The Rocket Man

by Maggie Hamand

  ‘Yes, I do. In fact, it might be better if I could talk to him directly.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. She removed her glasses and looked at him; he wondered for a moment whether she had not been, or was now, a call-girl, because of the professional way she seemed by her look to make him feel attractive, important, while her eyes gave nothing of herself away. ‘And you can tell me nothing now?’ she asked him, softly.

  ‘No.’

  She looked away. She seemed suddenly to have lost interest in the conversation; she ran her finger lazily round the rim of her glass. Then she touched the slice of lemon with the tip of her finger and put it to her tongue. She said, ‘Herr Richter will ring you tomorrow, then, at your hotel.’ She did not look at him as she spoke.

  ‘That’s fine.’ He got down from the stool; there was no way he could do so with dignity. ‘Good-night then, Miss Mellors.’ He tried to put a note of irony into his voice; she glanced up at him with a little smile as if she had recognised it. Then he turned round and, feeling somewhat foolish, left the hotel.

  Nihal waited all morning in the hotel for the call from Richter, but it didn’t come. In the late afternoon he went to the Place des Vosges and stood across the square. The lights were on in the upstairs windows but it was impossible to see anything through the pale blinds. He crossed the road to go and ring the bell and passed a grey Peugeot in the square in which two men were sitting; one of them was talking into a car phone. It seemed to have an unusually long aerial. Of course it was very likely that someone would be keeping a watch on Richter’s apartment. This reminded him that he, too, might easily still be being followed.

  He went into the entrance and rang the bell, but no-one replied. He thought of standing there and waiting in case Richter came back, but decided that if he was being followed they might be alarmed at this behaviour, so he gave up and went back down to the metro, returning to his hotel to collect his bags.

  The receptionist produced his key and a note written on a used envelope. She said someone had phoned on behalf of a Monsieur Richter. If he rang the office in Stuttgart they would make him an appointment.

  Nihal beamed at her and gave her an unusually generous tip.

  Weak afternoon sunshine filtered into the DDG’s office. Dmitry sat, his back to the window, frowning, staring at the papers in front of him. He had made a contribution earlier on; long ago the meeting had lost his attention. He was wondering why Müller had made changes to the report on that Friday, the last day before he died. He knew there was no reason why he should not have done; the report had not been finalised yet. It could take months before the reports were completed and passed back to the governments concerned; results had to come back from the laboratories, everything had to be checked. He wondered if anyone who did not have access to the file could make changes to it. Passwords could be stolen; there were other ways to get round computer security systems.

  This opened up a new train of thought. There had been a great deal of concern recently about whether hackers could get into the IAEA’s data base and extract or tamper with information. Safeguards data were held on both of the IAEA’s mainframe computers, on which other data -– including library and public information data - were stored. The Safeguards Division had been asking for some time to have one computer solely for their use to try to make it more secure. So far at least this request had not been granted.

  But if there were no hard copies of earlier drafts of the report, how could he check whether Müller – or indeed anyone else – had altered something? There must be some back-up tapes. He had no idea how long these were kept for; but every night the data would be copied from the discs to large reels of magnetic tape in case of a power cut or other disaster which might otherwise wipe out the database. He thought he would check with Panini, the computer systems manager. Maybe it would be possible to check that nothing had been changed by seeing what was on the back-up tapes.

  He became aware that it was very quiet in the room. He looked up suddenly; everyone was staring at him. Somebody must have asked him a question. He had no idea what it was about. He had not the slightest idea where on the agenda they were. He could feel himself flushing with embarrassment and didn’t know what to say.

  He stood up. ‘I’m sorry, can you excuse me for a moment. I’ve just remembered something very urgent.’ He picked up his papers and then, in confusion, put them down again. He stepped sideways, nearly knocking his chair over as he did so, and left the room, aware of the astonished glances of his colleagues.

