Making Enemies (39 page)

‘This is surely too late for a social call, Colonel Andropov, even in Russia,’ Stevens says. ‘What do you want?’

‘Sit down,’ Andropov says. He pulls out a chair. ‘I presume it is me you have come to see.’ Stevens sits down and puts his hand through his hair, brushing it into some kind of shape.

‘That is correct.’

‘What is this about?’

‘Do you wish to speak in front of Dr Marchenko?’

Stevens nods, uncertain.

Andropov leans against the window ledge and looks down at Stevens. He takes out a cigarette and lights it.

‘We made a bargain and you have broken it,’ Andropov says.

‘What bargain? I made no bargain,’ Stevens says. (Is he expressing outrage or confusion?)

‘We agreed that you would retain your freedom so long as you left the boy alone.’ Andropov’s tinted lenses appear menacingly dark in the half-light of the room.

‘I agreed nothing of the kind.’

‘You were to leave the boy alone.’

Her instinct tells her that Andropov is not talking to Stevens, he is giving a message to her.

‘Did you expect me not to talk to my own son?’

‘You know exactly what I mean,’ Andropov says bluntly.

‘Geoffrey?’ She is frightened now. Threats to her own life, Geoffrey’s, even her mother’s, are all things she can cope with. But her son is the most precious thing in the world to her. ‘What did you promise?’

She sees Stevens turn towards her, horror in his eyes. How can she say that? How can she ask such a question of the man she loves? Has she sunk so low now that she doubts the father of her son?

‘You were not to speak to the boy,’ Andropov says coldly. ‘You were to teach him nothing.’

‘I made no bargain and I have broken no bargain.’

‘His teachers say differently.’ Their reports give accounts of V. Marchenko subverting his fellow students by persistent attacks on Academician Lysenko’s theories. That is anti-communist propaganda.’

‘That’s not true,’ Ruth says, the desperation in her heart making her voice hoarse with emotion. ‘My son would never do such a thing. Never.’ She has trained him too well for that.

Andropov ignores her. It is as if she was not in the room. There is a contest going on between these two men whose meaning she does not understand and in which she has no part. But she knows that is what Andropov came for.

‘There is only one possible source that allows him to promote such opinions.’

‘There are many sources for those views,’ Stevens says. She is proud of the vigour of his rejection. ‘His own common sense, his scientific instinct, the doubts of his fellow pupils, the opinions of other scientists. Anyone with any knowledge of the laws of physics. Lysenko’s theories are dangerous nonsense and should not be taught.’

‘They may not be taught in the West.’

‘They’re bloody nonsense, of course no one teaches such absurd ideas in the West.’

‘They are endorsed officially here.’

‘If you knew any science you would have nothing to do with Lysenko. What’s happened to the great tradition of Soviet scientific enquiry? How can you allow yourselves to be beguiled by such idiocy?

Stevens is shouting at him. She still does not understand what is happening. Andropov cannot have come to her apartment at two in the morning to argue about scientific theory.

‘If Valery is denouncing Lysenko’s mad ideas, then he is right to do so. But he isn’t, is he? He isn’t denouncing anything because he hasn’t opened his mouth. You and your people have invented this whole ludicrous story. God knows what you hope to gain by it.’

Andropov pulls an envelope out of his pocket.

‘Here are the reports of his teachers, his classmates. That is all the evidence I need.’

‘Evidence for what?’ Ruth’s heart is beating so fast she can hardly speak.

‘To order his arrest.’

There are the first words he has addressed to her.

‘My son is not a dissident,’ she says quietly. ‘He has done nothing. I will not allow you to touch him.’

‘The boy’s sixteen. Little more than a child,’ Stevens says. ‘He poses no threat to you or anyone. Why can’t you leave him alone?’

‘We cannot tolerate the son of a Soviet scientist who proclaims unorthodox views,’ Andropov says.

‘A boy of sixteen cannot undermine this or any other state,’ Stevens says defiantly. ‘You can do better than that.’

‘Your son will be charged with offences against the state.’

‘No!’ Ruth screams. ‘No! You won’t touch him! He is my son. He belongs here with me. You cannot touch him. He has done nothing.’

She rushes at Andropov but Stevens holds her back. She tries to break from his grasp.

‘He’s not here to arrest anyone,’ Stevens says, taking charge. ‘That’s not why he came, is it?’ He turns to Andropov. ‘He’s threatening Valery in order to frighten me. He wants something else. All right, I’ll listen to what you have to say. But the boy must be left out of it.’

