The Rocket Man (34 page)

Katie fetched her suitcase and waited for Liliana in the hallway. She came down the stairs like a model in her long dress, radiating perfume. They were going in the white Porsche. Liliana climbed into the driving seat, reversing the car out onto the road rather too recklessly for Katie's comfort. As they drove past the house Katie saw two men watching in a car just up the street. They were there all the time; they were not very discreet. Liliana had pointed them out to her before and said they were the CIA.

Katie asked, as casually as she could, ‘Could we call in at the Gran Hotel del Paraguay on the way? I think I left a scarf there the other day.'

Liliana made the small detour and Katie ran into the lobby. The man at the desk said he would check if there was anything for her and came back with a folded sheet of fax paper. Katie unfolded it with shaking fingers. When she saw that it was Dmitry's writing she hardly dared to read it; perhaps it would be another cold rejection. But she had no other time; Liliana was waiting, and she had no wish for Bob to discover it. She moved across to the other side of the lounge and read it.

The letter said:

Dearest Katie,

I have wanted to write to you so many times but believed that you had put all this behind you and that it would be best not to be starting things up again by contacting you. I am better now, but I have not been well; it took longer to recover than I had first thought. You will be pleased to hear that I have now had to give up smoking.

I know I have no right at all to say anything to you about what you should do but it seems to me that all my life I have suffered and caused suffering by not saying openly what I think or feel. Even worse is when I have rushed in impulsively and done things without thinking where they are going to take me. I may be guilty of that even now but I have to tell you that I want you to have the baby. This of course is no use to you if I am not there to help you so I must say that I will support you, help you, live with you, marry you, if you want any of these things. If you are truly wanting to stay with your husband then that is different but you do not say anything about this in your letter.

You write in a very dignified way but it seems full of pain between the lines. I know how much I must have hurt you to make you deny your own wishes so much. Please do not do anything which you may regret later. If you want I will come and see you and we can talk about everything. I am leaving for Buenos Aires for ten days at the end of the week and perhaps I can route home via Asunción. Please ring me or fax soon so that I can arrange this.

As we say in Russia, I wait for your reply as a swallow waits for the summer,

Your loving Mitya.

When she had finished the letter Katie read it again, trying to make sure she had understood it. She went hot all over and then cold. She wanted to keep the letter, but she dared not. She tore it up, threw it in a bin and ran back to the car.

‘Did you find it?'

‘No.'

Katie was sure Liliana would see that something had happened to her; perhaps she would think she was just upset about the scarf. But Liliana seemed unaware of anything but the car and the road. She was driving too fast. She had the roof down and her hair whipped back from her face where it strayed from under the brightly-coloured scarf. A lorry in front shed some of its load of earth, smearing the windscreen and narrowly missing them; Liliana swerved to overtake it on the inside. She turned the wipers on and squirted water to clear the windscreen.

‘You know, Wolfie is a genius,' she said. ‘He was explaining to me the other night. Do you know what he did? He needed something to open the valves to let the fuel up from the tanks to the engines so what did he use? A car windscreen wiper motor. Isn't that unbelievable? It worked perfectly.' And she roared with laughter.

Katie forced herself to smile. She was hardly conscious of the drive to the airport. She was in utter confusion. For an instant it crossed her mind that she could simply take the next flight back to Europe; she could simply turn up in Vienna on his doorstep and say, ‘Here I am.' But no; he would be going to Buenos Aires; she could wait and go to meet him there. She tried to imagine his face when he saw her, his reaction to her, but she couldn't do it; she had to push the thoughts away instantly.

Bob was waiting for them at the airport. Richter's plane, a small jet, was standing on the tarmac with its engine roaring. Bob fussed around Katie, enjoying himself. She had never flown in a small plane before; the sensation of taking off was exhilarating; and as the plane banked steeply, she saw below the wide sluggish curve of the Rio Paraguay. She looked out of the window, peering into the flat wilderness which lay spread out before her. Below and ahead of them lay a sea of trees; they were still climbing. In spite of herself, she was excited.

‘There's nothing much to see,' said Liliana, as they flew over the Chaco; ‘It's all like this; there's absolutely nothing here.' Its emptiness was impressive. They flew north of the Trans-Chaco highway; a few ranches were dotted here and there and an occasional earth road cut through the forest. Finally the plane banked again; Liliana pointed out of the window. In the distance Katie saw a clearing with an airstrip; a group of buildings; and the rocket gantry gleaming in the bright sunlight. On the horizon she could see the mysterious grey hump of Cerro León.

‘RASAG occupies this whole area,' said Liliana. ‘There are hundreds of native workers; we've built housing for them over there. We've pumped up water and started irrigating; look – you can see the channels.'

They touched down. Clouds of dust from the strip of bare earth rose up and enveloped the plane. Richter was standing at the side of the runway to greet them. Katie looked around; when the engine cut out, the silence hit her. She felt the hot, dry wind. The rocket gantry towered above the trees, thin metal tubes criss-crossed like a modern architectural sculpture. In the midst of it stood the rocket. It was still under construction; the bottom part was made up of a bundle of tubes; the top was almost square. Three men in yellow suits were working on the platform at the top of the gantry.

