Holdout: A Novel

by Jeffrey Kluger

  Whatever entrance Vasily Zhirov might have wanted to make into Moscow Mission Control when he returned from space was not the one he actually got to make. Zhirov might have been a national hero, but he wasn’t above his vanities, and no sooner had he landed in Kazakhstan than his mind shifted to the grand scene that would play out later that evening at Mission Control, when he strode into the room having come straight from an emergency evacuation in space—still carrying some of the cosmic shimmer, still smelling of thruster fuel. There would be hugs; there would be handshakes. He would smile and express his thanks, but he would make short work of the greetings, take a seat at a console, and resume command of his mission. After a full eight-hour shift was done, then there would be time to accept the controllers’ plaudits with cognac toasts in an adjacent meeting room.

  But no sooner had the Roscosmos plane taken off for the three-hour flight from Kazakhstan to Moscow than he knew that was not to be. The Zhezkazgan dumplings stayed down for less than an hour before Zhirov bolted for the plane’s lavatory and brought them straight up again. He was back in the lavatory twenty minutes later and then ten minutes after that. By the second half of the flight he simply decided to stay there, sparing the Roscosmos officials the awkwardness of pretending that they didn’t notice that the world’s greatest cosmonaut, the man chasing the Zolotaya Tysyacha, the Golden Thousand, was having a harder time holding down his food than a pregnant woman suffering from the toksikoz—lady sickness.

  “It’s your ears,” Sergei Rozovsky, the recovery team commander, told him during one of the brief interludes when Zhirov was actually in his seat.

  “My ears are fine,” Zhirov protested.

  “They are not. They have thrown off your balance, and the return to gravity is making you sicker still.”

  Zhirov started to argue but knew that Rozovsky was surely right. When the Roscosmos plane at last landed in Moscow, he tottered from the lavatory and confessed weakly to Rozovsky, “I cannot go to the flight center.”

  Rozovsky smiled. “No, Vasily, you cannot.”

  Zhirov gestured to the others in the plane and lowered his voice. “But they can’t know.”

  “They would understand.”

  “No,” Zhirov protested. “They can’t know.”

  Rozovsky nodded, picked up the cabin phone, and muttered into it. He hung up, then spoke a few quiet words to Zhirov, and the two of them exited the plane and climbed down the steps. Zhirov held the handrail in a death grip and waved with seeming ease with his other hand. He reached the bottom and accepted handshakes. And then he and Rozovsky performed their little pantomime.

  “Where is the car I requested?” Rozovsky asked crossly as Lebedev was loaded into a waiting ambulance.

  “There is no need,” said the airport official who greeted them. “Both men must go to the hospital.”

  “That’s not possible!” Zhirov protested.

  “That’s not possible,” Rozovsky echoed. “This man needs to go to the control center.”

  “I am told this man is sick,” the official said.

  “I am fine,” Zhirov said and took a few conspicuous steps toward the terminal building. Three airport security guards converged and stood—respectfully—in his path. One of them spoke into a walkie-talkie, and a moment later an Air Force officer strode from the terminal toward the group. The two stars on his epaulets marked him a lieutenant general.

  “Colonel,” he said, shaking Zhirov’s hand. The two men knew each other, had spent more than one evening drinking vodka together, and had long since come to address each other by their first names. But announcing Zhirov’s subordinate rank would serve the purposes of their charade today.

  “Sir,” Zhirov said.

  “You are to accompany Captain Lebedev and the doctors to the Vishnevsky Military Hospital.”

  “I have business at Mission Control,” Zhirov said. “And I feel fine.”

  “Your business can wait and you do not look fine.”

  “But the mission—”

  “The mission will run without you for now.”

  Zhirov, feeling the eyes of the airport officials and now of various tarmac technicians on him, could have wept with gratitude at the general’s command. With so large an audience watching, however, he felt that one more protest seemed called for.

  “I would prefer to go to the command center, sir.” The words were out of his mouth before he even realized what he’d said. He could practically hear the cursed Walli Beckwith’s voice in his head.