Andropov stares blankly at him and doesn’t move. Ruth waits. Once more she has the sense that this confrontation has another agenda, another script, the purpose of which she has no idea.

Stevens pulls the sheet tighter around him. ‘Tell me what you want.’

The sight of these two men in her small sitting room, facing each other like gladiators, is a moment of illumination for Ruth. Suddenly she sees the truth with awful clarity. She knows that she can have either her son or her lover but for reasons she doesn’t understand she can never have both.

‘What are we playing for?’ Stevens asks. It is a game they are playing now, where the bets are human lives.

‘The boy,’ Andropov says.

‘No,’ Stevens says. ‘The evidence against him is false. A few typed sheets. Anyone could do that. We play for the truth or we don’t play.’

Andropov smiles. ‘If I have created it once, could I not create it twice?’

‘The question you must decide is, will it be worth it?’

‘That we will see,’ Andropov says. ‘It depends what you can offer me.’

They are not fighting over her, these two men (did she believe for a moment that they might be?), she is forgotten. They are fighting another battle which will decide whether or not Stevens survives intact. She knows without a word being spoken that Stevens must leave Moscow, that her greater loyalty is to her son. That is not the point at issue. It is the method of Stevens’s leaving that counts. Will he be allowed to return to Cambridge whole enough to be able to continue as before?

‘What must I do?’

‘We want you to go home.’

‘Just that?’

‘Just that.’

‘Why?’

Andropov lights a cigarette. ‘Our assessment was wrong. We imagined you might help us. We were mistaken. You cannot or you will not give us the information we need. We could use force against you to persuade you to talk, but strange as it may seem, we can see no purpose in that. It is better that you leave the Soviet Union and return home.’

She knows then that he cannot go home undefeated. The battle that Andropov is fighting is already over. Whatever is agreed now, Andropov has won. Stevens will return to Cambridge disabled by his weeks in Moscow and she, Ruth Marchenko, will have been the instrument of his defeat. Why did she let Andropov use her to bring Stevens to Moscow? She should never have told Stevens that Valery was their son. She should have resisted the opportunity to meet him again after so many years. She should have had the courage to go on living alone in her dreams where she and Valery were safe. Imagining that she could have Stevens to herself again, even for a few days, was her mistake.

In any case, in the years they have been apart he has forged another life, just as she has done. She has tried to steal that other life by rekindling the love that she once felt for him, and in doing so she has put her son in jeopardy and caused her lover’s downfall. Stevens does not understand that now but one day soon, when his life lies in tatters around him, he will come face to face with the truth of what has happened. Then he will condemn her. How she hates herself for her weakness.

*

It is dawn. She is alone. She sits at her desk and writes the letter to Stevens she has been wanting to write for days.

The room on the second floor of the house off Park Road in Wimbledon is dark. Someone has pulled down the blinds, even though it is daylight outside. The bulbs in the overhead light and the lamp on the table are weak and give out a watery glow, adding to the hallucinatory atmosphere of the proceedings. The interrogation team works in shifts. The questioning continues relentlessly.

*

His first impression is not how crowded the room is, nor how many people are there (certainly many more than he had expected), nor how noisy it is (everyone is talking at once), but how full of smoke, as if someone had lit a bonfire, the acrid smell of Soviet cigarettes. Bloody Red Stars. His eyes burn, he can hardly see to the back of the room where the film cameras are. He is just able to read
Pathé News
on the side of one of them. The talking dies away as he takes his seat, and the smoke gradually clears. Andropov draws up a chair beside him and pours a glass of water for them both. A battery of microphones faces him, strange metal fish waiting to capture what he says and swim away with it to an invisible world.

Is this the world’s press? he thinks as he surveys the room. What a grand phrase for such a dismal collection.

‘Professor Stevens would like to read a statement.’

Andropov nods at him. He takes the paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and unfolds it. The action revives memories of the day-long battle he and Andropov have waged over what he should say. For a moment he wonders, shall I tear up the text? Shall I say what I want to say? But he decides not to. Yesterday’s compromises were hard won.

‘I would first like to express my gratitude to Colonel Andropov
and his colleagues for their hospitality towards me since my arrival in Moscow. I have wanted for nothing.’

He hears his own voice and it is as if someone else were speaking. He is astonished that he could be praising the Soviets in this way, when at every turn they have put obstacles in his path, they have lied continuously, they have deliberately misled him. He told Andropov yesterday that no one would believe him if he were to thank his Russian hosts in this way. But Andropov insisted that this appalling, hollow introduction remain in the script.

