7.3 Lights Outside Stavropol

He was helped down the ladder and the stairs to a waiting vehicle. He felt coolness in air, heard the ocean waves in the vicinity and smelt the breeze.

The vehicle drove at a moderate speed for ten to fifteen minutes on bumpy roads and arrived at a location not too far from the airfield. They let him out, undid his blindfold and freed his hands. It was light in the sky. That was a UAZ-450 khaki green van that brought him to this ground with dry grass and bare trees. There stood a fence ten feet tall with barbed wire and a large timber factory.

Four guards carried hunting rifles and they wore shuba coats and ushanka hats. He was checked at the site for weapons or sharp tools in his pockets or on his body, shoes, wristwatch and jacket. He wore double clothing. Then he was taken to a large canteen for breakfast. Food here wasn’t all that satisfying on roasted meat, vegetable soup, pancakes and hardboiled eggs. The guard filled his plate obviously. Tyler did not have any of his belongings with him.

When he finished breakfast, one of the sentinels grinned at him and very considerately offered a smoke, “Papirosa?”  one of those Russian tubes.

“Thank you,” Tyler picked one and motioned, “I smoke later.” It was too early to get desperate about what happened to him or to start thinking about an escapade. He was in control. The guards took him to a three-storey building close to the wall with barbed wire on the top. It looked like an administrative office and up three wooden staircases to a tiny room with a bunk bed and a chair that seemed fairly alright. He was locked in there.

Tyler removed his thick jacket and unbuttoned the shirts. He glanced at a skylight on the wall fitted with a glass panel and barred. He placed the chair by the wall and climbed on to peep out of the glass. He saw a bright blue ocean touching the wall that stood right below his eyes. He could also see a submerged deck of an old wreck. That was Volga River and the opposite bank was seen two kilometres away on a clear day like this. He noticed a long bridge lying three kilometres away to the east, he judged. That was the Saratov Bridge which opened seventy-seven days after that. He fell asleep in the bunk.

Around noon, a guard opened the door and took him for lunch out of the building to the mess room. Only one guard followed him. Tyler began to think if he could ask for a cigarette, knock him down, grab his weapon and make a break. But where could he run?

Next morning after breakfast, he rested on the bunk on an elbow, his head against the wall and flipping four papirosa tubes in his hand. He was thinking how and when to make a break. This was a vast field without many trees and a strong wall built around. He smelt bad. If he took time, he might not get a chance to make a break. At that moment, the door opened and two soldiers in green coats walked in. 11:00 on his watch.

He was restrained, taken to the khaki green van and driven some forty minutes through a flow of traffic, beeping its horn and braking to halts. When they turned to a rustic road, his blindfold was removed. It was a long trail, a fence on the left and a wooded slope on the right covered of bare chestnut trees.

The van drove in through a fence gate to an outpost with scattered shelters. He couldn’t read those green letters in Russian but noticed ‘МВД’ and uttered rather to himself, “Good Lord! It is the MVD!” Here the guards in fact wore steel grey uniforms of the Red Army.

Tyler Friesen was ushered to the main unit and told to sit in the main hall. Here he noticed one of those black and white portraits on the wall. The handsome face of Yuri Gagarin who was the first human to journey into outer space on Vostok 1 and completed an Earth orbit on 12^th April 1961. And that gave a hint to believe he was at Saratov base where Gagarin joined a flying club.