Zhilev remained at the table for a long time after he had stopped crying while steam gushed from the bubbling kettle on the stove.When he eventually got to his feet, he went to a cupboard and took out a mug, placed a spoonful of instant coffee into it and filled it with the boiling water, stirring it slowly as if in a trance. All he could see and hear were memories of his brother.
Zhilev was a year younger than Vladimir although most people thought they were twins. They were inseparable throughout their youth.Vladimir was the quiet, intelligent one while Zhilev was the adventurer and very much the risk-taker. When Zhilev accepted a bet one day from fellow schoolboys that he could not ride his bicycle off a ramp and over a ditch from a culvert that gushed vile black water from the old generating station, it was only because Vladimir had inspected the width of the ditch, the angle of the ramp, the mechanics of the bike and told his brother it was possible. The first time they were apart was the day Vladimir was called up to serve his mandatory time in the military. Vladimir was more fortunate than most since, as a gifted engineer, he went directly to an engineer battalion and spent virtually his entire three years in an armoured depot on the outskirts of Moscow thus missing active service. Zhilev considered his military career just as fortunate and for quite the opposite reasons. From the day he joined he dreamed of a future filled with adventure and exciting operations behind enemy lines, gathering information and carrying out direct action.
The day after Vladimir left home for the army, Zhilev walked into town and joined the local military youth school where he learned to scuba dive. By the time his call-up papers arrived a year later, he had some idea of what he wanted to do and even a vague plan. Rumours abounded of special units that carried out clandestine operations in enemy lands and every youth soldier and conscript had at least one exaggerated story he had heard of their derring do. What nobody seemed to have a clue about was where the mysterious groups were based and how a person joined them. It was generally understood that they came to you, but for that to happen a man had to stand out in some way, be different, exceptional. Zhilev had learned from his old diving instructor in the youth military school that the best route to ‘special forces work’ was through military intelligence. That would open many doors for anyone who was successful in that department. First Zhilev had to get through the basic military-training course and then take it from there.
The three-month induction training was easy for him and made him all the more determined not to end up serving with the kind of men he had joined up with, most of whom were unmotivated and got drunk at every opportunity. All he could think of was getting to the end of the course and applying for a specialist aptitude test which, if he passed, would allow him to attend a selection process for military intelligence.Within a week of completing basic training he was invited to take the week-long series of mental aptitude tests with some short map marches thrown in to assess the recruits’ physical condition. He passed the course with ease and received orders to study radio communications under OSNAZ, the Special Forces unit of the Intelligence Directorate of the Navy, in Kiev. This was the first big step towards his goal but he still had no idea how he was going to break into the actual operational units. Zhilev spent a year at the vast old concrete complex built after the Second World War under Stalin’s directive, learning radio technology and how to operate the various ‘special’ radios used by Special Forces and field agents - or spies for want of a better term - learning their construction and the many complex coding systems.
At the end of this course he sat a final test and passed with honours. His intelligence as well as Sambo skills, which highlighted his physical abilities, did not go unnoticed and a week after the exams he was called to see his commanding officer who personally handed him a military assignment, voluntary in nature, which was simply two words: marine intelligence. The brevity of the offer suggested it was far beyond ordinary military duty. In fact, it was a career directive and, as the commander pointed out, a great honour to receive. There was one slight obstacle Zhilev had to clear before he could accept the offer: he could not embark on an intelligence career as a conscript and would have to sign up for twenty years, which also included signing a contract that stated he understood the punishment for disclosing official secrets was death. These were not even issues for Zhilev and he promptly signed on the dotted line. He was finally on his way to realising his childhood dream and within days was on a train to the Black Sea where he would join the OMRP and one of the legendary and highly secret reconnaissance and sabotage units that came under the general banner of Spetsnaz, which simply translated means ‘of special purpose’. He knew his life was going to change in every conceivable way and he marched eagerly, albeit blindly, into it.
Had he known where the great adventure would eventually lead he would have remained in Riga and become a metal worker like his father, marry, and have a family and take holidays in Yalta once a year like everyone else in the factory. But he did not.
Zhilev took the two hundred mile train journey south from Kiev to the city of Ochakov on the Black Sea, a hundred miles north of Sevastopol, the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, which was to be his parent command. From Ochakov, he was taken in an army truck into the wilderness to eventually arrive at Pervomayskiy, an artificial island at the mouth of the rivers Dnepr and Bug. Called Mayskiy for short, the island was a stone fortress constructed in 1881 and used as such until World War Two. It was taken over by the Spetsnaz in the 1960s and the interior reconstructed to provide classrooms, a small hospital, helicopter pad, sports facilities and accommodation for two hundred and fifty men, and included a water-processing plant and enough food and supplies to comfortably sustain the men inside its walls for up to a year without contact with the outside world in the event of a nuclear attack. This was the home of the 17th Brigade of the OMPR and where Zhilev was to be based for much of his career.
The following two years were spent training extensively in all forms of intelligence gathering, both technical and physical, as well as advanced small arms and sabotage. He learned Special Forces diving skills, which included the use of bubble-less re-breather diving apparatus as well as mixed gas options for deep-water operations, and how to drive and navigate a number of different miniature submarines. He studied intensively a variety of Western commercial and military targets, from oil platforms to missile silos, so that he could report on them as well as mount sabotage operations against them. This was where he also learned to use several different kinds of chemical, biological and man-portable nuclear weapons or suitcase bombs.
The only negative aspect of that period was he could not see as much of his brother as he would have liked. When either of them were on leave, and that was rarely at the same time, they would make their way to the other’s nearest base town, in Vladimir’s case, Moscow, and in Zhilev’s, Ochakov, and spend as much time as they could together. By the time Zhilev’s two-year training programme was complete, Vladimir was a civilian once again, and with Zhilev’s probationary period over, it was easier for them to meet. In fact Zhilev spent every leave period back in Riga with his brother, attended his wedding as best man, and was at every one of their three children’s christenings.
During Zhilev’s operational years he took part in missions and so-called rehearsals all over the world from Cuba to China, England and America, and was involved in the training of several renowned terrorist groups and the passing of weapons to, among others, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. The day he realised his career in Spetsnaz was over was the worst in his life, until the arrival of this letter. Nothing in the world meant more to him than his brother, not even his own life. He would have given it gladly if it meant Vladimir could come back home.