Francis Powers - Operation Overflight

Still no letter from Barbara, although other mail was coming through. Mother: “It hurt real bad to see the other two boys arrive back here and you not with them, but I’m happy for them and their families.”

On February 28 something odd occurred which took my thoughts, temporarily, off my growing concern. Because of its nature, I couldn’t trust it to my diary or journal, except for a coded reminder.

Earlier Zigurd had told me that prisoners sometimes exchanged messages by wadding them in bread and throwing them when the guard wasn’t looking.

While I was walking in the exercise yard, a ball of bread, apparently tossed from one of the second-floor cell windows, landed at my feet. Making sure the guard had his back turned, I quickly scooped it up and palmed it. Not until we were back in our cell did I take out the message and read it.

It was in English, but strangely worded: “Dear Friend! You will live by and by. In that glorie land below the sky… but you must live so interestly, that you would be able to say something to your grandmother, when you return home. I can… if you are the man.”

I puzzled over it for hours. By “grandmother” did the writer mean “Uncle Sam,” and was he trying to say he had information for him?

I didn’t, and still don’t, know. No further attempt at contact was made. Separated as we were from the other prisoners, Zigurd and I had no idea whether any of them could speak or write English. Occasionally some of them would yell a word or two from their windows, but it was always “Hello” or something equally simple, repeated several times as though it were the only word they knew.

The need to communicate can lead one to all sorts of extremes. Once, when I was looking out the window, I saw a pigeon carrying a message. Literally. A prisoner had tied a string about two feet long to the pigeon’s leg; at the other end a letter, in a regular envelope. I could even see the postage stamp.

The sight was both comical and sad, sad because one of the guards saw it too and brought the pigeon down with one shot.

That was the only time, in either Lubyanka or Vladimir prison, that I heard a shot fired.

It was no longer easy to make excuses for Barbara’s failure to write—yet I continued to do so in spite of the fact that she didn’t have a job and lived with her mother, receiving a monthly check from the agency, leaving her few responsibilities. I not only thought of every possible excuse, I even reached way out for improbable explanations, wondering for example, if some of her letters were on a plane I heard had just crashed in Belgium.

I couldn’t write to my parents, asking them to inquire. Relations between them and my wife were strained enough without letting them know that she wasn’t writing to me. All I could do was wait.

By the end of February, thirty-three days had passed since Barbara’s last letter, and thoughts of her had become an obsession. Coinciding as it did with my disappointment over not being released, it was as if in addition to the government abandoning me, my wife had done so also.

I suppose there exists in every prisoner’s mind doubts about those he loves, no mater how blameless they may be. The mere fact that they are free, and you aren’t, builds resentments. But such doubts can be overcome where trust exists. I was denied that. I couldn’t trust Barbara. And without trust love begins to die, not fast but slowly and painfully.

Some of the agony I was going through was poured into the diary and journal. Even more remained bottled up inside…. “I can never have a future with her, because the past will always be between us…. Although in principle I’m opposed to it, there seems no other way than a divorce when I return to the States. It should have been done in 1957…. I thought at the time I loved her too much to let her go, that I wouldn’t admit failure, but now I don’t know…. I am at my wit’s end as to what to do. That is the worst thing about prison life. The helplessness, the not knowing. All you can do is sit and wait and think, which, in my case, is very bad….”

On March 8 I requested and received permission to write a letter to the American Embassy, asking them to make inquiries to see if my wife were ill or had been in an accident.

Diary, March 9: “Today, after an afternoon nap, I started working on a carpet, and while I was working I became very nervous and my whole body was tense. My hands shook so badly my cellmate wanted to call the doctor, but I wouldn’t let him. It only lasted thirty minutes…. If this keeps up, I think it could drive me crazy….”

Some weeks earlier I had mailed the first carpet to Barbara, hoping it would arrive in time for our anniversary, also hoping that its arrival would result in a letter. The package was now returned, refused by U.S. Customs. The significance of this wasn’t lost on me.

March 11: “I received a letter from my wife, which was written on February 21 and mailed on February 22. She offered no explanation as to why she hasn’t written between January 9 and February 21. Except that she has been visiting relatives in North Carolina….”

The letter did nothing to ease my mind. It was either very insensitive or carefully contrived. Barbara didn’t bother with the pretext, used in the past, that some of her letters had apparently gone astray; though unnumbered, the letter contained the newspaper copy of Kennedy’s inaugural address I had asked for, dated January 21. The tone of the letter was as though she was bored, and performing some unpleasant task.

Two problems, however, had been resolved, both thanks to Zigurd’s mother. She had sent vitamins, and after several days my eyesight returned to normal. She had also sent wool, enabling us to resume our carpet-making. Examining it, I found that it was dyed. Apparently she had been unable to find the colors that we had requested, and had gone to the trouble of dyeing it herself, thoughtfulness that moved me very much. She also provided one of our few laughs during this dark period. Earlier she had sent a package containing what Zigurd asserted was rabbit. It had an unusually long neck, and I marveled at how different rabbits in Latvia were from those in the United States. The meat was very good, though different from all the rabbit I has tasted, and Zigurd wrote thanking her for us both. In a very humorours reply, she informed us that our rabbit had been a goose.

Gradually, with a great deal of help from Zigurd, I began to emerge from my long depression. The world’s chess championship was being held in Moscow, and as the radio broadcast the moves we would copy them down and reconstruct the games on our board. The new carpet progressed well; I again took up my Russian studies. There were also other developments.

Diary, March 31: “Have received two very nice letters from Barbara. She still does not say a word about why she did not write for such a long time. It is surprising how much her letters ease my mind and make me feel better.”

This was true even though the news they contained was not hopeful. Kennedy, appearing on Meet the Press , had been asked why I hadn’t been released with the RB-47 pilots. He had replied, “That is a different situation.” Asked what was being done to negotiate my release, he said, “The time has not come yet.”

Now all my thoughts were on May 1. If the Russians were to release me, this seemed the most logical time. A national holiday—the traditional time for amnesties. The anniversary of my capture. Again hope began to build. But this time world events dashed it before it got out of hand.

On April 18 Premier Khrushchev announced over Radio Moscow that on the previous day, troops, “trained, equipped, and armed in the United States of America,” had launched an unsuccessful attempt to invade Cuba.