The Rocket Man (44 page)

He had let the recoil lift the gun upwards; now he brought it back down into line again. Haynes had gone completely white; he obviously thought Dmitry might feel he had already gone too far and might as well kill him too. And indeed, Dmitry for a moment felt such an intense rage that he almost thought he might pull the trigger. The anger was at himself; he was not sure that he had really had to shoot. He knew at once that this act would have its consequences; that one way or another he would have to pay for it. If he could have unravelled the thread of his life which had led him to this point and started out anew, he would have done so.

For a few moments after the gunshot sounded, there had been an extraordinary stillness in the room. Now, suddenly, sounds started to filter in from the street outside and from the other rooms; shrill, alarmed voices, shouts, confusion. Dmitry's hand had started to shake with reaction; he suddenly wanted only to get away. Katie had appeared in the doorway; she cried out, ‘Oh my God, what have you done?' He pushed her back, trying to stop her from looking at the dead man. There seemed to be blood all over the room; it looked like a slaughterhouse.

Dmitry saw her staring at him and looked down at the blood which had splashed onto his shirt and said, ‘It's okay, it isn't mine. Katie, take the bags, put them in the jeep.'

She hesitated. Bob said, ‘For God's sake, Katie, you can't go with him now, you've seen what he can do.' Katie looked at him, then left the room.

Dmitry said to Haynes, ‘Now you are going to tell me what is going on. If you don't I am going to shoot you just like him. After all, why not? I could hardly be in a worse position than I am already.'

Haynes obviously believed him. He said, ‘For God's sake. What do you want to know?'

‘What is Richter up to in Brazil?'

‘In Brazil?'

‘I mean the connection with this nuclear diversion. You know all about that; come on, tell me. How is Richter involved in this?'

‘He's not involved.' Haynes saw Dmitry's hand tighten on the gun and panicked. ‘It was Liliana. Her father had the idea – and Heinrichs, Richter's right-hand man. They had a meeting. It was a group of right-wing in the Brazilian military. They had the idea of making a bomb – they wanted to show the government how much power they had. RASAG was supposed to supply them with the launching system, but nobody in the Brazilian aerospace programme would have gone along with it. It was a very small group of people.'

‘Their names?'

‘Oliveira was involved, an Air Marshall – I don't know his name – a Paraguayan general, too, Luís Hería Prieto. It was a crazy idea. They were prepared to pay a lot of money. Heinrichs knew what bad shape the company was in and he wanted the money. I guess he has more power than Richter – he controls the financial side, he does the ordering.'

‘And had they supplied the Brazilians?'

‘That's correct, with the sixteen-engine model: Richter hasn't even tested it yet – that's happening next month. As far as I know they've done nothing with it, it's just sitting in sheds waiting for the right moment. It was transported to Cachimbo by plane via various locations.'

‘How did they manage to conceal this?'

‘Well, no-one knew what it was for – it doesn't look much like a rocket, you know. Just pieces of tubing and various metal boxes – could be anything. The transportation was quite easy. Some came direct from Germany, some routed via Paraguay. There's been a lot of drug trafficking between Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil – a lot of the military are involved in it, they turn a blind eye.'

‘Have they built a bomb?'

‘I don't know.'

Dmitry said, ‘If you don't tell me the truth I shall shoot you in the leg.' He was getting nervous; he could hear people shouting outside.

Haynes said, ‘I don't know – that's the truth, I don't know. I know they had the intention. I don't know who else might have been involved on the Brazilian side'

‘And you? What about you? Did you know all this? What was your role? In Vienna, did you tell them I knew?'

Bob's face was grey with fear. ‘I swear to you – I wasn't involved.'

Dmitry wanted to ask him dozens of questions, but he knew there would be no time; perhaps there never would be time. They looked at one another. It would have been hard to say who was the more frightened. Somebody outside was shouting for the soldiers to come. Dmitry said, urgent, alarmed, ‘Give me the keys to your jeep.' Haynes dug in his pockets and pulled them out.

‘Throw them on the bed.'

