by Duane N. Burghard
©2015
The following is excerpted out of a book I am working on about my experiences with my beloved Grandfather in the late summer of 1976. I wrote it out recently because my daughter was turning the story into a school video project.
To describe it as an eventful summer would be a fairly dramatic understatement. Running off to Europe all by itself is usually eventful enough, but not for Papa and me. In the days leading up to this story I had been detained in London for illegally accessing Parliament, very nearly declared Persona Non Grata in Italy for climbing to the top of the Coliseum in Rome, had lunch with the Commander of American Forces in Greece and then spent the afternoon on the Calypso with Jacque Cousteau and his crew.
But none of that compared to what happened when we went to the Soviet Union.
On Saturday morning, September 4, 1976, the Royal Viking Star pulled in to Odessa. It seemed like any other late summer day on the Black Sea to me, but I could tell from the way everyone else around me was acting, it was not. I was hardly a cruise ship veteran (this was, in fact, my first cruise), but the ship had been to other ports in other countries already, so I was largely confused as to why this one should be *that* different. But there was definitely something different in the way the adults were talking as we made our way to Odessa; clearly THEY thought this was different. There was excitement about being one of the very first cruise ships to visit the Soviet Union, but there was something else in their voices; something like apprehension or being on guard in some way. I couldn't put my finger on it, but *something* was different.
As we pulled up to the pier, a crane moved the gangway into position, and right away I noticed something odd. The gangway had two circular pods on either side of the middle of it (half way between the ship and the pier). And the pods had guns! When the gangway was secured in place, uniformed men walked towards the ship carrying boxes. Two of the men stopped and manned the machine gun nests in the pods. Two armed guards stood at attention on the pier side of the gangway. I supposed it was impressive and all, but I also thought it was a pretty silly waste of time to post armed guards on a cruise ship filled with old people and a few kids. "We're no harm," I thought as I went to get in line to go ashore.
As we pulled up to the pier, a crane moved the gangway into position, and right away I noticed something odd. The gangway had two circular pods on either side of the middle of it (half way between the ship and the pier). And the pods had guns! When the gangway was secured in place, uniformed men walked towards the ship carrying boxes. Two of the men stopped and manned the machine gun nests in the pods. Two armed guards stood at attention on the pier side of the gangway. I supposed it was impressive and all, but I also thought it was a pretty silly waste of time to post armed guards on a cruise ship filled with old people and a few kids. "We're no harm," I thought as I went to get in line to go ashore.
As I neared the front of the line, I saw something that made me nervous. Everyone on the ship was giving up their passports to the Soviet officials inside the boat by the gangway. I had been told to never surrender my passport like this, ever, and I had certainly never left the ship without it, but everyone was handing in their passports from the United States, Britain and wherever else they were from, and in exchange they were being given Soviet passports for their time ashore. It made me uncomfortable but I figured it must be OK since everyone else was doing it and they didn't seem alarmed, so when my time came, I handed over my passport and took the Soviet one. "CCCP" it said across the front. It was a dirty, dingy, muddy brown color, and I instantly thought it looked like crap compared to my pretty blue American passport. "Oh well," I thought, "it's just for a few hours and I'll get mine back."
The tour bus was waiting on the pier and I got on board with my group. The tour guide was a heavy set woman in her late 30s. She spoke with a thick Russian accent and started by talking for several minutes about how proud they were to have us visit and how proud the Soviet Union was to have worked with America and the Allies in World War 2 to defeat Nazi Germany.
As the tour progressed, I got increasingly bored. "Man, I thought (Varna) Bulgaria was boring," I thought, "this is way worse." Towards the end of the tour (we were clearly heading back now, and I could even see the port and ship in the distance) we stopped at one of "the people's parks" to walk around and take a break. It was a pretty unusual experience in that there were very large animals that were stuffed and on pedestals along the walking path. I guessed that they had been put there just for the tour since they couldn't possibly leave them outside all the time (and I wondered who on Earth thought this would seem normal to us). When the time came to re-board the tour bus, though, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't face another 30 minutes of the droning on about stuff I really didn't care about. I could see the ship, I could walk there in about the same length of time it would take the bus to finish its tour *and* that would give me the chance to be outside. It was a nice day. Papa and I had switched on and off being on the same and different buses during the stops of that day, so I knew he'd just assume I got on the other bus if he didn't see me. So I held back, and the bus left without me.
