The Rocket Man

by Maggie Hamand

  ‘I understand that point of view absolutely. What concerned me was that this was a violation of an international agreement. Brazil have undertaken not to produce a bomb. But haven't you been a little naive? You must surely realise what kind of people an organisation like yours would attract.’

  ‘I did not expect to be betrayed like this.’

  Richter lit a cigarette; he remained seated, almost as if he were too tired to move. He looked at his watch again. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked unexpectedly. ‘I hear they gave you rather a rough time. That’s the trouble with these people, they don’t know any other way to get information out of someone. They didn’t do you any serious damage, did they?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Look,’ said Richter, getting up suddenly, walking over to the window and swatting at the buzzing fly. ‘You have caused a lot of trouble for me, one way and another. On the other hand, it seems you are a victim of this business as much as I am. I can’t think what is going to be achieved by leaving you to rot here in a Paraguayan prison. Have you seen the state penitentiary in Asunción? My God, what a place. It’s a disgrace – drugs, violence, corruption – I don’t suppose you’d last out very long there. And the food, the smell…’ His face wrinkled in an expression of absolute disgust.

  Dmitry sat very still. Richter turned round to face him. ‘Well, if I have a word with them they’ll release you. If I claim you are attached to the RASAG project, I imagine you will have immunity, even if the contract has been cancelled. We are flying everybody out of here as soon as possible.’

  He leaned over the desk. ‘Well, come on,’ he said. ‘You can come with me. What’s the matter with you? Do you want to get out or don’t you?’

  The Lear jet turned on its wingtip and lined up to land on the thin strip of parched earth. Out of the window Dmitry saw the shadowy outline of Cerro León on the horizon.

  ‘When I’ve divorced Liliana,’ Richter said, ‘I’m going to marry my secretary. She’s a nice girl – Sylvia. She’s got less up here than Liliana. It’s always best to have a woman with no brains. Don’t you agree?’

  They came in to land. Dust flew up as the wheels touched ground and obscured the view. When they opened the door Dmitry saw the rocket gantry rising above the trees; the top of the rocket could be seen glinting in the centre of the metal scaffold. He stood and stared at it. It looked bigger than it actually was; there was no sense of perspective in this vast wilderness. To others it might have seemed impressive; to Dmitry, who had worked with the vast SS-9s, it seemed little more than a firecracker. He felt suddenly deflated. Was this what it was all about? He wondered whether Richter would seriously have had any success with these things.

  A driver was waiting to drive them towards the site. There had been a massive fire; for perhaps a mile to the east was blackened ground, still smouldering in places. A smell of charred wood and something acrid, metallic, hung in the air. Part of the house itself was in ruins. He thought, thank goodness Katie hadn’t been there. Perhaps I did something right, after all.

  ‘Was anybody killed?’

  ‘Yes – eleven of them. A few more suffered burns; they were flown to hospital in Asunción, but they’ll be all right. If it was the CIA, it shows what vandals they are. It’s a useless waste. I gather that they had persuaded Rodriguez to cancel the project in any case.’

  They climbed down from the jeep and walked towards the gantry. ‘They have destroyed millions of dollars worth of computers,’ said Richter. ‘Of course we had back-ups but this will set us back about two years. Most of the technical staff have already gone; they didn’t believe we could guarantee their safety.’ A group of RASAG workers, their women and children, had come out of their huts when they heard Richter coming. ‘You must excuse me for a while,’ he said, ‘I have some business to attend to.’

  Dmitry held back as the workers approached Richter. They were appealing to him; they didn’t want to go, they didn’t want to lose their jobs. They were asking if the agricultural projects would continue. Richter gave them bland assurances; he said they would be compensated. Then he turned to one of his colleagues and began giving instructions for the dismantling of the rocket.

  Dmitry sat down in the shade under a tree in a daze and watched Richter at work. One of the battered old Argosy transport planes was sitting on the runway; men were loading boxes onto it. The sun began to descend; its slanting rays shone in Dmitry’s eyes and a dry wind blew in his face, bearing on it the faint, spicy scent of the palo santo tree.

  A young German wandered over with a canned drink; he handed it to Dmitry and introduced himself as the range controller. He said that this destruction was terrible; he told Dmitry about his native wife. He said he had grown fond of her and couldn’t bear to leave her behind, but there was no point in pretending he could take her back to Germany. ‘It was a nice dream,’ he said, ‘But the trouble with dreams is one has to wake up again to real life, isn’t that so?’

  Later, in the Lear jet heading for Rio, Richter kept up a long monologue, shouting above the noise of the engines. He was explaining that he was considering launching his rockets from a stabilised ship at sea. Of course there were various technical problems, but these could be overcome. Dmitry turned to look at him. For someone who had been up all night, who had just supervised the closing down of his project, he seemed remarkably animated. Dmitry wondered if he would ever understand him. Perhaps he was just an idealist, who had been used by people more ruthless than himself. Perhaps he was really a man from another age, like one of the Spanish explorers searching for Eldorado; an anomaly here at the end of the twentieth century. He was indeed a man following a mad quest in which he could never succeed, because Dmitry saw that even if he could make it work technically, politically he would never be allowed to get away with it.

