Fulcrum

by Alexander Mikhaylovich Zuyev

  I climbed down the narrow steps from the control tower at 2330 hours that Friday night, leaving the duty dispatcher and a communications sergeant in the greenhouse. The regiment had just completed a three-hour night flying exercise, the last training of a hard ten-day stretch, which had been marred by the poor flying weather that morning. Now the sky had cleared. A quarter-moon was rising over the snowy ridges to the east. The weather forecast for the morning called for thin, scattered ground fog, but no wind or overcast.

  I would make my attempt in less than six hours, at dawn on Saturday, May 20. Appropriately Antonovich had just declared Saturday a holiday. At this moment he and most of the regiment’s pilots were in the sauna, drinking beer. I hoped they became very sleepy.

  I strolled across to the concrete-block duty-alert building. Officially I had about seven more hours to serve before the section was relieved at 0700 Saturday.

  A lanky Ukrainian sergeant sat at the operations alert desk. He hardly glanced up when I returned from the control tower. The first door off the hall was the officers’ dormitory. I peered inside, noting the double row of empty cots. As I had planned, my colleagues would be in the dayroom.

  The door of the armory was made of steel and framed with heavy girders. Inside I touched the twin racks of AKM assault rifles and tested the padlock securing them. I opened the safe and deposited the bundle of secret intelligence folders the duty officer carried with him to the control tower during training operations.

  In the hall I pulled shut the steel armory door and snapped the heavy padlock. Then I tapped the pocket of my flying jacket to feel the narrow file I would use later to jam this lock.

  The officers’ dayroom was brightly lit, cheerful. The television and videocassette deck stood like an altar at the far end of the room, beyond the pilots’ roster blackboard. The two pilots on duty alert tonight were Major Vladimir Petrukhin and Captain Vladimir Voldeyev. They sat uncomfortably in easy chairs, dressed in their tight stratospheric pressure suits. Petrukhin nodded coolly as I entered the room. Voldeyev was a good fellow, not the world’s greatest fighter pilot, but a steady wingman. Typically he accepted the drudge work. Tonight he was laboring diligently on the next week’s flight schedule.

  Petrukhin lounged in his chair, leafing through a sports magazine with colorful pictures. The three maintenance officers were grouped before the television, watching the late edition of Vremya from Moscow. Judging from the clean tea glasses around the electric stainless-steel samovar, they had just come back from helping secure the regiment’s aircraft for the weekend. Now they were waiting for the Friday night broadcast ofVzglyad, “Glance,” the new investigative show that was scheduled to report on the findings of the official investigation of the Tbilisi massacre.

  “Zuyev,” Dmitri Karpov, the maintenance captain, called, seeing me enter, “where the hell are the videos? You promised something new tonight.”

  I grinned, held up my empty hands, and shook my head. “Be patient,” I answered. “I just got out of the tower.”

  Following my plan that week, I had bent regulations to rent another new Western movie from Malhaz. The duty section had already been treated to Sweet Dreams and a sexy French farce about a bigamist airline pilot. “I’ll go fetch the new movie as soon as Colonel Antonovich is in the sauna,” I added.

  The two officers closest to the television groaned in unison. The news from Moscow had just ended with an announcement that Vzglyad had been canceled on the orders of the Central Committee, pending the “completion” of the Tbilisi investigation.

  “Shitmouths!” Karpov cursed. “Glasnost, unlike turds, does not seem to float across the Moscow River.”

  I looked at my watch. “I’ll go get us something decent to watch.”

  “Not too decent,” Voldeyev called.

  When I came back through the doorway of the duty-alert dayroom carrying the cake, the men cheered. This was a much better treat than a video. I cleared a place on the samovar table and sliced the cake into generous pieces. But I kept my eye on the right-hand comer, where I had placed the largest ripe strawberry. Before I invited the men to help themselves I took the untainted wedge for myself.

  Major Sergei Stupnikov came in to check the flight schedule with Lieutenant Voldeyev. I could see the major had drunk a few beers in the sauna. His face was flushed, and his normal hearty laugh was boisterous. He immediately saw the cake.

  “Where did that come from?” he shouted.

