Under the Ice

by Richard P. Henrick

  With his daughter’s mittened hand firmly in his own, Sergei began to make his way down the snow-covered sidewalk. Though crowded with bundled pedestrians, this thoroughfare was much more easy to travel than the icy street to their left. Anyway the snarled roadway was bottlenecked with bumper-to-bumper traffic.

  As fortune would have it, their route took them downwind. This fact, plus their wise choice of clothing, made the frigid Arctic storm all the more bearable.

  While taking a shortcut through Revolution Park, Sergei was forced to carry his daughter in his free arm. This was necessary since many of the drifts he was soon trudging through were several meters thick and would have all but buried a standing Sasha.

  Halfway through the park, they stopped to watch a team of hockey players at work on one of the many frozen lakes situated in it. Such a sport was serious business in the Soviet north, and not even a howling blizzard could keep the players from their daily practice.

  It was while watching them work out on the ice that Sergei thought he heard an alien whining roar through the constant howling gusts. This high-pitched racket could easily have come from a low-flying airplane, on its way to the nearby Murmansk airport. But Sergei dismissed this thought as pure nonsense. Not even Aeroflot, or the devil himself, would be flying on such a stormy, windswept afternoon.

  It wasn’t possible to scan the sky in such a storm so the naval officer turned to complete the short, five-minute hike home.

  Inside the warm lobby of their building, Sergei and Sasha were met by the apartment’s vigilant duty woman. Olga Rybinsk took her position as concierge seriously, and since she lived in the building, she knew her fellow tenant’s comings and goings better than the

  KGB.

  Because Sergei’s duties kept him away from home for a good six months out of every year, he was glad to have the services of such a watch lady. There could be no better home security force than Olga Rybinsk, for no criminal in his right mind would dare incur the feisty septuagenarian’s wrath. The submariner couldn’t help but notice how the old lady’s eyes lit up when Sasha went dashing into the entry hall.

  “Well, if it isn’t the snow princess herself,” the adoring duty woman exclaimed.

  “Were you out there building a snow castle, Sasha?”

  “Poppy wouldn’t let me,” the youngster answered as she studiously wiped the snow from her boots.

  “You see, we went shopping, and so we have to put away our purchases before we can go back out to the park and play.”

  As the duty woman helped Sasha remove her mittens, she firmly commented.

  “Those fingers of yours are as cold as icicles, young lady! You’d better rest a while indoors and warm up properly first. This snow will be around for a long time to come, and it will be much more fun to play in once the winds stop. Besides, you don’t want to go out and play while you’ve got company in your apartment, do you?”

  Sasha’s eyes widened.

  “I bet it’s Uncle Viktor and Aunt Tanya! I do hope they remembered to bring along my birthday present.”

  The duty woman looked up and caught Sergei’s glance.

  “Comrade Belenko and his wife arrived here approximately a quarter of an hour ago. Captain.

  According to your instructions, I allowed them to go up to the apartment without first calling your wife.”

  Sergei nodded.

  “Thank you, Olga. Let’s just pray that I don’t get in trouble for being late to my own party.”

  “I believe that the Belenkos said something about being a half-hour early,” the duty woman stated efficiently.

  “Seems they anticipated this storm and left their place before the rush hour started.”

  Conscious that Olga Rybinsk would have made a marvelous intelligence officer, Sergei smiled.

  “Then perhaps my guests will forgive me after all. Stay warm, and have a nice evening. Comrade.”

  With this, Sergei followed his daughter up a twisting flight of stairs. Though the building had an elevator, it hadn’t worked properly since it was installed.

  By the time he reached the seventh floor, he was wheezing and his brow was matted with sweat. In contrast, Sasha, hardly affected by the climb, merrily skipped down the corridor and burst through their apartment’s front door. With leaden limbs, his sack swinging at his side, Sergei followed in her wake.

  Inside the apartment, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite was blaring forth from the radio’s speakers. As Sergei identified the particular movement as the “Waltz of the Flowers,” he scanned the combination dining room den and found it vacant.