He did so. Dmitry picked them up. Then he said, ‘I want you to pick up that pistol, those rifles, any other weapons, and put them in that suitcase over there, and then put it by the door. Hurry. If I were you, I wouldn't come out of this room till you hear we've driven away, because if you do, I will certainly kill you.'

He looked out of the window. Two young soldiers were coming; they had their rifles ready, they looked nervous. Feldman was standing in the courtyard arguing with Katie. The soldiers asked Feldman something; he turned and pointed towards their room. Dmitry turned to Haynes and said, ‘Have you got any money? Give me what you have.'

Haynes pulled out his wallet. His hands were quite steady. He said, ‘You've got to be out of your mind.' He held it out. Dmitry, remembering the golden rule that you should never get within reach of the man you are holding at gunpoint, asked him to toss it on the floor. He bent down to pick it up without taking his eyes off Haynes or Luís.

‘I'm going outside,' he said. ‘I don't want you to move from here. Do you understand me?' Haynes nodded. Dmitry put the revolver in his pocket and went out, shutting the door. The two soldiers stood in the courtyard. They looked at him blankly; he had no way of knowing what they were thinking.

Dmitry said, finding it hard to think of the right words in Spanish, ‘This is a private fight.' Even as he said it, it sounded absurd; surely the word
lucha
– fight, could apply only to some great cause, not some sordid squabble in a hotel room. He said, ‘
Está una cuestión de amor
.' They stood and stared at him. He had no idea if he was getting through to them; he could see that they didn't know what to do; they were so young, they came from abject poverty, to them Dmitry appeared a powerful and important person; they did not want to get into trouble. Dmitry could see Katie watching him across the courtyard; he hated what he was doing. He pulled out his wallet and Haynes's and began counting out the greasy ten thousand Guaraní notes, then hundred dollar bills. ‘How much?' he asked. ‘How much do you want?'

The soldiers looked at one another.

‘Go and tell them it was nothing,' said Dmitry.

One of the soldiers held out his hand. Dmitry thrust the notes into it. Some of the notes fell to the ground; the second soldier bent to pick them up. Then they both hesitated, still looking at Dmitry with this curious mixture of awe and curiosity. Then one said, ‘You want a doctor?'

Dmitry didn't understand; he did not realise that they took the blood on his shirt to be his own. He said, ‘It's too late for a doctor.' They fell back, wide-eyed, as if he was already a ghost; they turned and left the courtyard. Feldman came up; he said, ‘What is going on?' He too looked at the blood on Dmitry's shirt in horror. ‘Has somebody…?'

‘We are going,' said Dmitry, ‘He will pay the bill.' He handed Feldman Haynes's wallet. Katie had already got into the jeep. She was sitting there, white-faced, her hands pressed to her cheeks, and she was shaking. Dmitry flung the suitcase in the back and fiddled with the keys. He was amazed that his own hands seemed so steady. He started the jeep and drove down the road; they had to pass near the military checkpoint. A little road ran to the left; he turned down it. Maybe there was another way. if he could cut off the corner, they might not be seen. He drove over rough ground between the trees. Katie said, ‘Dmitry, it's no use. There are military checkpoints all along the road.' Then she said, ‘Oh my God, what will they do if they catch up with you? Did you have to kill him?'

‘Do you think I wanted to?' They rejoined the main road; nobody seemed to have seen them. Dmitry could not quite believe what had happened; his hands had begun to shake on the wheel. He tried not to think about it; he tried to blot it from his mind. After a few miles Dmitry suddenly stopped the jeep. He opened the door and got out.

‘What are you doing?' Katie asked.

‘I'm going to get rid of these guns. Perhaps I should keep the pistol; there are still five rounds in it. Shit! I don't know what to do. We can't risk being found with a van-load of guns, and this gun is a liability anyway. Perhaps I should keep the pistol.' He opened the suitcase and took out the rifles, carried them a distance off the road and threw them into the undergrowth. Then he tossed the pistol away and finally, with a violent gesture of despair, the revolver.

‘Mitya, are you sure?'

‘They're no use to us. I don't want to take the risk of killing anyone else, haven't I got enough on my conscience?'

