Kilo Class (1998)

by Patrick Robinson

  The Tolkach and its six-hundred-foot-long consort stretched for over five hundred yards of the Volga as they moved in stately procession through the heavily industrialized reaches of the river on the approach to the imperial university town of Kazan.

  On April 27 they had rolled past Syrzan, a town of old rusty chimneys and sprawling brick factories that looked like a throwback to the early days of the Industrial Revolution. The picture definition was poor because of occasional rain, but the eye of KH-III was good enough. “They’re gonna make Nizhny by May sixth,” George Morris told Arnold Morgan.

  Four days later, on May I, at the approximate time the SEALs had been fighting their way through the rain-swept woods of Lake Onega, the giant barges had reached Ulyanovsk, the birthplace of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. It was night as they hove into sight, and Captain Volkov could see the red neon nameplate stark above the new river station. They were not stopping, and he gave a short blast on the ship’s horn as he passed. Scatterings of people stood and gazed out across the sandy shallows into the great black flow of the central stream of the river, where the barges left hardly a ripple.

  They were a hundred miles short of Kazan, and these miles would be traversed in wide waterways—up to eighteen miles across—as the Volga turns into a virtual inland sea. At the town of Zaton the barges made a ninety-degree turn for the port of Kazan, which they made in the small hours of May 3. Just beyond there they swung hard left, along the now-narrowing river, and began their nonstop run to Nizhny Novgorod, 250 miles away.

  The US satellites charted their progress most days. Late at night George Morris and Arnold Morgan would examine the photographs of the three Kilo class submarines in Red Sormovo and the progress of the Tolkach barges. There was still some scaffold left on Kilo three, but the two American admirals assessed the first two to be almost complete.

  All the way along to Nizhny, the Volga is flanked by green rolling hills and woods. Intermittent villages set in the folds of the hills are bright in the morning light, and almost invisible in the misty rain that sweeps through every few days in spring. The eastern shore of the river is flatter than the more hilly Asian bank, but the two diverse green plateaus along the shallow, slow flowing stream of the Volga are a feast of glorious rural landscape. The presence of the giant barges with their military overtones was hideously intrusive.

  In the small hours of May 7 Captain Volkov steered around the Strelka and moored alongside the loading quay at the junction of the Volga and the Oka Rivers at Nizhny Novgorod. Both barges made a huge 360-degree turn in the mile-wide waterway and came up in the shadows of a forest of dock cranes. Behind them stood the great Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky. With the dock on their starboard side and the waters of the Oka to port, the barges now faced northeast. They were less then four hundred yards from the three Kilos.

  At Fort Meade, Admirals Morris and Morgan peered at the satellite pictures.

  “How long, George? How long before they leave?”

  “Well, if we assume they will go together, the most significant factor is that the third Kilo still has some scaffold. I’m not sure how long it takes to load and secure something that big onto a barge, but it’s gotta be a day for each one, and they are not yet down at the loading dock. Right now I’d say the earliest those transporters could start moving would be ten days from now—say May seventeenth. But if you want my best guess I’d still say first week in June.”

  “Any idea how they load ’em?”

  “They move the hulls around on the land the same way we move our big boats, on a multiwheel trolley system, running on rails over some very hard standing. We use hydraulic lifts to put the hulls into the water, rather than onto floating barges. I’ve never seen anyone do that, but I guess it’s possible. We might even learn something if we get a photo at exactly the right moment.

  “We have seen them put submarines onto those oceangoing freighters they sometimes use…That’s when they flood the ships down into the water and float the submarines onto the decks, same system as a floating dock. These barges look a bit different, but they must do it the same way. I don’t see any other possibility.

  “The Kilos will have to be lowered into the water, and then floated over the barges. Then the barges will pump out and lift the submarines clear of the water. I’d say the whole process is going to take a couple of days.”

  Arnold Morgan thought quietly to himself.