  A roaring fire burned in the fireplace, however, and the nearby coffee table held several platters of mixed appetizers. Yet there was still no hint of his wife’s presence or his guests’.

  Only when a characteristic high-pitched voice sounded from the enclosed kitchen did Sergei realize where they could most likely be found.

  “Oh Uncle Viktor, Aunt Tanya, it’s wonderful!”

  exclaimed Sasha.

  The mesh bag he continued to drag along at his side seemed to have gained in weight as Sergei headed toward the kitchen. As he had assumed, it was in this cramped, linoleum-lined cubicle that the entire party had chosen to gather.

  He first spotted his pert, redheaded wife Lara standing beside the sink. At her feet, Sasha sat comfortably on the floor, already absorbed in the toy doll she had just been given.

  “She’s got several additional outfits as well,” observed Tanya Belenko.

  “We got you the ski suit, some formal wear, and bathing gear.”

  As the svelte blonde bent down to show Sasha where these outfits were stored, Sergei Markova announced his presence by loudly clearing his throat. It proved to be his wife who spotted him first.

  “Well, look what the wind blew in. I hope you don’t mind, but we started the party without you.”

  “So I’ve noticed,” replied Sergei as he swung the mesh carrying bag onto the counter. After accepting a kiss from Lara, he turned to the tall, black-haired man standing by the refrigerator.

  “Hello, Senior Lieutenant. Glad you could make it.”

  Any guise of formality was dispeled as Sergei picked his way across the room and warmly hugged his coworker.

  “Greetings to you. Captain,” replied Viktor Belenko.

  “That’s some storm that’s brewing outside, huh, my friend?”

  “It certainly is,” answered Sergei, who was about the same height as his swarthy second-in-command, but fair-skinned and blond.

  “Why it was an effort just to keep Sasha from being blown away.”

  “That’s not true!” shouted the six-year-old from the kitchen floor.

  “Come see what Aunt Tanya and Uncle Viktor have given me. Poppy. It’s a Barbuski doll!”

  As Sergei bent down to take a look at this present, he planted a kiss on Tanya Belenko’s cheek.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this. Captain,” whispered Tanya with a provocative wink.

  “People will talk.”

  “Let them. I’m not shy,” retorted Sergei playfully, as he examined the lifelike doll Sasha was already expertly dressing in ski coat and boots.

  “That’s a marvelous gift, little princess,” he observed.

  “Why she almost looks real. Now why don’t you gather everything up and take your Barbuski off to your room before one of us grown-ups steps on something.”

  “Come on, Sasha dear. I’ll help you,” offered Tanya.

  As they began picking up the various articles of realistic, miniature clothing and the colorful paper in which the present had been wrapped, Sergei stood and rejoined Viktor.

  “It looks like Sasha certainly has something to keep her out of trouble for the rest of the evening. Thanks for remembering her, comrade.”

  “The pleasure’s ours, Sergei. After all, we’ve known Sasha since she was an infant, and we like to think of her as our own flesh and blood.”

  Sergei smiled.

&
nbsp; “We’re very lucky to have friends such as you and Tanya. So what do you say to a drink to seal our bond?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Viktor replied.

  Beside them, Lara Markova was in the process of emptying the mesh sack her husband had just brought in. Most of the items she took from it were bottles of liquor. Lara counted three liters of Georgian champagne, two of Ukrainian potato vodka, and a bottle of French cognac. She also exhumed four loaves of crusty bread, a package of assorted fruit tats, Sasha’s prized cookies, cake, and several tins of Beluga caviar.

  As she turned the empty sack upside down and shook it as if expecting something else to fall out, she commented.

  “Do you mean to say that you’ve been gone over two hours, and this is all you were able to bring back?

  Why this isn’t even half the items I put down on the list. Where’s the milk, the chicken, and the fresh fruit I needed? Why our guests will positively starve!”

  Already breaking the seal of one of the vodka bottles, Sergei made a vain attempt to defend himself.

