Stuart Kaminsky: Fall of a Cosmonaut

Elena was plump, pretty, serious, and smart; smarter, Sasha thought, than Sasha Tkach. He had seniority, but she was two years older than he and more likely to get ahead somewhere in the Ministry of Interior, which oversaw all criminal investigation. At first, when he came to this realization about Elena, he had been sullen and felt sorry for himself. That was no longer the case. He belonged exactly where he was. Promotion meant responsibility and greater vulnerability. He had no passion for power, and the greater salary was not sufficient incentive.

Sasha was dressed, ready. With the money from Maya’s salary, which was larger than Sasha’s, not coming in, Lydia had found ways to try to buy her son’s happiness. She had urged money on him, far too much, to pick up a few things on the way home if he ran into them. She would not ask for the change. She found other ways. At first he had been reluctant to take the money, but he had soon found himself accepting, wondering if he was being lured into an emotional debt to his mother, a debt that he would be unable to escape. However, that easy money did provide compensations.

He would take two sweets from his mother’s bakery out of the refrigerator and buy a large coffee from the nearest kiosk today. She was snoring still as he eased out of the bedroom door, deciding not to close it.

Luck was with him as he opened the refrigerator, selected something small and cakelike, covered with chocolate, and a French croissant, dropped them in a brown paper bag, and headed across the room to the front door.

Suddenly the snoring stopped. Sasha could either break for the door and hope she would not hear him leave or move slowly while she got up, hoping to make it out of the room before his mother came through the partially open door.

Neither turned out to be possible.

“Sasha? I hear you. I have to talk to you.”

He was doomed.

She sat in her small office, looking at her cooling cup of tea. It was a bleak, white-walled office. That was the way it was supposed to be. It had no windows. That was the way it was supposed to be. The door was closed. That was the way it had to be.

The woman’s desk was almost completely clear and the dark wood shone with neatly applied polish and without a bump, mark, or scratch. The only object on the desk was her cup of tea in a simple white porcelain cup. The tea strainer had been removed, the grounds dumped into the wastebasket.

The only outside distraction this early in the morning had been a rattle of windows down the hallway outside of her office. She thought she heard the sound of rain on glass and was sure that there had been lightning and thunder. The weather had never intruded this deeply into the Center for the Study of Technical Parapsychology. She had waited till it passed.

Now she tried to clear her mind as she sat, tried to relax, used her techniques for concentrating on nothing. She hummed the single note she had chosen and paid attention only to it. After seconds or minutes, she didn’t know which, she let her eyes fall slowly to the cup. It was nothing. Some object. She continued the hum. A circle of nothingness surrounded her hum, and deep within she let the power unto itself reach out to the cup. Something was happening. She tried not to let thought enter her being. The cup. She gently allowed the power to engulf the cup almost lovingly. She waited, distanced, for the power to move the cup. It would not take much of a move, just a distinct small motion, an indisputable motion.

And then her meditation broke, as she knew it would. Thoughts, fears, reality crept in, and the murder of the day before danced before her. Sergei Bolskanov at the table in his laboratory in his white laboratory coat. He had been listening to a CD, Mozart perhaps? He had turned. There was no look of horror or surprise on his face. There was a look, perhaps, of pleasant surprise. And then the hammer came out and fell hard upon Bolskanov, the claw side digging into his beard just below his lips. Bolskanov tried to rise, ward off the attack, but he was bewildered, dazed. The second blow dug deeply into his forehead. He yelped like a dog and tumbled back. No longer able to protect himself, blood spurting, he ripped off his glasses and flung them into the corner of the room.

The blows continued. Four, five, six, until there was no doubt that the heap of blood and flesh on the floor was no longer alive. The hammer was wiped on the bottom of the dead man’s blood-spattered white smock, dropped on the floor, and kicked across the room to rest next to the pair of glasses.

And so, she asked herself, reaching out for the cup of tea, how can one perform an experiment with such thoughts, such memories, such images?

Her hands trembled but only slightly as she lifted the cup and took a sip. Tepid but with its flavor still intact.

The police were coming back. It would be a long day.

“Tsimion Vladovka.”

A pad was open before him. His pencil was in his right hand, his alien leg stretched out under the table at a slight angle so it would not touch Yaklovev’s foot.

“Tsimion Vladovka,” the Yak repeated, leaning over, head cocked at a slight angle, hands folded on the table as he looked at Porfiry Petrovich for a reaction. “Do you know him? Does the name mean anything to you?”

“It is vaguely familiar.”

“He was a cosmonaut,” said the Yak evenly.

Rostnikov nodded, his eyes on the director, waiting for the point to come as it inevitably must. “There have been many cosmonauts,” he said.

“Many,” agreed the Yak.

Rostnikov reached for the mug of coffee before him and drank slowly, waiting.

“You remember the Mir flight of perhaps a year ago, the one in which the three cosmonauts came down prematurely?”

Rostnikov did not particularly remember.

“There was a problem during that particular flight.”

Rostnikov said nothing.

“Yes,” the Yak went on. “There were always problems. But this one prompted an early change of crews and the rather unceremonious return to earth of the three cosmonauts on board. Vladovka was one of the cosmonauts. He is missing. National Security has been unable to find him. The Space security force has been unable to find him. Military Intelligence has been unable to find him. We have been given the task of finding him.”

Rostnikov nodded, let his eyes take in the thick file that lay behind the protective wall of the director’s arms, and then began to draw without thinking of what he might be drawing.

“And? …”

“You personally are to find him,” said the Yak.

“Question. Why does he have to be found?”

“He has information about our space program which might embarrass us, which should not be allowed to fall into the hands of other nations. He may have been kidnapped. He may have defected. He may have committed suicide somewhere, or he may simply have gone mad and run away.”

“And when I find him?”

“If he is alive, you are to inform me of where he is, be sure he remains there, and leave the rest to me, but if you believe he is trying to leave the country, take him into custody and bring him to me. It is better for you, better for me, if you do not ask him about the information he has. And it is essential that if he tries to tell you, you do not allow him to do so. There are secrets it is not safe to keep.”

The Yak unclenched his fingers, opened his arms, and slid the folder over to Rostnikov. Rostnikov drew it in past his coffee cup, opened it, and found the photograph of a very serious dark man with the face of a peasant, a face not unlike his own.

“I would like to work with Iosef on this,” Rostnikov said, putting down his pencil.

“The choice, as always, is yours, Chief Inspector,” said the Yak. “You wish to work with your son. Do so. As I say, the choice is yours. You have any questions?”