Edge of Eternity (34 page)

‘He might, if he’s French.’

George grinned. ‘Have you ever met a French person?’

‘No, but they have a reputation.’

‘And Negroes have a reputation for being lazy.’

‘You’re right, I shouldn’t talk that way; people are individuals.’

‘That’s what you always taught me.’

George had only half his mind on the conversation. The news about the missiles in Cuba had been kept secret from the American people for a week, but it was about to be revealed. It had been a week of intense debate within the small circle who knew, but little had been resolved. Looking back, George realized that when he had first heard he had under-reacted. He had thought mainly of the imminent midterm elections and their effect on the civil rights campaign. For a moment he had even relished the prospect of American retaliation. Only later had the truth sunk in: that civil rights would no longer matter, and no more elections would ever be held, if there was a nuclear war.

Jacky changed the subject. ‘The chef where I work has a lovely daughter.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Cindy Bell.’

‘What is Cindy short for, Cinderella?’

‘Lucinda. She graduated this year from Georgetown University.’

Georgetown was a neighbourhood of Washington, but few of the city’s black majority attended its prestigious university. ‘She white?’

‘No.’

‘Must be bright, then.’

‘Very.’

‘Catholic?’ Georgetown University was a Jesuit foundation.

‘Nothing wrong with Catholics,’ Jacky said with a touch of defiance. Jacky attended Bethel Evangelical Church, but she was broad-minded. ‘Catholics believe in the Lord, too.’

‘Catholics don’t believe in birth control, though.’

‘I’m not sure I do.’

‘What? You’re not serious.’

‘If I’d used birth control, I wouldn’t have you.’

‘But you don’t want to deny other women the right to a choice.’

‘Oh, don’t be so argumentative. I don’t want to ban birth control.’ She smiled fondly. ‘I’m just glad I was ignorant and reckless when I was sixteen.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll put some coffee on.’ The doorbell rang. ‘Would you see who that is?’

George opened the front door to an attractive black girl in her early twenties, wearing tight Capri pants and a loose sweater. She was surprised to see him. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, I thought this was Mrs Jakes’s house.’

‘It is,’ said George. ‘I’m visiting.’

‘My father asked me to drop this off as I was passing.’ She handed him a book called
Ship of Fools.
He had heard the title before: it was a bestseller. ‘I guess Dad borrowed it from Mrs Jakes.’

‘Thank you,’ George said, taking the book. Politely he added: ‘Won’t you come in?’

She hesitated.

Jacky came to the kitchen door. From there she could see who was outside: it was not a large house. ‘Hello, Cindy,’ she said. ‘I was just talking about you. Come in, I’ve made fresh coffee.’

‘It sure smells good,’ said Cindy, and she crossed the threshold.

George said: ‘Can we have coffee in the parlour, Mom? It’s almost time for the President.’

‘You don’t want to watch TV, do you? Sit and talk to Cindy.’

George opened the parlour door. He said to Cindy: ‘Would you mind if we watched the President? He’s going to say something important.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I helped write his speech.’

‘Then I have to watch,’ she said.

They went in. George’s grandfather, Lev Peshkov, had bought and furnished this house for Jacky and George in 1949. After that Jacky proudly refused to take anything more from Lev except George’s school and college costs. On her modest salary she could not afford to redecorate, so the parlour had changed little in thirteen years. George liked it this way: fringed upholstery, an oriental rug, a china cabinet. It was old-fashioned, but homey.

The main innovation was the RCA Victor television set. George turned it on, and they waited for the green screen to warm up.

Cindy said: ‘Your mom works at the University Women’s Club with my dad, doesn’t she?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So he didn’t really need me to drop off the book. He could have given it back to her tomorrow at work.’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ve been set up.’

‘I know.’

She giggled. ‘Oh, well, what the heck.’

He liked her for that.

Jacky brought in a tray. By the time she had poured coffee, President Kennedy was on the monochrome screen, saying: ‘Good evening, my fellow citizens.’ He was sitting at a desk. In front of him was a small lectern with two microphones. He wore a dark suit, white shirt and narrow tie. George knew that the shadows of terrible strain on his face had been concealed by television make-up.

