Dmitry’s desperate gamble

Dmitry’s desperate gamble/ By Olga Bonnel

“His heart racing, the young Russian walked towards the waiting plane. He knew he was only steps from freedom—or capture”

            Entering Moscow’s Sheremetievo Airport, he looked line any Western tourist on his way home. He had a camera slung over his shoulder, and he was wearing a bow-tie, glasses and a French-made suit. The passport he carried identified him as Paul Duchalon, a university student from Berne, Switxerland.

            His real name was Dmitry Fedorovich Mikheyev, a russian student trying to leave his country. It was October 3, 1970, and Dmitry and Paul were partners in a daring escape scheme. At the airport’s foreign-exchange window, Dmitry filled out a form to convert his local money to Western currency. Comparing the signature on the form to the one on the passport, the clerk looked suspiciously at the tall, blond man.

            “Is this really your signature?” she asked.

            “Of course,” Dmitry replied. Relax, he reminded himself. Relax! “I was in an awkward writing position,” he explained, flashing his friendliest smile. Dmitry grabbed another form and this time he did a convincing imitation.

            From the exchange window, Dmitry went through the passport, visa and customs checks. So far so good, he thought. Just a little further. He strolled through the exit door and walked towards the giant airliner. Act natural. Don’t arouse suspicion. His pulse racing, Dmitry reached the boarding steps of the plane.

            Then a voice caught him short. “Monsieur Duchalon?.....”

            Dmitry Fedorovich Mikheyev was born in Siberia in 1941. Even as a youngster, he was independent. In a speech to a communist youth organisation, 16 year old Dmitry accused the government of “robbing the subscribers” of a public loan. His indiscretion was hushed up because of his excellent progress in school.

            He came to official attention again in March 1965, at Moscow University, when he chaired a discussion group at which a student name Viktor Kuznetsov spoke for an hour and 20 minutes on cynicism in social life—why Soviet youth had lost their ideals. “ It is because we have been living a lie since the first day of the Revolution!” Kuznetsov thundered.

            In the weeks that followed, the KGB interrogated Dmitry seven times, convinced that he and Kuznetsov had plotted this outraged, acting under Western influence. In the end, Kuznetsov was packed off to a psychiatric hospital. Dmitry was threatened with university expulsion but, because there was no proof of a plot, officials finally allowed him to stay.

            Any illusions that Dmitry still had about communism melted away, and he started wondering about the West. He began mingling with foreign-exchange students from non-communist countries, learnt about Western freedom, even began studying to improve his English. In 1969, he applied for permission to travel outside the Soviet Union. But this required a form certifying he was “a good communist.” The party commissar for the university refused to sign. “I haven’t forgotten the discussion-group incident,” he told Dmitry.

            Dmitry decided to get out of Russia any way he could. In the spring of 1969, he explored the Finnish border by train, unaware that a special permit was required for travelling on the line. He was arrested and released after 24 hours of questioning. That summer, he tried again –this time on foot. He struck out across flat, marshy country for Finland. After days of wandering, often lost (maps of the area could not be bought), he abandoned the attempt.

            Helping hand. During his last year of postgraduate studies, Dmitry made friends with a Swiss student named Fritz Muller. One day Dmitry was examining his friend’s passport when an idea struck him. With a foreign passport, he reasoned, I’m free, I could go anywhere. He scribbled an outline: “Fine a foreigner who looks like me. He –Mr  X –comes to moscow, gives me his passport and his return ticket. I take the plane instead of him and, three hours later, I’m in the west. Meanwhile, Mr X goes to his embassy and reports that his papers have been stolen.”

            Dmitry discussed the plan with Muller “ Dmitry was like a man drowning, struggling for a breath of air,” Muller recalled later. “He was my friend, and he needed help

            Muller returned to Switzerland in June 1970. He and Dmitry planned to keep in touch through another of Dmitry’s Western friends, Karl Vogelmann, an Austrian student at the university. Vogelmann shared a flat with an Austrian diplomat and received all his letters through the diplomatic pouch, assuring a private line of communication.