  “You would prefer?” the general said, this time with genuine pique; he too had the eyes of the tarmac technicians on him. “I am indifferent to what you would prefer. You will get in that ambulance now—Colonel.”

  Zhirov did as he was told, climbed into the back of the ambulance, and ultimately spent four days at Vishnevsky, sleeping, trying to eat, and following the developments unfolding in space and in the Brazilian jungle. The news the doctors gave him was encouraging. His ears would heal. The eardrums hadn’t ruptured, but the suddenness of the depressurization had caused fluid along with air to accumulate in the inner ear. It would take weeks for it to be reabsorbed. In the meantime he would be grounded, forbidden to fly so much as a low-altitude glider, much less a spacecraft.

  Lebedev would not be so lucky. His eardrum had ruptured completely, as Zhirov and Beckwith had assumed straightaway. Even if the doctors could repair it, there were too many other healthy cosmonauts awaiting their chance to fly for Roscosmos to justify assigning a damaged man to another crew. Lebedev’s first, abbreviated trip to space would be his last.

  The doctors would have kept Zhirov in the hospital for up to a week, but after just four days, he decided he’d had enough. The treatment he was receiving was doing nothing for his ears, and the doctors themselves admitted his hearing would just have to recover slowly on its own—which it was already beginning to do. Beckwith was getting by without all of the medical doting, and he could too. He had listened to her call to Earth and, through news reports, learned of the global following she was developing. There was only so much longer he could remain sidelined. On his fourth morning in the hospital, he dressed in a clean set of Navy fatigues and announced summarily that he was discharging himself. There was no lieutenant general to outrank him here.

  When Zhirov at last made his return to Mission Control, it was just after 8:30 on the morning of August 25. The smell of thruster fuel was four days gone, and the very thought of toasting with cognac or anything at all still made his head swim and his stomach turn over.

  His reception was reserved: The morning shift change was underway, and at all of the consoles, the outgoing controllers were busily briefing the incoming ones. Zhirov was greeted only by Gennady Bazanov, the director of flight operations, who hurried up the aisle to him.

  “Welcome, Vasily Sergeyevich,” Bazanov said affectionately, adding a handshake and a warm embrace. He hugged with the strength of a much younger man. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine,” Zhirov said and caught Bazanov’s skeptical expression. “I am improved.”

  “You should rest.”

  “I’ve rested long enough. I should be here,” Zhirov said. “Where can I plug in?”

  Bazanov pointed him to a console in the back aisle of the room, and Zhirov frowned. The console was fully functional, but it was also a spare, usually set aside for government officials and other visitors.

  “You will observe, Vasily,” Bazanov said. “No more.”

  “It’s my spacecraft, Mr. Director,” he said respectfully.

  “Your mission is over.”

  “My mission is to last six months. We have barely finished two.”

  “Vasily,” Bazanov said reasonably, “you’re on the ground; your spacecraft is in the sky. This is not puppetry.”

  “One of my crew members is still in the sky too,” Zhirov answe
red. “I respect the chain of command. She respects the chain of command.” He swept out his hand in a gesture that took in the entirety of Mission Control. “There is not a man or woman in this room who knows Walli Beckwith better than I do.”

  Bazanov had never cared for Beckwith’s nickname, believing it ill served the Russian roots of her proper name. “She is Belka,” he said.

  “With respect, sir, you have just proven my point,” Zhirov replied.

  Bazanov, who had worked all night along with the outgoing shift, looked away and rubbed his eyes. He had been directing missions from the ground since the flight of Soyuz 10 in April 1971. His second mission, just two months later, was Soyuz 11, when the mournful “one-one-one” was announced by the recovery team at the site of the just-returned spacecraft. All those years and that long-ago sorrow seemed to be weighing on him today.

  “If you speak to her, Vasily, you must bring her home,” Bazanov said at last.

  “I know that,” Zhirov answered. “But I can’t promise that I can.”

