Derek Lambert - The Red Dove

Massey felt Christmas. Heard it on the cries of the children and the swish of their skates. Except that here there was no Christmas, only New Year. But the spirit was the same, delayed a week.

It was midday. But of the fat Ukrainian there was no sign. Massey walked up and down the line of players, men of all ages, no women. Those confident of a tactical advantage leaned back in their seats sunning themselves while their opponents brooded darkly.

Massey stopped at a vacant table. A small man wearing a leather hat with flapping earpieces and yards of grey wool scarf round his neck pointed at the board: ‘You play?’

Massey shook his head.

The man’s tone hardened. ‘Today you play,’ he said.

Massey sat down. The man produced a box of chess pieces from the pocket of his Navy reefer jacket and set them up; then he held out two fists. Massey touched the left. White.

The man whose face was lined, bristles missed by the razor buried in the creases, said in heavily accented English: ‘You have the advantage, Gaspadeen Massey.’ His eyes – like dark wet pebbles, Massey thought – were focused on the board.

Massey moved P-K4. He knew how to move the pieces, that was about all.

His opponent did the same.

Massey cast his mind back to college when he had last played and, wondering ‘Who told him my name?’ moved his king’s knight.

‘So far so good.’

‘Who are you?’

‘It is a mistake to talk while playing chess.’ He moved a knight. ‘I like to play black. I enjoy being on the defensive.’

Massey moved a bishop.

‘Ah.’

A brilliancy or a disaster?

His opponent moved his queen’s pawn, glanced at the players on either side, and, voice lowered, said: ‘When playing white you are always one move ahead.’

‘I did know that.’

‘Which means you must always look behind you.’

Involuntarily Massey looked behind. There was no one there.

His opponent stuck a papyros, a cigarette with a hollow cardboard filter, between his lips. He struck a match; over cupped hands, he said: ‘In this instance look to your right but take your time. First make your move.’ He extinguished the match, inhaled and blew a cloud of smoke into the sunlight.

Massey moved his second knight, yawned and glanced lazily to his right. His opponent murmured: ‘Last table, by himself.’

A young man came up to the last table but the sleek-haired, powerfully built man sitting there dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

Behind Massey a little girl on skates fell on the ice now glossed with water by the sun. She was picked up, dusted down and launched again, wobbling, on the footpath.

Three moves later Massey castled.

His opponent nodded, coughing up smoke. ‘Perhaps a little premature?’ And whispered: ‘Rybak says you must shake your tail off. He will meet you the day after tomorrow at Dietsky Mir toy shop. Same time. My move? I’m sorry I wasn’t concentrating.’ He moved his queen with a plundering swoop.

Massey leaned forward and, conceding defeat, turned over his king.

His opponent inclined his head and was gone, trailing cigarette smoke.

Massey stood up, stretched and strolled towards the frozen river. Five minutes later he turned to pat the head of a boy on skates who had cannoned into him. Momentarily he saw the man who had been sitting at the end of the line of chessboards before he dissolved, like a melting snowflake, into the crowds.

Massey turned and headed towards the main gate. Ahead of him that day lay a series of fitness tests. And Phase Three.

The tests were carried out at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre at Zvezdny Gorodok, Star Town, forty miles to the north-east of Moscow, close to Chkalov Air Force base.

Set in pine forest, Star Town consists of a nucleus of high-rise apartments, well-stocked stores and recreation centres adjoining the actual training premises. In the centre of the apartment blocks stands a statue of Yuri Gagarin and close by, in the Cosmonaut Museum, a replica of his study.

As Massey and Nicolay Talin made their way through the dusk to the old red Moskvich in the training centre’s parking lot mist created by the brief thaw swirled around them.

‘A good thing you had your tests this afternoon,’ Talin remarked. ‘By tomorrow you’ll have pneumonia.’ He searched his pockets for the car keys. ‘What did they examine you for today?’

Massey began to recite. ‘Visual acuity, Neurocirculatory conditions, auditory function, water electrolyte balance… Do you want to hear more?’

‘Disorientation?’

Massey glanced at him. ‘Not today.’

They reached the car. With a strip of plastic Talin scraped the frost from the windscreen. ‘Did you pass everything?’

‘You know perfectly well that they’d pass me if I had a wooden leg. They’re going to make a showpiece out of me.’

‘Then we’re both showpieces,’ Talin said. ‘With a lot in common as we’ve discovered over the past couple of weeks.’ Sedov, Talin thought, is my tamer; Massey is the call of the wild.

He slid the key into the lock; it was already freezing and he had to twist hard. He eased himself behind the wheel, unlocking the passenger door from the inside. ‘Did you know,’ he said as Massey sat beside him, ‘they told me to buy a new car? Part of the image. But I refused, I like this little red devil and it would take months to tune a new engine as well as this.’

The engine fired throatily; clouds of exhaust joined the mist.

As the Moskvich accelerated towards Moscow, Talin said: ‘I received good news today.’ He paused, negotiating a long, slithering bend. ‘They gave me a date for the launch. It was to have been 23 February. But they’ve brought it forward. Apparently someone in the Ministry of Defence, possibly Tarkovsky himself, wanted to fire Sedov and me on New Year’s Day—’

‘But that’s much too early, you wouldn’t have time—’

‘So they compromised. 14 January.’

‘Even that doesn’t give you time to get ready.’

‘You forget, we’ve done it before. There aren’t many differences. Not from the flying point of view. Only the return-to-orbit procedure if anything goes wrong when we re-enter the earth’s atmosphere. Do the Americans know about that?’

‘Oh yes,’ Massey said, ‘they know about that all right.’

A red light loomed out of the mist; Talin braked, felt the locked wheels continue forwards on the ice; they stopped directly beneath the light strung across the road.

Massey said: ‘What’s it like driving in Siberia?’

‘It’s better by troika,’ Talin told him. ‘Except in the cities.’

‘You were born in Khabarovsk?’

‘Just outside.’ Talin switched up the heating. ‘You once told me that you had read about me in the United States. But, although we’ve seen quite a lot of each other recently, you’ve never elaborated.’

Massey was silent.

The lights changed to green; the wheels spun, gripped.

‘Well?’

‘I know you were born on October the tenth, nineteen fifty.’

‘Some memory.’

‘I remember because we’re both Libra.’

‘You believe in that stuff?’

Massey shook his head. ‘You don’t believe in such things after you’ve been in space. You know that.’

‘What else did you read about me?’

‘There was an article in Aviation Week and Space Technology. You seemed to be emerging as a personality; the editor was obviously intrigued because that’s not allowed, is it?’

‘It’s all right,’ Talin said, braking again as a set of rear lights materialised in front of them, ‘if you’re a footballer or a poet or a cosmonaut.’ He remembered a conversation with Sedov in a bar when Sedov had stopped him from talking about the Cult of Personality within the Kremlin. ‘Did the article reach any conclusions?’