Dr Berlin

by Francis Bennett

  The chairman stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another.

  ‘And now his tragic early death puts all those gains at risk,’ Medvedev said.

  ‘Your assumption is correct,’ the chairman agreed.

  The timing of the interruption was too neat to be anything but rehearsed, Koliakov was sure of it. Medvedev’s contribution was too slick, too seamless to be anything else. The stubbing out of the cigarette must have been his cue. If he was that close to the chairman, his power had increased in the time Koliakov had been in London. Better to be wary of him.

  ‘The success of our space programme,’ the chairman was saying, ‘has advanced the socialist cause faster and further than any other event since the defeat of the Nazis in 1945. The originality of vision that characterised the Chief Designer’s work, and which is the source of his achievement, must continue to play its part in the heroic task to which we have dedicated our lives – the achievement of the global socialist revolution.’

  Transparent hypocrisy, though you would not think so if you looked at the expressions of the men round the table. Perhaps Medvedev had written the text.

  ‘Our instructions are that death must be no obstacle to the Chief Designer’s continuing contribution to the superiority of Soviet achievements in space. Though he is no longer with us, we must find ways to deceive our enemies into thinking that the Chief Designer is alive, so that we may continue to benefit from his influence. That is our task, and the reason we are gathered here tonight.’

  To pretend Radin was not dead … to conceal his death from the world! Koliakov was incredulous. Had the Central Committee finally lost its senses? Such an idea was not only impossible, it was nonsense, the product of minds that had lost all connection with the real world. He felt sickened and angry.

  What about the Chief Designer’s funeral? someone asked. Will the state not want to honour him publicly, given the significance of his contribution to Soviet leadership over the Americans in the space race? Will these events not tell the world that he is dead?

  There would be no official funeral, no obituaries in the papers, no public memorial of any kind, no announcement of any successor. The chairman could reassure his colleagues on that. There would be no reference to his death anywhere.

  ‘Officially, the Chief Designer is not dead. He has been seriously ill – that much is known by the West – but the skill of our Soviet doctors is such that he is very much alive today and restored to his former strength.’

  Why are we being asked to find strategies to conceal the death of our leading scientist? What truth are we trying to hide? Perhaps Radin’s death has revealed a weakness in our armoury for which there is no other defence than deceit? He could guess what that weakness was, though the chairman had, Koliakov imagined deliberately, made no reference to it in his opening remarks. Radin had no obvious successor. Without him the space programme was leaderless. This policy of deception was born out of desperation. Behind the scenes, there would be a bitter battle to inherit Radin’s mantle. It is always the self-important who struggle for power. The genius, like Radin, waits for the call.

  If the Americans were to learn of his death, he imagined, they would whoop with delight at their good fortune and redouble their efforts to eliminate the Soviet advantage. Within months Moscow would see its lead over the West rapidly eaten away, and with it so much of the widespread political influence that its recent space successes had brought. Such a prospect was unacceptable to the bald, diminutive and impulsive peasant who now guided the fortunes of the state. Which explained why nine men were sitting around a table in a small room on a hot night uneasily searching for answers to an impossible question: how to bring Radin back from the dead.

  He shifted his position in his chair and felt his body ooze moisture as he did so.

  ‘You are asking us to come up with a plan that will deceive the West into thinking that the Chief Designer is still alive?’ Medvedev asked, playing the chairman’s straight man again.

  ‘It is essential that the West believes that the Chief Designer’s work continues. It is imperative that they do not learn about his death.’

  The discussion quickly ran onto the shoals. Tea was brought, and later plates of caviar and blinis. More fans were asked for. A search in the adjoining offices, long since emptied for the night, found two, only one of which worked. Its addition was powerless to bring down the temperature in the room which had noticeably risen since the meeting had begun. Twice the chairman called for breaks in the proceedings to allow members to stretch their legs, in the hope that movement or the emptying of bladders might stimulate creativity. Despite these usually helpful devices, success continued to elude them.

  Koliakov, tired and irritable, looked around the table at the equally tired and irritable faces of his colleagues. Finding an answer was a task well beyond the energies and competence of all of them. They were in for a long night.

  Soon after midnight, the chairman reminded the committee of the importance of its task. His message was uncompromising. They would not be released until they had come up with a proposal. The smoke in the room thickened, and once or twice a roll of thunder could be heard but the longed-for storm held off. The temperature rose, brows and necks were mopped more frequently. Creative thinking remained at a low ebb. Somewhere a clock struck one.

  That was the moment that Koliakov decided to break the stalemate. He did so not out of conviction or belief. His ambitions were more mundane – he was impatient at his continued discomfort. Anything to get out of this stifling room and end this absurd meeting, to escape the numbed minds of men for whom he had so little regard, to throw off his wet clothes and immerse his boiling body in a long cold bath.

  Was his proposal serious? Did he intend that the committee take up his suggestion? The only question that concerned him at the time was: could his proposal fool the committee for long enough to get the chairman to close these pointless proceedings? Or would one empty vessel recognise the emptiness in another? He never gave a thought to the consequences of his scheme beyond his own need to get out of that suffocating room.

