Dos Santos had finished his beer. He was so gripped by what he was saying that he went on without needing any encouragement at all from Dmitry.
‘Of course I can only imagine what they were discussing at this meeting. But here is the next thing. This colleague of mine had established that there have been flights between the Paraguayan Chaco and a military site in the south of Brazil. From there are regular military flights to Cachimbo, in Amazonia; you know, the place where they built the test bores for atomic bombs. One of the planes, a small one, was stopped in the north of Paraguay, near San Pedro Caballero. They said they were looking for drugs. A Paraguayan journalist who was investigating this was later dragged out of his car in broad daylight and shot by people who they claimed were drug-runners. The story was in the papers; nobody has done much in the way of investigating it. The journalist was found with seventeen bullets in his body. As you may imagine, other journalists are not very anxious to look into what he found.’
‘Have you published anything about this?’
‘Not yet, we don’t have enough evidence. There have been so many crazy stories circulating about the rocket project. What are we to suppose? A number of the military have been arrested already. Nobody can understand why they haven’t found out what is going on. The Brazilian government cannot be behind this thing, but why haven’t they exposed it?’
‘I don’t understand. Oliveira is dead. The scandal at Valadares has been looked into. I thought this was all over.’
‘Look. They still haven’t accounted for all the highly enriched uranium that was produced at Valadares. Who knows where it is. It’s even possible it’s been sold for vast sums to Libya or Iraq. Nobody knows how many people might be involved, how high up this thing is going to go. Maybe they don’t want the extent of it to be known. It’s always like this in such situations. You have to flush these guys out, one by one. It takes a long time.’
‘But this possible connection with Richter. This I don’t understand. You’re surely not suggesting he has tried to lay his hands on an atomic warhead? Why should he do such a thing? Hold the world to ransom?’ Dmitry’s voice expressed his contempt for the very idea.
‘No. No, I agree, that would be too incredible. No, I'm not suggesting that. But maybe it’s the other way round. Maybe the Brazilian military want a rocket to launch their bomb.’
Dmitry shrugged. ‘The intelligence services must know what’s going on. They must know if this Richter really is a threat.’
Dos Santos snorted. ‘Yes, but it’s only once things become public that there is ever any action. Anyway, you can tell all this to Nihal. You’re going back tomorrow? Greet him for me, won’t you? Tell him to watch the Brazilian press.’
‘I will. And you, be careful won’t you?’
‘Sure.’ Dos Santos shook Dmitry’s hand and turned to go.
Dmitry stood outside the entrance to the conference centre for a few moments, to breathe in the fresh air. He watched dos Santos walk down the road, heading for the car park. The United Nations flags were fluttering in the breeze. Dmitry turned to go back in through the doors when he heard it happen.
He heard a squeal of brakes and a muffled cry. Dmitry spun round to see a car reverse back over a body on the ground and lurch across the grass. He saw the car drive down to the main road, screech across the pavement and smash into an oncoming truck. Then the door swung open and a young man leapt out and ran into the side streets so fast that he caught only a glimpse of a white tee-shirt, jeans and white trainers.
A knot of people who had been standing by a nearby car crowded round the body. The uniformed men at the door started running towards them. Dmitry walked over slowly behind them. Someone ran for an ambulance but the security guard who was there said it was already too late as he waved at the gathering crowd to move away.
Dmitry pushed his way through them. He looked down at the body. Dos Santos was lying face down; he saw the blood, but fortunately he couldn't see the young man’s broken face. He thought, this can’t have happened. If only this could not have happened. He felt as if an enormous weight had suddenly descended on him. He felt as if he had been handed the poisoned chalice; this thing would not go away from him.
