The Rocket Man (43 page)

‘Why shouldn't I seek revenge? That Russian bastard has fucked everything up all along the line. You don't have the least idea – you are letting yourself get involved in things you don't understand. Are you really expecting me to believe that he's come here just to find you? You think I'll just sit back and let you go off with him, and this child you're carrying, and go God knows where? Is that really what you think I'd do?'

Katie said, ‘I think this other baby is his.'

Bob stared at her with such coldness that her mouth went dry and she could feel sweat breaking out all over her. He moved towards her. He said, ‘That's not possible. You told me that was not possible.'

‘I lied about the dates. It's already three months.'

‘You lied about the dates.' His voice rose in disbelief. ‘My God. I would never have believed you could do this. And you say you want another baby – you're not fit to be a mother!'

A look of disgust came over him, as if he could not bear to think of what she had done. ‘I don't understand how you can even touch that man. He is repulsive. And what the hell do you think he's doing here? Well, we'll find out, won't we?'

The threat behind this brought Katie to her feet. ‘What are you going to do? You can't hold Dmitry like this. He is nothing to do with this rocket business. Why don't you just let him go back to Asunción?'

‘So that you can join him there.'

‘Whatever you do I'm going to leave you.'

‘We'll see.' Bob left the room abruptly, banging the door behind him. Katie sat on the bed in torment. The walls were very thin; she could hear Bob talking to the soldier in the next room. Then he came back and said they would all go and have something to eat. Katie followed him into the dining room. Dmitry was already there, with the two guards, at the table. The atmosphere in the room was unbearably oppressive. The windows were open, but there was hardly a breath of air; Bob walked up and down uneasily. Dmitry looked up at Katie when she came in but his face showed no expression. He shook his head slightly as if to tell her to say nothing to him.

Feldman came in and tried to make conversation. He put the food on the table with some Paraguayan beer.

Bob said, ‘Sit down,' and Katie sat at the table. It was like that; he had absolute control over all of them.

Bob turned to Dmitry. ‘But there's more to it than this, isn't there? Why did you come here?'

Katie put her hand on his arm. ‘Bob, I've told you the truth –'

Bob ignored her, pushing her hand aside. ‘I could get rid of you altogether. I could tell these two men to take you out to the rocket range and shoot you. You realise that, don't you? It would be perfectly legal. The territory is RASAG's. Nobody could do anything about it.'

Dmitry looked Bob straight in the face. He said, ‘You have the power to do that, of course, if you want to, if that is the kind of man you are.'

Katie watched Bob's face. It was twisted with anger. Katie felt that Dmitry threatened him in every way, physically, intellectually, morally; no wonder Bob hated him. She said, ‘Please don't talk like this, Bob. Don't say such things, you don't mean them.'

Feldman came in and cleared away the plates. Bob said, ‘You don't have any playing cards, do you? We could play cards to pass the time.'

Dmitry said, ‘Isn't it chess that one plays with death?'

Feldman came back with a bottle of whisky and a pack of tattered playing cards which he put on the table. He clearly didn't like the atmosphere in the room, and hastily went out again. Bob knocked back a large glass of whisky and began to shuffle the cards. ‘Can you play poker?'

Dmitry looked straight at him. ‘Of course, it's only too easy to deceive when you hide the cards; but you should know that, even though you can see the whole board, chess is also a game of deceit.'

Bob looked up, sharply. ‘What are you trying to say?'

‘How much did they pay you, the Brazilians, to organise that inspection? You tipped them off, didn't you, about Müller, you covered up for him. Did you know they were going to kill him?'

Katie went hot and cold all over. Bob got to his feet; he was outraged. ‘Is that what you think? Is that what you've told her? Is that why – '

Katie grabbed his arm. ‘No, Bob, please, he's never said anything –'

‘You're a fool.' He spat the word out at her. ‘You're both fools. You don't know anything, you don't understand anything, you're meddling in things you can't begin to comprehend –' he broke off and turned to Dmitry. ‘Or do you understand things only too well?'

Katie looked from one to the other of them in utter confusion. Could this be true? If so, Bob would have known all along the reasons for Müller's death, even had a part in it – no, that wasn't possible. What could be his motive? But if it was true, he would be capable of anything.

Dmitry went on, quietly, ‘Who was behind it? Who was your contact in Brazil?'

‘I thought you told me you were here for Katie? What are all these questions? Do you think I am going to answer them?' Bob turned to one of the men. ‘For God's sake watch him. Take it in turns to sleep. If you hear anything in the corridor, check it out.'

He took Katie's hand and led her into the next room. As soon as they were alone, Katie knew what he was going to ask her. The whisky seemed to have had an instant effect on him. He said to her, ‘Get into bed. I want you to make love to me.'

Katie said, ‘No. Anyway, it would not be love.'

‘You're still my wife.'

‘Do you think I could bear to touch you after what you let those men do to Dmitry this morning, after what you've said? Besides, you're involved with crooks. There was something about them, wasn't there? All that money, that power. It fascinated you, didn't it? You wanted to be like them, you wanted to lead that kind of life. Well, I find it empty. Liliana, Wolf, they have nothing in their heads. Wolf just likes to play with things, cars, rockets, missiles; Liliana can think of nothing but clothes or money. You've lied about her, too – I hope you didn't go to bed with her that time in Paris because it would be like going to bed with a mannequin. I can't imagine it would be very satisfying.'

