That was fine by him, he thought. A warship should look like it could fight, and Kirov had all of the classic sharp angles, stalwart masts and radar festooned towers that brought the word battlecruiser to mind when you looked at her. This is a ship that was meant to be seen and feared, not something that would slink through the seas in the dark of night like a whisper of fog, hoping to remain undiscovered like a submarine. No, Kirov was a warship, a predator at sea, menacing, dangerous and intimidating in every line and angle of her design.
Karpov hated submarines, and he justifiably feared them. When offered a chance to train for undersea warfare, he refused the assignment, recoiled from it, as if he might be joining a colony of lepers if he went. There was something vile about a submarine, he thought, something devious, something that too closely reminded him of the darker aspects of himself. He understood the work of an undersea boat only too well. In fact, he had captained his life like any good submariner might up until that first great failure that had sent him to the bottom of the sea.
Karpov had planned and plotted his way up through the corporate ranks of Gazprom, but his career took a turn for the worse under the Putin administration. The executive class of the company had evaded taxes, stripped off assets and distributed them to family members, but the Putin reforms began to root out the corruption and return control of the company to the state, which was really nothing more than taking them out of the frying pan and putting them into the fire.
In the midst of the turmoil, Karpov’s long negotiations with Western oil and gas companies came under scrutiny, the special favors, privileged access, the perks and gifts exchanged, and he found himself betrayed and back-stabbed when a consortium of Western companies led by British Petroleum undercut his position, reneged on a technology transfer deal, and left him dangerously exposed to government scrutiny. He could hear the investigators listening for him, then pinging out a more invasive search, and he was very afraid. When a government committee dropped a depth charge in the water that he knew he could not avoid, he abandoned that first career ship and went into the cold waters of unemployment, burning with resentment and vowing he would one day get even with BP and the other Western companies that had ended his career.
A few hard years followed where he sat at harbor himself, a derelict like the old hulk of the ship he now captained, without heading or compass, until he eventually decided, like so many other ruined men in Russia, to turn to the military. He joined the navy as a lieutenant where his devious skill and ruthless efficiency saw him advance quickly.
Like Kirov, Karpov had struggled to rebuild himself as well, yet to do so he had brought the same old habits and strategies of the corporate oligarchy along with him, climbing the ranks here by using the same guile and conniving undersea tactics that had seen him move up the ladder in Gazprom. The navy was just the sort of environment a man like Karpov thrived in. There were established rules here, clear pathways for advancement, well honed protocols and decorum. One could follow a sure and certain route through the ranks, much like the halls and gangways of the ship itself, and he climbed the ladders well.
It was not an easy climb, or one without conflict. Russians still had a deep distrust of capitalism, and businessmen in general after those dark years of collapse. It was as if his contemporaries could sense he had come from another world, a submarine world, and that there was no place for him now on a ship like Kirov. The Captain had to offset all this by finding the right men to please, and the right voices to silence with a well planned reprisal when necessary.
Russians were meant to suffer, or so they seemed to believe, and Karpov would see that his enemies suffered well if they blocked his way forward. His ability to undermine a potential rival was a long practiced skill. Even as a young school boy he had found that he had to use his head to survive in this world. Physically small, and even somewhat frail as a boy, he nonetheless possessed a sharp intelligence and aggressive, competitive spirit. When the boys would play in the yard, choosing up sides with the strongest among them as team captains, Karpov hated it when he would be the last one picked by either side, and hated it even more that none of the other boys would trust him to ever carry the ball in the scrimmage matches they played.
In secondary school he had taken to closeting himself away and finding solace in the souls of Russia’s great writers, and he soon fancied himself a man from the Underground, just as Dostoevsky had written about it.
“My schoolfellows met me with spiteful and merciless jibes because I was not like any of them. But I could not endure their taunts; I could not give in to them with the ignoble readiness with which they gave in to one another. I hated them from the first, and shut myself away from everyone in timid, wounded and disproportionate pride. In the end I could not put up with it: with years, a craving for society, for friends, developed in me. I attempted to get on friendly terms with some of my schoolfellows; but somehow or other my intimacy with them was always strained and soon ended of itself…”
Russia was a big, bruising, and rough place. Her men were the same way at times, uncultured, and relying more on brawn than brains. Karpov saw how the physical was glorified in school athletics, and knew there was no way forward for him there. He was not like any of the other boys. He could not run fast enough, jump high enough, or push his way through the line to get at the ball. Yet he suppressed his shame and determined to become a team captain nonetheless, by some other means, by any means necessary. To do so he had courted the favor of his athletic coach, staying late in the dressing room, bringing him food from home, and even gifting him with a small vial of vodka that he had found in his father’s old liquor cabinet.
