9
The news of the successful launch of a new Soviet satellite broke just before lunch. It was circling the earth every ninety minutes, and its trajectory took it menacingly over Washington.
‘Is it armed?’ Hart asked.
‘We don’t know,’ he was told. Nor did it appear that there was any way in which they could find out what kind of threat it posed. The Russians were saying nothing – they didn’t have to. It was either a brilliant bluff aimed at making the West believe they had made good the First Secretary’s promise, or a very genuine threat – either way, their timing, Hart had to admit, was near-perfect. The Soviets had cleverly succeeded in increasing the tension over Berlin by pushing up the stakes once more.
Hart ran his fingers through his hair. Slowly but inevitably the situation in Berlin was slipping out of control.
IVAN’S SEARCH FOR HIS FATHER
‘You were the one, weren’t you, Andrei?’ His mother was shaking her head as if she desperately wanted him to deny the accusation. ‘You of all people. You did this terrible thing.’
They were in the small apartment in Moscow. Andrei had known his mother was upset because in the last few days she had hardly spoken to him or his brother Anton. He had tried to keep out of her way for as long as he could but now she had got him alone in the kitchen and she was shouting at him. She was too angry to care if she could be heard in the next-door apartment.
‘You defaced his sculptures, didn’t you?’
It was impossible to lie to her. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I did.’
His mother’s scream of incomprehension and distress came from deep within her. ‘How could you betray your own father?’
‘He didn’t love you,’ Andrei said simply.
‘You don’t know that.’
‘He did it with that girl when we were at the Black Sea. I saw them together. They were lying on the floor of the cinema naked and he was sticking his thing into her. I saw them doing it, Mother. I know it happened.’
‘That doesn’t mean he didn’t love me,’ she said in an agonised voice.
Andrei was confused. His mother was not reacting as he had expected her to. He’d imagined she’d be grateful for what he’d done.
‘If he did that to her, how can he love you any more?’
‘Oh, Andrei.’ She put her head in her hands. ‘Why didn’t you come and tell me about it?’
‘I was too ashamed. I didn’t know what to say.’
He had tried to find words that would allow him to explain what he’d seen, why he was angry, why he felt this burning compulsion to hurt his father. But he didn’t know how to tell her what he wanted to say. His emotions outran the words he could command; they were too overwhelming to be described with any kind of coherence. Words no longer governed his thoughts. He had lost the power of self-expression. And what good would telling her do? She was weak with his father, she never stood up to him. She accepted what he did to her without complaint. Each time she did so, the life in her eyes dulled a little more. He had seen it happen too often. This was too serious to be left to his mother to deal with. That’s why he had behaved as he had. This time, he told himself, his father would not get away with it. This time he would protect his mother.
‘You’re old enough to know that what you’d done was bound to be discovered and your father arrested.’ She wiped her face with the corner of her apron but it made no difference to the tears.
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I knew what would happen.’ Why couldn’t she understand that his father deserved punishment for what he’d done?
‘You knew that and still you went ahead. What possessed you, Andrei?’
He’s the guilty one, he wanted to shout. He betrayed you. All I’ve done is to save you from him. He can’t harm you now, he’s well out of your reach. Why can’t you be happy? Why are you angry with me?
‘How could you stand beside me in the courtroom and watch them send your father to prison, knowing the charges against him were false?’
What was the point in saying anything to her? She wouldn’t listen. Say nothing and the storm would pass, it was bound to. It always did with her.
‘You saw him trying to defend himself,’ she continued. ‘You heard him protest again and again that he had done nothing. He swore he’d not been in his studio that day. You saw how the judge wouldn’t listen to him. Yet you stood there, knowing he was innocent, not saying a word, not showing any emotion. How could you be so cold-blooded?’
She understood nothing, which made explaining what had gone through his head an impossible task. All she saw was the husband she had lost and the empty years stretching ahead. Why wasn’t she glad that he had gone? After all his father had done to her, how was it possible that she should still care for him?
He had another reason for keeping silent. In the courtroom, the prosecutor had held up enlarged black-and-white photographs of the defaced sculptures. He had been shocked by what he had seen. The damage was far worse than anything he had done himself. Someone must have gone in after him and completed the task with a thoroughness he had not dreamed of attempting. The discovery froze him, denying him movement or speech. He felt a spasm of fear spiral through his veins. His father had enemies and they had seen the opportunity that he, Andrei Berlin, had unwittingly given them, and they had used it to destroy him. He had remained silent during the trial because he had lost the power of speech. He found himself up against powerful invisible forces, and he had been almost too frightened to breathe.
‘I saw how he treated you,’ he told his mother, defiance creeping back into his voice. ‘He didn’t love you any more.’
‘Wasn’t that my business?’
‘I couldn’t bear it any more.’
She went to the sink and poured herself a glass of water. She drank it slowly. She was calmer now, perhaps in her mind coming to terms with her loss.
