Derek Lambert - The Red Dove

Massey kicked a plastic bottle. Later in the day the debris would be cleared from the beach, Reynolds’ body with it. Now was the time to kill, while the sky to the west was still cold, while the day was primitive. But still he delayed. Once, while Reynolds’ attention was distracted by a leaping fish, he slipped his hand inside his jacket and felt the butt of the automatic.

Reynolds said: ‘We in the intelligence agencies attract a lot of criticism, some of it justified. But mostly it’s misguided. Without such agencies the United States, the whole Western concept, would be submerged by the Soviet Union, by tyranny. They talk about our Dirty Tricks Department: it’s lily white compared with its Russian counterpart. These people,’ Reynolds continued, an edge to his voice, ‘would have us haul down our defences, self-destruct. They remind me of a crowd demonstrating for the Communist dream: if they got that dream they wouldn’t be allowed to demonstrate, they’d be shot instead.’

‘What do you want from me?’ Massey asked, thinking: ‘I have to know before I kill him.’

The pelican veered away and headed out to sea. There were a few fleecy clouds in the sky and the pearl-pink of dawn had strengthened to blood-red.

‘I’ve got a lot to give you,’ Reynolds said enigmatically.

‘You should, you took enough away.’

‘I want to give you back your self-respect. To give you a cause. You had one once.’

‘Sure, to explore space. And to safeguard it.’

‘Which by definition means keeping ahead of the Russians. When we get to Washington I’ll show you the documented evidence of Soviet aggressive intent in space.’

‘So we’re going to Washington?’ Massey stopped walking and stared at the rays of the sun splintering on the water. He said: ‘Stop crapping around, Reynolds, what do you want?’

When Reynolds told him he wondered whether he was experiencing another hallucination.

He said: ‘You mean you want me who once babbled about sharing our secrets with the Russians to persuade a Soviet cosmonaut to defect?’

Reynolds said: ‘That’s one of the reasons why it has to be you. When you were…’ Reynolds hesitated, choosing his words, ‘…when you were ill the Soviets discovered that you wanted to communicate with them. Therefore they will be sympathetic, now that you are cured, when you make contact with them prior to meeting Talin.’

‘Why didn’t they ever try to contact me?’ Massey held up one hand and answered himself: ‘Because they thought I was out of my mind, a raving, 22-carat lunatic. You made sure of that.’

They walked on, more slowly now. Behind them their footprints had moved a little closer together. Before I kill him, Massey thought, I have to know everything. He picked up a small branch of driftwood scoured bone-white by sea and sun; it was shaped like a hand-gun; he pretended it was the gun in his belt.

Reynolds said: ‘You see now why I had to let you read the dossier? You would never have believed that I would seriously ask you to undertake a mission like this when I had once dismissed you as crazy.’

Reynolds had done more than dismiss him as crazy: he had emblazoned his craziness across the world. As a result Helen had divorced him; if you were the Vassar-educated daughter of an oil-rich fat cat in River Oaks it was fine being married to an astronaut; being married to a madman was different.

Massey asked: ‘What makes you think the Russians will take me seriously now? I presume you mean I would have to pull a fake defection.’

‘I’ll come to that later,’ Reynolds told him. ‘First the other reasons why it has to be you.’

‘Because the computer says so?’

‘Of course.’ Reynolds turned in his tracks. ‘Let’s go back.’ Massey followed because he still had to know.

A jet flew high over the Gulf spinning a white thread behind it. Reynolds took his hands from the pockets of his windcheater – the sun was beginning to warm the day – and ticked off the other reasons on his fingers.

‘ One: in a way you’re Talin’s double. Older, sure, and badly out of condition. But, like him, you’re an idealist. Two: you had started training for the shuttle so you’ve got a lot of common ground there. Three: Talin’s stability was slightly suspect but he had a mentor who covered up for him.’

‘As unstable as me?’

‘You weren’t unstable,’ Reynolds said. ‘You had a vestibular condition which could have been corrected.’

‘You didn’t think so at the time.’

‘Like I said, it wasn’t a risk I was prepared to take.’

‘But you can now.’

‘What I can do now,’ Reynolds said carefully, ‘is utilise the unfortunate events of the past. Talin will be sympathetic to your experiences, especially when he sees that you’re eminently sane.’

‘You’ve got two faucets,’ Massey said. ‘One marked sane, one marked nuts. You turn them on and off at will.’

‘ Four: you speak Russian.’

‘I often wondered in the past whether that would be held against me.’

‘Why should it? I understand that you decided to learn it when the possibility of the Soviet-US joint venture with Apollo and Soyuz ships docking with a Salyut space station was first mooted.’

‘Some computer,’ Massey observed. ‘In fact the Apollo and the Soyuz ultimately docked directly. Any more reasons?’

‘A few.’

‘But you’re not telling?’

‘That’s right,’ Reynolds said.

Massey, disappointed with himself for trading conversation with Reynolds, said: ‘You still haven’t told me just how the hell you think I’m going to persuade a man like Talin to defect.’

‘If I explain you’ll do it?’

It would be satisfying, Massey decided, to get a concession from Reynolds before shooting him. He said: ‘I would only consider co-operating with you on one condition—’

‘That you are allowed to return to space? Don’t worry, that’s already in the pipeline. As soon as this operation is completed you are to be allocated a fresh place in a training programme for service in the shuttle.’

Massey’s thoughts blurred; the initiative left him. Without realising it he straightened his body. He saw the curve of the Moon, the bright shining globe that was Earth. Infinity beckoned. Everyone had their price.

Reynolds said: ‘So you agree?’

When he didn’t reply Reynolds took his arm and said: ‘Don’t let that gun in your belt confuse you. You don’t want to kill me now: you want to fly to the stars.’ He increased the pressure on Massey’s arm. ‘In any case that old Colt’s crocked. You don’t think I’d have walked down the beach with you if it worked, do you?’

When Reynolds finally got around to explaining how Russian scepticism to his reported mental condition would be overcome, and how Talin would be persuaded to defect Massey said: ‘But that’s real Dirty Tricks Department.’

‘Do you want to be an astronaut again?’

Beaten, Massey nodded.

Reynolds got back to the President’s ranch at 5 p.m. on Saturday. Half an hour before dinner he handed the President a cardboard folder containing five sheets of typescript. ‘The scenario for your spectacular,’ he said.

Many people imagine the Kremlin to be a brooding mausoleum. Nothing could be farther from the truth. On a fine day the gilded husks of its cathedrals sail majestically in the blue sky and the sunlight finds gold in its green-roofed palaces; during fog or blizzard it is baronial and snug.

For Nicolay Talin the Kremlin was a joy. Not because it was the fount of an ideology, far from it, but because its epic history appealed to the Siberian in him. As he walked through its grounds this November day, with the first snow on the ground freshly crisped by frost, with ice-dust sparkling in the sunlight, he marvelled at its fragile elegance conceived in violence.