Edge of Eternity (133 page)

Tania yelled: ‘What are you doing? What’s happening?’

Some of her neighbours also shouted questions. The police took no notice.

The door was opened from inside, and Danuta’s husband stood there, a frightened man in pyjamas and glasses. ‘What do you want?’ he said. From within the apartment came the sound of children crying.

The cops strode in, shoving him out of the way.

Tania ran down the stairs. ‘You can’t do this!’ she yelled. ‘You have to identify yourselves!’

Two big policemen came out of the apartment dragging Danuta, her abundant hair in disarray, wearing a nightdress and a white candlewick dressing gown.

Tania stood in front of them, blocking the staircase. She held up her press card. ‘I am a Soviet reporter!’ she shouted.

‘Then get the fuck out of the way,’ one replied. He lashed out at her with a crowbar he held in his left hand. It was not a calculated blow, for he was striving to control the struggling Danuta with the other hand, but the iron bar caught Tania across the face. She felt a blaze of pain and staggered back. The two police pushed past her and hauled Danuta down the stairs.

Tania had blood in her right eye but she could see with her left. Another cop emerged from the apartment carrying a typewriter and a telephone answering device.

Danuta’s husband reappeared with a child in his arms. ‘Where are you taking her?’ he shouted. The police did not reply.

Tania said to him: ‘I’m going to call the army right now and find out.’ Holding one hand to her injured face, she went back up the stairs.

She glanced in the hall mirror. She had a gash on her forehead and her cheek was red and already swelling with a bruise, but she thought the blow had not broken any bones.

She picked up the phone to call Staz.

It was dead.

She turned on the television and the radio. The TV was blank, the radio silent.

This was not just about Danuta, then.

A neighbour followed her in. ‘Let me call a doctor,’ the woman said.

‘I don’t have time.’ Tania stepped into her little bathroom, held a towel under the tap, and washed her face gingerly. Then she returned to her bedroom and dressed quickly in thermal underwear, jeans and a heavy sweater, and a big thick coat with a fur lining.

She ran down the stairs and got into her car. Snow was falling again but the main roads were clear, and she soon saw why. Tanks and army trucks were everywhere. With a growing apprehension of doom she realized that the arrest of Danuta was just a small part of something ominously massive.

The troops swarming into the centre of Warsaw were not Russians, however. This was not like Prague in 1968. The vehicles had Polish Army markings and the soldiers wore Polish uniforms. The Poles had invaded their own capital.

They were setting up roadblocks, but they had only just started, and for the moment it was possible to circumvent them. Tania drove her Mercedes fast, pushing her luck on slippery bends, to Jana Olbrachta Street, in the west of the city. She parked outside Staz’s building. She knew the address but she had never been here before: he always said it was little better than a barracks.

She ran inside. It took her a couple of minutes to find the right apartment. She banged on the door, praying he would be in, though she feared the overwhelming likelihood was that he was out on the streets with the rest of the army.

The door was opened by a woman.

Tania was shocked into silence. Did Staz have another girlfriend?

The woman was blonde and pleasant-looking, wearing a pink nylon nightdress. She stared at Tania’s face in consternation. ‘You’ve been hurt!’ she said in Polish.

Tania noticed, in the hallway behind the woman, a small red tricycle. This woman was not his girlfriend, she was his wife, and they had a child.

Tania felt a jolt of guilt like an electric shock. She had been taking Staz away from his family. And he had been lying to her.

With an effort, she wrenched her mind back to the present emergency. ‘I need to speak to Colonel Pawlak,’ she said. ‘It’s urgent.’

The woman heard her Russian accent, and her attitude changed in an instant. She glared angrily at Tania. ‘So you’re the Russian whore,’ she said.

Evidently, Staz had not succeeded in keeping his love affair entirely secret from his wife. Tania wanted to explain that she had not known he was married, but this was not the moment. ‘There’s no time for that!’ she said desperately. ‘They’re taking over the city! Where is he?’

‘He’s not here.’

‘Will you help me find him?’

‘No. Now fuck off and die.’ The woman slammed the door.

‘Shit,’ said Tania.

She stood outside the apartment door. She put her hand to her aching cheek: it seemed to be swelling grotesquely. She did not know what to do next.

