Making Enemies (22 page)

For weeks Ulanov could bring himself to do nothing. This was the time of Peter’s silence. In an attempt to regain his courage, Ulanov took to following Martineau. He got to know the daily pattern of his movements, his rota at the embassy. He became an expert in what he called ‘Martineau’s nocturnal habits’, his visits to the dark-haired wife of a French consular official. He rehearsed his meeting with Martineau a hundred times. Then, early one morning, he caught up with the scurrying figure of the military attaché, handed him a briefcase and said only one word before walking quickly away: ‘Peter.’ Peter the Great had come back to life. Bakov’s faith was vindicated.

By December 1945, the ever-vigilant KGB had caught Ulanov, but before his arrest he had recruited Joseph Militarossian who, months later, brought in Boris Shtemenko. Peter was passed from hand to hand. The flow of intelligence may stutter occasionally but it does not stop, but nor does the line of corpses of those associated with it. All of them, she knows, are Little Krasov’s friends.

It is dark outside now; the windows have turned black while Little
Krasov has been talking. The hall is flooded with an icy blue light. From time to time she is dimly aware of names being called and of figures shuffling past her to be directed down ill-lit corridors by sour-faced nurses with the doughy complexions of camp guards.

Krasov is pouring more tea from the flask. Why is he telling me about Peter the Great? What am I to do with all this? Could it be a trap? She controls a sudden wave of paranoia. She has known Little Krasov all her life – surely they have been through too much together for him to betray her now? Then she remembers it is years since she last saw him. In that time, what might have happened to him that she does not know about?

She looks at the small dark man next to her, leaning forward as he speaks to touch her hand, she hears the urgency in his deep voice as the story unfolds, she remembers the adventures of their childhood and youth, she sees the Krasov she has always known. How could he lie to her when they have shared so much? She must be patient and wait for him to explain why he has to tell her this story. Then she will make her judgement or, perhaps, by then no judgement will be necessary.

Suddenly the lights fail and the hall is plunged in darkness. ‘How many times this week?’ someone says in the row behind her, and groans of complaint follow at yet another power failure. ‘What’s happening to this country?’

Within seconds lighters and matches flare. Grotesque, moving shapes are projected on to the walls and ceiling: huge heads, distended bodies, insect-like arms, a world of deformity. Then, where before voices could be heard in conversation, a whispering begins, a rising sibilant sound, the soft Russians like fingertips sliding across velvet.

Krasov, holding his lighter in his hand, his face illuminated by the blue flame, continues his story undeterred.

‘Why I am telling you this? That’s what you want to know, isn’t it? Why should Little Krasov reappear in your life after so many years to tell you these dreadful things about people you don’t know?’ He leans closer to her; she can feel his breath on her cheek and see the flame of his lighter reflected in his eyes. ‘I am your friend, Ruth. Your loving friend. I have brought you here to warn you.’

My life is too simple to need warnings, she wants to say. It revolves around my son, my mother and my work. How carefully I have avoided any other involvement.

‘Warn me about what?’ she asks.

‘I attend committees, read reports, see documents. I keep my eyes and ears open, Ruth. Perhaps that is why I have lived so long. I beg you to be careful.’

His words terrify her even though he has told her nothing concrete.

‘I am not involved in anything,’ she says. Denial is an instinct, a protective second nature.

‘Madness has corrupted our lives,’ he says. ‘A name on a piece of paper can put your life at risk. Your name came up in a secret report on the explosion in D4.’

She must test him now. See how much he knows.

‘The official report exonerated the Institute of any blame.’

‘You didn’t believe what you read and nor did I. The explosion wasn’t an accident. A decision was taken at a high level to damage the laboratory and to blow up the apartment block.’

‘And kill all those old people?’

‘That was all part of the plan, yes.’

‘Why?’

‘We want the British and the Americans to believe we cannot master the techniques needed to make nuclear weapons. We want them to think we are falling further behind in the race to make our atomic bomb. Now do you understand?’

She shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says, ‘that can’t be so.’ But of course, Little Krasov’s story fits.

‘The explosion destroyed everything within a large area. The laboratory and the apartment block are sealed off and guarded. To deceive the West the impact must appear larger and more damaging than it was. Peter has told them we have suffered a catastrophe.’

‘Why kill old people?’ she asks, maintaining the pretence.

‘To confuse our enemies. You could say they served their country in the way they died.’

As he speaks his face disappears into the darkness. He has moved his hand and the flame of the cigarette lighter flickers.

‘What did the report say about me, Leo?’ At last she finds the strength to ask what she so wants, but fears, to know.

‘It said that you were fully aware of what was to happen and had made sure that no research of any value was lost in the explosion. It expresses the fear that you may tell Professor Stevens the truth about what happened.’