Katie looked at the rocket with astonishment; it was angular, ungainly with its cylinders of jointed tubes. She said, ‘It doesn't look very aerodynamic.'

Richter laughed. He slapped her shoulder. ‘What does it matter?' He said, ‘T hat's only a detail. It doesn't have to look like a Porsche. If you have enough power, you can get anything into orbit.'

He left his hand resting on her shoulder; Katie instantly moved away, following Bob towards the buildings. He took her on a quick tour of the out-buildings; the computer room, the workshop. It was very hot; outside, barefoot soldiers sat sipping
yerba maté
out of gourds under a tree.

Bob took her back to the ranch, a big, solid house, with a wooden veranda. Inside it was air-conditioned and comfortable; there were leather chairs, rugs on the floor, hammocks hanging from the ceiling.

Bob showed her round, almost proudly. ‘There's everything you need here. I've got to help Wolf – why don't you rest here? Our room's upstairs.'

‘Is there a phone?'

‘Of course. Why? Who do you want to call?'

‘I thought I might ring Anna but it doesn't matter; I just wanted to be sure that someone could reach us here in case she was ill or anything.'

A woman came in, bringing them glasses of orange juice on a tray. The ice jingled in the glasses as she walked across the room. Bob took a glass, drained the contents down, kissed Katie on the cheek and strolled out. She watched him walk across the dusty compound to the control room. It was very quiet. She wondered if she could call Vienna. Perhaps they kept a record of all calls; perhaps they recorded them or listened in. She didn't dare to. Anyway, they would only be here a few days, she could call Dmitry when she got back to Asunción.

Liliana came in and sat beside her. ‘Wolf will be working all night,' she said. ‘It's always like this. There are always last-minute problems. He's anxious to keep to the schedule because of Rodriguez coming.' She stretched out her legs, yawned and sighed. ‘I hope you bought a good book to read.'

Katie thought that she would be bored, but she wasn't. She was surrounded by constant activity. While the men worked, Liliana stayed in the house and took endless: phone calls. Katie began to realise that many of the calls were from people who seemed to be anxious to prevent or postpone the launch, and that Liliana, far from being an empty-headed beauty, was in fact a very shrewd negotiator.

Once when Liliana put the phone down with a gesture of triumph, Katie asked her: ‘Who is this that keeps calling?'

‘It's the Americans. They are getting tough. I thought all along it was a mistake to come to Paraguay; he would have been better off in Brazil. They are much more able to stand up to the Americans.'

‘Why didn't he try Brazil?'

‘Well, he did, there were negotiations with several governments, but you see, Brazil had already had their fingers burned with this Sonda space programme which France was helping them with. The two main aerospace companies are going bankrupt, their missile programme is in chaos. I think they were happier for Wolf to try it out somewhere else; after all, if it works, they can always buy the technology.'

There were also other calls in Portuguese which seemed to go on for hours and which Katie was completely unable to understand.

The day before the launch Richter was plunged into depression by the news that the President was unable to come and would be sending one of his generals, head of the air force, instead. He took this badly, as a sign that the President's position was weak or that he was trying to distance himself from the project. But it seemed there was nothing to be done; the launch had to go ahead as planned.

At ten o'clock in the morning Katie heard the drone of the general's plane in the distance. The atmosphere was tense. Everyone was standing outside in the bright sunlight waiting for him. They watched the plane circle, come down, the clouds of dust stream across the airstrip. She watched the general jumped down out of the plane. Richter, his face all smiles, went up to him; he shook his hand; he put his hand almost delicately on the general's shoulder. They turned and looked at the rocket standing on the gantry; Richter was pointing out various features to him in his primitive Spanish, then pointed to the chairs which had been arranged on the veranda of the house.

Loudspeakers, crackling ominously, announced that everyone should prepare for the launch, and the young soldiers, carrying their rifles proudly, lined up along the fence to watch.

Suddenly everything went very still; the men spoke in nervous whispers. The wind sighed around the house; it set up ripples in the reservoir of water lying to the left of the building.

The countdown started. ‘Three… two… one…' The bottom of the rocket lit with bright flame. A great balloon of red dust billowed up; the rocket began to lift from its launch-pad. Then the sound, the roar, hit them. Katie waited, tense and anxious despite herself, to see if the rocket would clear the top of the gantry; she wondered if it was her imagination that the rocket was tilting slightly. She glanced at Richter; he was frowning, biting his lip. The rocket was rapidly gathering speed, rising now in an arc; it was flying into the sun, Katie couldn't keep her eyes focused on it. She felt something beautiful, impressive in its pure, arching flight, like an arrow from a bow, like an image of the soul's ascent to heaven; its power was awesome. Katie looked at Bob and smiled; instinctively she put out her hand and he slipped his arm around her waist.