‘When I fell in love with him I knew what sort of a man he was. Even if I were the most beautiful woman in the world he would still have had other women. That was his nature. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t change it. I couldn’t even try. But if I loved him, and I did, then I knew that he would always come back to me, and I was right. He always did. That girl you saw wasn’t the first. There’d been others before and there were others afterwards. I knew all about it – sometimes he would tell me what he’d done. If I could accept that, why couldn’t you?’
Andrei looked at his mother in astonished silence.
‘You sent him away, Andrei, and left me with nothing. Can you understand that? You have left me with nothing and ruined my life.’
You’ve still got me, he wanted to say. You’ve still got me. He wanted to go up to her and put his arms round her, to comfort her, to say that things would improve now they were without him. He found he was rooted to the spot, unable to move and unable to speak. He gazed at his mother with horror in his eyes.
15
1
Pountney is standing near Checkpoint Charlie. He wears an overcoat against the cold, and the wind blows his hair over his face. It is nine p.m. West German time. Behind him, powerful searchlights turn day into night. The area is full of heavily armed American soldiers. Pountney is providing a live televised report from what he describes as ‘the front line in this latest and most serious clash between the free world and the Soviet Union’. His coverage of the situation in Berlin is the first part of Julius Bomberg’s current affairs programme. It will be followed by a studio debate about whether the defence of the West’s right of access to Berlin is worth a war.
‘This afternoon I was privileged to watch an American Marine Division practising an assault on a mock-up of the Berlin Wall under the eagle eye of their commanding officer, General Clay. I cannot tell you where this exercise took place, nor how the Americans overcame the natural obstacles that such a Wall poses an attacking force. I can tell you that the efficiency of the Marines was impressive, as was their clear determination to take the offensive in any conflict
. We can deduce from this that the Western Alliance is assembling a formidable fighting force as it prepares to resist Soviet claims on the city of Berlin.’
His voice is momentarily drowned as a troop carrier passes behind him. He waits until the roar of its engines dies down before continuing.
‘The increase in the military presence here is not one-sided. Over there’ – he points towards the darkness beyond Checkpoint Charlie – ‘we know because in daylight we can see them, the Soviets are assembling a huge force. They too are engaged in exercises behind the lines. The tension here is electric. You can see it in the strained faces of civilian and soldier alike as West and East face other in the final preparations for war. Every hour the danger of conflict mounts.’
2
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
Berlin was sitting in a chair gazing out of the window at the moonlit night. Marion had heard him get out of bed. She knew him well enough now to realise that he was in some kind of distress. At first she was reticent about questioning him. Did this strange man whom she was slowly getting to know want her to get involved with his life? Or was he better off alone? As she stared at his hunched, withdrawn figure, she felt his silent appeal for help.
‘What is it?’ she asked again.
‘I am in trouble,’ he said.
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘It would take a long while to explain.’
‘It’s a long time till dawn,’ Marion said.
‘Then we shall see if it is long enough.’
*
Had he intended to tell her? He knew he had woken her when he got out of bed. Was his clumsiness deliberate? He had no way of knowing. But when she spoke to him, he felt a wave of relief at the prospect of confessing the burden he was carrying. He had reached the limit of what he could support alone. The weight of his responsibility since his arrival had become intolerable. If she would listen, he would talk.
When later he tried to recall what he told her, he could not remember. How honest was he? This was a confession to lighten a burden, not to cleanse him morally. He told her about the politics in his country, the recklessness of the First Secretary’s unscripted pronouncements, how his belligerence towards the West sickened him. He spoke of how the state could not accept the death of his friend Viktor Radin, and how Marshal Gerasimov had given him a message which no one in the British Intelligence Service would believe was true, how every word he said was met with suspicion. He described his desperation at his failure, how he could not sleep because he was haunted by the consequences if the situation in Germany should suddenly explode into war.
*
She said nothing while he talked. She did not question him when he had finished, though her mind was teeming with questions. She accepted his story unequivocally because she could not imagine him not telling her the truth. Throughout the hour or so it took him to describe what had happened, she willed him to leave nothing out, to open his heart.
When he had finished she said: ‘I think I know someone who might help.’
When it was light, she telephoned Michael Scott.
*
‘I believe your story,’ Michael Scott said. ‘I am merely a servant, a voice representing others. I have no power to convince, or to promote a case. All I can do is try to persuade others to talk to you and listen to what you have to say. You understand that?’
*
They walked through St John’s and sat on a bench near the Bridge of Sighs. In the distance a young man and woman were playing tennis. The river was deserted, the willows trailing in the slow-moving water as they looked upstream towards Magdalene Bridge. Marion held his hand and felt his tension.
‘Three more days,’ Berlin said suddenly. ‘Then I return home.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Three days, one more lecture. Then what?’
