by Adam Baker
Ignatiev had a radio. We each wore an earpiece and microphone.
‘Can you hear me?’ he asked. We gave a thumbs up.
We pulled on hoods. Each hood had a Lexan face-plate and an air hose at the back. We had electric filtration units clipped to our belts. Air pumped through charcoal filters. My headpiece was filled with the hiss of supply fans, and my own heavy breathing.
‘Open the box.’
I popped latches. A video camera.
‘I want you to film the interior of the craft. You will be my eyes and ears.’
Intelligence agencies always operate through proxies. They call it Resource Exploitation. Human chess. I have ordered the arrest and torture of countless men. Sat in my office and consigned prisoners to death as I sipped coffee. I never met my victims face-to-face. Never had to hear their screams, their pathetic pleas for mercy. They were numbers. Bruised and bleeding mug shots. I didn’t sign execution orders. I took great care to commit nothing to paper. I gave files to my adjutant and requested ‘stern measures’. Call it plausible deniability. Call it emotional distance, a coward taking refuge in euphemism.
Men like Ignatiev rarely get their hands dirty.
We walked from the staging area, down a sterile polythene umbilicus to the Spektr containment area. Our hazmat suits creaked and rustled.
We unzipped a plastic curtain and entered the dome.
My ears popped. Extractor fans kept the containment dome at negative pressure to prevent the back-flow of contaminated air. A sprinkler scaffold high above our heads fogged the atmosphere with a constant hydrogen peroxide mist. Lights glowed through opaque plastic sheets like weak sunlight.
The orbiter looked like a US space shuttle in miniature. Porcelain white. Black ablative bricks coated the nose, belly and aerofoil to help the fuselage withstand the white heat of re-entry.
We walked a circuit of the ship.
I reached up and stroked the pitted, seared hull of the craft. It was astonishing to think that the vehicle before me had voyaged beyond the earth. It had been exposed to the vacuum of space. The silicon dioxide tiles had been cratered by micro-meteoroids. They had been subject to absolute cold and the merciless gamma-blast of unfiltered solar radiation.
I was consumed by curiosity, desperate to climb inside the vessel and investigate. I wanted to know where it had been, what disaster had befallen the crew while in orbit.
We propped scaffold steps against the vehicle and climbed level with the hatch. We scanned the hull with a Geiger counter. Spektr had been floating in high orbit for more than a decade, baking in stellar radiation. The handset crackled triple background.
‘There’s a warning stencilled on the hatch tiles.’
‘English?’ asked Ignatiev.
‘Yes. And Cyrillic.’
‘In case Spektr crashed outside Russian territory, I suppose.’
ATTENTION
STEP ASIDE
THIS COVER MAY BE JETTISONED
PEOPLE INSIDE
HELP
‘There should be a small panel to the side of the hatch,’ said Ignatiev, over the radio. ‘Can you see it? It looks like a heat tile, but it is held in place by screws.’
‘I’ve got it.’
‘Use the hex drill.’
Hassim passed me a power drill. I unscrewed the titanium bolts and prised the tile free with the sliver-blade of a scalpel.
‘Describe what you see.’
‘Four sockets. A couple of nozzles. A couple of jacks.’
‘The port on the top left should let us test the internal atmosphere.’
We took a gas spectrometer from a high-impact case. We plugged it into the hatch panel. We took a reading.
I tore off a strip of print-out.
‘Read it to me.’
I recited numbers.
‘Lot of nitrogen. Lot of carbon dioxide. The air inside the ship is toxic but the seals are intact.’
‘How do we open the hatch?’
‘The access mechanism is identical to Progress capsules used to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. Those jack plugs are for the benefit of the recovery crew. If, for any reason, the cosmonauts are incapacitated and unable to exit the craft, the rescue team can deliver a simple electrical pulse and trip the explosive bolts.’
We piled sandbags against the hatch. We didn’t want the heavy steel door to fly across the containment area and puncture the fabric of the bio-dome.