‘Why should I do that?’

‘Because you were once his lover.’

If this whole business with Stevens goes wrong, he is saying, you will not escape. Your name is there, on a list, ready to have a black cross marked against it.

‘I knew nothing of all this, Leo. Nothing. Believe me.’

‘I do believe you, Ruth.’ His deep black eyes stare at her out of the gloom. ‘You are involved with powerful and dangerous forces. You have your protectors now, but if they should slip, then you will be alone, facing a power you cannot even imagine. Take care, Ruth. That is what I came to say. Trust no one. You must beware for your own protection. If I knew more I would tell you.’

This is why they are huddled close together in a hospital waiting room talking in whispers, surrounded by little flickering lights. He does not know about Andropov (or she assumes he doesn’t know) but he is warning her that to reduce her life to its essentials is not as effective as she believes it is.

At that moment, the power is restored and the lights come on again. There are ragged cheers around the room, a few handclaps. She looks at him and sees his saucer eyes are fixed on her; his hands, still outstretched, are trembling.

It is an act of conscience. The proof that Little Krasov will always be her friend. The thought of it strengthens her in her moment of distress. She wonders how could she have doubted him so. She knows now why he is telling her so much. Krasov is leaving Russia for ever. He has come to say goodbye and he wants her blessing before his departure.

‘I am leaving Moscow,’ he is saying. ‘Going far away. It is unlikely we will ever see each other again.’

She sees the sadness illuminated in his expression, she feels the tight grip of his hand on her arm.

‘Where are you going?’ she whispers.

‘I dare not say, even to you.’

He does not want to hide the truth from her. The motive for his refusal is that even in this act of farewell he wants to protect her. If she knows his secret then she becomes vulnerable. He would never place her own safety in jeopardy. Knowing that, she does not persist with her question. Now she is convinced he is telling the truth.

‘Oh Leo, Leo.’

There are tears in her eyes. When he has gone she will be truly
alone. He holds her in his arms as she cries, clinging to him with all the strength she can muster.

‘Ruth, please.’

Goodbye, my friend, goodbye, she wants to say, but she finds she cannot say anything.

The few short weeks in March and April were the glory days of Peter’s career. He was our eyes and ears as the crisis developed in the Institute of Nuclear Research. His intelligence was unsurpassed in its clarity and the momentous nature of its content. There were times when Horseferry Road was closer to Moscow than to Westminster Abbey.

Our astonishment at Peter’s report of Marchenko’s challenge to the Institute’s safety policy turned to incredulity when, not long after, a group of like-minded scientists formed themselves around her into a small but effective opposition to Soviet nuclear research. Their tactics had pushed an already seriously delayed programme to the edge of crisis when their laboratory exploded and the setback became a disaster. Within days they faced their directorate with an ultimatum. Without major concessions on the issue of the political control of nuclear weapons, they were no longer willing to work on the nuclear bomb project. It was an unprecedented challenge by a small group of scientists against the authority of the Soviet State. We waited anxiously for Peter to report that the Soviet system had taken its revenge in the usual manner. Days passed but nothing happened.

Who were these courageous men and women whose actions had the power to hold the Soviet Union to ransom? We trawled the Registry for information. Our findings were thin. We discovered next to nothing about Marchenko, Markarova, Gromsky, Tomasov, Lykowski and the others. We put the word out to our SOVINT network in the universities and fared not much better. We were given one or two articles from pre-war scientific journals that Tomasov and Gromsky had written, but these were juvenile pieces and no guide to their politics, their resolve or their present positions
in the Institute. Marchenko’s group was the new generation of post-war Soviet scientists, many of whom had come to prominence in wartime research programmes, a period when international scientific conferences (now essential intelligence-gathering grounds in the post-war world) had ceased to exist. New reputations had been made away from the spotlight and we knew little or nothing about them.

‘Why don’t they arrest and imprison the ringleaders?’ Adrian Gardner asked as Peter reported that Marchenko’s group had survived another day. ‘What’s going on?’

Surely the political authorities couldn’t be in two minds about how to cope with Marchenko and her friends? The Soviets were not known for their slowness in repressing what they described as deviant activity.

‘If this goes on much longer,’ Colin Maitland said as the challenge began the third week of its life and work on the bomb (Peter told us) was rapidly coming to a complete halt, ‘the Soviets will hand the nuclear race to us on a plate. That’s what mystifies me. I can’t believe they’ve given up the fight for their own bomb. There has to be an explanation for what’s going on.’