Katie said nothing. Dmitry climbed back into the jeep. She said, ‘You look as if you've killed someone. You've got blood on your shirt.'

Dmitry took off the shirt and went and hid that in the undergrowth too. He came back and took another one out of the bag. ‘This is my last shirt.' He looked down at his shoes and then went off again to wipe them on the grass. Nausea and revulsion suddenly overcame him and he turned away to be sick by the roadside. He went to the back of the jeep and pulled out his Soviet passport. He was convinced it was a liability. If he was stopped, he was arguably better off without it. He could claim his UN laissez-passer had been lost. He asked, ‘Shall I throw this away too?' Katie understood him. She remembered hearing that people had trouble if they even had a Soviet or Cuban visa in their passport when they entered Paraguay and she didn't know if that had changed yet. Dmitry went and buried the passport by the side of the road. He straightened up, looking back over the scene, trying to fix the shapes of the trees and the undulations in the road in his memory just in case he should have need to come back, but there were no particular landmarks; besides he did not expect he would be able to remember.

He came back to the jeep. Katie was staring at him; he could not bear the expression on her face. He suddenly hit out at the side of the jeep with his hand. ‘Why did I have to kill him? He was only doing what he was told. I talked to him last night, you know. He seemed quite a decent man. Perhaps he has a wife, a lover, children. What made me think I had more right to live than him?'

Katie said, ‘Don't think about it now, Mitya. You said you had to do it.'

‘I would have done much better to have killed your husband.'

‘No, don't say that!'

‘So you still care for him, after everything. If you knew…' He stopped himself; he wondered for a moment whether he should confide in Katie, tell her what Haynes had said, ask her to tell someone in Asunción, maybe the UN resident representative, maybe the American Ambassador. But he was afraid to do so. Anyone so far who had had any information had been killed, or nearly killed; it was like a curse. She was best protected by her innocence.

‘No,' said Katie, ‘Of course, I don't care for him, not now, not after this. But I can't wish him dead. You frighten me, Mitya, you have so much anger in you.'

He climbed into the jeep. He felt it too, as if some violence which had been inside him all his life had suddenly found a circumstance in which it could find outward expression, in his own blood and that of others. He had played with the idea of death, he had considered in his darkest moments taking his own life, and now he had found in himself the capacity to inflict it also. He was profoundly shaken. For a while the death of Virgilio in the hotel room had revolted him, he realised that he had crossed over some border; he knew that he could kill and would kill again if he needed to. For that reason he felt he could not afford to carry arms; it would be too much of a temptation. He kept thinking of that moment when he pulled the trigger; the instant of no return, the explosion and the powerful recoil, a split-second flash of triumph that the shot had gone home.

They sat in silence for a few moments, not looking at one another. Then Dmitry started the engine; they drove a little further; then, turning around a bend in the road, they suddenly saw the glint of cars ahead and a barrier across the road. Dmitry stopped the jeep, slammed it into reverse and drove backwards about fifty yards, till they were out of sight. He stopped and looked at Katie.

‘There's nowhere else to go. If we go back they'll pick us up in Mariscal Estigarribia.'

‘Isn't there another road?'

‘No. Perhaps we should have gone the other way and headed for Bolivia. But there'll be roadblocks on that road too, I expect. There's nothing else for it, Katie, I shall have to give myself up.'

Katie didn't say anything for a while as the full hopelessness of the situation sank in. Then she said, ‘What will they do to you?'

‘Once I can establish who I am I'll be all right. You must carry on and get to Asunción. Go straight to the resident representative at the UN office and tell him what has happened. If I'm imprisoned he can negotiate for my release.'

Katie tried to reason with him. ‘They might not bother to wait. They might just shoot you.'

‘Yes, they might. But I don't think so. Not until they have established who I am. Things are different in Paraguay now that Stroessner's gone.'

‘I can't go on alone.'

‘Yes, you can. No, listen. Don't argue with me. There is one other chance. You go on with the jeep. You'd better hurry, they may have seen us. I'll walk right round the roadblock and join you on the road the other side. I'll have to walk for miles; it might take some time. If that fails I'll try to join you in Asunción.'