Under the Ice

“All right!” Sasha screamed, glee in her voice.

With his daughter’s mittened hand firmly in his own, Sergei began to make his way down the snow-covered sidewalk. Though crowded with bundled pedestrians, this thoroughfare was much more easy to travel than the icy street to their left. Anyway the snarled roadway was bottlenecked with bumper-to-bumper traffic.

As fortune would have it, their route took them downwind. This fact, plus their wise choice of clothing, made the frigid Arctic storm all the more bearable.

While taking a shortcut through Revolution Park, Sergei was forced to carry his daughter in his free arm. This was necessary since many of the drifts he was soon trudging through were several meters thick and would have all but buried a standing Sasha.

Halfway through the park, they stopped to watch a team of hockey players at work on one of the many frozen lakes situated in it. Such a sport was serious business in the Soviet north, and not even a howling blizzard could keep the players from their daily practice.

It was while watching them work out on the ice that Sergei thought he heard an alien whining roar through the constant howling gusts. This high-pitched racket could easily have come from a low-flying airplane, on its way to the nearby Murmansk airport. But Sergei dismissed this thought as pure nonsense. Not even Aeroflot, or the devil himself, would be flying on such a stormy, windswept afternoon.

It wasn’t possible to scan the sky in such a storm so the naval officer turned to complete the short, five-minute hike home.

Inside the warm lobby of their building, Sergei and Sasha were met by the apartment’s vigilant duty woman. Olga Rybinsk took her position as concierge seriously, and since she lived in the building, she knew her fellow tenant’s comings and goings better than the

KGB.

Because Sergei’s duties kept him away from home for a good six months out of every year, he was glad to have the services of such a watch lady. There could be no better home security force than Olga Rybinsk, for no criminal in his right mind would dare incur the feisty septuagenarian’s wrath. The submariner couldn’t help but notice how the old lady’s eyes lit up when Sasha went dashing into the entry hall.

“Well, if it isn’t the snow princess herself,” the adoring duty woman exclaimed.

“Were you out there building a snow castle, Sasha?”

“Poppy wouldn’t let me,” the youngster answered as she studiously wiped the snow from her boots.

“You see, we went shopping, and so we have to put away our purchases before we can go back out to the park and play.”

As the duty woman helped Sasha remove her mittens, she firmly commented.

“Those fingers of yours are as cold as icicles, young lady! You’d better rest a while indoors and warm up properly first. This snow will be around for a long time to come, and it will be much more fun to play in once the winds stop. Besides, you don’t want to go out and play while you’ve got company in your apartment, do you?”

Sasha’s eyes widened.

“I bet it’s Uncle Viktor and Aunt Tanya! I do hope they remembered to bring along my birthday present.”

The duty woman looked up and caught Sergei’s glance.

“Comrade Belenko and his wife arrived here approximately a quarter of an hour ago. Captain.

According to your instructions, I allowed them to go up to the apartment without first calling your wife.”

Sergei nodded.

“Thank you, Olga. Let’s just pray that I don’t get in trouble for being late to my own party.”

“I believe that the Belenkos said something about being a half-hour early,” the duty woman stated efficiently.

“Seems they anticipated this storm and left their place before the rush hour started.”

Conscious that Olga Rybinsk would have made a marvelous intelligence officer, Sergei smiled.

“Then perhaps my guests will forgive me after all. Stay warm, and have a nice evening. Comrade.”

With this, Sergei followed his daughter up a twisting flight of stairs. Though the building had an elevator, it hadn’t worked properly since it was installed.

By the time he reached the seventh floor, he was wheezing and his brow was matted with sweat. In contrast, Sasha, hardly affected by the climb, merrily skipped down the corridor and burst through their apartment’s front door. With leaden limbs, his sack swinging at his side, Sergei followed in her wake.

Inside the apartment, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite was blaring forth from the radio’s speakers. As Sergei identified the particular movement as the “Waltz of the Flowers,” he scanned the combination dining room den and found it vacant.

A roaring fire burned in the fireplace, however, and the nearby coffee table held several platters of mixed appetizers. Yet there was still no hint of his wife’s presence or his guests’.

Only when a characteristic high-pitched voice sounded from the enclosed kitchen did Sergei realize where they could most likely be found.

“Oh Uncle Viktor, Aunt Tanya, it’s wonderful!”

exclaimed Sasha.