The tour bus was waiting on the pier and I got on board with my group. The tour guide was a heavy set woman in her late 30s. She spoke with a thick Russian accent and started by talking for several minutes about how proud they were to have us visit and how proud the Soviet Union was to have worked with America and the Allies in World War 2 to defeat Nazi Germany.
As the tour progressed, I got increasingly bored. "Man, I thought (Varna) Bulgaria was boring," I thought, "this is way worse." Towards the end of the tour (we were clearly heading back now, and I could even see the port and ship in the distance) we stopped at one of "the people's parks" to walk around and take a break. It was a pretty unusual experience in that there were very large animals that were stuffed and on pedestals along the walking path. I guessed that they had been put there just for the tour since they couldn't possibly leave them outside all the time (and I wondered who on Earth thought this would seem normal to us). When the time came to re-board the tour bus, though, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't face another 30 minutes of the droning on about stuff I really didn't care about. I could see the ship, I could walk there in about the same length of time it would take the bus to finish its tour *and* that would give me the chance to be outside. It was a nice day. Papa and I had switched on and off being on the same and different buses during the stops of that day, so I knew he'd just assume I got on the other bus if he didn't see me. So I held back, and the bus left without me.
As I walked through the park I saw a young girl sitting on a park bench. I wanted to do something nice for her (I didn't think of myself as any kind of ambassador of American culture or anything, but I did want to give her a good impression of westerners), so I walked up to her, reached into my pocket, pulled out a pack of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum and offered her a stick. The girl's eyes got very big and she looked at me, but she looked afraid, *really* afraid. Her reaction made me nervous. She shook her head no and made it clear she wanted me to go. I certainly didn't want to cause a problem or offend anyone, so I walked on, a little sad that she clearly wasn't allowed to have gum.
I had a very nice walk back to the ship. I passed a number of interesting looking buildings and other places. I arrived back at the pier just as the buses arrived. “Perfect timing,” I thought. Papa, who obviously hadn’t known about my little “walking tour” of Odessa was confused to see me walking up from someplace other than the second bus. I was sure he would be upset (and hadn't in fact planned on telling him but he saw me and it was obvious I wasn't on the bus), and he probably was, but he didn’t show it. He asked me what had happened, I told him, he told me I shouldn't have done that and not to do something like that again without saying something, but then he adopted a "no harm done" attitude and we headed back to the ship, both of us knowing that he'd be telling a story about it at the dinner table that night.
The Soviet tour organizers wanted the groups to re-board the ship based on the buses we'd just come back on, so I got in line with the people who were on what would have been my bus. This put me 20-30 people behind Papa in line, but this didn’t bother either one of us. There was nothing to worry about. But when I got to the gangway something very strange happened. The two armed guards on the pier side of the gangway stepped in front of me and blocked my path. I was startled and initially annoyed by the delay, but I stopped, assuming that they wanted to let the line get shorter before allowing more people on the gangway.
But that wasn’t it.
One of them spoke to me in Russian, and indicated with his eyes for me to move out of line. In an instant I went from annoyed to terrified. My blood felt cold and my stomach sank. Suddenly, there was another Soviet Army guard behind me who gently but firmly grabbed my shoulder and directed me to move out of line. I looked up and saw the faces of the old couple behind me in line. Their faces were confused and concerned, and that REALLY scared me. Something was WRONG. I was being moved out of the line, away from the gangway and towards a building on the pier. My eyes moved quickly. Papa was already on board, there was no way to get to him. I thought about trying to run away, but where would I go? The only safe place was on the ship, and the only way to it was blocked.