  “A very pretty woman made it,” I answered. I hoped the men in the section would gobble up my gift before Stupnikov took a piece.

  Stupnikov stood near the samovar table, shaking his head in admiration. “This is one beautiful cake,” he said. “Some lucky guy must be keeping a woman very happy to get a cake like this. Who is he?”

  I forced myself to grin at my friend. “You know him very well,” I said.

  He roared with laughter, took his copy of the flight schedule, and strode out of the room. A moment later I heard his old GAZ rattle away.

  I smacked my lips loudly as I ate my small wedge of cake, then turned to stare out the window at the dark runway. The other officers were grouped around the samovar table, scooping up hunks of cake, laughing and talking. I had put aside twelve pieces for the soldiers in the guardroom. Hopefully they’d be fair and the whole section would eat a piece, including the men about to rotate the apron guard at 0400.

  But there were still several pieces on the table. Petrukhin remained in his easy chair, now reading the new issue of Red Star.

  “Comrade Major,” I called formally, “you don’t want to miss your cake.”

  He looked up coolly, then smiled. “No, thank you,” he said, “but I really don’t care for any.”

  My throat went tight and I felt my heart begin to thud. Petrukhin was a notoriously light sleeper. Unless he ate some of the cake, he’d be wide awake when I took off. And if I had to engage him in a dogfight, I would lose precious time. I could see my careful plan unraveling.

  “These strawberries are fresh, Major,” I said. “There’s real butter in the frosting.”

  Petrukhin barely looked up from his newspaper. “Thanks, but no,” was all he said.

  Vladimir Voldeyev was already on his second piece. He would be no problem in an hour or so. But Petrukhin seemed unmoved by the tempting offer. In desperation, I tried to shame him into taking a piece. “Surely you’re not on a diet?”

  Petrukhin folded the newspaper and lay it on the knee of his pressure suit. He stared at me for a moment, then smiled sheepishly. “Yes,” he said, “as a matter of fact, I am. You other fellows take my share.”

  Before I could reply, Captain Karpov was smacking down his second piece. I took my tea glass and returned to the window. Petrukhin’s refusal to eat was disturbing. I knew he loved sweets. Even on a diet he would have accepted a morsel just for taste. I felt a cold sagging inside. Petrukhin was still a loyal Communist. The Osobists had brought him into their confidence. They had been following me for weeks. They had seen me buy the neozepam and interrogated all the pharmacists. They knew every detail of my plan. It was still not too late to abort. I had not yet reached the point of no return.

  No, this was just paranoia. I had to keep my wits. If I panicked, I would die.

  I carried the cake to the guardroom down the hall. The young sergeant assured me he would save a piece for the man who came off duty at 0400. When I returned to the dayroom, only a few crumbs and frosting smears remained on the cake pan. I refilled my tea glass from the samovar and settled down to watch the late evening documentary. Instead of the truth about Tbilisi, State television was treating the nation to an inspiring account of volunteer oil-field workers struggling against the Siberian winter to produce needed foreign exchange for the Motherland.

  This certainly was not an Italian sex farce. The men were tired from a week of alert duty. I hoped they would soon amble down the hall to their dormitory cots.

  As I sat watching the documentary, Senior Lieut
enant Ivan Gromov, my relief as duty-alert officer, came through the door, carrying his overnight bag. What the hell was he doing here seven hours early? He and Petrukhin seemed to exchange a furtive glance, then Gromov greeted me.

  “My roommates brought a bottle of cognac back from the sauna,” he said. “I can sleep better over here.”

  I stared at him, searching for any sign of deception. His face was calm and open. We all considered this duty irksome and restrictive, more suited to bureaucrats than pilots. Was Ivan Gromov part of an Osobist surveillance team? Why had he waited to appear until the last of the cake was eaten?

  Then I forced myself to think rationally. Gromov was single. He shared three cramped rooms with six other lieutenants. Compared to his quarters, the alert building was luxurious. Colonel Antonovich had declared a holiday after ten days’ intense training. Ivan’s young roommates would certainly take advantage of the occasion to continue the sauna party, with cognac now instead of beer. But Ivan couldn’t drink the night before taking over the duty section from me. So there was a rational explanation, after all.