They sat in silence. What happens now? She wanted to know. What becomes of us? Is this one of those brief affairs that lights up your life like a flaring match, then dies and is forgotten? Surely it was more than that.
‘I came here with a dream of what I imagined freedom would be. I was wrong, of course, my ideas were quite wrong. I have had to learn to be unafraid of the sound of my own voice, even of the sound of my own heart. I have had to learn to trust my instincts. That is very new for me.’
She drew his hand to her lips and kissed it.
‘In Moscow, my friend Viktor Radin used to push me to write articles and books. For years I did so. Then one day my inspiration dried up. I was no longer able to write. I had run out of ideas. I know now that it was because I no longer had any beliefs. I doubted everything, especially myself, my own judgement. That is a terrible abyss into which to fall, not any longer to know yourself. I became very frightened. My mind locked itself away and I froze. My life has been suspended for years.’
‘Is it suspended now?’ Marion asked.
He looked at her and shook his head. ‘You have given me back my belief in myself. You have shown me that I am not as worthless as I believed myself to be.’
‘When you leave,’ she said suddenly, ‘my heart will break.’ For a moment she felt tears pricking her eyes and she fought to hold them back. ‘I have never loved anyone before. For me, love has always been a dismal failure. Then one hot afternoon at Cambridge Station, before we had even spoken to each other, I discovered I had given you my heart.’
*
‘Good news,’ Michael Scott said. ‘At least I think it is. They want to interview you again. My friends would like you to meet a man named Carswell this afternoon. Is that all right?’
*
At four o’clock Koliakov telephoned Merton House. ‘I would like to speak to Mr Hart, please,’ he said.
3
Hart was furious at the instruction that Nigel Carswell be brought in to interview the two Russians. ‘Carswell retired years ago,’ he objected. ‘We’re perfectly capable of dealing with this ourselves. We don’t need to dig out relics of the past.’
Carswell was thought to have the necessary background – whatever that meant – and sanction for his recall had been given at the highest level. The argument, Hart saw, was lost before it began. He remembered Carswell. His appearance hadn’t lived up to his reputation as a feared inquisitor. He was a large, florid man, painstaking in his method, but there was no spark, only a relentless steadiness as he built up a picture with the care of a miniaturist.
People talked to him, that was his gift. He looked so helpless sometimes, so lost, that you wanted to help him out. It was all a clever disguise, of course, but it got results. He’d come out to Budapest to interview Bobby Martineau the summer before the Revolution. Something had happened between them – Hart didn’t know what – because in some unexplained way, after the visit, Martineau was a diminished man.
He might make mincemeat of Berlin, but Koliakov was of a different mettle altogether: he was a hardened professional playing a mysterious solitary game. Getting anything out of him other than what he wanted you to know was going to demand more than a light dusting off of old skills.
‘Nigel, how are you?’ He could hear music in the background. It sounded like Dixieland jazz.
‘Struggling with the diminishing capacity of old age, but otherwise not bad. What brings you back into my life after so long, Hugh?’
‘We have a problem, and we think you might be the man to help us.’
‘I retired five years ago. What possible interest can I hold for you now?’
‘We have someone we’d like you to talk to.’
‘A Russian?’
‘Two Russians. One’s a KGB colonel. The other’s a historian.’
‘They want to talk?’
‘The historian already has. It’s the other one that interests us.’
‘When would you want me?’
‘As soon as you can get here. I’m sending a car now.’
‘It’ll mean missing a game of golf.’
‘The course will still be there t
omorrow, Nigel.’
‘I can see you aren’t a golfer, Hugh.’
*
‘How about a sandwich?’
It was well past one when Hart completed his briefing. Carswell had listened carefully, taking a few notes and asking the occasional question. The room was filled with the sweet, sickly smell of his pipe tobacco.
Carswell shook his head. ‘A cup of tea would do me fine. No milk, no sugar. Doctor’s orders,’ he added ruefully. He pushed his spectacles onto his forehead and leaned back in his chair to stretch. ‘I’d be teeing off about now if you hadn’t called me.’
‘What do you make of it?’ Hart asked.
‘Radin’s the hinge, isn’t he?’ Carswell seemed to be talking to himself. ‘If we can convince ourselves that he’s dead, then we can be reasonably certain that recent Soviet actions – the testing of the bomb, the launch of the satellite, the build-up of their military forces in East Berlin – are all intended to deceive the West into believing the Soviets are more powerful than they actually are. The aim is to get the West to concede to Soviet demands before a shot gets fired. On that basis, we hold our nerve and push the Soviets to the very edge.
‘On the other hand, if we believe the official Soviet line that Radin is alive, then our reading has to be very different. The Soviets have a huge military advantage over the West on the ground and in space which, from what we know, it would be foolish, not to say catastrophic, to try to resist. On that interpretation, Berlin is not worth a war. We should be conceding as little as we can get away with, but we should certainly agree to let them have the city of Berlin.’
Dr Berlin Page 37