“No, it’s the Germans who know about guidance and they’re all living in America,” Yaroslav corrected him glumly. “You weren’t in the war, junior, that’s why you don’t know that! Here in Russia we just blow things up and call it success. At least in my department!” Abruptly, he changed the subject. “You hear anything from Anzhela these days?”
“Not a word,” Aleksei responded. In times past the reference to his ex-wife would have brought a sharp pain; now he just took another long drag on his smoke. “Been months now. She’s probably sleeping with some party official. What of you?”
“I should be so lucky. Ulyana and her damned mother-in-law are just fine, thank you for asking, and there’s no probably about it: they’re both screwing party officials! But at least they’re not here to make my life more miserable than it is. Tikhonravov takes care of that all by himself. But did you know my mother-in-law was bitten by a dog the other day, Aleksei?”
Aleksei grinned, sensing the forthcoming of another prehistoric knee-slapper. “And how is she?”
“Oh, she’s fine. But the dog died.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’ve got to get some new jokes, comrade.”
The sun had crested the horizon, and the concrete structure of the nitrogen plant behind them was glowing with early morning color. A truck rattled by on the road behind them, an old American Studebaker left over from the Lend-Lease program, its six-cylinder engine coughing noisily and emitting clouds of bluish smoke. The vehicle was something called Deuce and a half which was a strange term, but the trucks remained rare and coveted items even today. Eleven years after the end of the war they were still superior to anything ZiS was manufacturing.
To their left, half-hidden by a coarse cluster of scrub and one half-dead tree that seemed to have lost its bark, several crows had congregated, providing a moment of diversion to the gray landscape. “What are they up to?” Yaroslav wondered aloud, picking up a rock and chucking it at the black forms. The crows fluttered but did not leave. “Must be something tasty over there. Come on, Aleksei, let’s go have a look!”
“What do I want to see a dead goat for?” Aleksei complained, following the other as he headed towards the crows. But as the crows leapt into the air, protesting at their approach, it became abruptly clear that their would-be feast was something quite other than a goat.
“Oh hell,” Yaroslav muttered, pulling up short at the sight of a man lying supine in the rocks and scrub, his face obscured by a clump of perekati polya.
“Ebat Kopat!” Aleksei exclaimed, experiencing a nasty start. “Who is it?”
Yaroslav drew a little closer, placing a hand against the trunk of the tree. “Comrade Nikolai, I think.”
“Is he asleep?” Aleksei peered around the tree, trying to get a better look at the man’s face.
The man was obviously dead. Yet he appeared peaceful in death and there were no signs of violence. He wore a gray overcoat, as did they all, and his boots were covered in a patina of dust, as if he had been walking. Close beside him lay an empty bottle of vodka; his eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the lightening sky, but the crows had begun their feast and one of the eyeballs was missing, leaving only a bloody socket.
“Don’t imagine so,” Yaroslav murmured as they stood looking down at the body of their erstwhile companion. “What kind of fool comes out here to drink himself to death?”
“Comrade Nikolai, obviously,” Aleksei replied sourly, running a hand over his chin. “I think he definitely got the wrong end of that deal. We’re in for the high-jump now, Yarik.”
“KGB…unless we leave and say we didn’t see him.” Yaroslav scanned the steppe nervously.
Aleksei shook his head. “They’ll see our tracks. Either way we’re in for an interrogation.” He cursed.
“How bad could it be?” Yaroslav muttered. “We didn’t kill him. The fool drank himself to death. We just found him.”
“I’d rather not be answering some chekist’s nosy questions as to what we were doing out here,” he replied curtly. “What were you doing off the road? Where were you going? Why were you going there? Who were you meeting? What were you talking about? Who is your sister screwing? Damn Nikolai anyway. I wonder how long he’s been dead.”
“Who knows? He must have come out here last night sometime…” Yaroslav looked around, deep in thought. “Don’t see anything we can do about it now,” he said finally. “It’s obvious someone was here looking at his damn corpse, and it won’t take them too long to find out it was us.”
Aleksei turned to examine the shape of the nitrogen plant behind them, shielding his eyes from the rising sun. “He worked over there with you, didn’t he?”
