‘It’s possible,’ I said, sounding doubtful. My father as saviour of the world. Was that the role he cast himself in now? I thought back to the articles he had written, to his barely suppressed anger at my working for Watson-Jones, a man who endorsed nuclear arms as a prerequisite for lasting peace. I remembered his use of Ridout’s death to promote his own cause, that either we must remove nuclear weapons from political control or attempt to reject war as a political solution. Perhaps in my easy dismissal of his position I had underestimated his determination to act on his own convictions.
‘You and I both know where your father stands on this issue. He believes we have given the world a gift too powerful for its own good. He sees our politicians misusing that gift and blowing up the world. I disagree. That was the cause of our quarrel. Perhaps he is not here to give Marchenko secrets. Perhaps, oblivious of personal risk, he is here to convince her of the lightness of his cause. Is that not a courageous, far-sighted, crazy act, for which humanity should be grateful, particularly if it helps to save all our lives?’
His theory had a logic to it, and it was a view I hadn’t considered.
‘Is Marchenko the right contact? Does she have political influence? Can she help his cause, if indeed he has one?’
‘It is possible,’ Jamie said, ‘that Marchenko is giving the same message to your father.’
Then he told me about the rumour that had been sweeping through the conference since Monday. In a gesture of defiance, a group of leading scientists at the Institute of Nuclear Research in Moscow had deliberately blown up their own laboratory, destroying much valuable research and setting back the development of the Soviet bomb by months if not years. They had done this, Jamie said, because the political authorities had refused to listen to their concerns.
‘If that were true,’ I said, ‘they would all have been shot by now.’
‘That is the pragmatist’s answer,’ Jamie said. ‘I accept the rumour may not be true. I prefer to believe that the explosion was an accident. I know that the scientists are still alive, because Marchenko is one of them. If her colleagues had been shot she would either be dead or not here.’
‘You don’t believe this rumour, do you?’
‘It is too early to ask that question. The rumour exists. What one must establish is why does it exist? Why now, in Helsinki? Who has started it? What might their motives be?’
‘Are you suggesting it comes from the Russians?’
‘That is one possibility, certainly.’
‘They’re incapable of such subtlety.’
‘You see the Soviets as brutal and ruthless, which is undeniable. But they are as capable of great sophistication as they are of brutality, or of making stupid mistakes.
‘You’ll have to convince me,’ I said.
‘Maybe the Soviets have their own reasons for ending this race to build the bomb. Maybe they have realized it is something they cannot do, that they do not have the technology or the economic resources to create such a weapon. What better way of avoiding the political disaster of failing at such an important task than to get the international community to take the matter out of your hands? In politics, it is better not to do something because you have given in to international pressure than it is to admit your own weakness.’
He paused to stare at me. ‘Marchenko is one of the leaders of this revolt.’
The small, shy woman I had seen clutching my father’s arm. It was impossible to imagine her in such a role. Laurentzen had read my thoughts.
‘Don’t be taken in by her appearance. She is more determined than she looks. I am sure she speaks out of conviction. The question we have to answer is: is it her voice we hear, or is she being manipulated?’
All my experience, particularly my months in Berlin, denied what Jamie was saying. The Russians would never give up building their own bomb, whatever the cost. Too much was at stake. Their foreign policy depended on the strength of their opposition to the democracies of the West. Owning their own atomic bomb was the index of that strength, a necessary symbol of the triumphant path of Marxist-Leninism. I could see nothing stopping them building a nuclear arsenal to equal that held in the West.
If that were the case, why was Marchenko talking to my father? Very slowly, as I listened to Laurentzen, an appalling thought emerged.
What if this was the message that the Soviets wanted us to believe? Suppose their own development had come up against obstacles that were taking much more time to resolve. Desperate, they had hit upon the idea of slowing the West’s progress. What if the West was being tricked into a false sense of security? What if we believed what they wanted us to believe and reduced our own commitment to nuclear development?
It didn’t end there. The British intelligence service believed my father was a traitor, which is what the Russians wanted them to believe. If that was true, this was no innocent meeting with Marchenko. She was as much on their side as the rest of Stalin’s gang. She was the siren call my father could not resist. Somehow the Soviets knew that, and they had made use of Marchenko to lure him to Helsinki. He had answered her summons and now, in his innocence, he was about to walk into a trap. It would be impossible to conceal this meeting. The Russians would leak the information to the British, my father would be arrested by Monty’s people on his return home. His secret meeting with a Soviet nuclear scientist would be indisputable evidence of his treachery. Our intelligence services would be doing what the Soviets wanted – removing a senior scientist from our own programme, sowing dissension among our allies, the Americans, keeping both countries apart.
I got to my feet. ‘We can’t let this go on, can we? He’s in real danger. The consequences of this meeting are too awful to think about.’
‘It is too late to stop them now,’ Laurentzen said. ‘They have begun. Your friend Monty was right. Our one chance was to stop them meeting. We are too late for that. We have been deceived into helping them meet. Somehow we must retrieve the situation. God knows how.’
