Operation Overflight (28 page)

Still another possibility occurred to me. While I didn't like to think about it, I had to admit its existence—that this fiction was being told to bolster the self-confidence of other pilots and flight crews.

What was most frustrating was the knowledge that so long as I remained a captive of the Russians there was nothing I could do to dispel the lie. Anything I said—whether in my trial testimony or my letters—was suspect: Powers is a prisoner of the Communists, either by torture or drugs or brainwashing, they can make him say anything they want.

In time, I was sure, my story would be verified by other evidence. And the United States would have to face up to the unpleasant fact that Russia had effective SAMs. I could only hope the delay wouldn't prove dangerous or that the supporting evidence didn't consist of downed planes and dead pilots.

Early on the morning of Friday, September 9, I960, accompanied by two guards, a lieutenant colonel, a major, a female interpreter, and a driver, I rode out the gates of Lubyanka Prison. A second car, containing three additional guards plus my few personal effects, followed.

In a short time we left “modern Russia” behind. The roads were narrow, primitive, and in bad repair, necessitating frequent detours. The occasional villages did not seem to have changed much since Tolstoy's day, their inhabitants still living in log cabins. But, though the day was overcast, the countryside was green, the horizons vast, after so long between four walls, and I saw
trees
, the first in over four months. I wondered how long it would be before I saw them again.

It was a pleasant drive. I wished it could have gone on forever. But in a little more than three hours we reached our destination, Vladimir Prison, located near the Trans-Siberian railroad, about 150 miles east of Moscow.

The approach to Vladimir Prison was deceptive. All you saw was the large gray administration building, and no walls.

Once inside, I was turned over to prison officials. Whether a country is Communist or democratic, there are common denominators—bureaucracy and red tape. More than an hour of answering questions and filling out forms was required before my assignment
to building number 2. Exiting from the other side of the administration building, I could have no doubt where I was: the walls were better than fifteen feet high, brick; guards with machine guns and searchlights were stationed in towers at the corners.

As we walked through the long empty courtyard, past several buildings, then through an arched gateway, they watched our every step.

Surrounded by its own walls, building number 2 was a prison within a prison. Four stories high, its outside red firebrick, it looked all too secure.

The building superintendent was a roly-poly little major named Dimitri. Quite jolly, he seemed an unlikely jailer. Shortly after my arrival in his office, another man entered. He was about my height, but fairly thin, with a gaunt face that made it difficult to guess his age. He wore a black beret. I thought perhaps he worked in the prison.

“My name is Zigurd Kruminsh,” he said in English, shaking my hand. Since handshaking was something my Russian captors never did, this should have been a clue. But I missed it.

I tried to pronounce his name, failed. “Sorry,” I apologized, “but I'm still having trouble with these Russian names”

“I'm not a Russian”
he barked.
“I'm a Latvian!”
He said it less in anger than in pride.

The major said something, pointing to Zigurd's beret. This time his reply
was
angry, and defiant. I asked him what the major had said.

“He told me to remove my beret. I refuse to do so. They have cut off all my hair, and until the day they let me grow it back, I shall wear this. Because of my self-respect.”

I liked him immediately.

While still at Lubyanka I had been asked whether on arrival at my permanent prison I wished to remain in solitary confinement or to have a cellmate. Knowing all too well that loneliness was my worst enemy, I had replied that most definitely I would like a cellmate; then, tempting my luck, I had requested one who spoke both English and Russian. This would eliminate the need for an interpreter, and I could learn Russian at the same time. My request had been granted. Zigurd Kruminsh (pronounced Zoo-gurd Crewmage) I now learned, was to be my cellmate. He not only spoke and read English and Russian, but Latvian and German, knew considerable Esperanto, some French, and was currently studying Spanish.

After I had been searched by one of the guards, the two of us were taken to the second floor of the building to our cell, number 31.

It was twelve feet long, eight feet wide. The floor was wooden. The walls were painted a dark gray on the lower part, the upper portion and ceiling white.

Having become “stir wise,” one of the first things I checked, once the guard had locked us in, was the window, to see if there was any way to look out. There were two. The glass in the upper section of the window was clear. From the floor you could see a bit of the sky. Standing on one of the beds, or the cabinet directly in front of the window, you could see a great deal more. But this, I presumed—correctly—was
zahpretne,
forbidden. However, in the lower section, there was a narrow crack, with a tiny hole in the end. Looking through, I could see the tops of several buildings passed on the way from the administration building, the wall separating our building from the rest of the prison, and the arched gateway. It wasn't exactly the kind of view one would pay a high rent to enjoy, but it had a distinct advantage. I would be able to see at least some of the other prisoners, whenever any were escorted through the gate. And that in itself was a big improvement over Lubyanka.

Looking through the hole, I noticed a few other things. The first sheet of glass was opaque. Behind it was a dead-air space about six inches deep, another window, this one clear glass, another space of about six inches, heavy bars, then about a foot to the outside. From this I was able to estimate that the brick walls were at least two feet thick.

In front of the window was a small cabinet. We could store our bread ration and extra food there, Zigurd told me.

The beds stretched alongside the two walls, separated by a space of about two and a half feet. I tried mine, the one on the left. Had I checked into a hotel in the United States and been given such a bed, I would have complained immediately. But compared to the iron slats at Lubyanka, it was comfort personified. I was rapidly learning that pleasures are relative.

At the foot of each bed was a cabinet and small wooden stool. The top of the cabinet could be used as a desk or table, the inside as storage space for underwear, socks, towels, cigarettes, toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving gear—which just about completed the inventory of our personal possessions.

At one corner near the door was an old-fashioned radiator. At
the other, on Zigurd's side, a five-gallon can. I didn't have to ask what it was for.

