Dr Berlin

by Francis Bennett

  *

  Berlin walked back to the car alone, his mind in turmoil. Why had Gerasimov told him this? What purpose did the old soldier’s confession serve? He had no absolution to offer, no comfort of any kind. He was powerless to help. Better to leave the old man to the isolation of his own despair. Best of all to leave this field of death as soon as he could, and return to the secure routines of the Department of History, his students and his lectures.

  He remembered the confusion he had felt standing alone in Viktor’s study all those weeks ago; how he had wrestled with the sense that he had been brought there for a purpose but had no idea what that purpose was; how he had finally puzzled out a concealed logic that had led him to discover the report on Alexandrof’s ill-fated flight. He tried to repeat the process now. There was a clear line – wasn’t there? – linking Viktor, the two secret reports he had given him to read, his meeting with Orenko and now this strange walk with Gerasimov in the garden of the dead. The connection was anger, the deep-rooted fury of good and loyal men – Radin, Kuzmin, Alexandrof, Orenko, Gerasimov – who had made sacrifices for their beliefs and had then found their actions betrayed by lesser men.

  Disaster follows misgovernment, was the warning in Kuzmin’s report, and his warning had been proved right. Viktor’s account of Alexandrof’s death, Orenko’s explanation of the vulnerability of the military were further compelling evidence of a progressive internal collapse. Now Gerasimov had confirmed that the First Secretary wilfully rejected the truth if it did not serve his purpose. The machine of state would run down if abused. As a historian he knew that to be true. Continued abuse would bring the country to its knees, and lies would be no defence against its decline. Rather, they would be proof of its inevitability.

  ‘Historical analysis looks unblinkingly at what has happened and tells us the truth,’ he remembered Radin saying to him once, a cigarette stuck between his lips. ‘What historian has dared to do that in this country since 1917? You have kept silent when you should have spoken out. You have become the servants of the state, not its critics. You have rejected your true role. When the analysts are corrupt, then there can be no solutions because there are no problems.’

  It was the harshest criticism Viktor ever made of him, and it had hurt him deeply. He had never repeated it, but the words had stuck with Berlin, they had lodged deep in his memory. Now they returned to haunt him.

  He felt the first drop of rain on his cheek.

  *

  The rain fell heavily on their journey back to Moscow. The countryside refracted through the rain-drenched car windows had the dreamy appearance of a watercolour. Once more Gerasimov sat beside him, smoking and saying nothing. Berlin felt uneasy, apprehensive. This strange morning had not yet divulged all its secrets.

  ‘If we are to prevent ourselves from being drawn into a war we cannot hope to win,’ Gerasimov said suddenly, ‘we have only one possible course of action. We must destroy our greatest strategic advantage – the West’s vast overestimation of our military capability. We must convince them that we cannot fight an offensive war, that our threat to Berlin cannot be sustained. In particular, we must tell them that an orbiting nuclear satellite in space doesn’t exist.’

  ‘How can we do that?’

  ‘We must send them a message.’

  ‘Will it be believed?’

  Gerasimov drew heavily on his cigarette before answering. ‘We will provide our messenger with supporting evidence to establish that we are speaking the truth.’

  ‘What kind of evidence?’

  ‘Proof that the mind behind our space triumphs, Viktor Radin, is dead.’

  ‘Won’t they see that as one more lie, one more trick?’

  ‘That depends on the skills of the messenger.’ Gerasimov paused to light another cigarette. ‘We want a man who can dissemble, who is used to concealment, yet who carries conviction. Someone who can talk convincingly about Viktor Radin so that he is believed. Someone who knew him well.’ He hesitated again, this time fixing Berlin with his dark eyes. ‘I understand you are going to England in a few days’ time.’

  Berlin’s mind was in torment. The marshal’s purpose was clear. The trap had been set weeks ago by Viktor, and he had allowed himself to be led blindly forward. Now he was caught. What a fool he’d been.

