Fatal Orbit

by Tom Grace

  “Shit.”

  “It gets more interesting. I don’t know the substance of their conversation with Fleetwood, but during their ride back to the embassy, we captured a phone conversation between them and Jackson Barnett, the director of the CIA. In addition to looking at satellites, Barnett is sending them to Moscow to talk with a Russian, a man named Zadkine, who was responsible for deorbiting the Mir space station. There apparently was a problem with Mir that relates to something Barnett referred to as target practice.”

  “Keep on them, and assemble a team. I don’t like where this inquiry is heading.”

  Peng and his driver watched the BMW SUV glide past the U.S. Embassy. They’d spotted it trailing after Kilkenny and the woman now identified as Roxanne Tao on the A23 heading into London from Gat-wick Airport. The driver of the vehicle had expertly maintained subtle contact with his quarry, and was noticeable only because Peng had the advantage of observing the movements of both vehicles. The Chinese agent and his driver took full advantage of the second tail, using it to further mask their own surveillance.

  Outside Lloyd’s of London, Peng photographed one of the men from the second car and transmitted the images to a ministry computer in the embassy. Whoever the man was, Peng noted in his report to the ministry later that evening, he carried the appropriate credentials to gain admittance and freely move about inside the Lloyd’s building. The man had also visited the same area of the trading floor as Kilkenny and his associate, an area the Lloyd’s of London website identified as serving the insurance needs of the satellite industry.

  Peng’s report ended with some ticketing information gleaned from an airline network, indicating the American investigation was now heading toward Moscow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  KOROLEV, RUSSIA

  AUGUST 14

  The midmorning flight out of Heathrow put Tao and Kilkenny on the ground at Sheremetyevo 2 Airport outside Moscow at four in the afternoon. Regardless of what their watches said, their internal clocks were still struggling with the shift of eight time zones. Both had slept as much as possible to moderate the effects of jet lag.

  As in London, Barnett’s advance calls greased their arrival and in little more than the time it took to deplane, they were in another embassy car cruising down the northern arc of the Moscow Ring Road.

  The driver brought them to a modest dacha in the northern periphery of Korolev, a small city on the outskirts of the Russian capital. The house was a simple, one-story wooden structure with a detached outbuilding. A battered Giguli sat parked on the gravel drive and a mature grove of birch and pine covered the property. The dense foliage visually isolated the home from its distant neighbors.

  “Will you be needing a translator?” the driver asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Kilkenny replied. “We were told he speaks English.”

  As they approached the front door, Kilkenny and Tao heard jazz playing from behind the house. The followed the music to the outbuilding at the end of the driveway.

  “The Bird—Charlie Parker,” Tao said, picking out enough of the melody. “The man has taste.”

  “Grin’s tried to turn me on to jazz, but so far it hasn’t stuck. Says I’m a philistine.”

  “He’s right.”

  Kilkenny ignored the jibe and knocked on the door. The music quieted and Kilkenny knocked again. Footsteps followed and the door opened a few inches. The man eyed them warily, but said nothing.

  “Yuri Zadkine?” Kilkenny asked.

  “Da.”

  “Tim Heshel sends his regards.”

  As Zadkine considered what Kilkenny had said, his face softened and he opened the door a little further. “You are Americans?”

  “Yes. You weren’t told we were coming?”

  “Someone may have tried to contact me. Phone rings, but I don’t always hear it.”

  “May we come in?” Tao asked.

  “Oh, I forget my manners. Please.”

  The interior of the outbuilding contained a large open space on the ground floor and what Kilkenny presumed was an attic storage room above. The room was large enough to shelter two cars, but Zadkine had it equipped with an array of tools and equipment.

  Zadkine pulled a pair of wooden folding chairs off hooks in the wall and set them down for his visitors, then perched himself atop a low stool at the workbench. He was dressed in worn coveralls and his hands were stained with grease. The outbuilding had the musty metallic odor of an old machine shop.

  “Sit, sit,” Zadkine said as he picked up a blackened piece of metal from the workbench and began rubbing it with a solvent-soaked rag. The fumes were strong, but Kilkenny noted thankfully that the windows were open. “So why has my old friend Heshel sent you to see me?”

  “It has to do with Mir,” Tao said softly. Heshel had warned them it was a sore subject for the proud engineer.

  “What else could it be? Heshel was there. And he stood up for me; not that it did any good. Officially, Mir came down perfectly—a triumph of Russian science.”

  Kilkenny glanced at Tao, nodding for her to continue. “Sir, we want to know what really happened when Mir came down.”

  “All hell broke loose is what happened,” Zadkine replied bitterly.

  “Did something hit Mir?” Kilkenny asked.

  Zadkine stopped cleaning the part and glared at Kilkenny defensively. During the internal review of the Mir reentry, Zadkine had espoused the theory that the space station had been struck. The physics of the matter seemed to bear him out—to indicate that only a collision with an object of significant mass could have pushed the station into an uncontrolled spin. Those presiding over the inquiry—political appointees rather than scientists—rejected Zadkine’s argument in the belief that such a collision was a statistical improbability. In the end, they found Zadkine responsible for the near-disaster and his career in the Russian space industry was finished.

  “Heshel said something happened during the final deorbit burn,” Kilkenny continued. “That Mir began tumbling. What could have caused that?”

  “According to the review board, the cause was my incompetence. You were in charge, Yuri,” Zadkine ranted. “You fucked up and the thing almost smashed into Chile, Yuri. Now I’m out on my ass. No job, no pension. Disgraced.”

  Kilkenny looked at Zadkine squarely. “The review board wasn’t there. You were. You’re an engineer, tell me what you think happened to the station?”

  Zadkine continued to stew, his eyes darting back and forth between Kilkenny and Tao. He found no sign of accusation in his visitors; their curiosity appeared genuine and even urgent.

  “Why do you want to know about this bit of ancient history?” Zadkine asked, his tone softening.

  “Liberty,” Kilkenny replied.

  Zadkine closed his eyes, saddened. Then he leaned forward and collected his thoughts.

  “Mir was in last orbit. Up to this point, everything went well. I called for final burn from Progress.”

  “What is Progress?” Tao asked.

  “Unmanned spacecraft. We use them to send supplies up to station and bring back garbage. Last one went up empty to bring station back. Progress engines fired, Mir slowed down and began to enter upper atmosphere. Then all electrical systems on station failed and we lost contact. We switched over to computers on Progress and discovered station was tumbling end over end. When it finally entered the atmosphere, its trajectory was far outside target area. Several large pieces of station landed just off coast of South America.”

  “Couldn’t hitting the atmosphere have caused Mir to tumble?” Tao asked.

  “Given the station’s configuration, yes, but Mir began spinning before it entered the atmosphere. Had we not fired Progress’ engines, the station would have remained in orbit for at least another week. I have studied the telemetry, and I am convinced that one of the modules—either Kvant-2 or Kristall—was hit with great force. The collision disrupted station’s electrical system and started spin.”

  “Ca
n we have a copy of the data and your analysis?” Kilkenny asked. “I’m certain the U.S. government would value your insights as an expert consultant and compensate you appropriately.”

  Zadkine lowered his head, but couldn’t hide the flush of embarrassment that reddened his face. Of all that he’d lost after Mir, the respect of others for his abilities and his experience as an engineer was by far the most painful.

  “If my analysis will help, of course you are welcome to it. But how is what happened to Mir relevant to Liberty?”

  “We’re not sure that it is,” Tao replied.

  A faint knowing smile curled the ends of Zadkine’s mouth. “Ah, but I sense there is hypothesis you are trying to test. Unfortunately, my government was unwilling to investigate mine.”

  “How could they?” Kilkenny asked.

  “Recover the evidence,” Zadkine answered matter-of-factly. “Six large pieces of Mir lie in ocean off coast of Chile. Just looking at what’s left of station should be enough to determine whether or not it was struck.”

  Tao looked at Kilkenny, who nodded back. It was a good suggestion. Zadkine caught the exchange and hoped he correctly understood its meaning.

  “Something I find odd, though,” Zadkine continued. “The shell of low Earth orbit surrounding the planet is a very large volume of space, which makes the probability of two objects running into each other very small—at least that was the argument used against me.”

  “Very small doesn’t mean impossible,” Tao countered.

  “No, it doesn’t. But the probability of two spacecraft being destroyed in accidental collisions in so short a span of time, well that is something for mathematicians to chew on, eh? Being a product of Soviet system, I find myself wondering if a deliberate action has perhaps overcome the improbabilities.”

  Looking for a way to deflect this line of reasoning, Kilkenny caught sight of the part in Zadkine’s hands and the collection of pieces on the workbench.

  “What are you rebuilding”

  “A piece of history,” Zadkine replied. “This was my hobby, until I lost my job. Now, it helps to keep me sane. I just started work on this one, but, here, showing is better than telling.”

  Zadkine set the nearly clean gear on the workbench with the other engine parts and motioned for Kilkenny and Tao to follow him to the back of the building. There he pulled a protective tarp off an antique motorcycle.

  The bike’s rigid tubular frame and wide split tank were painted light green with a dull matte finish. The sides of the tank bore the bright-red star of the Red Army. A tin box off the right front fender held ammunition, the leather sleeve on the left was for the rider’s rifle. The polished steel of a 45°V Twin engine glistened beneath the tank and fish-shaped exhaust tubes ran along the bottom of the frame straight back.

  “May I?” Kilkenny asked.

  Zadkine nodded.

  Kilkenny grasped the handgrips and climbed into the brown leather saddle. The spartan machine was nothing like the high-tech motorcycles he was used to. Instrumentation consisted solely of a speedometer mounted over the center of the fuel tank and switches for lights and ignition. Along the left side of the split tank, Kilkenny saw the gearshift set in a notched slot guide. He experimented, trying to imagine steering the bike one-handed while changing gears.

  “How do you shift?”

  “Carefully,” Zadkine replied knowingly, “This is called a suicide shift, because you have to take your hand off the grip to use it.”

  “Definitely not for the faint of heart.”

  In the center of the tank, Kilkenny found an engraved plate listing the daily instructions for maintaining the motorcycle. The instructions were in English.

  “Is this American?”

  “Da. 1942 Harley-Davidson WLA. Under Lend-Lease program, your President Roosevelt sent many motorcycles to Russia to fight Germans in Great Patriotic War. This one was still in running condition when it was brought to me a few months ago.”

  “It looks like it just rolled off the assembly line.”

  Zadkine beamed. “I have a lot of time on my hands these days. That collection of parts over there is 1939 Zÿndapp, German army motorcycle. Legend says it was captured at Stalingrad.”

  “What are you going to do with them?” Tao asked.

  “Oh, they’re not mine. I just restore them. They belong to a Canadian who does much business in Moscow. A business associate presented him with one of the first motorcycles I restored and he fell in love. On his last visit, he rode off with a 1942 Indian. He was a very happy man.”

  “I can see why. You do beautiful work.”

  “I must,” Zadkine replied, “this is now my livelihood.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Unger’s driver, Nikita, had no trouble following the embassy car to Korolev, but this was not a testament to the man’s tradecraft. The embassy car made no effort to shake off or even detect their surveillance. Instead, the driver’s biggest problem had been to remain unnoticed as traffic thinned on the rural roads of the Moscow suburb.

  Leaving the driver and car down the road, Unger approached Zadkine’s home through the thick woods accompanied by Stefan and Jurg. All three of the local men he’d hired were former KGB, now plying their trade as security consultants to the Russian mafiya. None had struck Unger as exceptionally bright—why else would the Russians have let them go?—but their current employer vouched for their ability to follow orders. The Russians were dressed in slacks with open collared shirts and loose-fitting jackets, which concealed their weapons. Unger was dressed similarly, but with a sense of style that left him looking less like a thug.

