Fulcrum

by Alexander Mikhaylovich Zuyev

  Now I had to investigate what type of drug would meet my needs. I studied the pharmacy text I had bought so many years before as a cadet. In the section “Hypnotics and Tranquilizers,” I found a long list of possible candidates under the category “Available at State Pharmacies.” But I discovered that almost all of the strongest drugs — guaranteed to put a man to sleep — were not water soluble. There were, however, two possibilities: a sedative called chlorpromazine and a barbiturate known as clonazepam.

  After a fruitless search among the pharmacies in Tskhakaya the next afternoon, however, I learned that neither drug was available, with or without a prescription — or even a suitable prezant. Then I remembered the unused bottle of neozepam tranquilizers that Lieutenant Colonel Frolov had prescribed me. The pharmacy manual said that neozepam was often indicated for insomnia. Two of the normal ten-milligram tablets would put a man to sleep for several hours. Back in town the next day, I found that neozepam was available in three of the pharmacies.

  Another calculation revealed how much neozepam I would need. There would be ten guards sleeping in the bunk room, one on apron duty, one at the guard desk inside the alert building door, three engineers and maintenance officers, and the two alert pilots. That made a total of sixteen men to drug, seventeen if the desk guard drank drugged tea. If not, I could overpower and bind him before setting out for the apron, provided the other men were deep asleep.

  Then I made an unpleasant discovery. Neozepam was available in the appropriate quantities, but it was not water soluble. Again I found myself pacing the walkways and ramps around the alert building, chewing on the problem. If I couldn’t get these men to drink tea, I suddenly realized, I could certainly entice them all to eat a tempting sweet. Given the high prices and shortages, it had been a long time since any of us had seen cake or pastry.

  That night I crushed a neozepam tablet, wet the tip of my index finger, and gingerly licked the dull white powder. It was almost tasteless.

  I searched my kitchen cupboard and found a cache of two kilos of sifted white flour. I knew I could obtain butter, sugar, and eggs at the bazaar. Sweet condensed milk for the frosting would probably be a problem. But I still had enough money left from the poster sale to make all the required purchases to fill my unusual cake recipe. I had to be certain the cake was big enough and adequately laced with drugs to incapacitate at least sixteen men.

  For the first time, I made actual written notes. If the Osobists discovered them, all they’d find was a shopping list for a cake. Let the bastards ponder that.

  Then I performed another mental calculation. Sixteen men times two tablets equalled thirty-two. But I wanted them sound asleep, not just groggy. I certainly did not want to give the PVO any of the half hour they needed to come on-line. That precious thirty minutes was my life insurance. So I decided to lace the cake with six times the minimum neozepam required to put those men to sleep. The pharmacy text made it clear that there was no danger of a lethal overdose, but warned “prolonged torpor” could result from taking too many.

  My goal was to purchase eighteen ten-tablet bottles. The next Saturday afternoon I began my shopping. My ploy was simple. Dressed in civilian clothes, I went to the chief pharmacist of each store, explained I was a patient at the nearby sanitarium and that I had “problems sleeping.” Then I requested neozepam, making sure to flash my thick roll of new red ten-ruble notes. By the next Tuesday, I had twelve bottles of the drug. After a quick bus trip to Poti, I had the other six bottles.

  By Friday, May 12, I had the 180 neozepam tablets and almost all the other ingredients for the cake. I was nearly ready to execute the plan. Now I had to pick my day. It suddenly came to me. May 19, a Friday that week, marked the fortieth day since the Tbilisi massacre. In the Orthodox religion this was a significant anniversary, the day the souls of the dead finally departed their bodies. I planned to give them a suitable ceremony to mark their passage into the next world.

  But an unexpected obstacle presented itself. There was no condensed milk to be had in the bazaar. Even Malhaz could not locate any. Finally I managed to borrow six cans of Sgushyonka from my neighbor Natasha, a female warrant officer who was our regimental control tower dispatcher. I did find fresh spring strawberries in the bazaar, however, and spent fifty rubles of my depleted war chest to buy two kilos. Now I had all my ingredients.

