Juggernaut

‘We shall rest,’ said Ignatiev. ‘Rehydrate. Get something to eat. We begin the autopsy in an hour.’

We walked from the tunnel mouth, down the narrow ravine and back to the camp.

Morning light.

The men had set up generators and draped camouflage nets. A semi-permanent township. Dormitory tents with canvas cots.

I watched them dig defensive trenches and fill sandbags. They pulled on armoured gloves and rolled out concertina wire.

Elite troops, Saddam’s praetorian guard, prepping eighty-gallon fuel drums for use as latrine buckets. The air was full of dust.

Ignatiev’s team had their own tent. I saw trunks of communication equipment hooked to a big mesh tripod dish pegged into the sand, angled to face the western sky. Some kind of uplink.

I sat with Ignatiev and Hassim. We drank sweet tea and smoked cigarettes.

‘How long have you known Koell?’

‘Long enough,’ said Ignatiev. He didn’t look me in the eye.

He took the kettle from the primer stove and poured water. I stole a glance at his wristwatch. Raketa. A red star on the dial. A communist relic.

The doctor was an exile. A man without a state. Modern Russia overrun by gangsters and oligarchs. Statues of Lenin torn down and consigned to the scrap yard. Skyline transfigured by glass mega-structures and corporate signage. He could never go home. The proletarian state he knew from his childhood didn’t exist any more.

‘You work for the Americans?’

‘I work for myself.’

Ignatiev stood and walked away. It fed my conviction I was due a bullet in the head soon as my use was at an end.

I should have run. Picked my moment. Walked from the camp, climbed the valley wall and fled into the desert. But I was fascinated by Spektr. I wanted to examine the Russian cosmonaut. I wanted to confront this strange disease.

We returned to the tunnel mouth. Ignatiev joined us in the staging area.

We zipped biohazard suits. We sluiced our overboots in trays of caustic soda and lye. Then we pulled back a polythene curtain and entered the containment dome.

Hassim unfolded the legs of a plastic table and sprayed the surface with Envirochem.

We released latches. We lifted the cosmonaut from his silver sarcophagus and laid him on the table. Ignatiev told me to hold the video camera and film.

Slow pan. I surveyed the suit head to toe. Ignatiev took still photographs from every angle.

‘Who was this man?’ I asked.

‘Hard to be sure. We have background information concerning a group of young men that passed through Soviet flight school in the eighties. I think he might be Vasily Konstantin. Born in Riga. Joined the air force. Trained at Akhtubinsk. Test pilot, second class. Seconded to the Yuri Gagarin cosmonaut school, Star City. He was part of the civilian space programme for a while, then dropped off the map. Declared dead three years later. No details. “Deceased” stamped on the cover of his personnel file. He was post-humously awarded Hero of the Russian Federation.’

‘Do you think he had a family?’

‘I imagine his parents buried a coffin full of rocks. They’ve been laying flowers on an empty grave, while Konstantin slowly orbited the Earth. Let’s get him out of his suit.’

Ignatiev unscrewed retaining bolts and unlatched the gauntlet lock-ring.

‘My God,’ said Hassim, as the glove slid clear.

I’m not a religious man, but I murmured a prayer.

‘Bismillah ar rahman ar rahim.’

Mummified fingers. Strange metallic ropes and tendrils woven into flesh.

‘Film it,’ said Ignatiev. ‘Film it all.’

I held the video camera while they cut the cosmonaut free. They sliced through the canvas oversuit with trauma shears. They couldn’t release the helmet lock-ring, so they cut through neck fabric and lifted the helmet clear.

‘In the name of God the merciful,’ muttered Hassim.

‘Keep filming.’

An emaciated skull. Dried skin taut like leather. Sharp metal spines bristled from his mouth, his eyes.

Ignatiev pushed me aside. He leaned forward and examined the spines.

‘What happened to him?’ I asked. ‘What in God’s name happened to him?’

‘I wish I knew.’

‘But your people created this monstrosity. The Soviet military.’

‘You assume this is the work of man.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

Ignatiev didn’t reply. He took more pictures.

Hassim and Ignatiev continued to strip the astronaut. They cut away the temperature regulated undersuit. Stretch fabric webbed with heating pipes.

They peeled away electrodes planted on the cosmonaut’s chest and abdomen to monitor bio-function.

Hassim held the cosmonaut’s head while Ignatiev peeled away the grey communications skull-cap with forceps. A scalp rippled and knotted with tumorous metallic growths.

Hassim winced. He pulled off the outer glove of his suit and examined his forefinger. A smear of blood beneath blue Nitrile rubber.

‘What happened?’ asked Ignatiev.

‘Nothing. I’m all right. I just pricked my finger.’

Ignatiev opened a plastic case. He loaded a vial of liquid into an injector gun.

‘Show me your hand.’

Hassim held out his hand. Ignatiev gripped his wrist, twisted his arm and locked him in a half-nelson.