Edge of Eternity (118 page)

After a few minutes, Tanya and Galina went out, and two of the grandchildren took their places at the bedside.

Dimka had arrived and joined the group waiting in the corridor. He took Tanya and Vasili aside and spoke to them in a low voice. “I recommended you for the conference in Naples,” he said to Vasili.

“Thank you—”

“Don't thank me. I was unsuccessful. I had a conversation today with the unpleasant Yevgeny Filipov. He's in charge of this kind of thing now, and he knows that you were sent to Siberia for subversive activities back in 1961.”

Tanya said: “But Vasili has been rehabilitated!”

“Filipov knows that. Rehabilitation is one thing, he said, and going abroad is another. It's out of the question.” Dimka touched Tanya's arm. “I'm sorry, sister.”

“We're stuck here, then,” Tanya said.

Vasili said bitterly: “A leaflet at a poetry reading, a quarter of a century ago, and I'm still being punished. We keep thinking that our country is changing, but it never really does.”

Tanya said: “Like Aunt Zoya, we're never going to see the world outside.”

“Don't give up yet,” said Dimka.

J
asper Murray was fired in the fall of 1988.

He was not surprised. The atmosphere in Washington was different. President Reagan remained popular, despite having committed crimes far worse than those that had brought Nixon down: financing terrorism in Nicaragua, trading weapons for hostages with Iran, and turning women and girls into mangled corpses on the streets of Beirut. Reagan's collaborator Vice President George H. W. Bush looked likely to become the next president. Somehow—and Jasper could not figure out how this trick had been worked—people who challenged the president and caught him out cheating and lying were no longer heroes, as they had been in the seventies, but instead were considered disloyal and even anti-American.

So Jasper was not shocked, but he was deeply hurt. He had joined
This Day
twenty years ago, and he had helped make it a hugely respected news show. To be fired seemed like a negation of his life's work. His generous severance package did nothing to soothe the pain.

He probably should not have made a crack about Reagan at the end of his last broadcast. After telling the audience he was leaving, he had said: “And remember: if the president tells you it's raining, and he seems really, really sincere—take a look out of the window anyway . . . just to make sure.” Frank Lindeman had been livid.

Jasper's colleagues threw a farewell party in the Old Ebbitt Grill that was attended by most of Washington's movers and shakers. Leaning against the bar, late in the evening, Jasper made a speech. Wounded, sad, and defiant, he said: “I love this country. I loved it the first time I came here, back in 1963. I love it because it's free. My mother escaped from Nazi Germany; the rest of her family never made it. The first thing Hitler
did was take over the press and make it subservient to the government. Lenin did the same.” Jasper had drunk a few glasses of wine, and as a result he was a shade more candid. “America is free because it has disrespectful newspapers and television shows to expose and shame presidents who fuck the Constitution up the ass.” He raised his glass. “Here's to the free press. Here's to disrespect. And God bless America.”

Next day Suzy Cannon, always eager to kick a man when he was down, published a long, vitriolic profile of Jasper. She managed to suggest that both his service in Vietnam and his naturalization as an American citizen were desperate attempts to conceal a virulent hatred of the United States. She also portrayed him as a ruthless sexual predator who had taken Verena away from George Jakes just as he had stolen Evie Williams from Cam Dewar back in the sixties.

The result was that he found it difficult to get another job. After several weeks of trying, at last another network offered him a position as European correspondent—based in Bonn.

“Surely you can do better than that,” Verena said. She had no time for losers.

“No network will hire me as an anchor.”

They were in the living room late in the evening, having just watched the news and about to get ready for bed.

“But Germany?” Verena said. “Isn't that a post for a kid on his way up the ladder?”

“Not necessarily. Eastern Europe is in turmoil. There could be some interesting stories coming out of that part of the world in the next year or two.”

She was not going to let him make the best of it. “There are better jobs,” she said. “Didn't
The
Washington Post
offer you your own comment column?”

“I've worked in television all my life.”

“You haven't applied to local TV,” she said. “You could be a big fish in a small pond.”

“No, I couldn't. I'd be a has-been on his way down.” The prospect made Jasper shudder with humiliation. “I'm not going to do that.”

Her face took on a defiant look. “Well, don't ask me to go to Germany with you.”

He had been anticipating this, but he was taken aback by her blunt determination. “Why not?”

