I looked up to find my father, Nikolai, approaching. “Papa?”
He was wearing his green uniform, of course, with the three stars of a colonel-general, and his red Hero of the Soviet Union medal. I had not seen him in two weeks. In fact, in those days I rarely saw him more than once a month. He was often traveling on business for the Air Force’s general staff, where he had worked for the past few years. Even when my mother was alive and we all lived together, he was often absent.
To my surprise, he hugged and kissed me. This demonstration from the unusually reserved, severe Colonel-General Nikolai Ribko made me stammer as I explained about Filin, not mentioning Korolev. My father nodded. “I hope you’re not here as a patient,” I said to him.
He smiled as he always did whenever I used phrases that weren’t strictly functional. “I’m in excellent health. I’m visiting Vladimir.”
Vladimir was my uncle, my mother’s brother, an official of State Security. “Is he all right?” That Uncle Vladimir could be hospitalized without my knowing it was no surprise: I was only in his company two or three times a year, and his activities were completely secret.
My father tilted his head to one side and shrugged. “He’s heavy, you know.” This was true: Uncle Vladimir was taller than my father and me, a trait that must have served him well as a young Bolshevik thug, but in late middle age he had grown hugely fat.
My father didn’t look well himself. Normally very confident, even swaggering, he seemed lost, older than his fifty-five years. “Let me get you some tea,” I said.
“What I need is vodka.” That, like the kiss, was also strange: My father only drank vodka when forced to, never by choice.
Nevertheless, he followed me to a table where a pretty nurse tended a pot. “How long is Vladimir supposed to stay here?”
“They’re running more tests. If they don’t find anything new, he will go home tonight.” He practically gulped the tea and slammed down the cup. “I’ll tell him you said hello.” He did not offer to take me to him.
At that moment a pair of younger officers, a colonel and major, both in their thirties, appeared. “Good morning, General!” one of them addressed my father, though with nothing like the deference one would expect from a relatively junior officer. Then I realized why: The young colonel was Yuri Gagarin, our country’s first man in space, a bright-eyed, handsome man whose most notable trait was his small stature. He barely came up to my chin, and I am not tall.
Introductions were made, and I learned that the taller, dark-haired, hawk-nosed and almost aristocratic major was named Ivan Saditsky.
It was a brief encounter. Gagarin and Saditsky were on their way out of the hospital. In moments they were gone, and so, with another hug, was my father.
He had barely disappeared around the corner when Filin emerged from his room, papers in hand. Artemov was not with him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize you were finished.”
“I’m not.” He waved the papers. “There’s so much noise here today.”
“And important visitors.” I told him about my brief encounter with the famous Gagarin.
“Here to check on Korolev, no doubt.”
“Is there any word on his condition?”
He grunted. “No. By my count, he’s been in surgery for five hours.”
Five hours seemed like a long time for a routine procedure. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He told me last week it was a polyp. He’s lucky if that’s all it is, since he’s been working himself to death. He spent time in the camps, too, you know.”
Before I could say more, the door to the operating chamber opened. A man in a bloody surgeon’s gown came out. “Dr. Cherbakov,” Filin said, turning toward him.
Cherbakov ignored him, speaking instead to the pretty nurse who had been serving tea. “Call Katayev again. I need him.” The nurse reached for the telephone and began to dial.
“Why is this is taking so long?” Filin asked Cherbakov, who was lighting a cigarette with trembling hands.
“There are some complications.”
“What kind?”
“A tumor. Where is he?” Cherbakov was more interested in the nurse than in Filin.
The nurse said, “There’s no answer.”
“Damnit, I’ve got a man on the table!”
“He had to drive in from his cottage—”
As Cherbakov turned away, Filin grabbed his arm. “What’s going on?”
“I’m calling in a specialist.” He tugged his arm free and headed to the theater door.
“I’m not through talking to you!”
“Talk to him.” Cherbakov nodded at a man in a gray suit, the hospital administrator, who had suddenly appeared and was now urgently conferring with the nurse.
Before Filin could say anything, the administrator approached him. “You’re Comrade Korolev’s associate? You should know that the original operation was a success. The polyp was removed.”
“Then what is the problem?”
The administrator was sweating. “A tumor was discovered. The size—” He turned to the nurse, who held up both fists. “—Well, very large. That was successfully removed by Dr. Cherbakov and the patient is stabilized.”
“So far, I’ve heard nothing but good news.”
“Unfortunately, the patient continues to hemorrhage.”
“How badly?”
The administrator hesitated a moment too long. Filin got red in the face. “You’re telling me Korolev is in there bleeding, and we’re waiting an hour for this specialist?”
“The government always wants us to call in a specialist in these cases. I can show you the document.”
“Fuck your document. That won’t save you.”
“Katayev is the deputy minister of health. He’s Brezhnev’s personal surgeon.”
“If he’s that good, he should have been doing the operation in the first place!”
With the administrator warned, and the potential accusation stated, an agitated Filin returned to where I was standing, helpless. “Remember what you’ve seen and heard,” he told me. “You are my witness.”
The telephone rang at the nurse’s station. The nurse answered it, handed the phone to the administrator, who then ran to the door of the operating theater. A moment later he emerged with Cherbakov, just as a very polished man of fifty, wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a French suit, arrived from down the hallway.
Filin rose and joined the three men. “Are you Katayev?” he asked.
“Yes,” the new man answered, handing his overcoat to the administrator. From that point on, he completely ignored Filin. “Where are the X rays?”
“Inside,” Cherbakov said.
“I’ll scrub.” He slapped Cherbakov on the back. “Don’t worry, children,” Katayev said. “Your savior is here.”
Filin followed them into the theater, leaving me alone with the administrator and the nurse. Both of them looked at me with a mixture of fear and anger: Until a few moments ago, I was just another worker. Now they had to worry about what I might say.
Minutes later, looking paler than he had when he went in, Filin burst out of the operating theater. The door flew open far and long enough for me to see, inside, a mass of bloody linens and discarded plasma bags piled to overflow in one corner. The floor was slippery with blood.
The patient, of course, was in the glass-walled chamber beyond, hidden by sheets, assistants, and support gear.