  “In anticipation of this snowstorm that’s upon us, I think every single babushka in Murmansk was out this morning hoarding food. The milk and poultry counters were bare by the time I got to them. And the only fresh fruit available was a load of rotting Cuban mangoes.”

  “Well, I see that you had a bit more luck at the liquor store,” Lara wisely observed, as she set four clean glasses on the crowded counter.

  “And where in the world did you ever find real Beluga caviar? I thought all of it was being exported for hard currency.”

  A gleam sparkled in Sergei’s eyes.

  “Sometimes being an officer in the People’s Navy does have its benefits, my dear wife. Old man Litvak, the fellow who runs the Red Star liquor store was a naval commander himself during the Great Patriotic War.

  Though I’ve heard his exaggerated exploits told time and again, I bit my tongue and listened as he took me back to the time he single-handedly ran a Nazi blockade to successfully land a shipment of food badly needed by the starving citizens of Leningrad. After he finished this narrative, I humbly asked if he knew where a current-day naval captain could find a special party treat to share with his wife and a small group of friends. Not only did he come up with the caviar, but that bottle of Napoleonic cognac as well.”

  “I’ll have to remember that next time I’m out shopping,” reflected Viktor Belenko.

  To this, Sergei shook his head.

  “Sorry, Senior Lieutenant.

  It only works for captains.” There was a wide grin on Sergei’s face as he filled up the glasses and proposed the first toast.

  “To good friends, warm homes, and to peace in the Motherland!”

  While each of the women took but a sip of the powerful potato vodka, their husbands each downed an entire glassful. Grabbing the rest of the bottle, Sergei beckoned Viktor to join him in the den.

  With their glasses again filled, they settled down in the large, upholstered couch that sat beside the blazing fireplace. From the mounted radio speakers, Tchaikovsky’s soulful Symphony No. 5 in E minor began unraveling. Such a thoughtful piece of music proved to be the perfect background as the two submariners sipped their drinks and stared into the crackling embers.

  “Your Lara seems very happy,” reflected Viktor.

  “And little Sasha is as adorable as ever. You are a very lucky man, Sergei Markova.”

  “I don’t know about that, Viktor Ilyich. That sexy wife of yours is the type of woman a man dreams of.”

  Viktor looked introspective.

  “I guess that we’re both very fortunate in our own ways, my friend. Has this week gone as quickly for you as it has for me?”

  Sergei rolled his eyes up and responded.

  “I’ll say.

  The hours are just flying by, and all too soon we’ll be packing our bags and returning to the Neva. Speaking of the devil, weren’t you going to put a call into our esteemed which man this morning?”

  The senior lieutenant grunted.

  “That I did, comrade.

  Ustreka sends his regards and was able to give me a fairly comprehensive update on the state of our refit. As we expected, the SS-N-15 nuclear-tipped antisubmarine missiles are the only weapons that have yet to be delivered. Other than that, we seem to have a full complement of torpedoes and decoys. Our food larders have also been restocked, though Ustreka mentioned that much of the fresh produce and fruit is little more than garbage. The which man also reported that a supply of Arctic outerwear arrived late last night. In the same locker with this clothing were a dozen Kalaishnikov assault rifles, several portable mortars, and a large supply of ammunition and grenades.”

  “You don’t say,” returned Sergei Markova “I don’t remember requesting such specialized gear. Do you, Viktor?”

  Shaking his head that he didn’t, the senior lieutenant continued.

  “Since this delivery didn’t show on the ship’s manifest, the which man was prepared to turn it away, when our good friend the Zampolit intervened.

  It seems that Comrade Zinyagin knew all about the shipment, for he personally signed the receipt invoice.”

  “Now that is strange,” observed Sergei as he reached for the bottle to refill their glasses.

  “I must remember to ask our dear Political Officer about this when I meet with him at the end of the week.”

  “I still think Konstantin Zinyagin is a snake,” disgustedly spat Viktor.

  “That man can’t be trusted for a single minute. Some keeper of morale, when he’s instigated the majority of personnel problems we encounter on the Neva.”