Gradually, he was given more responsibility there, helping to draft the rosters, inventory the athletic equipment and see that everything was accounted for and locked up in the bins properly at day’s end. His position soon saw him assigned the task of distributing the balls and equipment to the various squads, and handing out their shoes and uniforms as well, and he loved his hard won authority and the small measure of power and control it gave him over the other boys. He saw to it that any boy who had ever offended him ended up with the most shoddy equipment in reprisal. The strong young team captains who had so cavalierly passed over him before, now had to come begging, and those who did not soon found themselves undermined in other ways as well.
Academically gifted, Karpov helped the boys he favored in their studies, and shunned and even impeded those he perceived as rivals or threats. He once went so far as to see that one lad received the wrong list of words for study on a particularly important test, and it was enough to put a torpedo into his chances for a scholarship that semester. It ended his athletic program as well when the boy failed the exam so miserably that he could not participate in the crucial team competitions that spring.
When he moved on to university studies Karpov followed much the same route, surfacing to becoming a teacher’s aide, docent, librarian’s assistant. Here it was not footballs and helmets he controlled access to, but books and information. He saw to it that he worked the desk for special reference volumes, keeping track of book requests, and here he decided who got the materials, and who did not. He moved students up or down on his lists, sometimes extracting favors and forcing them to support his other agendas if they wanted access to important information he controlled in the library.
Once, when embarrassed in debate class by another gifted student who had opposed him too skillfully, Karpov saw to it that the student waited longer than anyone else, and after finally releasing an important volume to him he found a way to slip into his dormitory room and steal away the book, hiding it back in the shelves and then spending the next two weeks pressuring and haranguing the student for its return, berating him for losing it and threatening to take the matter up with school officials.
Even the professors came, in time, to fear and dislike him when he was instrumental in ending the career of a teacher who had graded him low in an important class. He had confro
nted the man in his office, saying he had failed to properly consider and evaluate his essays, but his protest came to naught. The teacher would not revise his grade, and so Karpov determined how best to get even. It was here that the fine art of spreading rumor and fomenting scandal came into play. He slipped bottles of vodka into the teacher’s classroom closet, then whispered he was a drunken lush, and often kept certain students too long after class, and for reasons that were far from academics. He soon discovered the devious art of the lie, and its power to influence and harm others.
There were two kinds of lies in the Russian mind, and Karpov was a master of both. One was vranyo, the posturing and lip service everyone paid to the system, a little white lie here and there, whispered to an audience who knew very well it was a little white lie, and was perfectly content to stand as the willing believer, knowing full well that the other party knew the matter at hand was a bent and tarnished version of the truth. Russians traded vranyo with each other on a daily basis, one the liar, one the listener, and both knowing it was all a casual play. Dostoevsky had gone so far as to claim: ‘A delicate reciprocity of vranyo is almost the first condition of Russian society-of all Russian meetings, parties, clubs, and associations.’
The other lies were something more, called lozh, which was a conscious and deliberate intention to deceive. While most Russians were well adept at the subtle gamesmanship of vranyo, they often failed completely at the darker art of lozh. Writer and dramatist Leonid Andreyev wrote that Russians really have no talent for real lies, which were, ‘an art, difficult and demanding intelligence, talent, character and stamina.’ Karpov was an exception. His talent for spinning out real lies served him very well over the years. He made an accusation that ended the troublesome teacher’s tenure, and was skillful enough to make the lie stick. Karpov had learned early on that even the appearance of wrongdoing could have the same debilitating effects as a real misdeed.
Ambition was one thing, duplicity and deception another. People soon came to realize that Karpov’s ambition would always come in tandem with those darker elements. Getting things done in the sloth of protocol and paperwork in Russia took time, patience and more than a little conniving, he knew. After fifteen years coming up through the ranks at Gazprom, Karpov was a master of the subtle art of lying, a master of lozh, and he never blushed one minute for his behavior. Dostoevsky had said it best when he asserted that among Russian intellectual classes, transparent candor was an impossibility.
Karpov was a perfect example of this, scheming, controlling, subtly aggressive, and often shameless in the way he undermined his rivals. He had discovered that popularity only took a man so far in life, particularly in Russia. Fear was an equally compelling emotion for most people, a moral reference point any Russian understood well enough, and Karpov knew how to stoke those fires of doubt in any rival’s heart. He was indirect, yet ruthless and persistent. And in the end he was successful. Some men stood aside just to be out of his crosshairs, others opened doors for him just to be rid of the man and his constant harangue when he engaged them. And wherever there was a vacuum that would take him higher in the ranks, Karpov filled it with his considerable ego, and an intelligence and ambition that saw him rise quickly, making his current position of First Captain in just seven years.
With many enemies and few friends, he had become a cold man, arrogant within the hard shell of his own intelligence, and still preoccupied with details, rules, schedules and lists, still the young schoolboy in the locker room or assistant in the library. Now he shuffled the ship’s crew from one assignment to another, granted and denied favor, chastened and ground upon his chiefs, but yet his ruthless efficiency saw the ship as tightly wired as it had ever been.