‘Get on the bed.'

‘No, I won't. I won't just do what you say like this. Anyway, I thought that I disgusted you.'

‘Yes, you do,' Bob was keeping his voice low. ‘But the walls in here are thin. I want that son-of-a-bitch to hear you, I want him to hear you fucking me, and I want you to sound as if you're enjoying it. What did he do to you, that bastard, what did he do to you in bed that you liked so much? Show me, go on, show me. After all, you want him to live.'

Katie woke early in the morning. She had cried for half the night; she felt desperate, disgusted and shamed, and terrified of what would happen to them. The room was mercifully empty; Bob wasn't there. She looked out of the window to see if the jeep was still parked outside; it crossed her mind that they might already have taken Dmitry off somewhere to shoot him; wasn't dawn the traditional time for executions? She pulled on her clothes and went to the door; as she opened it Bob came in. He had taken a shower; his hair was wet. He looked clean and composed.

‘Where were you going?'

‘To see where you were.'

‘Come here.' They went next door. The room was still in semi-darkness; the curtains were drawn. The guard, Virgilio, was sitting on the chair with a gun in his lap. Dmitry was sitting upright on the bed; he looked as if he hadn't slept much. He shot Katie an agonised glance as she came in; she looked at the floor. If she had looked at his face she would have been unable to hold back the tears.

Bob turned to Dmitry. ‘My problem is what to do with you now. The easiest thing would be to have these guys shoot you; but I wouldn't like to have that on my conscience. I think it might be better if I just hand you over to the military. Maybe you'd like to explain what you're doing here to them. You got your passport there?'

‘Why do you want it?'

Bob picked up Dmitry's jacket and took the two passports out of his pocket. He flipped through them. ‘One Soviet passport. That will interest them, I'm sure. You didn't get a visa.'

‘No.'

He held up the UN laissez-passer and flipped through that too. ‘This isn't visaed either. So you're an illegal immigrant. And it's outside UN regulations, surely? This isn't much use to you here, is it? I think we may as well get rid of it.' He tossed it into the round glass ashtray, tipped a generous quantity of whisky onto it, and struck a match. Dmitry made a move to get up off the bed but the guard pushed him back. They watched the flames shoot up; Dmitry watched mesmerised as darkness spread across the cover like a stain.

‘All right,' said Bob, ‘Let's go.'

But the burning of the passport had had an extraordinary effect on Katie; it seemed gratuitously cruel, as if Bob had stripped Dmitry naked. She knew he meant him to suffer; she flung herself at Bob, digging her fingers into the flesh of his neck and tore at it with her fingernails. The two guards stepped forward; seeing his opportunity, Dmitry leapt up and grabbed Virgilio around the neck; after a brief struggle, Dmitry pushed him away, holding in his right hand the man's revolver. He backed away to be out of reach, holding the gun in front of him; standing sideways on with his legs apart, almost as if he were fighting a duel, sighting along the whole length of his outstretched right arm, his left eye closed. He aimed the gun at Bob. It was as if something in him had turned, and it gave him a wonderful sense of power to threaten those who had just been threatening him. At the same time he looked tense, nervous, unsure of the weapon in his hand. It occurred to Katie that he would not know how many rounds were in it or even if there was one in the presenting chamber.

‘For God's sake don't make me use this,' he said, ‘I am not a very good shot. If I aim for the heart I am quite likely to hit you in the face or in the belly, but at this range I am unlikely to miss you altogether.'

Nobody moved.

‘Katie, get out into the courtyard.'

Katie turned and fled.

Nobody moved in the dim room. Through the tattered curtains came a thin pencil of light in which the dust danced.

Bob said, ‘Put it down, Gavrilov, and let's talk about this.'

‘Talk? You've held me at gunpoint for twenty-four hours and told me several times you want me dead. Put up your hands. And you, Virgilio, put that pistol down on the table. Do it with your left hand, very slowly.'

Virgilio put his left hand in his pocket and slowly pulled the gun out. They were all three frozen; Dmitry could see the fear on their faces. As Virgilio put his hand out towards the table he made a sudden move. Dmitry fired. He seemed to do it in slow motion; he remembered struggling to hold the sights steady while his finger seemed to take an extraordinarily long time to take up pressure on the trigger. Then the gun suddenly went off. It made a deafening roar in the small room. The bullet struck Virgilio at the base of his neck; it hit the artery and bright orange- red blood shot out with such violence that it sprayed across the floor like a fountain and hit Dmitry's shin. Virgilio fell to the floor, crumpling as if he was a marionette and someone had cut the strings. He lay there with blood still pouring out of him. Dmitry stood transfixed; he had never seen so much blood before; it lay thickly on the floor like bright red paint. Dmitry had to step back to stop it wetting his shoes.

Virgilio was dead almost instantly; his open eyes looked up towards the ceiling, his mouth hung open in shock. Dmitry stared at him in disbelief; he almost expected something else to happen, to see the soul depart visibly; surely it took more than this to make a man die? He was acutely aware of everything in the room; the silence, the smell of cordite, the sunlight lying in a thin beam across the floor. He thought what an irony it was that he, who had survived three shots from a trained assassin, should have killed with his first bullet.