by Ken Follett
‘Yes,’ said Woody. ‘I’d noticed that.’
(v)
Greg Peshkov was living in his father’s permanent apartment at the Ritz-Carlton. Lev came and went, stopping off for a few days between Buffalo and Los Angeles. At present Greg had the place to himself – except that the congressman’s curvy daughter, Rita Lawrence, had stayed overnight, and now looked adorably tousled in a man’s red silk dressing gown.
A waiter brought them breakfast, the newspapers, and a message envelope.
The joint statement by Roosevelt and Churchill had caused more of a stir than Greg had expected. It was still the main news more than a week later. The press called it the Atlantic Charter. It had seemed, to Greg, to be all cautious phrases and vague commitments, but the world saw it otherwise. It was hailed as a trumpet blast for freedom, democracy and world trade. Hitler was reported to be furious, saying it amounted to a declaration of war by the United States against Germany.
Countries that had not been at the conference nevertheless wanted to sign the charter, and Bexforth Ross had suggested the signatories should be called the United Nations.
Meanwhile, the Germans were overrunning the Soviet Union. In the north they were closing in on Leningrad. In the south the retreating Russians had blown up the Dnieper Dam, the biggest hydro-electric power complex in the world and their pride and joy, in order to deny its power to the conquering Germans – a heartbreaking sacrifice. ‘The Red Army has slowed the invasion a bit,’ Greg said to Rita, reading from the Washington Post. ‘But the Germans are still advancing five miles a day. And they claim to have killed three and a half million Soviet soldiers. Is it possible?’
‘Do you have any relatives in Russia?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do. My father told me, one time when he was a little drunk, that he left a pregnant girl behind.’
Rita made a disapproving face.
‘That’s him, I’m afraid,’ Greg said. ‘He’s a great man, and great men don’t obey the rules.’
She said nothing, but he could read her expression. She disagreed with his view, but was not willing to quarrel with him about it.
‘Anyway, I have a Russian half-brother, illegitimate like me,’ Greg went on. ‘His name is Vladimir, but I don’t know anything else about him. He may be dead by now. He’s the right age to fight. He’s probably one of those three and a half million.’ He turned the page.
When he had finished the paper, he read the message the waiter had brought.
It was from Jacky Jakes. It gave a phone number and just said: Not between 1 and 3.
Suddenly Greg could not wait to get rid of Rita. ‘What time are you expected home?’ he asked unsubtly.
She looked at her watch. ‘Oh, my gosh, I should be there before my mother starts looking for me.’ She had told her parents she was staying over with a girlfriend.
They got dressed together and left in two cabs.
Greg figured the phone number must be Jacky’s place of work, and that she would be busy between one o’clock and three. He would phone her around mid-morning.
He wondered why he was so excited. After all, he was only curious. Rita Lawrence was great-looking and very sexy, but with her and several others he had never recaptured the excitement of that first affair with Jacky. No doubt that was because he could never again be fifteen years old.
He got to the Old Executive Office building and began his main task for the day, which was drafting a press release on advice to Americans living in North Africa, where British, Italians and Germans fought backwards and forwards, mostly on a coastal strip two thousand miles long and forty miles wide.
At ten-thirty he phoned the number on the message.
A woman’s voice answered: ‘University Women’s Club.’ Greg had never been there: men went only as guests of female members.
He said: ‘Is Jacky Jakes there?’
‘Yes, she’s expecting a call. Please hold on.’ She probably had to get special permission to receive a phone call at work, he reflected.
A few moments later he heard ‘This is Jacky, who’s that?’
‘Greg Peshkov.’
‘I thought so. How did you get my address?’
‘I hired a private detective. Can we meet?’
‘I guess we have to. But there’s one condition.’
‘What?’
‘You have to swear by all that’s holy not to tell your father. Never, ever.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ll explain later.’
He shrugged. ‘Okay.’
‘Do you swear?’
