Derek Lambert - The Red Dove

‘Who?’

‘The Company, the CIA.’

‘What did they do to you, Robert?’

He told her.

Closed his eyes. The nose of the spaceship was pointing at the moon that was the earth and it was rushing towards them. The earth was out of control. When it fills the screen in front of me I will be mad.

Her breasts filled the screen. A hand was stroking his belly, inching downwards, bringing warmth. ‘Who is the Ukrainian, Robert?’

‘They shot me full of drugs, the bastards.’

‘The Ukrainian.’

‘And told me I was crazy. Do you think I’m crazy?’

‘Do you want to make love, Robert?’

‘I’m as sane as—’

‘If you tell me about the Ukrainian we can…’

‘– you are.’

The earth had almost filled the screen. It was spinning. Oceans and continents melted. A spinning top. One colour. Green.

‘Open your eyes, Robert.’

Fingers opening them. Returning to his crotch. ‘You like me doing this? Ah, I can see you do. And this?’ The warm wetness of her mouth.

Those fucks! But not much longer…

A door opened. In my mind? The door to insanity? No, a real door.

A man’s voice, a lascivious whisper. ‘Down again, that’s fine.’ An intake of breath. A flash.

‘He’s a spy, isn’t he?’

‘A spy? Who’s a spy?’

‘The Ukrainian.’

Hatred dispersing. He reached out for its last tattered fragments.

‘That’s why I came to Russia.’

‘The truth, Robert. You want to be inside me, don’t you?’

‘Ah the truth.’ You’ve got the truth going for you. ‘You want the truth?’

‘That’s all. Then I want you inside me. I want you so much.’

Another voice: ‘Give me his jacket.’

‘Then you shall have the truth.’

‘Oh Robert.’

Another flash.

The spinning globe was obliterating the screen, only a perimeter of light left.

‘The truth is that I wanted to share.’

‘To share what, Robert? Quickly, I’m so excited.’

‘The stars.’

Her breasts were above him. She was kneeling astride him.

‘The real truth. Tell me now while I… ah, there… filling me… so big and strong…’

Hatred, where is the hatred?

Only a rim of light on the screen.

The globe a spinning blur.

Madness.

‘Tell me. I’m going to stop now if you don’t tell me. Now, just before you—’

He shuddered.

The spinning globe receded.

He smiled up at her. ‘Rosa,’ he said.

Later that night another fragment from Camp Peary surfaced. ‘After drugs look for bugs.’

He found the tiny microphone sewn into the lapel of his jacket. He decided not to remove it; instead he crushed it with his foot. An accident.

But why did they still suspect him?

Framed between the Presidential Flag and the Stars and Stripes, the President gazed through the bow windows of the White House’s Oval Office at the Rose Garden.

‘Good morning, George,’ he said without turning round. ‘Where do you think we should talk? Out there?’ pointing at the lawns sugared with frost.

Wearing topcoats and scarves, observed at a respectful distance by two guards, they strolled across the lawn, shoes crushing the frost glittering in the sunshine.

‘An appropriate setting,’ the President remarked. ‘This is where the first team of American astronauts was received. Well, how’s it going?’ voice as crisp as the frost.

Reynolds was wearing spectacles. The lenses were plain glass, a defensive disguise. ‘Tight,’ he said. ‘I looked at the latest satellite pictures of Tyuratam this morning and the Dove isn’t even on the pad yet.’

They turned at the end of the lawn on which, in recent years, everyone from a Chinese table tennis delegation to Queen Elizabeth II had been received.

The awkward question from the President came as they began to walk beside a boxwood hedge towards the colonnade. ‘How much longer can we stall?’

‘Maybe a month. You see we always figured that they’d launch Dove Mark II in mid-January. Now it’s beginning to look as though we might have been premature.’

‘So?’

‘We’ll have to box pretty damn clever.’

‘Elaborate, George.’

‘Well, we’ve fooled them twice so far. The next time they’ll want something more convincing than a rocket abort immediately after a launch. They’ll want’ – Reynolds smiled thinly – ‘a spectacular.’

‘Can we give them one?’

‘It will involve a whole lot more people, that’s always a danger.’

‘I asked you if it can be done.’

‘That depends on our budget, Mr President.’

‘How much?’

‘A few million.’

The President was silent. Budget, Reynolds thought, was the key word to silencing Presidents. A jet crayoned a white line across the sky. Above the pulse of the city Reynolds fancied he could hear carols being played. There were two more shopping days to Christmas.

The President said: ‘A spectacular always costs a lot. But think of the returns.’

‘If it’s a smash,’ Reynolds said.

‘We’ll have to write off the cost against NASA military contingency funds.’

‘In that case,’ Reynolds said, ‘we’re still in with a chance. But we need to delay as long as possible.’

As they turned again the President glanced at his wristwatch. ‘We’ll have to hurry it up,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a meeting with the Voice of Democracy script-writing winners in ten minutes.’

Reynolds said: ‘To help Massey delay things I’ve instructed Vogel to leave a one-word coded message in his private computer indicating that he’s sick. In other words he won’t be able to supply the codes for that day for the Vandenberg central processor. The Russians will just have to wait and that will give us a little more time.’

‘They’re going to love that,’ the President said.

‘Then we’ll give them their spectacular.’

‘When?’

‘I figure we should be able to stall them until the New Year. If they make the critical contact on January the First then they can have it on the Second.’ Reynolds looked speculatively at the President through his plain glass lenses. ‘One US satellite knocked out of orbit should keep them happy for a while, shouldn’t it?’

‘A satellite, George?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Reynolds said firmly. ‘That’s what they’ll have at the top of their list, I’ll stake my job on it.’

‘If this doesn’t work you won’t have a job to stake. And if anyone gets to hear the details nor will I.’

‘Time is everything,’ Reynolds said. ‘After they’ve zapped the satellite then they’ll want to clinch our final destruction. We’ll just have to string them along as best we can.’

‘And if they postpone the launch after, say, the beginning of February?’

‘We’ve lost,’ Reynolds said.

‘And Massey?’

‘We’ve lost him too.’

They stopped outside the French windows of the Oval Office. ‘But surely,’ the President said, ‘Massey himself should know when they’re going to launch Dove?’

Reynolds identified the carol reaching them above the noise of the traffic. ‘ Oh Come All Ye Faithful… ’ ‘The trouble,’ he said carefully, ‘is that since making contact with the Ukrainian, Massey has been out of touch.’

Massey had tried to keep in touch. He had walked to Gorky Park to meet Rybak. It had been a sunny day, gold and ermine, and the chess-players had emerged. Despite the cold they sat at the line of battered tables moving their pieces with mittened fingers.

Cherry-nosed children followed by sedate parents skated along the footpaths; the ferris wheel was still, frozen until spring. In the background small figures skied down the Lenin Hills.