—What do you call it?
—Semyorka.
—Seven. How poetic. I am proud of you, Mia, always. I am grateful for all that you are doing.
—You can thank Stalin for dying. Khrushchev is a smart man. He and Korolev get along for now. That’s the only reason we were able to drop the R-3 for good.
Now is probably a good a time to tell her…. Somehow it feels as if our roles were reversed. I am the child about to confess I broke a vase.
—Wonderful. Speaking of Stalin’s demise, I—
—You what?
—… Are you aware that Lavrentiy Beria died yesterday?
—Yeah. The little rat went to his knees and begged for mercy. I heard they had to stuff a rag into his mouth to stop the wailing before they shot him.
—Indeed. You should know that I tried to kill him last year.
—Mother, no! We talked about this. If I wanted him gone, I would have killed him myself.
—I know, but—
—There’s no but. You said it yourself. We kill to survive, like every other living thing. We don’t hunt people.
—I did not hunt… I gave him a dozen bottles of Georgian wine laced with rat poison. Warfarin.
—Mother!
—It did not work.
—That’s not the point!
—I know, the point is…
—You mean there’s more?
—Perhaps…. I did not give it a thought when they announced Stalin’s death in March. The papers said he watched a movie at the Kremlin on that Saturday with Khrushchev, Malenkov, Bulganin, and Beria. They all went to the dacha afterwards and drank all night. Stalin had a stroke. They found him in a coma the next morning. Four days later, he was dead. End of story.
—So?
—So I never saw the autopsy report but I heard they also found intestinal bleeding, which is not all that common with a stroke.
—I don’t like where this is going.
—It could be nothing.
—Or…
—A hefty dose of warfarin would account for both the stroke and the intestinal bleeding. Many things would, really, but perhaps Beria brought a bottle as a gift that night and Stalin had a nightcap before going to bed. I heard Georgian wines were a favorite of his.
—You fucking killed Stalin?!
—Language, Mia. And no. I mean… there is a very remote possibility that I did, but perhaps Beria found out the wine I sent him was poisoned and he gave it to Stalin on purpose. They say that after Stalin died, he bragged to members of the Politburo that he had done it and saved them all.
—A remote possibility?
—Very remote.
—You fucking killed Stalin!
—I did not.
—You keep telling yourself that. I’ve got to go, Mother. Korolev and I are having dinner with friends.
Mia is not nearly as mad as I thought she would be. I do not know why this surprises me. It was always I who thought the rules could not be bent. Mia chose her own path. She wanted a normal life, and I wanted it for her. We broke every rule to get her there. She will not condemn me for breaking one more. My daughter is happy. She has a husband, a lover. She is passionate about her work, and we are making great progress towards our goal.
I did not think this was something we could have. Perhaps I, too, could have the life I want, see my granddaughter born and watch her become us one day at a time. I could tend a garden, do the small things other people do while they watch the years go by. I would love to grow old. None of us ever have.
48
Earth Angel
Shit. I’m late for lunch. Billie’s going to give me a mouthful. Where the hell is it?!
—Sergei! Did you see my necklace?
Where did I go? Nowhere. I was here all day yesterday. I took it off the night before. I remember that.
—SERGEI!
—WHAT? WHAT?
—My necklace! Have you seen it?
—Green jacket. I am coming.
—Your dress uniform? Wh—Oh there you are. What’s my necklace doing in—
—I took it to an expert like we had talked about. Get dressed!
—I am dressed. I have to go. Why are you out of breath?
He’s sweating like he just ran a marathon.
—I ran downstairs. I—
—You ran—
—I meant you should put on a dress. I will open some champagne.
—It’s eleven, Sergei.
I think my husband is broken.
—That is perfect, because at ten forty-five, the USSR Council of Ministers officially approved our draft for the R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile.
—They said yes?
—You have your rocket, Nina. You did it. Whoa! No! You are too heavy!
I don’t want to let go and let him see me crying. I worked— We worked so hard on this. It’s…
—It’s your project, Sergei. You did it.
—Nina, I do not know exactly why you agreed to marry me but I—
—I—
—Let me talk. But I hope… I like to believe it was in part because you think of me as a fairly intelligent human being. I see you working, Nina, always. You jot down equations on napkins when I am not looking. My office is full of them. I pick them up from the trash can when you leave. When the car windows get foggy, I see the math you last did with your finger and I cannot understand the half of it.
—Sergei, that’s—
—I am not an idiot, Nina. I read all those papers. Unlike you, I actually know Mikhail Tikhonravov, personally. He is a smart man but he could not write a coherent sentence to save his life. He also cannot do what you do. No one can. I do not ask because I assume you would say something if you wanted to. That and you make me look incredibly smart. The rest of us helped when we could but this is your rocket, even if you and I are the only ones who know it. You did an amazing thing, Mrs. Korolev. I think you should celebrate, and I would be honored if you let me celebrate with you.
I absolutely adore this man, but this is so not helping with the crying. I suppose if I’m going to sob like a child, I might as well do it over champagne. I’m a couple of days late, but one glass can’t hurt, can it?
—I’ll get the glasses. You said you had someone look at my necklace?
—I did.
I hate it when he does that.
—… And?!
—He could not tell me anything about the metal, but the gem in the middle comes from a meteorite. Fitting, don’t you think? You dream of sending things into outer space and you are wearing a piece of it.
—He said it was a piece of meteorite?
—Well, not exactly. He said that mineral was not from Earth. It had to come from somewhere, right?
Shit.
49
Mr. Sandman
I better hold on to something. I can’t feel my fingers it’s so cold up here. I don’t know why I agreed to this. Well, I know why. Korol—My husband asked me to and I said yes. I must be losing my mind, like the last manager did. They wouldn’t tell the excavation crew what they were building. They told them it was a “stadium.” Typical Russian nonsense, we’re in Nowhere, Kazakhstan. Their surveys said there was nothing but sand here, but they hit some heavy clay right from the start and they fell behind. The generals in Moscow were quick to blame the manager, a kid from the Academy of Military Engineering. He went crazy, literally. He’s in a mental institution now. Maybe that’s where I should be. Instead I’m… fighting the wind a hundred and fifty feet above ground, watching tiny people below pour concrete into a giant hole.