*

‘Maybe we’re expecting more of Marchenko and her people than they can deliver,’ Arthur Gurney said during one of our daily conferences about the situation in Moscow. His unexpectedly reductionist mood was, I supposed, intended to counterbalance the wildly speculative theories that grew out of our lack of knowledge; an attempt to bring us back to earth.

‘Why shouldn’t their action be no more and no less than genuine revulsion at the task they’ve undertaken? Put yourself in their shoes. They’re intelligent people, patriotic Russians, not necessarily members of the Party but still committed to working on a highly secret project. Progressively they become aware of the terrifying consequences of what they’re being asked to do. They realize that one slip of the finger could destroy all civilization and turn the planet into dust and ashes. Can you blame them for taking a stand against that madness?

Arthur warmed to his theme. The event itself was clear and unambiguous, its meaning eluded us only because we’d got our focus wrong.

‘The Institute’s team asks for certain safeguards to be put in place
to protect their own technicians because of the hazardous nature of the work they are being asked to undertake. The directorate denies there is any need for safeguards. So what does our gang do? They down tools. At root, it’s as simple as that. The revolt is a spontaneous event, unplanned, an expression of basic human decency. It has no significance outside itself. It is what it is, no more, no less.’

‘Oh God,’ Adrian Gardner whispered to me, ‘he’ll be saying the Soviets are like the rest of us next.’

‘After all,’ Arthur Gurney concluded, ‘the Russians are no different from the rest of us, are they?’

‘As far as I’m concerned,’ Gardner said spikily, ‘your average Soviet is two whiskers short of a savage.’

While we admired Peter’s bravery and the courage of Marchenko and her colleagues, the question we came back to, and on which all our speculation stumbled, was the baffling inaction of the Soviet authorities.

‘God knows,’ Colin Maitland said, ‘they’ve got the means to do what they please and they’re not short of experience in stamping out what they don’t like.’

It appeared the resistance was being allowed to develop its own momentum. Had we read the Russians wrong?

Some of us (Gardner, Boys-Allen, myself) believed the authorities were in a state of paralysis because they did not know how to cope with the situation. Faced with a genuine crisis in a totally unexpected quarter (the Institute’s team was an elite whose privileges were intended to undermine any remaining moral scruple) they had looked in the rule book for guidance and had found none. Others (Maitland, Gurney, Guy Benton) took a more alarmist view. Their argument was based on the impossibility of the Soviet system
not
reacting to crush this outburst of individualism.

‘If the state does nothing,’ Arthur Gurney said with unexpected passion, ‘It sows the seeds of its own destruction. The Soviet Union is a repressive society. Their leaders know they can’t let the pressure off anywhere. Their survival demands a reaction.’

Martineau, speaking to us on a crackling but secure line from the embassy in Moscow, confirmed that the authorities had succeeded in maintaining a news blackout. No one knew that anything was going on at the Institute.

‘Surely people know about the explosion, don’t they? After all, there’s a gaping hole where there used to be a building.’

‘People here ignore what they know,’ Martineau said cryptically. ‘They look the other way, pretend it hasn’t happened. Nothing unusual in that. It’s standard Soviet practice. Say nothing, see nothing, think nothing if you want to stay alive.’

What about unofficial sources? we asked, going for another angle. Was there no gossip about the Institute?

No, he said, none of his Russian contacts (and he was well connected, we knew) had heard so much as a whisper.

Was there any evidence that the scientists had talked outside their own circle? Not as far as he knew. ‘They’re an isolated group socially. They keep themselves to themselves. That’s always been their way. That shouldn’t surprise you. They’re given a lot of privileges and consequently they’re unpopular. I’m not sure there are that many people who would listen to them sympathetically, even if they did want to talk. More to the point, when they get home they’re frightened. Fear is the best security measure there is. Ask anyone here.’

He shared our view that the silence was deliberate and well managed. Soviet practice, he confirmed, was to seal off any area of difficulty and deprive it of oxygen. He agreed that the failure of the authorities to take action was surprising, but the Institute was probably the last place anyone expected something like this to happen.

How did Martineau react to the idea that Marchenko and her group had powerful protection? Didn’t their continued survival argue that someone high up in the political apparatus had sanctioned a policy of non-intervention, even if only to buy time to resolve the issue of what to do?

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Logic isn’t a reliable guide to the Soviet system. There are countless examples where it simply doesn’t work. This could be one of them. I wouldn’t bet on a conspiracy or on protection, I really wouldn’t.’

‘How do you explain this phenomenon, then?’

‘Left hand ignorant of the right, that sort of thing. The Soviets are chronically inefficient. Nothing more sinister than that, probably. Who knows?’