  ‘I knew Radin,’ Berlin said desperately. ‘I can’t deny that. I don’t know what he may have told you about me, but I can assure you I am not the man you want. I couldn’t do what you ask.’

  ‘What if there is no one else?’

  ‘It would make no difference. I cannot do this. I am the wrong man.’

  ‘You underestimate your abilities. I think you have the qualities to do what we want very well.’

  ‘Please,’ he begged. ‘I am not a brave man.’

  ‘I am not looking for bravery. I want a man who can keep a secret, who is familiar with the arts of concealment. No one must ever know about this plan.’

  ‘I wouldn’t pass your test,’ Berlin said quietly. ‘So please, tell me no more.’

  ‘Viktor was your friend over many years. He knew you well. He said you were the man for such a task, if ever I felt the moment had arrived. I trust his judgement.’

  ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘Enough to convince me he was right.’ The old general paused, wiping the condensation off the inside of the window with his handkerchief. ‘He said that you knew enough about him to be able to convince the British that he was dead.’

  Berlin shook his head repeatedly. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I am not the man you want.’ It was a last desperate appeal against his sentence. ‘I cannot do what you ask.’

  ‘You are not the man I would choose if any choice existed,’ Gerasimov said. ‘But we have run out of time.’

  ‘There must be many better qualified than me.’

  ‘Don’t you think I haven’t searched high and low for them?’ Gerasimov turned his anger on Berlin. ‘This late in the day, you are all I have.’

  PART THREE

  Autumn 1961

  12

  1

  How would she recognise Berlin? He had sent no photographs – she hadn’t asked him to – and only now, waiting at the station, did she realise that she had no idea what he looked like – except he would look Russian, whatever that meant. How would he recognise her? She should have worn a different dress, something cooler, certainly – her face felt hot and she knew it wasn’t only the heat of the afternoon – or with more colour – red, perhaps, or was that too obvious? Then she would have stood out among the crowd gathered around the exit. Now they’d probably miss each other, and his arrival would be a disaster. How thoughtless she’d been.

  *

  He knew her at once, even though the arrivals hall was filled with people waiting to meet passengers off the London train. She was tall, slim, dark-haired, and much younger than he had expected. Her face was flushed – was it the heat of the day? – and she studied each arriving traveller with the care he imagined she would bring to the examination of an historical document. The moment she caught sight of him, she took off her glasses, as if to conceal her short sight. She came towards him smiling, her hand outstretched in greeting.

  ‘Dr Berlin? Hello, I’m Marion Blackwell.’

  He looked as if he had just woken up. His hair was all over the place, he wore no tie and he was carrying his crumpled jacket and a battered canvas holdall. One of his shirt sleeves had unrolled and was flapping around his wrist. He was grinning at her sheepishly, as if he had no idea what to do next. She felt an immediate desire to take charge of him.

  ‘Dr Blackwell.’ He took her hand and bowed over it. ‘I am Andrei Berlin.’

  ‘It’s so good to see you here.’

  ‘What can I say?’ He was smiling at her. ‘Thank you for inviting me. You must forgive my appearance. I fell asleep on the train. I almost missed the station.’

  She guided him towards the taxi rank. ‘Male guests aren’t allowed to stay in our c
ollege – it’s women only,’ she said, concealing her embarrassment with a laugh. How absurd he must think this rule was. ‘I’ve prevailed upon a male colleague in our faculty, and he’s agreed to put you up in one of his college guest rooms. I hope that’s all right.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They drove into the city in silence. Berlin stared out of the window with an intensity she found daunting, as if he was trying to draw everything he saw deep down into his memory where it would be preserved for ever.

  ‘You must be tired,’ she said when he’d been shown to his room. ‘Perhaps you’d like to rest.’

  ‘If you tied me to a chair this minute, like Houdini I would escape within seconds,’ he said, grinning again. ‘Now I am here, I cannot sit still for a moment. I must walk round this wonderful city. I must breathe its air and touch its ancient stones. Will you accompany me, Dr Blackwell? Perhaps you have other appointments?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ she said. ‘Where first?’