What had I done wrong? Well that was a pretty easy question to answer in my own head. They almost certainly knew and were mad about my not having taken the tour bus back into town. But where was the real harm there? Maybe it was the girl. The girl in the park I had offered gum to, maybe someone saw it and had said something to someone. I knew little about the Soviet Union, but everyone knew they were our enemies and that they had a very strict society with lots of silly rules. I had obviously broken at least one of those rules and was in a LOT of trouble for it. I was instantly really sorry for everything I might have done wrong, and part of me wanted to cry, but I didn't because another part of me still couldn’t believe it was that big of a deal.
The man walking with me opened the door to the building and gestured for me to go in. The inside of the building smelled like something I couldn’t really identify but didn't like. It was kind of like a hospital smell, but also kind of sickening in a way. The room inside the door was empty, but on the far right there was another door, and the guard motioned for me to continue on and go to that door and into that room. At the same moment another man appeared behind the guard at the first door. He was not in uniform, but rather wore a very plain brown suit (I have since decided that this man was either KGB or GRU, probably just some run of the mill KGB agent assigned to deal with me). He followed us without speaking. The guard escorting me opened the door to the interrogation room. I swear to you this room looked like a set from an old spy movie. The room had no furniture except an old wooden table in the middle. The table had three chairs (one on one side, the other two on the opposite side). Above the table was a single light hanging from the ceiling (not a light bulb, but you get the idea). The guard motioned for me to sit down. I didn’t want to sit down, I was scared out of my mind, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. As I sat, two more uniformed men entered the room. One was smoking. They sat down across from me and without introducing themselves or telling me anything, they just started asking me questions. LOTS of questions, and quickly. They asked me my name, I told them. They asked me where I'd been for the last half hour? What did I do? Why did I leave the tour bus? Where did I go? Had I been given anything by anyone? Had I given anything to anyone? Had anyone asked me to say or do something away from the tour group?
As the questions went on, periodically the men would speak in Russian to one another, but there was something strange about how they were interacting. The man in the plain brown suit was standing and leaning against the wall by the door. By this point he was now also smoking, and when I looked over at him he looked both annoyed and bored. He didn’t speak, but as the questions went on, I became increasingly certain that *he* was the one who was really in charge here. It was in the eyes of the men asking the questions, the way they occasionally looked over to him. There was no question about it, the man in the suit was definitely in charge.
I tried to give honest answers to all the questions. I told them that I had gotten bored by the tour, that from the park I could see the pier in town, it didn't seem far and so I had decided to walk rather than go on the last bit of the tour. I told them about offering gum to the girl in the park and apologized for doing it. I said I didn't know it was wrong but that the girl hadn't taken it. I hadn’t spoken to anyone else, no one else had spoken to me. I just had a nice walk back to the boat. I took some pictures of buildings I thought looked interesting. Looking back on it now, I feel like I should have said, something like, "dude, I'm ELEVEN," but I was so scared I just wanted to do whatever they wanted so I could go. I felt increasingly like crying at this point. What could possibly be so bad about what I did? Whatever it was, I was really sorry and just wanted to go home now.
It felt like the interrogation went on for hours, but in truth it was probably only about 10 minutes total. As the questions and answers went on, the man in the brown suit seemed to be going from annoyed to just plain irritated. Suddenly, without warning, he moved from up against the wall over towards me. That scared me (I didn’t think he was going to hit me or anything, but he was definitely in my personal space). The man reached out and grabbed my camera bag, which I still had over my shoulder. He quickly unzipped it and pulled out my Kodak Instamatic X-15 camera. He looked at it carefully, obviously studying it, trying to figure out how to get at the inside of the camera. He found the button and the back door of the camera popped open. He pulled the roll of film in the camera out, set the camera on the desk and wrapped his fingers around the edges of both sides of the hard plastic covering of the film roll and pressed his thumbs hard in the middle.