‘Are you ready?’ asked Ignatiev
Wire snaked from the sandbagged hatch, down the scaffold steps and across the polythene floor.
We crouched. I counted to three and touched frayed wires to the terminals of a twelve-volt battery. Sudden flame-flash and a shotgun roar. The sandbags absorbed the blast. The scorched hatch hung crooked.
I climbed the steps.
We dragged the hatch aside and lay it on the floor.
I held up the video camera and began to film.
A white-walled airlock, little bigger than a phone booth. The inner hatch was sealed. There was a pile of fabric on the floor. A space suit.
‘Switch on the camera. I want to see it all.’
A big helmet with a gold visor. A big, quilted backpack. A heavy pressure suit in white canvas. The suit was in two sections. It seemed to seal at the waist. There were gauntlets with big lock-rings.
‘Must be an EVA suit. That confirms Spektr has an occupant. There are a stack of hermetic storage boxes in the containment area with you. Pack the suit and seal it up.’
We packed the suit in a plastic trunk. We sealed the trunk with biohazard tape.
‘All right. Return to the airlock. My schematic says there is a mesh service plate in the floor.’
‘I see it.’
‘Grip the ring-latch. The plate should lift out.’
‘There’s a socket inside. A five-pin, high-voltage connector.’
‘Spektr had a bank of chemical batteries but they will be long dead. If we run electricity from an external power source, we can get the ship’s systems back online.’
We unpacked a four-stroke generator and set the motor running. We ran cable up the scaffold steps to the airlock. I twisted the connector into the floor socket and there was an immediate power-up hum. Lights flickered and lit the airlock interior brilliant white.
‘I’ve got a green panel light.’
‘The inner hatch is active. Open her up. Let’s look inside.’
I pressed the panel button and turned release handles. I pushed the inner hatch open.
‘Talk to me, Jabril. Describe what you can see.’
I resumed filming.
‘I’m entering a crew compartment. It’s cramped. There are storage lockers. There is some kind of porthole at the back.’
Hassim shone a flashlight through black glass. The empty hold. Payload doors held shut by heavy piston actuators.
‘The bay is empty,’ I told Ignatiev. ‘There is no cargo.’
A bank of winking red lights.
‘I think I have found the life-support controls. Russian symbols. Might be CO2 warnings. Depleted oxygen.’
‘There should be another floor plate directly beneath your feet.’
‘I see it.’
‘Open it up. Don’t touch anything.’
I lifted the plate aside.
A status panel flashed red, first in Cyrillic, then in English.
WARNING
DESTRUCT ARMED
‘What in God’s name is this?’
‘About thirty kilos of plastic explosive. The standard auto-destruct mechanism on all Soyuz and Progress flights, manned and unmanned. If a craft fails to deploy correctly, if there is a significant deviation from the launch flight-path, then Mission Control has the option to initiate a de-orbit burn and bring the vessel back into the atmosphere over the Pacific, east of the Mariana Islands. They wait until the vehicle descends to an altitude of about fifteen kilometres then transmit the self-destruct code.’
‘How do
we defuse it?’
‘Press the amber button. Flip the toggle switch.’
DESTRUCT DISARMED
‘Unplug the unit. There are grips either side of the console. The detonator and explosives should lift smoothly out. Get Hassim to help carry it from the vehicle.’
We carried the auto-destruct unit from the airlock and set it down on the cavern floor.
‘Return to the crew compartment.’
‘Okay.’
‘There’s a wall panel, secured by four lock-screws. Should be a voltage symbol on the panel.’
‘Got it.’
I unscrewed the bolts. A cavity. Clumps of cable.
‘The Saliut-5 data system. It captures telemetric and medical information for post-flight analysis. I’ll talk you through the de-installation.’
‘It’s gone.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The entire unit has been removed. Someone cut through the wires.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘There are data ribbons hanging out of the wall. They’ve been sawed with a knife.’
‘Chyort voz’mi,’ muttered Ignatiev.
‘It seems someone was anxious to ensure Spektr kept her secrets.’
