“Let what go?”
The other thugs had moved off, out of earshot. “Korolev. Gagarin. Sabotage.”
“I did.”
“If you had, your father would still be alive.”
He didn’t need to say anything else: At that moment I knew for certain what I had already suspected. “He was working for you. You wanted those men killed.”
“Your father, Yuri, was a marvelous weapon. Technically trained, able to go anywhere, cold-blooded and ruthless when it was necessary. When he died, I wept genuine tears.”
It took all my willpower not to smash him in the face. “He hated you.”
“He feared me. Your father, Yuri, was a serf. He came from a family of serfs who had lived in their own shit for a thousand years. Your mother’s side of the family — my side, a family you share, Yuri — we’re lords. Aristocrats.”
“I thought we were all Communists.”
Uncle Vladimir laughed so hard I thought he would choke. Hoped he would. “Someday. Until that happy day, we use whatever tools we have. A worker is just a tool.”
“I don’t believe it. My father wasn’t an ignorant peasant—”
“True. He was a clever man, as peasants go. Not clever enough to keep himself out of trouble, of course. I had saved him, protected him. He had to do what I wanted.”
There was still a dull ache in my back, but I felt as though I could run. If I found the chance, which didn’t seem likely. “Why was it necessary?”
“What?”
“The death of Korolev, the sabotage, all of it?”
The look on Uncle Vladimir’s face was one I had never seen before — not on his face, at least. It reminded me of Filin, of Lev, even of myself. “Why did you go to Bauman, Yuri?”
“My mother—”
“My sister wanted you there. Because I had gone there.” He raised his head. “I was one of those dreamers once, Yuri. I even met Tsiolkovsky. But the Revolution turned me into… well, into what I am now.”
“I still don’t understand—”
“They were ruining our program, Yuri! Korolev was completely overextended, failing in health, yet no one would refuse him! He had to leave the scene.” It was very clear to me now: Uncle Vladimir was like an earnest college student trying to make a point to a skeptical professor. Old habits took over: God help me, I joined in!
“And Gagarin was a threat from the military.”
“Exactly. They would have made things more efficient, yes, but only for weapons and spy satellites. Russia deserves a Red Moon, Yuri. Mars will be ours, too. The Red Planet, right?”
“But, what about the sabotage, Artemov’s arrest—”
“Artemov needed to know he was no Korolev.” It was true; thanks to the failures, Artemov had only a fraction of Korolev’s power. “And you need to know that you are not your father.”
I stared stupidly as Uncle Vladimir motioned to one of his thugs, who stepped forward with an object wrapped in a cloth.
My pistol. It was dusty, as if someone had dropped it in flour.
“Did you know that this was the weapon that killed your father?” I had been afraid of that; I nodded. “And that it contains your fingerprints as well as his?”
“Yes.”
“Any further… disruptions will force me, as an officer of State Security, to reopen the matter of your father’s suicide. As a murder.” The thug quickly wrapped up the pistol and tucked it away. “The fact that you are a member of the cosmonaut team won’t save you. The only thing that saves you now, Yuri, is that you are my only link to my sister.” He rubbed his shoulders. “It’s getting colder, don’t you think?”
“Fuck you.”
All he did was smile at me, then turn to his team. “Let’s go.”
Within moments, I was alone on that dark street.
I told no one about the encounter, of course. No one would have believed it.
But my back hampered me, and my physical-training instructor reported it to Colonel Belyayev the next morning, and I was summoned to his office. I told him I had slipped on the ice last night.
“Drinking?”
“No, sir.” I don’t know whether he believed me nor not.
“Well, a few days in the hospital should shape you up.”
Remembering Katya’s warning, I almost begged him not to send me to the hospital. “It’s only a bruise,” I said. “It will heal.”
Belyayev hated the military doctors at Star Town, so he was sympathetic. Stilclass="underline" “I have a report here. I’ve got to take some action.”
“Can’t I be put on limited duty for a few days?” Here my lack of military experience showed.
“It would have to be for at least two weeks.”
“I should be fine after two weeks, sir.”
“All right.” He signed the papers.
Which, unfortunately, prevented me from going to Baikonur for the launch of the first Carrier rocket on February 20. So I was not present for the heartbreaking moment when that giant failed a minute after liftoff and had to be destroyed.
53
Vehicle 5L
In early March 1969, the American Apollo 9 crew commanded by McDivitt made a completely successful test of the lunar landing craft. We thought they would press ahead with a lunar landing attempt on Apollo 10, but they stuck to their test program and made plans to send Apollo 10 to test the lunar module in orbit around the Moon. The LM was too heavy to accomplish a landing, anyway, and there were still many problems, such as communications, to be worked out before a landing could be attempted.
At that same time, Military Unit 26266 was reorganized, with Shiborin and me now assigned to its Fourth Directorate for lunar programs, though there was now one less of these: The manned L-1 mission was canceled. The Council of Ministers and the Central Committee — or was this all Uncle Vladimir’s doing? — had realized that a single loop of the Moon by a pair of Soviet cosmonauts would be insufficiently impressive.
All our resources were to be devoted to the E-8 unmanned sample-return mission, and to the L-3 lunar landing program. Even the Soyuz missions were starved for resources to feed L-3; poor Ivan Saditsky’s flight, another rendezvous and docking, this time with the passive craft in orbit first, was postponed to October.
I did as I was told, by Colonel Belyayev, now head of the center’s First Department, and by Colonel Bykovsky, head of the Fourth Directorate under Belyayev. As a member of the Fourth Enrollment, I made up my winter survival training in March as well as my parachute jumping, then entered the last phase of training, spending several weeks learning the basic systems of the Soyuz, the L-3, and the Almaz military space station as not just a test engineer, but a crew member. I was facing final technical and political examinations to take place in July. They would determine my future as a cosmonaut.
I floated through these days and weeks powerless, dazed, even overwhelmed, much as I had been during my first weeks at Bauman, almost nine years in the past. Katya was out of my life — especially when I realized it must have been her phone call that alerted Uncle Vladimir to my presence the night of our last encounter.
And Marina? For most of this time, March, April, and May of 1969, she was out of Moscow on another assignment, courtesy, I assumed, of Uncle Vladimir. I told myself it was all for the best; an association with me could only harm her.
Which is why I was surprised, one night in late May, just after the safe return of America’s Apollo 10 mission, in which astronauts Stafford and Cernan swooped to within twenty-five kilometers of the lunar surface (were they tempted to simply press on, to make the first landing, knowing they would not be able to return home?) to find Shiborin at my door with a note in his hand.