CRACK!
The plastic encasing the roll of film snapped in two. The film was ruined. The man tossed the roll of film into a trash can next to the table. He picked up the now empty camera and closed the door forcefully. The violence of the action had startled the crap out of me. At this point I was now actually too scared to cry. The man handed the camera back to me. His eyes and his body language were strict and disapproving. He was making it clear to me in his look that I had done something wrong and was being punished. I understood. The man pointed at the door, gestured and said something in Russian. I don't speak Russian, but it sure sounded like “go” to me, so I took off for the door. I walked out of the room and then out the door of the building, and then very quickly walked towards the gangway. The guards did not stop me.
As I walked towards the gangway I could see and hear Papa up on the promenade deck of the cruise ship. He was VERY upset, but not at me, at the situation. He was yelling all kinds of things at the top of his lungs, threatening everyone on the pier to return his grandson NOW GODDAMN IT. I made eye contact with him as I stepped on the gangway. I waved. He stopped shouting.
Once in the ship, there was only one Soviet government person left on board. All the boxes and things were gone. He had nothing except my passport in his hand. I handed him my Soviet passport and he handed me my US passport and left. It was a strange feeling of safety and relief to be back on board AND holding my passport again. Two of the ship’s officers were also standing just inside the ship, and they did NOT look happy, but they weren’t angry at me, they were angry with the Soviet official. Evidently in my absence there had been quite a ruckus about the fact that I had been separated from the group and removed for questioning and it was pretty clear that I had missed some genuine fireworks between the parties. One of the officers looked at me and said (with a fairly thick Norwegian accent), ”OK?”
I nodded and, in a rather adrenaline fueled response, quickly said, “yeah, fine.”
“Come with me please,” he said.
“Man! Am I going to get in trouble AGAIN?” I thought.
The officer led me around the corner to a small room. This room was the opposite of my interrogation room. It had beautiful wood paneling, nice carpet, there was a new looking, elegant, round table. Two men were standing on the far side of the room talking quietly to each other. When I entered they smiled and asked me to sit down.
“Am I in trouble?” I asked.
They both smiled and looked reassuring. “No,” one of them said, “we just want to ask you a couple of questions, OK?”
To be honest, I was feeling kind of “questioned out” at this point, but I nodded. The men told me that they worked for the United States Government (State Department?). They asked about my experience just now on the pier. They wanted to know if I had been hurt? If the Soviets had done anything to me? Did they ask me to do anything? Did they threaten me in any way? I told them I was fine. I was starting to calm down which meant my emotions were starting to catch up with me (I think I did finally start crying as I spoke, which they seemed to be genuinely compassionate about). I told them I was upset because the man in the suit had destroyed the roll of film that had been in my camera, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. The men were very nice, but I wanted to go join Papa and asked if I could go. They smiled, said “of course” and thanked me for talking with them. I went to the bathroom to clean up.
By the time I got up to the Promenade deck I was the talk of the ship. For days afterwards I was “the American boy those Soviet monsters detained and questioned.” But I wasn’t paying any attention to any of that (I would enjoy my chance to be the center of attention later, for the moment I was still coming down from having been as frightened as I had ever been in my life and all I wanted was the safety and security of being near Papa).
As I reached the Promenade deck, the ship had pulled away from the pier and was moving south on the Black Sea. The sun was setting in the west, and everything suddenly seemed normal and safe again (the totally surreal experience of going from normal to life/death terrified to completely normal again so quickly is one I will never forget). Papa was all calmed down, staring out at the sunset and quietly puffing on his cigar. I walked up and posed myself on the railing looking out at the sunset exactly as he was doing. We stood in silence for a few moments. Papa spoke first.
“You alright?” he said.
“Yes sir,” I replied.
“I understand they took your film,” he said (I learned later that one of the ship's officers had been behind me in the room and had already been up on deck to brief Papa).
“Yes sir,” I said.
“That’s too bad,” Papa said.