  But now there would be two officers, Ivan and Petrukhin, who had not eaten any cake. And they both carried pistols.

  I hunkered low in my chair and gazed at the comforting images on the television screen. The broadcast from Moscow ended just before 0200. I went outside and strolled around the building. The base was quiet. The thin chunk of moon was high overhead. I could smell diesel fuel and newly plowed fields on the breeze. Away to the north, the snowy wall of the Caucasus shone in the moonlight. It was a perfect night for flying.

  When I rounded the corner of the alert building, I saw Petrukhin staring out the window, almost as if he were watching me.

  The desk guard had his head down on his folded arms. He was snoring lightly. That was a good sign; the lanky young sergeant must have weighed at least two hundred pounds and had only eaten one piece of cake. The other men were probably already asleep on their cots. Everyone except Petrukhin and Ivan Gromov, of course.

  Before returning to the dayroom, I made my final reconnaissance of the dining room. All the section’s communication lines connecting the building’s three telephones, the public address system, and the old hand-cranked field telephone ran through the dining room in a thick wire bundle. It was there that I planned to cut them, my final preparation before subduing the apron guard. I quietly turned the door handle. To my horror, it was locked. I felt the sweat pop on my forehead. Breaking down the door would wake everyone, no matter how much cake they had eaten. I had planned my every move, but I had never imagined this door would be locked.

  Once more, I forced myself to think rationally. The desk guard was required to have keys for all the rooms. I shook him brusquely awake. His face was slack and he couldn’t stop blinking. He explained through his yawns that Captain Karpov had asked him to lock the dining room to prevent people stealing cheese from the pantry.

  “That’s against fire regulations, Sergeant,” I snapped, taking the key.

  “Yes, Comrade Captain,” he said, his eyes already closing.

  I unlocked the door and hid my flannel helmet bag under a table in the far corner. There was another door leading from the dining room to the side of the building. I made sure it was open, in case someone decided to lock the hall door again. Then I knelt at the bundle of communication lines to feel the thickness of each wire. There was nothing here that I couldn’t cut quickly.

  Back in the alert room, I was amazed to find that everyone was still awake. Voldeyev was bent over his training schedule. The maintenance officers were finishing a hand of cards. Petrukhin studied his damned Red Star as if it were a training manual. At this rate they’d still be up when the effects of the tranquilizer wore off.

  “I don’t know about you sportsmen,” I said, nodding to the maintenance officers, “but I’m tired, and I’m going to get some sleep.” I stretched slowly and yawned. As I had hoped, the suggestion worked. Voldeyev was yawning now and so were two other officers. I turned on a small desk lamp, then switched off the overhead light. We all made our way to the dormitory.

  I curled up with my arm around the pillow and my hand over my eyes. After a few minutes I heard Voldeyev snoring. But Petrukhin rolled back and forth on his cot, trying to find a comfortable position in his tight pressure suit. After a long time I heard his breathing steady into a regular rhythm. In my mind I reviewed all the steps I had taken as if going through a takeoff checklist. My next step was to cut the communication lines from the control tower, steal the vehicle keys, then slip inside the dining room and cut the last wire bundle. Then a final check to make sure the desk guard was still asleep. After that I had to move quickly to overpower the apron guard before regimental headquarters discovered the phones were down.

  But it was already almost 0400. I didn’t want to be in the middle of tying up the guard on the apron if the relief guard actually woke up and came on duty. Although it was risky, I decided to wait until after the guard had changed. But it was impossible to lie here feigning sleep. I pulled on my boots and quietly left the dormitory.

  The desk guard was still snoring. Outside, the night was dead quiet. There was no sign of movement down the runway at the main guardhouse. Down on the alert apron I found the guard pacing slowly around the four aircraft. He stopped when he saw me approach.

  “All quiet, Comrade Captain,” he said.

  “Fine,” I muttered, “but I don’t want to hear of you sleeping out here. With all these strikes and riots, we’ve been told to expect trouble.”

  “Yes, Comrade Captain,” the boy replied.