  ‘King’s Parade,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Then I will look at the books in the window of Bowes & Bowes before we walk down Trinity Street, past the Whim, Matthews’ Café, then through the Great Court of Trinity College and on to the Backs.’

  Marion started to laugh.

  ‘Have I said anything wrong?’ Berlin asked nervously.

  ‘I understood you’d never been to Cambridge before,’ she replied.

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘But you know your way around.’

  ‘In my imagination,’ he said. ‘Always in my imagination. Now you see why this moment is important. It is when my dreams meet reality.’

  ‘I hope you won’t be disappointed,’ she said.

  ‘That is already impossible,’ he replied. ‘Quite impossible.’

  *

  It was late. Where the evening had gone she had no idea. It seemed only minutes before that she had been waiting anxiously at the station. Now she felt she had known this mysterious Russian all her life. Why mysterious? He said so little, he listened with such intensity, his eyes never releasing you from their gaze, and when he did speak, he chose his words with great care. Was it more than unfamiliarity with the language that prompted his caution? Was he afraid that a misplaced phrase might carry some kind of risk about whose origin she could only speculate? His hesitation made her want to touch his hand all the time to reassure him that now he was in Cambridge, he was safe, no harm could come to him. He had nothing to worry about.

  Fearing that he might be tired of her company, she had offered to bring him back to college in time for dinner in hall. He had declined, insisting that they have supper together – unless she had some other appointment. She had asked, jokingly, if in his dreams of Cambridge he had a favourite restaurant.

  ‘The Koh-i-Noor,’ he had replied. ‘I have never eaten Indian food.’

  Over dinner she told him about her childhood in a quiet suburb of Northampton where she’d been brought up by her widowed mother – her father had been killed during the battle of El Alamein – the grammar school she had attended (why was the English school system so difficult to explain to someone who hadn’t been born to it?) and her overwhelming sense of arrival on her first day at Cambridge, of one journey ending and another beginning, and why since childhood she had wanted to be a historian.

  ‘Curiosity, really,’ she explained. ‘I’ve always wanted to understand why things happen the way they do.’

  ‘The truth and meaning of events.’ Berlin smiled. ‘Have you come to any conclusions?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she replied laughing. ‘But I’m working on it.’

  Throughout the evening his dark eyes interrogated her, and she felt a compelling need to answer questions that he had not asked. For some reason she was justifying herself to him – it was absurd, she knew, but she was unable to stop herself. He listened intently, prompting her to continue if she faltered, occasionally smiling at her jokes – why were they always so self-deprecating? She had questions of her own: what was it like living in Soviet Russia? What was going to happen over the crisis in Germany? Why was the Soviet leadership always so aggressive towards the West? Was there going to be a war in Europe? Surely some kind of reason would prevail? But for reasons she didn’t understand, she found herself inhibited from asking him anything about himself.

  They walked back through the deserted streets. She was ashamed of monopolising the conversation. How unfriendly she must seem. What could she have been thinking of? But she was powerless to do anything different. There was something in those dark, hypnotic eyes that made you want to confess your innermost thoughts. She had never met anyone who made her feel like that. She was defenceless before his gaze, and she found herself surrendering willingly.

  ‘Two days ago,’ he said suddenly as they walked past the Round Church, ‘I stood on the Lenin Hills that overlook Moscow and tried to convince myself that in forty-eight hours I would be standing in this street and that everything would be as I imagined. What I find hard to believe is that I am not dreaming, that I am actually here.’

  ‘Have we met your expectations?’ she asked. ‘Or have we failed the test?’

  He took some time to reply. For a moment she wondered if she or the university had disappointed him.

  ‘I have no words. It is much more than I am able to describe. So much more.’

