‘She is coming, yes,’ Laurentzen said. ‘She wishes to brush her hair first.’
‘And the Russians?’
‘There is no sign of the Russians but that does not mean they are not watching us. It is good to see you again, Geoffrey.’
The two men shook hands through the open window of the car.
‘And you, Jamie,’ my father said, ‘and you. I’m grateful.’
After so many years apart was that all these two men had to say to each other? Their partnership had produced one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the last decade, then they had fallen out for reasons that were never fully explained, and there had been no contact between them since. Now they greeted each other as if they met each day of the week.
‘Here she is now,’ Laurentzen said. ‘I told you she would come.’
There had been a transformation since our meeting earlier in the day. Ruth Marchenko had let her hair down, it was set with two combs on either side, and she had changed her dress and her shoes. I was struck at once by a kind of girlish radiance about her.
‘Geoffrey.’
It was a cry across the years, the past echoing into the present. It reached my father and touched him.
Marchenko was running towards him. A strand of hair broke loose and she tried to push it back under the comb. She laughed then, she laughed with excitement, with pleasure and delight. I realized, watching her, that she was in love with my father.
She spoke breathlessly. ‘Geoffrey? Oh, Geoffrey.’
My father had got out of the car and was holding Marchenko in his arms. She was clinging to him.
‘Ruth? Are you all right?’
They kissed each other on the cheeks and my father helped Marchenko into the car. We saw two men run out of the house and race to a car. We presumed they were Russians.
‘Get in and hold tight,’ Laurentzen said. ‘Now the fun begins.’
We were followed for a time, but Laurentzen knew the countryside, which our pursuers did not, and his car was much faster than theirs. I guessed we had doubled back on ourselves a couple of times, and once we had left the city I kept getting glimpses of the sun on the water. We were travelling east, along the coast, but I no idea where we had ended up, except that we were some distance from Helsinki.
‘Welcome to my summer home,’ Laurentzen said. ‘Here you will be safe. Not for ever, but for a few hours. You may speak freely. You will not be overheard. Please. You are welcome here.’
He led us into a painted wooden house on the edge of the sea.
2
RUTH
‘Many years ago, in a moment of rashness I bitterly regret, I told my husband what happened in Leiden. If I had not done that he would not have been able to betray me all those years later. You would not be in danger now. I must ask your forgiveness for what I did.’
‘Did he force you to tell him?’
She remembers that terrible night, the night she told Ivan in a moment of desperation that she had slept with Stevens. Why did she tell him? What did she hope to gain but his anger, his disdain and rejection of her? How many years later did that pathetic man offer the secret of her infidelity to his inquisitors in exchange for his own life? They accepted his offer, then changed their minds and executed him anyway. In that moment, unknowingly, he drew her into Andropov’s power.
‘No,’ she says quietly. ‘No, he never forced me.’
‘There is nothing to be forgiven,’ he adds quietly. ‘How could there be?’
Across the years his hand reaches out to her and she feels his warmth. The gentleness of his words bathes her like a warm breeze. She wants to kiss him and love him. But she doesn’t move. His grip tightens on her fingers, closer, closer. She wants him to draw her closer.
‘How you have suffered,’ he says. ‘How wrong it all is.’
They sit there, linked together, in silence. Outside the sun is climbing. She wonders what time it is but dares not ask. They are in their own world again now; time doesn’t matter. Nobody will disturb them. She is safe with him. This is where she is meant to be.
*
‘This is our task,’ he is saying to her, ‘our responsibility.’
She is not here on her own account. Gromsky, Tomasov, Lykowski, Markarova have placed their trust in her, as has Andropov. Though she is exhausted, she must fulfil her duty to them all. She must hear what he is saying.
‘Every day more of us believe that what we are being asked to do is wrong.’
‘What can we do, Geoffrey? What power have we got?’
‘We have the power of our knowledge. If the scientific community says “no” loudly enough, our voices will carry across national frontiers. If we refuse to work for any political regime, East or West, until our demands for international scientific control are met, then political strategies based on the development of nuclear weapons will be stranded and we will have delivered the world from the possibility of annihilation. We will have banished nuclear arsenals because we, the builders, refuse to build. Instead of being the architects of destruction, we will have started the design of a new world. We will earn the respect of future generations.’
It is a courageous speech, whose sentiments she endorses. She also knows it is wholly impractical. Geoffrey is an innocent dreamer. She knows the world as it truly is because she lives it every day of her life, while he can only imagine. All her disappointments rise again.
She looks out to sea. The morning is bright now. A couple are walking a dog on the beach. She can see a man swimming. The world is waking up to another day.
‘I must get you away from here,’ he says, his face lighting up as he speaks. ‘We will be the symbol of a new world order, a Russian scientist and an English scientist, working together for what we believe in, speaking the same language. We will fight this madness together.’
He smiles at her and squeezes her hand.
‘We will begin the campaign in Cambridge. I will find you somewhere to live – you can stay in our house until we get you a place of your own.’