  “Right. Then we got five days running time at five knots to make the journey up to the middle of Lake Onega. The very earliest I’m going to see them in the right area is going to be May twenty-second.”

  He calculated that would require a five-day tour boat with the scheduled Green Stop at the north of the lake at around 1900 to 2100 on that same night—a tour boat that had left St. Petersburg three mornings previously on May 19, and which would meet the submarines on the waters of Onega in the afternoon of May 22.

  “Just gotta make sure we have a block of rooms on one of those ships every day from May nineteenth,” he concluded. “Once we get that in place, the only thing we need to do is to get the travel agent to change the names on the day we send the team in.”

  The CIA would now take over the nuts and bolts of the operation, organizing travel agents to book two suites on the top deck, plus one extra cabin, for one ship every day between May 19 to June 10. The entire plan was carried out from Langley, and the space was booked through the United States offices of the Odessa-American Line. As long as the Kilos stayed in Red Sormovo, a succession of young American executives would be enjoying nice vacations touring Russia’s canals and lakes.

  By May 31, almost fifty staff members from various consulates, embassies, and private corporations had made the journey up to the gateway of the Belomorski Canal. And more were scheduled. Except that on June 1 everything changed, fast. The first Kilo was photographed by KH-III moving down to the loading dock on rails. Twenty-four hours later a new picture showed it on board the lead Tolkach. There was suddenly no scaffold whatsoever on the third Kilo.

  “Christ,” said George Morris. “They’re on their way. Looks to me like June third or fourth departure.”

  Arnold Morgan alerted Admiral Bergstrom in Coronado, who confirmed that the SEALs were ready to go at a moment’s notice—he just needed Morgan to let him know the day his men were to leave St. Petersburg, and the name of the ship. Meanwhile he would move his SEALs across the Atlantic and into a hotel in the busy Russian seaport immediately.

  Lieutenant Commander Rick Hunter’s team was ensconced in the Hotel Pulkovskaya near the St. Petersburg Airport. Lieutenant Ray Schaeffer was with him, but Chief Petty Officer Fred Cernic had remained in California. Two other SEALs, a thirty-year-old Petty Officer, Harry Starck, and a much younger noncommissioned seaman, Jason Murray, were already in place. The CIA officer, Angela Rivera, a slim olive-skinned veteran in her midthirties, had arrived on May 29 with a large bag of theatrical makeup and a box full of wigs.

  The Tolkach barges were loaded by the afternoon of June 4. At first light on the morning of June 5 four tugs dragged the transporters and their $900 million cargo off the Red Sormovo moorings. The massive engines of Captain Volkov’s mighty barge churned up a seething maelstrom in the middle of the Volga junction and slowly pushed their way forward, followed by the six-hundred-footer, fifty yards astern.

  The usual complement of Russian military personnel was on board. Three armed guards worked shifts on each of the three barge sections; one of them was on duty at all times. The lieutenant in charge stayed with Captain Volkov. When they reached the White Sea, the Kilos would proceed under their own power, on the surface, to Pol’arnyj for trials and workup. Then they would set off on their journey to China, escorted the entire way by four heavily gunned Russian antisubmarine frigates carrying guided missiles, torpedoes, antisubmarine mortars with a six-thousand-meter range, and racks of depth charges.

  America’s KH-III satellite photographed the barges as they set off from Nizhny. George Morris had
pictures of the Kilos in his hand at Fort Meade within two hours. Admiral Morgan called Coronado, and Admiral Bergstrom himself hit the start button for Operation Northern Wedding at 2122 Pacific time. The SEALs would depart St. Petersburg on the Russian tour ship Yuri Andropov at 0800 on the morning of June 7.

  That meant an additional two-day wait for Rick Hunter and his team. While they settled down to the mind-numbing boredom of life in a commercial hotel in Russia, the Tolkach barges cleared the partly elegant thirteenth-century city of Nizhny, with its population of one and a quarter million, and its belief that it stands as Russia’s third capital.