‘Sure.’
She persisted. ‘Say it.’
‘I swear it, okay?’
‘All right. You can buy me lunch.’
Greg frowned. ‘Are there any restaurants in this neighbourhood that will serve a white man and a black woman together?’
‘Only one that I know of – the Electric Diner.’
‘I’ve seen it.’ He had noticed the name, but he had never been inside: it was a cheap lunch counter used by janitors and messengers. ‘What time?’
‘Half past eleven.’
‘So early?’
‘What time do you think waitresses have lunch – one o’clock?’
He grinned ‘You’re as sassy as ever.’
She hung up.
Greg finished his press release and took the typed sheets into his boss’s office. Dropping the draft into the in-tray, he said: ‘Would it be convenient for me to take an early lunch, Mike? Around eleven-thirty?’
Mike was reading the op-ed page of the New York Times. ‘Yeah, no problem,’ he said without looking up.
Greg walked past the White House in the sunshine and reached the diner at eleven-twenty. It was empty but for a handful of people taking a mid-morning break. He sat in a booth and ordered coffee.
He wondered what Jacky would have to say. He looked forward to the solution of a puzzle that had mystified him for six years.
She arrived at eleven thirty-five, wearing a black dress and flat shoes – her waitress uniform without the apron, he presumed. Black suited her, and he remembered vividly the sheer pleasure of looking at her, with her bow-shaped mouth and her big brown eyes. She sat opposite him and ordered a salad and a Coke. Greg had more coffee: he was too tense to eat.
Her face had lost the childish plumpness he remembered. She had been sixteen when they met, so she was twenty-two now. They had been kids playing at being grown up; now they really were adults. In her face he read a story that had not been there six years ago: disappointment and suffering and hardship.
‘I work the day shift,’ she told him. ‘Come in at nine, set the tables, dress the room. Wait at lunch, clear away, leave at five.’
‘Most waitresses work in the evening.’
‘I like to have evenings and weekends free.’
‘Still a party girl!’
‘No, mostly I stay home and listen to the radio.’
‘I guess you have lots of boyfriends.’
‘All I want.’
It took him a moment to realize that could mean anything.
Her lunch came. She drank her Coke and picked at the salad.
Greg said: ‘So why did you run out, back in 1935?’
She sighed. ‘I don’t want to tell you this, because you’re not going to like it.’
‘I have to know.’
‘I got a visit from your father.’
Greg nodded. ‘I figured he must have had something to do with it.’
‘He had a goon with him – Joe something.’
‘Joe Brekhunov. He’s a thug.’ Greg began to feel angry. ‘Did he hurt you?’
‘He didn’t need to, Greg. I was scared to death just looking at him. I was ready to do anything your father wanted.’
Greg suppressed his fury. ‘What did he want?’
‘He said I had to leave, right then. I could write you a note but he would read it. I had to come back here to Washington. I was so sad to leave you.’
Greg remembered his own anguish. ‘Me, too,’ he said. He was tempted to reach across the table and take her hand, but he was not sure she would want that.
She went on: ‘He said he would give me a weekly allowance just to keep away from you. He’s still paying me. It’s only a few bucks but it takes care of the rent. I promised – but somehow I managed to summon up the nerve to make one condition.’
‘What?’
‘That he would never make a pass at me. If he did, I would tell you everything.’
‘And he agreed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not many people get away with threatening him.’
She pushed her plate away. ‘Then he said if I broke my word Joe would cut my face. Joe showed me his straight razor.’
It all fell into place. ‘That’s why you’re still scared.’
Her dark skin was bloodless with fear. ‘You bet your goddamn life.’
Greg’s voice fell to a whisper. ‘Jacky, I’m sorry.’
She forced a smile. ‘Are you sure he was so wrong? You were fifteen. It’s not a good age to get married.’
‘If he had said that to me, it might be different. But he decides what’s going to happen and just does it, as if no one else is entitled to an opinion.’
