by James Philip
“Take me to Comrade Maxim!” She commanded, staggering to her feet.
Chapter 73
Friday 17th February 1967
The White House, Washington DC
There were flakes of snow in the air as Alexander Shelepin stepped out of the second, of the three bullet-proof Lincoln’s the Secret Service had provided to convey the Soviet delegation wherever they went in Washington.
The mood of the city had been febrile since the President’s return from California, and since Wednesday’s shooting, reinforced rings of steel had surrounded the White House, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and many foreign embassies. There were soldiers on the streets, everywhere, patrolling with Washington PD officers, and tanks, armoured personnel carriers and a host of other military vehicles were parked up at strategic locations across the city. Overhead, the roar of high-flying jet interceptors circling the capital was ever-present.
The great city might have been under siege…
The Soviet leader had mixed feelings about what he was seeing and hearing about the Americans’ response to the assassination of a single CIA officer, granted a senior and in some quarters, one known to be an unprincipled, notorious, formidable operator. The response seemed disproportionate, verging on the paranoid even if one accepted the premise that there was a mad dog killer at loose in the District of Columbia; an inherently improbable scenario.
Nevertheless, no man in Alexander Shelepin’s position could fail to be impressed by the quantity, and the potency of the military forces the US Administration had been able to magic out of seemingly thin air, and the speed with which the city had been locked down.
If the KGB thought it had a firm grasp on Sverdlovsk and the Chelyabinsk military district to its south, he was going to have to put his subordinates right about that upon his return! Moreover, there was a lesson to be learned in the way his hosts had flooded the metropolis with military firepower and yet not, as would have happened in the Motherland, brought it to a virtual halt. The busses still ran, the traffic was as previously, very heavy, the sidewalks were jammed with pedestrians and nothing, not even being pushed back several tens of metres behind cordons manned by machine gun-toting grim-faced troopers, diminished the enthusiasm or the persistence of the US media.
Flanked by Sergey Gorshkov and Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, Shelepin met Richard Nixon, stepping forward beneath the portals of the neoclassical portico of the North Wing of the Executive Residence.
Dobrynin had insisted on explaining the layout of the White House ‘complex’ to the First Secretary. Although Shelepin could have told him to desist at any time, he had let the man talk.
‘The middle, Executive Residence is the shell of the original White House built between 1792 and 1800 to a design by an Irish architect who drew his inspiration from Leinster House in Dublin, presently the home of the Parliament of the Republic of Ireland. The building you will be entering by its northern entrance, the one visible from Pennsylvania Avenue is simply the facade of the original nineteenth century one burnt down in around 1812 by the British. Strictly speaking, it is the third White House. The first one was rebuilt in the early nineteenth century, and then gutted and reconstructed by President Truman between 1949 and 1952. The Americans were afraid all it would take was one medium-sized bomb and the whole place would collapse, so, apart from the exterior fascia, they built a new, massively steel-reinforced version of what had been there in Roosevelt’s day.’
Dobrynin had moved on to talk about the rest of the ‘complex’.
‘Thomas Jefferson, the first President to occupy the original completed building, added eastern and western colonnades to the first White House. In that period the building stood in relatively open, somewhat swampy countryside. Apparently, George Washington – who was sensitive about such things - had not wanted to ‘waste’ good agricultural land so he had mandated that ‘his’ house should be built on land nobody wanted to farm!’
Even Alexander Shelepin had quirked a grimace of amusement at this below the belt jibe.
“The North Portico, where President Nixon will greet you, Comrade First Secretary, was built in 1829 during the term of the 6th President, John Quincy Adams. The East Wing of the White House – built in 1846 - is where ordinary and customary business visitors arrive and enter the complex. This wing also accommodates the First Lady’s staff and other minor functionaries of the Administration. The modern West Wing, where you will be escorted, was constructed as recently as 1909, with the Oval Office at its south eastern corner overlooking the South Lawn. Although there was an oval room in the original White House, called the Yellow Oval Room, inspired by a room used by the first President, Washington in Philadelphia; in modern times the Oval Office became the workplace of American Presidents only in the early years of this century when Theodore Roosevelt built a one-storey temporary one on the site of the present West Wing in around 1902.’
By then the convoy of loaned-Lincolns and its Marine Corps escort was turning into the grounds of the White House.
‘Today, after the greeting ceremony on the steps of the White House, the President will guide you into the building for the short walk along the western colonnade to the West Wing for your meeting in the Oval Office, Comrade Chairman.’
‘You are very well-informed, Comrade Anatoly Fyodorovich,’ Admiral of the Fleet and Minister of Defence of the USSR Sergey Gorshkov growled sarcastically, as the car cruised into the show of the White House.
‘Thank you, Comrade Deputy First Secretary,’ Dobrynin retorted with exemplary politeness. ‘My wife, a very wise woman, purchased a copy of a guide book when we first arrived in Washington, it has been invaluable!’
Despite himself, Gorshkov relented, chuckled and shook his head.
On the steps the President was flanked by the First Lady, Patricia, and the Nixon’s daughters, twenty-year-old Tricia and eighteen-year-old Julie.