‘Geoffrey.’ She must stop him before it is too late.
‘Why not? What other solution can there be? Together we will present an unanswerable argument.’
‘Geoffrey. I have a mother and a son.’
‘If you leave Moscow they will send them after you.’
‘If I leave they will keep them as hostages and force me to return.’
‘What possible use can they have for an old woman and a child?’
‘That is how they operate.’
She sees his hopes begin to fade.
‘Will you go back? When this conference is over?’ he asks.
‘To Moscow? Of course. I live there.’
‘Everything will continue as before?’
‘What choice do I have, Geoffrey? It is the world I know.’ She puts her finger to his lips. ‘Don’t make parting harder than it already is. Please say nothing more.’
‘You cannot imagine how difficult this is.’
‘I know only too well.’
*
He has looked at his watch twice in the last five minutes. She knows it is time for them to leave. She has told him everything but the greatest secret of her life.
‘There is something I want you to see.’ She reaches into her handbag and produces a wallet of photographs. She chooses one and hands it to Stevens.
‘This is my son, Valery.’
Stevens looks at the photographs. His expression registers nothing. Surely he can see what to her is so obvious? She smiles and puts her hand on his shoulder.
‘Can’t you see it?’
‘See what?’
Those grey-blue eyes, staring at her quizzically. How well she knows that look.
‘See what?’ he asks again.
How can he fail to see that which is so clear to her?
‘You are the father he has never seen.’
‘Valery is ours?’
‘Yes.’
‘You nev
er told me.’
‘He is a good boy,’ she says. ‘You would be proud of him.’
‘Why did you never tell me?’
‘How could I? At first I was not sure. But when I was sure, it became my secret. It kept me close to you; I could look at Valery and I could see you. There was some comfort in that. As he grows older he becomes more like you every day, not only in looks but in manner too. Sometimes it makes me laugh to listen to him. I am hearing you speaking Russian.’
‘All these years,’ he says. ‘All these wasted years.’
She holds his head against her as his body shakes. She tries to calm him but the tears flow out of him as if a dam has broken: all the sorrow, the rage, the hurt of the years is released and he lets it run out. It is some time before he is calm again.
‘Can I see him?’
‘That is impossible,’ she says. ‘You mustn’t even think it.’
‘I must see him. I have to. I am his father.’
‘He knows nothing about you.’
‘You never told him?’
‘How could I? It would be intolerable for him to know the truth. We live on opposite sides of a divided world. He would never be allowed to see you. You cannot ask him to live with the knowledge of something he can never realize.’
‘But I know. I know.’
‘He is young, Geoffrey. Think of him. You’re not living in Moscow. You’re not Russian. He is all those things. For as long as our two countries see each other as enemies, your son will remain unknown to you. That is the legacy of what we scientists have done to the world. That is what you must fight to destroy. For his sake and those of his age, and younger. You must go on to make his future secure.’
Can telling him the greatest secret of her life provide the motive that will drive him on to overcome whatever obstacles are thrown in his path? Will he go back to his own people, his own leaders, and ask them to speak to the Supreme Soviet?
‘I will send you photographs,’ she says. ‘I will write to tell you what he does with his life. But you cannot see him.’
He looks at her, desperation in his eyes. She knows what he wants to say. If something happens to you, his eyes tell her, how will I know if he is still alive? How will I know?
She wants to say, there is no consolation, that is what we have made of our lives; there are no answers, no reprieves. We are victims of politics. Now our lives must be about making a safer world for our son.
She kisses him. ‘We cannot let ourselves think these thoughts. We must remember that once we loved each other and that Valery is the living testimony to that love. We may be apart but we are luckier than some. Perhaps,’ she smiles as she says this, ‘perhaps he will grow into a famous physicist like his father. Perhaps you will read of his achievements in the scientific journals and be proud.’
He looks at her, a man lost and desolate, and she feels her heart almost break. Why must she always be strong? Why her? Why can’t she break down and be comforted by him?
‘What am I to do?’ he asks.
‘Keep the secret,’ she says. ‘We cannot burden his life with our guilt, our needs, our recriminations for secrets not shared. He must be free to live the life he chooses, in so far as any choice is possible within the Soviet Union. We must do what we have to do to make that possible. That is the greatest gift we can give him.’
She knows that what she says is true, but it is not what she wants. She wants Stevens to sweep her up into his arms, to rescue her and Valery; to take them away from Moscow to a life without fear, where she can dedicate herself to the two men she will never stop loving.
It is morning now. Light, she knows, brings with it truth. She is Russian and she must return to Moscow. He is English and must return to Cambridge. That is their fete. She smiles to herself. Fate is such a Russian concept. She wonders if the English think of their fate. She suspects not.
‘It will be very difficult to say goodbye,’ he says.
‘We have done it before and we must do it again.’
‘There will be other conferences. Rome in November. Oxford next year. You must come to Oxford, bring Valery to Oxford. We must meet as often as we can. That is our obligation to each other.’
‘No dreams, Geoffrey. Not this time.’