‘What is a British nuclear scientist doing in Moscow? That is what you want to know. I came here because I believed that if I appeared in the Soviet camp, there was an even chance I might be listened to.

‘The importance of what I have to say lies beyond ideology, nation states, the ambitions of world leaders. It concerns us all, every man, woman and child, every living organism on this planet.’

*

There is a knock at the door. They stop talking at once. Someone brings in a tray of mugs of tea. They each take the mug offered in silence. He sees that milk has already been added. There is a bowl of sugar and one spoon to be shared for stirring. He declines the sugar.

‘Why did you go to Moscow after Helsinki?’

‘I wanted to see my son.’

‘You and Marchenko had been planning this for some time.’

‘On the contrary, it was a shock to learn from Dr Marchenko that I was the father of her child. A great shock.’

‘We know you met your son in Helsinki. Why was it necessary to go to Moscow?’

‘He and his mother were under guard in Helsinki. It was impossible to talk to him in such circumstances. I wanted to be alone with him. I wanted to see him without Colonel Andropov listening to every word I said.’

‘The circumstances would be more favourable in Moscow?’

‘That is what I believed, yes.’

‘That was the idea Colonel Andropov sold you.’

‘I see that now.’

‘You trusted Andropov?’

‘I believed what he told me at the time, yes.’

‘Were you justified in your belief?’

‘No. That is why I behaved as I did.’

*

It is going well, he thinks to himself. They are listening to me. Andropov sits beside him, very still, occasionally drinking from his glass. He can hear the whirr of the film cameras at the back of the room, he sees the bowed heads of his audience as they write in their pads, some with earphones on are listening to the female translator’s voice. (‘Don’t speak too fast,’ she had asked him in faultless English when he had been introduced to her shortly before the press conference began.)

He feels his confidence growing. His own identity is submerged by the words he is using. He and his message have become one. He feels a surge of power. This is the world’s press and they are listening to him. Through them the world will listen to what he has to say.

This is his chance, he thinks, this is his opportunity. To hell with Andropov and the promises he’s made to him. He must go through with it whatever the consequences. He must take the opportunity that is offered to him because it will never occur again. He has to do it. His mind is made up.

Now.

*

‘Let me take you forward in time again. You are now in Moscow. Are you living with Marchenko?’

‘No. I was given my own apartment.’

‘Did you spend much time with Marchenko and her son?’

‘Not as much as I wanted to.’

‘Did that surprise you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You were prevented from doing so?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you do about that?’

‘I complained to Andropov.’

‘And what did Colonel Andropov say?’

‘He asked me to fulfil certain official functions, as he put it, and then I would be free to spend as long as I wanted with Marchenko.’

‘A bargain, in other words.’

‘No, a proposal. A change of plan.’

‘Did you accept his change of plan?’

‘No, I refused to go along with it.’

‘For what reason?’

‘I hadn’t come to Moscow on that basis. I had agreed to come to see Marchenko and her son. That was it. Nothing more. Certainly no conditions.’

‘After your arrival Andropov imposed conditions?’

‘Continuously.’

‘When he first put to you the idea of going to Moscow, did you think that you might achieve something more than just getting to know your son?’

‘My objectives were to see my son and to protect Ruth Marchenko if I could. I had no other motives.’

‘What happened when you turned down Andropov’s offer?’

‘He insisted we meet to discuss my response.’

‘Can you describe that meeting to us, please?’

‘There’s not much to describe. I said I wouldn’t accept what Andropov was proposing for the reasons I have given you. He said news of my arrival had slipped out to the international press corps and the circumstances were now changed. He asked me if I would speak to the press. Reluctantly I agreed.’

‘Why did you agree?’

‘Andropov made me a series of promises which he subsequently dishonoured. I agreed to see the press on the understanding that then I would be free to see Marchenko and my son. In the event, I always had one more obligation to fulfil before I was able to do properly what I had come for.’

*

He pushes aside his text. He is seeing everything with an astonishing clarity: who he is, what he is, what he wants to say, what must be said, all fitting so perfectly that there is no blurring at the edges, no lack of focus. Everything is precise and correct and sharp. One complete, perfect circle of truth.

‘I would like to add this one point,’ he says. This is it. This is his moment of greatest power and influence. Andropov looks at him nervously.