The other person who might know what was going on was Cam Dewar. She probably could not phone him: she guessed all the civilian phones in the city had been cut off. However, Cam might go to the American Embassy.

She ran outside, jumped back into her car, and headed for the south of the city. She cut across the outskirts, avoiding the city centre where there would be roadblocks.

So Staz had a wife. He had been deceiving both women. He was a smooth liar, Tania thought bitterly: he was probably a good spy. Tania was so angry that she felt like giving up on men. They were all the damn same.

She saw a group of soldiers putting up a placard on a lamp post. She stopped to look, though she did not risk getting out of her car. It was a decree issued by something called the Military Council for National Salvation. There was no such council: it had just been invented, no doubt by Jaruzelski. She read it with horror. Martial law was in force. Civil rights were suspended, the frontiers were closed, travel between cities was prohibited, all public gatherings were banned, there was a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., and the armed forces were authorized to use coercion to restore law and order.

This was the clampdown. And it had been carefully planned – that poster had been printed in advance. The plan was being carried out with ruthless efficiency. Was there any hope?

She drove off again. In a dark street two ZOMO men stepped into the light of her twin headlights, and one held up a hand to stop her. At that moment Tania felt a stab of pain in her cheek, and made a split-second decision. She floored the accelerator pedal. She thanked the stars for her powerful German engine as the car leaped forward, startling the men, who jumped aside. She screeched around a corner and was out of their sight before they could deploy their guns.

A few minutes later she pulled up outside the white marble embassy. All the lights were on: they, too, would be trying to find out what was happening. She sprang out of her car and ran to the US marine at the gate. ‘I have important information for Cam Dewar,’ she said in English.

The marine pointed behind her. ‘That looks like him now.’

Tania turned to see a lime-green Polski Fiat pulling up. Cam was at the wheel. Tania ran to the car, and Cam rolled down his window. He addressed her in Russian, as always. ‘My God, what did you do to your face?’

‘I had a conversation with the ZOMO,’ she said. ‘Do you know what’s happening?’

‘The government has arrested just about every Solidarity leader and organizer – thousands of them,’ Cam said grimly. ‘All phone lines are dead. There are massive roadblocks on every major road in the country.’

‘But I see no Russians!’

‘No. The Poles have done this to themselves.’

‘Did the American government know this was going to happen? Did Staz tell you?’

Cam said nothing.

Tania took that for a yes. ‘Couldn’t Reagan do something to stop it?’

Cam looked as perplexed and disappointed as Tania felt. ‘I thought he could,’ he said.

Tania could hear her own voice rising to a screech of frustration. ‘Then, for God’s sake, why didn’t he?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cam. ‘I just don’t know.’

*  *  *

When Tania got home to Moscow, there was a bunch of flowers from Vasili waiting for her in her mother’s apartment. How had he found roses in Moscow in January?

The flowers were a spot of brightness in a desolate landscape. Tania had suffered two shocks: Staz had deceived her, and General Jaruzelski had betrayed the Polish people. Staz was no better than Paz Oliva, and she had to wonder what was wrong with her judgement. Perhaps she was wrong about Communism, too. She had always believed it could not last. She had been a schoolgirl in 1956 when the Hungarian people’s rebellion had been crushed. Twelve years later, the same had happened to the Prague Spring, and after another thirteen years, Solidarity had gone the same way. Maybe Communism really was the way of the future, as Grandfather Grigori had died believing. If so, a grim life was ahead for her nephew and niece, Dimka’s children, Grisha and Katya.

Soon after Tania arrived home, Vasili invited her to dinner.

They could be friends openly now, they agreed. He had been rehabilitated. His radio show was a long-running success, and he was a star of the Writers’ Union. No one knew that he was also Ivan Kuznetsov, dissident author of
Frostbite
and other anti-Communist books that had been bestsellers in the West. It was remarkable, Tania thought, that she and he had succeeded in keeping the secret so long.

She was getting ready to leave the office and go to Vasili’s place when she was accosted by Pyotr Opotkin, screwing up his eyes against the smoke from the cigarette between his lips. ‘You’ve done it again,’ he said. ‘We’re getting complaints at the highest level about your article on cows.’

