The Foreign Service Journal, May 2007

had a fair number of enthusiastic volunteers. John Floyd, our Seabee, was able to keep the consulate’s sys- tems running while doing basic main- tenance tasks in his spare time. John also volunteered for some of the more dangerous work, which includ- ed roping himself to an iron railing and lowering himself down the roof to clean off icicles and snow. Bea Burns volunteered to be the tele- phone operator. The husband of our consular officer, who himself was a retired FSO and had been consul general in Sydney, vol- unteered to be the consulate driver and also make customs runs. …Everybody volunteered for something, and every- thing was covered by at least one person.” “New Year’s Greetings from the Titanic ” The weather remained bearable through mid- December; then, just as Christmas drew near, the ther- mometer plunged. We were later told that the winter of 1986-1987 was the worst in 54 years, the second worst in 105, and colder than the winter that defeated Napoleon’s army. Whether this was true or not, we went through several weeks of temperatures below minus 35 Celsius. At that temperature few cars will start. By mid-January only six cars in the embassy motor pool were running (the ambassador’s limousine and a pickup truck used for jumpstarting other cars were kept garaged). My Volvo hatchback was one of the six, but only because I arose every two hours at night, started the engine and ran it for an hour to recharge the battery. I then went back to bed for two hours before doing it all over again. Shortly after Christmas, the steam pipe feeding the embassy heating system ruptured. The interior temper- ature of the chancery plunged to 33 degrees below zero within a day, and the heat was not restored until spring. People worked indoors all winter in long underwear and down coats. This event spurred Supervisory GSO Jane Becker to give one cable the subject line, “New Year’s Greetings from the Titanic .” Commercial Attaché Mike Mears wrote a cable detailing the U.S. Commercial Office’s own travails, not- ing that things couldn’t get much worse. Then, on Jan. 12, 1987, a steam pipe blew in their own building. Mears and his administrative assistant, Cheryl Dustin, arrived to discover boiling water pouring out the front door. When the water was shut off, so was the heat, and the next morning USCO had six inches of ice on the floor, a glacier extending to the sidewalk, and condensed ice inside all office equipment. The summary para- graph of Mears’ next telegram to Commerce read simply, “Things did get worse.” Another consequence of the round of expulsions emerged about this time: a spike in vandalism, home intrusions and automobile sabotage. The KGB already routinely engaged in harassment at the rate of about one or two incidents per week, but the frequency jumped to one or two per day. Margo Squire had her car’s exhaust pipe sawn through. My (and many others’) apartment win- dows were opened and left open when the temperature was 35 below zero. Larry Goodrich recalls: “[T]he Soviets especially liked to prey on empty embassy apartments. One night an embassy telephone operator’s ceiling fixtures were filling with water cascading in from the empty apartment above. … We found all the windows open (it was mid-January), which had caused one of the radiators to freeze and burst. We fought our way through the spraying water and turned off the water supply to the radiator. Then we went down to the staff member’s apartment, where I emptied his ceiling fixtures with a turkey baster, taking care not to electrocute myself.” Hoses were slashed on washing machines, causing apartment floods. The lug nuts on DCM Combs’ car were loosened, and the right front wheel fell off in traffic. Diesel fuel was poured into gas tanks, and it jelled when the mercury dropped, plugging fuel lines. We later learned that the PNG-ed KGB and GRU officers had been unleashed against us. But then came the good news that State had award- ed an “omnibus contract,” and contractors would come in the spring. All-purpose duty might soon be behind us! In celebration, Christmas carol lyrics were rewrit- ten and posted on the walls of the chancery’s two ele- vators: “Here We Come on APD” (to the tune of “Here We Come a-Wassailing”) and “God Rest Ye Merry, APDs.” F O C U S 38 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 7 Another consequence of the round of expulsions emerged about this time: a spike in vandalism, home intrusions and automobile sabotage.