4
RUTH
She watches the white car drive away, one face in the back window turning round to catch a last glimpse of her; no wave, no smile, just those dark eyes she remembers so well looking at her. Then they are gone, and she returns Stevens to the secret treasury of her memory where, except for the last eight hours, he has lived since she met him so many years before. She can hardly believe that she has seen him again. She is dizzy with physical impressions of him: his voice, the touch of his hand, the colour of his eyes, the lines on his face, the texture of his clothes, the weight of his presence beside her. (In her imagination he is always a weightless being whom she can make appear or disappear at will.) She is relieved that she has to make so few adjustments to the image she has preserved of him. Her memories at least are true, and that is some consolation.
She realizes how exhausted she is, how much of a strain the last few hours have been. She wants to throw off her clothes and sleep for as long as she can. She goes upstairs to her room. As she opens the door, the early-morning light is in her eyes and she can make out only the contours of a thin, angular figure silhouetted in the window. She is too tired even to feel frightened.
‘Where did you go?’ Andropov asks.
She is in no mood for questioning. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I am too tired to talk.’
‘Where did Professor Laurentzen take you?’ he insists.
‘I don’t know. Somewhere on the coast. Please.’ She knows she is pleading with him but she doesn’t care. ‘I haven’t slept for over twenty-four hours.’
‘Did you tell Stevens he is the father of your son?’
How could Andropov know that? This is her secret, the secret around which her entire life has been built. No one knows except her and now Stevens because an hour ago she chose to tell him. She has never told anyone else. How can Andropov know? Can he listen to the secrets of her heart? No, this is a trick. He is trying to get her to admit something he suspects may be true but is not sure.
‘Come now, Comrade Marchenko.’
She has an overwhelming desire to close her eyes and sleep. She sees the sunlight momentarily reflected on the lenses of Andropov’s rimless glasses. Two fiery lights burn into her soul. She knows this is no dream; she fights to keep awake, to remain alert.
‘Show me the photographs you have of your son,’ he says.
Reluctantly she opens her bag and hands them to Andropov. He lays them out across the table as if he were playing solitaire. Where is the man who asked her to question him? Who came close to expressing his need for companionship, for some kind of relationship? Or did she dream that moment? Andropov has opened his briefcase and now he brings out a set of photographs which he places on the table beneath those of Valery Marchenko.
‘Do I need to say more?’
She stares at photographs of her forgotten husband Ivan, ancient photographs of him as a young man, taken at the time they first met. She can find no trace of the dark hair and narrow face that she has almost wiped from her memory, imprinted on her son.
‘Stevens knows,’ she says. ‘I told him.’
She can hardly believe she has made this admission, but she only has to look at the expression on Andropov’s face to know that he has won and she has lost. At that moment the core of her life breaks within her. She is emptied of will, purpose, identity. This is not the effect of fatigue. Now there is nothing left. Ruth Marchenko, as a woman in possession of her own life, has ceased to exist. She has lost the identity of her son to Andropov, the last emblem of her being.
‘Good,’ he says. ‘I am pleased you told him. Now we must arrange a meeting between father and son.’
‘Stevens won’t come to Moscow.’ She is fighting him with the very last of her strength.
‘He doesn’t have to. He can meet his son in Helsinki.’
At that moment Andropov comes as close to destroying her as he has ever done. He knows her greatest secret and he has her son in his possession. She has no resistance left because there is nothing left to resist with. Now her secret is gone, where is the basis of her will? What is there to protect? She feels invaded, soiled, unclean. She has become that which she has always fought against, she is ‘someone else’. Her private war is over. She has been defeated. Andropov has complete control over her life.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Her question is a last echo of the self that is no more.
‘Get some rest now. We will talk later.’
‘How can I rest? What are you doing to me? Where is my son?’
Andropov looks at his watch. ‘It is six o’clock,’ he says. ‘Your son is asleep. The young have a great ability to sleep.’
‘I want to see him now.’
‘That will not be possible. You will be confined to your room until we are ready. Goodnight, Comrade Marchenko. Or should I say, good morning?’
*
She lies on the bed drained of strength but unable to sleep. She has not bothered to take off her clothes. Her mind is racing out of control, taking her into a waking delirium where reality is replaced by a monstrous and threatening confusion. She is alone in her terror, shaking with cold and fear. She wraps the blanket around herself but the shaking continues. She wants to weep but finds that she cannot. Everything has been taken from her. She is a shell, without feeling or purpose.
There is a knock at the door. Slowly the door opens.
‘Mother?’
She holds her son in her arms, she feels the warmth of his breath against her neck, the weight of his body against her. He is alive, and that is the only reality she cares about. The future has no promise any more. She lives only for the moment.
‘Are you all right?’
‘What’s happening?’
What can she tell him? What would Stevens want her to say? Perhaps after today she will never see Valery again. Better to tell him the truth, however painful it may be to her.
