Swimming to Antarctica (28 page)

“Here is Kozlovsky’s number in Moscow. If there is a problem and I’m not reachable, contact him,” Fisher instructed.

“Gene, do you know why it took them so long to respond to our telex?”

“Kozlovsky said there was a breakdown in communication, and their security forces rejected our request.”

“How did he get them to change their minds?” I asked.

“Bob Walsh told Kozlovsky that you intended to swim with or without their approval. He said you would swim as far as they would permit. And it would be very embarrassing for Gorbachev if he didn’t allow the crossing, because opening the border symbolized
glasnost.
When Gorbachev saw the ABC tape he had Gramov, the head of the sports committee, put Kozlovsky in charge of the project. Kozlovsky said the visa requirements have been waived for the Inuit crew in your support boats. And he wants to know if there is anything further you will need to support the swim.”

“Are those ships supposed to be our escorts? They may be a bit big for us,” I said.

“They’re just a staging area. They have smaller boats, and they’ll meet you on the border with them. Anything else you need?”

“Yes, a sleeping bag for rewarming and a babushka,” I said.

“A babushka?” Gene asked.

“It’s a brightly colored Russian shawl. In many ways it symbolizes the warmth and brightness of the Russians,” I said, still not knowing what the word meant in Russian.

What we didn’t know at the time was that Kozlovsky and Walsh had been certain that this project would glorify
glasnost
and Soviet relations with the United States. Kozlovsky had worked night and day, going through party channels; but somewhere along the line, key people in Gorbachev’s cabinet who should have known about the swim hadn’t heard anything about it.

That left an opening for the naysayers, and they had the power to move in and set up roadblocks. But Kozlovsky was used to navigating around them. At one time, he had been a world champion cyclist in the Soviet Union. He was still a national hero, and he had friends everywhere. Most people knew him simply as “Mischa,” like the popular bear mascot of the Moscow Olympics. Kozlovsky promised Walsh he would do his best to see that the project would happen, though it was very late.

Kozlovsky had less than two weeks to pull it all together, and in a country where the normal first, second, and third responses to anything were
nyet,
two weeks was very little time. He called his friends in the highest echelons of the Soviet government, in the military, and at the KGB. He knew how to package the proposal. He copied the American newspaper clippings and had them translated, along with the letter of support from Senator Murkowski, and he called his friend at the Foreign Ministry. He strongly suggested that Edvard Shevardnadze, the foreign minister, contact Ambassador Dobrynin in Washington. Kozlovsky knew that Ambassador Dobrynin’s endorsement would push the project along. He also gave the story to the Soviet Sports Committee’s public relations department, and they passed it on to the Soviet press. Then Kozvlosky had one copy of the
ABC television video hand-delivered to the foreign minister, and another handed directly to Gorbachev’s assistant.

On Thursday, July 30, with less than a week to go before the proposed swim, a new answer came back from the Soviet government. Kozlovsky immediately wired it to Walsh’s office in Seattle. The telex read: “Your proposal is being reconsidered, and we will advise you of our decision later.”

Later? Kozlovsky fumed. How much later?

At 2:00 a.m. on August 1, a directive came from the central government for Kozlovsky to drop everything. He was put in command of the Bering Strait project. His office became the base of all operations, and he was given carte blanche. Everything was put at his disposal—ships, planes, helicopters, personnel, press, and funds, nearly a million dollars’ worth.

Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, and he was having the time of his life. It was like a chess game, and chess was Kozlovsky’s passion. He set up a series of meetings with top officials from the government, commanders in the military and the security forces, and immediately began implementing the plan.

On Tuesday, August 4, one by one the welcoming party began arriving on the Siberian mainland. Most of the group had never met, but they had plenty of time to introduce themselves. There was a world-champion boxer, the governor of Siberia, journalists from across the country, a military commander, the head of the KGB for the Siberian region, and one of Gorbachev’s assistants. More than fifty people had been sent to Siberia as part of the welcoming committee.

The fog that had prevented us from flying to Wales also grounded the welcoming committee on the Siberian mainland. The military commander called Kozlovsky and informed him of the Soviet team’s delay.

