Stuart Kaminsky - Fall of a Cosmonaut

“That’s not right,” said Nina. “About obsessive. ”

Rostnikov had learned to count on his new leg in a way he had been unable to count on the sickly old one. If he managed to place the leg just so, it could actually help him lift, but he still had much to learn about adjusting the leg. He was concerned that there would be some protest this year, claims that the leg was helping him. Rostnikov was prepared for that. He would simply volunteer to participate in all the events for which he had registered on one leg. Since he was only doing what he could with his arms and lying on his back, it might cost him a few pounds, but he would still be very competitive.

“Sarah says that lifting weights is your only vice,” said Laura.

Porfiry Petrovich could not talk. His face was red, and he was doing his breathing as he went to five presses with the enormous weight.

“What’s a vice ?” asked Nina.

“A bad thing. Like sucking your thumb or taking drugs,” Laura explained.

“What’s wrong with lifting weights?” asked Nina, who had only recently stopped sucking her thumb.

“I don’t know everything,” said Laura.

For the first two months the girls had lived with them, they had said almost nothing, trusted no one, and never asked to watch anything on television or go anywhere. Only gradually had they taken to watching Rostnikov lift his weights and listen to American music. And little by little they had come closer and begun to talk.

The girls’ grandmother was still at work at the bakery but would be home soon. She spent all her free time with her grandchildren, listening to their day’s adventures, telling what she had done. Every night she came home with something for each of them, an éclair they could share, their own cookies in the shape of stars, different things.

The girls’ parents had long since left the scene. And it was very likely, though they did not know it, that each girl had a different father. They did look somewhat alike, thin of face and body with clear skin, a small nose, short brown hair, and pink cheeks. They might well turn out to be pretty.

The time when their grandmother had been in prison had been the worst, but they had taken it as just another blow that was their lot in life.

But things were getting better now.

One more, Rostnikov thought, just one more.

The phone was ringing. Laura hurried across the room to where it sat on a table near the sofa.

Rostnikov and Dinah Washington finished at the same time. The weight went back on the rack over “head. He lay there exhausted, breathing deeply.

“When you breathe like that, it looks like there is a melon in your belly,” said Nina, pointing to “abdomen. “And your face turns red like a crayon.”

“I’m pleased that the display provokes your imagination,” said Rostnikov, sitting up and reaching for his towel. His hands were wet now. His palms were red. He still had more to do, and Dinah Washington was well ahead of him.

“It’s Iosef,” said the older girl, holding the phone out. “He says lots of things were flying today, like horses and pots of flowers and balloons.”

“Balloons fly every day,” said Nina.

“Iosef Rostnikov was making a joke,” Laura said with an exaggerated sigh.

Rostnikov reached out his hand for the phone. He had a fifteen-foot extension that could reach anywhere in the room and just far enough into the bedroom so that one could close the door for some privacy.

“Iosef,” he said, taking the phone. “You called me to say that you are packed, ready, and will meet me at Sherametyevo Airport at seven in the morning. Correct?”

“Yes, but …” Iosef began.

“Then there is nothing more to say,” Rostnikov said pleasantly. “I am busy getting ready. We can talk tomorrow.”

He hung up, knowing that his son had understood, that whatever he was going to say, and Rostnikov thought he knew what it was, would be best not spoken on the phone.

Rostnikov had been followed home from Petrovka. He had been followed, in fact, by the same man he had seen in the crowd at Lermontov’s house. The man had been carrying an umbrella. When he had come home, Rostnikov had looked out the window in the kitchen alcove. Another man, also with an umbrella, was standing across the street in the shadow of a doorway.

Sarah appeared at the door of the bedroom, a book in her hand. She was still dressed, but in one of her loose-fitting, comfortable dresses, the orange one with white flowers.

“Who called?” she asked.

“Iosef,” said Nina. “He says horses can fly.”

“But I would advise them not to do so,” said Rostnikov.

Sarah was still well built, red haired and beautiful, with pale unblemished skin. Since her brain surgery five years earlier, she had lost some of the weight it had taken her years to nurture, weight Rostnikov had loved. She had gained back her hair and taken on a knowing smile. Rostnikov once told her that she looked as if she had had a long talk with death and that he had told her that she had too much life in her for him, and so he sent her back to Moscow and her husband.

“I wanted to talk to him,” Sarah said.

“Nina, you know the number?” asked Rostnikov.

“Yes,” she said.

“It is my turn,” said Laura.

“No,” said Rostnikov, wiping his neck with his now sweat-drenched towel. “I remember precisely. On Tuesday, just after dinner, I asked you to call Sasha Tkach for me. You were sitting on the chair at the table doing homework. You were wearing your jeans and a blue T-shirt. Nina was sitting on the sofa, looking at the dinosaur book. She was wearing …”

“It is difficult living with a detective,” said Laura.

“Very,” Sarah confirmed with a smile. “But it has its rewards.”

Rostnikov smiled and moved back to his bench. Dinah Washington had not waited for him. She was selling more love.

Nina dialed.

Rostnikov reset the weights on the bar and wondered briefly if the first man with the umbrella had been the one who murdered Vladimir Kinotskin. He probably had.

The two men, both bachelors, both in their mid-thirties, stood in front of the bar in the town of Brevard, North Carolina, hoping for quite different encounters.

Both men were Russians. Both spoke passable but not fluent English. The move had come abruptly. They had been summoned to the office of their commander at Star City, where they had been assigned since returning to earth from their mission on Mir.

They were not celebrities, though their names were known within the space community. Their jobs were simply to keep up with their technology studies and training in preparation for their next mission.

When they had been summoned, the two men, Misha Sorokin and Ivan Pkhalaze, who had been kept apart since their return to earth, both wondered if this was the moment when the secret they held would end their careers if not their lives.

But the meeting had gone quickly and much to their satisfaction. They were being sent to the United States, immediately, to serve as liaisons with a space-study program at the University of North Carolina, a satellite program near a town called Brevard.

Misha and Ivan had been given a crash course in English and told that the assignment was open-ended. Its conclusion would be determined by consultation with the Americans. Both men were told to be cooperative. American support and money were needed for the construction of the new space station. No mention was made of the secret the men shared. Perhaps, both thought, it has been forgotten, put away, no longer meaningful.

They were, of course, quite wrong.

Within two weeks Misha and Ivan were sharing a house near a waterfall near the small town in North Carolina. Their input, services, and expertise were seldom drawn on by the quartet of three men and a woman who came occasionally to meet with them and even more infrequently to drive them to Asheville or even as far as Chapel Hill for discussions with professors and students.