Marina set down the dishes and put her arms around my neck, her mouth on mine tasting of strawberries and champagne. After several delicious moments, we broke, and she rested her head on my shoulder. I held her close, drinking in her sweet perfume, my hand roaming up and down her back, as I had so many times before. “Tell me what’s going on here,” I said.
“Lev and I — our relationship has ended.”
Now I was even more confused. “But he’s still living with you!”
She shrugged. “We’re together only because of the flat. With his travel and mine, we barely cross paths.” She took my hands and looked into my eyes. “I didn’t know any other way to tell you. Neither did he. So he… planned to bring us back together.”
“That’s what I call a good friend.” She smiled. Only then did I realize that she had said “back” together. And only then did I think of Katya.
“Lev is a good man, Yuri. A good friend. He feels terrible about what happened.”
At that moment I wanted to stay with Marina forever. I also wanted to flee into the November night. “I don’t know what to say,” I blurted, helplessly.
She laughed. “Say you still love me.”
“I still love you.” It was true.
“Then we can be friends again.”
“More than friends.” I was saying things without any conscious thought, only a vague concern about what they might mean.
“I’m in Moscow through the New Year,” she said.
“I’ll call you tomorrow.” We kissed again. And shortly thereafter I said good night, not wanting to be present when Lev returned.
I don’t remember walking to the Podlipki Station, don’t remember feeling the cold. That’s how wrought up I was.
It was only on the train home to Star Town that I had time to set aside my terror about this possible new future with Marina, about my ill-fated relationship with Katya, and think again about the popping sound and the smell of the pyros.
I had heard the same sound the day Gagarin died, as his plane flew over our group of parachutists on the runway at Kirzhach. Had some small military pyro been used to sabotage Gagarin’s plane?
Now if I could only remember where I had encountered that smell.
48
Davydov
The next morning was Sunday, technically a free day. Nevertheless, I showed up at the gym after a light breakfast, hoping to use exercise as a way of straightening out my thoughts.
For an hour I ran and lifted weights. The only sounds I heard were my feet slapping against the floor, the weights creaking, my own panting. The workout felt good, physically. As for my mental state, I did not achieve clarity, only a kind of numbness.
Shortly after nine, as I was about to quit, Shiborin and several others showed up. “Did you hear the news?” Shiborin said.
“No.” I was immediately apprehensive. News was usually bad.
“Belyayev met us when we got home last night. They want us to do our winter survival training starting Monday.”
“We weren’t supposed to do that until January.”
“It’s already especially cold in Vorkuta,” he said, grinning. “Actually, he said they expected us all to be busy in January, with the next Soyuz mission plus the first Carrier launches.”
“And yet another L-1.”
“Yes. We’re rolling rockets out of the factory like sausages.” I was surprised to hear this allusion to the famous quote by our former leader, Khrushchev, whose name had disappeared from the newspapers four years ago. Shiborin was growing more openly cynical. Was it my influence? Or that of his fellow eagles, like Saditsky? Or just an inevitable result of exposure to life in Star Town? In a way, it made me sad, like seeing a beautiful young girl starting to smoke cigarettes and wear makeup.
Knowing I would be gone again for at least a week helped focus my thoughts. Not on the Marina or Katya matter, which I knew even then was not solvable without anger and pain, but the nagging business of that popping sound and the pyros.
I needed to talk to Davydov, the air-crash investigator. But where would I find him on a Sunday? There was no telephone directory for the Moscow area; I didn’t even know where his institute was located.
But, thinking of Davydov’s dogged and relentless work habits, I suspected I could probably find him at Chkalov.
“Did you hear about Kamanin?” Davydov said, as he labored to push open the door to the hangar where the wreckage of Gagarin’s plane was laid out.
“No.”
“The Central Committee hit him with a formal reprimand.”
“Why?”
“For losing Gagarin. And Seregin. ‘Failure to exercise proper authority’ was the phrase they used.”
“Do you think it’s fair?”
“It’s only fair if they blame everyone else who was responsible. All they really want to do is write ‘the end’ to the whole story. Careful where you step.” I was following him into the darkness. “Don’t move.”
I froze in place while Davydov moved off like a shadow to turn on a light, which was so dim it was as if the inside of the hangar were bathed in moonlight.
All around me, in a grotesque parody of an aircraft shape, was arrayed the wreckage of Gagarin’s MiG-15. Most of the pieces were the size of a hand — mere fragments — though there was a large, intact piece of the tail, and an even bigger chunk that used to be the engine.
I was standing near the nose when Davydov returned to my side. “Now, what’s all this about a bomb in the cockpit?”
I told him about the sound I had heard the day of the crash and how I had learned it was a common pyro charge used by our military, adding Triyanov’s story about the damage even a small explosion in the cockpit could do. “When I was part of the search team, we couldn’t find most of the canopy.”
“More than sixty percent of it is still missing.”
“So it’s plausible that a small pyro could have exploded, shattering the canopy and possibly knocking the pilots unconscious long enough for them to crash.”
“Very plausible, given the lack of an obvious mechanical failure.” He stooped over to examine some bit of the smashed nose section. When he straightened, his voice was lower. “Most of us think someone wanted Gagarin dead. A small pyro with a pressure trigger, or a small timer. You could place it behind the control panel or between the front and back seats in a few minutes. Step back, watch them take off, and wait. Boom. The charge destroys itself and the timer. Two dead pilots, no evidence.”
I could see it all. A hand reaching in, pulling back. A person retreating into the shadows as Gagarin and Seregin approached. “It couldn’t be just anyone, of course. Chkalov is a military base and their security is pretty good. It would have to be someone on the ground crew—”
“—or someone with special access.”
“Fine. Who?”
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling sick.
Because I did know. I had remembered where I encountered that distinctive smell of a pyro, not more than an hour after Gagarin and Seregin crashed.
“Yuri?”
Bleary-eyed, my father stared at me from his open door. He was wearing a peasant blouse and old trousers, suspenders hanging down, as if he had just pulled them on. I pushed past him into the flat. “It’s midnight!”
“I know what time it is. Close the door.”
He was about to make more complaints, but my manner and the look on my face alerted him that this was not a friendly visit.
“You killed Gagarin,” I said.
He weighed several responses as he stepped away — out of reach? — and pulled up his suspenders. “You’ve been spying again.”