Jokers To The Right

We kids had the run of the neighborhood.  The yards were big and the traffic on the streets was sparse in our secluded location.  For the most part, the adults were tolerant of our rowdy play.  With one exception.  Mr. and Mrs. Belcher.  They didn’t have kids, they didn’t like kids.  

One day we were playing basketball at the house next to the Belchers.  The ball bounced off the rim into their driveway.  Mr. Belcher made good on one of his many threats.  He grabbed the ball and went into his house.  Despite our protests, and irate phone calls from several of the parents, the ball was never returned.

Everyone assumed it was us kids that put up the signs all over the neighborhood that Halloween, saying there was a neighborhood party and lots of food at the Belcher’s house.  Their doorbell rang for hours.  No one was caught, nobody fessed up, and the identity of the perpetrator remained a mystery.

It wasn’t until after Dad had his first stroke that he told me, it was him.

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Artur became a rebel when he ran from the bus outside of Glashütten.  He took it to the next level at Gorodomlya Island, when he snapped the pen in half and openly defied the Communist Party.  At Baikonur, he went underground.  Artur became a practical joker.   

It took several weeks to plan, gather supplies, and get ready.  He started with a large piece of heavy paper, some leftover packaging.  That gave him the white background.  

It was easy to steal the problem tickets from the supply room.  They were attached to equipment that needed work or had failed some test.  About three inches wide and 6 inches long, they could be cut and laid end to end to make a red stripe.

Cutting all the stars was the hardest part.  He’d cut a blue rectangle from an old sweater.  He glued the fabric to one corner of the paper, then affixed the stars to the fabric.  Next he glued down the problem tickets to create alternating white and red stripes.  After attaching thin strips of wood around the edges as reinforcement, Artur had a bona fide facsimile of the Stars and Stripes, aka the American flag.

He gave it time to dry, then snuck out at two a.m.  He’d walked the route many times during daylight and knew the stealthiest route between his apartment and the Communist Party office.  

The rapid knocking at the door while they were eating breakfast came as a surprise to Ekaterina, but Artur was expecting it.  Mr. Dobrynin was not in a good mood.  Arthur scanned his forehead and didn’t see any bulging veins.  But the tone of his voice let the mathematician know his prank led to the desired result.

“Did you think we wouldn’t know it was you?  There isn’t anyone else at Baikonur disloyal enough to raise an American flag.  I promise, you will regret this.”

Artur had already rehearsed what he would say.  “Have you found any fingerprints?  Can you prove I was involved?”

He’d worn gloves whenever he touched anything, and had already disposed of all of the leftover materials and the tools.  No fingerprints, no evidence.  Unless someone had seen him, Dobrynin could not prove anything.  And both men knew that Sergei Korolev would protect him any way he could. 

There were no official repercussions from his practical joke.  Dobrynin was reduced to assassinating Artur’s character to anyone who would listen.  It had an effect.  Both Artur and Ekaterina noticed, some people would no longer talk to them.  The social isolation affected Ekaterina more than Artur, and he began to regret his practical joke.

Until the soft knock on their apartment door.  Elena Shirinova handed Artur a covered basket and said, “There are people here that want you to know, you are not alone.”

The basket was filled with food. Next to the apple pie, on top of the chicken, was a homemade cartoon.  Artur laughed.  A drawing of Mr. Dobrynin, with a look of horror on his face, as he gazed at the flag of his sworn enemy, flying above his office.

Few humans thrive in oppressive societies, and the Soviet Union was no exception.  Most kept their feelings to themselves and did their best to get along.  Few rebelled, but those that did were secretly admired.  At Baikonur, Artur became a folk hero. 

The pranks continued, every few months.  He let the air out of the tires on Dobrynin’s car.  A worker had to break a window and climb in to remove the locks, when he filled the Party building keyholes with glue.  Things like that.

Artur never got caught.  At the same time, the team at Baikonur was producing stunning results.  On August 21, 1957, they launched their newest ICBM from R-7.  It followed course perfectly, and traveled more than 6000 kilometers.  At the middle of its journey, when it reached maximum trajectory, the missile was in outer space.  

The big prize came on October 4, 1957.  Sputnik, the human race’s first satellite, was launched.  The world was stunned and Baikonur was thrust into the public’s eye.  The staff immediately noticed an improvement in the quality and quantity of food and other goods available at the stores.  

The reward for their success extended to a lavish New Year’s Eve party.  Arthur and Ekaterina must have gotten carried away.  Nine months later, baby Sergei arrived.  Yours truly.

Rocket technology advanced rapidly.  Money poured into the program as competition with the Americans heated up.  Artur watched as his child began talking and learned to walk.  He and Ekaterina discussed the possibility of more children.  The pranks continued.

Artur thought it would all come crashing down.  It was January, 1962.  As always, in the middle of the night.  He was executing his boldest practical joke yet.  He’d stolen a master key and was in the Party office.  After carefully removing the prints of Lenin and Stalin from their frames, he replaced them with photographs of a burned, mangled rocket, from one of their early launch failures.

He’d remounted the frames and was thinking he was going to get away with another one when he heard the door open.  Across the lobby from Artur stood Ivan Sokolov, a young Party worker.  The two men made eye contact.  Arthur did not expect what happened next.

Sokolov broke out in a grin.  He held a hand up to Artur, then put a finger up to his lips.  “Don’t move, don’t say anything.”  He stuck his head out the door.  Artur could see him looking around.  Sokolov turned back into the office and whispered, “All clear, you better get going.”  Artur made his way back to his apartment.

Even members of the Communist Party were Artur Wlodarski fans.

But not Mr. Dobrynin.  He had made it his personal mission to get Artur out of Baikonur.  

His opportunity had literally fallen out of the sky.  On May 1, 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down in Soviet airspace.  The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was put on trial and sentenced to prison.  After two years and tense negotiations, a prisoner exchange was arranged.

The story made headlines around the world as Powers walked through Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin to his freedom.  KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher, caught spying in New York, walked the other way.

They were not the only people that walked through the checkpoint that day.  The Americans and the Soviets also solved a problem each had with their rocket scientists.

In America, Wernher von Braun had never forgotten Artur.  And, he had an unhappy scientist on his hands.  Ernst Weber had done well in America, until his wife died in an automobile accident.  The grieving widower lost interest in work and wanted to go home.  Unfortunately, home was on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, in East Germany.

In the USSR, Mr. Dobrynin had made sure Artur’s acts of disobedience were well known.  When talk of an exchange of rocket scientists began, things progressed quickly.

On February 10, 1962, Artur, Ekaterina, and young Sergei followed Powers through Checkpoint Charlie.  A few days later, von Braun was reunited with his mathematician, this time on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

The exchange of rocket scientists was never publicly acknowledged.  My Soviet birth certificate was destroyed.  A new one, along with a complete hospital birth record, was created.  My first name was Americanized, from Sergei to Serge.  I was now officially an American citizen, born at the hospital in Huntsville, Alabama.