He told the security guard where the police could get hold of him if they wanted a description of the incident and pointed out the direction in which he had seen the man running. He went back into the conference centre, into the main hall, sat down, and put on his headphones. He could not listen to one word. So it was still going on. Had they known who dos Santos was talking to? Did they know he was here? Who was he going to talk to about it? There was no point in hoping the police would get anywhere. He was not going to go to the KGB again; not after what happened last time. There was also no point in going to a newspaper; he had not enough to go on, and no way to convince them. He didn’t want to ring Nihal and then put him at risk. He hadn’t the slightest idea what he could do.
Why had they killed dos Santos here, in Argentina? Wouldn’t it have been easier to kill him in Brazil? They hadn’t – and this was too terrible to think about, this must surely be a product of his paranoia – known that dos Santos had made contact with him? But what did that matter – what did he know? Besides, it had happened too quickly – there hadn’t been time to set up a killing.
And what if Richter really was involved in this nuclear diversion business? What had a RASAG representative been doing at a meeting of these military types? What was Richter hoping to do? If he had dreams of commercial success it was the worst thing he could get involved with. Nobody was going to let him get mixed up in something like this. None of it made the slightest sense.
The easiest thing, the best thing that he could do, would be to walk away from it. In any case, he had no power to do anything. He would ring dos Santos’s paper now and tell them the manner of his death and what he thought was behind it. That was the end of his responsibility. He would go and see Tolya this evening and return to Vienna tomorrow. He was not going to think about it any more. He tried to listen to the final speeches, forcing himself to concentrate.
He was called out of the final session to give a brief statement to the police. They said it seemed to be a clear case of hit and run. Dmitry asked if the car had been traced; he was told that it had been reported stolen earlier that afternoon. Probably it was a young joy-rider. The police couldn’t account for his presence near the conference centre; but they didn’t think there was anything more to it. Dmitry did not try to persuade them otherwise; he didn’t want to spend hours with them explaining about Project Solimões and the Paraguayan rocket project. He would leave it to dos Santos’s paper to raise that with them later.
After the police had gone Dmitry left the conference centre in a taxi. He didn’t want to go back to his hotel; he was too restless; he wanted to keep busy. On impulse he decided to go and wander round the fashionable Barrio Norte, where Anatoly lived. He got out of his taxi at one of the coffee houses, walked in one entrance, out the other, just in case anyone was following him, and took a bus, a Buenos Aires colectivo. He consulted the map he had in his pocket. After turning off the Avenida 9 de Julio the streets became like those in Paris; grand nineteenth century apartment buildings, shops selling fashion clothes, interior decoration, art, antiques. He stepped off the colectivo and wandered aimlessly along the streets. He looked in the shop windows, but he did not want to buy anything; what would be the point? Even the bookshops did not entice him. Suddenly he laughed aloud. In his youth he would have given anything to travel out of the Soviet Union; Buenos Aires would have sounded like a magic incantation on his tongue. Now that he was here he felt no joy at all; he would have felt the same despair had he been anywhere.
He was on the Avenida Santa Fe, walking northwards slowly, irresolutely, trying to spin out the time till eight o’clock, when the sun sank behind the buildings. A blazing stream of copper light shone across the street and caught on the metal of the shop signs, the bonnets of the cars and colectivos f
illing the air with a strange luminosity. The light shone on his hands, turning them deep gold, on the fabric of his dark coat, on the pavement which seemed to melt beneath his feet. His heart seemed to stop for an instant and then to pound again, stricken with an unbearable mixture of beauty and pain. If God were ever to enter the world, he would come in such a blaze of light as this, he thought, stopping to look into the light for an instant before the intensity of it hurt his eyes. In another moment the sun passed behind another building, and he was cut off, left behind in an inky darkness for a moment till his eyes adjusted to the coming twilight.
He felt dizzy. Something had happened to him; he could not say what it was. He turned into a side-street shaded by plane trees and began to walk faster and still faster. He came to a little square and sat down on a bench; there were children in the park, their mothers and nannies gathering up coats and jackets and calling that it was time to go home. He thought, I am not going to run away from this. He felt that it had somehow been given to him; there must be some point in it. He was not going to sit and do nothing about that young man’s death. It must be possible for him to do something; he had to get to the bottom of it somehow. He could not just sit there and let these people carry on their killing.