  “Now Viktor, is that any way to talk about out beloved Zampolit? After all, the Party puts such individuals on board each and every Soviet warship merely to direct the crew’s ideological indoctrination.”

  “Like hell they do, Sergei. You know as well as I that officers such as Konstantin Zinyagin are there for one purpose only, to act as Party spies.”

  Any response on Sergei Markova’s part was cut short by the arrival of his wife.

  “Just like I told you, Tanya. I knew that they’d be talking shop,” observed Lara, as she placed a platter of caviar down on the coffee table.

  Following with two half-filled glasses and an open bottle of champagne, Tanya Belenko took this opportunity to get her own two kopecks in.

  “It never fails, does it, Lara? Leave these two alone for more than ten seconds and they can’t wait to talk about that damn submarine of theirs. I don’t understand it. When they’re out on patrol, they always tell us how during every spare moment, their thoughts are of us, yet when they finally get home, what do they do in their spare time but talk about that infernal boat.”

  Sergei realized the truth in this statement and held up his hands.

  “You’re right, ladies. This is certainly no time for talk of work. So what do you say to getting this party rolling? Has anyone tried that caviar yet?”

  Lara’s face filled with an ecstatic expression.

  “I can’t tell a lie. We both gave it a try in the kitchen, and are you two in for a special treat. Why should such a delicacy be only reserved for rich foreigners? Such a policy is a national disgrace.”

  As the conversation turned to the wisdom of bartering away national treasures such as Beluga caviar for the hard currency it brought, the telephone began to ring. Lara was in the process of turning for the bedroom phone when the ringing abruptly stopped, to be replaced by the shrill voice of their daughter.

  “Poppy, it’s for you!”

  These unexpected words hit Sergei like a blow to the stomach. Briefly catching the concerned stares of his guests, he put down his glass, excused himself, and headed for the bedroom.

  Several minutes passed before he returned. It only took one look at his sullen face to know he would be the bearer of bad news.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Sergei with a heavy sigh, “but I just got off the phone with Admiral of the Fleet
Kharkov. And not only has he just landed in Murmansk, he wants — immediately — to meet us at the docks, where we’re to have the Neva ready for sea at the next change of tide!”

  A moment of constrained silence followed as the navy men wives exchanged disappointed glances while the tragic conclusion of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth symphony rang out appropriately in the background.

  Chapter Eight

  Lieutenant Jack Redmond sat in the jumpseat of the Canadian Forces CP-140, Aurora long-range patrol aircraft. The muted whine of the plane’s four turboprop engines produced an almost hypnotic effect on the exhausted, forty-three-year-old Arctic Ranger, and he briefly closed his eyes to take advantage of this rare moment of free time.

  The past twenty-four hour period had been a most hectic one. It had all started innocently enough, with what was to be a routine overnight bivouac in the foothills surrounding Mount Assiniboine. With Angus McPherson accompanying them a good portion of the way with his melodious bagpipes, they had proceeded up into the Sunshine meadowlands without incident. Of course, this atmosphere of normalcy had changed the moment Jack had had his terrifying encounter with the two grizzlies. Yet the hand of fate had miraculously intervened in the form of the Canadian Forces helicopter that had literally rescued Redmond from the jaws of death and whisked him off to nearby Calgary.

  It was at Calgary’s Currie Barracks that he learned why the chopper had been sent for him in the first place. In yet another isolated corner of the world’s third largest nation, a plane carrying Soviet Premier Alexander Saratov had presumably crashed. To make certain of this, and hopefully to locate the plane’s black box which would explain to the world the reason for this tragedy. Jack Redmond and his crack squad of Rangers were to be sent northward to far-off Baffin Island.

  Most anxious to undertake this demanding mission, Jack waited as the rest of his squad arrived at the barracks. They flew in aboard a lumbering Boeing Chinook helicopter. This same vehicle whisked them off to the Calgary airport, where a chartered jet was waiting to convey them on a one and a half hour flight almost due northward, to the town of Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories. It was here that the Arctic Rangers had their permanent headquarters.