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"Do you think they will let me live in Montana?"
America is still not real for Vasily. It is a conglomerate of what the Party would have him think of it-- the excesses and the decadence of the wealthy, the poverty of the working man-- and of the Amerika painted for him in the grainy images of his precious contraband copies of Stagecoach and Angel and the Badman. The flat deserts, the vast open sky. Two myths. He supposes the truth lies somewhere in between, but he does not know, he does not know; he asks Ramius.
He asks Marko Ramius because he can never quite stop believing that Marko Ramius holds all the answers. Holdover of the days as a midshipman, learning from the Schoolmaster. Even then Ramius had been on his way to becoming a legend, and he had been young enough still to believe in those.
"I would think they'll let you live wherever you want," says Ramius after a pause, and Vasily smiles a bit. Good. It's good. It will be good, a big sky, an open space. The room to stretch one's arms out, to breathe. A far cry from a Petrograd flat, even the nice one afforded him by his rank. The flat is nice, spacious enough by far for a single man. Party-sanctioned art on the walls, Party-sanctioned books on the shelves, and under his mattress a few pictures of naked women on cheap newsprint. Party-sanctioned pornography, even.
The real secrets are much more securely hidden. Under the floorboards in the bedroom. The two John Wayne films he has rewatched to the point they are unwatchable, the old reels so scratched and worn that half the screen will be static; the Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash tape cassettes he paid three months' salary for on the black market; the homosexual poetry of Kuzmin and Pereleshin; the letters a classmate wrote him long ago, both of them foolish and young. (The other man long since discovered and sent to one of the Siberian gulags.)
All these things left behind, now. He dared not risk bringing them aboard, not with Putin's indisputable access to the cabins at any time. The zampolit is dead now, but the artifacts of Vasily Borodin's rebellion are under the floorboards and must stay there, sacrifice to the new life that awaits.
Besides, the most valuable secret of all he carries with him, untouchable, undiscoverable, safe from all eyes. Even his captain's. (Especially--)
"--Then I will live in Montana, and I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have... a pick-up truck." He does not have to feign the desire for the latter, at least.
In truth, the desire for the former is not feigned either. Comfortable, it would be comfortable, to raise rabbits as his father did, to come home at dusk to a wife who smiles kindly and warmly from the yellow rectangle of a doorway. He would be a good husband to her, he thinks. Affectionate. Gentle.
The fantasy will not stretch to include children, but that is alright. He's forty-three, what business does a man that age have with sons, hm? Nyet... the wife and the rabbits and the American roads will be enough. Johnny Cash on the truck's speakers. Arizona, as he tells the man who has been his guide in so much. Arizona, and two wives, because to laugh even at such an idle jest is good. To see his captain's grin is good as well. This has been such a tense time.
The cup of tea rattles on the table. Going into the turn...
A lifetime spent navigating in the dark. To be one of the Soviet Union's undesirables, to be a dissenter in thought or ideology, is to live in paranoia, to know that at any moment the eye of the State may become its hand, descending from the blind spot behind you to settle heavy on your shoulder and escort you into a black unmarked car.
A submarine, at least, can turn to see what follows it. Vasily knows no way to clear his own baffles, to make sure he remains undetected, other than the careful maintenance of the illusion.
His eyes find Ramius. Stretched on his bunk with casual ease, commanding the space as easily as he does the conn, with one hand up behind his head and the other on the immaculate white of his dress shirt. The ring on his finger catching the cabin's dim lights.
"What about you? What do you look forward to?" Vasily asks, careful to keep his voice only curious.
"I.... I have no such appetites," Ramius murmurs, and Vasily swallows a pang of disappointment. They have talked a hundred, a thousand, times of strategy, conspiracy, consequences, contingency plans, and his captain trusts him implicitly with all that knowledge; but they have not spoken of dreams, and his friend does not share those.
"Well, there must be something," he presses gently. It turns out to be a mistake. Talk of fishing slides to talk of peace, talk of war, talk of Natalia.
In the face of Ramius's grief he discreetly flees.