When he said Cuba had ‘a nuclear strike capability against the Western hemisphere’, Jacky gasped and Cindy said: ‘Oh, my Lord!’

He read from sheets of paper on the lectern in his flat Boston accent, ‘hard’ information pronounced ‘haad’, and ‘report’ pronounced ‘repoat’. His delivery was deadpan, almost boring, but his words were electrifying. ‘Each of these missiles, in short, is capable of striking Washington, DC –’

Jacky gave a little scream.

‘– the Panama Canal, Cape Canaveral, Mexico City –’

Cindy said: ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Wait,’ said George. ‘You’ll see.’

Jacky said: ‘How could this happen?’

‘The Soviets are sneaky,’ George said.

Kennedy said: ‘We have no desire to dominate or conquer any other nation or impose our system on its people.’ At that point, normally Jacky would have made a derisive remark about the Bay of Pigs invasion; but she was beyond political point-scoring now.

The camera zoomed in for a close-up as Kennedy said: ‘To halt this offensive build-up, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated.’

‘What use is that?’ said Jacky. ‘The missiles are there already – he just said so!’

Slowly and deliberately, the President said: ‘It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile, launched from Cuba, against any nation in the Western hemisphere, as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.’

‘Oh, my Lord,’ said Cindy again. ‘So if Cuba launches just one missile, it’s all-out nuclear war.’

‘That’s right,’ said George, who had attended the meetings where this had been thrashed out.

As soon as the President said, ‘Thank you and goodnight,’ Jacky turned off the set and rounded on George. ‘What is going to happen to us?’

He longed to reassure her, to make her feel safe, but he could not. ‘I don’t know, Mom.’

Cindy said: ‘This quarantine makes no difference to anything, even I can see that.’

‘It’s just a preliminary.’

‘So what comes next?’

‘We don’t know.’

Jacky said: ‘George, tell me the truth, now. Is there going to be war?’

George hesitated. Nuclear weapons were being loaded on jets and flown around the country, to ensure that some at least would survive a Soviet first strike. The invasion plan for Cuba was being refined, and the State Department was sifting candidates to lead the pro-American government that would take charge of Cuba afterwards. Strategic Air Command had moved its alert status to DEFCON-3 – Defense Condition Three, ready to start a nuclear attack in fifteen minutes.

On balance, what was the likeliest outcome of all this?

With a heavy heart, George said: ‘Yes, Mom. I think there will be war.’

*  *  *

In the end, the Presidium ordered all Soviet missile ships still on their way to Cuba to turn around and come home.

Khrushchev reckoned he lost little by this, and Dimka agreed. Cuba had nukes now; it hardly mattered how many. The Soviet Union would avoid a confrontation on the high seas, claim to be a peacemaker in this crisis – and still have a nuclear base ninety miles from the US.

Everyone knew that would not be the end of the matter. The two superpowers had not yet addressed the real question: what to do about the nuclear weapons already in Cuba. All Kennedy’s options were still open and, as far as Dimka could see, most of them led to war.

Khrushchev decided not to go home tonight. It was too dangerous to be even a few minutes’ car journey away: if war broke out he had to be here, ready to make instant decisions.

Next to his grand office was a small room with a comfortable couch. The First Secretary lay down there in his clothes. Most of the Presidium made the same decision, and the leaders of the world’s second most powerful country settled down to an uneasy sleep in their offices.

Dimka had a small cubby-hole down the corridor. There was no couch in his office: just a hard chair, a utilitarian desk and a file cabinet. He was trying to figure out where would be the least uncomfortable place to lay his head when there was a tap at the door and Natalya came in. She brought with her a light fragrance unlike any Soviet perfume.

She had been wise to dress casually, Dimka realized: they were all going to sleep in their clothes. ‘I like your sweater,’ he said.

‘It’s called a Sloppy Joe.’ She used the English words.

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know, but I like how it sounds.’

He laughed. ‘I was just trying to figure out where to sleep.’

‘Me, too.’

‘On the other hand, I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep.’

‘You mean, knowing you might never wake up?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I feel the same.’