  He took the lift down to the computer system’s manager’s office. Dmitry had met Panini before and knew that he was always harassed. He had a dishevelled look and his face bore the habitual expression of a man who maintained great patience in the presence of idiots. His office was chaotic; the phone was constantly ringing; every problem concerned with the Agency’s computer systems landed on his desk. He made the point over and over that it was never the computer or the systems which were at fault, only ever the operators, but of course nobody believed him; it was always easier to blame the machines.

  He looked up when Dmitry walked in, waving him into a chair as he conducted a conversation in French on the phone. He was clearly not pleased to see him; he knew at once it meant more work. Finally he hung up. ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.

  ‘We were just considering a hypothetical situation,’ said Dmitry, plunging right in. ‘How far back do the back-up tapes go, if for any reason data was lost and we wanted to reconstruct the database?’

  ‘Up to six months.’

  ‘But you don’t keep them daily up to that time, surely?’

  ‘Oh, no. We keep them daily for a week. Then we keep a weekly tape, so within any month you can go back to the previous week. Then after that, we keep a monthly tape, but the maximum is six months.’

  ‘So if some data was changed, for example, and remained on the file for a certain period, perhaps only a few days, it would be a matter of luck if we could find it?’

  Panini frowned. ‘Yes, well, it would depend on whether the back-up tape we kept happened to fall within that period.’

  ‘So if I’m talking about something that goes back about two months…

  ‘You might be lucky. You might not.’

  ‘I see.’ Dmitry paused for a moment. ‘Well, I’d like to look at what is on the back-up tapes for a particular file.’

  ‘I thought you said this was hypothetical.’ The phone rang; Panini picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, said ‘I’ll call you back,’ replaced it and then, on impulse, took it off the hook. He looked at Dmitry with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Well… it may be. I wanted to check something.’ Why did this make him feel so uncomfortable? It was a perfectly reasonable request to make; no-one could challenge his right to do this.

  ‘It’s just one file, is it? You’re authorised to see it, I suppose? I’ll have to check.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You realise once I pull it off the back-up tape there won’t be any password protection. Do you want it as hard copy or on disc? Have you done this before? There are certain procedures we have to go through. You’ll need an authorisation… Fill all this out and I’ll see to it for you.’ He put the receiver back on the hook and instantly the phone rang again. ‘You’re not in a hurry for this, are you?’

  Dmitry shook his head.

  RASAG’s offices and factory were housed in a large building on an industrial estate outside Stuttgart. Nihal was taken up to a little office on the third floor where the secretary introduced him to Becker, a pale, thin man whose anxious-looking face peered at Nihal from behind thick glasses. Becker shook hands limply and said, ‘I’ll show you around, then you can have thirty minutes with Richter. Please, come this way.’

  They went down a metal staircase and Becker opened a heavy metal door into a vast unused space. Sunlight streamed through the high windows but there was not a mote of dust in the air to catch the light. Becker cleared his throat. �
��This will house the production line.’ Nihal walked through the empty halls, his feet treading silently on the polished floors, the walls dazzling white, thinking; but this is crazy. How could anyone let him build these things? All Germany would have to do would be to forbid exports of the rocket parts. Germany has strict arms control legislation; surely they must have suspicions about all this?

  Becker took him into a side-room where models of the RASAG rockets stood on display together with an array of components. The prototype consisted of units of shining, lightweight metal tubes. Nihal braced himself to lift one and it shot upwards in his hand, light as if it had been made from paper. Becker laughed.

  ‘These are made from cold spun stainless steel. This has high strength and is easy and relatively cheap to manufacture. We simply bolt these on top of one another and group them in clusters of four to make the rocket. We are about to test a basic four-tank, four-engine cluster. This will develop a thrust of 12 tonnes. It might reach an altitude of 15 or 20 kilometres. The eight-engine cluster would be capable of putting a 500-kilogramme satellite in orbit.’

  Nihal scribbled all this down in his notebook.