***
He had gone to her funeral, of course. The funeral had in fact been very well attended, a crowd of the Red Fleet's finest, sharp and somber in black dress uniform. Natalia and Marko's surrogate children: the boys of whom Ramius had made men and officers. Tupolev had been there, on the other side of Ramius. Putin had been there, crying even. Vasily had noted them and been silently angry on Ramius's behalf, because Ramius had noted nothing but her casket, his own cheeks dry.
After, the officers and crew had trickled away one by one, back to their own homes and lives. Ramius had sat in his house with an untouched glass of vodka in front of him, Tupolev attempting to get him to speak for some time. Finally he'd given up, stood with his hat under his arm and a wooden "Captain," a quick angry flicker of his eyes to Borodin, and then away.
(Like a jealous suitor fighting for a lover's favor, Vasily had thought at the time.)
He had sat in his chair, sipping slowly at his own vodka, letting his captain have his silence. Near on to midnight before Ramius's iron had cracked, silent shudders of his decorated shoulders, his face in his hands. Vasily had given Marko what he could-- he had looked away, to the dacha's big windows, the Russian night black and breath-takingly cold on the other side of the glass.
And when Ramius had lifted his face, cheeks wet, dark eyes terrible, and said, "This cannot be allowed to go unpunished," Vasily had done the only thing he could. Nodded, and said softly, "Da, captain."
Not knowing what he was assenting to, what was asked of him, only that Ramius asked it and that that was enough.
***
That had been the start of things, just the two of them at first. The others came slow and cautious-beyond-cautious, one man at a time. He and Ramius discussing each beforehand, arguing everything from the man's family to the books they had seen him reading to chance comments dropped during officer's mess: any possible clue as to true loyalties, inner thoughts. It will only take one misstep to see them all executed.
Ramius is the one who brings up each new name from among their circle of comrades, Borodin the one playing devil's advocate. Ramius seems to disregard half his objections, pushing ahead with the same assured confidence, almost recklessness, that has made him the force he is in the Red Fleet. His detractors say that he gambles; Borodin has served under Ramius too long to believe that his captain leaves anything to chance. And as Ramius's tactics have not yet been wrong, he follows him in this as well, even when he does not understand why Yuri, why Victor, why thirty degrees down-angle at this moment. Ramius says so. That is enough.
And Ramius does not ask him why. Some part of Vasily likes to think it's because Ramius knows he has no cause to ever doubt or question him, that Ramius knows he would give his life for him without a moment's hesitation. The more pragmatic parts of Vasily's mind say rather that Ramius merely believes he chafes at the promotion he will never receive.
That almost makes him laugh. Hardly that. In fact he counts it almost as a blessing, that an objectionable family member means he will never be given command of his own boat.
He would rather be Ramius's second than the first in a fleet that did not contain him.
***
Ramius didn't even know what he intended, with this gathering of the like-minded. Merely that he would strike, some way or another, at the State that had denied him justice for her death. Borodin followed in his wake like a tug drawn by the passage of a more powerful ship. Ramius simmered with impatience, with ideas, with plans that grew bolder and bolder and yet led nowhere; Borodin pointed out careful objections. Sometimes the others were involved but always it was Ramius's Plan; they all knew this. There was no plan and yet it was Ramius's.
Then the October. Coming, actually, in midsummer, the loveliest time of year, both of them on a month's leave from the sea.
The telephone rang in his flat and it was Ramius. Could he come out to the dacha from Petrograd? Today?
Da, captain.
A drive through the countryside, too tense to appreciate the scenery, parking the Moskvich. Ramius greeted him at the door, pressed a cup of tea into his hand, gestured him inside with no words out of the ordinary. But he knew Ramius, the gleam in his eyes, the controlled burn of energy in each gesture.
Ramius led him into the study and there on the table was the Plan. The plans, rather; the blueprints for a submarine. The first thing to strike Vasily was her sheer size; she was a monster, a queen of the deep.
"What is she?" he asked, voice hushed.
"Change," Ramius answered.
The Red October. An autumn that could lead only to a nuclear winter.
