Winter of the World (121 page)

However, Bevin jumped at Greg’s idea for Germany. ‘Was he speaking for Marshall, do you suppose?’ said the portly Foreign Secretary in his broad West Country accent.

‘He said not,’ Lloyd replied. ‘Do you think it could work?’

‘I think it’s the best idea I’ve heard in three bloody weeks in bloody Moscow. If he’s serious, arrange an informal lunch, just Marshall and this youngster with you and
me.’

‘I’ll do it right away.’

‘But tell nobody. We don’t want the Soviets to get a whisper of this. They’ll accuse us of conspiring against them, and they’ll be right.’

They met the following day at No. 10 Spasopeskovskaya Square, the American Ambassador’s residence, an extravagant neoclassical mansion built before the revolution. Marshall was tall and
lean, every inch a soldier; Bevin rotund, nearsighted, a cigarette frequently dangling from his lips; but they clicked immediately. Both were plain-speaking men. Bevin had once been accused of
ungentlemanly speech by Stalin himself, a distinction of which the Foreign Secretary was very proud. Beneath the painted ceilings and chandeliers they got down to the task of reviving Germany
without the help of the USSR.

They agreed rapidly on the principles: the new currency, the unification of the British, American, and – if possible – French zones; the demilitarization of West Germany; elections;
and a new transatlantic military alliance. Then Bevin said bluntly: ‘None of this will work, you know.’

Marshall was taken aback. ‘Then I fail to understand why we’re discussing it,’ he said sharply.

‘Europe’s in a slump. This scheme will fail if people are starving. The best protection against Communism is prosperity. Stalin knows that – which is why he wants to keep
Germany impoverished.’

‘I agree.’

‘Which means we’ve got to rebuild. But we can’t do it with our bare hands. We need tractors, lathes, excavators, rolling stock – all of which we can’t
afford.’

Marshall saw where he was going. ‘Americans aren’t willing to give Europeans any more handouts.’

‘Fair enough. But there must be a way the USA can lend us the money we need to buy equipment from you.’

There was a silence.

Marshall hated to waste words, but this was a long pause even by his standards.

Then at last he spoke. ‘It makes sense,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

The conference lasted six weeks and, when they all went home again, nothing had been decided.

(v)

Eva Williams was a year old when she got her back teeth. The others had come fairly easily, but these hurt. There was not much Lloyd and Daisy could do for her. She was
miserable, she could not sleep, she would not let them sleep, and they were miserable too.

Daisy had a lot of money, but they lived unostentatiously. They had bought a pleasant row house in Hoxton, where their neighbours were a shopkeeper and a builder. They got a small family car, a
new Morris Eight with a top speed of almost sixty miles per hour. Daisy still bought pretty clothes, but Lloyd had just three suits: evening dress, a chalk stripe for the House of Commons, and
tweeds for constituency work at the weekends.

Lloyd was in his pyjamas late one evening, trying to rock the grizzling Evie to sleep, and at the same time leafing through
Life
magazine. He noticed a striking photograph taken in
Moscow. It showed a Russian woman, wearing a headscarf and a coat tied with string like a parcel, her old face deeply lined, shovelling snow on the street. Something about the way the light struck
her gave her a look of timelessness, as if she had been there for a thousand years. He looked for the photographer’s name and found it was Woody Dewar, whom he had met at the conference.

The phone rang. He picked it up and heard the voice of Ernie Bevin. ‘Turn your wireless on,’ Bevin said. ‘Marshall’s made a speech.’ He hung up without waiting for
a reply.

Lloyd went downstairs to the living room, still carrying Evie, and switched on the radio. The show was called
American Commentary.
The BBC’s Washington correspondent, Leonard Miall,
was reporting from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ‘The Secretary of State told alumni that the rebuilding of Europe is going to take a longer time, and require a greater
effort, than was originally foreseen,’ said Miall.

That was promising, Lloyd thought with excitement. ‘Hush, Evie, please,’ he said, and for once she quietened.