Richard Nixon proudly introduced his family to Alexander Shelepin, who was impressed by the way Anatoly Dobrynin seemed to get on well with the President and his wife. Dobrynin was clearly regarded as a gentle giant, entertaining uncle figure by both of the daughters.
Anecdotally, the Dobrynin’s and their daughter had lunched more than once at the White House, and ‘got on well’ with the Nixons. A month ago, that had been a possible black mark on the Ambassador’s file; a thing which in the new circumstances needed to be urgently revisited.
Shelepin paused for the obligatory pictures taken by a couple of official White House photographers. There would be a small group of reporters, and a TV crew from the US network ABC, inside in the reception hall; more shaking of hands, and posing for the cameras. Such was unavoidable, this was, after all…America.
It had been agreed that only Shelepin, Gorshkov and Dobrynin, the latter acting as an interpreter, would follow the President and his family into the Oval Office where Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, his wife, Secretary of State Cabot Lodge and the newly appointed US National Security Advisor, Gordon Bell, would form a second welcoming committee.
“Often, we welcome visitors to the White House on the South Lawn,” Pat Nixon was explaining to Shelepin as the group began to amble, unhurriedly, deeper into the building. ‘But the weather at this time of year has turned the lawn back into the swamp it used to be in George Washington’s day!’
Alexander Shelepin was struck by the fundamental unreality of the situation. Here he was, supposedly the ringmaster of the Evil Empire, being greeted like a prodigal returning by the First Family while Richard Nixon’s closest military and economic ally, the United Kingdom was in the proverbial doghouse over the fallout from the United Nations farrago in San Francisco, and now the extraordinary incident at the Lincoln Memorial, and positively drowning in a storm of excoriating, jingoistic condemnation in the American media.
A visitor from another planet, stepping foot in Washington DC, could easily get the impression that the Soviet Union was the United States’ best global friend. After all, the B
ritish leader and her Commonwealth allies had been sent packing from California with their tails between their legs.
However, there was going to be a lot to digest on the way home to Sverdlovsk. One view might be that it had been American intransigence which had stopped the United Nation’s re-dedication becoming a farce, and that Richard Nixon had emerged anew in the eyes of his own people – and of so-called Middle America - as the reliable strong man who had won the Civil War only last year. Already, the firestorm over the Operation Maelstrom revelations was partially extinguished, relegated to the inside pages of the newspapers, and unmentioned until after the first, or second commercial breaks on most TV and radio news broadcasts. As Dobrynin had commented, possibly presciently on the day the delegation left San Francisco: ‘Last week’s news is old news, the attention span of the people on Main Street is short and already, the agenda has moved on. Yes, the scandals of before still rumble on; just not with anywhere near the intensity of only a few days ago.’
Shelepin characterised it as a form of national schizophrenia!
Anatoly Dobrynin had correctly predicted what would happen next: the Nixon Administration had gone through hours, days of panic, recrimination, of desperately attempting to blame the messenger, gone into denial, then a phase of stubborn, short-lived non-engagement with the media. Subsequently, it had lashed out at its enemies, castigated its allies and basically, weathered the initial storm. It had lived to fight another day. The President’s approval ratings were on the slide but not anywhere as catastrophically as the ‘liberal intelligentsia’ imagined, and events like today’s in the Oval Office, although meaningless in terms of actual diplomatic substance, could not help to further enhance Richard Nixon’s status as an international statesman.
Alexander Shelepin and Richard Nixon were not here today to heal the world’s many, incurable problems; they were here to do each other a huge public relations favour. The mere fact that they were meeting publicly, and with all due fanfare shouted that they were big men on the global stage; and that they were men who could ‘do business’ together.
As a result of this meeting, in Middle America and back in the Motherland both men would in different ways, be more secure in their positions than they had been yesterday. Both men understood that if they were ever to seriously sit down and talk about peace, or any kind of post Cuban Missiles War settlement, there would first need to be months of bitter, intractable debate between their officials; and that would just be to agree an outline agenda!
However, for today, the pictures beamed around the planet would suffice because neither party was yet ready to contemplate ‘talking turkey’ with the other.
And in the meantime, global realpolitik would continue to play out. Better by far to engage in a propaganda war than the real thing. The Cold War could thaw a while because in their hearts both men knew that sooner or later, winter was coming again.
Bizarrely, Warsaw Concerto had achieved more than anybody in Sverdlovsk imagined possible!
Chapter 74
Friday 17th February 1967
Orcines, Puy-de-Dôme, the Auvergne
Comrade Agnès was unsurprised to discover that Maxim Machenaud had taken pains to ensure that even here, out in the countryside little more than hours after he had abandoned his people to their fate, that he had taken steps to ensure his own physical comfort without a concern for that of his followers.
A straw mattress on the cobbled floor of a pigsty had been good enough for her, whereas, he had laid his palliasse on the floor of the old cottage, close to where a low fire burned and crackled in an ancient hearth.
The wintery trees and a few firs, evergreens, wrapped the cottage the First Secretary and Chairman of the Front Internationale had requisitioned. From the state of the place, its good repair, its cleanliness and the fact there was still glass in the windows, it must have been occupied until recently.
