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But their letters, like the countless other pleas of assistance with Siberian postmarks that reached the Kremlin daily, went unanswered. What saved Korolev, ultimately, was Hitler’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union and the sudden drastic need for skilled military engineers. Transferred to one of the special Sharaga minimum-security technical prison institutes that Beria had set up to exploit jailed brainpower, Korolev slowly recovered, until, at war’s end, he was released and sent to Germany to parse the secrets of the V-2.

Glushko had also been in the camps, and Korolev had worked for him when they were sent to the same Sharaga. He too had been told, or had somehow come under the impression, that Korolev had denounced him during the purges. After all, everyone talked and named names after a few days with the NKVD, the predecessor to the KGB. Korolev himself had signed a written confession of guilt, following one of the bloodier sessions of his interrogation. And so perhaps it was true, even likely, that he had implicated others under duress. Neither man would ever truly know, though each would harbor his suspicions. Such was the fate of the children of a revolution that ate its own and spread complicity like a soul-sapping disease.

In America, the blacklists that had cost scientists and Hollywood writers their careers or promotions during McCarthy’s rampage had led to lifelong grudges. Here the betrayals had cost people their freedom and lives, their families and possessions. And yet, when it was all over, the denouncers and denouncees were all thrown back together to coexist peacefully as if nothing had happened. No Westerner could ever hope to understand this peculiarly Soviet condition, this enforced amnesia.

Had Glushko and Korolev forgotten, or forgiven each other? Or had they simply buried their simmering recriminations and resentments beneath a thin veneer of civility?

Another factor complicating their reconciliation was the persistent rumor that Korolev had engaged in a long-running affair with Glushko’s sister-in-law. The alleged romance—a source of contention among contemporary Russian historians—had predated the purges and apparently resumed in 1949, as the Chief Designer’s first marriage was falling apart. Whether Glushko knew about it, or how he felt about his brother’s deception and humiliation at the hands of his rival, is not a matter of the historical record. The only thing clear amid the unanswered questions was that Korolev and Glushko needed each other and had to find a way to work together.

Korolev now outranked Glushko, which probably didn’t help heal the old wounds, for the one characteristic the two men shared was pride. Both were intensely egotistical and ambitious and fiercely competitive by nature. In manner and demeanor, however, they were different in almost every other respect. Korolev was coarse and crude, capable of violently profane tirades during which he would scream, shout, and dismiss employees with threats of extended sojourns to Siberia. Boris Chertok recounted witnessing one such outburst. It occurred in 1945, when the two were in Germany, scouring for V-2 technology. As war booty Korolev had procured a shiny red Horche two-seater sports car, which he drove at breakneck speed, terrorizing passengers and pedestrians alike. “Sergei Pavlovich,” Chertok had pleaded, “your Horche is beautiful, but it’s not a fighter plane, and we are in a populated area, not the sky.”

“But I have both a driver’s license and a pilot’s license,” Korolev had retorted confidently. Sure enough, a few days later Korolev rammed a vehicle from the Soviet carpool just outside Chertok’s headquarters. “Korolev flew into my office extremely upset and demanded I immediately fire the German driver, and send Chiznikov [the Russian officer in charge of transportation] into exile for not keeping order in his motor pool.”

Korolev’s anger, however, never roiled for long. His temper subsided as quickly as it flared, and he would