Then Lloyd heard the low, reasonable voice of George C. Marshall. ‘Europe’s requirements, for the next three or four years, of foreign food and other essential products –
principally from America – are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help . . . or face economic, social and political deterioration of a
very grave character.’

Lloyd was electrified. ‘Substantial additional help’ was what Bevin had asked for.

‘The remedy lies in breaking the vicious circle and restoring the confidence of the European people in the economic future,’ Marshall said. ‘The United States should do
whatever it is able to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world.’

‘He’s done it!’ Lloyd said triumphantly to his uncomprehending baby daughter. ‘He’s told America they have to give us aid! But how much? And how, and
when?’

The voice changed, and the reporter said: ‘The Secretary of State did not outline a detailed plan for aid to Europe, but said it was up to the Europeans to draft the programme.’

‘Does that mean we have carte blanche?’ Lloyd eagerly asked Evie.

Marshall’s voice returned to say: ‘The initiative, I think, must come from Europe.’

The report ended, and the phone rang again. ‘Did you hear that?’ said Bevin.

‘What does it mean?’

‘Don’t ask!’ said Bevin. ‘If you ask questions, you’ll get answers you don’t want.’

‘All right,’ Lloyd said, baffled.

‘Never mind what he meant. The question is what we do. The initiative must come from Europe, he said. That means me and you.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Pack a bag,’ said Bevin. ‘We’re going to Paris.’

1948

Volodya was in Prague as part of a Red Army delegation holding talks with the Czech military. They were staying in art deco splendour at the Imperial Hotel.

It was snowing.

He missed Zoya and little Kotya. His son was two years old and learning new words at bewildering speed. The child was changing so fast that he seemed different every day. And Zoya was pregnant
again. Volodya resented having to spend two weeks apart from his family. Most of the men in the group saw the trip as a chance to get away from their wives, drink too much vodka, and maybe fool
around with loose women. Volodya just wanted to go home.

The military talks were genuine, but Volodya’s part in them was a cover for his real assignment, which was to report on the activities in Prague of the ham-fisted Soviet secret police,
perennial rivals of Red Army Intelligence.

Volodya had little enthusiasm for his work nowadays. Everything he had once believed in had been undermined. He no longer had faith in Stalin, Communism, or the essential goodness of the Russian
people. Even his father was not his father. He would have defected to the West if he could have found a way of getting Zoya and Kotya out with him.

However, he did have his heart in his mission here in Prague. It was a rare chance to do something he believed in.

Two weeks ago the Czech Communist party had taken full control of the government, ousting their coalition partners. Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk, a war hero and democratic anti-Communist, had
become a prisoner on the top floor of his official residence, the Czernin Palace. The Soviet secret police had undoubtedly been behind the coup. In fact Volodya’s brother-in-law, Colonel Ilya
Dvorkin, was also in Prague, staying at the same hotel, and had almost certainly been involved.

Volodya’s boss, General Lemitov, saw the coup as a public relations catastrophe for the USSR. Masaryk had constituted proof, to the world, that East European countries could be free and
independent in the shadow of the USSR. He had enabled Czechoslovakia to have a Communist government friendly to the Soviet Union and at the same time wear the costume of bourgeois democracy. This
had been the perfect arrangement, for it gave the USSR everything it wanted while reassuring the Americans. But that equilibrium had been upset.

However, Ilya was crowing. ‘The bourgeois parties have been smashed!’ he said to Volodya in the hotel bar one night.

‘Did you see what happened in the American Senate?’ Volodya said mildly. ‘Vandenberg, the old isolationist, made an eighty-minute speech in favour of the Marshall Plan, and he
was cheered to the rafters.’

George Marshall’s vague ideas had become a plan. This was mainly thanks to the rat-like cunning of British Foreign Secretary Ernie Bevin. In Volodya’s opinion, Bevin was the most
dangerous kind of anti-Communist: a working-class social democrat. Despite his bulk he moved fast. With lightning speed he had organized a conference in Paris that had given a resounding collective
European welcome to George Marshall’s Harvard speech.

Volodya knew, from spies in the British Foreign Office, that Bevin was determined to bring Germany into the Marshall Plan and keep the USSR out. And Stalin had fallen straight into Bevin’s
trap, by commanding the East European countries to repudiate Marshall Aid.