Meanwhile, the military commander on Big Diomede built special ramps so the American team could land their umiaks safely without being worried that the walrus skins would be punctured by the rocky shore. Kozlovsky wondered if the U.S. Coast Guard would be escorting us. He was eager to see the new coast guard boat.

On Wednesday, August 5, the fog cleared and the Soviet team was
mobilized. They flew to Big Diomede, set up tents, and moved in equipment and supplies. When everything was in place, they took turns staring through binoculars at the Eskimo village on Little Diomede. For hours they searched the shoreline, straining to see where the American team was.

Then a military lookout shouted from the beach. He had spotted something in the water heading toward Big Diomede. Sure that it had to be the American swimmer, they scurried from their mountainside tents, down a rocky and slippery cliff face to the beach. When the head coach for the Soviet national swim team took his turn looking through the binoculars, he started laughing out loud. It wasn’t a human swimmer moving toward shore; it was a seal.

The following morning, on Thursday, August 6, the Soviet welcome party crawled from their tents wondering again where the American team was.

We stood on the other side of the strait in the early evening—six o’clock. The sea was peaceful, and we could see the very top of Big Diomede’s volcanic cone. It looked so close, I just wanted to put on my bathing suit and swim across, but we had told the Soviets we would leave here at 8:00 a.m.

Rich Roberts, Dr. Nyboer Jr., and I stood onshore and studied Big Diomede. We didn’t know it then, but the Soviets were looking back across at Little Diomede through binoculars, wondering what had happened to us. They had had three more false alarms—all seal sightings—and they were beginning to wonder if we were ever going to come across. The last thing we had heard from Moscow was that at 8:00 a.m., we were supposed to release our balloons and push off from Little Diomede, then meet the Soviet boats at the border.

The Inuit families sang and danced all night long in celebration of the border opening. At 7:00 a.m., when we were supposed to shove off from shore and motor to the southern tip of Little Diomede, most of the villagers were sound asleep. Looking out of the window from a schoolhouse apartment where I had spent the night, I could clearly
see Big Diomede, a snowcapped volcanic cone rising majestically out of the Bering Sea, which was as flat as a mirror, reflecting the wide blue heavens. It made me feel that there were no limits to the sky, and the world seemed to be filled with energy; everything seemed possible. I wanted to go, to start. I was so excited and nervous, so ready, I didn’t want to wait another moment. But we needed to wake the villagers and I needed to tell Kozlovsky that there was a delay. I called and reached an operator, but I couldn’t speak much Russian, and she couldn’t speak much English. She did know my name, though, and Kozlovsky’s, but that’s as far as I got. So I tried to reach Gene Fisher in Bob Walsh’s office. He was on his way to work.

Worse than that, a milky-gray fog bank was rapidly moving into the strait, snaking its way in front of Little Diomede. In a span of ten minutes the visibility to the north and south of us had dropped from one mile to less than half a mile, and I was becoming agitated. I hated fog. I had been lost in it during the Catalina Channel swim and scared out of my wits. If I got lost in the Bering Sea, in water this cold, I wouldn’t only be lost, I’d be dead.

Fog continued streaming into the strait, filling it with clouds that were strangling the light. I knew we had to move, so I started to gather the crew together. I asked Dr. Keatinge if we could get started now. That’s when I found out that the Soviets and my crew already knew about the delay. Without consulting me, someone in my crew had spoken with Gene Fisher at Walsh’s office and had postponed our departure time until noon. Fisher had immediately transmitted this information to Moscow, and they’d confirmed the update. The Soviets would have their boats at the border to escort us at noon. There was no way we could wait until then; it was too dangerous. And there was no way I wanted to delay the swim for another day. Conditions could get worse, and we had only a small window of opportunity to make the crossing. On our side of the strait it was August 7, while on the Soviet side it was August 8. We had only five days to get this off, and then I didn’t know what would happen.

