Page 44 of Stars
Moscow, Russia
“I need good news,Ilya. Give me something.”
Sergey pinched the bridge of his nose as he pressed his phone against his ear, hard enough to hurt, and listened to the crackle of the wind over the line.
“Baikonur was a bust,” Ilya grunted. Sergey heard him inhale, and he closed his eyes and pictured Ilya sucking on a cigarette. “There’s no record of this satellite launched from the cosmodrome.”
Baikonur Cosmodrome had been the workhorse of the Soviet Union’s space program. The sprawling complex had unfolded across the arid steppes of what was now Kazakhstan. At forty-six degrees latitude—as far south as the Soviets could go in the USSR—it was the only location from which they could launch both men and rockets into a geosynchronous or semisynchronous orbit. And it was the only location that avoided dumping used rocket stages and launch debris all over China. Launch paths from Baikonur arched over the Sakha Republic, and the detritus of the Soviet space program still littered Siberia.
“Ilyukha, all the Raduga satellites were launched from Baikonur.” Sergey reached for the mess of old files and folders spread on his desk, the smell of typewriter ink and paper gone thin with age stuck in the back of his throat. “Raduga satellites required the heavy Proton rocket,” he said, squinting at the typewritten words. “They could not launch from Plesetsk!”
Plesetsk was the Soviet Union’s northernmost launch facility, high near the Arctic Circle in the Arkhangelsk Oblast. It never reached even half the size of Baikonur, and it served more as a rocket testing site than a cosmodrome. The satellites Plesetsk launched were stuck in polar orbits or in sweeping Molniya arcs. Most of the Soviet Union’s spy satellites had been shot into the sky from Plesetsk, while the early warning radar satellites were sent up from Baikonur, along with all of the Soviet cosmonauts.
“Well, this isn’treallya Raduga satellite, is it?” Ilya snapped back. “We don’t even know what it is.”
“What did you find at Baikonur?”
“Nothing. Every Raduga satellite is on record, except for this one. It doesn’t exist.”
“It does exist, because it’s over our heads!” Sergey shouted. “How does a country lose a satellite? It takes billions of rubles to launch something into orbit! Thousands of personnel! This is not something that is just swept aside!”
Ilya was silent for a moment, only the sound of a deep sucking inhale over the wind-whipped phone line. “It is if it’smeantto be forgotten. And this, Seryozha? A weapons platform in orbit, in violation of the Outer Space Treaty from the sixties? If this was operational before the fall, the Soviets would haveusedit. This satellite would have been the end of the Cold War—but we would havewon. No, this was thrown away, Seryozha. Like everything else they burned and destroyed in the fall, thisthingwas evidence of all their broken treaties and lies and criminal activities they needed to get rid of. Like the anthrax factories andBiopreparat. This satellite wasmeantto be forgotten.”
Sighing, Sergey scrubbed one hand over his face, digging his fingers into his aching eyes. How long had it been since he’d slept? Since he’d eaten? How many days had it been since he’d received Ilya’s message over the Atlantic? He was still in the same clothes he’d worn for the videoconference with President Wall. “The Americans sent their spy data from the launch window. Early December 1990, they say. At a latitude between forty-five and fifty-three degrees. That is too far south for Plesetsk, so it must be Baikonur.”
“There is another possibility.”
Sergey’s spine cracked as he straightened. He glared across his office, his vision tunneling until all he saw was the white, blue, and red bands of the Russian flag posted at his door. “Anotherpossible launch site?”
“Have you heard of Uglegorsk?”
“Of course not. Where the fuck is that?”
“It was the cover identity for Svobodny-18. The closed launch site in the Far East.”
“Svobodny-18 only launched missiles. It was no cosmodrome. It had no space launch capabilities.”
“What the fuck was a space launch in the Soviet Union other than a giant fucking missile? Those cosmonauts strapped their asses on top of giant rockets and hoped for the best. They were ridingweapons! ICBMs! Missiles that—if they were lucky—didn’t fall back to Earth!”
It was Sergey’s turn to be silent.
“Svobodny-18 was at fifty-two degrees latitude. The Twenty-Seventh Division of the Strategic Rocket Forces was stationed there until the base was shut down in 1993. You said the Americans claim this satellite went up in early December? 1990?”
“That’s what their spy satellites told them.” Sergey fingered the papers on his desk, his sweaty hands smearing the ink. Red-banded folders marked with the American seal andTop Secret Eyes Onlystamps rested next to his own Defense Ministry reports and Roscosmos archives.
“The 1990s were fucked. It was the Wild West all over Russia. And, do you remember? The Strategic Rocket Forces weren’t brought under the direct control of the Defense Ministry until theendof 1990—”
“On December 17,” Sergey finished with a whisper. “Strategic Missile Forces Day.”
“They were operating on their own when this satellite went up. If someone had a way into the Strategic Rocket Forces, they could have sent this thing into orbit with no oversight. They could have hid this launch from the premier, from the general secretary, even from the defense ministry. And what better way to hide a launch then to do it in plain sight? Hide it in the middle of a hundred other rocket tests? It was probably one of the last things they sent up. Part of the launch frenzy at the fall. Those fucking Soviets thought if they launched something into space—or dumped it in the ocean—it was the same as throwing it in the trash.” Another deep inhale, the sound of Ilya’s cigarette sparking next to the phone. “So why space? Why wasn’t it dumped off Kamchatka into the Kuril Trench, or into the Siberian Sea?”
“Strapping it to the top of a rocket must have been the easiest option.” A headache had bloomed in Sergey’s brain sometime in the past forty-eight hours, and it had never let up. The pain hammered now, like a boxer was punching the backs of his eyes. “There’s nothing left of the old base. How are we supposed to find anything?”
“Forget the base. When Svobodny-18 closed, they would have destroyed everything. We need to find the Twenty-Seventh Division. It was disbanded when the Strategic Rocket Forces were reorganized under the Defense Ministry. But they ran the base and all the launch pads. They will know what went up.”
“Go. Find everything you can. Dig up old graves if you have to. I want to know what the fuck Svobodny-18 launched.” It was the only lead they had. They were running in circles, chasing shadows and trying to catch old ghosts with their bare hands.
“I’ll call you later.” Ilya hung up before Sergey could say another word.
