“If this goes wrong, we’ll all be shot,” Shein argues. He’s frightened, and it shows. “The KGB doesn’t screw around.”
“No one’s going to get shot; trust me,” Sablin promises. “Anyway, if something like that happened it would only be the officers, not the enlisted men.”
“I don’t want to end up in a gulag, freezing my ass off, eating rats.”
“It won’t be like that, either,” Sablin says. “Are you with me?”
Shein nods a little uncertainly, still not 100 percent sure of anything, except that he would like to get out of the navy and return home.
“Good man,” Sablin says, beaming. He hands Shein the envelope addressed to the captain and instructs the seaman to go to the ship’s library and pick out a few books that Captain Potulniy might like to read.
Again Shein nods uncertainly, even less sure what’s going on. What does getting some books for the captain have to do with a mutiny?
“I want you to take the books and the letter down to sonar parts compartment two,” Sablin orders. It’s far forward and at just about the lowest point in the ship, except for the bilges, and at this hour of the evening, at a mooring, the compartment will be unmanned. “Then I want you to disconnect the phone and take it out of there.”
“Yes, sir,” Shein says. He’s really confused, but suddenly Sablin makes everything frighteningly clear.
“As soon as you have the compartment ready, let me know. It’s where we’ll keep the captain after I arrest him.”
Shein steps back a pace, the enormity of what they are about to do striking him in the gut. Arrest Captain Potulniy? The captain is not a bad man. In fact, Shein has never exchanged so much as one word with him. And it’s not the captain who’s at fault for what Sablin preaches is a failure of trust by Moscow.
Sablin pulls a Makarov 9mm pistol out of a drawer. “Take this, and when you’re finished belowdecks go directly to the midshipmen’s dining hall, and I’ll meet you.” He grins. “Right now Comrade Mauser is empty, but I’ll give you the magazine in plenty of time.”
“I don’t want to shoot anybody,” Shein complains.
“Not to worry, Alexander, you won’t have to shoot anybody,” Sablin says, getting to his feet. “I promise you. Now hurry and get the compartment ready for our guest; we don’t have much time left.”
Shein turns and leaves, but before he does Sablin can read the confusion and worry in the boy’s eyes. To this point Shein had been led to believe that Captain Potulniy was going along with the plot. There was going to be a mutiny, but in name only, because the captain himself would be a part of the conspiracy. It is a small white lie, in Sablin’s mind, but a necessary lie to ensure that everything goes well.
If Potulniy gets so much as a whiff of the plot before he is secured in the compartment below, he will sound the alarm and fight back. At that point all of Sablin’s carefully laid plans will be reduced to nothing more than an exercise in futility.
A dangerous exercise in futility, because officers who attempt mutiny and fail at it get their nine ounces. A 9mm bullet to the back of the head.
The next fifteen minutes while Sablin waits for Shein to report back that the sonar compartment is ready are difficult for Sablin, who paces his compartment. This part of the plot wouldn’t have been so critical if Potulniy had gone ashore this afternoon for a few hours of liberty. Sablin had planned on going with the captain and somehow ditching him in Riga.
How Sablin had planned accomplishing that part will probably never be known, but he was, if nothing else, a romantic, and ditching the captain ashore sounded swashbuckling.
But Potulniy refused. He had too much work to do aboard before they sailed for the shipyards tomorrow. Which was too bad, because Sablin had a real respect for the captain, and everybody knew it.
Shein appears back at Sablin’s cabin. “It’s done,” he says, a little breathlessly. His face is pale and his brow sweaty.
“Good,” Sablin says. “Now get yourself to the midshipmen’s dining hall and wait for me.”
“What about the bullets?”
“As soon as I’m finished with the captain,” Sablin says. “Now go!”
When Shein disappears down the corridor, Sablin takes a moment to compose himself before he rushes to the captain’s cabin and without knocking throws the door open.
Potulniy, in shirtsleeves, is sitting at his desk doing some paperwork, and he looks up in surprise. “What is it, Valery?”
“Captain we have a CP!” Sablin shouts. It is a Chrez’vychainoy Polozhenie, a situation.
“What has happened?” Potulniy demands, getting to his feet.
“Some men are drinking belowdecks, in the supply compartment,” Sablin reports. “Captain, I think they mean to do some damage unless they’re stopped.”
“We’ll see about that,” Potulniy snaps. “Come with me.”
He rushes forward and down ladder after ladder, deep into the forward bowels of the ship, his zampolit right on his heels.
Reaching the sonar compartment, Potulniy looks over his shoulder. “Here?”
“Yes, Captain, just inside,” Sablin says.
The captain pulls open the hatch and climbs down into the compartment. The moment his head clears the level of the deck, Sablin slams the hatch shut and dogs it down.
“Valery, what are you doing?” Potulniy shouts. At this point he has no comprehension of what is happening.
“Saving the Soviet Union,” Sablin calls back, and even to his ears the statement seems grandiose.
“What are you talking about? Let me out of here. That’s an order!”
“I can’t do that, Captain, not until later. For now, most of the officers and I are taking control of the ship.”
“Mutiny?” Poltuniy screams. “You bastards. You’ll all hang.”
“What I’m doing is just as much for your benefit as for the Rodina’s. Can’t you see?”
“I thought you were my friend.”
“I am. Believe me, Anatoly, I am your best friend.”
“Then why are you doing this? Have you gone insane?”
“We’re going to broadcast on radio and television directly to the people.”
“Broadcast what?”
“A call for revolution. A return to the true meanings of Marx and Lenin. We’re tired of the lies, tired of the stagnation, tired of having no say in our future. Can’t you see—?”
Potulniy slams something that sounds like a piece of metal against the hatch. “You bastard! You miserable fucking traitor! Let me out now!”
Sablin steps back, his heart pounding nearly out of his chest, until he finally catches his breath. He makes certain that the hatch is truly locked, then turns and heads back up to the midshipmen’s dining hall, for the next part of the mutiny to unfold.
25. MUTINY
The act of mutiny is punishable by death in just about every navy in the world. Even failing to report a suspicion that someone else aboard ship is about to commit mutiny can be punishable by death. National governments take this crime very seriously.
Technically, mutiny is a crime of nothing more than disobeying a legal order. If the captain says, “Scrub the decks,” and the sailors refuse, they may be court-martialed for mutiny. The reason the crewmen disobey the order doesn’t matter; all that matters is that the order was a lawful one.
That means the captain of a ship has been placed in charge of the vessel and his crew. Every order the captain issues is, by definition, a legal one, unless of course it goes against all common sense or is clearly against the Geneva Convention. But even then the issue is almost impossible to prove, because the benefit of the doubt always lies with the captain. According to the British Royal Navy’s Articles of War (1757), which most nations, including the Soviet Union, adopted: