Leonid restarted the engine, slipped the clutch, and the car lurched another half-meter forward. He could see the other drivers, still in their cars parked ahead of him, watching in their mirrors. At first, there had been laughter, but now their faces, what he could see of them, looked almost bored. His incompetence, it seemed, was only entertaining for so long.
“Would you like if I drove?” asked the driver.
“It would be best if I drove myself,” answered Leonid.
The car lurched forward again.
Leonid rested his head on the steering wheel. Much longer and their escape would fail before it even began. The contingent from Star City would be exiting Giorgi’s family home at any time. The car’s back door unlatched, thunking shut immediately after. The driver’s side door opened. Leonid raised his head. Nadya stood outside, arm extended as a silent instruction for him to exit the car.
“What?” he asked.
“I’ll drive,” said Nadya.
“Do you know how?”
“I know I’m at least as skilled as you. Get out.”
The driver, who could not have understood the conversation in Russian, still laughed. He understood enough.
“That’s why she was the first and you the fifth?” he said. He pointed both fingers up and wiggled them. “To fly to outer space?” The laugh that followed rocked the whole car, and the driver was still shaking with the aftershocks as Leonid, now chuckling himself, ceded the driver’s seat to Nadya. Before Leonid could get back into the car, she started the engine, shifted into gear, and pulled the car away from the curb and several meters forward. She revved the engine and waved out the window for Leonid to catch up. He went to the passenger side and opened the door on the surprised driver.
“Friend, we must borrow your car,” said Leonid. “You can retrieve it at the train station south of the city.” Without counting them, he pulled bills from the stack of rubles Ignatius had provided and gave them to the driver.
The driver did not get out right away, as if he believed Leonid’s Ukrainian had somehow been flawed. He looked at Leonid and then at Nadya, and then a coy grin grew under his mustache. “I see, I see,” he said. He held up the money. “This is too much.”
“For a taxi,” said Leonid. “Or you can ask the woman in the leather jacket for assistance. She’ll return at some point, I’m sure, and will have no trouble getting you to your car.”
“She’s a scary one! I think I’d rather walk.”
“Before, I’d have agreed with you. But I’ve learned that what I think I know is often not the truth. You can trust that woman, maybe more than anyone else.”
The driver glanced at Nadya and then back at Leonid. This time, he did not grin. “Yes, yes. I see what you mean.”
He exited the car. As he walked away, he whistled a tune that reminded Leonid of Giorgi, a simple melody, something that had been hummed in Ukrainian villages for centuries. Leonid got into the car and closed the door, cutting off the song mid-melody.
“Get us away from here,” said Leonid. “A couple streets farther up this road is fine.”
He spread the map out on his lap as Nadya eased the car onto the road, moving alongside the row of black state vehicles. The car lurched to a stop almost immediately. Leonid braced himself against the dashboard.
He spun to Nadya. “I thought you said you could drive.”
She did not acknowledge him, staring instead through the windshield. Mishin and Bushuyev stood in the middle of the road, blocking the car’s path. They came to Leonid’s window and waited for him to roll it down. The glass squeaked.
“What are you doing?” asked Mishin or Bushuyev.
“When did you learn to drive?” asked the other.
They looked at each other in a silent conference, nodded, and then asked at the same time, “Where are you going?”
“Just for a drive,” said Leonid.
“We’ll be leaving soon.”
“Yes,” said Leonid.
“There’s no time for a ride.”
“This is a ride we should have taken a long time ago,” said Nadya.
Mishin and Bushuyev conferred silently once again. Leonid started to roll up the window, but Mishin thrust his arm into the gap before it shut completely.
“We’re so close,” said Mishin. “Finally, after so long, we’re close.”
“The moon is the same size in the sky,” said Leonid. “Mars is still but a dot. All the sacrifices. All the friends burned up like fuel in a rocket, and we’re closer to nothing.”
“Do you blame him?” asked Mishin. Bushuyev stood so close behind that it seemed his head sprouted from Mishin’s shoulder.
“The Chief Designer?” said Leonid. “I used to believe the things he said about a grander purpose, but now I doubt any of it extends beyond himself.”
“He’s not an evil man, Leonid,” said Mishin. “Misguided, maybe. Blinded, sometimes. But not evil. I wouldn’t even be alive if it were not for him.”
Bushuyev took a step back, as if Mishin’s statement needed space.
“I have a hard time imagining the Chief Designer saving a life,” said Nadya. “The score is definitely skewed in the other direction.”
“You’re too young to remember the purges. Do you know how many colleagues Stalin took from us? He feared the intelligentsia even as he needed scientists. The Chief Designer himself… have you not wondered where he got that scar on his head? He spent years in Siberia. He almost died. He witnessed hundreds of people who weren’t so lucky to survive. And then Stalin forgave the Chief Designer, or decided he needed him more than he feared him. And so the Chief Designer returned, and he brought me into OKB-1.
“I worked for the Chief Designer for years. He came to me or Bushuyev first with every problem. He chose us first for every task. But while Bushuyev was promoted to Deputy, I was left in a low position, an assistant. How I used to stay awake at night and wonder what I’d done to offend the Chief Designer! Bushuyev and I still did the same things. We attended the same meetings. We had the same skills. I started to doubt myself and hate the Chief Designer. Sometimes the other way around. Finally, after years, I’d had enough. The General Designer had not yet established OKB-52, but I knew him, and even though I thought him an ass, the General Designer respected me. He offered me a position as his Deputy. No, I didn’t like him even then, but I needed respect more than I needed to respect the man who gave it to me. When I told the Chief Designer I intended to leave OKB-1, though, he cried. He actually cried. He pled with me to stay, and promised me that it would be worth it, and apologized over and over. I’d only ever seen him burst with anger before, so this new emotion stunned me, so much that I said I would stay without understanding why I agreed to it.
“Less than a month later, Stalin died. A week after that, I was promoted to Deputy. You see, my grandfather was Jewish. The Chief Designer knew, from his time in the gulag, that one of the quickest ways to draw Stalin’s wrath was to be of Jewish descent. Half the prisoners were people Stalin perceived to be enemies. The other half simply had the wrong ancestors. Entire Jewish families disappeared. Any prominent Russian who had any measure of Jewish blood was transferred away, never to be heard from again. We were all vaguely aware of this at the time. One cannot pretend ignorance when the problem is so obvious, but we knew better than to talk about it. As someone who was separated from his Jewishness, it never occurred to me that the problem might apply to me. My own ambition, my own pride, would have gotten me killed.
“The Chief Designer did not promote me during Stalin’s lifetime in order to keep me safe. If only he had explained that to me, I wouldn’t have had so hard a time of it, but I choose not to focus on the ways he failed me, when he, without having to, risked himself to protect me.”