Edge of Eternity (10 page)

When she had done, she handed two sheets of stencil paper to Vasili. ‘I’ve made it concise,’ she said.

‘Concision is the sister of talent. Chekhov said that.’ He read the report slowly, then nodded approval. ‘I’ll go in to Radio Moscow now and make copies,’ he said. ‘Then we should take them to Mayakovsky Square.’

Tania was not surprised, but she was uneasy. ‘Is it safe?’

‘Of course not. It’s a cultural event that isn’t organized by the government. Which is why it suits our purpose.’

Earlier in the year, young Muscovites had started to gather informally around the statue of Bolshevik poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Some would read poems aloud, attracting more people. A permanent rolling poetry festival had come into being, and some of the works declaimed from the monument were obliquely critical of the government.

Such a phenomenon would have lasted ten minutes under Stalin, but Khrushchev was a reformer. His programme included a limited degree of cultural tolerance, and so far no action had been taken against the poetry readings. But liberalization proceeded by two steps forward and one back. Tania’s brother said it depended on whether Khrushchev was doing well, and felt strong politically, or was suffering setbacks, and feared a coup by his conservative enemies within the Kremlin. Whatever the reason, there was no predicting what the authorities would do.

Tania was too tired to think about this, and she guessed that any alternative location would be as dangerous. ‘While you’re at the radio station, I’m going to sleep.’

She went into the bedroom. The sheets were rumpled: she guessed Vasili and Varvara had spent the morning in bed. She pulled the coverlet over the top, removed her boots, and stretched out.

Her body was tired but her mind was busy. She was afraid, but she still wanted to go to Mayakovsky Square.
Dissidence
was an important publication, despite its amateurish production and small circulation. It proved the Communist government was not all-powerful. It showed dissidents that they were not alone. Religious leaders struggling against persecution read about folk singers arrested for protest songs, and vice versa. Instead of feeling like a single voice in a monolithic society, the dissident realized that he or she was part of a great network, thousands of people who wanted a government that was different and better.

And it could save the life of Ustin Bodian.

At last Tania fell asleep.

She was awakened by someone stroking her cheek. She opened her eyes to see Vasili stretched out beside her. ‘Get lost,’ she said.

‘It’s my bed.’

She sat upright. ‘I’m twenty-two – far too old to interest you.’

‘For you, I’ll make an exception.’

‘When I want to join a harem, I’ll let you know.’

‘I’d give up all the others for you.’

‘Would you, hell.’

‘I would, really.’

‘For five minutes, maybe.’

‘For ever.’

‘Do it for six months, and I’ll reconsider.’

‘Six months?’

‘See? If you can’t be chaste for half a year, how can you promise for ever? What the hell time is it?’

‘You slept all afternoon. Don’t get up. I’ll just take off my clothes and slip into bed with you.’

Tania stood up. ‘We have to leave now.’

Vasili gave up. He probably had not been serious. He felt compelled to proposition young women. Having gone through the motions he would now forget about it, for a while at least. He handed her a small bundle of about twenty-five sheets of paper, printed on both sides with slightly blurred letters: copies of the new issue of
Dissidence.
He wound a red cotton scarf around his neck, despite the fine weather. It made him look artistic. ‘Let’s go, then,’ he said.

Tania made him wait while she went to the bathroom. The face in the mirror looked at her with an intense blue-eyed stare framed by pale-blonde hair in a short gamine crop. She put on sunglasses to hide her eyes and tied a nondescript brown scarf around her hair. Now she could have been any youngish woman.

She went into the kitchen, ignoring Vasili’s impatient foot-tapping, and drew a glass of water from the tap. She drank it all then said: ‘I’m ready.’

They walked to the Metro station. The train was crowded with workers heading home. They went to Mayakovsky Station on the Garden Ring orbital road. They would not linger here: as soon as they had given out all fifty copies of their news-sheet they would leave. ‘If there should be any trouble,’ Vasili said, ‘just remember, we don’t know each other.’ They separated and emerged above ground a minute apart. The sun was low and the summer day was cooling.