  If I had any qualms about my actions during that final week, they were quickly banished by Lieutenant Colonel Dovbnya, our regimental zampolit, who kept up a constant harangue about our patriotic duty to “suppress adventurist elements” who might capitalize on the tense situation here in Georgia. His message was clear: The regiment had to be prepared to turn its weapons on our fellow citizens. He made me sick.

  One afternoon in the duty-alert dayroom I found myself alone with Petrukhin. His orders to the military training mission in North Korea had just come through. But he still had three months to serve in Georgia.

  “What do you think of Dovbnya’s stirring words?” I asked him, probing. “Are you ready to fly missions against your fellow Soviet citizens?”

  Petrukhin shook his head at once. “Of course not.”

  “What about your next assignment?” I leaned toward him still pressing hard. “Will you attack the South Koreans if ordered to do so?”

  He jumped up from his easy chair and threw down the illustrated sporting news he was so fond of reading. “Leave me alone,” he muttered. “That’s a different matter and you know it.”

  I had my answer. If ordered to scramble and intercept my hijacked aircraft, Petrukhin would not hesitate to shoot me down.

  Next I prepared an escape kit containing a flashlight, compass, extra socks, matches, and two cans of stewed beef. I hid the waterproof sack in the high grass near the airfield perimeter. If I failed in my hijack attempt. I planned to head south into the nearby swamps on foot and make my way to the mountain frontier.

  Slipping the bag into the weeds felt strange. It was my first overtly treasonous action. Then I got to my feet and breathed the cool moist air. I felt calm again. It had finally begun.

  The next afternoon I brought a French video film to the duty-alert dayroom and presented it with great fanfare. “We can watch it tonight, boys,” I told the engineers. “It will be a welcome treat after all the good news on Vremya.”

  They laughed and clapped.

  “There’s more where this came from,” I said, placing the video beside the television set. “My Georgian friends tell me they’ve got something pretty spicy.”

  Again my comrades clapped. The stage was set.

  Alone in my apartment the next morning, I removed pictures from my photo albums and began selecting the ones to take with me. This was a harder task than I had imagined. I certainly did not want the pictures I left behind to fall into the hands of the Osobists and be stuck on the bulletin board of some investigator’s office. So I planned to burn those I didn’t take. But the actual choice was a wrenching experience. Finally I stacked twenty pictures of my family and friends on one side of my kitchen table and swept the others into a paper bag. That night I burned them with my personal papers out on the far corner of the soccer field. When I came back to the apartment, I sat for a long time staring at the pictures I had selected to carry with me. There was my grandmother with her wide, stoic face and kindly eyes; me in a sailor suit on a river excursion; my first day of school with my white collar and my heavy book bag; a picture with my mother the summer I was fourteen, just before I left with the survey brigade. She looked young and untroubled. I looked so innocent, so optimistic. Then there was Kursant Sergeant Zuyev, Alexander M., in his first year at the Armavir Academy. There was Karpich with his big nose and ears, and Firefly after his first solo in the L-29. Finally I could no longer look into my past. I slid the precious mementos of my life into an envelope and sealed it.

  Later that night I carefully reviewed my handwritten diagrams and specifications of the MiG-29’s missile and fire-control systems, and the multi
ple pages detailing the latest Soviet air-combat maneuvers. To the Americans, these documents would be my most valuable cargo. I lay them carefully inside my flannel helmet bag.

  I definitely intended to reach the safety of American custody as quickly as possible, even though it was impossible to fly directly to the NATO base at Incirlik. For several weeks I had been thinking about the last Soviet fighter pilot to escape, Senior Lieutenant Viktor Ivanovich Belenko. In September 1976, Lieutenant Belenko had flown an advanced PVO MiG-25 interceptor from a base in the Soviet far east to Japan. The official Soviet explanation of his escape flight and defection to America had been that the unfortunate young pilot had become lost in bad weather and had only landed in desperation at the Hakodate Airport in northern Japan when he was completely out of fuel. Belenko had then been “kidnaped” by the Americans, at least according to Soviet authorities.