            The toughest job was to find someone daring enough to serve as Dmitry’s Mr X. Muller screened his friends, looking for someone about 30 years old, with straight blond hair, an athletic build, about 182 centimetres tall. Then one August evening, as he walked out of a library, he bumbed into Paul Duchalon, a close school friend he hadn’t seen for two years. “Just the man I need!,” Muller exclaimed, even before asking how his friend was.

            Duchalon followed Muller into a near-by café. “There’s a young Russian behind the Iron Curtain,” Muller told him, “and he needs help getting out.” Muller showed him Dmitry’s escape plan and a photograph. “He’s just a student like you and me,” Muller said, “curious about the world, pining for a chance to live a free life. Dmitry has thought of everything. You ask for a new passport and we will provide a photo that looks like him. We will also have your picture taken with glasses and a bow tie, which both you and Dmitry will wear in Moscow. These are the kinds of details that distract attention.”

            As he pondered his decision, Paul began to feel a kinship with Dmitry. Both were science students, they were almost the same age and they even resembled each other. Paul also felt drawn to Dmitry by Switzerland’s long humanitarian tradition. “All during my youth,” Paul recalled later, “I had heard tales of my own family members, hiding Jews or helping them cross the border from France into our country.” After long deliberation, Paul made up his mind: “I felt I had to try.”

            Muller conveyed to Dmitry the good news. Escape day was set for Saturday, October 3, 1970. The plan called for Paul to travel from Geneva to Helsinki, returning via Moscow and Vienna. That made Moscow seem just a stop-over, instead of the trip’s objective.

            Plan in action. Paul’s plane took off on September 27, 1970. After three days in Helsinki, Paul arrived in Moscow. One by one, all the other passengers picked up their luggage. Paul waited and waited. What could this mean? He wondered. In the deserted baggage hall, the exaltation that he had felt began subsiding into panic. What have I gotten into? After a long delay, a man finally brought his suitcase. Paul looked through the bag; he had the feeling it had been searched, but nothing was missing.

            From the airport, Paul telephoned Vogelmann’s room, where Dmitry was waiting. “I’m to say hello to you from your cousin Helga,” Paul said. This was the agreed code to indicate his safe arrival.

            Paul’s next stop was the Hotel Ukraina. In the lobby, he was approached by the tall, blond Dmitry. “I see you’re a tourist,” Dmitry said. “Would you like me to show you Moscow?” Paul smiled. In case they were being watched, Dmitry wanted it to appear he was befriending this foreign visitor.

            The two men went into the hotel bar. Paul was nervous. “I think that man is staring at us,” he said, gesturing towards one of the musicians in the orchestra. Dmitry tried to reassure him.

            The next day, they took a tour of the city. That evening, in Volgelmann’s room, Dmitry practised Paul’s signature and learnt to operate his camera. As the three men parted for the night, Vogelmann turned to Dmitry: “See you soon, in Vienna.”

            At 1 p.m. on October 3, Dmitry and Paul chatted over coffee in the second-floor lounge of the Hotel Ukraina. Then, after Paul rose and went to the lavatory, Dmitry slipped some sleeping medicine into Paul’s cup. The dose was strong enough to prove Paul had been drugged –if he had to undergo a blood test –yet not stiff enough to knock him out. Paul turned to his seat, emptied his cup and soon pretended to doze.

            Picking up the suitcase, Dmitry walked slowly out of the hotel. “The airport,” he told the taxi driver in English. In the car he adjusted his bow tie, put on his glasses and slung Paul’s camera over his shoulder. Half an hour later, he entered the airport.

            “Monsieur Duchalon?......”

            Dmitry froze. It was 3.15 pm., and his flight for Vienna was about to leave. Now one of the two men by the plane called out his assumed name.

            “Do you speak English?” the man asked. Dmitry nodded. “Will you follow us, please, for a passport check. Don’t worry, the plane won’t leave without you.

            There were a dozon uniformed men in the airport office where he was taken. The man in charge was a KGB colonel. “Your photo isn’t a very good likeness,” the colonel remarked.

            Dmitry broke out in a cold sweat. “That’s what my mother says too,” he replied, smiling.