“Yes sir,” I said. But then I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a roll of film. I held it out so Papa could see it. Then I smiled and said, “it's too bad they didn’t get the roll I took isn’t it?”
Papa looked hard at me, and then he smiled, and then he laughed, a little at first, and then a big roaring laugh that I don't think I had ever heard before.
Tragically, Papa would die suddenly just four years later (September, 1980), but for the rest of his life he told the story of how his grandson had “outsmarted the Soviet military.” The story wasn’t really true of course. The truth was that I had simply just finished the roll of film that was in my back pocket moments before arriving at the pier and I had traded it out for a fresh roll (the roll that was destroyed had only 2-3 pictures on it), and when everything happened on the pier I was WAY too scared to say anything about the other roll (in fact I don't think I ever even thought of it). The roll of film was developed on the ship and copies of the pictures I took were provided to the men I assumed were State Department representatives, who almost certainly just threw them away … they were, after all, just buildings and things an 11 year old boy found interesting.
Now, if you think that story was interesting, wait till you hear what happened in Istanbul just a few days later ... but THAT, is another story.
I had a very nice walk back to the ship. I passed a number of interesting looking buildings and other places. I arrived back at the pier just as the buses arrived. “Perfect timing,” I thought. Papa, who obviously hadn’t known about my little “walking tour” of Odessa was confused to see me walking up from someplace other than the second bus. I was sure he would be upset (and hadn't in fact planned on telling him but he saw me and it was obvious I wasn't on the bus), and he probably was, but he didn’t show it. He asked me what had happened, I told him, he told me I shouldn't have done that and not to do something like that again without saying something, but then he adopted a "no harm done" attitude and we headed back to the ship, both of us knowing that he'd be telling a story about it at the dinner table that night.
The Soviet tour organizers wanted the groups to re-board the ship based on the buses we'd just come back on, so I got in line with the people who were on what would have been my bus. This put me 20-30 people behind Papa in line, but this didn’t bother either one of us. There was nothing to worry about. But when I got to the gangway something very strange happened. The two armed guards on the pier side of the gangway stepped in front of me and blocked my path. I was startled and initially annoyed by the delay, but I stopped, assuming that they wanted to let the line get shorter before allowing more people on the gangway.
But that wasn’t it.
One of them spoke to me in Russian, and indicated with his eyes for me to move out of line. In an instant I went from annoyed to terrified. My blood felt cold and my stomach sank. Suddenly, there was another Soviet Army guard behind me who gently but firmly grabbed my shoulder and directed me to move out of line. I looked up and saw the faces of the old couple behind me in line. Their faces were confused and concerned, and that REALLY scared me. Something was WRONG. I was being moved out of the line, away from the gangway and towards a building on the pier. My eyes moved quickly. Papa was already on board, there was no way to get to him. I thought about trying to run away, but where would I go? The only safe place was on the ship, and the only way to it was blocked.
What had I done wrong? Well that was a pretty easy question to answer in my own head. They almost certainly knew and were mad about my not having taken the tour bus back into town. But where was the real harm there? Maybe it was the girl. The girl in the park I had offered gum to, maybe someone saw it and had said something to someone. I knew little about the Soviet Union, but everyone knew they were our enemies and that they had a very strict society with lots of silly rules. I had obviously broken at least one of those rules and was in a LOT of trouble for it. I was instantly really sorry for everything I might have done wrong, and part of me wanted to cry, but I didn't because another part of me still couldn’t believe it was that big of a deal.
