Comrade Charlie

Chapter 49

The Soviet publicity surrounding the launch was brilliantly engineered and manipulated. The Foreign Minister’s announcement in Geneva created the furore that Moscow anticipated, although it continued longer than expected, with Western analysts and commentators concluding that Moscow was at least ten years further advanced in its space technology than had been previously imagined and that the gap was probably too great for the United States to catch up. The Kremlin capitalized upon the reaction, staging a press conference for the world media at which the Foreign Minister expanded upon his initial announcement, pressing the fact that the Soviet Star Wars platform was entirely defensive — as America had always insisted theirs to be — and that its being put into space in no way affected or reversed the scaling down of missiles and weaponry already agreed and undertaken by the Warsaw Pact nations.

There was a frenzied response to the invitation to attend the actual launch, which was organized to obtain the maximum international impact. Satellites enabled television pictures to be transmitted live and worldwide, and the lift-off of the shuttle to take the missile into its two-hundred-mile-high geostationary orbit timed specifically to coincide with peak viewing time, particularly in America. As well as permitting full photographic facilities at the lift-off gantry, complete access was also made available inside the space control centre, to enable the launch to be followed up to orbiting height, where television cameras aboard the shuttle were to show the moment of launch and the establishment of the missile into its planned position in space.

The lift-off went faultlessly on a brilliantly clear day.

The shuttle arced off into its trajectory, with simultaneous translations into English of the crew conversation and after a momentary, snow-like flicker of interference the television pictures beamed back from space became perfectly clear.

The missile housing being disgorged from the belly of the shuttle looked remarkably like some space animal giving birth, which was how at least two television commentators described it. For the first few seconds it was hard to differentiate the platform from the shuttle but then, as it floated free, its shape became obvious.

It was about twenty yards from the mother ship when the explosion happened. One moment the television screens were filled with the picture of a square-shaped, box-like structure, the next it burst apart into a thousand fragments but in complete silence, which heightened the shock of its destruction. Then the television screens went blank.

‘Good God!’ said Wilson. Although he’d been expecting it — hoping for it — he still sounded shocked.

Charlie, who was in the room at Westminster Bridge Road with the Director General, watching the Soviet transmission, slowly released the pent-up breath. ‘It worked,’ he said, relieved.

‘It’s difficult to believe that something as simple as the grease of ordinary hand cream could prevent the bonding of the carbon fibre sheets and create an airbubble void that would expand and explode like that in the vacuum of space, isn’t it?’ said Wilson.

‘But it did,’ said Charlie gratefully. ‘It did.’