            Back at the Hotel Ukraina, Paul continued to feign a drugged sleep until 7 p.m, half an hour after Dmitry’s scheduled arrival in Vienna. Then he telephoned the Swiss embassy. “It’s Saturday, sir,” the duty clerk told him. “There is no one here. Call back in an hour. I’ll try to reach the ambassador.”

            As he hung up, Paul felt a chill. Something’s gone wrong, he thought. I know it. Suddenly, he was very thirsty. He had 30 kopecks left –just enough to buy a bottle of milk.

            In pursuit. Outside the hotel, he ducked into an underground passage that came up in front of a food store. Before leaving the passage he spied a man’s silhouette. On his way back he notice with relier that the man had disappeared. Then Paul turned to look again. The figure had reappeared behind him, motionless.

            Paul saw two more men blocking the right-hand exit, leading to the hotel –but the staircase on the left was still free. He took the steps four at a time, and raced to a nearby phone booth. His hands shaking, he dialled the embassy number and asked if he could go there at once. The clerk agreed. When he emerged from the booth, there was no taxi in sight. He took off, running through the streets, away from the hotel. Behind him, a car screeched to a halt. Five men piled out, grabbed him and hustled him into the back seat. It was 8 p.m.

            At 8.05 the phone rang in the airport office, and the KGB colonel picked up the receiver. His face brightened as he turned slowly towards Dmitry. “Now, Dima,” he said in Russian, using the familiar form of Dmitry’s name, “tell us a little about the young fellow who slept so soundly at the Ukraina.”

            During the interrogation that followed, Dmitry realized that he had been under surveillance for months, probably for years, partly because of the Kuznetsov affair five years before. He had been filmed with Duchalon in the Hotel Ukraina, and his conversation in Vogellmann’s flat had all been tapped.

            The KGB arressted Vogelmann, interrogated him ceaselessly for three months and threatened him with 10 to 15 years in prison. Finally he signed a confession. He was allowed to return to Austria in December 1970

            Paul went to prison for a year and a half, then was released to return to Switzerland. After a trial that drew considerable publicity in the West, Dmitry spent five years in the Gulag. Released in 1976, he moved to Kiev and married a woman who shared his desire to emigrate; together, they repeatedly requested visas –always without success.

            In March 1979, the KGB found a copy of an anti-soviet novel Dmitry had been writing. But he was no longer an obscure student; if he were sent back to the Gulag, the authorities risked turning their now-famous victim into a martyr. Concluding that Dmitry would be less trouble out of Russia than in prison, the authorities gave the young man and his wife visas.

            On January 2, 1980, Dmitry and Paul were reunited for the first time in Paris. They fell into each other’s arms. “We were very young and idealistic,” admitted Paul, “and we both paid a heavy price.”

            “The more I think of our adventure,” added Dmitry, “the more I realize my debt to my Western friends. For the future of the world, may there be many more men of their courage.”

“To the optimist, all doors have handles and hinges; to the pessimist, all doors have locks and latches.” –W.A.W.

Hijack Over Shanghai

 Hijack Over Shanghai

"The flight began routinely. Then, suddenly, five knife-weilding madmen turned it into a nightmare".

            The 19 American tourists waited quietly in a spartan little airfield building on the outskirts of Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province. Behind them on this Sunday morning, july 25, 1982, lay two fascinating days of sightseeing. Next stop was the port city of Shanghai, 1,200 kilometers to the east. After Wang, their young tour guide, distributed boarding passes, the Americans and the other passengers moved to airport security, where a ground hostess conducted a cursory inspection by glancing inside the carry-on baggage. There were no metal detectors or X-ray cameras.

            At 8 a.m. flight 2505 of the Chinese national airline CAAC took off with 72 passengers and a crew of eight aboard a vintage turboprop. Flying time to Shanghai was two hours and ten minutes. The Americans settled in to reading and dozing. They were old friends, middle-aged and elderly, most from rural New Jersey.

            Ronald Roth, 53, organizer of the tour, was seated by the left aisle in the middle of the aircraft. Most of his group was towards the rear of this main cabin, which ended in a partitioned galley. In front of Roth were three rows of seats, and then a galley on the left and a toilet on the right. Forward were a smaller seating section and the flight deck. The plane was near capacity with Chinese travellers, a scattering of Japanese businessmen and the Americans.