Vladimir Mayakovsky had been a poet of international stature as well as a Bolshevik, and the Soviet Union was proud of him. His heroic statue stood twenty feet high in the middle of the square named after him. Several hundred people milled about on the grass, mostly young, some dressed in vaguely Western fashions, blue jeans and roll-neck sweaters. A boy in a cap was selling his own novel, carbon-copy pages hole-punched and tied with string. It was called
Growing Up Backwards.
A long-haired girl carried a guitar but made no attempt to play it: perhaps it was an accessory, like a handbag. There was only one uniformed cop, but the secret policemen were comically obvious, wearing leather jackets in the mild air to conceal their guns. Tania avoided their eyes, though: they were not that funny.

People were taking turns to stand up and speak one or two poems each. Most were men but there was a sprinkling of women. A boy with an impish grin read a piece about a clumsy farmer trying to herd a flock of geese, which the crowd quickly realized was a metaphor for the Communist party organizing the nation. Soon everyone was roaring with laughter except the KGB men, who just looked puzzled.

Tania drifted inconspicuously through the crowd, half listening to a poem of adolescent angst in Mayakovsky’s futurist style, drawing the sheets of paper one at a time from her pocket and discreetly slipping them to anyone who looked friendly. She kept an eye on Vasili as he did the same. Right away she heard exclamations of shock and concern as people started to talk about Bodian: in a crowd such as this, most people would know who he was and why he had been imprisoned. She gave the sheets away as fast as she could, eager to get rid of them all before the police got wind of what was going on.

A man with short hair, who looked ex-army, stood at the front and, instead of reciting a poem, began to read aloud Tania’s article about Bodian. Tania was pleased: the news was getting around even faster than she had hoped. There were shouts of indignation as he got to the part about Bodian not getting medical attention. But the men in the leather jackets noticed the change in atmosphere and looked more alert. She spotted one speaking urgently into a walkie-talkie.

She had five sheets left and they were burning a hole in her pocket.

The secret police had been on the edges of the crowd, but now they moved in, converging on the speaker. He waved his copy of
Dissidence
defiantly, shouting about Bodian as the cops came closer. Some in the audience crowded the plinth, making it difficult for the police to get near. In response, the KGB men got rough, shoving people out of the way. This was how riots started. Tania nervously backed away towards the fringe of the crowd. She had one more copy of
Dissidence.
She dropped it on the ground.

Suddenly half a dozen uniformed police arrived. Wondering fearfully where they had come from, Tania looked across the road to the nearest building and saw more running out through its door: they must have been concealed within, waiting in case they were needed. They drew their nightsticks and pushed through the crowd, hitting people indiscriminately. Tania saw Vasili turn and walk away, moving through the throng as fast as he could, and she did the same. Then a panicking teenager cannoned into her, and she fell to the ground.

She was dazed for a moment. When her vision cleared, she saw more people running. She got to her knees, but she felt dizzy. Someone tripped over her, knocking her flat again. Then suddenly Vasili was there, grabbing her with both hands, lifting her to her feet. She had a moment of surprise: she would not have expected him to risk his own safety to help her.

Then a cop hit Vasili over the head with a truncheon and he fell. The cop knelt down, pulled Vasili’s arms behind his back and handcuffed him with swift, practised movements. Vasili looked up, caught Tania’s eye, and mouthed: ‘Run!’

She turned and ran but, an instant later, she collided with a uniformed policeman. He grabbed her by the arm. She tried to pull away, screaming: ‘Let me go!’

He tightened his grip and said: ‘You’re under arrest, bitch.’

6

The Nina Onilova Room in the Kremlin was named after a female machine-gunner killed at the Battle of Sevastopol. On the wall was a framed black-and-white photo of a Red Army general placing the Order of the Red Banner medal on her tombstone. The picture hung over a white marble fireplace that was stained like a smoker’s fingers. All around the room, elaborate plaster mouldings framed squares of light paintwork where other pictures had once hung, suggesting that the walls had not been painted since the revolution. Perhaps the room had once been an elegant salon. Now it was furnished with canteen tables pushed together to form a long rectangle and twenty or so cheap chairs. On the tables were ceramic ashtrays that looked as if they were emptied daily but never wiped.

Dimka Dvorkin walked in with his mind in a whirl and his stomach in knots.