  Perhaps he would turn himself to more realistic ends; he might go where the money was, and that was for missiles. Possibly he would be able to find someone else to subsidise his dreams, perhaps someone in the Middle East. Dmitry turned his head away, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep. Somehow he felt this was not going to be the last that would be heard of Wolfgang Richter.

  EPILOGUE

  LONDON, 1992

  It was pouring with rain. Nihal walked down the gloomy street in Kilburn, holding his umbrella. It was one of those bleak, bitter February days which Nihal always associated in his memory with his past years in London. He had been in London for a three-day conference and had just found time to call in and see Katie and Dmitry for tea before catching the seven-thirty flight back to Vienna.

  He found their place without too much difficulty; it was the two top floors of a three-storey Victorian house. He rang the bell; he could hear the baby crying indoors. The cries became louder, rising to a crescendo; Katie opened the door, the baby against her shoulder. She looked extremely pleased to see him.

  ‘Nihal, how wonderful – come in.’ Katie took his umbrella and propped it by the door in the gloomy entrance hall. She took him through into the living room; it was a double room with the original dividing doors and a kitchen area at one end, untidy and poorly decorated, but with a warm fire burning in the grate. The baby had stopped crying, and Katie turned towards Nihal to show him off. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘Don't you think he looks like Mitya?’

  The baby did indeed look extraordinarily like his father. He was, thought Nihal, quite remarkably, yet endearingly ugly. Katie’s face radiated adoration as she gazed down at the crumpled little face. Nihal made suitable noises of admiration but the baby was unimpressed and after a few moments it started crying again.

  Katie went to the door and called upstairs. ‘Mitya! Come down. Nihal’s here.’ She put on the kettle, filling it with difficulty by the spout because the sink was piled high with unwashed dishes. The baby carried on fretting on her shoulder.

  Nihal asked, ‘Why is he crying? Does he need feeding?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Katie, ‘Anna was ne
ver like this. I’ve only just fed him. Mitya won’t be a minute, he’s finishing a translation.’ She went to the door and called up to him again.

  Dmitry appeared in the doorway and greeted Nihal warmly. His hair had grown longer and he was wearing a shapeless woolly which Katie proudly said she had knitted for him. Dmitry told Nihal to sit down on the sofa, at the end which didn’t have a hole in it, and then peered at the baby.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘Mitya, if I feed him again, will you make the tea? There’s a cake in the tin.’ She sat down on the armchair, pulled up her jumper and latched the baby on to her round, pale breast. The baby whimpered and then started to feed; Katie sighed and leaned back on the cushions. Dmitry walked across the room to Katie, stood behind her and looked down at her and the little baby, quiet now and sucking rhythmically at the breast. Almost unconsciously, he pulled a stray lock of her hair back from her face and arranged it on her shoulder. Katie smiled at him; for a moment Nihal felt like an intruder, shut out of this sudden and complete intimacy between them.

  The kettle was boiling. Dmitry abruptly broke away and went to make a pot of tea. ‘So how’s Vienna, Nihal? What are you working on?’

  ‘Well, actually, I’m still following up the RASAG story. Richter has just signed a deal with Libya. He’s transferred his test site to a remote area in the Saharan desert south of Zurbah. It’s a perfect spot for testing rockets; even more deserted than the Chaco, and, of course, it’s outside US influence.’

  ‘Does he still claim it’s for launching satellites?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what he says. But the trouble with these people is that an idea turns into an obsession and then they don’t care who pays for it or what the end result is. I don’t think there's much doubt about what he's doing now.’

  Dmitry carried a tray from the kitchen and placed it on the table. He poured out the tea into the Russian glasses Nihal recognised from Vienna and cut generous slices of cake. Nihal went on, ‘Gaddafi has been rather vague about its intentions – simply said that the project is peaceful. But there’s some more evidence turned up about abortive missile deals RASAG was making with Pakistan, and with a secret project backed by a number of German companies to sell missiles to Saudi Arabia.’

  Dmitry seemed not to be concentrating; he frowned as he passed Nihal his tea. Then he went to the door and called upstairs; Anna came down, looked shyly at Nihal, and helped herself to some cake. She had grown much taller since Nihal had last seen her and her face was thinner, having lost that infant chubbiness. She went up to Katie and began to stroke the baby’s head; Nihal noticed that she did it rather roughly.

  ‘Not while he’s having his milk,’ said Katie, gently. ‘He doesn’t like it.’

  ‘Yes he does.’ Anna reached out her hand again. Katie tolerated this for a moment, until the baby started whimpering, and then firmly took it away. ‘Shhh, he’s going to sleep. Go and have another bit of cake.’