“You speak German, I don't.”

Jasper did not speak very good German, but that was not his best argument. “It would be an adventure,” he said.

“Get real,” Verena said harshly. “I have a son.”

“It would be an adventure for Jack, too. He'd grow up bilingual.”

“George would go to court to stop me from taking Jack out of the country. We have joint custody. And I wouldn't do it anyway. Jack needs his father and his grandmother. And what about my work? I'm a big success, Jasper—I have twelve people working for me, all lobbying the government for liberal causes. You can't seriously ask me to give that up.”

“Well, I guess I'll come home for the holidays.”

“Are you serious? What kind of a relationship would we have? How long will it be before you're bouncing on a bed with a plump Rhinemaiden in blond plaits?”

It was true that Jasper had been promiscuous most of his life, but he had never cheated on Verena. The prospect of losing her suddenly seemed insupportable. “I can be faithful,” he said desperately.

Verena saw his distress, and her tone softened. “Jasper, that's touching. I think you even mean it. But I know what you're like, and you know what I'm like. Neither of us can remain celibate for long.”

“Listen,” he pleaded. “Everyone in American television knows I'm looking for a job, and this is the only one I've been offered. Don't you understand? My back is up against the goddamn wall. I don't have an alternative!”

“I do understand, and I'm sorry. But we have to be realistic.”

Jasper found her sympathy worse than her scorn. “Anyway, it won't be forever,” he said defiantly.

“Won't it?”

“Oh, no. I'm going to make a comeback.”

“In Bonn?”

“There will be more European stories leading the American television news than ever before. You just fucking watch me.”

Verena's face turned sad. “Shit, you're really going, aren't you.”

“I told you, I have to.”

“Well,” she said regretfully, “don't expect me to be here when you come back.”

•   •   •

Jasper had never been to Budapest. As a young man he had always looked west, toward America. Besides, all his life Hungary had been overcast by the gray clouds of Communism. But in November 1988, with the economy in ruins, something astonishing happened. A small group of young reform-minded Communists took control of the government and one of them, Miklós Németh, became prime minister. Among other changes, he opened a stock market.

Jasper thought this was astounding.

Only six months earlier Karoly Grosz, the thuggish chief of the Hungarian Communist Party, had told
Newsweek
magazine that multiparty democracy was “an historic impossibility” in Hungary. But Németh had enacted a new law allowing independent political “clubs.”

This was a big story. But were the changes permanent? Or would Moscow soon clamp down?

Jasper flew into Budapest in a January blizzard. Beside the Danube, snow lay thick on the neo-Gothic turrets of the vast parliament building. It was in that building that Jasper met Miklós Németh.

Jasper had got the interview with the help of Rebecca Held. Although he had not previously met her, he knew about her from Dave Williams and Walli Franck. As soon as he got to Bonn he had looked her up: she was the nearest thing he had to a German contact. She was now an important figure in the German Foreign Office. Even better, she was a friend—perhaps a lover, Jasper guessed—of Frederik Bíró, aide to Miklós Németh. Bíró had fixed up the interview.

It was Bíró who now met Jasper in the lobby and escorted him through a maze of corridors and passageways to the office of the prime minister.

Németh was just forty-one. He was a short man with thick brown hair that fell over his forehead in a kiss curl. His face showed intelligence and determination, but also anxiety. For the interview he sat behind an oak table and nervously surrounded himself with aides. No doubt he
was vividly aware that he was speaking not just to Jasper, but to the United States government—and that Moscow would be watching, too.

Like any prime minister, he talked mostly in predictable clichés. There would be hard times ahead, but the country would emerge stronger in the long run. And yadda yadda yadda, thought Jasper. He needed something better than this.

He asked whether the new political “clubs” could ever become free political parties.

Németh gave Jasper a hard, direct look, and said in a firm, clear voice: “That is one of our greatest ambitions.”

Jasper concealed his astonishment. No Iron Curtain country had ever had independent political parties. Did Németh really mean it?

Jasper asked whether the Communist Party would ever give up its “leading role” in Hungarian society.

Németh gave him that look again. “In two years I could imagine that the head of government might not be a Politburo member,” he said.

Jasper had to stop himself saying
Jesus Christ!