  Captain Volkov settled into a speed of five knots and led the way slowly upriver past the dark-green forests that stretch all along the right bank, forming the heart of the central Volga timber-growing industry. The sight of the three jet black submarines being ferried along the river brought local people out by the dozens, and they watched the Kilos pass by, along the lonely, wide stretch of the river that leads to Jurevec. The Volga begins to narrow here, passing first through the picturesque nineteenth-century artists’ colony near Plyos, where white houses built like Swiss chalets cluster along the riverbank. It then passes the neoclassical town of Kostroma, to which Czar Nicholas II pleaded unsuccessfully to be exiled, and where Tolstoy was a frequent visitor.

  The submarines ran nonstop past the city of Jaroslav, with its ghastly chemical factory, placed with typical Russian flair so close to the old-world bourgeois charm of the town itself.

  At 2200 on the night of June 7 they swept past the hundred-foot-high statue of a female warrior, which guards the entrance to the waters of the Rybinsk Reservoir. They were more or less halfway between Nizhny and the center of Lake Onega now, a distance of five hundred miles. Captain Volkov pressed on into the night, occasionally speaking by phone to his son, who was up in the bow wheelhouse, three hundred yards for’ard. The Russian Navy guards patrolled through the night, walking back and forth with Slavic doggedness.

  The 9,500-ton tour ship Yuri Andropov was named in honor of the one-time head of the KGB, who presided, briefly, over the Soviet Empire in the early 1980s after the death of Leonid Brezhnev.

  The ship was packed. The suites on the uppermost deck, of which there were two, were greatly sought after. They were newly designed and built, each comprising two bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, and a small salon between them. They were much superior to the ten old single-bedroom suites they had replaced, and much more expensive.

  Four Americans occupied these suites. In number 400 was seventy-six-year-old Boris Andrews, and his brother-in-law Sten Nichols, who was one year younger, both from Bloomington, in the southern suburbs of Minneapolis. In 401 resided Andre Maklov, a seventy-eight-year-old diabetic from White Bear Lake, St. Paul, and his roommate, the bearded Tomas Rabovitz, a somewhat youthful seventy-four-year-old from Coon Rapids, north of Minneapolis.

  All four knew each other and had saved for many months to make the trip, each of them having once had distant ancestors from European North Russia. They were all in reasonably good health except for Mr. Andrews, who would soon require a hip replacement. He presently walked with the aid of a cane and used painkillers to deaden the endless hurt at the top of his right leg.

  The four had shared the cost of a nurse to accompany them back to the land of their forefathers. She was accommodated separately on deck two. Her duties were to attend them throughout the trip, and to ensure that none of them were left alone for too long. Her name was Edith Dubranin. She was fifty-two and also had some Russian ancestry, although she had never before traveled outside the United States. Edith was a stern, no-nonsense kind of a lady who had spent much of her career as a staff nurse in a Chicago hospital. She was five feet tall, fair skinned with obviously dyed blonde hair. In her new job as nurse-companion she wore a gray skirt with a white jacket and favored formality.

  She addressed her four charges as Mr. Andrews, Mr. Nichols, Mr. Maklov, and Mr. Rabovitz. She would attend to their laundry, arrange for their various medications, and accompany them to the dining room, where she would eat with them and deal personally with the waitresses. The table was for five only.

  On the first morning Edith had walked her charges slowly around the ship for some exercise after breakfast, watching the banks of the wide Neva River slip by during the thirty-eight-mile trip to Lake Ladoga. Mr. Andrews, a big, stooped man made smaller by the pain in his hip, said very little, except to Mr. Nichols, but Edith Dubranin seemed to strike up rather serious conversations with Mr. Rabovitz. Mr. Maklov, who also walked very slowly, seemed quickly exhausted by two strolls around the upper deck.

  The nurse arranged for a steward to make sure there were always five deck chairs placed outside the two suites in the small private area reserved for the passengers who had paid the most.