‘Still, we had good times.’
‘You bet.’
‘I was your Gift.’
He laughed. ‘Best present I ever got.’
‘So what are you doing these days?’
‘Working in the press office at the State Department for the summer.’
She made a face. ‘Sounds boring.’
‘It’s the opposite! It’s so exciting to watch powerful men make earth-shaking decisions, just sitting there at their desks. They run the world!’
She looked sceptical, but said: ‘Well, it probably beats waitressing.’
He began to see how far apart they had moved. ‘In September I’m going back to Harvard for my last year.’
‘I bet you’re a gift to the co-eds.’
‘There are lots of men and not many girls.’
‘You do all right, though, don’t you?’
‘I can’t lie to you.’ He wondered whether Emily Hardcastle had kept her promise and got herself fitted with a contraceptive device.
‘You’ll marry one of them and have beautiful children and live in a house on the edge of a lake.’
‘I’d like to be something in politics, maybe Secretary of State, or a senator like Woody Dewar’s father.’
She looked away.
Greg thought about that house on the edge of a lake. It must be her dream. He felt sad for her.
‘You’ll make it,’ she said. ‘I know. You have that air about you. Even when you were fifteen you had it. You’re like your father.’
‘What? Come on!’
She shrugged. ‘Think about it, Greg. You knew I didn’t want to see you. But you set a private dick on me. He decides what’s going to happen and just does it, as if no one else is entitled to an opinion. That’s what you said about him a minute ago.’
Greg was dismayed. ‘I hope I’m not completely like him.’
She gave him an appraising look. ‘The jury’s still out.’
The waitress took her plate. ‘Some dessert?’ she said. ‘Peach pie’s good.’
Neither of them wanted dessert, so the waitress gave Greg the bill.
Jacky said: ‘I hope I’ve satisfied your curiosity.’
‘Thank you, I appreciate it.’
‘Next time you see me on the street, just walk on by.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
She stood up. ‘Let’s leave separately. I’d feel more comfortable.’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘Good luck, Greg.’
‘Good luck to you.’
‘Tip the waitress,’ she said, and she walked away.
10
1941 (III)
In October the snow fell and melted, and the streets of Moscow were cold and wet. Volodya was searching in the store cupboard for his valenki, the traditional felt boots that warmed the feet of Muscovites in winter, when he was astonished to see six cases of vodka.
His parents were not great drinkers. They rarely took more than one small glass. Now and again his father went to one of Stalin’s long, boozy dinners with old comrades, and staggered in through the door in the early hours of the morning as drunk as a skunk. But in this house a bottle of vodka lasted a month or more.
Volodya went into the kitchen. His parents were having breakfast, canned sardines with black bread and tea. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘why do we have six years’ supply of vodka in the store cupboard?’
His father looked surprised.
Both men looked at Katerina, who blushed. Then she switched on the radio and turned the volume down to a low mutter. Did she suspect their apartment had concealed listening devices, Volodya wondered?
She spoke quietly but angrily. ‘What are you going to use for money when the Germans get here?’ she said. ‘We won’t belong to the privileged elite any longer. We’ll starve unless we can buy food on the black market. I’m too damn old to sell my body. Vodka will be better than gold.’
Volodya was shocked to hear his mother talking this way.
‘The Germans aren’t going to get here,’ his father said.
Volodya was not so sure. They were advancing again, closing the jaws of a pincer around Moscow. They had reached Kalinin in the north and Kaluga to the south, both cities only about a hundred miles away. Soviet casualties were unimaginably high. A month ago 800,000 Red Army troops had held the line, but only 90,000 were left, according to the estimates reaching Volodya’s desk. He said to his father: ‘Who the hell is going to stop them?’
‘Their supply lines are stretched. They’re unprepared for our winter weather. We will counter-attack when they’re weakened.’
‘So why are you moving the government out of Moscow?’