Looking out the window, I could see wind ripples on the sea surface. I was getting nervous. Just the week before, I had seen the straits
when they were rough, and I couldn’t get that image out of my mind: the Bering Sea as a raging hell. If the wind increased quickly I knew, we would have to postpone the swim. Even though the distance was only 2.7 miles in a straight line from our side to theirs, we couldn’t start in marginal conditions. It was just too dangerous. There was no way I was going to wait until noon. I thought that any delay now reduced our chances of getting across.

Dr. Nyboer Jr. came down to the beach to find me. He said that Dr. Keatinge wanted to begin the preswim tests on me. I asked him if he could make it quick. I had changed the plan, I told him; we were going to start the swim at nine. But Dr. Nyboer Jr. didn’t think we could get our Inuit crew together in that time.

We couldn’t wait. I told him conditions were beginning to change. He said he would go tell Pat Omiak, and he asked me if I’d lie down and relax in a room in the community center so he and Dr. Keatinge could get their preswim readings.

As I lay on the table waiting for Dr. Nyboer’s return, I heard Dr. Keatinge talking with a crew member. They had found an uninflated Zodiac and had decided to inflate it and tow along it on the swim. The Zodiac would provide a more stable base for them to hold their equipment and get readings. Dr. Keatinge unrolled the rubber boat, and Pat Omiak began reading directions for inserting its floorboards.

While this was happening, Dr. Nyboer Jr. returned and took my pulse. He couldn’t believe how slow and calm it was: forty-four beats per minute. I was doing my best to be calm, but I was itching to go. This wait was killing me. My skin temperature was the same as the air temperature, seventy degrees, and my core temperature was all the way up to 100.7, three degrees above my normal temperature. My mind must have told my body to turn up the heater.

Dr. Keatinge handed me a large silver capsule and explained that it was the thermopill, a metal pill the size of a horse pill that contained a radio transmitter. This device would measure my internal temperature. As backup, I would insert a thin rectal probe connected to a twenty-foot-long lead that would be coiled up in the bottom of my
swimsuit. To get a body-temperature reading, the doctors would have me roll over onto my back while they held a receiver attached to a long broomstick near my stomach, to get a transmission from the thermopill.

Dr. Keatinge handed me a large cup of coffee, explaining that some subjects had difficulty swallowing the thermopill. I wasn’t worried about swallowing; I was more concerned about getting it out afterward. But I wasn’t sure how to ask Dr. Keatinge this delicate question.

Fortunately, he volunteered the information. The pill was worth about a thousand dollars, and Dr. Keatinge wanted me to recover it once it passed through my system. He told me that a plastic bag worked nicely for the recovery phase. I hesitated before I swallowed it, wondering, Was this pill new or had it been used? Dr. Keatinge assured me that it was new. They wanted to sterilize it and reuse it for future experiments and to check the calibrations after the swim.

Everyone in the village turned out for the swim—the village elders, men, women, and children. Some were blowing up red, white, and blue balloons, while others carried the umiaks from the racks and placed them in the water.

The journalists—Rich Roberts, Jack Kelley, Jim McHugh, and Claire Richardson—climbed into one umiak with David Soolook, their pilot, while the ABC cameraman and Pat Omiak boarded the other umiak. As Dr. Nyboer Jr. and Dr. Keatinge climbed into the Zodiac, the village children released the balloons to signal the start of the swim.

The fog was so heavy it was drizzling, and the balloons sank to the water’s surface and floated rapidly northward. No one on the Soviet side of the border could have seen them anyway; the fog was too thick.

Just as we were about to shove off and head to the very southern tip of Little Diomede to start the swim, David Soolook said something in Inuit to Omiak, then jumped out of the boat and headed uphill toward the village. While we waited, the fog grew heavier and the villagers put five more boats in the water. Pat informed me that
the villagers wanted to share in this celebration, so they had decided to join us.

What’s going to happen next?
I wondered, shaking my head. This created a real problem. None of these villagers had clearance to enter Soviet waters except our immediate crew. None of their boats had life jackets, and none of the villagers could swim. Worse, they were using some of the older boats, and the skins were stretched, tattered, and worn. I voiced my concern to Omiak and he assured me that the boats would be fine and promised that the villagers would not enter Soviet waters. They would only go halfway. None of this made me feel comfortable. And then it got worse.