The man walking with me opened the door to the building and gestured for me to go in. The inside of the building smelled like something I couldn’t really identify but didn't like. It was kind of like a hospital smell, but also kind of sickening in a way. The room inside the door was empty, but on the far right there was another door, and the guard motioned for me to continue on and go to that door and into that room. At the same moment another man appeared behind the guard at the first door. He was not in uniform, but rather wore a very plain brown suit (I have since decided that this man was either KGB or GRU, probably just some run of the mill KGB agent assigned to deal with me). He followed us without speaking. The guard escorting me opened the door to the interrogation room. I swear to you this room looked like a set from an old spy movie. The room had no furniture except an old wooden table in the middle. The table had three chairs (one on one side, the other two on the opposite side). Above the table was a single light hanging from the ceiling (not a light bulb, but you get the idea). The guard motioned for me to sit down. I didn’t want to sit down, I was scared out of my mind, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. As I sat, two more uniformed men entered the room. One was smoking. They sat down across from me and without introducing themselves or telling me anything, they just started asking me questions. LOTS of questions, and quickly. They asked me my name, I told them. They asked me where I'd been for the last half hour? What did I do? Why did I leave the tour bus? Where did I go? Had I been given anything by anyone? Had I given anything to anyone? Had anyone asked me to say or do something away from the tour group?
As the questions went on, periodically the men would speak in Russian to one another, but there was something strange about how they were interacting. The man in the plain brown suit was standing and leaning against the wall by the door. By this point he was now also smoking, and when I looked over at him he looked both annoyed and bored. He didn’t speak, but as the questions went on, I became increasingly certain that *he* was the one who was really in charge here. It was in the eyes of the men asking the questions, the way they occasionally looked over to him. There was no question about it, the man in the suit was definitely in charge.
I tried to give honest answers to all the questions. I told them that I had gotten bored by the tour, that from the park I could see the pier in town, it didn't seem far and so I had decided to walk rather than go on the last bit of the tour. I told them about offering gum to the girl in the park and apologized for doing it. I said I didn't know it was wrong but that the girl hadn't taken it. I hadn’t spoken to anyone else, no one else had spoken to me. I just had a nice walk back to the boat. I took some pictures of buildings I thought looked interesting. Looking back on it now, I feel like I should have said, something like, "dude, I'm ELEVEN," but I was so scared I just wanted to do whatever they wanted so I could go. I felt increasingly like crying at this point. What could possibly be so bad about what I did? Whatever it was, I was really sorry and just wanted to go home now.
It felt like the interrogation went on for hours, but in truth it was probably only about 10 minutes total. As the questions and answers went on, the man in the brown suit seemed to be going from annoyed to just plain irritated. Suddenly, without warning, he moved from up against the wall over towards me. That scared me (I didn’t think he was going to hit me or anything, but he was definitely in my personal space). The man reached out and grabbed my camera bag, which I still had over my shoulder. He quickly unzipped it and pulled out my Kodak Instamatic X-15 camera. He looked at it carefully, obviously studying it, trying to figure out how to get at the inside of the camera. He found the button and the back door of the camera popped open. He pulled the roll of film in the camera out, set the camera on the desk and wrapped his fingers around the edges of both sides of the hard plastic covering of the film roll and pressed his thumbs hard in the middle.
CRACK!
The plastic encasing the roll of film snapped in two. The film was ruined. The man tossed the roll of film into a trash can next to the table. He picked up the now empty camera and closed the door forcefully. The violence of the action had startled the crap out of me. At this point I was now actually too scared to cry. The man handed the camera back to me. His eyes and his body language were strict and disapproving. He was making it clear to me in his look that I had done something wrong and was being punished. I understood. The man pointed at the door, gestured and said something in Russian. I don't speak Russian, but it sure sounded like “go” to me, so I took off for the door. I walked out of the room and then out the door of the building, and then very quickly walked towards the gangway. The guards did not stop me.
As I walked towards the gangway I could see and hear Papa up on the promenade deck of the cruise ship. He was VERY upset, but not at me, at the situation. He was yelling all kinds of things at the top of his lungs, threatening everyone on the pier to return his grandson NOW GODDAMN IT. I made eye contact with him as I stepped on the gangway. I waved. He stopped shouting.