  *

  He lay awake listening to the college clock chime every quarter-hour. He felt exhilarated, his mind buzzing with conflicting sensations. He found it impossible to believe that he was no longer in Moscow, that he had actually arrived in Cambridge, that in the last few hours he had walked the streets of his imagined city. He had breathed the pure air of intellectual inquiry that over the centuries had nourished so many great minds; he had walked in the Great Court of Trinity – whose feet had trodden those very same cobbles before him? He had looked up at the windows of the Wren Library, he had wondered at the majestic spires of King’s College Chapel, he had watched punts gliding on the Cam, and he had done all this with a companion who was not the bearded monster of his imagination but a slim, shy, studious English woman in her thirties, who seemed wholly unaware of her attraction.

  He was relieved that she talked over dinner. He found himself without words, his mind suddenly locked in a frenzy of fear and embarrassment. He did not want her to sense his uncertainty. He needed time to come to terms with the simple but extraordinary notion that this new world he was discovering had no dark mirror. What it reflected was itself, nothing more, nothing less. He could walk its streets and he would not be followed. He could speak its language and not be overheard. He could say what he believed and not fear arrest. As they sat in the Koh-i-Noor and strolled home afterwards, he reminded himself repeatedly that nothing he did or said could put himself, or anyone else – certainly not his companion – at any kind of risk. He was free – and the realisation terrified him.

  He had kissed her hand when she had left him because he did not dare to kiss her on the lips. He was as surprised as she was by his gesture. He had bent low over her white skin and smelled coriander and other spices on her fingers, and when he had looked up into her eyes he had known all too well what he had seen there.

  ‘The sensuality of innocence,’ he said aloud, and laughed. Was that what attracted him? Whatever the body or the mind may try to deny, it is in the eyes of those untutored in the dark arts of self-concealment that the truth can so easily be found. Nothing was hidden in Cambridge, she was telling him with every word she uttered. Not even the truth in our hearts can be concealed. In the country I come from, his silence was telling her, nothing can be revealed. Would she understand? Would she realise that he was a stranger to the habits of self-expression, that it was a language he had never learned, a cultural norm he had never experienced? If he were to use the words and expressions that he so desperately wanted to, he would have to learn a new language. And he had only a few days in which to do so.

  The possibility of speaking without restrai
nt, the opportunity to cast off the disciplines of a lifetime was confusing him, and his confusion was preventing him from sleeping. If such turmoil was the gift of freedom, he had no idea how to make use of it, nor did he know whether it was wise to do so, given the short length of his stay. Would it be possible, on his return to Moscow, to unlearn a recently acquired skill like telling the truth? Tonight Marion’s kindness in talking about herself had given him some breathing space in which to bring order into the chaos of his troubled mind. But what about tomorrow? Or the day after? He could not stay silent all the time. Perhaps during these few days in Cambridge he would begin to appreciate how the complexities of freedom worked. Perhaps he would begin to like it; perhaps not.

  Outside, the clock on the small tower over the hall chimed the hour. He counted the soft hammer blows five times.

  *

  The gesture had surprised her. The man was a communist, what Michael Scott would call, in his unguarded moments, ‘a bloody Bolshevik’, not someone you would associate with old-fashioned courtesy. For an instant she had felt his lips, soft and warm, on the ends of her fingers. She had pulled her hand back because it was so unexpected, and now she was furious with herself. What must he have thought? How could she have been so ill-mannered? She knew it was not the kiss that had alarmed her. As she withdrew her hand he had stared deep into her eyes. She had not expected him to look at her in that way, as if he was shining a light into her mind and forcing her to reveal thoughts so secret she was barely aware of them herself. She was afraid of what he might have found there.

  What was happening to her? Where was the self-control on which she prided herself, and which had never let her down before? How could she have let such a moment happen? Why had she been so unprepared? Her mind was bursting with memories of their conversation, of sentences she wished she’d been quick-witted enough to come out with. She was painfully aware that some of what she’d said had been embarrassingly banal. If Berlin had noticed – and surely he must have – then what did he think of her? Her face flushed at the recollection. She’d talked too much tonight, no question. She’d made a fool of herself.