‘Please forgive me,’ she says. This time there are tears in her eyes and he sees them.
‘What is it?’
She sits up and tells her son the secret she has kept from him all these years. He listens to her. She does not excuse herself for lying to him about his birth. How can he understand what love is, she asks herself? He is too young to know how irresistible a force love can be, turning the world on its head, defying politics and race and law and religion. Whatever else I have failed at, she tells herself, at least I have known love. I have sacrificed my life to it. In its way that sacrifice has brought its own reward. It gave me a purpose, a direction, and allowed me to survive because it gave me my son.
‘Tell me about my father,’ the boy asks.
How can she describe him in a manner the boy will understand? She cannot tell him of her own feelings towards Stevens. She must try to look at him objectively and scientifically; she must paint a portrait of a man Valery will probably never see but whom he must never forget.
‘He is a scientist,’ she says. ‘A professor at Cambridge.’
Valery knows about Oxford and Cambridge, the light and dark blue, the boat race, the Cavendish Laboratory where Peter Kapitza worked with Rutherford and together they split the atom (Cambridge is always superior to Oxford in her descriptions, she has caught that from her few days with Stevens). Over the years she has told him about Cambridge because it allowed her to bring Valery closer to his father without giving anything away.
‘A year before the war he won the Nobel Prize for Physics, for work he did with a Finn called Laurentzen.’
‘What kind of work?’
‘He is a nuclear physicist.’
‘Describe him to me.’
‘You look like him,’ she says. ‘You have some of his gestures.’ She laughs at the memory. ‘When he talks to you, he holds his head at an angle. You do that too. He is tall, thin, his hair is white, he has deep blue eyes, lines around his mouth. He is quite serious most of the time but when he smiles his face lights up. He is wise.’
‘Wise?’
What she means to say is, when he speaks to me he makes me feel wise, as if I know more than I do, and I am better for it. It is a great gift to be able to share your wisdom with others, rather than intimidate them with it.
‘He understands everything. When you talk to him, he makes you think you are better than you are.’
‘Would he want to talk to me?’
‘I think he would want that more than anything else.’
‘Did he ask you about me?’
‘All the time.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said he would be proud of you.’
The boy smiles at that. ‘So I have an English professor for a father.’ She wonders what he is thinking at that moment, but he gives nothing away.
‘I cannot ask you to forgive me,’ she says.
‘For what?’ he asks.
‘I never told you what you had a right to know. I should not have kept this secret from you. I was wrong to do what I did.’
‘Not telling me was a sacrifice for you too,’ he says. ‘You had your reasons. Why should I question them?’
How much older he sounds. In these few moments he has grown up, he is changing before her eyes from a boy to a man. She takes his hand and kisses it. She notices at once that his warmth has gone too. They are both afraid.
‘What will happen now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Will Andropov come back?’
‘He is sure to.’
‘Will he take me to meet my father?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what he will do.’
Lying on the bed, side by side, mother and son under a single blanket, they wait for Andropov to return.
*
He looks bemused and lost, as if he cannot believe what is happening to him. He has been involved in a struggle. His jacket is torn, his tie has gone, his hair is all over the place. Blood is seeping from his nose and c
ollecting on his shirt-front, and there is a swelling under his eye. Andropov comes into the room after him and offers him a chair.
Stevens looks at his watch. ‘I am giving a lecture this afternoon,’ he says. ‘I am due to speak in fifteen minutes.’
‘Professor Laurentzen has been alerted. He will give your apologies and tell the conference you are indisposed.’
She watches him as he slowly becomes aware of his surroundings. First he sees her and his face betrays his horror that she too is involved, that he can do nothing to protect her. He gets up from his seat and comes to sit beside her.
‘Are you all right?’ he asks.
She kisses him on the cheek and takes a handkerchief from her bag. She dips it in the glass of water by her bedside and starts to clean the blood from his face.
‘What happened?’ she asks.
‘I was dragged from my room,’ he says. ‘Who is this man?’
‘I am Colonel Andropov,’ he says in cold, clear and surprisingly unaccented English. ‘Let me introduce you to your Russian son.’
He has taken even that away from me, she thinks. Even now in moments of distress he must humiliate me. She knows then the depth of Andropov’s brutality. He must win. At all costs, he must always win.
The man and the boy look at each other but they say nothing. She realizes that Stevens can speak no Russian and Valery no English. She must act as interpreter between them.
‘Valery.’
Andropov says the boy’s name. The boy looks at his mother. She says nothing. The room is filled with silence. For a long moment nobody moves. Then Stevens extends his hand. She watches, astonished, as the boy approaches his father and they shake hands.
She says in Russian, ‘Kiss him. Embrace him. He is your father.’ Her words are an instruction.
Valery looks embarrassed. He is frozen to the spot. He cannot move. Man and boy stare at each other in silence.
‘Very English,’ Andropov says in English. ‘No tears. No emotion, no embrace. That is not the Russian way. Perhaps your son is a true Englishman after all.’
Making Enemies Page 38