Edge of Eternity Read online

  People were taking turns to stand up and speak one or two poems each. Most were men but there was a sprinkling of women. A boy with an impish grin read a piece about a clumsy farmer trying to herd a flock of geese, which the crowd quickly realized was a metaphor for the Communist Party organizing the nation. Soon everyone was roaring with laughter except the KGB men, who just looked puzzled.

  Tanya drifted inconspicuously through the crowd, half-listening to a poem of adolescent angst in Mayakovsky's futurist style, drawing the sheets of paper one at a time from her pocket and discreetly slipping them to anyone who looked friendly. She kept an eye on Vasili as he did the same. Right away she heard exclamations of shock and concern as people started to talk about Bodian: in a crowd such as this, most people would know who he was and why he had been imprisoned. She gave the sheets away as fast as she could, eager to get rid of them all before the police got wind of what was going on.

  A man with short hair who looked ex-army stood at the front and, instead of reciting a poem, began to read aloud Tanya's article about Bodian. Tanya was pleased: the news was getting around even faster than she had hoped. There were shouts of indignation as he got to the part about Bodian not getting medical attention. But the men in the leather jackets noticed the change in atmosphere and looked more alert. She spotted one speaking urgently into a walkie-talkie.

  She had five sheets left and they were burning a hole in her pocket.

  The secret police had been on the edges of the crowd, but now they moved in, converging on the speaker. He waved his copy of Dissidence defiantly, shouting about Bodian as the cops came closer. Some in the audience crowded the plinth, making it difficult for the police to get near. In response the KGB men got rough, shoving people out of the way. This was how riots started. Tanya nervously backed away toward the fringe of the crowd. She had one more copy of Dissidence. She dropped it on the ground.

  Suddenly half a dozen uniformed police arrived. Wondering fearfully where they had come from, Tanya looked across the road to the nearest building and saw more running out through its door: they must have been concealed within, waiting in case they were needed. They drew their nightsticks and pushed through the crowd, hitting people indiscriminately. Tanya saw Vasili turn and walk away, moving through the throng as fast as he could, and she did the same. Then a panicking teenager cannoned into her, and she fell to the ground.

  She was dazed for a moment. When her vision cleared she saw more people running. She got to her knees, but she felt dizzy. Someone tripped over her, knocking her flat again. Then suddenly Vasili was there, grabbing her with both hands, lifting her to her feet. She had a moment of surprise: she would not have expected him to risk his own safety to help her.

  Then a cop hit Vasili over the head with a truncheon and he fell. The cop knelt down, pulled Vasili's arms behind his back and handcuffed him with swift, practised movements. Vasili looked up, caught Tanya's eye, and mouthed: "Run!"

  She turned and ran but, an instant later, she collided with a uniformed policeman. He grabbed her by the arm. She tried to pull away, screaming: "Let me go!"

  He tightened his grip and said: "You're under arrest, bitch."

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Nina Onilova Room in the Kremlin was named after a female machine-gunner killed at the Battle of Sevastopol. On the wall was a framed black-and-white photo of a Red Army general placing the Order of the Red Banner medal on her tombstone. The picture hung over a white marble fireplace that was stained like a smoker's fingers. All around the room, elaborate plaster moldings framed squares of light paintwork where other pictures had once hung, suggesting that the walls had not been painted since the revolution. Perhaps the room had once been an elegant salon. Now it was furnished with canteen tables pushed together to form a long rectangle and twenty or so cheap chairs. On the tables were ceramic ashtrays that looked as if they were emptied daily but never wiped.

  Dimka Dvorkin walked in with his mind in a whirl and his stomach in knots.

  The room was the regular meeting place of aides to the ministers and secretaries who formed the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the governing body of the USSR.

  Dimka was an aide to Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary and chairman of the Presidium, but all the same he felt he should not be here.