  Viktor Belenko was a graduate of the Armavir Academy. His audacious exploit was a taboo subject among the cadets. But we all suspected his flight had been a well-planned escape, not the unfortunate result of bad weather. Our suspicions were confirmed later when the KGB circulated reports in the Soviet military that they had tracked down and executed the “traitor” Viktor Belenko in America. I doubted that the KGB had actually accomplished this; their propaganda was intended to scare pilots like me from attempting a similar escape flight. But in any event, I knew the Organs of State Security were capable of such behavior. Delivering a MiG-29 to the West would mark me for death, but I didn’t intend to become an easy target for KGB assassination squads.

  I baked my cake on the morning of Wednesday, May 17. It was magnificent, a full seven pounds and three layers high, frosted in creamy white, and studded with fresh, ripe strawberries. Looking at this beautiful cake, there was no way for anyone to know that the lower right-hand corner was any different from the rest. But the creamy frosting in that corner was free of the crushed neozepam tablets that I had so carefully mixed into the other frosting. Just to be certain, I placed the biggest ripe strawberry on the safe corner. That would be the piece that I cut first and set aside for myself.

  Then I opened my kitchen curtains and made a show of washing out several shirts and a pair of trousers. I hung them prominently on the clothesline of my balcony. Any man planning a desperate action would not take the time to wash and hang up laundry. At least I hoped that was the impression I gave to any unseen watchers.

  I carried two heavy boxes of my best aeronautical engineering textbooks and expensive international aircraft almanacs to the duty-alert dayroom that afternoon and told the officers they could help themselves.

  “I won’t need these on ground duty,” I explained.

  I had signed each of the books: “To my friends and acquaintances with the best of luck for the future.”

  Even Dovbnya, the shit-eating zampolit, thought this was a magnanimous gesture.

  Before leaving the building, I upbraided the sergeant of the guard for the filthy condition of the troops’ kitchen, bunk room, and latrine. “I want these areas scrubbed and painted,” I ordered. “No damned excuses.”

  He began to complain that the men were already short of sleep from the extra patrols and that this duty would exhaust them. This was exactly my intention.

  “No damned excuses, Sergeant,” I said in my best parade-ground voice.

  That afternoon at sunset, I again climbed the green slope of Dzveli Senaki outside of town. I wanted to be alone on this peaceful mountain to gather my thoughts for the day and night ahead. Again, bells sounded in the cool afternoon. Without thinking, I had stopped before the walls of the church. I entered the courtyard. An old babushka with a twig broom smiled from the doorway. I asked if the priest was there.

  He came out brushing dust from his cassock, as if he’d been helping the old woman clean the vestry. The priest was an elderly man with soft, intelligent eyes. Like most Georgians these days, he viewed me cautiously.

  I had never spoken to a priest before and was clumsy when I asked him for a “blessing.”

  “Why?” he asked, a practical Georgian beneath his cassock and beard.

  “I need it, Father.”

  He still eyed me warily. “Is it for good or for evil?”

  “For good, Father. I’m a Soviet officer,” I said quietly. “I am very sorry for what happened in Tbilisi.”

  The priest solemnly studied my face for any hint of mockery. “We are planning a memorial to mark the fortieth day since the massacre,” he told me. “Perhaps you can join us.”

  I had other plans to mark that grim occasion. But I could not reveal them. “Perhaps, Father.”

  His eyes softened and he nodded with understanding. Then he raised his right hand with the first two fingers extended and made the sign of the cross near my face. He spoke clearly in Georgian, and I understood the word “Kristos.”

  Warm calm seemed to flood physically through my body. I was ready.