He looked at his map; he was only a street or two away from Anatoly’s apartment. He had an hour and a half to wait until he was due there; after a while when the square had emptied he got up, bought a paper, La Nación, at a news-stand, found a café, and sat down to read it I over a cup of coffee.
On page three was a short item:
Rocket launch in Paraguay
A third rocket launch from the RASAG site in north-west Paraguay took place yesterday watched by Air Force Chief General Martinez. The launch was not an unqualified success as the rocket failed to follow its planned trajectory after a fuel inlet valve malfunctioned. The launch of a larger, sixteen-engine rocket is planned for next month.
RASAG’s rocket activities have been strongly criticised by the governments of Brazil and Argentina, although both governments have behind the scenes expressed interest in the cut-price rocket since the scrapping of Argentina’s Condor programme and the bankruptcy of both Brazil’s major aerospace companies. The Bolivian government has accused RASAG of using a secret US military airstrip situated in the uninhabited Chaco region.
Recent reports that a plane stopped in the north of Paraguay was carrying sensitive military equipment have been strenuously denied by representatives of RASAG and the Paraguayan government.
Dmitry ordered another coffee. He looked at his hand; it was shaking slightly. He would have given anything just then for a cigarette. He tore the item out of the paper, folded it into his wallet, and read the rest of the paper. At quarter to eight he got up and walked out into the night.
Anatoly and Nina welcomed him warmly into their apartment. Nina explained that it was the maid’s night off; she had just prepared something simple, there were no other guests. The two girls, aged seven and nine, were already in their pyjamas, their faces freshly scrubbed, their hair still slightly damp from the bath. They hovered nervously in the doorway and giggled whenever Dmitry looked at them.
‘Come and say hello properly,’ ordered Anatoly, ‘And then go to bed.’
They sat at the end of the grand table and ate a homely meal, some Ukrainian-style dumplings stuffed with meat and onions, followed by fresh fruit. Anatoly was generous with the wine; inevitably they talked about the worsening situation back home, till Nina changed the subject and they began talking about old times. The children wandered in from time to time to ask for a drink or to peer at the visitor and Nina shooed them out again. They were not allowed to do this at official dinners, she explained, but tonight was different. Eventually she went off to read them a story. Dmitry’s feeling of isolation was intensified; he could not bear the atmosphere of peaceful domesticity, contrasting with his own isolation. Anatoly must have caught his fleeting look of sadness, for he suddenly asked:
‘So you never found the right woman to marry, Mitya?’
‘No.’
‘What went wrong with you and Masha? I thought she seemed just right for you; very clever, very sensible.’
‘Perhaps she was too sensible.’
‘Nina saw her last time we were in Moscow, you know. She has married again, a professor at the Lebedev Academy.’
‘Has she? I never hear from her these days.’
Anatoly offered Dmitry a cigarette which he declined, and then re-filled his glass of wine. Then he said, ‘You know, I always thought that the trouble with you was that you were too fond of your sister.’
Dmitry smiled. ‘Well, you have to admit that other women did rather pale in comparison.’
‘Why did she marry that creep Oleg? I never could work it out. She must have had a hundred proposals. All the men were crazy about her. I was myself. My God, she was beautiful. I would have done anything for her, I swear I would have died for her if she had asked me to.’
Dmitry said, sipping his wine, ‘Fortunately that wasn’t necessary.’
‘Nina still can’t bear it if I mention her. She wasn’t even too keen on your coming. She is very jealous, not that she has ever had much reason to be – well, now and then, you know…’
‘No, I don’t know.’ Dmitry was surprised.
‘You disapprove of me, Mitya.’
‘Not at all. I don’t disapprove of anyone. It’s just I would hope that if I were lucky enough to have a loving wife like Nina, I wouldn’t see the point in being unfaithful.’
