26. THE OFFICERS DIVIDED
Gindin has made his choice and is waiting for the other officers to make theirs—white or black. Some of them seem to have calmed down a little. Maybe they think that this is some sort of a joke after all, or maybe it’s simply that they are whistling as they pass the graveyard, gallows humor. Among the others only Lieutenant Sergey Kuzmin, the sonar systems officer from BCH-3, acts like he’s taking Sablin’s insane proposal seriously. Kuzmin had a bad marriage that will end in a divorce, but it hasn’t soured him on women, and he and Gindin often talked about the day they would settle down with a wife.
Kuzmin is the same height as Sablin, only his hair is blond and he has a tiny mustache. He walks up to the table and faces their zampolit eye to eye and drops a black game piece into the basket. Sablin doesn’t have the same reaction he had with Gindin; maybe it’s because he expected Kuzmin to vote against the mutiny or thought that because Gindin was a Jew and hated the system there was more hope.
Kuzmin comes back to his seat, and one by one all the officers cast their votes. Besides Gindin and Kuzmin, those voting against mutiny include Captain Lieutenant Nikolay Proshutinsky, who is commander of BCH-3, Senior Lieutenants Smirnov and Vinogradov, and Warrant Officers Gritsa, Khokhlov, and Zhitenev.
Which leaves Lieutenant Dudnik going along with the mutiny and midshipmen Viktor Borodai, Gomenchuk, and Kalinichev also each dropping a white backgammon piece into the basket.
Everyone has voted now, except for Gindin’s roommate and best friend, Firsov, who slowly gets to his feet and approaches the table where Sablin is standing. Vladimir is clutching a backgammon piece in his right hand so tightly his knuckles have turned white. No one is making any noise now, not because they are concerned about Firsov’s vote but because all of them are finally beginning to realize the enormity of what is happening. Gindin just wants his friend to drop the black piece into the basket and find out what happens next.
Firsov reaches over the basket and drops the game piece. But his body is blocking Gindin from seeing the color—white or black. When Firsov turns around to face the room it is impossible to tell from his expression how he voted, but Gindin is worried because Vladimir is not returning to his seat. He stands at Sablin’s left as if he wants to say something, as if he wants to explain to Gindin what he’s just done.
“This vote shows who is with us and who is against us,” Sablin says. He doesn’t seem as sure of himself as he did just two minutes ago. In fact, he seems resigned, which as far as Gindin is concerned is another bad sign. “I am giving you one last chance to change your minds. This is the most important decision of your lives.”
“It’s the most important decision of your life, Captain,” Gindin says from where he’s gone back to his seat at one of the tables. “You’ll kill us all if you go though with a mutiny. You should know this.”
“I’m doing this not to kill you, but to save your lives!” Sablin cries passionately. “You must be able to see this. Our government must be thrown out before it’s too late for all of us. We need another revolution, the time is now, and this ship will be the spark that begins it.”
Gindin is at a loss for words, finally. Maybe this is a test after all.
At length Sablin nods. He understands the situation, probably better than anyone else in the room, although his idealism will probably be his undoing. “I will ask those officers who voted against me not to stand in our way.”
No one moves a muscle; no one says a word.
He nods again. “Very well. I would like everyone who voted against us to leave the room.”
Still no one makes a move. “We were afraid of our own shadows,” Gindin recalls. And he wanted to find out how Firsov had voted.
Finally someone stands up, Gindin can’t remember who, but then he is on his feet with the others, and they shuffle out from behind the tables and timidly approach the door they came through. “We didn’t know where we were supposed to go,” Gindin says. “Certainly not to our duty stations. Maybe back to our quarters, or perhaps up on deck where we could have a smoke and talk about what was happening.” Sablin said they would not be leaving Riga until morning, so there was still time to do something. What that might be no one had a clue, but at least they had overnight to figure something out.
But Firsov is not joining the officers leaving the midshipmen’s dining hall. His backgammon piece was white. He has voted to go with Sablin. Firsov has voted to mutiny.
“I could not believe my eyes,” Gindin says of that moment. “It felt as if a speeding train had just run through my head.” Thoughts and emotions tumble end over end in his gut. A dozen questions he hasn’t even been able to form yet are seething to the surface from some cauldron deep within his Russian soul. He feels confused, betrayed, deceived, more frightened than he’s ever been to this point in his life. Why had Vladimir chosen to side with Sablin? It made no sense. Was Vladimir completely out of his mind? Was he flustered? “Maybe he was trying to save his own life,” Gindin muses.
A couple of the officers who’d voted to go along with the mutiny get to their feet and stand beside Sablin as if the zampolit’s rank or power might protect them.
Gindin wants to ask again what has happened to the captain, but the vastness of the chasm that has opened before him and the shock of Firsov’s betrayal strike him speechless for those few moments.
One of the officers opens the door. Metal chains have been stretched across the corridor to the left and the right, blocking them from returning to their duty stations or from going up on deck. The only path for them is through an open door directly across the hall and down a companionway to the next deck below. It occurs to Gindin, and probably the others, that they are being herded like sheep. Or, more darkly, like lambs to the slaughter.
Gindin’s fear spikes, yet he doesn’t call out in alarm. Nor does anyone speak, because a stocky enlisted man holding a large Makarov is standing in the corridor just beyond the chain to the left. He is scowling, and he looks as if he means business. Sablin has promised the enlisted men the moon. He is the one officer they can trust. They will do anything for him, even kill the other officers if it comes to that. Gindin and the others read something of that from the young man’s expression.
The first officers through the door into the corridor pull up short when they are confronted by the sailor with the gun and try to turn back, creating a logjam.
Gindin spins around, but Shein has stepped out of the projector closet and he, too, is holding a big Makarov pistol in his meaty hand, and he, too, looks as if he means business. There will be no turning back. They have no other choice than to cross the hall and take the companionway stairs down to the lower deck, though what awaits them below is anyone’s guess, but Gindin is truly afraid for his life now. Not only from the authorities when word of the mutiny gets out but also from his zampolit and his armed crewmen.
Gindin makes a last, mute appeal to his roommate, but Firsov looks away. He cannot meet Gindin eye to eye. Vladimir is embarrassed, and Gindin believes that is a positive sign.
He turns back again to follow the other officers out of the midshipmen’s dining hall, and he feels a faint glimmer of hope that Firsov will come to his senses at some point and stop this madness from going any further.
It’s up to Firsov now.
Across the corridor they climb down the steep, vertical stairs about three and half meters to where another enlisted man with a pistol is waiting for them at an open door into one of the sonar parts compartments.