He was on a roll, and it was time for the big one. “Might the Soviets intervene to stop these changes, as they did in 1956?”

Németh gave him the look for the third time. “Gorbachev has taken the lid off a boiling pot,” he said, slowly and distinctly. Then he added: “The steam may be painful, but change is irreversible.”

And Jasper knew he had his first great story from Europe.

•   •   •

A few days later he watched a videotape of his report as it had appeared on American television. Rebecca sat beside him, a poised, confident woman in her fifties, friendly but with an air of authority. “Yes, I think Németh means every word,” she said in answer to Jasper's question.

Jasper had ended the report speaking to camera in front of the parliament building, with snowflakes landing in his hair. “The ground is frozen hard here in this Eastern European country,” he said on the screen. “But, as always, the seeds of spring are stirring underground. Clearly the Hungarian people want change. But will their Moscow overlords permit it? Miklós Németh believes there is a new mood of tolerance in the Kremlin. Only time will tell whether he is right.”

That had been Jasper's sign-off, but now to his surprise he saw that another clip had been added to his piece. A spokesman for James Baker, secretary of state to newly inaugurated President George H. W. Bush, spoke to an invisible interviewer. “Signs of softening in Communist attitudes are not to be trusted,” the spokesman said. “The Soviets are attempting to lull the United States into a false sense of security. There is no reason to doubt the Kremlin's willingness to intervene in Eastern Europe the minute they feel threatened. The urgent necessity now is to underscore the credibility of NATO's nuclear deterrent.”

“Good God,” said Rebecca. “What planet are they on?”

•   •   •

Tanya Dvorkin returned to Warsaw in February 1989.

She was sorry to leave Vasili on his own in Moscow, mainly because she would miss him, but also because she still nursed a faint anxiety that he would fill the apartment with nubile teenagers. She did not really believe it would happen. Those days were over. All the same the worry nagged at her a little.

However, Warsaw was a great assignment. Poland was in a ferment. Solidarity had somehow risen from its grave. Amazingly, General Jaruzelski—the dictator who had cracked down on freedom only seven years previously, breaking every promise and stamping on the independent trade union—had in desperation agreed to round-table talks with opposition groups.

In Tanya's opinion, Jaruzelski had not changed—the Kremlin had. Jaruzelski was the same old tyrant, but he was no longer confident of Soviet support. According to Dimka, Jaruzelski had been told that Poland must solve its own problems, without help from Moscow. When Mikhail Gorbachev first said this, Jaruzelski had not believed it. None of the East European leaders had. But that had been three years ago, and at last the message was beginning to sink in.

Tanya did not know what would happen. No one did. Never in her life had she heard so much talk of change, liberalization, and freedom. But the Communists were still in control in the Soviet bloc. Was the day coming nearer when she and Vasili could reveal their secret, and tell the world the true identity of the author Ivan Kuznetsov? In the past
such hopes had always ended up crushed beneath the caterpillar tracks of Soviet tanks.

As soon as Tanya arrived in Warsaw, she was invited to dinner at the apartment of Danuta Gorski.

Standing at the door, ringing the bell, she remembered the last time she had seen Danuta, being dragged out of this very apartment by the brutish ZOMO security police in their camouflage uniforms, on the night seven years ago when Jaruzelski had declared martial law.

Now Danuta opened the door, grinning broadly, all teeth and hair. She hugged Tanya, then led her into the dining room of the small apartment. Her husband, Marek, was opening a bottle of Hungarian Riesling, and there was a plate of snack-size sausages on the table with a small dish of mustard.

“I was in jail for eighteen days,” Danuta said. “I think they let me out because I was radicalizing the other inmates.” She laughed, throwing back her head.

Tanya admired her guts. If I were a lesbian I could fall for Danuta, she thought. All the men Tanya had loved had been courageous.

“Now I'm part of this Round Table,” Danuta went on. “Every day, all day.”

“It is really a round table?”

“Yes, a huge one. The theory is that no one is in charge. But, in practise, Lech Wałesa chairs the meetings.”

Tanya marveled. An uneducated electrician was dominating the debate on the future of Poland. This kind of thing had been the dream of her grandfather the Bolshevik factory worker Grigori Peshkov. Yet Wałesa was the anti-Communist. In a way she was glad Grandfather Grigori had not lived to see this irony. It might have broken his heart.