  “Is she your crew member or not?” Bazanov asked.

  “She is.”

  “Then you will bring her home. But these are my conditions: You will not have an open mic. You will spend today simply observing and listening to the air-to-ground communications. When you do wish to speak to Belka Beckwith, you will request permission, and the flight director will either grant or not grant your request.”

  Zhirov nodded. “I accept those terms.”

  “Then you may take the seat,” Bazanov said.

  With that, the director of flight operations stood aside. Zhirov put on the headset, fiddled with the volume knob, and, before he had even sat down, flicked the call button.

  “Flight,” he said to the flight director in the middle of the room, “request permission to speak to the crew.”

  Bazanov shook his head. “Cosmonauts,” he muttered wearily. Then he turned and left the room to go home and sleep. He would, the controllers knew, be back before the dinner hour.

  * * *

  • • •

  At the same moment Zhirov was getting settled at his console in Mission Control, Beckwith was having breakfast in the Russian Zvezda module. It was just after 9:00 a.m. in Moscow, which meant it was just after 6:00 a.m. aboard the station. She had not been terribly hungry since the day of the accident—mostly, she guessed, because her still-clogged ears left her just light-headed enough to make her feel chronically, if slightly, motion sick. Still, breakfast was an exception.

  Beckwith had grown partial to a lot of the Russians’ food, especially tvorog, a sort of sticky marriage of cottage and ricotta cheese that could be stored dry, rehydrated, and mixed with nuts or raisins or minced dates. Beckwith preferred all three at once. She always felt awkward about cadging tvorog from the Russians and would typically wait to be invited for breakfast, which happened now and then. Even alone on the station, she had forced herself to eat the Americans’ rehydrated eggs on her first two mornings, but after that she decided that once you’ve hijacked a spaceship, it seemed somehow beside the point to worry about raiding the kitchen. She was halfway through her first cup of tvorog and already contemplating a second when the radio crackled to life.

  “Station, Moscow,” came the call.

  Beckwith brightened at the voice, fumbled the tvorog—which went somersaulting slowly toward a bulkhead—and lunged for the talk switch on the nearest panel.

  “Vasily!” she exclaimed.

  “Walli Belka,” he said levelly. He had expected to hear her voice; she had not imagined she’d hear his.

  “How are you? Are you well? Your ears?” she asked.

  “Better. They hurt a little, I can hear a little. You?”

  “The same. And Yulian?”

  “He burst the drum. He won’t fly again.”

  “I’m so sorry, Vasily,” Beckwith said, feeling genuine sadness both for Lebedev and for Zhirov, who had held the rookie cosmonaut with the fine engineering skills in such high regard.

  “Yes,” Zhirov answered. “He is a good man. But he cannot now be a cosmonaut.” He quickly changed the topic. “You’ve caused quite a mix down here, Walli.”

  “Mix?” she asked.

  He switched to the Russian. “Perepolókh,” he said.

  Beckwith thought. “Stir!” she finally said. “Yes, I’ve caused one.”

  “You’re in a lot of trouble.”

  “Twenty-five countries, I’m told. Tell me you and Yulian will visit me in prison.”

  “Don’t make jokes, Walli,” Zhirov said. “And don’t provoke your government. They will not change their minds, and they will punish you for what you’re doing. A Soyuz will come to get you soon and you should be on it.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “I know you don’t want to do that.” Zhirov avoided the word “prefer.” It had caused him enough trouble lately.

  Beckwith said nothing at all, letting the hiss from space speak for her. Zhirov understood.

  “Tell me what your work is today,” he said, tacking in a different direction. “You may overthrow your government in your free time, but first you must take care of my spacecraft.”

  Beckwith laughed and consulted her notes. She was about to read out the first few items—changing air filters in Nodes 1, 2, and 3; adjusting humidity in the plant experiments in the Kibo and Columbus modules—when suddenly the hated Klaxon again sounded from seemingly everywhere in the station. It was loud, cutting, startling, even through the muffling caused by her still-clogged ears. The same sound, mixed with the static of the air-to-ground line, cut through the headsets of every man and woman in Moscow Mission Control.