Dimka thought for a moment. Even if he spent the night awake, worrying, he might as well find somewhere to be comfortable. ‘This is a palace, and it’s empty,’ he said. He hesitated, then added: ‘Shall we explore?’ He was not sure why he said that. It was the kind of thing his ladykiller friend Valentin might come out with.

‘Okay,’ said Natalya.

Dimka picked up his overcoat, to use as a blanket.

The spacious bedrooms and boudoirs of the palace had been inelegantly subdivided into offices for bureaucrats and typists, and filled with cheap furniture made of pine and plastic. There were upholstered chairs in a few of the larger rooms for the most important men, but nothing you could sleep on. Dimka began to think of ways to make a bed on the floor. Then, at the far end of the wing, they passed along a corridor cluttered with buckets and mops and came to a grand room full of stored furniture.

The room was unheated, and their breath turned to white vapour. The large windows were frosted over. The gilded wall lights and chandeliers had sockets for candles, all empty. A dim light came from two naked bulbs hanging from the painted ceiling.

The stacked furniture looked as if it had been here since the revolution. There were chipped tables with spindly legs, chairs with rotting brocade upholstery, and carved bookcases with empty shelves. Here were the treasures of the tsars, turned to junk.

The furniture was rotting away because it was too
ancien régime
to be used in the offices of commissars, although Dimka guessed it was the kind of stuff that might sell for a fortune in the antique auctions of the West.

And there was a four-poster bed.

Its hangings were full of dust but the faded blue coverlet appeared intact and it even had a mattress and pillows.

‘Well,’ said Dimka, ‘here’s one bed.’

‘We may have to share,’ said Natalya.

That thought had crossed Dimka’s mind, but he had dismissed it. Pretty girls sometimes casually offered to share a bed with him in his fantasies, but never in real life.

Until now.

But did he want to? He was not married to Nina, but she undoubtedly wanted him to be faithful to her, and he certainly expected the same of her. On the other hand, Nina was not here, and Natalya was.

Foolishly, he said: ‘Are you suggesting we sleep together?’

‘Just for warmth,’ she said. ‘I can trust you, can’t I?’

‘Of course,’ he said. That made it all right, he supposed.

Natalya drew back the ancient coverlet. Dust rose, making her sneeze. The sheets beneath had yellowed with age, but seemed intact. ‘Moths don’t like cotton,’ she remarked.

‘I didn’t know that.’

She stepped out of her shoes. In her jeans and sweater she slipped between the sheets. She shivered. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Don’t be shy.’

Dimka put his coat over her. Then he unlaced his shoes and pulled them off. This was strange but exciting. Natalya wanted to sleep with him, but without sex.

Nina would never believe it.

But he had to sleep somewhere.

He took off his tie and got into bed. The sheets were icy. He put his arms around Natalya. She lay her head against his shoulder and pressed her body to his. Her bulky sweater and his suit coat made it impossible for him to feel the contours of her body, but all the same he got an erection. If she felt it, she did not react.

In a few minutes they stopped shivering and felt warmer. Dimka’s face was pressed into her hair, which was wavy and abundant and smelled of lemon soap. His hands were on her back, but he got no sense of her skin through the chunky sweater. He could feel her breath on his neck. The rhythm of her breathing changed, becoming regular and shallow. He kissed the top of her head, but she made no response.

He could not figure Natalya out. She was just an aide, like Dimka, and not more than three or four years his senior, but she drove a Mercedes, twelve years old and beautifully preserved. She usually dressed in conventionally dowdy Kremlin clothes yet she wore costly imported perfume. She was charming to the point of flirtatiousness, but she went home and cooked dinner for her husband.

She had inveigled Dimka into bed with her, then she had fallen asleep.

He was sure he would not sleep, lying in bed with a warm girl in his arms.

But he did.

It was still dark outside when he woke up.

Natalya mumbled: ‘What’s the time?’

She was still in his arms. He craned his neck to look at his wrist, which was behind her left shoulder. ‘Six-thirty.’

‘And we’re still alive.’

‘The Americans didn’t bomb us.’

‘Not yet.’