“That’s right. Some kind of propulsion engineer.”
“Do you know much about him?”
Yaroslav shook his head. “No, not much. Good man for cigarettes and vodka, but not much of an engineer and a hell of a one for griping. Can’t imagine he’ll be missed much.”
“Any engineer is going to be missed on this damn project,” Aleksei grumbled.
“You’re right, of course,” the other sighed glumly. “And that means some nasty questions for us sooner or later. Come on. We might as well report it. And Aleksei? Forget about these smokes. The KGB doesn’t need to know where they came from.” Yaroslav turned and headed away across the steppe, angling northwest towards the cluster of buildings.
Aleksei knelt beside the body for a moment, thoughtfully, and then followed.
Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
“Spasibo, Aleksei. You did the right thing to tell me immediately. I will look into the matter.”
Grigor Fedoreev was anxious. His subordinate appeared at the door of his drab office with disturbing news, and he now had a visit to make to the Director of Security—if possible, before someone else brought the same news. To delay for even a moment with news of this magnitude would be inexcusable.
He shoved an untidy pile of papers aside and reached for the black telephone, dialing several numbers. A voice answered. “Praporshchik Timofeev,” he said quietly, glancing up at Aleksei, who had risen from his hard chair to leave. “One of our comrades has suffered a mishap…half a kilometer west of the nitrogen plant. Beside a tree, was it, Aleksei? Yes. Take the body to the infirmary…good.”
Grigor rose, shoving his chair back. “So the wheels begin to turn, Aleksei. You have made your report, now I must make mine.”
“I hope it will not be difficult for you, comrade Fedoreev. I am sorry to have to bring you this news so early in the morning.”
Grigor placed a hand on the young scientist’s shoulder, escorting him from the office and into the hallway of the MIK-2-1 Building. The corridor was already filling with researchers and secretaries on their ways to various departments to begin their work. “Bad news seems to have no sense to wait until after the morning coffee. I can face an ass chewing with the Director of Security, or the Comrade Chief Designer over our apparent lack of progress. Personally I prefer the Director of Security. What are you working on today?”
“Testing the new circuit boards we received last week,” Aleksei replied, moving closer to Grigor as a scientist passed carrying a load of papers. “Over half of them have tested bad so far.”
Grigor scowled. “Yes, I heard from Vadim. I am not pleased, Aleksei. You will give me a report on the final numbers, please. Include the lot numbers as well.”
Aleksei nodded. Grigor watched him leave for a moment. It wasn’t Aleksei’s fault the subcontractors were shipping faulty boards, though Grigor was tempted to dress him down for it. Still, it wasn’t Aleksei’s business to be redesigning poorly manufactured components. Grigor could wish it was though, especially when it came time for the department heads to meet with the Comrade Chief Designer. Or worse, when he showed up and demanded a progress report. This had not been a good summer, and they were far behind schedule.
But there were other matters needing his attention this morning. Quickly he turned and heade
d down the hallway, the soles of his shoes making no sound on the green tiles of the floor. The smell of brewing coffee was in the air and he wished for a cup, but had no time to stop for one. The Director of Security’s office was a ways away across the compound and he needed to be there as quickly as possible.
Responding curtly to the greetings of his engineers, he left the Assembly building and headed east across the gravel compound towards a low, featureless concrete structure housing the local offices of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti. His feet crunched on the gravel and the crisp morning air was welcome, smelling of dust and sage and the ever-present fuel oil. It was going to be a clear day and the launch gantry farther to the east should have been undergoing preparations for a test launch, but that wouldn’t be happening as long as long as the project was beset by poor work from the subcontractors. The flame trench down in the launch pit hadn’t been finished either. At least, he consoled himself, his was not the only department plagued with these maddening issues. Most of the departments were suffering from poor quality parts this year, a situation that would have to be turned around if the project were to proceed on schedule. Schedule was a theme one heard a great deal from the Comrade Chief Designer these days. But the quality of the parts that would make up Object-D and the rocket designed to lift it into orbit were issues he could do little to remedy. He hoped the Comrade Chief Designer saw it that way too.