  ‘The propellant. Two of the tanks are filled with kerosene and two with nitric acid oxidiser, and compressed air is used to maintain the pressure inside the tanks as the rocket rises. The rocket is actually steered by controlling the rate of flow of the fuel from the four tanks to the engines… at the moment, we simply use an off-the-shelf inertial guidance system.’ Becker showed him the models. ‘This is the full-sized version – impressive, no?’

  Nihal nodded and Becker, seeing that he had no more questions, took him back upstairs. As he entered the main office, Richter swivelled round in his plush leather chair. He looked a little uncomfortable in his expensive suit; his hair was slightly too long, and he had an impatient, irritable air about him. He shook hands with Nihal and indicated that he should sit down at the large round table.

  The secretary brought coffee; another man came in, aged about thirty-five, smartly but casually dressed in a floral shirt. Even indoors he wore sunglasses; they were part of the look. Richter had introduced him as Berthold Heinrichs, his right-hand man. Nihal was not quite sure why he was there; Heinrichs sat through the whole meeting without saying anything and appeared to be exceedingly bored.

  Nihal put his tape-recorder on the table and took out his notebook. Richter had a dull, inflectionless voice and his English, though adequate, was not good. He said that he was happy to talk to Nihal because he understood that he wanted to write an accurate and factual account of their unique endeavour. He said that he was first and foremost a scientist, but he did not think scientific achievements were enough, science had to be tested in the marketplace… for him commercial success was as important as scientific success. He intended to open up space commercially, just as aeronautics had developed from a scientific discipline to a commercial enterprise. There was no reason why access to space shouldn’t be within the reach of all nations, not just a select few.

  Nihal listened politely for a while, then asked: ‘But what about the military aspect? Aren’t these rockets likely to be used for military purposes?’

  ‘For military satellites? Yes, of course. Why not?’

  ‘l didn’t just mean that. Is there any reason why these rockets couldn’t equally well carry a conventional warhead, or even a nuclear one?’

  Richter’s voice sounded utterly bored. ‘Well of course this is an old question. There are many reasons why this rocket is not suitable as a missile. The fuel, to begin with, cannot be stored in the rocket for long periods, it has to be pumped in prior to launch in a long and slightly hazardous operation, and then there is the question of the guidance system. You don’t need me to tell you that these days people expect their missiles to be rather accurate. Anyway, in my experience the vast majority of Third World countries are not aggressive towards their neighbours. They are concerned with protecting their own boundaries, they are concerned with their internal problems, economic problems, social problems…’

  ‘And what about your launch site?’

  ‘Well, this is not certain. It would help us to have an equatorial or at least tropical location to favour the launch of satellites because, as you must know, we can make use of the earth’s rotation. In view of all the rumours which have been circulating we don’t want to give out too much information at this time.’

  ‘Can you confirm that it is in Paraguay?’

  Richter glanced at Heinrichs and Nihal thought he caught a tiny, imperceptible movement of the corner of Heinrichs’ mouth. Richter said, ‘Yes. But all this other information you have received is complete nonsense. I am not prepared to discuss such blatant lies. You must of course be aware that not everyone is happy about our activities, because we challenge the present monopolies. Perhaps you should be a little more cynical about accepting such information at face value.’

  Nihal, thinking it wise to change the subject, asked various technical questions, and Richter, who seemed happier discussing these technicalities, took his time over clarifying the details. When the interview was over Richter suddenly became quite friendly. He offered Nihal a drink and then, when he refused it, offered to run him to the station. They stepped outside and Richter led him over to a gleaming red Mercedes coupé parked on the forecourt.

  Settling himself in the plush seats, Richter pulled on his heavy leather gloves and Nihal, his head hardly high enough to see over the dashboard from the low-slung seats, timidly watched Richter demonstrate how his car could accelerate from 0-100 kilometres per hour in 6.2 seconds. He drove with an intensity more appropriate to someone on some deadly mission than driving to the station. Perhaps this was instructive in showing what Richter was all about.