Agnès did not think to ask what had happened to whoever had been living in it when the great leader and his dwindling retinue had turned up last night. She took it for granted either they had fled for their lives, or their bodies were presently mouldering, unburied in the woods nearby
Agnès shut the rickety oaken door at her back.
“You had them put me in a pigsty?”
“I had them wrap you up warmly, and watch over you in the night,” the man said coldly. He had been sitting on a hard, wooden stool, reading from a note book. One of her note books. “They found this in the ruins. They brought it to me. They said you had probably been killed in the bombing.”
The woman shrugged, raised a hand to her head.
“I think I got concussed, I woke up wandering around in the Place de Jaude,” she frowned. “The old Opera House took a direct hit from a big bomb. It was chaos… When I came around the fucking Russians grabbed me and ordered me to lead them out of the city!”
Maxim Machenaud was viewing her with none of the reptilian mistrust he reserved for the majority of his other underlings. As time went by, he had been as mystified as she was by his consideration for her. The way he had come to need her near him; calming, chaining the worst of his demons. For a while she had managed to talk down his rage, take the edge off the terror. But ever since the latest Soviet mission had arrived in Clermont-Ferrand he had reverted to type, become again a wild animal. Although, hardly ever with her. It was not as if she was any kind of Greek goddess; she was plain, had few wiles, little or no charm, she was just reliable, loyal, and most of the time, unafraid of him and that had somehow, made an indelible mark on him. He had even fucked her a few times; vaguely affirmatory angry couplings. He had ached for her to be more, alive, not lie there like a lifeless doll but then for all he knew, that was how all copulation was conducted. It was, after all, an animal function; purely satisfying a physiological need…
“Did you?” The man asked.
“Help the bastards? Of course not!” She retorted angrily. “I led them into a cul-de-sac with the mob blocking all the exits and slipped into a doorway before they knew what was happening. I knew those streets as a kid, they never had a clue where I’d gone!”
Maxim Machenaud smiled.
“But you kept on running?”
“People were fucking shooting at me!”
“I needed you,” he complained with a hint of petulance.
“Where were you when I needed you?” She snarled back at him, stepping closer.
He was little more than her height.
They stood, eye to eye.
“You know what they’ll do to us if they catch us?” She asked, a little breathless. She doubted he would misinterpret her rising excitement for what it really was; she did not care.
“I said I’d cut your throat to save you that,” the man shrugged.
“I swore I’d never let them take you alive.”
“That was our…tryst,” Maxim Machenaud agreed, matter of factly. He put his hands on her breasts, groped for them.
“Not like before,” she hissed, slapping his hands away. “And if you’ve got a knife under your mattress, put it somewhere I’m not going to impale myself the moment we start fucking!”
She had no idea why the man she hated and despised with every fibre of her being, had not had her butchered the first time she had rejected his advances. She had recoiled in revulsion and in the next moment, pity, for a man whom she had realised needed something from her that he simply could not get by force. The chemistry of it defeated her; there had actually been brief interludes when he had not disgusted her. In any event, while he needed her, she had continued to survive, life had gone on. So, she had become the maniac’s lover, occasional mistress although to this day she had no idea what he saw in her. She was ordinary, always a mess, androgynous with no figure to speak of, and most of the time she was dirty, hungry, as romantic as dead meat. And yet, he saw something in her she did not see in herself, and he obviously needed something from her that he could not get from anybody else.
Perhaps, it was ju
st a classic example of chemistry gone wrong. One of those implausible ghosts in the machine that every mathematician or physicist glimpsed, like a spectre now and then. Every time a scientist thought they understood everything; nature proved them wrong. That, after all, was the ultimate challenge which defined the human condition…
“Lie down,” she said, hoarsely.
As the man obediently lowered himself to the mattress, he reached under it, retrieved the one-hundred-and-eighty-millimetre hunting knife he always carried close to his skin when he was among his people.
She had seen him skewer men, and women with that wicked blade: curved and razor-sharp on one side, serrated from its tip half-way to the haft on the reverse.
Mostly, he just liked slicing off pieces of people who had upset him…
He turned, stabbed the knife into the floor board next to the pillow. She glanced around, saw the blade’s sheath resting in his left boot.
He watched her wriggle out of her damp, filthy fatigues.
She enjoyed for a second the radiant heat of the fire in the hearth on her bare skin. Naked from the belly down she knelt down beside Maxim Machenaud, and tugged at his belt.
He pushed down his trousers.
Such a monster; such a small cock.
In a moment she had straddled him.
He stank of sweat and mud, stale cigarette smoke, and piss but then she probably did not smell much better. They had been living like animals back in the city, out here they were like two kinds of beasts of the forest, feral, unwashed inside and out.
She sank onto him, rubbed her groin against his.
There was life between her thighs, modest at first.
She went on grinding against him.
Maxim Machenaud closed his eyes, reached to press her hips down onto his small but rising tumescence.
“Wait… There’s something I want to tell you,” the woman said quietly.