They had rendezvoused with the replenishment ship 10 hours ago and taken on additional live ammunition to replace the rounds they would fire in these exercises. They were up between Bear Island and Jan Mayen on a cold late summer day, but they should be in a sheltered inlet where they could best ride out the coming storm. No use running at sea in a force nine gale, which is exactly what Rodenko, the ship’s radar man, had predicted over the next several hours.
His mind drifted to the likely play of the hours ahead. They would ride out the storm, then rendezvous with Orel off Jan Mayan and try again, if Slava managed to keep her targeting barges in line it would be a miracle. And as for Kirov, what to do about all those extra missiles crated in the holds below? Chief Martinov was taking far too long to store the munitions properly in the magazine. The Russian maxim: ‘They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work’ was well applied to that man. He would have to send Orlov down there to knock a few heads together if he wanted the missiles all sorted out in the next eight hours.
What would Severomorsk say about the delay, he wondered? The Admiral already seemed upset over the time lost by this mishap, and it led Karpov to believe that Volsky was worried about something back home. What could it be, he wondered? A personal matter? More likely it was something to do with ‘Old Suchkov,’ Chief of the Navy. He was aging, ten years older than the Admiral, and well past retirement age. Yet the old guard, as he called them, had been hanging on to power in the hierarchy above.
Suchkov was made Chief of the Navy in 2015, just six years ago, at the age of 68. Now, at 74, his failing health would prevent him serving out the usual ten year term at the post. Volsky was next in line, having come up through the mandatory billets as commander of the Black Sea Fleet, then the Pacific Fleet, and finally the Northern Fleet. If Suchkov retired, who would replace Volsky as Fleet Admiral here? Most likely Rogatin. He had moved from Novorossiysk to Murmansk two years ago, and now was comfortably installed as Suchkov’s Deputy Chief of Staff.
The Captain knew he was a long way from that chair. His normal route, after finishing at least three years here aboard Kirov, would be to take on a Missile Ship Division as Chief of Staff, then make Rear Admiral and take over operations at a base like Severomorsk or Novorossiysk. He would need to collect his medals, the Order of the Red Star, the Order for Service to the Homeland, the Order of Military Merits, the Order of Courage. Once he lined up enough color in the ribbons on his chest he could then begin the final approach to a Fleet Admiral position, and he would finally have the power he deserved.
He shrugged inwardly, thinking what a long and grueling slog it would be. Things took time in Russia. Things were promised but seldom delivered in Russia. Things too often had a way of going wrong, just like this simple live fire exercise. Karpov had already started courting the favor of men like Rogatin back home, thinking to get in with the man and possibly skip a few chairs. For now, he was proud of his post here aboard Kirov, and determined to make the most of the opportunity. He was finally out of the ranks of junior officers, a man to be respected and reckoned with, or so he believed.
Yet Dostoevsky’s line about old habits was all too true where the Captain was concerned: ‘The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.’ Now that he had been made First Captain of the ship, he sometimes repeated the foibles and jaded manners of the old Gazprom executive class he had come from, bending the rules to suit him, and exercising more license than he might have done while jostling in the ranks for promotion. This was common all through the calcified power structures in Russia, from the police stations in every town, up through government at every level. Rank had its privileges. There would be nice thin layered blini with melted butter, jam and honey on the officer’s table in the morning for breakfast, but not for the rankers below. One had to do whatever was necessary to put honey on the table, he thought, but what to do about Volsky?
Just as in his university days, Karpov had been involved in more than one deception with senior officers standing as potential rivals on his career path. He took it upon himself to investigate personal matters in the lives of men he found threatening. He learned their habits and foibles, the state of their marriages and affairs, the bars or clubs they frequented, and he
became a master of spreading those subtle, destructive lies, lozh, often wrapped in the more familiar gauze of vranyo — a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as it were.
Where lies would not serve, Karpov often feigned friendship by sending unusual gifts at odd hours and in unusual circumstances. Once, he had sent a bottle of fine French champagne to a rival officer on the day after his son had failed miserably in his crucial academy testing. He rubbed it in by pretending to apologize the next day, saying he was so certain the young many would pass that he believed the gift was well made. “Perhaps next semester,” he concluded. His message in these petty and often offensive capers was obvious, and they were one of many reasons why those beneath Karpov in the ranks had come to dislike him so much. For those above him, he reserved liberal praise and the most strict and proper decorum-until he set his mind on the post that particular officer occupied. After that, when a man became an obstacle, Karpov began a long and calculated campaign to subtly undermine him, a whisper here, a rumor there, a little vranyo, a little more lozh, an arranged embarrassing moment in the line of duty that would serve to cast doubt on his rival’s competency.
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