Once in the ship, there was only one Soviet government person left on board. All the boxes and things were gone. He had nothing except my passport in his hand. I handed him my Soviet passport and he handed me my US passport and left. It was a strange feeling of safety and relief to be back on board AND holding my passport again. Two of the ship’s officers were also standing just inside the ship, and they did NOT look happy, but they weren’t angry at me, they were angry with the Soviet official. Evidently in my absence there had been quite a ruckus about the fact that I had been separated from the group and removed for questioning and it was pretty clear that I had missed some genuine fireworks between the parties. One of the officers looked at me and said (with a fairly thick Norwegian accent), ”OK?”
I nodded and, in a rather adrenaline fueled response, quickly said, “yeah, fine.”
“Come with me please,” he said.
“Man! Am I going to get in trouble AGAIN?” I thought.
The officer led me around the corner to a small room. This room was the opposite of my interrogation room. It had beautiful wood paneling, nice carpet, there was a new looking, elegant, round table. Two men were standing on the far side of the room talking quietly to each other. When I entered they smiled and asked me to sit down.
“Am I in trouble?” I asked.
They both smiled and looked reassuring. “No,” one of them said, “we just want to ask you a couple of questions, OK?”
To be honest, I was feeling kind of “questioned out” at this point, but I nodded. The men told me that they worked for the United States Government (State Department?). They asked about my experience just now on the pier. They wanted to know if I had been hurt? If the Soviets had done anything to me? Did they ask me to do anything? Did they threaten me in any way? I told them I was fine. I was starting to calm down which meant my emotions were starting to catch up with me (I think I did finally start crying as I spoke, which they seemed to be genuinely compassionate about). I told them I was upset because the man in the suit had destroyed the roll of film that had been in my camera, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. The men were very nice, but I wanted to go join Papa and asked if I could go. They smiled, said “of course” and thanked me for talking with them. I went to the bathroom to clean up.
By the time I got up to the Promenade deck I was the talk of the ship. For days afterwards I was “the American boy those Soviet monsters detained and questioned.” But I wasn’t paying any attention to any of that (I would enjoy my chance to be the center of attention later, for the moment I was still coming down from having been as frightened as I had ever been in my life and all I wanted was the safety and security of being near Papa).
As I reached the Promenade deck, the ship had pulled away from the pier and was moving south on the Black Sea. The sun was setting in the west, and everything suddenly seemed normal and safe again (the totally surreal experience of going from normal to life/death terrified to completely normal again so quickly is one I will never forget). Papa was all calmed down, staring out at the sunset and quietly puffing on his cigar. I walked up and posed myself on the railing looking out at the sunset exactly as he was doing. We stood in silence for a few moments. Papa spoke first.
“You alright?” he said.
“Yes sir,” I replied.
“I understand they took your film,” he said (I learned later that one of the ship's officers had been behind me in the room and had already been up on deck to brief Papa).
“Yes sir,” I said.
“That’s too bad,” Papa said.
“Yes sir,” I said. But then I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a roll of film. I held it out so Papa could see it. Then I smiled and said, “it's too bad they didn’t get the roll I took isn’t it?”
Papa looked hard at me, and then he smiled, and then he laughed, a little at first, and then a big roaring laugh that I don't think I had ever heard before.
Tragically, Papa would die suddenly just four years later (September, 1980), but for the rest of his life he told the story of how his grandson had “outsmarted the Soviet military.” The story wasn’t really true of course. The truth was that I had simply just finished the roll of film that was in my back pocket moments before arriving at the pier and I had traded it out for a fresh roll (the roll that was destroyed had only 2-3 pictures on it), and when everything happened on the pier I was WAY too scared to say anything about the other roll (in fact I don't think I ever even thought of it). The roll of film was developed on the ship and copies of the pictures I took were provided to the men I assumed were State Department representatives, who almost certainly just threw them away … they were, after all, just buildings and things an 11 year old boy found interesting.
Now, if you think that story was interesting, wait till you hear what happened in Istanbul just a few days later ... but THAT, is another story.
The name's Bond. Duane Bond.
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