Now the Soviet secret police seemed to be doing all they could to assist the passage of the bill through Congress. ‘The Senate was all set to reject Marshall,’ Volodya said to Ilya.
‘American taxpayers don’t want to foot the bill. But the coup here in Prague has persuaded them that they have to, because European capitalism is in danger of collapse.’

Ilya said indignantly: ‘The bourgeois Czech parties wanted to take the American bribe.’

‘We should have let them,’ said Volodya. ‘It might have been the quickest way to sabotage the whole scheme. Congress would then have rejected the Marshall Plan – they
don’t want to give money to Communists.’

‘The Marshall Plan is an imperialist trick!’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Volodya. ‘And I’m afraid it’s working. Our wartime allies are forming an anti-Soviet bloc.’

‘People who obstruct the forward march of Communism must be dealt with appropriately.’

‘Indeed they must.’ It was amazing how consistently people such as Ilya made the wrong political judgements.

‘And I must go to bed.’

It was only ten, but Volodya went too. He lay awake thinking about Zoya and Kotya and wishing he could kiss them both goodnight.

His thoughts drifted to his mission. He had met Jan Masaryk, the symbol of Czech independence, two days earlier, at a ceremony at the grave of his father, Thomas Masaryk, the founder and first
President of Czechoslovakia. Dressed in a coat with a fur collar, head bared to the falling snow, the second Masaryk had seemed beaten and depressed.

If he could be persuaded to stay on as Foreign Minister, some compromise might be possible, Volodya mused. Czechoslovakia could have a thoroughly Communist domestic government, but in its
international relations it might be neutral, or at least minimally anti-American. Masaryk had both the diplomatic skills and the international credibility to walk that tightrope.

Volodya decided he would suggest it to Lemitov tomorrow.

He slept fitfully and woke before six o’clock with a mental alarm ringing in his imagination. It was something about last night’s conversation with Ilya. Volodya ran over it again in
his mind. When Ilya had said
People who obstruct the forward march of Communism
he had been talking about Masaryk; and when a secret policeman said someone had to be
dealt with
appropriately
he always meant
killed.

Then Ilya had gone to bed early, which suggested an early start this morning.

I’m a fool, Volodya thought. The signs were there and it took me all night to read them.

He leaped out of bed. Perhaps he was not too late.

He dressed quickly and put on a heavy overcoat, scarf and hat. There were no taxis outside the hotel – it was too early. He could have called a Red Army car, but by the time a driver was
awakened and the car brought it would take the best part of an hour.

He set out to walk. The Czernin Palace was only a mile or two away. He headed west out of Prague’s gracious city centre, crossed the St Charles Bridge, and hurried uphill towards the
castle.

Masaryk was not expecting him, nor was the Foreign Minister obliged to give audience to a Red Army colonel. But Volodya felt sure Masaryk would be curious enough to see him.

He walked fast through the snow and reached the Czernin Palace at six-forty-five. It was a huge baroque building with a grandiose row of Corinthian half-columns on the three upper storeys. The
place was lightly guarded, he found to his surprise. A sentry pointed to the front door. Volodya walked unchallenged through an ornate hall.

He had expected to find the usual secret police moron behind a reception desk, but there was no one. This was a bad sign, and he was filled with foreboding.

The hall led to an inner courtyard. Glancing through a window, he saw what looked like a man sleeping in the snow. Perhaps he had fallen there drunk: if so, he was in danger of freezing to
death.

Volodya tried the door and found it open.

He ran across the quadrangle. A man in blue silk pyjamas lay face down on the ground. There was no snow covering him, so he could not have been there many minutes. Volodya knelt beside him. The
man was quite still and did not appear to be breathing.

Volodya looked up. Rows of identical windows like soldiers on parade looked into this courtyard. All were closed tightly against the freezing weather – except one, high above the man in
pyjamas, that stood wide open.

As if someone had been thrown out of it.

Volodya turned the lifeless head and looked at the man’s face.

It was Jan Masaryk.

(ii)