Anatoly switched the subject. He said, ‘I shouldn’t really tell you this, but I heard today some news which might interest you, in view of what we were talking about yesterday.’
‘I saw what was in today’s papers.’
‘Yes? Oh, well, that’s already out of date. I gather the US Ambassador is going to see Rodriguez again to issue an ultimatum that the US wants the rocket project cancelled. But that’s not all. Richter’s investors too are getting a little anxious. He has apparently been seeking other alternatives to Paraguay, and the Americans are not happy about this. I believe they are going to try to stop the project altogether. There appear to be links, you see, with this business in Brazil, and he has also been dabbling in the Middle East. They’ve decided he must be stopped at all costs.’
‘How?’
‘Oh, we have intelligence that they are planning a para-military operation. A few days and it will all be over.’
For an instant Dmitry felt relief; then a terrible thought occurred to him; he couldn’t shake it out of his head. He was thinking of Katie’s safety. He struggled to think clearly. ‘Where exactly are they based? The Chaco is a big area, isn’t it? Are they actually out there now?’
‘I imagine so. They would have been out there for the launch.’ Anatoly seemed suddenly nervous. ‘Why, what’s on your mind?’
The wine must have been stronger than Dmitry had thought, because he found himself blurting out: ‘Tolya, you’re very careless. When I was in Vienna I had an affair, I was in love with Haynes’s wife. She is there, in Paraguay, with Haynes. This Richter has armed security men, he has the support of half the Paraguayan military. If the CIA goes in, there may be shooting. They could blow them all up. Anything might happen. If they’re going to destroy Richter, are they going to care if a few innocent people get in the way?’
Anatoly said, taken aback, ‘Yes, in that case, I can see your concern, but she must know the score. She knows he’s not out there growing soya beans.’
Dmitry winced. He held the wine glass in his hand, swirling the dark red liquid round and round in it. Anatoly said, his voice changed, worried, ‘You’re not thinking of trying to warn her, are you? You couldn’t take that risk.’
Dmitry said, ‘You shouldn’t have told me, Tolya.’
Anatoly had a tense, alarmed look in his eyes, though he kept his voice low and even. ‘Well, perhaps you should warn her to get out. But what if she tells them? What if she
tried to leave and they find out why? Perhaps she’s actually in less danger if you leave well alone.’
Dmitry got to his feet and walked to the mantelpiece, unable to keep still. He said, ‘It's my fault she’s there. From the beginning I decided to tell her nothing, to protect her. It’s because of that she’s there now. If I had told her the truth about her husband she would never have gone with him.’
‘This affair, is it all over?’
‘Yes – that is, I thought so. I don’t know.’
Dmitry had drained his glass; Anatoly replenished it. He said, ‘I'm sorry, I made a grave mistake in telling you. How was I to know that you would be so upset by it?’
Dmitry took another gulp of wine. It was good wine, but he didn’t notice the taste of it. He walked across the room. ‘You know, you remember when we used to have those abstract arguments at university, about whether the greater good is worth the sacrifice of a few innocent people? Those situations we used to invent, sometimes you argued one way, sometimes the other. The trouble is, the equation was always too neat. In real life, the edges are all blurred, we can’t tell who is innocent and who is not, we don’t know what is going to happen, what would have happened if we had chosen differently. Besides, when we love some of those people who are to be sacrificed, it all looks rather different.’
Anatoly laughed. ‘Yes, I remember. You were always obsessed in these arguments with what you called the truth.’
‘Well, when you have been fed nothing but lies and stupidities from the cradle – things you knew made no sense, which you knew not even the person who told you them had the slightest belief in –’
‘Yes, it’s coming back to me now. Scientific truth, religious truth – of course that was always a little dangerous – artistic truth, well, that was dangerous too – scientific truth was the best. That’s why you became a scientist, wasn’t it? You could go on looking for the truth without it being political, without being disapproved of.’
The Rocket Man Page 25