But when he showed Corneau preliminary specs for the framework and propulsion systems, Patrice had shaken his head. “This is all quite elegant, Jerry,” he said. “But it’s all pretty irrelevant.”
“Irrelevant? What do you mean, irrelevant?”
Corneau shrugged. “For the most part, you’re simply duplicating work that others are already doing. Some of it is quite parallel, some of it goes off at a tangent, none of it’s integrated with the overall design. What good are specs for a framework designed in isolation from the fuel balloon or the cabin? What’s the point of designing a propulsion system without a fix on the overall payload?”
“Well then, damn it, Patrice, why don’t you give me access to the main data banks so at least I can know what the hell is going on?” Jerry said irritably. “You just admitted that I have a need to know.”
Jerry’s terminal gave him access to the maneuvering system section’s data banks, but he was locked out of the data banks of the other design sections. Patrice was forever muttering vaguely about “access on a need-to-know basis” and promising to rectify the situation when “the time came.”
Surely what Corneau was telling him was that the time was now.
Corneau shrugged and avoided his eyes. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Jerry,” he said.
“What do you mean, you can’t do it? You’re the project director, aren’t you?”
Patrice still wouldn’t look at him. “It’s a political position, after all, you know . . . ,” he muttered.
“No, I don’t know! What’s that supposed to mean?”
Corneau sighed. “It means that Velnikov would go through the ceiling if I allowed you general access,” he said.
“Velnikov! Who’s the project director, Patrice, you or that Russian bastard?”
“Let us say that Velnikov . . . has routes outside the normal chain of command,” Corneau said. “There’s a lot of Russian money in this project, and he’s, well, he’s Moscow’s man. I don’t like it any better than you do, but there we have it.”
“We’ll see what Emile Lourade has to say about this!” Jerry snapped.
“This comes from Emile, Jerry,” Corneau told him. “The way things are set up, he’s answerable to Velnikov in certain matters too. . . .”
“Like my access to the main project data banks?”
“There you have it, Jerry,” Patrice admitted.
“Goddamn it, Patrice, you promised I’d have access to the whole project through you!”
“Input, Jerry, not access. And I’m not going back on that. I’ll put these specs into the main data banks where the frame and propulsion teams can consult them as much as they want to. And I’ll do the same with anything else you turn in.”
“Big deal!”
“That’s the best I can do,” Patrice said sadly. “That’s all I can do. I’m sorry, Jerry, really I am.”
So for want of anything else to do, Jerry continued to develop his own Grand Tour Navette hardware specs, dumping the results blindly into the main data banks and printing out his own hard copies, papering the walls of the office with them, even making fumbling and amateurish attempts to construct models, which by now filled most of the shelf space.
What would happen to him when the design phase was finished he did his best not to think about, just as he tried to avoid thinking about the son he might never see again, and Sonya’s affair with Ilya Pashikov.
There would hardly be a place in the project for a “maneuvering system design consultant” when the construction phase began, and it seemed certain that Velnikov would not allow Corneau to make him the head of any hands-on engineering team. Beyond the end of the design phase, the future was a featureless black void into which he dared not peer too deeply.
So too did he dare not confront Sonya directly. He knew that she was screwing the Golden Boy from time to time, and he let her know that he knew often enough, but she refused to acknowledge that he knew, and he would not force her to. For what would happen if he did was another void in his future he knew better than to gaze upon directly lest it turn his present to stone.
He could precipitate a crisis any time he chose by simply confronting her openly. And she could easily enough force him into it. But she didn’t. She never spent the night anywhere but their apartment on Avenue Trudaine. Just as he confined himself to oblique put-downs of Pashikov, she never went beyond defending him as a “good friend.”
And in some strange way, he managed to convince himself that she was playing the game this way because she still loved him somehow. Pashikov, after all, was well known for screwing every woman he could get his hands on, and Sonya herself joked about it. Perhaps that was her way of telling him that this affair was a thing that could never go any further, that she had chosen Pashikov for an occasional lover because he was safe, because a relationship with him was impossible, and hence he was no real threat to what was left of theirs. Indeed, he might even be keeping them together.
Did he still love her? That was another thing he dared not confront openly.
And yet . . .
And yet, agonizing as it might be, the configuration was stable. Life without Sonya was quite literally unimaginable, as unimaginable as life without his work, futile or not. They were the two poles of his existence, they were all he had. And if both were beds of frustration, somehow each made the other bearable; that was a stable configuration too, and he dared not disturb it, for he could conceive of no other.
But though the end of the project’s design phase might be vague years in the future, last night’s call from the Soviet Embassy, and Sonya’s reaction to it, had in the end filled him with dread too.
But why was he afraid? What was he afraid of?
Although he could put no face on it, he could feel it coming. Something was rushing down the timeline toward him at hypersonic speed, silent and invisible until the moment of impact like an incoming missile, something that could shatter the fragile stability of his life’s configuration as surely as the end of the project’s design phase.
But this was not something that lay inevitably but safely in the vague future like the end of the design phase or the moment of death. It might be faceless and formless, but it would arrive at ground zero on Thursday.
