We went up four flights of stairs — I don’t ever recall seeing Triyanov take an elevator — and down the hall to the flight-test office. As he was about to open the door, Triyanov paused. “Take a good look at your colleagues, Yuri. Grechko, Makarov, Yeliseyev.” These were some of the members of the kindergarten. “One of them is going to be on that first flight around the Moon. If Artemov and I have anything to say about it, one of them might take the first step on the surface.”
Naturally, when I entered the office I found none of the future Moon orbiters or walkers present. Grechko and Makarov were almost certainly busy with Artemov and Filin. But I looked at their desks — not so very different from mine — with a greater sense of wonder.
Riding the train back to Moscow that night, I got an idea: Knowing how devoted Lev was to the whole idea of manned spaceflight, how perfect he would be for the flight-test department, and how shattered he would be when Chelomei lost the lunar mission, why not introduce him to Filin? Transfers between bureaus were rare, but not impossible, especially with Lev, like me, in the prediploma stage.
I was feeling quite good about my generosity when I walked up the steps to my building to have Liliya, the giant key lady, practically fly out of her kiosk with another message in her hand. “Yuri, it’s your father. He’s in the hospital.”
The message directed me to the Aviation Hospital, which was in Sokolniki, northeast of central Moscow and, as these things go, fairly close to Bauman. I hurried back to the metro and retraced my path to the Kursk station, then around the Ring to Komsomol Station, changing to the blue line, exiting two stops away.
The Aviation Hospital sat surrounded by the huge Sokolniki Park just a few blocks from the metro stop. It was dark, of course, as I reached the entrance, and it took half an hour to get past the various guards and key ladies and find my father.
I was worried about him, naturally. Beyond that, I felt sorry for him, knowing his feelings about the Aviation Hospital. “A bunch of optometrists” is what he called them. The staff of the facility was famous for its precision in judging pilots’ eyesight, and not much else. Of course, like all Soviet military medical establishments, it was blatantly politicized: If somebody higher up wanted a particular person medically disqualified, some disorder would always be found.
There was a young Air Force officer sitting outside his room who told me that my father had had an “accident” while returning from a visit to some research facility out in Shchelkovo, a town a few kilometers out from Sokolniki close to Chkalov air base and the cosmonaut training center. “What kind of accident?” I asked. “How is he?”
The officer would only tell me that my father seemed to be resting comfortably. He insisted on getting a doctor to answer any other questions. I allowed myself to be relieved that my father had not, at least, been found frozen to death in some snowbank.
The doctor was even younger than the officer; he couldn’t have been much older than me, in fact. And instead of answers, he had questions. “Has your father been under stress lately?”
“No more stress than usual,” I said. We went back and forth like this for a few moments before I learned the story:
My father had visited an institute in Shchelkovo for some celebration, having been driven there. As expected, the vodka flowed freely, and my father had climbed into the car and driven off. The doctor was not about to claim that my father was drunk, but to me it was obvious: Father had been an ace pilot in his day, but, to my knowledge, had never qualified for a driver’s license.
“He headed back to Moscow, but missed a turn and ran off the road in Lukino. He was lucky he was close to a militia station, because two of them noticed the tracks going off into the snow when they came off work, and decided to investigate.
“Your father suffered a broken collarbone and was suffering from exposure when they found him.”
“May I see him?” The doctor led me into the room — a private one for a general and Hero of the Soviet Union, of course, on a floor filled with private rooms.
My father was sleeping, but could not have been very comfortable. His left arm and shoulder were wrapped in a giant elevated cast. There was a nasty cut, now stitched and bandaged, and a bruise on that side of his face. All I could think to say was, “How long will he have to wear the cast?”
“Eight weeks.”
At that moment a nurse appeared in the doorway. “Yes?” the doctor said.
“There’s someone here to see him,” the nurse said, indicating me. “Her name is Marina.”
“When did you decide to forgive me?”
Those were my first words to her, as we broke what seemed like a desperate hug.
“What makes you think I have?” Before I could respond to that, she said, “How is your father?”
I explained, adding, “He’s asleep now, so you don’t have to worry about him.”
“Well, I am starting to worry about him.” His drinking, she meant.
“Me, too.”
She took my hand. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch. I love you so much, and I was afraid your father was going to take you from me.” She told me how she had decided to surprise me at the flat, and had learned from Liliya about my father’s accident.
“I wouldn’t let him do that.”
She kissed me again. I could not let her go. Shocking as it may sound, within moments we — my shy, private Marina and I — were making love, passionately, frantically, in one of the empty rooms, as my father slept off the effects of his accident and a disapproving nurse shook her head in dismay.
10
The State Commission
The first two weeks of February 1966 were a blur of schoolwork, bureau tasks, and Marina. She had schoolwork, too, of course, but spent more and more time at my room. If the Omsk Twins cared — or noticed — they said nothing.
Lev, busy with his own burden of school finals and diploma work, had taken to spending nights with a friend out in Reutov, home of the Chelomei bureau.
My father was discharged from the Aviation Hospital on the ninth, little more than a week after his accident. We had not discussed the accident in any detail. Perhaps you find this strange; looking back, I do, too. But our conversations had never been long or deep, except on those rare occasions, when I was younger, that I was able to get him talking about flying combat missions in the Great Patriotic War, or testing Sukhoi and MiG fighters. The week after the accident, his only comment was that he had been “a damned fool.”
Even when I telephoned him from my office at the bureau the night before, to tell him I would try to be present when he left, he had been blunt. “They’re sending me to Foros,” he said, naming the resort on the Black Sea often used by the Air Force.
“Then I want to see you before you go.”
With great difficulty, I managed to get to Sokolniki at eight in the morning, his scheduled time of discharge, only to find that I was too late. The nurse on his floor — the same nurse who had witnessed my disreputable lovemaking with Marina — happily informed me that General Ribko had been driven away only minutes before!
Confused and angry, I sat down on a bench inside the main entrance, gathering my strength before submitting to the cold, the metro, the train to Kaliningrad. It was another gray, nasty day, like most of them that month. “So you didn’t listen to your father,” a voice said, startling me.
Uncle Vladimir stood there, slipping on his gloves, accompanied by two obvious State Security types.