“The last time I saw you, you were heading off to kill zaigak.”
“Last week?”
“A year ago. When Komarov was killed.”
Oleg shook his head. “I killed my first zaigak a few days ago.”
Among my bad habits is insisting on my point of view beyond the point where it would be polite to stop. “Maybe you only got one then, but last April you were heading off to one of the tracking sites to do the same thing. They kept the ‘official rifle’ there, you said.”
“Yes,” he said. “And that’s what I used.”
It was as though we were speaking two different languages. Either that, or Sergeant Oleg lived in a time zone entirely his own, where a year could be confused with a week, like a character in a science fiction story. “Well,” I said, enjoying the private fantasy, but not wishing to prolong the debate, “I hope you got a good dinner out of it.”
“Look what they paid me.” He opened the flap of his own bag, and pulled out a pistol, its gray metal gleaming in the light of the street lamp overhead. I had fired a pistol several times in my reserve training, now five years in the past, but that had been a heavy Borodin, not this sleek thing.
“What do they call it?”
“The officer who gave it to me said it was a PB-8. The Special Forces use it.” Special Forces were the elite commando units of the Soviet Army. “He said he had won it in a bet, and it made him nervous to have it around.”
“How does it make you feel?”
He hefted it, then twirled it on his finger like a character from an American cowboy movie. Until, that is, he dropped the pistol on the pavement. We bumped heads trying to recover it. All right, perhaps we had kept swigging from the beer — with Sergeant Oleg several swigs, if not whole bottles, ahead of me. Finally he recovered the weapon. “Careful,” I said. “It might be loaded.” Like the two of us.
“Oh, it’s loaded,” he announced with glee. He even ejected the clip and showed it to me. “Eight rounds!”
“You could get into a lot of trouble with eight rounds.”
I was thinking of the damage one could do to an enemy, but Oleg misunderstood. “Do you think so? I know we’re not issued weapons, but…”
I would have explained, but sweeping headlights told me a car was coming, and I still needed a ride. I said good-bye to Sergeant Oleg, promising to see him again, and ran toward the car, waving frantically to get it to stop.
The next morning, when I went downstairs to rendezvous with Shiborin, I found a message from my father. He had arrived with some inspection team yesterday afternoon, and was staying at the old hotel.
I had not seen my father in a couple of months, not since the death of Gagarin, though we had talked briefly on the telephone during one of his trips to Eastern Europe. His sudden presence here at Baikonur filled me with dread, because I knew I needed, finally, to be open and honest with him, and that it would be difficult.
Thanks to Shiborin, I made an early exit from the day’s work and met my father at his hotel. It was still light, still hot and dusty, but he insisted on walking through the streets of old-town Tyuratam. Imagine an Arab bazaar taking place in a canyon lined with Khrushchev-era concrete buildings.
He bought nothing, so I got food for both of us from a vendor. When I asked him why we bothered to leave the relative comforts of the hotel, he said, “Watchers.”
I found this humorous. “Who would be watching Colonel-General Ribko?”
“You’d be surprised,” he said. “With this stupid business in Czechoslovakia, not to mention all the problems in the space program, all security forces are on alert.” He grunted, disgusted. “Most of them wind up watching each other.”
I realized this was my best opportunity. “I’ve been one of them,” I said. “One of Uncle Vladimir’s watchers.”
For a moment I thought he hadn’t heard, since he kept walking as usual. Then his left hand shot out and grabbed my right arm above the elbow, painfully. He drew me close. “After I told you not to?” he said. The look of betrayal on his face made me ashamed.
“It was already too late,” I said, lamely.
“And you kept it secret from me all this time? You went into the cosmonaut team working for that man?” Each sentence was like a slap, as my father’s sense of betrayal gave way to disbelief, then anger. “Do you have any idea of the risks you’ve taken?”
“I think I do. Now.”
He rubbed his hand on his face, as if wiping away a stain. “You should have told me.”
Now, driven by embarrassment, I got angry myself. “You should have told me about Mama.”
“What do you mean?”
“She worked for State Security, too. So I’ve joined the Air Force and become a spy; so what? It’s in my blood!”
Had I been younger, he would have hit me. Or maybe it was the very public location of our argument that restrained him. “He told you that, did he? Vladimir?”
“Who else?”
“Is that what he used to get you to work for him?”
“He offered to get me a job in the Korolev bureau,” I said. “Something you refused to do.”
“Don’t be childish!” Now he was almost pleading. “I wanted you to live your own life! Be an engineer, whatever. Not a snitch.” He flicked his hand at my uniform shirt. “Not a soldier.”
“Well, I’m not a snitch anymore. I told Vladimir I wouldn’t make reports to him.”
He thought about that for a moment, then laughed. “Good. Good for you, standing up for yourself. He’ll destroy you, but at least you’ve repossessed your soul.”
“Why would he destroy me? He wasn’t happy, but I’m certainly no threat to him.”
“What were you investigating, Yuri?”
“Korolev’s murder. If it was murder. I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Oh, Korolev was murdered. And he was not the only one. Yuri, there is a war going on, not just for the space program or who gets to the Moon, but for the whole country. On one side you have the Party and State Security, on the other — well, other forces.”
“Clans,” I said, remembering Triyanov’s warnings to me when I worked at the bureau.
“Exactly! And unless you are in one of the clans, you’ll never understand anything. The only way to remain safe is to stay completely out of it!”
“Well, I’ve gotten out of it.”
“You think so. You worked for State Security, yet you wear an Air Force uniform. No one knows which side you’re on, and that’s the most dangerous position of all.” Somehow we had gotten turned around and were headed back to the hotels, just a father and son, senior and junior military officers out for a pleasant stroll in one of the socialist republics.
If ever I needed a father’s advice, now was the time. “Tell me, then, what do I do?”
“Nothing. Nothing but your cosmonaut work. That should keep you busy enough.” He spoke slowly, as if formulating some plan in the part of his brain not engaged in speaking to me.
“And what will you do?” I hoped he would share his plan with me.
“I’ll take care of everything.” He grabbed my arm again; this time it actually hurt. “But you have to promise me: no more intelligence work. No more reports to anyone”
What else could I do? I had failed horribly as a spy, anyway. “I promise.”
Even as I gave my word, I knew I was certain to break it. I had questions that needed answers — answers I knew I would never hear from my father.
43
The Devil’s Venom
I managed to stay out of my father’s way for the next several days, a task made easier by the flood of new State Commission members arriving for the launch of the eighth unmanned L-1, now scheduled for no earlier than July 16.