  Late in the afternoon the party of elderly midwesterners made their first contact with the outside world when the senior officer on the ship, Colonel Borsov, called to pay his respects, in impeccable English, to his most valued passengers. Like all such men on these tour boats, he would have been obviously ex-military, even without the formality of his rank, by which he announced himself.

  Old Mr. Andrews made the introductions and explained to the ship’s commissar, in an infirm voice, how much they were enjoying the lake. He also mentioned that it was wonderful to be back in Russia four generations after his folks had left for the United States back in the nineteenth century. Colonel Borsov asked where the Andrews family was from originally and smiled when he was told, “Right up there in Archangel, on the White Sea.”

  “Then we are from opposite ends of Russia,” the Colonel replied. “My family is from the Ukraine—like President Leonid Brezhnev.”

  “Well, you are a very nice, polite man,” chimed in Mr. Maklov, brushing his white mustache upward with the back of his right index finger. “And I think you should run for president as well.”

  This brought a smile to the face of the Colonel, who replied, “Not of Russia, nor of the Ukraine, Mr. Maklov. But perhaps one day of this shipping line.”

  “Good luck to you, Colonel,” Mr. Andrews said. “A bit of ambition never hurt no one.”

  “That’s right,” added old Mr. Maklov. “When you’re young, that’s the name of the game. And if I hadn’t shown some of it when I started out in insurance, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

  “And the Yuri Andropov would be the poorer for it,” said the Colonel, gallantly. “By the way, have you been to see the little museum we have dedicated to Mr. Andropov, down on deck two. No?…Well, you should. I know you will find it interesting. He came from central Russia, along the Volga, you know? He was a great man, a lover of American jazz, who died too young.” He did not mention that Mr. Andropov was also a Communist ideological hard liner, who had been a ruthless head of the KGB. Neither would the museum.

  “Well, we’ll certainly make a point of doing that before dinner,” said Mr. Andrews. “And we appreciate you visiting with us.”

  When the Colonel left, Miss Dubranin walked with him and thanked him for making it such an enjoyable afternoon. “They will be so proud that you came to talk to them, Colonel. They are such lovely old gentlemen, it’s a real pity that walking is so difficult for Mr. Andrews and Mr. Maklov. But they are both very uncomplaining.”

  “I was glad to come up and see them, Miss Dubranin. What line of business were they in back in the United States?”

  “Well, Mr. Andrews had a business distributing spare parts for automobiles. Mr. Maklov was an insurance agent. I think Mr. Nichols at one point worked for Mr. Andrews, and Mr. Rabovitz was some kind of a retail buyer for a clothing store in Minneapolis, Minnesota.”

  “Men from the heart of the Western capitalist system, eh?” said Colonel Borsov.

  “I suspect you will all be getting used to it before long,” replied the nurse.

  “No doubt,” said the Colonel. “No doubt. But I must continue with my calls, and I hope we may speak again before
too long.”

  Miss Dubranin watched him descend to the lower deck, and she walked back and sat down once more. “Very nice,” she said, carefully.

  A little later, on their way to the second shift, in the horseshoe-shaped dining room, they walked slowly past the museum and looked at the pictures of the late General Secretary of the Communist Party…pictures of him in his birthplace, Rybinsk; pictures of him in the Kremlin; pictures of him in Naval uniform, taking the salute at the Naval Academy in Rybinsk. Yuri Andropov, who died in 1984, before the full horror of the Soviet Union’s collapsed economy became known. Andropov, one of the very last of the Communist old guard, a blinkered man who thought until the day he died that another idealist from the Volga, Ilyich Lenin, may yet be proved right.

  “What a total asshole,” murmured Andre Maklov.

  And with that, the four old gentlemen and their nurse made their prolonged way to dinner, Mr. Andrews’s limp becoming noticeably worse. Two of their fellow passengers, both elderly ladies, smiled sympathetically as they passed. It was the natural telepathy of the elderly, a smile of shared anguish at the passing of middle age and the onset of twilight.