Skyfall

2

Gregor Salnikov heard the car when it was still far away, a hum no louder than the bees busy in the flowers beyond the open window. There were other houses further down this road, and no shortage of cars among the officials here at Baikonur. A shortage of paving though; whenever one passed a cloud of white dust rolled along after it. Apart from the dust he was unaware of the cars that went by; they had nothing to do with him. He carefully spread peach preserve on the thick slice of bread, then poured the heavy glass full of tea. The car stopped in the road outside — then the engine was turned off. Here? A car door slammed and he stood up to look out. It was a big, black Czechoslovakian Tatra, more of a tank than a car. An old one too, with the triple tail fins, and there was only one like it in all Star City. He went down the passageway and his hand was on the knob just as the knocker sounded.

“Come in Colonel,” he said.

“Vladimir if you please, Gregor. I think we know each other wet! enough by now. And what would the Americans think if it was 'Colonel Kuznekov' and 'Engineer Salnikov' all through the flight.”

“I'm sorry, Vladimir, come in please. Bad manners the heat…”

“I always told the men in my outfit don't complain, don't explain. Though you are not in my company I give you the same advice for free.”

They were a study in contrasts, in age and in every other way. Colonel Kuznekov was a rock of a man in his middle fifties, stocky and hard, his grizzled hair as tough as wire. Gregor Salnikov was a head taller and twenty years younger, blond, easy-going, still with the accent of his native Georgia. He led the way to the kitchen and while the Colonel dropped into a chair he put fresh tea in the pot and filled it with boiling water from the samovar.

“I thought I would bring my car and take you to the meeting,” Kuznekov said. “Very important, very high level, the world watching.”

Gregor looked up at the clock. “But there's more than an hour yet, plenty of time.”

“Good. We can enjoy some tea first.” Kuznekov dropped a slice of lemon into his glass and mashed it with his spoon. Instead of adding sugar he held a lump between his teeth and drank the tea through it in the old-fashioned manner. He did a lot of things like this and some people were foolish enough to take him for a rustic. “You have a very pleasant house here, Gregor,” he said.

“Yes,” Gregor said, looking around, his face falling as he did so. He had never learned to hide his emotions. Kuznekov nodded, understanding.

“Excuse me if I speak out of turn, but I think we are good enough friends for you to hear me out. You wear a black band on your sleeve — but you also wear one around your heart. I know it hurts you to talk of this, but some things must be discussed. How long it is now, two months since the plane crash? Those old Ilyushins, some of them should have been retired ten years ago. Your wife and small daughter. .. But you have to go on, eh?”

Gregor sat heavily, his hands clasped before him, head lowered. “There are times when I don't feel like going on.”

“Yet those are the times when we must. You look at me. An old family man, grandpa twelve times over. But it wasn't always that way. I was nine years old when the Germans came to our village.” His voice did not change much, but was suddenly harder, emotionless, his face the same. “Black uniforms, lightning bolts on their collars. Our people were in the way so they just wiped them out. Like beetles. I was lucky. I was out with the cows and they didn't see me. They shot the cows though.” He shook himself and took a long noisy sip of tea before he continued.

“So what was I to do? No one else there and all the Nazis between me and the rest of the country. I went to the forest and thought about it and met Pyotr there who was in the same fix. Only he had done something about it. He had a nice new German rifle and a wallet of ammunition and was cleaning blood from his ax.” He finished the tea with a happy sigh and put the glass down. “In the partisans we fought behind the enemy lines for the rest of the war. I killed my first man before I was ten years old. I tell you this simply to show you that life must go on. Your life must go on. I know how you feel but if you continue like this you'll be dropped from the Prometheus program. And whoever replaces you won't be able to do your work as well as you can.”

“I know this. I've been trying. But it's hard.”

“Nothing in this world is easy, my friend. But you owe it to yourself and to the rest of us to try.”

“Yes, I will, of course. Thank you.”

“Don't waste time thanking me. Just get into my eighteen-year-old racing car and break some records for the two-kilometer dash.”