The bureaucracy was in the process of being transported two thousand miles east, to the city of Kuibyshev. The citizens of the capital had been unnerved by the sight of government clerks carrying boxes of files out of their office buildings and packing them into trucks.
‘That’s just a precaution,’ Grigori said. ‘Stalin is still here.’
‘There is a solution,’ Volodya argued. ‘We have hundreds of thousands of men in Siberia. We need them here as reinforcements.’
Grigori shook his head. ‘We can’t leave the east undefended. Japan is still a threat.’
‘Japan is not going to attack us – we know that!’ Volodya glanced at his mother. He knew he should not talk about secret intelligence in front of her, but he did anyway. ‘The Tokyo source that warned us – correctly – that the Germans were about to invade has now told us that the Japanese will not. Surely we’re not going to disbelieve him again!’
‘Evaluating intelligence is never easy.’
‘We don’t have a choice!’ Volodya said angrily. ‘We have twelve armies in reserve – a million men. If we deploy them, Moscow might survive. If we don’t, we’re finished.’
Grigori looked troubled. ‘Don’t speak like that, even in private.’
‘Why not? I’ll probably be dead soon anyway.’
His mother started to cry.
His father said: ‘Now look what you’ve done.’
Volodya left the room. Putting on his boots, he asked himself why he had shouted at his father and made his mother cry. He saw that it was because he now believed that Germany would defeat the Soviet Union. His mother’s stash of vodka to be used as currency during a Nazi occupation had forced him to confront the reality. We’re going to lose, he said to himself. The end of the Russian revolution is in sight.
He put on his coat and hat. Then he returned to the kitchen. He kissed his mother and embraced his father.
‘What’s this for?’ said his father. ‘You’re only going to work.’
‘It’s just in case we never meet ag
ain,’ Volodya said. Then he went out.
When he crossed the bridge into the city centre he found that all public transport had stopped. The metro was closed and there were no buses or trams.
It seemed there was nothing but bad news.
This morning’s bulletin from SovInformBuro, broadcast on the radio and from black-painted loudspeaker posts on street corners, had been uncharacteristically honest. ‘During the night of 14 to 15 October, the position on the Western Front became worse,’ it had said. ‘Large numbers of German tanks broke through our defences.’ Everyone knew that SovInformBuro always lied, so they assumed the real situation was even worse.
The city centre was clogged with refugees. They were pouring in from the west, with their possessions in handcarts, driving herds of skinny cows and filthy pigs and wet sheep through the streets, heading for the countryside east of Moscow, desperate to get as far away as possible from the advancing Germans.
Volodya tried to hitch a lift. There was not much civilian traffic in Moscow these days. Fuel was being saved for the endless military convoys driving around the Garden Ring orbital road. He was picked up by a new GAZ-64 jeep.
Looking from the open vehicle, he saw a good deal of bomb damage. Diplomats returning from England said this was nothing by comparison with the London Blitz, but Muscovites thought it was bad enough. Volodya passed several wrecked buildings and dozens of burned-out wooden houses.
Grigori, in charge of air raid defence, had mounted anti-aircraft guns on the tops of the tallest buildings, and launched barrage balloons to float below the snow clouds. His most bizarre decision had been to order the golden onion domes of the churches to be painted in camouflage green and brown. He had admitted to Volodya that this would make no difference to the accuracy – or otherwise – of the bombing but, he said, it gave citizens the feeling that they were being protected.
If the Germans won, and the Nazis ruled Moscow, then Volodya’s nephew and niece, the twin children of his sister, Anya, would be brought up not as patriotic Communists but as slavish Nazis, saluting Hitler. Russia would be like France, a country in servitude, perhaps partly ruled by an obedient pro-Fascist government that would round up Jews to be sent to concentration camps. It hardly bore thinking about. Volodya wanted a future in which the Soviet Union could free itself from the malign rule of Stalin and the brutality of the secret police and begin to build true Communism.