Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt for Red October

When Gindin makes his way up to the bridge to report to the captain, he is about ready to go to bed, which is just what Potulniy suggests. Later, in the sober light of day, Gindin realizes that maybe the captain hadn’t been shy after all. Maybe he knew what was in store for the officer who visited the important wives, and if someone were to drink a little too much and make a fool of himself, it would be better if it were a junior officer rather than the captain.

But that afternoon is just a memory now, as Gindin heads back to his cabin to write a letter to his mother. He’s also getting flashbacks from his father’s funeral. The entire workforce of the factory where Iosif worked showed up to pay their last respects, telling Boris and his mother how much they respected and would miss their friend. Boris desperately wants to be with his family today—even more so today than other days, for some reason—so he hopes that the letter will put his mind at ease. In any event, they will head to the shipyard tomorrow and after that it’ll only be a couple of weeks until he is on leave with his family.

Or so he thinks.

PART 2 THE BALTIC

9. EVENING OF THE MUTINY

Dinner has come and gone, the sky is starless, there is a cold breeze stirring, and traffic along the waterfront is sparse. The holiday is over and the people of Riga are doing their own thing: family gatherings, playing chess, watching television—the Bolshoi Ballet is doing a matinee performance of Giselle. Anyway, tomorrow the Storozhevoy will leave for the shipyard where for two weeks everything aboard will be put to rights. Already the weapons loads—missiles, mines, torpedoes, and depleted uranium ammunition for the guns—have been taken off the ship, and his fuel tanks are nearly but not quite empty. One of the refit tasks will be to send the smallest sailors through maintenance hatches into the tanks to repaint them. The less fuel there is to pump out beforehand, the quicker the job will get done.

Gindin goes back to his cabin to get another pack of cigarettes—they’ve been at sea for six months, so he is out of Marlboros until they get back to base; now he has to smoke the shitty-tasting Russian ones, Primas without filters. But he guesses that he really doesn’t mind. One of the main reasons he started smoking the much more expensive

American brand was so that he could impress civilians with how good Soviet navy officers have it.

“We were protecting their lives,” he says. “So maybe we deserved a few bogatstvo, luxuries.”

As he’s stuffing the pack into his uniform pocket, his roommate, Vladimir Firsov, walks in, a half smile on his pleasantly square face.

“So, Boris, what’s eating your ass?” he wants to know. It’s like half the ship has come down with the shits or something. Almost nobody is smiling.

Gindin hasn’t a clue. He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “Something.” It’s a general feeling that something is right around the corner or that someone is sneaking up behind them. He’s developed a case of the volocy vstali dybom, the willies.

Vladimir and Boris leave their nine-by-eleven cabin and head back up on deck, where they lean against the rail and smoke. The wind has picked up and now that the sun has gone down it has gotten even colder than this morning. One of the fronts that regularly sweep across the Baltic from the Arctic must have come through in the past hour, because they can see their breath.

“It’s cold,” Firsov says after a long silence, and Gindin isn’t at all sure his friend is talking about the weather just now.

“Havana was better,” Gindin replies. They’re talking, but it’s like they’re wading through molasses. It’s as if they are drifting, rudderless, without any purpose. Gindin has never felt like this.

They talk about the rotation they’re finally coming off and the big repair job they were stuck with on the way to Cuba. There’ll be a lot of work for them at the shipyard, but in two weeks they’ll be home with their families.

Vladimir is married and has one young kid. Each year Boris helps Vladimir celebrate his anniversary and the birthdays of his wife and son. It’s a sweet Russian custom, especially among sailors at sea. The little celebrations tend to make the loneliness more bearable.

Boris is thinking that he won’t be able to celebrate his father’s birthday next year, or any year after that, when Nikolay Bogomolov gets on the ship’s public-address system—the 1MC. He’s the duty officer on this shift. It’s coming up on 1900 hours, and Nikolay announces that all officers and midshipmen are to report to the midshipmen’s dining hall in uniform.

Boris and Vladimir head belowdecks. They’ve been off duty, so they have to change into the uniform of the day. All the ordinary sailors not on duty are watching a movie in their dining hall. It’s The Battleship Potemkin, which is the favorite of just about every zampolit in the fleet.