  He raised his hand to catch the chairman’s attention. He had said little during the evening but now he reminded the committee that he was attending as an observer, having been a full-time member during his last posting in Moscow, as no doubt some of them would remember. Would they, though? In the interval since he’d last attended regularly, the make-up of the committee had largely changed. He knew few well and none intimately, apart from Medvedev, who, he noticed, was eyeing him suspiciously.

  His posting in New York and now in London had given him, he said, some insights into the workings of the Western mind which might now prove of benefit to the committee’s task.

  ‘Very few Westerners have ever met the Chief Designer,’ he continued, ‘and none since the war. He has not left our borders. No Westerner has been allowed to meet him here. As our chairman has made clear, scientists in the West are certain he is the author of our successful space programme. I know that to be true from conversations I have had in London. The First Secretary is right when he says the Chief Designer’s reputation is of inestimable value in our ideological conflict with the West. His formidable achievements strike fear into the hearts of our enemies.’

  Here he paused for effect, looking round the table at his colleagues, using his apparent hesitation to increase the impact of what he was about to say. So far, so good.

  ‘I propose that we make public what we are planning to do in space,’ he continued. ‘As their experts study what we say we will do, they will recognise the ambitious signature of our Chief Designer. That will convince them, if they need convincing, that the Chief Designer is still alive because there is no other engineer in the Soviet Union who is capable of being the author of such a programme.’

  His idea was greeted with frowns of puzzlement and a moment of silence before a barrage of questions burst on him.

  Was he seriously proposing that they release
secrets of their space programme to the West? Surely that went against every precept they’d ever followed? How could their cause benefit from revealing their plans? Surely maintaining secrecy must be a paramount consideration?

  ‘We could invent plans for the purpose.’ In his desperation for a bath, Koliakov was now giving his imagination free rein, hardly caring if his inventions were convincing or not. ‘Plans which to our enemies will seem all too credible.’ He paused again to look round the table. ‘I would remind this committee that our task is, after all, disinformation.’

  The room was still not with him. He was the butt of another barrage of questions. What kind of invented plans? How could they be sure they were not confusing imagination with reality – was there not a risk that they might give away vital information unwittingly? Koliakov feigned irritated impatience, as if bored by the slow-wittedness of his colleagues in not seeing the neatness of his plan.

  ‘Let them believe,’ he said, inventing another idea on the spot, ‘that we have built a much bigger and more powerful rocket than that which enabled Gagarin to fly his single orbit around the world. Let us tell the West that we are preparing this new giant machine to launch into orbit above the earth a satellite from which we will be able to fire nuclear missiles at any target in the United States of America.’

  The room was stilled by the audacity of the deception. A nuclear arsenal in space from which the West could not hide – unquestionably daring, undoubtedly provocative, and consistent with the innovations the world had come to expect from the Soviet space programme. The slow strands of cigarette smoke, curling upwards above the heads of the committee, vanished into the darkness above the level of the lights. The fans creaked angrily. Through the window Koliakov could see the dimly lit city spread before him. A flash of lightning split the sky for an instant but there was no thunder. The idea was taking root. Silence is always the first staging post on the way to acceptance.

  ‘Only by telling the world what Radin is going to do,’ Koliakov said, ‘will we stimulate the belief in the West that he is still alive. In that way we will maintain their fear of our dominance in space.’

  There was a moment of silence in the room as his listeners withdrew into themselves to wrestle with a dilemma that might affect their careers. Had Koliakov taken leave of his senses? Or had he found a breathtakingly simple answer that would satisfy their chairman and his masters? He watched them face the agony of decision-making.

  ‘Which is preferable?’ he continued, the silence pushing him further than he had intended to go. ‘To let the West discover, as soon enough it surely will, that our greatest space engineer will build no more rockets?’ He paused to light a cigarette. ‘Or to deceive them into believing that he is still here, more powerful than ever, making his dreams come true?’

  He looked around. There were one or two nodding heads. The chairman had taken off his glasses, always a sign that he was prepared to listen. Medvedev, without a personal signal from the chairman, was shaking his head. It was always better to express your doubt first. Becoming convinced by an argument – especially once you had seen which way your chairman would vote – was a decent excuse for changing your mind.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Koliakov added recklessly, letting go of the restraint that he had so valiantly kept in check so far, ‘this will be Soviet proof that there is indeed life after death.’

  There was no reaction to his remark. Clearly, it was too late in the night for jokes. Worse, the chairman had completely missed his point. Mercifully, there was no harm done.

  ‘Can we be sure such a deception will work?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Koliakov replied. ‘The success of any scheme of disinformation can never be guaranteed. If the choice is between using every weapon at our disposal to maintain our lead over the West’s space technology, or doing nothing, surely we know in which direction we should move?’

  Would the West fall as easily as Koliakov was suggesting for these grandiose schemes? Medvedev asked. On what evidence did Koliakov base his assumption? That was Medvedev – even from where he was sitting he could feel the heat of his scorn. Was he alone, Koliakov wondered, in sensing the hostility behind Medvedev’s question? Time, it seemed, had settled none of their differences.