He looked at the plans, eyes finally rising from the paper to Ramius's gaze, understanding as well as he did the import of the machine laid out before them. Ramius's thick fingers settled lightly on the edges of the schematics. "They're building her in Murmansk as we speak. They are going to give her to us, Vasily."
Slow gaze between them, all the unspoken words hanging over the map, over those innocuous lines of ink on paper. Ours. Our crew. Our men for the officers.
This is our chance.
And Ramius smiled, fractionally, nodded back at him, just the smallest motion. Da.
***
After that time did strange things. It had crawled before with Ramius's burning desire for an opportunity; now it seemed there was not nearly enough time to set everything in readiness. And yet simultaneously it was still too slow, each day too long, too fraught with the chance of discovery. They began to plan again with the others, discussion seguing from abstract and philosophical heresy to the practical and technical.
They met at Ramius's home when they could afford to. For Borodin the evenings were bittersweet; it was good to see Ramius's energy given aim, focus, purpose. Better certainly than watching his captain raging silent and sullen without target. Yet when they sat around the dining table, papers and maps and diagrams covering the table instead of the plates of food Natalia had once cooked for them all, and Vasily watched Ramius expound the plan with a savage jab of his cigar for emphasis, he could not summon the same enthusiasm for it all. Freedom and America were such vague dreams. If it were possible, he would instead turn back the clock, have this be a dinner party in truth instead of as pretense. To have Natalia there again, smiling at her husband, Marko's own features softening when he regarded her. Vasily had always felt himself privileged to see that, as a man may who passes the lit window of a house on a cold night. The warmth of that house is not for him, but the sight may thaw him just the same.
But the clock will not turn back. So the dinners and evenings of laughter among the officers are forgotten, supplanted by the cigarette smoke hanging in a cloud over the table, the debates over just what the caterpillar drive can do, the American response, the course to take from Polijarny.
October brings change.
They sail in November, on a cold, cold morning.
***
"What is the plan?" he asks, as soon as he hears the door of Ramius's cabin close behind him, not even turned yet to face Ramius.
"Why, Vasily," Ramius says, the Lithuanian in his speech as pronounced as he has ever heard it, an audible smile in his tone, "don't you trust me?"
He nearly punches the door. Yes, he snarls mentally, yes, yes, I TRUST you, Marko-- you know I trust you, have I not proven my loyalty a thousand times? Now trust me, dammit, can you do that? God in heaven, his nerves cannot take much more of this. And they've twenty more hours before they reach this trench Ramius has plotted their new course to.
Vasily breathes in and out until he has control of himself, then turns to face Ramius. Some of the anger dies in him when he sees the weariness in Ramius's posture, his hands on the table and his head hung between his shoulders, sharp contrast to the old glibness in his tone.
It's been a hard voyage for them both, he reminds himself. Hard for them all, even Ramius who gives away nothing. Vasily leans back against the door and exhales heavily. "Captain..."
Ramius doesn't respond to it and Vasily doesn't know what he intended to finish the sentence with. He pushes away from the door and sinks into the seat; after a moment Ramius sits as well. In the silence the ship groans around them from the increasing pressure of the descent from periscope depth. One of them should be on the conn, Vasily knows, but dammit, dammit, he needs to know, and he needs to be included in whatever new thing Ramius now devises. That it is Ramius's plan is no longer enough. Vasily rubs at his forehead, eyes closed.
October has brought change.
"Marko, this is not the K-77 and I am not a midshipman."
Ramius looks at him startled, his thick brows, still black though his hair has gone to gray, rising over his eyes. "Of course not," he says as if that's self-evident, bafflement in his tone.
"Then stop treating me as such," Vasily says, and lets his hand drop from his face. "Stop setting up puzzles and not telling me the answer, stop enjoying my confusion, stop testing to see if I do what you tell me even when it makes no sense. This is not a teaching exercise, Marko!" His hand slams against the table but there are no teacups out to rattle satisfyingly.
Ramius regards him from behind black eyes, eyes dark as the depths through which the October manuevers, and says nothing. Vasily breathes in and out shallowly. He whispers, "Have I ever given you cause not to trust me, Marko?"
