until he tried them on. No matter. They would have to do. Hiding the pain as best he could, Valery took out his wallet and found two hundred rubles. That left him with very little.
The old man reached for the bills. Valery held them tight and pulled them back. The women looked at the odd exchange taking place and wondered again.
“Transport,” said Valery as the soccer ball sailed over their heads and small boys ran to retrieve it.
“On the other side of the buildings,” the old man said, pointing at the buildings. “A bus stop. One will be there in …”
The old man took out a pocket watch.
“… in sixteen minutes, if it is on time. You know I used to work on the railroad.”
He reached for the money again and Valery let him take it.
“Do you play chess?” asked Valery.
“Everyone plays chess,” the old man replied, pocketing the money and digging his pipe out of his pocket.
“What do you do if you are trapped? You have no place to go. All you can do is buy a little time but you are bound to lose.” Valery rose and looked down at the old man, who cupped a hand over the brim of his cap to block the sun as he looked up at Valery.
“What do I do? I attack. Suicidal, my son and grandson call it. Grandfather is suicidal again. Grandfather doesn’t know when to quit. I attack, do something bold, take out an attacker even if it means ending the game five moves earlier than is essential. I do not concede. I do not tip over my king. You know why? Because I used to work on the railroad.”
Valery nodded.
“Tell no one of me,” said Valery. “They might take the money from you.”
“I’ll tell no one. My son could have worked on the railroad. Instead, he sells fish at the market. At least he has work.”
Valery made a show of shaking the old man’s hand and patting him on the shoulder.
The old man was a bit mad perhaps, but, Valery decided as he walked, so am I. And his advice had been good. There would be no concession. If he were to lose the game, it would be with panache. It would be with a flurry of ribbons and a shout over Moscow.
Tsimion Vladovka did not protest, did not grow angry, did not laugh and say that the block of a policeman who stood before him was insane or mistaken. Instead he wiped his hands on his pants and said, “What now?”
“We talk.”
“Here?” asked Tsimion, looking around.
“Yes, I like it here,” said Rostnikov.
“So do I, and we can see anyone approaching for more than two hundred yards in any direction. We are alone.”
“What happened to your brother?”
“Konstantin had been sick for more than a year,” the man said, looking toward the farmhouse. “Liver cancer. I sent money so he could go to St. Petersburg for treatment. He went a few times. My father called, told me Konstantin was dying. I knew sooner or later they would decide to kill me, so I came here, I came home. I didn’t plan to stay, take my brothers life. It was my father’s idea.”
“A good one,” said Rostnikov, “but it had problems. You and your brother look similar. The beard helps, but the photograph of you that was given to me shows a white mark on the back of your hand. A scar?”
Tsimion looked at his hand. “Yes.”
“I must tell you that the man who calls himself Primazon may have noticed, as I did,” said Rostnikov.
“Then I will have to run,” said Tsimion, with a small sigh and a grunt.
“Not necessarily,” said Rostnikov. “Tell me the secret of that space flight. I will tell my director. He will talk to the proper people, protect you, let you stay here.”
“Why would he do that?” asked Tsimion.
“Because if he knows what happened, my director will be able to use it. Of course he will want you alive to confirm it. He will confront those who mean to kill you and keep them away. He will do it because my director is ambitious.”
“And ambition is a grievous fault,” said Vladovka in English.
“And grievously will he pay for it,” Rostnikov replied in English. And then in Russian said, “but not for a long time, I hope. What happened? Who wants to kill you? Why?”
“It is really very simple,” said Vladovka. “We had a biologist on the flight. Baklunov. He did not react well to life on the space station. He began to talk to himself, behave strangely. We, Kinotskin and I, reported his behavior on the computer safe line. We had no response. Then, one day, Kinotskin came to me while I was in the control pod. Baklunov had gone mad. He was breaking things. He had attacked Kinotskin with a metal bar. Do you know what it is like to have a nightmare come true?”
“Yes.”
“I mean almost literally true.”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov.
“I followed Kinotskin through the tunnel into the living area. The chamber was alive with floating debris and hundreds of white worms, fat white worms from Baklunov’s experiments. My nightmare, my precise nightmare, had come true. If I hadn’t had the nightmares, I would have been able to better handle what happened next. We heard the noise in the pod where the air is supplied. The noise of metal against metal and the shouting of Baklunov. We made our way through food, metal, debris, fecal matter, the worms. I have nightmares of that more than what happened next.”
“And that was?” Rostnikov prompted, looking toward the road beyond the farmhouse where a vehicle was moving quickly, sending up dust.
Vladovka’s eyes followed Rostnikov’s. He paused, and then continued his story. “When we entered the chamber, Baklunov attacked with the metal bar. He hit my hand. Blood splattered. Droplets floated. That is the reason for the scar.”
Tsimion Vladovka paused again and continued, “We killed him. Kinotskin took the bar. I grabbed Baklunov from behind. He was ranting, spitting. I was angry. I had him around the neck. I choked him. He struggled. Kinotskin had the bar now. He began hitting Baklunov in the ribs, in the face. I kept choking, thinking that I would have to go back through those fat floating worms because of this madman. The blood didn’t bother me. I know blood. It is life. It is not something to fear. It is something to regret losing. You understand?”
“I understand,” said Rostnikov.
The vehicle, whatever and whoever it was, was now driving up to the Vladovka farmhouse.
“I’m not sure which of us killed him,” Tsimion continued. “It doesn’t matter. We both murdered him. The first murder in outer space, followed by the first burial in space. We sent him into eternity to cover our crime. For you see, we did not have to kill him. But we did. I have considered it many times. We could have subdued him, but we were in a chamber of madness, in a state of instant delirium. We didn’t check with ground control. We simply put the body in a chamber and released it into space. We didn’t watch. We spent hours cleaning up after we disposed of the body. Horrible hours. Nightmare hours. No one has experienced what we have. May no one have to again.”
A man was now running through the field toward them.
“We were told to say nothing,” Tsimion continued. “We were told that we would be brought back to earth immediately, that those who were coming for us would know what had happened. We were told that we were to act as if there had been a minor problem on the station and that all three of us were coming down. We had solved the problem. We were space heroes. The three of us were coming down. We were told that our space program did not have enough money. Our national pride was at stake during difficult political times, but when are there not difficult political times? We came down. We were silent. Kinotskin took it harder than I did. His career, his ambition, were gone. He grew gaunt and became a hollow man. And they thought about it, thought, as I knew they someday would, that we might decide to tell what happened, tell of the cover-up. They decided to kill us all. Those who came to bring us back to earth, and both of us.”
“Why did you want me to be told of what happened on that flight? Why did you call my name?”