  The Vienna Summit was a few weeks away. It would be the dramatic first encounter between Khrushchev and the new American president, John Kennedy. Tomorrow, at the most important Presidium of the year, the leaders of the USSR would decide strategy for the summit. Today, the aides were gathering to prepare for the Presidium. It was a planning meeting for a planning meeting.

  Khrushchev's representative had to present the leader's thinking so that the other aides could prepare their bosses for tomorrow. His unspoken task was to uncover any latent opposition to Khrushchev's ideas and, if possible, quash it. It was his solemn duty to ensure that tomorrow's discussion went smoothly for the leader.

  Dimka was familiar with Khrushchev's thinking about the summit, but all the same he felt he could not possibly cope with this meeting. He was the youngest and most inexperienced of Khrushchev's aides. He was only a year out of university. He had never been to the pre-Presidium meeting before: he was too junior. But ten minutes ago his secretary had informed him that one of the senior aides had called in sick and the other two had just been in a car crash, so he, Dimka, had to stand in.

  Dimka had got a job working for Khrushchev for two reasons. One was that he had come top of every class he had ever attended, from nursery school through university. The other was that his uncle was a general. He did not know which factor was the more important.

  The Kremlin presented a monolithic appearance to the outside world but, in truth, it was a battlefield. Khrushchev's hold on power was not strong. He was a Communist heart and soul, but he was also a reformer who saw failings in the Soviet system and wanted to implement new ideas. But the old Stalinists in the Kremlin were not yet defeated. They were alert for any opportunity to weaken Khrushchev and roll back his reforms.

  The meeting was informal, the aides drinking tea and smoking with their jackets off and their ties undone--most were men, though not all. Dimka spotted a friendly face: Natalya Smotrov, aide to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. She was in her midtwenties, and attractive despite a drab black dress. Dimka did not know her well but he had spoken to her a few times. Now he sat down next to her. She looked surprised to see him. "Konstantinov and Pajari have been in a car crash," he explained.

  "Are they hurt?"

  "Not badly."

  "What about Alkaev?"

  "Off sick with shingles."

  "Nasty. So you're the leader's representative."

  "I'm terrified."

  "You'll be fine."

  He looked around. They all seemed to be waiting for something. In a low voice he said to Natalya: "Who chairs this meeting?"

  One of the others heard him. It was Yevgeny Filipov, who worked for conservative defense minister Rodion Malinovsky. Filipov was in his thirties but dressed older, in a baggy postwar suit and a gray flannel shirt. He repeated Dimka's question loudly, in a scornful tone. "Who chairs this meeting? You do, of course. You're aide to the chairman of the Presidium, aren't you? Get on with it, college boy."

  Dimka felt himself redden. For a moment he was lost for words. Then inspiration struck, and he said: "Thanks to Major Yuri Gagarin's remarkable space flight, Comrade Khrushchev will go to Vienna with the congratulations of the world ringing in his ears." Last month Gagarin had been the first human being to travel into outer space in a rocket, beating the Americans by just a few weeks, in a stunning scientific and propaganda coup for the Soviet Union and for Nikita Khrushchev.

  The aides around the table clapped, and Dimka began to feel better.

  Then Filipov spoke again. "The first secretary might do better to have ringing in his ears the inaugural speech of President Kennedy," he said. He seemed incapable of speaking without a sneer. "In case comrades around the
table have forgotten, Kennedy accused us of planning world domination, and he vowed to pay any price to stop us. After all the friendly moves we have made--unwisely, in the opinion of some experienced comrades--Kennedy could hardly have made clearer his aggressive intentions." He raised his arm with a finger in the air, like a schoolteacher. "Only one response is possible from us: increased military strength."

  Dimka was still thinking up a rejoinder when Natalya beat him to it. "That's a race we can't win," she said with a brisk commonsense air. "The United States is richer than the Soviet Union, and they can easily match any increase in our military forces."

  She was more sensible than her conservative boss, Dimka inferred. He shot her a grateful look and followed up. "Hence Khrushchev's policy of peaceful coexistence, which enables us to spend less on the army, and instead invest in agriculture and industry." Kremlin conservatives hated peaceful coexistence. For them, the conflict with capitalist imperialism was a war to the death.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Dimka saw his secretary, Vera, enter the room, a bright, nervy woman of forty. He waved her away.