His captain looks down at the table, his fingers rubbing absently at a dent in the edge. "I can't tell what I don't know, Vasily," he murmurs. "The trench is the Americans' idea, not mine." He relays the Morse-code/sonar-ping conversation he had held with the American submarine's skipper, the one that turned their course south.
"I don't know what their plan is," Ramius says when he finishes, his brows furrowed with concentration. Vasily's expression unconsciously mirrors his own.
"Over four-thousand in depth," Vasily says thoughtfully. "Too deep for salvage..."
"Yes. The Americans must have figured out we have to scuttle the October for this to work."
"Mmm. But that reactor accident we're going to have still procedes as planned, da?" Vasily hopes so; he's spent enough hours going over his own reactions for when the time comes. A shame to lose that work.
"Unless the Americans have a better way for getting my crew off." Ramius looks tense, weariness written in the deep lines of his face, the bags under his eyes. Vasily half-smiles. 'His crew.' His family rather, every one of them; Vasily has never served a captain who was more the father to his men. Albeit an often irritating father.
He stands from the table, then, and dares it-- a hand to Ramius's shoulder, brief, gone the next second. "I'll return to the conn. Get some rest, captain."
Ramius makes a noise that might be a snort, but tellingly he does not argue. "Very well. Wake me when second shift starts."
"Aye, captain."
He's to the door again when Ramius's voice halts him. "You never have, Vasily."
He pauses, one hand on the door, the palm of the other itching slightly where it had rested on Ramius's shoulder. A confused glance back, Ramius's eyes holding him whole. "Sir?"
"Given me cause to doubt you."
***
It is a cliché straight out of a cheap Party adventure novel, but it all happens so fast. The Americans docking. The October presented to them. The Konovalov's arrival (he can imagine Tupolev, in his boat, the boat he held up as the sign of his triumph over Vasily-- and yet it is Vasily who is here with Ramius, and not Viktor); the torpedos fired and outwitted. Events tumbling one after the other and Captain (2nd class) Borodin rises to the occasion as he always has, for Ramius. And then the events boil down into one moment, one long second. The doorway, the man in it, the gun. Ramius.
He does not think, he does not have to. Grabs him and shoves, back out of the line of fire, and the next few seconds accelerate again, sparks and gunfire and someone punching him in the chest, the deck cracking into his knees. He doesn't understand, for a moment, until Ramius is before him, expression showing only that something must be wrong, terribly wrong. A button pings off somewhere, Ramius's hands showing no regard for the coat of a captain of the Soviet Navy.
He follows Ramius's gaze, though it takes such effort, and there is his chest, red, red, the Party-sanctioned color.
"I would like to have seen Montana," he tells his captain, and there are other things he would have liked, and would tell him, but he cannot find the breath to say them.
***
White, when he opens his eyes. He wants to laugh at that; the State lied, there is a heaven. White clouds and angels.
He opens them further and thinks it's very odd, that heaven smells of disinfectant.
The other corner of the room has Marko Ramius, sound asleep in what looks to be an uncomfortable chair, one arm in a sling.
"Captain," he says, or tries to; it's the third attempt when his voice cooperates. Ramius's eyes open and focus on him hazily. "Hnn. You're awake."
"I'm-- where are we?"
"The United States frigate Reuben James, Perry class, infirmary, with a formidable-looking American sailor outside the door with a rifle," Ramius says with a huge yawn, his free hand rising to his mouth. He resettles in the chair, eyes closing again. "En route to Montana."
Vasily's a little dizzy and it occurs to him he must be drugged. Still, he's not so dizzy he doesn't see the error in the statement. "Montana... is landlocked."
"Oh is it? How d'you know?"
"I have seen maps, Marko."
"And you believed them?"
He would answer, but oh, he's tired, drugged oblivion beckoning sweetly. So many questions for the Schoolmaster. Ask them later. Ask them later. For now, he can only say, struggling to get the words out before sleep claims him again...
"Da, captain."