  ‘Fear of the unknown prompts belief in the unlikeliest of phenomena,’ he replied. What was happening to him? Was this how he would sound when his posting to London ended and he returned to work in Moscow? ‘Given what we have achieved so far, and with a convincing tale to tell, their fear of what we might do in the future will force them to believe what we tell them.’

  The chairman let the debate drag on for another half an hour. Koliakov’s position slowly gathered support. Even Medvedev, seeing that the mind of the group was moving towards Koliakov, was nodding in agreement. By now, even if he had wanted to, the process had gone too far to allow him to deny that what had begun as a frivolous diversion to bring a meeting to an end was being engineered into policy. With any luck, helped by his return to London, someone else – Medvedev, perhaps? – would claim the idea as theirs and his ownership of it would be forgotten. Meanwhile, Comrade Chairman, please let us go home.

  Shortly before three in the morning his proposal was accepted, not least because it was the only proposal with any kind of feasibility that, in their long and sometimes irritable hours of deliberation, the committee had come up with. When it finally came to a vote, it was passed with weary unanimity. The Chief Designer might be dead, but Koliakov’s moment of madness had ensured that Radin’s ghost would now live on, his powers apparently undiminished.

  4

  1

  The letter from Olga Radin, Viktor’s daughter, described how in his last days her father had given strict instructions about what should happen after his death. Any offer of an official funeral – not that he expected any such offer to be made – was to be rejected. It would be hypocritical, he said, to accept any show of public honour that had been denied him when he was alive. He asked instead to be buried without ceremony next to his son Kyrill, whose early death had left him stricken and wounded.

  After the disposal of his body, the dispersal of his possessions. ‘My good companion, Andrei Berlin, is to be the first of my friends to be given the key to my apartment, so he may choose something of mine to remind him of our conversations, which, over the years, have brought me so much pleasure.’ Anything that his friends and family did not want was to be burned.

  Did his friendship with Radin deserve this privilege? Being singled out in this way both embarrassed Berlin and made him fearful. He had known Viktor for many years. But didn’t he have other friends whom he had known better and longer? Weren’t they more deserving of this honour? Then there was his irrational fear that Viktor might be trying to hook him into something. He was quite capable of wanting to control Berlin’s life from beyond the grave, though why he should want to do so Berlin had no idea. He looked again at the statement in Olga’s letter. Viktor was unequivocal in his assertion of their friendship and in his instruction that Berlin should be the first to select a personal memento from among his possessions. That left him no choice. He must do as he had been instructed.

  *

  The lift was, as usual, out of order for ‘summer repairs’, and Berlin had to climb the stairs. Viktor always complained that they were lucky if it operated for six months in any year, and it never worked between June and September. Berlin had once found him on a hot July day, sleeves rolled up, trying to mend the machinery himself, a hopeless task given the injuries to his hands. As he put the key in the door of the apartment, Berlin was aware that this was the very last time he would do so. He felt a moment of regret for a man he had truly admired. Whatever their differences (though they had often argued, they had never quarrelled, even when Viktor overplayed his curiosity about Berlin’s life), he was diminished by the loss of a brave and inventive man.

  The air was stale, the place unlived in. Viktor had been taken to hospital some weeks before, and
had lived a lot longer than anyone expected. Berlin wasn’t surprised. All his life Viktor had stubbornly worked to his own timetable. Why should his dying be any different? No wonder the authorities had found him uncomfortable to deal with.

  He went into the bedroom, pulled the curtains and opened a window. The room was as he remembered it, with a chair, a table, a bookcase, a vase for flowers, empty now, bare, white-painted walls, a wooden floor, a bedside table on which a bottle of pills had been left behind and a single bed that had been stripped, the red blankets folded on the mattress. A pungent smell of disinfectant hung in the air. It was an anonymous, functional room, containing enough to suggest its owner only if you knew who he was, and if you didn’t, you’d never be able to guess.

  The study revealed Radin’s personality. Framed blueprints of his earliest designs were on the walls, and a collection of photographs stood on a bookshelf: a young Viktor Radin with a head of wiry blond hair, beside the base of one of his first rockets; an early picture of the Cosmodrome at Baikonur; Viktor with members of his staff celebrating a successful launch; an older Viktor on different occasions in the great hangar where his rockets were assembled; Viktor standing with a succession of Soviet leaders. How sour he looked in all the official photographs. Berlin remembered his resentment of official visits. Why waste time posing with politicians, he complained, when there was so much to do if they were to keep their lead over the Americans?

  A model of a rocket stood on his desk beside a photograph of his daughter taken when Olga was much younger, but even then she was the image of her father. Pinned to the wall behind his chair was a series of sketches, of futuristic spacecraft and drawings of space stations, speculations on what one day might be. Berlin studied them carefully. Radin had dated each of them – these had been done in the last two months. Even as he was dying, Viktor continued to dream. The drawings expressed his sense of wonder at the world still to be explored, how he always wanted to venture beyond what was known. His life had been dedicated to breaking down conventional barriers. Whatever else he may have been, Viktor’s nature was that of the true explorer. Berlin envied him the certainties of his vision.