groups were based and how a person joined them. It was generally understood that they came to you, but for that to happen a man had to stand out in some way, be different, exceptional. Zhilev had learned from his old diving instructor in the youth military school that the best route to ‘special forces work’ was through military intelligence. That would open many doors for anyone who was successful in that department. First Zhilev had to get through the basic military-training course and then take it from there.
The three-month induction training was easy for him and made him all the more determined not to end up serving with the kind of men he had joined up with, most of whom were unmotivated and got drunk at every opportunity. All he could think of was getting to the end of the course and applying for a specialist aptitude test which, if he passed, would allow him to attend a selection process for military intelligence.Within a week of completing basic training he was invited to take the week-long series of mental aptitude tests with some short map marches thrown in to assess the recruits’ physical condition. He passed the course with ease and received orders to study radio communications under OSNAZ, the Special Forces unit of the Intelligence Directorate of the Navy, in Kiev. This was the first big step towards his goal but he still had no idea how he was going to break into the actual operational units. Zhilev spent a year at the vast old concrete complex built after the Second World War under Stalin’s directive, learning radio technology and how to operate the various ‘special’ radios used by Special Forces and field agents - or spies for want of a better term - learning their construction and the many complex coding systems.
At the end of this course he sat a final test and passed with honours. His intelligence as well as Sambo skills, which highlighted his physical abilities, did not go unnoticed and a week after the exams he was called to see his commanding officer who personally handed him a military assignment, voluntary in nature, which was simply two words: marine intelligence. The brevity of the offer suggested it was far beyond ordinary military duty. In fact, it was a career directive and, as the commander pointed out, a great honour to receive. There was one slight obstacle Zhilev had to clear before he could accept the offer: he could not embark on an intelligence career as a conscript and would have to sign up for twenty years, which also included signing a contract that stated he understood the punishment for disclosing official secrets was death. These were not even issues for Zhilev and he promptly signed on the dotted line. He was finally on his way to realising his childhood dream and within days was on a train to the Black Sea where he would join the OMRP and one of the legendary and highly secret reconnaissance and sabotage units that came under the general banner of Spetsnaz, which simply translated means ‘of special purpose’. He knew his life was going to change in every conceivable way and he marched eagerly, albeit blindly, into it.
Had he known where the great adventure would eventually lead he would have remained in Riga and become a metal worker like his father, marry, and have a family and take holidays in Yalta once a year like everyone else in the factory. But he did not.
Zhilev took the two hundred mile train journey south from Kiev to the city of Ochakov on the Black Sea, a hundred miles north of Sevastopol, the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, which was to be his parent command. From Ochakov, he was taken in an army truck into the wilderness to eventually arrive at Pervomayskiy, an artificial island at the mouth of the rivers Dnepr and Bug. Called Mayskiy for short, the island was a stone fortress constructed in 1881 and used as such until World War Two. It was taken over by the Spetsnaz in the 1960s and the interior reconstructed to provide classrooms, a small hospital, helicopter pad, sports facilities and accommodation for two hundred and fifty men, and included a water-processing plant and enough food and supplies to comfortably sustain the men inside its walls for up to a year without contact with the outside world in the event of a nuclear attack. This was the home of the 17th