Derek Lambert - The Red Dove

‘It would appear,’ Massey repeated. ‘What sort of proof do you need for Christ’s sake?’

‘The object of the exercise is to feed information into those computers. I’ll only be convinced when I’ve seen the results of such misinformation. In other words, Mr Massey, I want to see something go wrong with the United States space programme. Something for which the Americans blame themselves while we know we are responsible.’

Yashin said: ‘Will that be all, Comrade Chairman?’ looking at Vlasov. His stomach made a noise like a violin string being plucked.

Peslyak said: ‘Get out of here and fill that miserable gut of yours.’

As Yashin departed Massey turned to Vlasov and said: ‘The next connection is scheduled for Thursday, in six days’ time.’

Vlasov shrugged. ‘Very well. We won’t attempt anything sensational. Not just yet.’

‘There is something pretty sensational as far as I’m concerned,’ Massey told him. ‘The connection will be made from Tyuratam. By that time I want to be enrolled as an advanced student in a cosmonaut training programme.’

Nine thousand five hundred miles away in California Carl Wonner handed Reynolds a print-out confirming the Russians’ electronic heist. As Reynolds had predicted, they had tested the leak by extracting information they could check, information that the CIA already knew had been lifted through routine espionage channels.

‘It was what I would have done in their place,’ Reynolds remarked as Vogel drove them to the airfield in the silver Mercedes. He snapped his fingers. ‘Which gives me an idea.’

Vogel glanced at him nervously. ‘Involving us?’

‘Oh yes,’ Reynolds said, ‘it sure as hell involves you.’

When he got home Vogel took his blood pressure. 150. Good for his age! Obviously there was something wrong with the apparatus.

Rocket City, according to Novosti Press Agency, ‘cannot boast a mild climate’.

Cynics have suggested that the author of this observation must have got wind of some award for understatement because in summer, Leninsk, to give it its real name, is as hot as a sauna and in winter the cold can take your ears off.

It is situated in Kazakhstan, one of the Soviet Union’s fifteen republics, some 1,500 miles south-east of Moscow. It has a population of 60,000, most of whom are connected directly or indirectly with the Tyuratam space centre whose launch pads are located twenty-one miles away.

The Soviet authorities have always been coy about the very existence of Leninsk. It isn’t marked on any Russian maps designed for public consumption – and the charitable suggest that this is because it is so brash, square and ugly, built in haste as the dormitory for the space centre.

It stands on the banks of the Syr Darya river on desolate steppe, once the crossroads of tribes from China and Mongolia seeking plunder in the West. Today it boasts a university, three theatres, a couple of hotels and a sports stadium. It is saved from uniform drabness by its shops which are stocked with relative luxuries for the privileged from the space centre.

But if the Russians are coy about Leninsk they are positively paranoiac about Tyuratam, which they still insist on calling Baykonur even though the railway station of that name is 230 miles to the north-west. To compound this deception they have stated categorically that the map reading for the space centre is 47.3 degrees N and 65.5 E, the reading, that is, for Baykonur and not Tyuratam.

Thanks to photographs from Landsat no one takes these figures seriously any more. And, when American observers visited the space centre for the Apollo-Soyuz docking in 1975, the Russians bashfully admitted that the highway leading to it passed ‘near the Tyuratam railway station’.

Tyuratam itself looks not unlike Kennedy with its hulking great assembling buildings, towering gantries, launch pads, skeletal crawler transports and featureless roads. Like Lubyanka Prison a lot of its vitals are underground and, with their periscopes, the command cellars have been likened to submarines.

Few employees from the space centre like living in Leninsk and most of the cosmonauts prefer staying in the pre-launch hotel, complete with swimming pool, to the small houses provided for them by the State. But there are exceptions, among them Nicolay Talin. The city, with its geometric high rise, reminded him of Khabarovsk, minus the old wooden houses with their fretted eaves, and in the bleak surrounding countryside he observed stark beauties not apparent to others.

But, thrusting his way along the sidewalk through a blizzard, he wondered if Sonya Bragina would observe them. Or for that matter if she would like anything at all about Rocket City. For her a city had to possess a soul: in Leninsk you had to bring your own.

At least she wouldn’t be short of home comforts. He had even bought a washing machine with a spin-dryer for her. And now, although he loathed shopping, he was intent on stocking the deep-freeze.

He pushed his way into one of the stores and surveyed bologna sausages, cheeses, polished fruits, peppers and tomatoes, cold meats, jars of black and red caviar, dishes of gherkins and black olives and pickled herring, lying on long counters beneath neon lights. His face began to ache, his heavy, fur-lined topcoat to steam.

He remembered shopping with his mother. Keeping her place in a line-up in Khabarovsk for scrag-ends of meat while she queue-jumped to a faster lane for bread; standing red-faced while a brawny woman harangued her for making a small boy her partner in crime; reaching the head of the queue as the last scrag-end was sold. Well, it wasn’t so different in many parts of Russia today; but at least his mother, whose son had become one of the élite, could now shop at her leisure.

He took off his mittens and fur shapka and began to shop.

He was examining a bag of apples from Alma Ata when a man wearing a green parka jostled him. The apples fell and the bag burst; together they knelt to pick them up. While they rescued the apples from passing feet the man apologised. He spoke Russian with an American accent.

‘Forget it,’ Talin told him, picking up the last apple. ‘An accident.’

‘Beautiful apples,’ the stranger remarked as they straightened up. ‘Quite a store this. I didn’t realise you had shops like this over here.’

Talin resisted the temptation to tell him it was exceptional; that would have seemed disloyal to the women all over Russia doing battle in their food stores. He contented himself with: ‘And we don’t have violence in the streets either.’

‘Sorry,’ said the stranger. ‘ Gaspadeen—’

‘Talin.’ He regarded the stranger curiously. ‘May I ask what an American is doing in Leninsk?’

‘I wish I could tell you.’

Like everyone else in Rocket City, Talin lived with secrecy and he accepted what the American said. ‘Your name?’ he asked.

The American smiled, one of those smiles that can transform a face. ‘No harm in divulging that, I guess. It’s Massey. Robert Massey.’

He shook Talin’s hand and walked away.

The man who had been examining the box of chocolates from Hungary at a counter near the exit followed Massey into the blizzard, walking almost immediately behind him. That was the trouble with snow: you had to stick close to your man. You ran the risk of blowing your surveillance, the alternative was to lose him.

Massey appeared to be heading for the small black Zhiguli loaned to him by the Ministry of Defence. Good. That meant that, with luck, the rest of the day’s work could be conducted from the warmth of his own Volga M-124.