While the bumper wheat crop in the Soviet Union has depressed current prices on the international market, wheat futures prices have actually risen due to the drought in the Midwest. The thinking seems to be that Washington will resist pressures to allow the sale of Russian grain in the American market, and the insurgents will diminish the harvest of the big crop coming to maturity in Patagonia.
But some contrarians are shorting wheat futures, looking to the new fields in mid-Canada to weigh in heavily in the next few weeks.
We say that the smart thing to do is stay out of wheat futures entirely. The apparent climatic shift has created too many uncertainties. There’s no reliable data base on the new northern Canadian fields, and the Patagonian guerrillas just may let the crop be harvested in order to gain local support and wreak economic havoc in the Chicago exchange. It’s all too much of a crapshoot. Stay away and wait for things to shake down.
—Words from Wall Street
Ivan Josefovich Ligatski did not look like the fictional version of a typical Chekist thug out of the bad old days, usually portrayed as a burly balding brute in an ill-fitting blue suit, nor did he look like a fictional Party martinet, thin, ascetic, with old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses and prim bloodless lips.
His suit was a rakish light gray and tailored well enough, he had curly medium-length black hair, an ordinary build, full lips, and rather large brown eyes unadorned by glasses.
But there was a full mustache above his lips, and while it was hardly one of the Stalin handlebars affected by Uncle Joe street hooligans, in place of a standard shirt and tie, he wore a stylized white peasant blouse with an off-white brocaded collar, and together they made the point, subtly perhaps, but unmistakably enough for Sonya’s hear
t to sink as she entered his office.
Ligatski was a Bear, and he didn’t care who knew it.
“Sit down please, Comrade Reed,” he said without rising from behind his desk. Using her American married name instead of calling her “Sonya Ivanovna” was another bad sign, and “Comrading” her did not seem designed to put her at her ease either. Or was she just becoming paranoid? Or was making her paranoid the intended effect in the first place?
Get ahold of yourself, Sonya, she told herself as she sat down on the hard plastic chair in front of Ligatski’s standard-issue metal desk. You are the assistant director of the economic strategy department of Red Star, S.A., and, judging from his title and this office, you outrank this petty functionnaire, at least from a certain perspective.
The office had a window, but no real view, cheap beige carpeting, a computer terminal on the desk, no couch, no coffee table. There was, however, a rather fancy electrified antique samovar and tea service on a small banquette. And a color photo of Lenin. And good Lord, that was an icon sitting on top of the bookcase.
Ligatski did not offer tea, and that bit of boorishness certainly was significant, especially on the part of a neo-traditionalist like this.
“I will come directly to the point,” Ligatski said. “You have brought your Party card of course?”
“Of course,” Sonya said frostily. Assuming a low posture, as the Japanese would say, would do no good when dealing with a character like this.
“Let me have it.”
“What?”
“Have you been here so long that you can no longer understand a polite imperative construction in Russian?” Ligatski said archly. “I will try something less complex, then. Give me your Party card, Comrade Reed.”
Trembling with fear and no little rage, Sonya took her wallet out of her purse and extracted the familiar plastic-laminated Party card. Instead of handing it to Ligatski, she slapped it down on the desktop midway between them. Ligatski eyed her narrowly for a moment, then picked it up, glanced at it, then back at her. He tapped it edgewise on the desk three times, then held it there, pressed upright between his fingertips and the desktop.
“This lists your nationality as Russian,” he said.
“Of course,” Sonya said coldly. “As Russian as you are.”
“Oh really? I am not the sort of Europeanized cosmopolitan who would choose to endure twenty years and more living in self-imposed exile from the land of my birth!”
“As a loyal Soviet citizen and Party member, I gladly serve my country wherever my country requires me to serve,” Sonya told him evenly.
“And I suppose marrying an American was an expression of Russian patriotism as well?”
“That is not Party business, and you know it!” Sonya snapped back angrily.
“The Party decides what is Party business and what is not, Comrade Reed,” Ligatski replied frostily.
Control yourself, Sonya, control yourself, she reminded herself. The fact of the matter was that Ligatski was all too correct. “Very well, Comrade Ligatski,” she said evenly. “If the Party deems it proper to drag my marriage into these proceedings, I must point out that the Party was far from displeased with my action at the time. Indeed, it was discreetly suggested that I would be doing my country a service by marrying Jerry Reed. Surely that is in my kharakteristika.”
“What is also in your kharakteristika is that you used the Party’s need to secure yourself a transfer from Brussels to Paris,” Ligatski said.
“From each according to her contribution, to each according to her need,” Sonya replied dryly.
Ligatski scowled. “Very clever,” he said. “Perhaps you can also misquote Lenin to explain how your son’s defection to the United States may be construed as service to the Party as well?”
“Robert didn’t defect to the United States. He was entitled to claim American citizenship under American law.”
“He was also entitled to Soviet citizenship under Soviet law,” Ligatski snapped. “Why did he choose American citizenship instead?”
Sonya found her ire overcoming her fear, and perhaps her bureaucratic good sense. “He’s an adult,” she said. “He made his own choice. And it’s no business of yours!”