  The weather turned suddenly bad that night. By midnight a rainy gale howled across the base. Then conditions grew worse, with an even lower ceiling and high wind. Antonovich suspended flying for the next day. I called the meteorological office and learned a sudden front had spilled across the Caucasus. We could expect below minimum conditions for the next twelve hours. Flying through the mountain passes in this weather was impossible. Reluctantly I readjusted my schedule. I would make the attempt at dawn on Saturday, May 20.

  Late that night I pulled my kitchen curtain and sat before my tape recorder. It was time for me to explain my decision to my family, my colleagues, and the people of my country. I knew the KGB would search this apartment, and wanted them to know exactly why I had taken this drastic step. Investigators at many different echelons would hear this tape, and I hoped reformers in both the Air Force and the KGB would unofficially spread news of my message. I also wanted to make it clear that I had acted alone.

  I clicked on the machine and spoke, addressing my words to “the people of Russia and the country called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”

  I began by stating that many would wonder why a veteran Soviet fighter pilot, “ready to give his life for his country and the ideals of Marxism-Leninism,” had taken this drastic step. Then I suggested they ignore whatever official explanation the authorities gave and to listen to my own version. “I have come to hate Socialism, the system into which I was born and raised.” I explained that I had believed too strongly in that system, but that now all I felt for it was “hatred and contempt.” But I did feel pity and compassion for all those still suffering under this totalitarian system that had already massacred millions of innocent people and was obviously intent on continuing the slaughter. “Communism has created the greatest prison in the world,” I said. And Marxism-Leninism had ruined the country’s economy and enslaved hundreds of millions simply to support a criminal clique that wrapped itself in the protection of the Party.

  I spoke about the sad state of the Soviet military, in which young recruits and old veterans alike found release only in suicide. I exposed the hypocrisy of Gorbachev’s “defensive” force reduction.

  Then I detailed what I knew of the Tbilisi massacre and the elaborate efforts in the military to suppress the truth. My flight, I said, had been planned for May 19, forty days after that horrible carnage. I spoke directly to the Organs of State Security, the KGB and the MVD, and to the special units under their command.

  “Fellows, what are you defending, the people? If so, why do you herd them like cattle to be slaughtered with gas and shovels?” I asked them if they were prepared to become as cruel as Stalin’s butchers.

  “Wait before you pull the trigger,” I concluded. “Listen to the voices of the demonstrators. Think before you pull the pin from that gas grenade. The consequences you face are more frightening than ever before in our history.”

  I clicked the switch of the tape recorder. The room fell silent.

  Then I started the machine for the last time. “My dear mother,” I said, �
�please forgive me. I have to do this. I have no way out. I love you all.”

  As I removed the tape and put away the recorder, I again carefully reviewed all the steps I had taken to protect my family from official retribution after my escape. First, I had kept them completely ignorant of my plans. All my mother knew was that I was trying to obtain a discharge from the Air Force. My family had no idea of the drastic action I was about to take. So they would be absolutely convincing during their inevitable questioning by the KGB. There was nothing I could do to prevent this interrogation, but I was confident that it would not be especially harsh. The record of my movements over the last several months was clear; I had spent very little time with my family, so they were obviously not coconspirators.

  More to the point, the days of the KGB’s ruthless Stalinist methods were over forever. With glasnost, the Organs of State Security could no longer simply dispatch their Black Raven vans in the night to haul innocent people away to the gulag. The independent press, especially the popular investigative magazine Argumenti i Facti, which had supported the work of the Memorial organization so effectively, would be certain to publicize any illegal retribution against my family.

  And I was also confident that the United States government would intervene on their behalf. Gorbachev desperately needed the support of the West. He simply could not afford to reveal a Stalinist side to his government, especially after the Tbilisi massacre. And, once I was safely in American custody, my first priority would be to appeal for my family’s protection, and, if possible, for their emigration to the West. So, as I carefully planned for the most dangerous and difficult military operation of my life, my family’s welfare was one problem I felt certain would be successfully resolved.