  Filipov was not so easily disposed of. "Let's not permit a naive view of world politics to encourage us to reduce our army too fast," he said scornfully. "We can hardly claim to be winning on the international stage. Look at how the Chinese defy us. That weakens us at Vienna."

  Why was Filipov trying so hard to prove that Dimka was a fool? Dimka suddenly recalled that Filipov had wanted a job in Khrushchev's office--the job that Dimka had got.

  "As the Bay of Pigs weakened Kennedy," Dimka replied. The American president had authorized a crackpot CIA plan for an invasion of Cuba at a place called the Bay of Pigs: the scheme had gone wrong and Kennedy had been humiliated. "I think our leader's position is stronger."

  "All the same, Khrushchev has failed--" Filipov stopped, realizing he was going too far. These pre-meeting discussions were frank, but there were limits.

  Dimka seized on the moment of weakness. "What has Khrushchev failed to do, comrade?" he said. "Please enlighten us all."

  Filipov amended quickly. "We have failed to achieve our main foreign policy objective: a permanent resolution of the Berlin situation. East Germany is our frontier post in Europe. Its borders secure the borders of Poland and Czechoslovakia. Its unresolved status is intolerable."

  "All right," Dimka said, and he was surprised to hear a note of confidence in his own voice. "I think that's enough discussion of general principles. Before I close the meeting I will explain the trend of the first secretary's current thinking on the problem."

  Filipov opened his mouth to protest against this abrupt termination, but Dimka cut him off. "Comrades will speak when invited by the chair," he said, deliberately making his voice a harsh grind; and they all went quiet.

  "In Vienna, Khrushchev will tell Kennedy we can wait no longer. We have made reasonable proposals for regulating the situation in Berlin, and all we hear from the Americans is that they want no changes." Around the table, several men nodded. "If they will not agree to a plan, Khrushchev will say, then we will take unilateral action; and if the Americans try to stop us, we will meet force with force."

  There was a long moment of silence. Dimka took advantage of it by standing up. "Thank you for your attendance," he said.

  Natalya said what everyone was thinking. "Does that mean we are willing to go to war with the Americans over Berlin?"

  "The first secretary does not believe there will be a war," said Dimka, giving them the evasive answer that Khrushchev had given him. "Kennedy is not mad."

  He caught a look of mingled surprise and admiration from Natalya as he walked away from the table. He could not believe he had been so tough. He had never been a pussycat, but this was a powerful and smart group of men, and he had bullied them. His position helped: new though he was, his desk in the first secretary's suite of offices gave him power. And, paradoxically, Filipov's hostility had helped. They could all sympathize with the need to come down hard on someone who was trying to undermine the leader.

  Vera was hovering in the anteroom. She was an experienced political assistant who would not panic unnecessarily. Dimka had a flash of intuition. "It's my sister, isn't it?" he said.

  Vera was spooked. Her eyes widened. "How do you do that?" she said in awe.

  It was not supernatural. He had feared for some time that Tanya was heading for trouble. He said: "What has she done?"

  "She's been arrested."

  "Oh, hell."

  Vera pointed to a phone off the hook on a side table and Dimka picked it up. His mother, Anya, was on the line. "Tanya's in the Lubyanka!" she said, using the shorthand name for KGB headquarters in Lubyanka Square. She was close to hysteria.

  Dimka was not taken totally by surprise. His twin sister and he agreed that there was a lot wrong with the Soviet Union, but whereas he believed reform was needed, she thought Communism should be abolished. It was an intellectual disagreement that made no difference to their affection for one another. Each was the other's best friend. It had always been that way.

  You could be arrested for thinking as Tanya did--which was one of the things that was wrong. "Be calm, Mother, I can get her out of there," Dimka said. He hoped he would be able to justify that assurance. "Do you know what happened?"

