‘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?
4
RUTH
Somewhere in the depths of the night a clock strikes two. Andropov checks his watch. He has his back to her. If she were to creep out of the room now, would he notice her absence? For the last hour he has said almost nothing: she has sat there waiting, exhausted, trying to find the courage to ask the one question that controls her waking mind.
Andropov the Silent.
‘May I remove my jacket?’
His question startles her. He has never before asked her permission to do anything.
‘As you please.’
She watches him unbutton the tunic and hang it carefully over the back of a chair, brushing something off the sleeve as he does so. He loosens his tie. He sits down opposite her again. There are damp patches on his shirt and small beads of sweat along his hairline. It is a warm night, but not that warm.
‘Would you like me to open a window?’ she asks.
He shakes his head. His hands are on the table in front of him, the fingers laced together, eyes cast down. He is very still. His behaviour is unusual and that disturbs her.
‘What is your opinion of what we are doing?’ he asks.
A harmless question. Except he has never asked a question like it in all the time she has been meeting him. Now he has asked her two questions in a matter of seconds.
‘I do as I am instructed,’ she says defensively. ‘I have no views.’
‘Put aside the rules for a few minutes.’
If she did not know better she would say he was asking her to drop the deference she adopts at their meetings, to break her private refusal to discuss anything with him and ignore the instruction she gives herself, that she must do what he wants and give him nothing else.
‘Why?’
‘It is very late. We are alone here. Let us be our true selves for once.’
Andropov the Alone. Of course. Perhaps he has no wife, no girlfriend, no parents, no one to share anything with. Perhaps he wants her now to play the role of confidante. She feels her sympathy rising and fights it back as she remembers Miskin’s terrifying accusation that Andropov was her lover.
‘If I was myself I would be home in bed.’
He lights a cigarette, then offers her one. She declines. He blows out smoke and says: ‘You are free to go. The driver has instructions to take you home.’
The familiar cold tone she prefers. A moment of potential embarrassment has passed.
‘Thank you.’
She turns towards the door, gathering her coat. This is the first time he has let her go without accompanying her.
‘If you have any questions,’ he says, ‘I am prepared to answer them.’
A last chance to know more. Should she take it? Should she leave? The only question that matters bursts into her mind but she is still too frightened to ask. She stands by the door, undecided.
‘Why do you keep me here like this? You could have let me go an hour ago.’
She looks at him carefully. His face is very white and there are dark patches under his eyes. For the first time she sees how young he is – early thirties, possibly even younger – an unlined face, fine blond hair cut short, white hands, the raised knots of lavender veins, pale blue-grey eyes behind tinted glasses. Is this the man Miskin described as having blood on his hands, a murderer?
‘I have been trying to find the courage to speak to you,’ he says.
‘When you bring me here, I am your prisoner. You can say what you like.’ Why should she help him? None of this is her doing. All she wants is to be at home in bed.
‘Dr Marchenko.’
His hands tighten their grip, the veins protrude still further with the strain.
‘Yes?’
‘Sit down.’
An entreaty, not a command. So the moment hasn’t passed. She sits down. The act of returning to the table is her signal of assent to his request.
‘Are there secret microphones here?’ she asks.
He shakes his head. ‘My people sweep each apartment half an hour before we use it. If there were anything they would have discovered it by now. Nobody is listening to us.’
Nobody is listening. How many times in her life has she heard that phrase? Somewhere, she knows, someone is listening to the beating of her heart.
‘I do have a question.’
He is wary, tense, alerted by her tone of voice. She knows he wants to talk about himself but she cannot let him do that. She must
know whether Miskin’s warning is true or not.
‘The explosion in D4 can’t have been an accident,’ she says firmly.
‘Why not?’ Eyes still cast down. He refuses to look at her.
‘I know which of our experiments is dangerous. Nothing we have been doing recently could possibly have caused that sort of damage if it had gone wrong. It was a massive explosion. There is therefore only one conclusion to draw.’
‘The official report concludes otherwise,’ he says sullenly.
‘Why don’t we speak the truth for once?’ she says. ‘No one can hear us. There will be no evidence this conversation ever took place. Everything we say will be deniable. Yet in our hearts we will know we have once faced each other as we are.’
He blinks frantically. A shadow seems to pass over his face. She has called his bluff.
‘I see the official version won’t satisfy you.’ He lights another cigarette. He looks up at her, taking off his glasses to clean them on his handkerchief. Anything to avoid looking at her directly.
‘Answer my question,’ she says. She has become the interrogator now.
He plays with the cigarette lighter in his hand. She watches him turning it over and over, polishing the steel case with his thumb. He is searching for the courage to tell her what he knows, or the lie to conceal what he has done.
‘The explosion in D4 had nothing to do with the experiment that was being conducted. A bomb was placed in an air vent and timed to go off in the early hours of the morning.’
‘Why?’ she asks.
‘The intention was to damage the place. Break a few windows. Blow in a door. Make it look as if something had gone wrong.’
‘Instead of which the laboratory was razed to the ground and months of vital work were lost.’
‘Mistakes were made,’ he says coldly.
Making Enemies Page 25