*

‘The atomic bomb is the cornerstone of an expansionist Soviet foreign policy.’ Adrian Gardner was standing in front of the blackboard, chalk in hand. ‘So what happens when their nuclear
programme comes shuddering to a halt, an event which strikes a blow right at the heart of Soviet ambition? Do they suppress the dissent? Eliminate the ringleaders? Shift their foreign policy? Quite the reverse. They stand by and do nothing. That’s where we trip up every time.’

It was late. The room in Horseferry Road was full of smoke, the table littered with uncleared teacups and unemptied ashtrays. We were tired and despondent. It had been a long and unproductive day and we wanted to go home. Outside, the wind blew gusts of heavy rain against the windows. The room felt cold.

‘If this rebellion had taken place at a steel plant,’ he continued, ‘it would have been stamped out long ago and the ringleaders imprisoned, if not executed.’

Boys-Allen knocked out his pipe loudly against the ashtray.

‘Can anyone find me a precedent for a lenient response by the Soviets to any kind of serious dissent?’ Adrian asked. He looked around the table. ‘The answer’s no because there isn’t one. So where does that leave us? This event has got someone’s seal of approval stamped all over it. Whose it is and why I have no idea. But I’m damn sure Marchenko would be dead by now if she didn’t have powerful protection. There’s no other possible explanation for this revolt lasting so long.’

‘A member of the Central Committee or the Politburo?’ Guy Benton said. ‘To be effective it would have to be someone at that level and that’s hardly likely, is it?’

‘Why not a senior member of the military?’ Adrian argued. ‘A disillusioned general or marshal would have the authority and the organization to provide protection.’

Our imaginations stirred. The continued survival of a small group of scientists as evidence of a secret power struggle inside the Soviet Union, of which so far we had only a peripheral glimpse? A revolt within the military? It had its attraction but not all of us were sold on it yet.

‘Peter paints the creation of Marchenko’s committee and all its subsequent acts as spontaneous events,’ Boys-Allen said. ‘Their rebellion is self-generating. A sudden awakening of conscience, stemming from Marchenko’s question, which came right out of the blue but which struck a chord. That doesn’t sound like acting under instruction to me. Far too chancy.’

‘I’m pretty sure Marchenko and the others are probably unaware
of any larger context,’ Adrian Gardner said. ‘But their ignorance doesn’t invalidate my theory. Their anonymous protector manipulates them by playing on their doubts.’

‘What doubts?’ Guy Benton asked.

‘Whether or not they should engage in the manufacture of atomic bombs.’

‘How do you know they’ve had doubts?’

‘You can’t look at newsreel footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and not ask if this is the future we want,’ Arthur Gurney said quietly.

‘Spontaneous events like this simply don’t happen in the Soviet system,’ Adrian said. ‘The social lid’s too tightly bolted down. The continued life of this group is a measure of someone’s ambition.’

‘Where’s the motive, Adrian?’ Guy Benton asked. ‘Suppose Marchenko has powerful protectors. Why go to such lengths? What do they hope to gain by all this?’

‘Think of owning that power base,’ Adrian Gardner said. ‘The heart of the Soviet nuclear programme in your control. The lives of key scientists in your hands. The future of the most strategically important development in Soviet military research under your command. The key to Soviet post-war ambition. You could bargain your way to the top with that one, couldn’t you?’

A platform for a
coup d’état
? Was that what we were seeing? The birth of an event of enormous historical importance? Could this be the first crack in the Soviet system, one that might ultimately bring it all down?

‘Rivals to Stalin,’ Colin Maitland said. A feeling of excitement, tinged with disbelief, began to gather. ‘Men and women who might be prepared to oppose him if the issue were big enough. If this was a plot by, say, a group of senior military commanders fundamentally opposed to the use of nuclear weapons, who might lead it, what are their chances of success?’

We reached once more for our Registry records, searching through the gallery of senior Soviet figures for even a whisper of evidence that might suggest such a possible leader. We came up with the usual catalogue of cynics, careerists and fanatics. Marshal Vasilevsky. General Zakharov. Politicians like Molotov, Beria, Abakumov, Zhdanov, Zorin. We knew that Stalin feared challenges to his authority (why else would he change his government so often? The removal from office of a potential threat, whether real or imagined, was a conventional Soviet tactic). We searched our archives for
anything, however trivial, to suggest that one of them might be prepared to stand against him.

Two days later Peter told us that the explosion in D4 had acted as the catalyst in bringing together a band of senior politicians and members of the military into an ad hoc opposition to Stalin. They were firmly set against the development and use of nuclear weapons. They believed it was essential that an accommodation with the West be reached, and soon. Behind the walls of the Kremlin a major power struggle was going on.

Suddenly it seemed as though we had the advantage. The question was, what were we going to do about it?