Most of these details I learned later, of course. What occupied me most beginning at the end of that first week in April was an order to report to Colonel Belyayev on the morning of Saturday, April 6.
It was a brief meeting — Belyayev still seemed to be exhausted by the events of the past ten days. His health was not good, I had heard. “The State Commission investigating the crash of Gagarin and Seregin has set up four subcommissions. Each subcommission will include representatives from the cosmonaut team. Because of your training as an aircraft engineer, by special request you are to work with the subcommission reconstructing the last hours of Gagarin and Seregin and of their MiG-15.”
I accepted the assignment at once, then found the strength to ask: “Comrade Colonel, you mentioned a special request…?”
“One of the other agencies represented on the subcommission asked for you by name.” He shuffled through the papers on his desk, looking for the order. “A Vladimir Nefedov.”
Uncle Vladimir of State Security. The same Uncle Vladimir who was present at the Kremlin Hospital the day Korolev died, who complained about Gagarin’s ambitions.
Was this the link I was looking for?
39
Subcommision Number 1
I had no time to act on my suspicions, since I went directly from Belyayev’s office to Chkalov, where I joined a team flown by helicopter back to the crash site near Novoselovo. There my valuable aeronautical training was put to use searching for fragments of Gagarin and Seregin’s MiG-15.
My immediate supervisor was an engineer named Davydov from the Ministry of Aviation Production, which oversaw the development and manufacture of aircraft, and was thus responsible for the MiG-15. Davydov was in his thirties, short, dark-haired, thick, and, as I soon learned, strict to the point of idiocy. He had that annoying habit of speaking to you as if reading from a manuaclass="underline" “You are to proceed along the ground only in the direction indicated. At the first sign of an anomaly, you are to stop and signal a supervisor.”
Well and good. Ten of us, “specialists” all, lined up an arm’s length apart in the woods to the north of the crash site itself, which I now saw for the first time: a jagged crater surrounded by stumps of trees destroyed in the explosion. There was also an ominous trail of shattered branches leading back toward Kirzhach. It was here that we searched.
During the initial briefing at Chkalov, and on the flight over, I learned that the demolished mass of the cockpit, including what was left of Gagarin and Seregin, had already been dug out of the crater and hauled off to the base for examination. The larger wing and tail sections had also been removed, but the impact of the crash had been so violent that the MiG had smashed like a jar dropped on cement. There were hundreds — thousands — of metal fragments yet to be recovered, each one a potential witness in the investigation.
So far, the various subcommissions had established that the plane was not damaged prior to the crash (ruling out a collision with another aircraft), that the engine was still operating at the time of impact, and that the pilots did not eject. Maintenance records of this particular MiG-15, officially UTI MiG-15 #612739, call sign “625,” were up to date and in order. There was no obvious cause for the crash.
Further, a bit of a mystery was taking shape. The last transmission from 625 to the control tower at Chkalov was at 10:32 A.M., when Gagarin requested permission to turn to a heading of 75 degrees, which the tower acknowledged. At that time, 625 was thirty kilometers from the runway at Chkalov and heading toward it.
But the crash site was sixty-four kilometers away.
There was no further transmission after 10:32, but the air-traffic radar at Chkalov had 625 on its screen until 10:44.
What happened in those twelve minutes to turn 625 around, send it thirty-some kilometers in the other direction, then knock it out of the sky? It seemed that the answer lay in the damp, matted needles of this forest floor, still dotted with clumps of snow.
I had taken perhaps eight steps when one of the other searchers, to my left, said, “I have something!”
“Nobody move!” Davydov ordered, scuttling down the line behind us and falling to his knees with a camera to record the exact position of the fragment. Only then did he reach down with a pair of tongs and raise it, placing it in a plastic bag.
He stood and made a notation on a chart. “Continue!” he said, and so we did.
During the course of that afternoon, we discovered almost fifty pieces of metal or debris, some as large as a hand. I myself found two items, one a shard of steel later determined to be from the skin of the tail section, and a rusted washer, which might have fallen from a Novoselovo tractor.
I spent the next week tromping through the woods under Davydov’s lash as life at Star Town resumed its former rhythms — if anything, the tempo increased as we looked forward to the launching of another pair of unmanned Soyuz vehicles. During the week another unmanned Luna probe, Number 14, was sent to the Moon. This one was to photograph the lunar surface from orbit, providing information about future landing sites.
Coming in late on the evening of Thursday, April 11, the night before the seventh anniversary of Gagarin’s pioneering flight, I found Shiborin staggering up the sidewalk.
He was more of a drinker than I, but not a steady or committed one. This day he had found himself forced to keep up in a highly emotional contest to prove his love for the late Gagarin on his anniversary. This, at least, was my reconstruction of events, once I had, at Shiborin’s request, steered him into my flat. “Don’t let Anna see me like this.”
For a while it was unlikely anyone would see Shiborin at all, as he collapsed onto my couch and passed out. I busied myself with other matters for the next hour, occasionally checking to be sure he was still all right.
Around midnight he stirred, hauled himself to the bathroom, then back, where I started handing him cups of tea, juice, anything. He was understandably subdued, first telling me the news that our training center was going to be named for Gagarin, as was the Red Banner Air Force Academy down the road in Monino, as well as Gagarin’s birthplace, the village of Gzhatsk. Seregin’s name would henceforth honor his 70th Training Squadron.
I thought that was the end of his report, but then he leaned forward for a moment, finally raising his eyes. “The war’s still going on.”
“What war?”
“Between the Air Force and everyone else. Gagarin was leading the charge, but even in death he’s valuable. Maybe more so: Kamanin apparently went to Ustinov yesterday with a whole bunch of proposals, one of them to take manned vehicles completely away from the Central Space Office.”
“What difference would that make?”
“It would mean that the Hammer and his son-of-a-bitch Artemov worked for us. We wouldn’t have to beg them to live up to their agreements anymore; we could order them to comply, or give the work to Chelomei or somebody else.” I could certainly see the benefits in this, from the Air Force’s point of view. “We know they’re fighting back.” He stood, wobbling, hand flailing as he reached for the door. “Now they’re saying Gagarin was drunk when he took off.”
“Not on the commission, they’re not.” Bits of tissue had been saved for an analysis of blood alcohol, and none had been found in either pilot. Nor had we found any witnesses — other pilots or support personnel — who had seen Gagarin or Seregin downing a shot before climbing in the cockpit.
“Facts have nothing to do with it. It’s only to discredit Gagarin’s judgment so that his proposals can be ignored.”
“What is going to happen, then?” I asked. Maybe it was the fatigue, or a delayed reaction to the events of the past week, the past eighteen months, but I felt myself getting angrier. I was tired of being shuffled around by everyone from Uncle Vladimir to Engineer Davydov. I was going to be twenty-six years old in two days. It was time I began to make my own decisions, take my own actions.