  Anna went over to Dmitry, took another slice of cake and climbed up onto his knee. She sat there, leaning back against his chest, swinging her legs, perfectly at ease.

  Nihal sipped his tea and, when no-one else said anything, carried on. ‘RASAG’s new chairman has denied absolutely that there is any truth in this. But there’s no doubt that after he'd been kicked out of Paraguay Richter was in deep trouble. After all, his credibility had been destroyed. The company was nearly shut down; Heinrichs was being prosecuted. How he managed to keep going I don’t know. At one stage he offered to sell the whole thing to another armaments company just to be shot of it.’

  Katie asked, ‘Nihal, how can you go on with this? Aren’t you afraid?’

  ‘Well, a bit, but Richter himself has much more reason to be. I phoned his new wife, Sylvia – you know, the girl I met in Paris. I couldn’t get him through his office so I rang his home number. She told me there had been two attempts on his life; in one his bodyguard was shot, and in the other there was a bomb in his car which killed the driver. She said he was very careful about who he met these days…’

  ‘And Liliana?’

  ‘She's in hiding, in Brazil, as far as I know.’

  ‘And how’s the IAEA?’

  ‘Oh, all right. There’s been all this Iraqi business – that’s had them running in circles. Probably the whole safeguards system will be reviewed. What about you? I was thinking of you a lot over those dramatic days in August…’

  Katie looked up from the baby, who appeared to have fallen asleep. ‘We never stopped listening to the radio. Mitya wants to go back, to see for himself, but I couldn’t face taking the children.’ She lifted the baby from her breast and laid him gently in the Moses basket on the floor. For a few moments there was peace; then he began to cry again. Dmitry gently lifted Anna off his knee, stood up and started to rock the basket but the baby carried on inconsolably. He picked it up and peered at the little crumpled face. ‘Sasha,’ he said, ‘What is the matter with you?’ Nihal found it strangely touching to see the little baby held so gently in his enormous hands. ‘You can’t be hungry; you can’t have your mother’s breasts all the time, you know, I shall get jealous.’ He walked up and down, but the baby would not be pacified. After a few minutes Nihal had had enough of the noise.

  ‘I’m afraid I must go, or I’ll miss my plane.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’m sorry it’s been so short. Perhaps next time…’

  ‘No, it’s lovely to see you. I’m sorry we’re in such chaos.’

  The baby was now working himself up into a fury and Dmitry handed him back to Katie.

  ‘I’ll walk you to the station,’ she said to Nihal.

  ‘I’d come too,’ said Dmitry, ‘But I’ve got a deadline for the morning.’

  Katie put on Anna’s coat and hat and gloves, wrapped the baby in a shawl and tucked him in the pram in the hallway. Nihal helped her carry it down the steps. Dmitry shook Nihal’s hand and closed the door behind him. Walking down the road, the baby finally stopped crying; instead, Anna started to complain that she was cold.

  ‘Come on,’ said Katie, ‘We’re not going far.’ She turned to Nihal. ‘I’m sorry. It hasn’t been a good day. This is the first big job Mitya’s had for this company and he’s anxious to get it done on time.’

  ‘What’s he working on?’

  ‘Oh, it’s just a technical translation for some company hoping to set up a joint venture in Russia. We didn’t have enough money so he took on too much work. It was all such a mess, Nihal; after Bob died I discovered he only had a small life insurance, he was in the process of taking out another but he never signed the forms. And of course Richter wouldn’t pay anything.’ She sighed, turning to Anna to pull up her hood and wind the scarf more tightly round her neck. ‘Then Mitya lost his job, and he was ill over Christmas; he was in hospital with a nasty chest infection, so he got behind with everything… And he keeps saying he wants to go back to Russia. I sat with him you know, those three days in August, seeing him weep first tears of shame and then of joy. He couldn’t bear the fact that he wasn’t there to be part of it. Now he gets these fits of Russian melancholy and then he drinks too much.’

  ‘Well,’ said Nihal, with a shrug of his shoulders, ‘You made your choice, Katie; nobody’s perfect.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have started going on about Richter,’ said Katie. ‘He’ll be upset now; he hates to talk about it.’

  ‘Does he? Why? I thought he’d be interested.’

  ‘Well, he lost rather a lot, didn’t he? It’s affected him rather badly, he feels it’s the end of his career. He can make some kind of living out of translating but it bores him.’

  They came to the underground station. Katie put her arms round Nihal and held him tightly. ‘For God’s sake, Nihal, be careful. Haven’t you learned how serious this can be?’

  Nihal released her reluctantly. ‘I don’t think Richter is such a serious threat. He has much more reason to be afraid than I have. Don't worry about me; I’m fine.’

  Katie
watched his small, familiar figure walk up the steps to the platform and waved him goodbye. She felt like crying, as if part of her life was going with him. Abruptly she turned round and pushed the pram back down the road in the pouring rain, the baby howling, and Anna running ahead of them, skipping and chanting a song, the Russian one about the crocodile.