  Then I saw a glow from the window of the nearby maintenance building. “What’s that light in there?” I demanded.

  “Nobody’s there, Comrade Captain,” the guard answered. “I checked myself.”

  “Carry on,” I told him, striding away to inspect the maintenance building myself. As the boy had reported, the room was empty. I snapped off the light. Leaving the building, I saw the young guard marching along his post on the apron. I certainly hoped the guard sergeant had saved him a piece of cake.

  Just to be certain, I made several circuits of the nearby buildings. The only guard I encountered was on the duty-alert apron.

  Back in the dormitory, everyone was still sleeping. Ivan Groinov had taken the couch in the alert room. He didn’t hear me when I drained the samovar to drink several glasses of strong dark tea. I sat in the easy chair trying to keep my breathing even. It was well past 0400 now, but I hadn’t seen the relief guard leave the station.

  I went down the hall to the desk and shook the Ukrainian sergeant awake again. He seemed even more groggy now. It was his job, I reminded him coldly, to make sure the guard was changed on time.

  “What’s the relief guard’s name?”

  “Chomayev, Corporal,” the clerk said, consulting the stenciled roster sheet.

  “If I put anybody on report for this,” I said, “you’ll share the punishment.”

  The young man’s face was confused, unfocused, his voice slurred. It was 0420 when the apron guard was finally changed. I went back outside and circled the building. The guard bunk room was dark again. When I looked back in the alert building, the desk guard was sound asleep, head down on his folded arms, as he had been earlier.

  Once more, I circled the area like a stalking cat. Then I entered through the dining room door. With my back turned to the operations desk at the end of the corridor, I hefted the armory padlock and thrust the thin metal file into the key slot. I broke off the file and jiggled the lock, making sure the slot was securely jammed.

  Outside, a mist was rising in the still, damp night. The lopsided quarter-moon was low in the western sky. I took the keys from the duty section van and the fuel truck and dropped them through the grate of a storm sewer. The vehicles could no longer be used to block the runway.

  Unfortunately the phone lines from the control tower were exposed to view. Twice I approached the end of the tower where the wir
es looped away from the junction box just above head height. Twice I stopped when I saw someone moving up in the greenhouse.

  I paced in the shadows of the nearby maintenance hangar, wiping my sweaty hands on the legs of my flight suit. I could see my plan unraveling. I fought back panic and the urge to bolt, to just scramble under the barbed-wire fence, toss away the incriminating wire cutters, snatch my escape kit from the weeds, and keep running south.

  At exactly 0506 I managed to cut the six phone lines from the control tower junction box. I strode away quickly to wait behind the maintenance hangar. If cutting those phone lines had triggered an alarm, the guard van from regimental headquarters would arrive soon. Ten minutes passed. The tower and alert building were silent.

  Off to the east, the serrated ridges of the Caucasus steadily gained definition in the first peach glow of dawn. I was still on schedule. But there was no telling how long the neozepam would work.

  A terrible sequence of events rolled through my mind like the lantern slides of an illustrated tactical lecture. The division duty clerk tries to phone Natasha in the tower. Dead line. He tries the emergency line. No answer. He sends a runner to the guard captain. They return to check the phone lines and find the cut ends. They then decide to arm the guard section, but discover the jammed lock. An alarm is sounded and the drugged officers stumble awake. Where is Zuyev? Where the hell is he?

  But this was only panic. The base was quiet. I marched directly to the side door of the dining room and entered silently. Crouching in the dark corner, I felt each wire with my thumb and finger, then cut it. As I snapped down the cutter blades on the last wire, the thin strand slipped. It took me four stabs to cut it. Then I heard a loud single ding of the telephone bell in the dormitory. Again sweat beaded on my face. Cutting that last line had broken the circuit, triggering the bell’s magnet. This was fourth-form physics. Why hadn’t I thought of it?

  I have to hurry now, I thought, grabbing my helmet bag of papers.

  But outside I forced myself to stop and slip into the hedge beside the dormitory window. Just as I had feared, I saw Petrukhin on his feet inside. In the faint light I watched him lift the telephone, then bang down the receiver. Now he was in the doorway to the hall. I didn’t want to watch.