  “Walli!” Zhirov called. “What is it?”

  “Stand by one,” Beckwith shouted over the noise.

  She bolted from the Zvezda module, over to the nearest piece of the American segment—the Node 1 Unity module—and glanced at the instrument panel. The red ATM indicator was flashing. Atmosphere—something was fouling the air. In the same instant, another voice, an American voice from the Capcom station in Houston, cut in.

  “Ammonia leak, station. Execute shelter procedure. Negative drill. Again, not a drill.”

  That was followed by Zhirov’s voice.

  “Ammonia, Walli! Shelter!” he said.

  Beckwith didn’t have to be told to shelter, by Houston or by Moscow. Ammonia was the likeliest cause of an atmosphere alert and also the worst. It was the key chemical in the coolant system in the American segment and far and away the most dangerous substance aboard the station. Ammonia was deadly to humans and easy to detect by smell—but not until the concentrations rose high enough that death would not be merely possible, but likely and imminent.

  “Copy, Moscow; copy, Houston,” she said.

  Wherever she sought shelter, it would have to be in the Russian segment, where the coolant system relied on simple glycol. The ammonia might have already drifted that far, but it was surely a safer bet than anywhere on the American segment. The Zarya module was closest. She could hunker down there, slam the hatch, and shut out the leak.

  “Moving into the Zarya!” she shouted over the screaming Klaxon.

  “Get to the Zarya!” Zhirov shouted at the same moment.

  In the back of Moscow Mission Control, a door flew open and Bazanov, who had lingered in his office tending to a few stray matters before going home, dashed in. He had a squawk box on his desk with which he always followed the air-to-ground chatter. He made straight for Zhirov’s console.

  “Is the ammonia confirmed?” he asked.

  “Houston confirms it,” Zhirov said.

  “Get her to the module.” He didn’t have to specify which one.

  “She’s doing that.”

  Beckwith dashed into the safety of the Zarya, slammed the hatch, and secured it. The soun
d of the Klaxon grew slightly softer.

  “Sheltering in place,” she called down.

  “We’re looking for the site of the leak,” Houston reported.

  “Copy,” Beckwith said.

  She braced her hand against a module wall and drew some deep, steadying breaths—breaths she hoped weren’t filling her lungs with a gas that could kill her. If the leak was real, she might survive it, but somewhere behind the safety of the closed hatch, the station itself was being killed. Ammonia was a stubborn poison, and if enough was released, the station’s entire volume of atmosphere would have to be vented and replenished and vented and replenished dozens of times before the modules would be habitable again. With the American space shuttle retired, there was no longer enough lifting power to get that much oxygen up to orbit. The morning had begun with a huge and healthy space facility made of fourteen functioning modules—already one fewer than there should have been, after the destruction of the Pirs. Under Walli Beckwith’s stolen command, the module count would be reduced to just four, all in the Russian segment. That was not the way the Naval Academy taught its officers to command a ship.

  Beckwith pivoted back to the hatch and yanked its lock latch, and the little door popped open. On the ground the monitors in Moscow instantly reported the pressure change.

  “Walli, what are you doing?” Zhirov shouted.

  “Damage control,” was all she said.

  She exited the Zarya, closed the hatch behind her, and shot toward the American segment. Even if there was no way of knowing yet where the leak was, she could still seal off every one of the ten modules on the American side and isolate most of the poisonous gas in the single one that had the problem. She drew a breath, held it, and headed first for the Destiny module, in the middle of the American array. Gas masks were kept in a storage cabinet there to be used during experiments with toxic chemicals.

  “Walli, please return to the Zarya,” she heard Houston call.

  “Walli, I instruct you to return to the Zarya,” Zhirov said.

  “Copy,” was all Beckwith croaked, with the little breath she allowed herself to exhale. Whatever microphone was closest in the public communications system probably didn’t pick up her voice.