The room was the regular meeting place of aides to the Ministers and Secretaries who formed the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the governing body of the USSR.

Dimka was an aide to Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary and Chairman of the Presidium, but, all the same, he felt he should not be here.

The Vienna Summit was a few weeks away. It would be the dramatic first encounter between Khrushchev and the new American President, John F. Kennedy. Tomorrow, at the most important Presidium of the year, the leaders of the USSR would decide strategy for the summit. Today, the aides were gathering to prepare for the Presidium. It was a planning meeting for a planning meeting.

Khrushchev’s representative had to present the leader’s thinking so that the other aides could prepare their bosses for tomorrow. His unspoken task was to uncover any latent opposition to Khrushchev’s ideas and, if possible, quash it. It was his solemn duty to ensure that tomorrow’s discussion went smoothly for the leader.

Dimka was familiar with Khrushchev’s thinking about the summit, but, all the same, he felt that he could not possibly cope with this meeting. He was the youngest and most inexperienced of Khrushchev’s aides. He was only a year out of university. He had never been to the pre-Presidium meeting before: he was too junior. But, ten minutes ago, his secretary had informed him that one of the senior aides had called in sick and the other two had just been in a car crash so he, Dimka, had to stand in.

Dimka had got a job working for Khrushchev for two reasons. One was that he had come top of every class he had ever attended, from nursery school through university. The other was that his uncle was a general. He did not know which factor was the more important.

The Kremlin presented a monolithic appearance to the outside world but, in truth, it was a battlefield. Khrushchev’s hold on power was not strong. He was a Communist, heart and soul, but he was also a reformer who saw failings in the Soviet system and wanted to implement new ideas. But the old Stalinists in the Kremlin were not yet defeated. They were alert for any opportunity to weaken Khrushchev and roll back his reforms.

The meeting was informal, the aides drinking tea and smoking with their jackets off and their ties undone – most were men, though not all. Dimka spotted a friendly face: Natalya Smotrov, aide to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. She was in her mid-twenties, and attractive, despite a drab black dress. Dimka did not know her well but he had spoken to her a few times. Now he sat down next to her. She looked surprised to see him. ‘Konstantinov and Pajari have been in a car crash,’ he explained.

‘Are they hurt?’

‘Not badly.’

‘What about Alkaev?’

‘Off sick with shingles.’

‘Nasty. So you’re the leader’s representative.’

‘I’m terrified.’

‘You’ll be fine.’

He looked around. They all seemed to be waiting for something. In a low voice he said to Natalya: ‘Who chairs this meeting?’

One of the others heard him. It was Yevgeny Filipov, who worked for conservative Defence Minister Rodion Malinovsky. Filipov was in his thirties but dressed older, in a baggy post-war suit and a grey flannel shirt. He repeated Dimka’s question loudly, in a scornful tone. ‘Who chairs this meeting? You do, of course. You’re aide to the chairman of the Presidium, aren’t you? Get on with it, college boy.’

Dimka felt himself redden. For a moment he was lost for words. Then inspiration struck, and he said: ‘Thanks to Major Yuri Gagarin’s remarkable space flight, Comrade Khrushchev will go to Vienna with the congratulations of the world ringing in his ears.’ Last month Gagarin had been the first human being to travel into outer space in a rocket, beating the Americans by just a few weeks, in a stunning scientific and propaganda coup for the Soviet Union and for Nikita Khrushchev.

The aides around the table clapped, and Dimka began to feel better.

Then Filipov spoke again. ‘The First Secretary might do better to have ringing in his ears the inaugural speech of President Kennedy,’ he said. He seemed incapable of speaking without a sneer. ‘In case comrades around the table have forgotten, Kennedy accused us of planning world domination, and he vowed to pay any price to stop us. After all the friendly moves we have made – unwisely, in the opinion of some experienced comrades – Kennedy could hardly have made clearer his aggressive intentions.’ He raised his arm with a finger in the air, like a schoolteacher. ‘Only one response is possible from us: increased military strength.’

Dimka was still thinking up a rejoinder when Natalya beat him to it. ‘That’s a race we can’t win,’ she said with a brisk common-sense air. ‘The United States is richer than the Soviet Union, and they can easily match any increase in our military forces.’