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West German officials had plenty of their own questions, but nothing they had learned so far pointed to anti-Soviet political motives behind the trip, or for that matter any other kind of political rationale. Investigators were not able to link Rust, a computer operator, to any organization other than his flying club, from which he rented the single-engine aircraft. One intriguing theory for Rust's motivation was advanced by a West German amateur pilot named Silke Matzen, who was traveling in the Soviet Union and witnessed the Red Square landing. Since it occurred on the Christian holy day marking Christ's ascension to heaven, she noted, Rust may have been acting out a popular German aviators' drinking toast that goes, "On Ascension Day we land in Red Square."
The son of an engineer, Rust lived with his parents and 15-year-old brother, who were described by Bonn officials as "completely bewildered" by Mathias' spectacular dilemma. Said one investigator: "He was a nice, quiet, dedicated young man from whom no one expected great deeds, or great misadventures either." The Rust family decided to sell the rights to their story, presumably to offset some $100,000 in fines and charges that Mathias could face, to the weekly West German picture magazine Stern.
That coup for Stern, however, hardly deterred the rest of the West German press from devoting an avalanche of coverage to the Rust saga. Night after night, television stations showed footage* of the small aircraft bobbing past the onion-shaped domes of St. Basil's Cathedral and the other famous buildings facing Red Square, and the figure of Rust, dressed in $45 red flying overalls, emerging from the cockpit. Newspaper editorials compared his exploits to those of Manfred von Richthofen, the legendary "Red Baron" of World War I. Rust's status as instant folk hero was further certified by the appearance in West Berlin of $8 T shirts with a drawing of the flyer's Cessna in its now famous background and the inscription INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, RED SQUARE. OPENING MAY 28, 1987. Indeed, so persistent was the hoopla surrounding the strange case of Mathias Rust that Soviet Foreign Ministry Spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov jokingly suggested that the "Cessna company organized all of this mess for advertising purposes." Not likely. As they say on Madison Avenue, no one can buy that kind of publicity.
FOOTNOTE: *The only known videotape of Rust's approach and landing, shot by an unidentified British tourist, was obtained by NBC News, which bought worldwide distribution rights. The Soviets have made no attempt to obtain the tape, and it was not until last week that Soviet print media began admitting that the plane had made it all the way to Red Square.