There is a saying that fat men are graceful; if so, Uncle Vladimir was an exception. He wasn’t hugely fat like Nero or some mountainous caesar — just round, like a pink, hairless bear, and about as coordinated. If there was a glass of water on a desk, he was sure to knock it over. His office had to have been the despair of the housekeeping staff. God, not they, only knew how many important files had been ruined, or lay cemented together, on Uncle Vladimir’s desk.
Not that he was untidy; far from it. He dressed better than any Russian I knew, and was obsessively neat about his person. I would almost say he was fastidious, as much as any man in his business could be. In that he was a Nefedov, like my mother.
As I arrived, he closed a red-colored file that was open in front of him and removed his glasses. I think it hurt his face to smile, but he tried. He did not rise: Though he and my father had little in common, both were more reserved than the average Russian man. “How was your test?”
“I passed it.”
“You don’t have many more to go before you get your degree.”
“Half a dozen, I think.” He nodded, as if processing the data, so I asked, thinking of his recent hospital stay, “How are you feeling?”
Uncle Vladimir seemed surprised by the question. “As good as I ever do this time of year.” He changed the subject without protest from me. “How do you like your job in Korolev’s organization?”
“Well, I’m not doing the work I was trained for. But I hope to get a position in the spring.”
He tapped on the red folder. “You can have one now.”
“There are no vacancies.”
When Uncle Vladimir managed a smile, it was only with his eyes. “Korolev is gone: That’s one vacancy.”
I didn’t know how to react to a statement like that. I liked Uncle Vladimir and felt comfortable with him. I had even tried to model myself on him, to be as cultured, well-read, informed, interested in the world. I felt I could be irreverent with him on our infrequent family occasions, but not here. So I said nothing, and he went on, more seriously: “Korolev’s death has upset many of our leaders, notably Ustinov. This doctor, Cherbakov, turns out to be a regular butcher. What he was doing operating on the chief designer no one understands. Who hired him? What really killed Korolev?”
“I assume someone will do an autopsy.”
“They cremated him. Hard to do an autopsy on a pile of ashes.” Uncle Vladimir consulted another file. “It seems his death couldn’t have come at a worse time. The Americans just made a two-week-long space-flight. Apparently they put one of their Geminis together with the other—”
“They made a rendezvous. Not a docking.”
Uncle Vladimir nodded. “Good, you follow these things. Ustinov and the others are afraid that because Korolev is dead, the Americans will beat us to the Moon.”
“I thought we were far ahead of them.”
“Not by much, and not for long. Yuri, our leaders are worried. ‘He who controls the high ground of space controls the world.’ Do you know who said that?”
“Lenin?”
“Lyndon Johnson. The same ruthless bastard who killed Kennedy so he could become President. Imagine what he would do to us if he could put his missiles on the Moon.”
Even then I knew that Mr. Johnson already had quite a few missiles much closer to Moscow than the Moon, but, again, I kept my mouth shut.
Uncle Vladimir folded his fat hands on that red folder. “I’ve been asked to find a volunteer for a special mission inside the space program. Specifically, inside Korolev’s organization.”
I had trouble understanding what he wanted. My confusion must have been obvious. “Yuri, I want you to start looking around at Korolev’s bureau. Keep notes. Report to me.”
“Become a spy?”
“Think of it as being a criminal investigator.”
“Why me? I’m an engineer, not an investigator.”
Uncle Vladimir tapped the folder. “Because of your technical training. And because I can trust you.” Only then did I realize that the red folder on his desk was my personal State Security file.
“All right.” I saw nothing wrong with helping a criminal investigation into Korolev’s death. Filin would approve. “When do I start?”
“As soon as you go back to Kaliningrad. Your boss, Dr. Filin, will be informed that you are to be promoted to engineer in his section. Try to act surprised.”
“I’ll do my best. How do I make reports?”
“To me, personally. It means we’ll be seeing more of each other.” He hauled himself to his feet and extended his hand to me. I shook it. Then Uncle Vladimir caught me staring at the red folder.
“Something on your mind, Yuri?”
“What else does it say in there?”
Uncle Vladimir laughed. “Go home.”
3
Experimental Design Bureau Number 1
The next morning, as ordered, I presented myself at Filin’s office. However, for the first time in the weeks I had worked for Filin, I was forced to wait in the outer office with Nadiya, Filin’s birdlike secretary. The many phones on her desk rang constantly, preventing us from having any conversation about the death of Korolev, the future of the bureau and Filin himself, and — most importantly for me — whether the bureau’s personnel department had left any messages regarding a promotion for administrative assistant Ribko.
Presently the door to Filin’s office opened, and half a dozen men, both civilians and military, emerged. The civilians had the look of engineers — white shirts, glasses, and, since Korolev never wore one, no ties. The military guys, some of the dozens of representatives of the Ministry of Defense at the bureau, had glasses, too, but wore ties with their green uniforms. Filin waved me in.
His desk, at one end of the office, was actually the top of a T whose leg was a long conference table lined with chairs. He motioned me to one side of the table, and sat down.
He was looking much better than he had in the hospital last week. Years younger, in fact. I said so. “I’ve always been able to respond to a crisis,” he said, with quiet pride. Well, any man who had risen to this level in the armaments business had survived many crises. Filin had told me once, during one of my early errands, how during the Great Patriotic War he had narrowly escaped death at the hands of military officers just like those he had ushered out of his office.
His job, in the dark days when Nazi armies were plundering European Russia, had been to supervise the acceptance of Katie bombardment rockets by the artillery forces. The Katies were some of the most effective firepower our army had at that time, but a whole batch of them, already accepted on Filin’s signature, had just failed, flying far off target or exploding in their launchers. And in Stalin’s time, any hint of sabotage or “wrecking” was punishable by instant execution without trial.
Filin got a tip from a friendly State Security officer — if that’s not a contradiction in terms — that he was going to be blamed for the last series of failures.
Thus warned, Filin stayed awake the entire night preparing a defense. He knew, for example, that the faulty rockets had conformed to the standards. So some other factor was involved.
The next morning he was summoned to his commander and told officially of the charges against him. Thanks to his research, he was able to point out that the solid fuel used in the Katies was susceptible to extremes of temperature. They were being used in brutally cold winter weather for the first time, and this factor, so Filin said, was changing their centers of gravity, making it impossible for them to fly to their targets.
The commander glared at Filin, then summoned one of the scientific staff into the meeting, making Filin repeat the story. “Is this possible?” the commander asked the scientist.