The lighting arrangement was similar to that at Lubyanka—the night light an unshaded hundred-watt bulb over the door, the day light an identical bulb in the ceiling. But we had one item in our cell not in the earlier prison. On a shelf on the right-hand wall was a squawk box. From six
A.M.
to ten
P.M.
, with a silent period between 2:30 and four
P.M.
, it broadcast Radio Moscow. It offered music—folk, opera, classical; news; and lots of propaganda. You could turn the volume down but not off.

The door, complete with peephole, was similar to the one at Lubyanka, with the exception that in the lower portion there was a smaller door, about a foot square. At suppertime I learned its purpose: unlocked from the outside, it folded down into a shelf; when we slid our tin plates and bowls out, the serving woman would ladle our meals from a huge vat, and pass them back.

Supper the first night consisted of one item—boiled potatoes.

You could hear the serving woman moving the food cart from cell to cell. Later I counted them. There were ten on our side of the cellblock, twelve on the opposite side.

Of the four floors in our building, Zigurd told me, there were cells on the first and second, the third vacant, the doctors' and dentists' offices and the hospital on the fourth. Until a few days prior to my arrival, Zigurd had occupied a cell on the first floor. Building number 2 housed the worst political prisoners—those who had committed serious crimes against the state: for example, writers and intellectuals who had dared criticize the Soviet regime publicly, and people who had attempted to overthrow it.

Zigurd belonged in the latter category. Convicted of treason, he had received the maximum prison sentence, fifteen years. Of this, he had already served more than five, the first three in solitary confinement.

He was not reluctant to tell me his story. Rather, he seemed excited at the prospect of having someone to talk to.

What did I know about Latvia?

Very little, I admitted.

He described it—its forests and trees, its little villages, its people, their fierce nationalism—with an eloquence that could arise only out of deep love for one's homeland.

In 1940 Latvia had been overrun by the Russians, who had incorporated it as the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. Only thirteen at the time—he was now thirty-three, two years older than I—
Zigurd had, like many of his countrymen, nurtured a hatred for the Russians stretching back through centuries of invasion and annexations. In 1941 Germany had invaded Latvia, driving the Russians out. To many of the Latvians, to whom German was a second language, this seemed less a conquest than a liberation. In 1944, when Russia again attempted to reclaim Latvia, Zigurd had joined the German Army, over the opposition of his parents, in order to fight the Russians. What followed was one continuous retreat, while the Red Army pushed their unit back into Poland, then all the way into Germany. By this time it was apparent even to the troops that Germany had lost the war. Many conscripts from Latvia, Poland, and other occupied countries were willing to battle the Russians, but they felt no animosity toward France, Britain, or the United States. Ordered to fight the Allies, they deserted in great numbers, Zigurd among them. Knowing that if he was caught by the Russians he would be shot as a traitor, he headed west, trying to make his way to the American lines. Before reaching them, however, he was captured by the British and placed in a POW camp. There, and later, in a displaced persons' camp, he had learned English, which enabled him to get a job as guard at one of the British bases. While working there, he had been recruited by British intelligence, who flew him to England and put him through a special agents' school. Trained to operate and repair radio transmitters, he was eventually returned secretly to Latvia by boat, where he went to work in the underground, transmitting messages, helping to smuggle people in and out of the country, and working to overthrow the Soviet puppet regime in Latvia.

The group did not engage in sabotage. Its primary functions, apparently, were to provide intelligence from behind the Iron Curtain and to form a nucleus of partisans that could be of assistance in the event of war.

Though in the Latvian underground for over a year and a half, he did not attempt to contact his parents. Erroneously, he had been reported killed in Germany. Not wanting to endanger them because of his activities, he had allowed them to believe that he was dead.

In summer his group had camped in the forests. Winters were so severe, however, that they had to have shelter. The underground hid them on a farm. One night they received warning that the secret police were closing in on the transmitter. A guide arrived, to take them to safety. After walking some distance, he left them by the side of a road while he went for a transport.

Since he had the radio strapped to his back and didn't want it
to be seen, Zigurd had left the others, retreating into the woods about one hundred feet, out of sight of the road, where he sat down on a log.

That was the last thing he remembered. On opening his eyes, he found he was staring at the checkerboard pattern in a wooden floor. He had been nearly frozen; now he was warm. Only then did he discover that he was bound to a chair in an interrogation room.

Though he had thought about it often, he was not sure how many hours or days had passed since his capture, nor exactly how it had occurred. He was sure he had been betrayed, however, and suspected the guide had been an informer. That he had been picked up so far back from the road, moments after arriving at the spot, indicated the secret police had been lying in wait.

After what he described as a “farce of a trial”—he was allowed no defense, the judge simply listened to the charges, then gave him the maximum prison sentence—he had been held in solitary confinement for almost three years, while they attempted to break him and make him identify others in the underground. Failing in this, they had transferred him to Vladimir.

When he arrived, his jailers had suggested that he write to his parents, giving them his new address. He had refused to do so. Rather than have them live under the stigma of a son in prison, he preferred that they believe him dead. But the Russians had written for him. His parents had come all the way from Latvia for a visit. And now they sent him letters and packages regularly.

That was Zigurd's story, as he first told it. Not until much later would I learn how much he had left out.

He apologized for his rough English. There had been more than five years since he had had an opportunity to use it.

We made a deal: I'd help him with his English if he would teach me Russian.

Several times during our talk I had heard tapping from the adjoining walls. Was it a code? I whispered. He nodded. What were they saying? “They're asking, 'Is Powers there?'”

Zigurd hadn't replied to the tapping. Not sure whether the cell was bugged, I didn't question him further. I guessed that having spent three years in solitary he was not willing to risk being returned there for a minor infraction of the rules.