“I’ll be sure to invite you to the ceremony.”
He slapped my knee. “You should never have left the bureau, young man. In time, people would have forgotten your… tainted origins.” He lowered his voice. “You certainly weren’t the only one serving two masters.”
This was a dangerous subject for a public conversation. “Did you know Colonel Seregin?” I asked, hoping to change the subject completely.
“Very well. He and I worked on a program together at Akhtubinsk six or seven years ago. He was a good pilot. So was Gagarin, for that matter. Not a lot of recent stick time, but he had the natural skills.”
“They’re saying the crash was pilot error.”
“That’s bullshit.” He shifted in his seat, perhaps to better aim his index finger between my eyes. “I had a situation once in a 15 that could have ended the same way. I was making a low pass — two hundred meters off the ground — when a bulb on the display exploded this far from my face.” He held his hand a few centimeters from his nose. “I was completely blinded, face bloody, all I could do was react by instinct and pull up.
“It worked, thank God, but I was seconds away from death, and no investigators would have known why. The only damage was to me — cuts on my face, blood in my eyes. One tiny missing bulb on the control panel. All that evidence would have been obliterated if I’d punched a hole in the ground.” He sat back, still indignant on behalf of Gagarin and Seregin. “They’d have said ‘pilot error,’ and they’d have been just as wrong.”
“They haven’t been able to find the canopy.”
“No. Because something happened to those guys. Some oxygen canister or hydraulic cylinder could have gone blooey, blown out the canopy and knocked Gagarin and Seregin out long enough for them to hit the ground.” He was silent for a moment, picturing the horror. “It doesn’t take much.”
Shiborin had returned, looking to claim his seat. Triyanov rose and threw him a salute, too, which Shiborin returned. As Triyanov departed, Shiborin looked after him. “Who the hell was that?”
I kept forgetting about the giant walls between the bureau and the Gagarin Center. Tired, and growing more nervous about the pistol in my baggage — suppose State Security was waiting at Chkalov to search us? I could be sent to prison for possession of a firearm — I simply told Shiborin that Triyanov was an old friend from my time in the bureau, which had the virtue of being partly true.
My father may have ordered me to give up spying, but no one, it seemed, could stop me from lying to my friends.
44
Semipalatinsk-20
The day after my return from Baikonur, I learned — along with the rest of the Fourth Enrollment — that we would shortly be sent to Feodosiya on the Black Sea, a place I knew slightly from my teenage years in the Crimea. For two weeks we would be either in the woods, simulating off-course Soyuz landings on Mother Russia, or bobbing in the water practicing landings at sea. The primary Soyuz crews were off on a long holiday because there were no manned vehicles for them to fly; the lunar teams, including support personnel Ribko and Shiborin, were not needed for at least a month due to the recent accident at Baikonur.
This news was profoundly depressing to Shiborin, who had just returned from two months away from home. I found it helpful, since it forced me to examine my situation and make a plan. I had good evidence that Uncle Vladimir was involved in Korolev’s death — confirmed, in a way, by my own father — and in the sabotage of the lunar program, thanks to Lev’s information.
But I could no more confront Uncle Vladimir than I could march into the Kremlin and punch Brezhnev in the nose. Nor was there any law-enforcement agency I could trust. Yes, my father said he would “take care” of things. But my impending departure for Feodosiya, sure to be followed by another stay at Baikonur, made me impatient.
I wanted answers about Uncle Vladimir, about what he had told me about my mother. Who would know?
I had had no contact with Katya since my awful birthday party at Ostankino Tower. She had told me not to call her, but even foolish and naive as I was in those days, I knew this would not absolve me of blame. Nor would my forced absence in the gardens of Kazakhstan. Before I could learn anything useful — assuming Katya had information she would share — I needed to get back in her good graces.
And as much as I wanted her to help me combat Uncle Vladimir, I truly did want to repair our relationship.
I have not gone into great details concerning that relationship. It was intensely physical and, I can see now, more emotional on her side than it was on mine. I loved her, in a way, but never dreamed of spending my life with her as I did with Marina.
I don’t claim that Katya wanted to marry me. At thirty-six, she had already arranged her life to her satisfaction, I think. But she seemed to enjoy my company, especially our lovemaking. I did, too, though I was first confused and even frightened by her aggressiveness: I thought I was supposed to be the initiator, as I had largely been with Marina. Not so. In fact, Katya initiated most of our activities, social as well as sexual.
I couldn’t just appear at her front door with an armful of flowers, though this was the only idea I had. I needed romantic advice, but my two closest friends were Shiborin — married since the age of nineteen — and Lev, an unlikely source of information for a variety of reasons.
At physical training one morning I found myself running through the woods with Ivan Saditsky. Well, I was running; he was walking ahead of me, huffing and puffing like a pensioner, when I caught up to him. He looked so ill, pale and bent over, that I stopped and asked how he was.
“Trying not to vomit,” he said, waving his hand dismissively.
“I’ll call Novikov.” He was our instructor that morning.
“No, you won’t. You’ll leave me to die here in peace, thank you.” He straightened out; color began to reappear in his face. “What idiot thinks that running through the forest is any kind of preparation for going to the Moon?”
“Well, they claim we’re in a race,” I said, joking.
Saditsky grunted. “Given the way our rockets have been working, we’ll probably have to walk.” He blinked. “Do you have a cigarette?” I reminded him that I didn’t smoke. “Remind me to denounce you at the next Party meeting.” That was typical Saditsky: While I was a grudging but regular attendee, I had never actually caught him at a meeting. And he was a full Party member.
I knew better than to ask him how Soyuz was going: The program was stalled while the factories struggled to build spacecraft. But here it occurred to me that he might be of assistance with my problem. “Ivan,” I said, “do you remember Katya?”
“I never forget a nice ass,” he said. “When are you going to bring her around again?”
“That’s the problem: We had a big fight a while back, and she’s not speaking to me.”
He grinned slyly. “Maybe I shouldn’t help you. I bet I can find her myself.”
It was stupid for me to worry about Saditsky taking Katya away from me; she wasn’t in any sense with me. But I felt some jealousy, anyway, which he must have noticed. “I’m joking. I am a married officer in the Soviet Air Force, after all.” Saditsky’s marriage was widely known to be troubled, though not so troubled that his wife Anya complained to Belyayev or others — which could have ruined his career. Apparently she was willing to look the other way regarding the womanizing as long as Saditsky’s cosmonaut career brought them both rewards. What would happen after Saditsky flew Soyuz and became a Hero of the Soviet Union was another matter.