Years of practice had taught me how to keep quiet while moving around the flat, just as years of practice had no doubt taught the Omsk Twins and Lev to sleep through anything short of a nuclear attack. I made a cup of tea and had a roll for breakfast, then sat on the couch going over the last of my school papers. Triyanov had told me that my report on the Voskhod toilet would serve as the basis of a senior thesis on habitability systems for manned spacecraft. Without making any conscious choice, I was being shunted onto a specific career track that had nothing to do with my interests in mathematics or trajectories. I suppose I should not have been surprised. After all, I was rapidly being turned into an investigator for State Security, too.
“Breakfast reading?” Lev appeared out of the other room suddenly, surprising me as he picked up the typist’s latest draft of my report.
“That’s secret,” I told him.
“It should be,” he said, making a face. “It’s years behind the ones we’re designing.”
I hadn’t planned to quiz Lev so early; had wondered, in fact, just how I would ever begin to probe for Chelomei’s secrets. But here it was. “I must have missed the flights of Chelomei’s spacecraft,” I said. “Which ones were they?”
“I see someone has been talking. Your father?” Fortunately, Lev took my embarrassed silence at the accidental mention of Chelomei’s name as confirmation of my father’s supposed talkativeness. “Fine. The general staff loves my boss, because he works for them.
“As for our spacecraft, you’ll see soon enough,” he said, rising to the challenge. He began ticking them off on his fingers. “First, there’s our space station, which was just approved by the Council of Ministers. Then there’s our lunar orbiter — your dead boss Korolev was trying to take that away from us, but now he’s gone.”
“The new heads of my bureau have allies, too.”
Lev spread his hands at the insanity of it all. “They have to use our launcher! The only way a Korolev bureau spacecraft is going to the Moon is on top of a Chelomei rocket! They don’t even fit together… it doesn’t make sense.”
“You make Chelomei sound like some kind of genius.”
“He is. He’s a passionate man… very cultured. I was in his office just this week, in fact. You should see it, Yuri. He’s like one of those people in an American movie, with a dark suit and a bright tie. He’s surrounded by polished wood, hundreds of books. Poetry and novels, too, not just engineering texts.”
I had never seen Korolev’s office, but I had seen Korolev’s style, which was strictly functional.
“He has a vision, too. It would be very easy for him to sit back and do whatever the generals want. Build bigger missiles. Shoot down American spy satellites. Collect his State prizes. He does all this, but he still believes, Yuri. He wants to see man — a Russian man — walking on the Moon. On Mars. And you know what?” Lev needed no encouragement to keep speaking. “He wants his people to fly his spacecraft. Yes, he’ll let the military cosmonauts fly the military vehicles, but not the lunar spacecraft. He’s very close to creating his own group using new people.”
“New people like you?” I debated telling Lev that the Korolev bureau was way ahead of him already.
“Why not? I’m fit. My eyes are good. I’m learning to be a pilot.” I hadn’t known that. “Besides, I would much rather explore space than fight a war.”
Then, perhaps feeling that he had revealed too much, he stopped. He pointed to the Voskhod papers on my desk. “I’m sorry… it’s really not that bad.”
“No, I tested it myself: It is a terrible design.”
“That’s because Voskhod is small. Chelomei’s space station is so large it has sleeping quarters as well as a bathroom.”
There was a knock at the door, loud enough to wake the Omsk Twins in the other room. I answered it; Liliya, the key lady, had a telephone message for me. “Your lady friend is coming back early,” she announced, handing me a slip of paper. “She says she will be home at noon.”
The moment she was gone, Lev laughed. “Why does she bother writing it down when she’s going to scream it all over the building?”
The Omsk Twins stumbled in then, effectively ending my interrogation of Lev. While it was now easier for me to picture this mysterious Chelomei, all I had learned was that he was a kindred spirit to Korolev, Artemov, and Filin. (Lev seemed to be one of them, too.) Not a murderer.
And what, exactly, was I?
Marina lived in another block of student flats not far from my own, but on the eastern side of the Yauza. I had hoped she would be alone — not an unusual expectation on a Sunday, with roommates who could be off studying in the library. Not only was she not alone, but one of her roommates was screwing her boyfriend in the next room.
Marina’s hug and kiss were hurried. “Let’s go, please.” She grabbed her coat as I tried not to hear the creaking of ancient bedsprings.
Once we had exited the building, our boots crunching on the January snow, Marina relaxed, became playful, taking my arm, letting me stop her for a kiss. Kaluga had been cold; the trip had been shortened because pipes burst inside the big Tsiolkovsky Museum. One of her tourist charges had flirted with her. “He was a rich Western journalist, very handsome, too,” she said.
“With a wife and four children back in Paris. Not to mention another set in London.”
“He swore that he was unmarried.”
“If you’re trying to make me jealous, don’t bother,” I said. “Take the best offer you can get.”
Then, disappointed that I didn’t want to play her game, she pouted, but not for long. It was only when I told her that I was on my way to visit my father that she showed real annoyance.
“Yuri, he hates me.”
“He likes you better than he likes me these days.” I was trying to be encouraging, but failed.
After much pleading, she agreed to come with me, on the condition that we would leave after a few hours.
We emerged from the Frunze Station into another world. Handsome buildings rose all around us. The cars that zipped down the wide street were shiny and black, in spite of the snow and slush. Marina noticed this as I did. “It pays to be a general,” she said. It was true: This part of Moscow belonged to general officers working at the Ministry of Defense headquarters, or at the many, many military academies and institutes around the city. Even the kiosks looked more prosperous.
It was a five-block march from the station to my father’s building. I hurried Marina as much as I dared, knowing that my father had expected me to arrive at least two hours earlier. I must have been too intent on the task, because Marina suddenly stopped. “What’s wrong?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You haven’t said a word since we left the station. We hardly talked all the way over here.”
She had that ability — common enough in women, I have learned — to read a man’s state from body language and things not said.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Something has changed with you in the past week or so. I wasn’t sure before I went to Kaluga, but now I can see it.”
“Well, I have a job now. It’s very difficult. Maybe that’s it.” That wasn’t it, of course — what was different was my secret job with State Security.
Only then did I ask myself… why not tell her? Marina had her own associations with that world. A simple statement that I did, too, should end all the questions with hugs of understanding. No more hiding.