The Rocket Man (48 page)

The colonel moved forward; Vargas restrained him. He said, ‘No, this is enough for now. I want to make some phone calls.' He turned to Dmitry. ‘Let me tell you at once I am not convinced by what you have said. You should have come out with it in the first place; you should not have lied to us. I can assure you I do not like treating you in this way. But if I discover that you have still been lying, you will regret it, I promise you.'

They took him back to the cell. They untied his hands and feet and threw his clothes in after him. Dmitry at once got dressed; he lay down on the floor and fell asleep almost instantly in exhaustion. When he woke up it was day. He felt completely still and calm; it was as if he was incapable of feeling anything else. He looked out of the window. Clouds drifted slowly across the sky; he looked at them curiously; he thought how infinite were the number of shades of grey. After a while he began to feel sick with hunger. He got to his feet and started to stumble round the room. He wondered how long they would hold him here, whether he would ever get out.

He didn't know how he would cope with prison. He thought suddenly of his days at the Physico-Power Institute in Obninsk. He could see clearly in his mind the double walls, the multiple fences of electrified wires separated by strips of freshly ploughed ground and the military patrols with their guard dogs. It had seemed almost like a prison to him then, working long hours and leaving every evening to go back to the prison of his home. He put his head in his hands. He thought of the dark winter evenings, of Masha and her long silences; he remembered how he would put his arms around her, try to make her respond to him, and how all too often she would freeze and simply push him aside. He had sought comfort with other women; Masha too had not been faithful to him. Despite his own behaviour, this had infuriated him; it was the way she had taunted him with it. Once, very drunk, he had actually assaulted her; the worst thing was it had made him feel better until he had woken in the morning to see her bruised face and been stricken with remorse. It was like something out of a bad play. He could not imagine how he had done these things.

Now he put his head between his knees and groaned aloud. He was bewildered; he could not understand what he had done to make things turn out so badly. But wasn't that the way life was? Why had he thought that he was entitled to escape, to have a good life, when all around him, now and in the past, was the vast suffering mass of humanity? What had made him think that he should be immune? And he saw that in some curious way he had brought this on himself, as if he had chosen it, wanted to suffer. Maybe in some way he had thought it would help him to expunge the guilt.

He felt himself trembling. He would not have been able to describe to anyone how degrading, how disturbing, this violent assault upon him had been. He did not feel any animosity towards the torturers; rather, he felt it for himself. It was as if they had all been involved in some debasing and unpleasant ritual from which none of them had been able to extract themselves. Of course he should have spoken right away to Vargas. He should have given him the benefit of intelligence and judgement. Later, lying on the floor, trying hopelessly to sleep, Dmitry thought of what he himself would do if he had in his power someone he believed had planted a bomb on the rocket site which might, at any moment, blow up Katie. Under such circumstances he would do anything to get the information, including threats and actual violence; he would himself become a torturer.

K
atie reached Asunción by dark. She went straight to Richter's house because she had nowhere else to go. She asked the maid to bring her some toast and hot chocolate and she went up to her bedroom. What else could she do? She felt ill and exhausted and it was too late to contact anyone official that night.

Katie went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. When she took her clothes off she noticed a tiny smear of blood on her underpants. She stared at them as if in hope that if she looked for long enough she would see that it was a trick of the light, that she had imagined it, that it wasn't there. This was just how her previous miscarriage had begun, an innocuous little smear of blood; there had been no pain till much later. She sat down on the bed; she felt numb with exhaustion and despair.

She thought, I can't bear it. If Dmitry was here with me and everything was all right I could just about cope with it; I cannot face it on my own. Everything is doomed. She felt a sudden wave of anger that this might have been caused by Bob, that it might indeed have been his intention. Desperate, she showered and crawled into her bed. She lay awake for hours, hardly daring to move, occasionally getting up to check if she's had any more bleeding; she hadn't. Perhaps it was nothing, she thought, perhaps it will be all right.

In the morning she phoned the UN office. They said the resident representative wouldn't be free till the afternoon, so she made an appointment to go in and see him, trying to explain briefly what it was about. Then she got the number of the Russian Embassy in Buenos Aires and rang that. She had to hang on for what seemed hours. Eventually she managed to get through to Anatoly Makushkin. He had a soft voice which she found it difficult to hear over the telephone. When she explained why she was calling there was a long silence. Then he said, ‘I warned him not to go. I told him something like this would happen.'

She said, ‘Isn't there anything you can do?'

‘Of course, the Ambassador will make enquiries. I expect he will be released eventually, they won't be able to prove anything against him. What have they arrested him for? Suspected espionage or something like this?'

Katie said, ‘The problem is, he shot a soldier. It was self-defence.'

Anatoly said, ‘Oh, good God.'

‘You must do something. He is not even with the police, he's with the military. If they know that people are concerned about him they are less likely to do anything awful. You must do something right away.'

Anatoly's voice sounded cold and far away. He said, ‘I will go and talk to the Ambassador. Do you have any other information that could help us? You had better write it down and fax it to us. I am sorry but I cannot help you any more. Ring me if you hear anything yourself.'