  "There was a riot at some poetry meeting!"

  "I bet she went to Mayakovsky Square. If that's all . . ." He did not know everything his sister got up to, but he suspected her of worse than poetry.

  "You have to do something, Dimka! Before they . . ."

  "I know." Before they start to interrogate her, Mother meant. A chill of fear passed over him like a shadow. The prospect of interrogation in the notorious basement cells of KGB headquarters terrified every Soviet citizen.

  His first instinct had been to say he would get on the phone, but now he decided that would not be enough. He had to show up in person. He hesitated momentarily: it could harm his career, if people knew he had gone to the Lubyanka to spring his sister. But that thought barely gave him pause. She came before himself and Khrushchev and the entire Soviet Union. "I'm on my way, Mother," he said. "Call Uncle Volodya and tell him what's happened."

  "Oh, yes, good idea! My brother will know what to do."

  Dimka hung up. "Phone the Lubyanka," he said to Vera. "Tell them very clearly that you're calling from the office of the first secretary, who is concerned about the arrest of leading journalist Tanya Dvorkin. Tell them that Comrade Khrushchev's aide is on his way to question them about it, and they should do nothing until he arrives."

  She was making notes. "Shall I order up a car?"

  Lubyanka Square was less than a mile from the Kremlin compound. "I have my motorcycle downstairs. That will be quicker." Dimka was privileged to own a Voskhod 175 bike with a five-speed gearbox and twin tailpipes.

  He had known Tanya was heading for trouble because, paradoxically, she had ceased to tell him everything, he reflected as he rode. Normally they had no secrets from one another. Dimka had an intimacy with his twin that they shared with no one else. When Mother was away, and they were alone, Tanya would walk through the flat naked, to fetch clean underwear from the airing cupboard, and Dimka would pee without bothering to close the bathroom door. Occasionally Dimka's male friends would sniggeringly suggest that their closeness was erotic, but in fact it was the opposite. They could be so intimate only because there was no sexual spark.

  But for the past year he had known she was hiding something from him. He did not know what it was, but he could guess. Not a boyfriend, he felt sure: they told each other everything about their romantic lives, comparing notes, sympathizing. Almost certainly it was political, he thought. The only reason she might keep something from him would be to protect him.

  He drew up outside the dreaded building, a yellow brick palace erected before the revolution as the headquarters of an insurance company. The thought of his sister imprisoned in this place made him feel ill. For a moment he was afraid he wa
s going to puke.

  He parked right in front of the main entrance, took a moment to recover his self-possession, and walked inside.

  Tanya's editor, Daniil Antonov, was already there, arguing with a KGB man in the lobby. Daniil was a small man, slightly built, and Dimka thought of him as harmless, but he was being assertive. "I want to see Tanya Dvorkin, and I want to see her right now," he said.

  The KGB man wore an expression of mulish obstinacy. "That may not be possible."

  Dimka butted in. "I'm from the office of the first secretary," he said.

  The KGB man refused to be impressed. "And what do you do there, son--make the tea?" he said rudely. "What's your name?" It was an intimidating question: people were terrified to give their names to the KGB.

  "Dmitri Dvorkin, and I'm here to tell you that Comrade Khrushchev is personally interested in this case."

  "Fuck off, Dvorkin," said the man. "Comrade Khrushchev knows nothing about this case. You're here to get your sister out of trouble."

  Dimka was taken aback by the man's confident rudeness. He guessed that many people trying to spring family or friends from KGB arrest would claim personal connections with powerful people. But he renewed his attack. "What's your name?"

  "Captain Mets."

  "And what are you accusing Tanya Dvorkin of?"

  "Assaulting an officer."

  "Did a girl beat up one of your goons in leather jackets?" Dimka said jeeringly. "She must have taken his gun from him first. Come off it, Mets, don't be a prick."

  "She was attending a seditious meeting. Anti-Soviet literature was circulated." Mets handed Dimka a crumpled sheet of paper. "The meeting became a riot."