There was a long pause.
‘Doctor? Doctor, can you hear me?’
‘Open the cockpit. It’s time we saw who flew this thing.’
The crew compartment was separated from the cockpit by a thick bulkhead.
I turned the release handles and pulled back the flight-deck hatch.
Darkness. The cabin lights had shorted out.
‘Hassim. Give me some light.’
I crawled into the cramped flight deck and filmed. Hassim crouched by the doorway.
A single high-backed couch facing banks of instrumentation. Commsgear, telemetric read-outs, navigation management consoles and attitude controls. Row upon row of dials and toggle switches.
The flight-deck windows were smoked almost black by the heat of re-entry.
I crawled into the cockpit on my knees.
‘There should be six red switches. Centre panel, above the thrust levers.’
‘I see them.’
‘They isolate the main boosters. Flip them upward into the off position. I don’t want some random command impulse to trigger the combustion chambers and blow us to pieces.’
I put down the camera. I rested my stump on a deck plate for support and reached forward to flip the bank of switches.
‘There’s a pilot right next to me. He looks long dead.’
‘Any obvious signs of injury?’
‘No. His suit is intact.’
‘Film it.’
The figure was strapped in the command couch. The couch was a foam and fibre-glass body-shell mounted on ram-jacks to absorb a heavy impact.
The cosmonaut wore a grey canvas pressure suit. His boots and gauntlets were attached by lock-rings. A hose anchored to his chest-plate was plugged into a wall-mounted oxygen supply.
‘Give me more light.’
Hassim crawled into the compartment and held the torch above his head.
The dead cosmonaut had a silver rosary wrapped round his wrist.
‘His helmet is sealed. I can’t see his face.’
I kept filming.
A mission patch on his sleeve: the tricolour of the Russian Federation and a clenched fist. A name tape on his chest.
KONSTANTIN.
‘Can you move the pilot? Can you extract him from his seat?’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Don’t violate the integrity of his suit, understand? Don’t release the lock-rings. Don’t lift the visor.’
I shut off the video camera and passed it to Hassim.
The cosmonaut was held in his seat by a five-point harness. I twisted the central clasp. The straps unlatched and fell free.
I turned a screw-ring, and released the oxygen umbilicus from his chest valve.
I shut off the light.
‘Give me a hand.’
Hassim gripped the cosmonaut’s ankles. I pushed my hand and stump beneath the pilot’s armpits and supported his weight as we swung his body from the seat.
We manhandled the dead man from the cockpit, through the stowage area and out the airlock.
‘Put him in the sarcophagus.’
I pulled a polythene sheath from a long box. A steel coffin with a big biohazard symbol etched into the metal and a porthole in the lid.
We laid the cosmonaut inside the steel container, still in his pressure suit, and folded his arms across his chest. We sealed the lid.
We entered the decon cycle. We scrubbed our suits with bleach, hosed down under a shower head, then stood bathed in ultraviolet light.
We towelled and dressed.
‘We shall rest,’ said Ignatiev. ‘Rehydrate. Get something to eat. We begin the autopsy in an hour.’
We walked from the tunnel mouth, down the narrow ravine and back to the camp.
Morning light.
The men had set up generators and draped camouflage nets. A semi-permanent township. Dormitory tents with canvas cots.
I watched them dig defensive trenches and fill sandbags. They pulled on armoured gloves and rolled out concertina wire.
Elite troops, Saddam’s praetorian guard, prepping eighty-gallon fuel drums for use as latrine buckets. The air was full of dust.
Ignatiev’s team had their own tent. I saw trunks of communication equipment hooked to a big mesh tripod dish pegged into the sand, angled to face the western sky. Some kind of uplink.
I sat with Ignatiev and Hassim. We drank sweet tea and smoked cigarettes.
‘How long have you known Koell?’
‘Long enough,’ said Ignatiev. He didn’t look me in the eye.
He took the kettle from the primer stove and poured water. I stole a glance at his wristwatch. Raketa. A red star on the dial. A communist relic.