‘Scientific knowledge is used for political purposes when there is an imbalance in knowledge, when one side knows more than the other. That is the case now. The West has exploded the atomic
bomb. The Soviet Union has yet to do so. The West is striving to maintain its advantage, the Soviet Union to reduce its disadvantage. How much safer the world would be if this race was not being run, if nuclear secrets did not exist. How much safer our lives would be if we shared everything between us, if we put this extraordinary knowledge at the disposal of humanity, not ideology.’

This is what they came for, he can see that in the greedy looks on the faces of his audience. This is the news they wanted, the real story of the British scientist in Moscow.

‘I appeal to the scientists of the world to forget their national origins, to take their rightful place as citizens of the world and to serve mankind. I appeal to my colleagues in the West and my friends in the Soviet Union to pull down the towers of secrecy. Let us ignore the politicians, and together put all our energies into the task of using science for the benefit of all mankind. A world without secrets would be a far safer place.

‘My prime purpose in asking you to meet me here today was to state publicly the offer I now make to the Soviet government. In order to reduce the growing tensions in the world, I am prepared to remain in Moscow and work with my Soviet colleagues on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, providing they will send a senior scientist to take my place in a similar programme in the United Kingdom. That way, we will ensure that there is no longer any knowledge that can be exploited against us.’

He sits back. He has done it. He is pleased with himself. He has said what he wanted to say and the world’s press has listened. Andropov can do what he likes now, it is too late.

*

‘Let us come now to your press conference. Remind us, please, of what you said.’

‘I repeated the views I have expressed on numerous occasions, that the control of nuclear weapons must pass from the hands of politicians into those of the international scientific community.’

‘I have here a transcript made by the Reuter’s man in Moscow who was present. He agrees that is how you began.’

‘It was an appeal for sanity above the emotional draw of nation or ideology.’

‘That’s one way of putting it. Our reading is that you urged scientists everywhere to reject the whole concept of secrecy by
opening their files and giving away to their enemies the information those files contained.’

‘That is what I said because that is what I believe.’

‘Why did you choose to make this statement in Moscow? Why not in London or Washington?’

‘I have spoken to Ministers, to senior politicians in Government and in the Opposition, and I have got nowhere. I have made similar appeals in the British press for some months now and in all that time I have received no more than a dozen letters, the majority of which do not support my views. I have corresponded with my American counterparts but my views have not met with any positive response there.’

‘You felt upset that you were being ignored, so you went to Moscow to get more attention.’

‘I repeat what I have said before. I went to Moscow to see my son. While I was there, I was presented with an opportunity to give my message to the world and I took it. I have no regrets about what I said.’

‘I suggest you said what your Moscow host Andropov wanted you to say.’

‘If that were true, why had I been putting forward the same message for so long before I went to Moscow?’

‘You have answered my question. You have been saying for some time what the Soviets have wanted you to say.’

‘Let us look at some of your unscripted remarks, Professor. “The antidote to an arms build-up is to share information about nuclear development.” “There should be no national or political barriers to the freedom of movement of research in nuclear energy.” Did you really say that?’

‘Yes. I continue to hold to every word.’

‘You advocate the giving away of nuclear secrets to our enemies?’

‘Perhaps they would no longer be our enemies if neither side had secrets to defend.’

‘That is a dangerous philosophy, Professor.’

‘How do you know? Have you ever tried it? The purpose of scientific enquiry is to find solutions to problems. The same is true of politics, except our politicians do not practise this method. They stick to their narrow ways, which is why they so often make a mess of things.’

‘Did you follow your own advice while in Moscow? Did you share your knowledge of our nuclear secrets with the Soviets?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘It was not appropriate to do so.’

‘Is appropriate the right word?’

‘You know exactly what I mean by it.’

‘You gave them no secrets, yet you spent time in the company of members of the Institute of Nuclear Research in Moscow.’

‘These people are academic colleagues, we work in the same field. We deal in similar problems. Some of us have known each other for years.’

‘I would remind you, Professor, that these people are in the pay of a state whose ideology is committed to the elimination of capitalism from the world, which is another way of saying they want to conquer the free world, submit it to the barbarities of Marxist-Leninism and eradicate the unbelievers. If you ask me, at best they have an advocate in you, at worst a fellow-traveller.’

‘They are scientists, not politicians. They have no interest in ideology. Their commitment is to scientific truth.’

‘You are asking us to believe, Professor, that in your meetings with them, you betrayed no secrets to the Soviets.’

‘I had one meeting with them. They thought I was an emissary from the West come to treat with their government on their behalf.
When they discovered I had no such role, they ignored me. They never asked me one single scientific question. They weren’t interested in me as a scientist. It was a major disappointment.’