  Stefan crept close to the outbuilding. Using hand signals, he indicated that three people were inside. The embassy driver had remained with his car and was seated behind the wheel reading a book.

  Unger signaled for the Russians to remain in place. The two men nodded. He pulled a Stechkin APS fitted with a sound suppressor out of his shoulder holster and chambered a round. Then, with his arms held behind his back, he casually walked up the gravel drive toward the car and rapped on the window. The driver hit a button to lower the glass and Unger bent to face him.

  “Excuse me,” Unger said in Russian, “but my car has broken down and—”

  As he spoke, Unger flipped the safety off, swung the pistol up, and fired. A nine-millimeter bullet cratered the young man’s face, the dampened sound of the gunshot completely masked by wind rustling through the birches. The driver slumped back in his seat, his head hanging limply to one side.

  Cover the outbuilding, Unger signaled, then he moved on to the house.

  The interior was small and cluttered with stacks of books and engineering journals. In a corner of the sitting room, he saw a small table covered with a collection of framed photographs. Some were of a family—a young Zadkine with a woman and young girl—others of just the woman.

  Unger swept the other rooms, but found the house empty. It appeared that Zadkine lived alone. According to the very brief report hastily generated by his people, the engineer was a widower of several years and father of one child—a daughter—who resided in Denmark. Unger was pleased to see the old man hadn’t taken up with anyone else.

  In a back room, he found a computer surrounded by reams of printouts. One wall of the room was covered by images of Mir and diagrams describing impact angles and trajectories. An engineering post-mortem.

  Among the clutter, Unger saw a half-consumed pack of cigarettes, an ashtray, and a cheap plastic lighter. He flicked the lighter. A tall colorful flame leaped up from the igniter. Flames quickly spread across the paper that littered the room, consuming years of work and turning it into ash.

  Not sharing Kilkenny and Zadkine’s enthusiasm for vintage motorcycles, Tao decided to step out of the stuffy garage for a breath of air. Just outside, she detected a faint acrid scent, then saw the trails of black smoke leaking out of Zadkine’s house.

  “Fire!” she shouted. “The house is on fire!”

&n
bsp; A bullet splintered the wooden door frame just inches from Tao’s head. She dropped as a second shattered a dirty pane in the door, jagged fragments of glass raining down on her.

  “Get down!” Tao shouted as she scrambled on elbows and knees back inside the garage.

  Ignoring Tao’s warning, Zadkine rushed to the doorway, fire the only thought in his mind. Kilkenny leaped off the motorcycle, moving to intercept him. At the doorway, Zadkine stopped, then staggered back a few steps before dropping onto his knees. Kilkenny caught him as he crumpled backward and dragged him out of view. Two crimson blooms spread in the fabric of Zadkine’s shirt. He grabbed hold of Kilkenny’s arm, staring up at him urgently.

  “Mir, Liberty,” Zadkine’s voice was low, his breathing coming in labored gasps. “You suspect … weapon?”

  “Yes.”

  The look of relief on Zadkine’s face caught Kilkenny by surprise.

  “Considered possibility myself … after Mir destroyed,” Zadkine rasped, his collapsing lung filling with fluid. “Did not offer as explanation. Unthinkable.”

  What are those fools doing? Unger thought when he saw his hired gunmen moving toward the outbuilding, pistols drawn.

  Unger fired a shot through the grille of the embassy car, then two more through the tires on the driver’s side of the car. The Crown Victoria slumped to one side and a puddle of radiator fluid oozed onto the ground beneath it. Unger inflicted similar damage to Zadkine’s car, then moved to the rear of the outbuilding.

  Peng reached the edge of the clearing surrounding the home just as two men opened fire. He couldn’t tell if Tao was injured, but the old man who’d appeared seconds after her in the doorway clearly was. In the area in front of the house, the man he’d spotted following Kilkenny in London disabled the two cars parked in the drive, then moved around the far side of the house.

  Kilkenny must be close to discovering the truth, Peng quickly deduced. I cannot allow my investigation to stop here.

  Reaching inside his jacket, he pulled out a pistol.