Katie hung up. She walked upstairs, very slowly, and when she checked her underwear she saw another tiny smear of blood. She lay down on the bed again. Then she thought, it's no use, I can't stay here. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen. She asked the maid to ring for a taxi and went downtown to the UN offices.

She felt a sense of relief in entering the building with its familiar atmosphere. There were posters on the walls stating the intention to solve by some miraculous means all the world's problems: Health for all by the year 2000; decade of clean water and sanitation; a new charter for children. Secretaries sat typing and important-looking men held earnest conversations. The res. rep. was a tall, thin, Scandinavian, aged about forty, with washed-out features and thinning, pale hair. He kept looking at her through the plate glass in the partitions which divided up the office and frowning as if he didn't want to see her. She had to wait some time to see him; at length the secretary took her in. He shook her hand and asked her to sit down. He said, ‘I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what this is all about.'

Katie tried to explain. She said a friend of hers, a UN employee from Vienna, had been arrested in Mariscal Estigarribia. He was not here officially, she said. Would the UN be able to do anything to get him released?

Nilson said, in a voice which was as washed-out as his appearance, ‘What was he arrested for?'

‘He shot a soldier. In self-defence. They were threatening him.'

Nilson winced. ‘Shot? You mean, killed?'

Katie nodded. Nilson stared at her and scratched his head. He looked out of the window at the rooftops and then up at the sky. ‘You will have to tell me more than this,' he said. ‘What was he doing there? Who is your friend?'

Katie told him.

‘From the IAEA? An expert on uranium enrichment? Good God. There is an atomic energy commission here, as a matter of fact, God knows what it does – I met the director at some dinner or other, nice man – but you say he was not on official business? He came in on his national passport? What the hell was he doing in Mariscal Estigarribia?'

‘He came to meet me.'

‘You live there?'

‘My husband is working for Wolf Richter.'

‘Ah; Richter; the rocket man.' Nilson sighed. Katie looked at the wall, at a photograph of the Pope shaking hands with some UN dignitary. It was underneath a poster for family planning. Nilson frowned even more deeply. ‘I don't see what you expect me to do. I suppose they will bring him to Asunción, there's nothing out there. Perhaps I can arrange to see him. He will want legal representation, I suppose.'

At that moment the phone rang. Nilson picked it up. After a few minutes he said, ‘There is somebody here talking to me about it now. Okay, thanks.' He hung up, turned to Katie. ‘My deputy had a call this morning from the commandante at Mariscal Estigarribia, asking if we knew this Dr Gavrilov. He's has sent a fax to New York to ask if any such person is employed by the UN.'

‘He has a senior post at the IAEA. Please, can't you contact them and tell them who he is? They might be capable of anything. Surely if they know he is from the UN that will give him some protection.'

Nilson said, ‘Maybe.' He looked more and more unhappy. ‘We could get in touch with them and say he is a UN employee. Maybe we could try the Minister of the Interior, I'll ring him myself. I'm not sure what else we can do. You say he was here on holiday?'

‘I… ' Katie thought she might as well come out with everything. ‘He came to meet me. He couldn't get a visa.'

‘So he entered the country illegally?' Nilson got up. ‘This is inconceivable. Has he gone off his head? Do Vienna know about this?'

‘I imagine not.'

‘The IAEA will have no choice but to revoke his diplomatic immunity immediately. We can't prevent him from facing justice here. But it is a very special situation right now in the Chaco with the rocket project. You say your husband works for Richter? They must have much more influence there than we do. Why don't you try to get them to sort it out? As I understand it they have complete immunity from Paraguayan law.'

Katie, realising that it was hopeless, suddenly started to cry. Nilson looked acutely embarrassed; he asked his secretary to get her a cup of coffee. ‘I am really sorry, I have things to do. Is there anything else I can do? Do you want me to send a fax to the IAEA? They should surely be informed in any case?'

Katie said, bitterly, wiping away her tears, ‘What would be the point?'

The secretary took Katie outside. She drank her coffee and tried to take hold of herself. She didn't want to go back to the house; she was afraid that Bob would come after her, and the thought of seeing him was unbearable. She didn't know what else she could do to help Dmitry. Perhaps she could achieve as much at home, phoning people, appealing to the Paraguayan Ambassador, to the Russian Embassy, to the UN. Most important of all, perhaps she could get hold of Richter and beg him to help, though she supposed this was unlikely. Besides, what would happen to her if she had a miscarriage and had to go into hospital? She thought of Anna, waiting for her back at home; she was due back in a few days time anyway. She felt she had lost everything else; she had a sudden irrational fear that something would happen to Anna and that she would lose her too. She turned to the secretary. She said, ‘Can you ring the airlines? I want a flight out of here as soon as possible – connecting to London. And can I make a call to England? I'll pay for it now.'

Dmitry sat on the floor of the cell, waiting for something to happen, He had sat there for hours, hardly moving. He had lost all sense of time; from the angle of the sun he gathered that it was sometime in the afternoon, At last he heard someone coming to the door. The two soldiers came in, tied his hands and feet again, and sat him on the chair. Somebody else came in and stood in front of him. Dmitry didn't look up for some time; at length a soft voice said, ‘Are you not going to look at me?'