And right now he is too excited, too focused, to ask.

Both men look up, alarmed by what they see in Sablin’s expression. “Are we okay?” the young midshipman asks.

“We’re perfectly okay,” Sablin replies. He hands over the tape. “This explains everything.”

“Sir?” The young officer is jumpy.

“It’s a message I taped. I want it sent out immediately on a civilian broadcast channel. The people need to know what we are doing, and why.”

The young officer holds the tape as if it were a wild animal ready to bite him. “When should we send this?”

“Right now!” Sablin fairly shouts. His nerves are finally starting to bounce all over the place. So much is at stake, and he hasn’t gotten any decent sleep or rest in the past week. He’s been too keyed up, knowing what was coming.

If only Firsov had not jumped ship!

The midshipman just sits there, a dumb expression on his face, like a deer caught in headlights.

“Now!” Sablin shouts. “Send it right now!”

“Yes, sir.” The young officer turns, shoots a look at the seaman sitting next to him, mounts the loaded reel on the recorder’s left spindle, and threads the tape through the heads to the empty twenty-five-centimeter reel on the right.

Sablin remains only long enough to see this much before he turns and hurries back up to the bridge. He has to make sure that the radar set does not remain on. Everything is coming together now. Everything is coming to a head, and yet there is so much left to accomplish.

Just a little more luck. It’s all he asks for.

Midshipman Yevgenni Kovalev has loaded the tape correctly on the machine, his hands shaking. Whatever message their
zampolit
has recorded will certainly be controversial.

The recording is Zampolit Sablin’s business, but a radio message from the
Storozhevoy
while Kovalev is on duty is his business.

The crew has mutinied; the captain was under arrest; what made you believe that it was your duty to send such a message en clair so that everyone in the Soviet Union could understand your shame?

Kovalev can hear the question now.

He flips a series of switches on his main transmitter, which will broadcast the tape to anyone with a military receiver monitoring this frequency.

But his hand hesitates at the switch that will start the message.

How will he answer the questions about his role in the mutiny? How will he defend his actions against his duties?

He hesitates a moment longer before flipping another series of switches that enables the encryption equipment to come on line. Only then does he switch the tape recorder on, and the reels begin to turn.

Sablin’s message is being broadcast from the
Storozhevoy
all right, but it is encrypted. No one but the navy will be able to understand what is being sent.