            At 9.50 the plane began a smooth descent through the cloud-smudged sky to Shanghai. Two minutes later a scream ripped through the aircraft as a terrified Chinese woman ran towards the back of the plane with a dozen more passangers hard on her heels. “Men are fighting with knives up there!” one passenger shouted in English.

            Two men flashing knives before them drove the people out of the front compartment and the first rows of seats in the main cabin. Both had torn off their shirts, exposing hard-muscled bodies. One was a leering, square-faced man. The other, yelling at the top of his lungs, had a long face and wild, rolling eyes. Gripped in each of his hands was a 13-centimetre straight-blade knife.

            When the intruders reached Roth’s row they fiercely gestured that he and his seatmate; W.J.Gunther, remain where they were. Through the open door of the cockpit Roth could see a man pressing a blade against the pilot’s neck. Two more were holding the co-pilot , navigator, engineer and radio operator at bay. The white shirt of one crew member was crimson with blood.

            “My God, we’re being hijacked,” Roth said hoarsely.

            “We’re Finished” The rear of the plane had become jammed with people. At least 15 were packed into the aisle. Two stewardess cowered in the galley there. The third advanced defiantly down the aisle and knelt at Roth’s side, her eyes blazing with anger.

            The long-faced hijacker standing before them was shouting in Chinese. “He says to sit still and be quiet,” warned Wang, who was sitting across from Roth on the right side of the plane the hijacker continued his howling speech.

            Two rows behind Wang, Wilbur Lance, 76, a retired banker, and his wife, Leila, heard the Japanese around them whispering. One scrawled a note and handed it to Lance. “They’re going to Hongkong, refuel, then to Taiwan to be liberated.”

            Meanwhile the aircraft had commenced a series of sharp banking turns, flying in and out of clouds. It shuddered and bucked in the turbulence, and the sound of vomitting was heard above the drone of the four propellers.

            As Gunther went into a fit of retching, Roth pressed back in his seat. Relax.it’s like being on a giant wheel. He looked out of the window. A cloud loomed out of the blue. Immediately the plane into its centre. Roth had no doubts: the pilot was deliberately flying into rough air in an attempt to throw the hijackers off balance.

            With feet spread wide and knees bent to take the bumps, the square-faced hijacker produced a 25-centimetre-long dynamite stick. Grinning, concious of a hundred eyes watching him, the pushed in a detonator cap trailing a fuse wire and then fitted a push-button triggering device to the free end of the wire. The bomb was put inside the toilet, with the fuse snaking under the door and the trigger secured under the nearest front-section seat.

            “We’re fineshed,” Gunther announced through his nausea. He took rosary beads from his pocket and began to pray silently.

            From his aisle seat, Stephen Domovich, 57, superintendent of a New Jersey youth correctional institution, had been watching with the same sense of doom. More than 30 years’ experience with delinquents and criminals convinced him that the hijackers would explode the bomb at any provocation.

            Domovich’s grim missing was interrupted by Al Dunn, who was sitting in front. “Hey, Steve,” Dunn said from the side of his mouth. “We’re circling.” The domed stadium that Dunn had seen when the plane had first begun its descent to Shanghai was below him again. It was clearer, bigger. The plane was not only circling, it was losing altitude. He estimated that they were at little more than 1,500 metres.

            The pilot was pursuing a daring deception in probable ignorance of the bomb in the cabin. But the hijackers were apparently unaware that the plane was circling; not one of them had thought to look out of the windows.

            During the first 50 minutes of the takeover, the crew members on the flight deck concentrated on the hijackers, alert to any chance for attack. Suddenly the plane tilted and the co-pilot lunged at the knife nearest him. He fell back with blood gushing from a gash in his cheek. The stewardess next to Roth was on her feet, shouting and shaking her fist.

            Victory Cry. The wild-eyed hijacker strode up to her and bellowed an order. Retreating to the galley, she brought him a bottle of orange soda. The man hacked the glass neck from the bottle with the blunt edge of his knife and poured some of the drink into a cup. After one swallow he refilled his mouth and spat the liquid at the Americans in front. Contemptuously he sent the jagged bottle spinning up the aisle. No one in the cabin dared react to the lunatic performance.