The office of the Director of Security was even more austere than were the offices of the researchers, perhaps by design. A desk, a telephone, a few hard wooden chairs for visitors, a more comfortable chair for the director. Except for the requisite photographs of Politburo members, the walls were bare and the new plaster was already cracking. The few papers visible on the desk were not covered by scrawled calculations or bad words as they were in other offices. A small credenza stood under the single window overlooking the launch gantry, mostly bare, supporting an antique coffeepot noisily perking and a few paper cups. A radiator in the corner wasn’t putting out much heat and the office was cold, but the Director was a large man and he might have preferred it that way.
The Director of Security, Piotr Vasilevich Kalyugin, was a short man, balding and needing a larger pair of trousers than the ones he wore. An apparatchik of the Second Chief Directorate, the arm of the KGB responsible for internal security, he was a man of indefinably threatening presence. Conversations tended to cease when Piotr Vasilevich Kalyugin entered a room, and men tended to remember business they had elsewhere. The dark eyes fixed on Grigor as he entered the office without announcement were sharp and keen, and the expensive wristwatch on the Director’s arm bespoke a man accustomed to power and privilege. “Ah. Comrade Grigor. Come in. I had a feeling you’d be coming to see me. Close the door behind you.”
Grigor complied, arranging his white lab coat so that it didn’t look so rumpled. “So you’ve heard, comrade Director?”
The Director grunted in assent, turning in his chair to fetch a paper cup and splash coffee into it. “Here, Grigor Petrovich. You look like you could use a cup.”
Grigor nodded gratefully.
“Oh, sit down,” Kalyugin muttered, swiveling back around with a cup of coffee that he pushed across his desk towards Grigor. “You were in the 70th, for God’s sake. A genuine hero of the Party! That makes you one of us. Besides that you’re my friend. You needn’t be so nervous around me.”
Grigor nodded. His involvement with the 70th NKVD Rifle Regiment during the defense of Moscow was considerably less heroic than Kalyugin’s statement implied—he’d actually been driving a truck while the German artillery dropped 88’s and 150’s haphazardly around the place—but he’d received a medal from the Party and stature within the Ministry. Which allowed him to walk without announcement into the Director’s office and converse with him as an equal. “I know, Piotr Vasilevich. I think I pick up the habits of the men sometimes.” He sipped his coffee gingerly, relaxing and savoring the bitter taste.
“Good habits for them,” Kalyugin grunted, “but not necessary for you. Because you are my friend and an apparatchik, I tell you things I don’t tell others.”
“So you heard of comrade Nikolai then…”
“Mm. Just got a call from what’s his name, Ruslan over in Propulsion. I take it you sent someone to fetch the bastard?”
“Called Timofeev.”
Kalyugin lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair, taking a deep drag and exhaling a cloud of bluish smoke at the ceiling. “Good. He was one of ours, did you know that?”
Grigor frowned. “Nikolai? I didn’t know.”
“Not many did.”
Grigor considered the Director’s statement for a few quiet moments, staring out the window at the silent gantry. “It’s strange, comrade Director, but I find myself wondering if he was killed. Had you not told me he was an apparatchik, I don’t know that I would have thought that. You don’t think so, do you?”
Kalyugin shrugged. “I was just starting to consider that when you walked in, Grigor Petrovich. I suppose it’s possible, although my list of suspects is a little short at the moment.”
“Aleksei was of the opinion he drank himself into a coma and then froze.”
“Yes, I got that same story from Ruslan. I’d like very much to believe it. He had a hell of a drinking problem.” He sighed. “But was his worse than anyone else’s? Honestly, I don’t know what to think at the moment.”
“Maybe he pissed in someone’s porridge, comrade Kalyugin. That happens around here, especially this year when things are not going well on the project. I recall a rumor going around a few months ago that he was queer. Anything to that?”
The director nodded. “Probably queer as a goose, but it was never proved and I am told this project is too important to send men willy-nilly to the gulag. Besides, the gulags aren’t what they once were. So did he have a lover’s quarrel and someone got him loaded then left him to die?”