Tania had visited the Vladimir Region, where Communist Party officials were so inefficient that cattle were dying on a huge scale while their feed rotted in barns. She had written an angry piece, and Daniil had sent it out. Now she said: ‘I suppose the corrupt and lazy bastards who let the cows die have complained to you.’

‘Never mind them,’ Opotkin said. ‘I’ve had a letter from the Central Committee Secretary responsible for ideology!’

‘He knows about cows, does he?’

Opotkin thrust a piece of paper at her. ‘We’re going to have to publish a retraction.’

Tania took it from him but did not read it. ‘Why are you so concerned to defend people who are destroying our country?’

‘We cannot undermine Communist Party cadres!’

The phone on Tania’s desk rang, and she picked it up. ‘Tania Dvorkin.’

A vaguely familiar voice said: ‘You wrote the article about cows dying in Vladimir.’

Tania sighed. ‘Yes, I did, and I have already been reprimanded. Who is this calling?’

‘I am the Secretary responsible for agriculture. My name is Mikhail Gorbachev. You interviewed me in 1976.’

‘So I did.’ Gorbachev was obviously going to add his condemnation to Opotkin’s, Tania assumed.

Gorbachev said: ‘I called to congratulate you on your excellent analysis.’

Tania was astonished. ‘I . . . uh, thank you, Comrade!’

‘It is desperately important that we eliminate such inefficiency on our farms.’

‘Uh, Comrade Secretary, would you mind saying that to my editor-in-chief? We were just discussing the article, and he was talking of a retraction.’

‘Retraction? Rubbish. Put him on the phone.’

Grinning, Tania said to Opotkin: ‘Secretary Gorbachev would like to talk to you.’

At first Opotkin did not believe her. He took the phone and said: ‘To whom am I speaking, please?’

From then on he was silent but for the occasional: ‘Yes, Comrade.’

At last he put down the phone. He walked away without speaking to Tania.

It gave her profound satisfaction to crumple the retraction and toss it into the bin.

She went to Vasili’s apartment not knowing what to expect. She hoped he was not going to ask her to join his harem. Just in case, she was wearing unsexy serge trousers and a drab grey sweater, to discourage him. All the same, she found herself looking forward to the evening.

He opened the door wearing a blue sweater and a white shirt, both new-looking. She kissed his cheek then studied him. His hair was grey, now, but still luxuriant and wavy. At fifty he was upright and slim.

He opened a bottle of Georgian champagne and put snacks on the table, squares of toast with egg salad and tomato, and fish roes on cucumber. Tania wondered who had made them. It would not be beyond him to have one of his girlfriends do it.

The apartment was comfortable, full of books and pictures. Vasili had a tapedeck that played cassettes. He was affluent now, even without the fortune in foreign royalties that he could not receive.

He wanted to know all about Poland. How had the Kremlin defeated Solidarity without an invasion? Why had Jaruzelski betrayed the Polish people? He did not think his apartment was bugged, but he played a Tchaikovsky cassette just in case.

Tania told him that Solidarity was not dead. It had gone underground. Many of the men arrested under martial law were still in jail, but the sexist secret police had failed to appreciate the major role played by women. Almost all the female organizers were still at large, including Danuta, who had been arrested then released. She was again working undercover, producing illegal newspapers and pamphlets, rebuilding lines of communication.

All the same, Tania had no hope. If they rebelled again, they would be crushed again. Vasili was more optimistic. ‘It was a near thing,’ he said. ‘In half a century, no one has come so close to defeating Communism.’

This was like the old days, Tania thought, feeling comfortable as the champagne relaxed her. Back in the early sixties, before Vasili was jailed, they had often sat around like this, talking and arguing about politics and literature and art.

She told him about the phone call from Mikhail Gorbachev. ‘He’s an odd one,’ Vasili said. ‘We in the agriculture ministry see a lot of him. He’s Yuri Andropov’s pet, and he seems to be a rock-solid Communist. His wife is even worse. Yet he backs reformist ideas, whenever he can do it without offending his superiors.’

‘My brother thinks highly of him.’

‘When Brezhnev dies – which can’t be far distant now, please, God – Andropov will make a bid for the leadership, and Gorbachev will back him. If the bid fails, both men will be finished. They’ll be sent to the provinces. But if Andropov succeeds, Gorbachev has a bright future.’