            The plane banked and trembled. Dunn felt a drop of water on his face. The air conditioning had been turned off. Condensation dripped from the air nozzles. The cabin had become a fetid oven.

            More than two hours into the hijacking, the engineer and the radio operator were released to the main seating section. One was unhurt, but his comrade had been savagely cut about the face and head. Together they disappeared into the back alley.

            Suddenly the sound of wild shouts spun the Americans around their seats. They could hardly believe their eyes. The two crew men were charging down the aisle with thick, wooden mob handles held in the joust position. Dunn watched them rush by.

            Thundering behind the engineer and the radio operator were half a dozen passengers wielding soda bottles and iron heating coils wrenched from the galley stove. Up front, Roth and Gunther were both shouting. “No! Stop! There’s a bomb!”

            Roth grabbed the mop of the lead man. By lunging across Roth’s back, Gunther got a hand on the second mob. A japanese man in the pack began shrieking, “Out of fuel! Out of fuel!”

            The two Americans looked out of the window. Both propellers on the left side had ceased turning. The die was cast. Better  to go down fighting. They released their grips on the mop handles and in one voice yelled, “Go!”

            At that instant the bomb exploded. It blew the toilet walls into the aisle and near-by seats, and opened a ragged, metre and a half hole in the fuselage. Because of the low altitude there was no feeling of depressurization, just the sweep of air through the gaping hole and the magnified roar of the two still-spinning propellers on the right wing.

            The raiders used this momentary distraction to storm the hijackers. Wang was in their midst, whacking away with a furled umbrella. The plane staggered, and then dipped forward. The pilot was grappling with the man who held a knife at his throat.

            Out of Control. Roth was conscious of the brutal struggle in the forward section, of men screaming and falling. Then a Chinese passenger was raising his arms above the melee, smiling and shouting an unmistakable victory cry. The hijackers had been overpowered. But too late, thought Roth. The plane was out of control, diving for the ground. “Take crash positions!” he yelled.

            Al and Carol Dunn were embracing. “We’ve had almost 35 years,” Al said, lifting his voice above the din. “The children are grown up. They’ll be okay…..”

            “I’m glad you’re with me,” said Carol. She linked her arm with her husband’s. as they braced themselves, Al Dunn took a final glance outside. The plane was plummering towards ponds greening with rice plants. Closer….closer….

            Then Dunn felt the nose of the plane lift, saw landing flaps hinge out from the wing. “He’s got control

! He’s going to land!”

            Rice fields flashed by only metres below his window.

            The plane hit with a thump, blowing out the front tyres and setting a shower of sparks under the wheels. Dunn was incredulous. They were screeching along on concrete. “It’s a runway!” His voice fairly boomed through the cabin and the Americans broke into a sponteneous applause.

            Ambulances were running abreast of the plane, the word “Shanghai” painted on their sides. Trucks filled with soldiers lined the airstrip.

            As soon as the crippled aircraft halted, the emergency exit behind the rear galley was yanked open and a platoon of armed men leapt aboard. They ran the length of the plane and came back dragging the unconscious hijackers.

            Roth picked his way through the wreckage of the bomb and the combat, and walked up to the valiant pilot, Yang Jihai, a big framed man in his early 50s.

            “Thank you,” said Roth, holding out his hand. It..seemed in adequate. Roth gave the pilot a bear hug and then felt the pilot’s arms around him. When the two men stood apart both had tears on their cheeks.

            Inside the terminal, the Americans learnt that all traffic had been diverted from the airport during the nearly three hours that Flight 2505 had been widely circling above. A bus was readied for the party, and when they were all aboard, Roth turned and kneeled in his seat.

            “Today is Sunday,” he said. “I think it would be appropriate if we sang a hymn of praise.”

            The words came softly at first; then the hymn filled the bus and echoed lustily down the highway to Shanghai..Nineteen American men and women sang joyfully at their deliverance: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow…..”

            Captain Yang and his crew were awarded orders of merit at a ceremony in Beijing. The five hijackers, following a two-day trial in Shanghai, were executed.

"God gives every bird his worm, but he does not throw it into the nest"

                                                      -swedish proverb