military pilots in the VVS, PVO, and Naval Aviation. Most of my competitors were fellow captains, but there were also a large number of young majors, many with experience as squadron commanders. I even recognized a couple of my former instructors from my academy years. At least I was in good company.
My squadron mates confirmed what I had already suspected: They had become friends with the test pilots of the fighter division, but I did not have time to socialize with the center staff. Colonel Torbov had indeed extracted his revenge.
The tests began the next day. We were told that the week-long examination would be divided into five days of separate tests: theoretical aeronautical engineering tests; medical exams; physical fitness and dexterity; practical flight tests; and, finally, personal interviews before a board of center instructors. As my fighter group assembled in a school amphitheater to receive our test schedules, I could see that most of my colleagues — like me — were anxious to do well. Fighter pilots are a competitive lot by definition, and we were all acutely aware that we represented the cream of the Soviet Armed Forces.
The eight hours of theoretical exams went well. Glancing around me in the brightly lit test room, I saw my fellow applicants literally sweating over their exam sheets, some nervously rapping their slide rules on the varnished tabletops in frustration. They had not taken the months to prepare, alone each night in an empty flat, as I had. My investment in the big Minsk refrigerator, rather than in a distracting color television set, was now paying dividends.
The medical and strength and dexterity tests were rigorous, but I knew I’d done well. Unfortunately I walked back from the sauna in a cold breeze and came down with a sinus infection the morning of my practical flight test. A blocked sinus throws off your vestibular balance, which makes precision flying difficult. As luck would have it, the first of the two flights was with the test pilot school commander, Colonel Migounov. By definition, he was a pilot’s pilot, who had probably forgotten more about precision flying than most Soviet fighter pilots ever learned.
The flights were in a two-seat MiG-23UB, a well-equipped and very well maintained aircraft. I rode in front, with the colonel perched behind in the narrow instructor’s rear cockpit. He had a full set of instruments back there and could accurately assess how well I executed the demanding maneuvers he ordered. I had been flying such precision tests since preparing for the L-29 aerobatics competition years before in Azerbaijan. But this morning I was simply not in tune with the aircraft. One particularly exacting sequence, a descending sixty-degree spiral at exactly three hundred knots down to a precise altitude of 6,000 feet was needed, I was way off the required speed and dive angle.
But Colonel Migounov remained silent behind me. All I heard was his slow, rasping breath in his oxygen mask.
My second test flight was scheduled for 1500 hours that afternoon with Colonel Rizantsev, the school’s deputy commander for curriculum. Instead of fretting about my shaky performance that morning, I went back to the officers’ barracks, undressed, climbed in bed, and slept for almost three hours. Luckily I had been used to catching such “combat naps” while standing duty alert day in, day out at Vaziani. When I awoke, my blocked sinus was clear, and my headache was gone.
That afternoon’s flight was flawless. And climbing down from the rear cockpit on the apron, Colonel Rizantsev smiled broadly. “It’s not often I get to tally a ten-for-ten perfect score, Captain Zuyev.”
I knew I had more than compensated for my poor showing that morning.
Two days later when I faced the formal personal interview panel, I felt calm and confident. The interview took place in a conference room at base headquarters. I stood before a long table where Colonel Migounov occupied the center seat, flanked by his deputies, including a benevolently smiling zampolit and a typically silent representative of the Osobii Otdel.
“You’ve done very well, Captain Zuyev,” Colonel Migounov began.
I felt a stab of anxiety. If I had made the final selection, he or the zampolit would have begun, “Congratulations, Comrade Captain…”
My eye shot to the right-hand end of the table where an intricate rank-order diagram of all the fighter pilot applicants lay, its pink cover sheet pulled back. Even from this distance I could see that the name “Zuyev, Alexander M. Captain/176 FAR” filled the number seven line. I had missed selection by just two places. My cheeks felt hot and I had to suppress an urge to turn and leave the room. Colonel Migounov was still speaking.
“… So you see, Zuyev,” he said. “We managed to get another opening from our helicopter colleagues.” Now he pointed toward the diagram as if I had not yet seen it. “We’ve ranked Major Safonov number six to take advantage of this extra opening, even though the two of you had almost identical scores.”
I must have frowned, because Colonel Bazlevsky, the school’s flight operations director, now spoke up to explain.
“Safonov is thirty-one years old, Zuyev,” he said. “This is his last chance to enter the school.”
I nodded glumly. All those months of hard work, all those long nights of dry study.
“We’d like you to apply again for the next selection in two years, Zuyev,” Colonel Migounov added. “It’s the best solution for all concerned. This way we will gain two good officers in two years, instead of losing Safonov.”
Obviously my interview was over. My arm felt wooden as I reached across the table to shake the colonel’s hand.
Colonel Bazlevsky followed me out of the conference room to the small smoking garden on the gravel path between the two wings of the headquarters building. He sensed my deep disappointment. I stood politely while he lit his own cigarette.
“How old are you, Captain?” There was a sympathetic glimmer in his eye.
“Twenty-seven, Comrade Colonel.”
He wrinkled his sunburnt nose. “This is June. When’s your birthday?”
He had me there. “In July, Colonel Bazlevsky. “I’m almost twenty-seven.”
Now the colonel smiled. “And not married yet?”
I shook my head. Had Torbov somehow poisoned the water with this panel? Then I realized that Colonel Bazlevsky was speaking of another matter altogether.
“This is an isolated post, Zuyev. We like our student test pilots to be married. It’s a sign of mature stability.”
“I understand, Comrade Colonel.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “Find some nice girl, Zuyev. Get married. Come back in two years and we’ll have a place for you.”
Normally the prospect of marrying a pleasant young woman and embarking on the exciting career of military test pilot would have overcome my disappointment. But I just could not feel good about the way these events had come together.
I still had a few days’ special leave accrued before returning to Tskhakaya, so I took the train home to Samara to visit my family. My mother’s fiftieth birthday was coming up and I hoped to offer her a suitable present: ten days at the Pearl Hotel in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. My KGB friend, Oleg, ran security for the resort, and I called him to confirm that he had landed me a reservation for my mother and young brother, Misha. Mother certainly needed a rest and a change of scene.
She looked worn, indeed haggard. Life was becoming harder every day. She toiled away in her demanding position as an irrigation project construction engineer, working on complex plans and blueprints for huge earthen dams, canals, and pumping stations, with little recognition and certainly poor pay. Twenty-five years before as a young engineering graduate, she had earned 120 rubles a month, enough to support her family. Now her monthly pay was only 180 rubles, and her and Valentin’s combined salaries were hardly sufficient. Luckily they had their small garden plot and packing-case “dacha,” to grow some fruit and vegetables each summer.
When I surprised her with the news of the Black Sea vacation, she was pleased but wary. “Where did you get the valuta, Sasha?”
She understood how the system worked, and knew such resorts were reserved for hard-currency clients. To my mother, the existence of luxury resorts on Soviet soil, open only to high Party apparatchiks and foreign tourists, could somehow be explained within the reassuring dogma of Socialist Economics. She looked forward to her holiday.