The doctor was an exile. A man without a state. Modern Russia overrun by gangsters and oligarchs. Statues of Lenin torn down and consigned to the scrap yard. Skyline transfigured by glass mega-structures and corporate signage. He could never go home. The proletarian state he knew from his childhood didn’t exist any more.
‘You work for the Americans?’
‘I work for myself.’
Ignatiev stood and walked away. It fed my conviction I was due a bullet in the head soon as my use was at an end.
I should have run. Picked my moment. Walked from the camp, climbed the valley wall and fled into the desert. But I was fascinated by Spektr. I wanted to examine the Russian cosmonaut. I wanted to confront this strange disease.
We returned to the tunnel mouth. Ignatiev joined us in the staging area.
We zipped biohazard suits. We sluiced our overboots in trays of caustic soda and lye. Then we pulled back a polythene curtain and entered the containment dome.
Hassim unfolded the legs of a plastic table and sprayed the surface with Envirochem.
We released latches. We lifted the cosmonaut from his silver sarcophagus and laid him on the table. Ignatiev told me to hold the video camera and film.
Slow pan. I surveyed the suit head to toe. Ignatiev took still photographs from every angle.
‘Who was this man?’ I asked.
‘Hard to be sure. We have background information concerning a group of young men that passed through Soviet flight school in the eighties. I think he might be Vasily Konstantin. Born in Riga. Joined the air force. Trained at Akhtubinsk. Test pilot, second class. Seconded to the Yuri Gagarin cosmonaut school, Star City. He was part of the civilian space programme for a while, then dropped off the map. Declared dead three years later. No details. “Deceased” stamped on the cover of his personnel file. He was post-humously awarded Hero of the Russian Federation.’
‘Do you think he had a family?’
‘I imagine his parents buried a coffin full of rocks. They’ve been laying flowers on an empty grave, while Konstantin slowly orbited the Earth. Let’s ge
t him out of his suit.’
Ignatiev unscrewed retaining bolts and unlatched the gauntlet lock-ring.
‘My God,’ said Hassim, as the glove slid clear.
I’m not a religious man, but I murmured a prayer.
‘Bismillah ar rahman ar rahim.’
Mummified fingers. Strange metallic ropes and tendrils woven into flesh.
‘Film it,’ said Ignatiev. ‘Film it all.’
I held the video camera while they cut the cosmonaut free. They sliced through the canvas oversuit with trauma shears. They couldn’t release the helmet lock-ring, so they cut through neck fabric and lifted the helmet clear.
‘In the name of God the merciful,’ muttered Hassim.
‘Keep filming.’
An emaciated skull. Dried skin taut like leather. Sharp metal spines bristled from his mouth, his eyes.
Ignatiev pushed me aside. He leaned forward and examined the spines.
‘What happened to him?’ I asked. ‘What in God’s name happened to him?’
‘I wish I knew.’
‘But your people created this monstrosity. The Soviet military.’
‘You assume this is the work of man.’
‘What are you suggesting?’
Ignatiev didn’t reply. He took more pictures.
Hassim and Ignatiev continued to strip the astronaut. They cut away the temperature regulated undersuit. Stretch fabric webbed with heating pipes.
They peeled away electrodes planted on the cosmonaut’s chest and abdomen to monitor bio-function.
Hassim held the cosmonaut’s head while Ignatiev peeled away the grey communications skull-cap with forceps. A scalp rippled and knotted with tumorous metallic growths.
Hassim winced. He pulled off the outer glove of his suit and examined his forefinger. A smear of blood beneath blue Nitrile rubber.
‘What happened?’ asked Ignatiev.
‘Nothing. I’m all right. I just pricked my finger.’
Ignatiev opened a plastic case. He loaded a vial of liquid into an injector gun.
‘Show me your hand.’
Hassim held out his hand. Ignatiev gripped his wrist, twisted his arm and locked him in a half-nelson.
He fired the hypodermic through the bicep of the Hassim’s bio-suit.