Grigor grinned. “I prefer to remain ignorant of what goes on down at the motor pool late at nights.”
“As you should. It’s one thing to be queer in Moscow,” Kalyugin grumbled. “Half the Central Committee swings that way, by Lenin. But out here in the sticks I’d as soon they kept it in their pants. I tell you, Grigor Petrovich, that complicates any situation you like.”
“So what was comrade Nikolai doing here?”
“Mainly bad research. Oh, he was a legitimate researcher, just not a very good one and he was on our payroll. We had to lean a little on the damned Comrade Chief Designer to take him on, that bastard Tikhonravov was unwilling to make the decision by himself. He was keeping an eye on Static Test and a couple other departments for us.”
“So the Comrade Chief Designer knew he was KGB?”
“Yes, and Tikhonravov.” The Director rose and stood by the window, watching the empty gantry. “These are not good days to be in the KGB, Grigor Petrovich,” he mused. “When comrade Beria was around, we were big men. We stuck our pricks up whoever’s ass we felt like. But now comrade Khrushchev has come to the remarkable conclusion that comrade Stalin really was a bastard after all, as if that was news, and comrade Beria is pushing up daisies somewhere. Now we must call those years “the excesses of the cult of personality,” if you please. Instead of shipping that fat fart Korolev back to Kolyma where he belongs, we must kiss his ass and call him “Comrade Chief Designer,” by Lenin, and play nursemaid to his flock of seditious schoolboys. And all because comrade Khrushchev has ordered us to improve rocket technology.”
In fact, that order had come immediately after an alert radar operator from the Voyska Protivovozdushnoy Oborony in Leningrad had made a panicked call to headquarters that a slow-moving, extremely high-altitude aircraft had just overflown his position. They had not been able to identify the aircraft nor was anyone aware that such a vehicle had been developed, for it was common knowledge that conventional fuels boiled off at extreme altitudes. Quite a lot of head-scratching and shouting ensued as Moscow realized th
at all their current rocket and aviation technology allowed them to do about it was alert Pravda.
“I think the Comrade Chief Designer spent time there already, didn’t he?”
“Not enough, if you ask me.” Kalyugin smoked in silence for a while, staring out the window at the bleak Kazakhstan countryside. “So we keep our hands off his operation and give him more than enough rope to hang himself and the Central Committee twice over. And instead of launching our weapons, we launch this damned Object-D.”
“It’s an important project, comrade Director.”
“I’m sure it is, Grigor Petrovich, I’m sure it is! But I will tell you something. The Americans are placing their nuclear weapons more places than anyone knows—they have one in Morocco, would you believe that? Our comrades in Egypt would love to learn that. No, we’re not positive, but it certainly looks that way. And the damned Jews either have one of their own or are not far from it. We are beset on all sides, and we play with space toys.”
“Morocco? Truthfully?”
“Got some reports from one of our podstava of some suspicious goings-on down there. And with the American’s new long-range bomber, this B-52, they can carry it right into downtown Moscow and drop it down comrade Khrushchev’s privy. How’s that for a pretty scenario?”
“Has the Central Committee raised a fuss about it?”
Kalyugin shook his head. “No. They dare not. For one thing, the Ministry is not certain, and to announce our suspicions would be to give away secrets of our intelligence-gathering capabilities. For the moment we keep our suspicions to ourselves.”
He returned to his desk, sitting heavily in his dark leather chair. “And now Nikolai.”
“What of the possibility that he was killed? Anything to that?”
“I’ll order an autopsy of his body. But if he was,” the director mused, “I can’t fathom a motive.”
Grigor considered this in silence for a moment. “We are secure here, are we not, comrade Director?”
Kalyugin fixed his confederate with a narrow eye. “You mean from the Americans and British or here in this office? In this office, yes. At this facility, well, that is why this site was selected. It’s in the middle of nowhere. We are close to nothing. This is the most god-forsaken patch of dirt in the entire Soviet Union, including Siberia. How are they to plant their spies among us?” He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and lit a second. “They would love to see what we have here. Not Object-D, though.”
A Cold Flight To Nowhereville Page 3