She remembers the red university diary, and the names of towns she has never visited. Milan. Basle. Oslo.
She takes his hand. ‘No false promises. No self-delusion. If we meet again, it will be entirely by chance. I have only one regret. For you, I wish I was beautiful.’
‘You are beautiful,’ he says, and she laughs again, disbelieving but pleased, because she knows he means it even though it is untrue.
‘Let me go, Geoffrey.’
He has taken her in his arms. She removes his hands and holds him apart from her. In that moment she understands him as she has never done before. His fate is that he can never have the one thing he wants.
‘It is time we returned to our real lives.’
3
DANNY
‘Whatever you may think of the Russians,’ Laurentzen said as he poured two glasses with care, ‘this is their gift to the world. They should have stuck to exporting vodka, not Lenin.’
He was sitting at his desk, beneath the stern gaze of his father portrayed in academic dress. In his time he had been Professor of Physics at Helsinki University and later its Rector. Jamie Laurentzen possessed the same confidence in the processes of science to unravel the mysteries of the world. I envied the certainties of their relationship.
‘He built this summer house,’ Jamie had told us as we came in, ‘in the last year of the last century. Before that there was nothing here, just a headland, a few trees, the beach and the sea. My father said that what attracted him was the peacefulness of this place. He would come here to think and to write.’
He had pointed to a shelf of leather-bound volumes. ‘He was a productive and meticulous man. These are his papers, his articles, the original manuscripts – all written in the same black ink. All bound, all numbered. Over there are his books. He taught all his life in Helsinki. I don’t think he once thought of moving. He was a true Finn.’
He pushed the vodka across the desk towards me.
‘This is the real thing, not some pale Soviet imitation masquerading as Russian. To old friends.’
I experienced the familiar burning, the cold flame coursing through my body, exploding in my stomach and then sweeping up and entering my brain.
Laurentzen refilled our glasses.
‘You may go to bed if you wish. Marina has made up the spare room. In our short summer, we Finns need very little sleep.’
Marina was Laurentzen’s English wife. They had met and married while he was working at Cambridge. I never knew her well because for some reason my mother didn’t like her and, in any case, her sons were older than me at a time when differences in age matter. On his desk were framed photographs of two young men, fair-haired and grinning.
He took a pipe from a rack and started to fill it with tobacco from a leather pouch.
‘So what is going on, Danny?’ he asked. ‘What is Geoffrey doing here? I cannot imagine it is by chance that you are both in Helsinki at the same time.’
There seemed little point in concealing the truth from Laurentzen. After all, he had responded to my appeal for help without questioning me.
‘I was sent here to stop the meeting that’s taking place next door.’
‘It would seem your mission has been unsuccessful,’ Jamie said. ‘But that does not answer my question.’
‘Our people think my father is here to give nuclear secrets to the Russians.’
‘So that is what Geoffrey is doing. He is handing over secret information to Marchenko.’ He looked at me over the top of his glasses. ‘You are a good son. You do not believe that Geoffrey is a traitor?’
‘Of course I don’t.’
‘You sound very sure.’
‘I know he’d never do anything like that.’
&
nbsp; ‘Do you say that out of loyalty because you are his son? Or do you have evidence to support your view?’
‘You were close to him for years, Jamie. Do you think he could betray his country?’
‘I offer no opinion. I ask what makes you so sure he would not.’
I was discouraged by his refusal to take sides. I should have realized the dangers of easy partisanship when, like the Finns, you are trapped in the vice between East and West.
‘You make it sound as if sharing secrets with the Russians isn’t wrong.’
‘Are there no circumstances when the act of giving secrets to another country might be justified?’
‘None that I know of.’
‘I envy your certainty.’
There was something on his mind. What it was I couldn’t guess, and he appeared reluctant to tell me.
‘In theoretical physics,’ he said, ‘there is a test, one among many, which we apply to every new theory. We ask ourselves: is this idea crazy enough? I think we should apply that test to your father’s behaviour.’ He smiled at me. ‘Let us assume that at this minute Geoffrey is indeed passing British nuclear secrets to Marchenko. Is he doing so out of political conviction? He is not a Marxist. For financial gain? He is not interested in money. Perhaps he is being blackmailed and he is doing this against his will. It is possible but unlikely, no? We draw a blank. His motive remains an enigma. But there must be a reason, otherwise why would he be here? Let us examine the problem from another angle. Might there not be a moral basis for his actions?’
‘An act of conscience?’
‘Is that not possible?’
‘It’s still a betrayal.’
‘The time to condemn the act is when we have established the cause. Our hypothesis suggests Geoffrey could be trying to do something good.’
‘Like what?’
‘There are many scientists, and your father is among them, whose consciences rebel in the face of the risk of a nuclear explosion destroying the world in a giant chain reaction. They have created these dangers, they see it as their duty to prevent such a disaster occurring. Could Geoffrey not be at this conference of nuclear physicists because he wants to do exactly that? Are not such actions good? Do they not have morality behind them?’
Making Enemies Page 37