  As they drove at an alarming speed along the autobahn, Richter asked casually, ‘I understand you had heard some story about the Mennonites wanting to stop the rocket launch. How do you know this? You haven’t been to Paraguay, have you?’

  ‘A friend of mine was there recently.’

  ‘His name?’

  ‘I never give away people’s names.’

  ‘Think something unpleasant might happen to them?’ Richter tossed this remark off lightly, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, but Nihal wondered if he was correct in interpreting this as a threat. ‘No, why should it?’

  ‘I’ve given you a lot of information. Don’t you think it only fair to return some?’

  ‘I understood the deal was that I would tell you what you want to know in exchange for permission to view a rocket launch.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be possible.’ They drew up at the station. Richter, having clearly lost interest, tapped his gloved hands impatiently on the steering wheel.

  ‘I’d like to see what you write.’

  ‘I’ll send you a cutting.’ Nihal climbed out of the car. Almost before he had shut the door, the car had shot away with a screech of tyres.

  Dmitry got the files from Panini on Thursday afternoon. At the end of the day, once Hilde had gone home, he went through them but found nothing wrong. There were only some minor changes and corrections which distinguished this from the report he had seen. The odd thing was that there didn’t seem to be any difference between the last version on the back-up tapes and the final one, the one which Müller had updated on his last day. On the other hand, this was the last avenue he could think of. There was nothing to be done and perhaps his suspicions were, after all, unfounded. He decided to forget it.

  He pulled on his coat and hat and walked down the corridor towards the lifts. The building was deserted; it was eerily quiet. When he got outside an icy wind was blowing. He walked to the station and sat down on the bench on the platform, waiting for the train. There were only a few people about. Someone came onto the platform and walked past him, his collar drawn up, and stood at the other far end, stamping his feet. Dmitry took out a cigarette and lit it.

  The train came. Dmitry was in no hurry to get home and he want
ed to finish his cigarette; he was sheltered from the wind and perfectly warm in his thick coat and hat, he felt heavy and lethargic, so he stayed where he was and missed the train. There was no reason at all why he should have done this; there wasn’t a train on another line he could have been waiting for. Perhaps it was because he had a moment’s paranoia. But as the train pulled out, he saw that he had not been paranoid at all. The platform was now empty, except for the man in the dark coat standing in the shadows, struggling to light a cigarette in the cold wind.

  Dmitry felt suddenly cold. He had been used to routine surveillance before, both at home and at conferences abroad; but this was different. He got to his feet and tossed his cigarette end onto the rails. Then he got out another cigarette and made a big show of failing to light it. With an exclamation of disgust he tossed the lighter onto the rails and walked up the platform towards the man in the dark coat.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, in awkward German, ‘Could you give me a light?’

  He knew as he did this that he was breaking the rules; he knew you were never supposed to acknowledge that you were under surveillance. It gave him pleasure to look this man straight in the face; he thought he saw a flicker of alarm cross his bland features. Silently the man offered Dmitry his lighter. Dmitry wondered if he knew that he knew. The man was not tall, in his thirties, undistinguished looking. Dmitry wanted to hear him talk. He handed back the lighter and said, ‘How often do the trains come this time of night? Every ten, fifteen minutes?’

  The man definitely showed irritation. ‘Yes, something like that.’ He spoke with a Viennese accent. Of course they would be likely to hire someone local.

  ‘Thanks for the light.’ Dmitry went back to sit down further up the platform. He got on the next train, took it as far as Schwedenplatz and changed. He glanced along the platform, but as far as he could tell, he was on his own. There was no point anyway in checking, he wasn’t going anywhere, and he assumed they were watching his flat. But now he knew, without a doubt, that something was very wrong. As he let himself into his living room and sank heavily onto the sofa he was struck by the irony that he had come here from Russia hoping to leave all this behind him, only to find himself in an even more sinister network of espionage, surveillance, and intrigue.