“It’s Party business, Comrade Reed,” Ligatski shot back. “As a Party member, you should have raised your son properly as a boy so that as an adult he would have freely made the right choice. Failing to do so is construable as dereliction of Party duty as well as the maternal role.”
Sonya’s mouth fell open at that. She could find no words that would not make matters much worse if she dared to utter them. It figured that a Bear like this would be an archaic Slavic phallocrat too!
“Well, Comrade Reed, what do you have to say for yourself?” Ligatski demanded.
“What do I have to say for myself?” Sonya stammered. “About all I can think of to say at this point, Comrade Ligatski, is will you please get to the point, whatever it is!”
“The point, Comrade Reed, is that you are unfit to hold membership in the Communist Party,” Ligatski said, and he palmed her Party card, opened a drawer, slipped the card inside, and slammed it shut with a metallic thunk.
“You cannot do this!” Sonya shouted, bolting to her feet. “It is a violation of every principle of Socialist Legality!”
Ligatski was on his feet shouting too. “You are a fine one to lecture the Party about Socialist Legality, Sonya Reed! You call yourself a Russian? Corrupted entirely by twenty years in the West! Married to an American! With a son who has defected to the United States! Conducting a sordid affair with a superior in the bargain and using him to protect yourself from the consequences of your disloyalty!”
“So that’s it, is it? This is the work of Raisa Shorchov!”
“Raisa Shorchov is a loyal Russian patriot, which is more than can be said for you!”
“I demand that you return my Party card at once! You have no authority to do this! There have been no legal proceedings. I demand my rights under Soviet law.”
Ligatski sat down again and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Party membership is a privilege, not a right,” he said. “And I am fully authorized to revoke your membership. You do realize what that means?”
Sonya knew what it meant, all right. She sank back onto her chair with most of the fight knocked out of her.
Obviously, Raisa Shorchov had finally found a way to get rid of her. Obviously, she had used Robert’s taking of American citizenship to go around the Red Star bureaucracy to her friendly Bears in the Party apparatus. At the very least, being thrown out of the Party would mean Sonya’s losing her job in Paris and being offered something dreadful back in the Soviet Union, probably east of the Urals too.
And if she refused whatever they offered, no major company here was about to offend Red Star, S.A., and the Soviet Union to the point of hiring someone they had blacklisted.
She would be unable to secure anything but a menial position in Paris, and if she capitulated and returned to the Soviet Union, she would never see Ilya again, she would have to leave Jerry, and she would be stuck all alone in some terrible job in some miserable provincial city, perhaps for the rest of her life.
“I don’t suppose there’s anything I can say to change your mind?” she moaned miserably.
“Nothing whatever,” Ligatski said. “If it were personally up to me, someone like you would be tried as a traitor and given a good long term of internal exile as far above the Arctic Circle as possible.”
“There is no longer such a thing as a gulag,” Sonya pointed out.
Ligatski frowned. “Unfortunately, at the moment that is true,” he admitted unhappily.
Sonya rose shakily to her feet.
“Sit down, Comrade,” Ligatski said.
“What for? There is no longer any point in enduring your abuse, now is there, seeing as how you’ve made it quite clear that there’s nothing I can do to alter the situation. Indeed, as long as I’ve got nothing left to lose, I
might as well tell you what I think of you and your—”
“Sit down, Comrade, we’re not through!” Ligatski said more forcefully.
“We’re not?”
“No, we are not. My personal feelings are not the issue here. My duty is to speak for the Party whether I like the realities or not.” And all at once, he seemed to become furtive, embarrassed.
He got up, went to the samovar, drew two glasses of tea. “Have some tea, Comrade Reed,” he said, amazingly enough, and handed her a glass.
Sonya’s bureaucratic instincts filled her with sudden hope. Was all that had gone before merely the opening move of the game the Americans called “Bad Cop, Good Cop,” with Ligatski forced, for some unfathomable internal reason, to play both roles against his will?
“Speaking for the Party now, not myself, I have been authorized, or if you prefer, required, to offer you a means by which you may prove your loyalty to the point where your Party card will be returned and all mention of this meeting stricken from the records,” Ligatski said, fidgeting and squirming as if his anus were impaled upon a stake.
“Do tell. . . ,” Sonya said quietly, sipping at her tea.
“Unfortunately a situation has been created from which the Party requires your assistance in extricating itself,” Ligatski told her fatuously. “Your daughter’s application for admission to Concordski pilots’ school has been forthrightly championed by Marshal Donets himself, a . . . well-connected personage in the Red Army. The Marshal interjected himself into the process before your son assumed American citizenship and before Comrade Shorchov reported your affair with Ilya Pashikov to the Party apparatus. The Party was unaware of what Marshal Donets was doing, and the Marshal was unaware that your Party membership was about to be revoked. . . . You understand the situation . . . ?”
“Not in the least,” Sonya told him truthfully.
Ligatski sighed. “There are, shall we say, ideological differences of opinion, within both the Party and the Red Army, and, ah, political groupings which cross organizational lines. . . .”
Russian Spring Page 48
