‘The world saw us retreat from that moment of confrontation,’ the general says. ‘Only you and I know the truth.’
Then, as if in slow motion, Berlin sees the general draw a revolver from his pocket and aim at his heart. He sees the old general’s finger squeezing the trigger. He is too frightened even to beg for his life. He knows that he has to be sacrificed because Gerasimov believes he has fulfilled his duty, and no one must know the role either man has played. He knows he has lied to Gerasimov, and the price of the lie is that Gerasimov must kill him to keep a secret that doesn’t exist.
He feels a terrible pain in his heart. He is dizzy, short of breath.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says to his neighbour. ‘I must get out of the plane. I am not well.’
IVAN’S SEARCH FOR HIS FATHER
It had seemed so simple in the film. Once Ivan had got into the Kremlin, he had been passed on from hand to hand like a baton in a relay race, until finally he reached the presence of the Great Leader, to be rewarded for his courage with fame as a youthful hero of the Soviet Union.
He was the same age as Ivan. Why couldn’t he do the same?
Reality and illusion, Andrei came to realise, are never the same. In dreams one knocks obstacles aside that in life are as solid as rock. The grim faces on the Kremlin guards – so unlike the grinning men Ivan had met – told him he had no chance of winning their support before he had said a word. Twice he tried to sneak past the guards but on both occasions he was stopped. He was struck on the head and told to get lost, or his treatment next time would be a great deal worse.
How was he to get into the Kremlin? If there were any doors he might force, he had no chance of getting near them. The walls were too high to climb and he was sure there were guards watching and an electronic surveillance system. But if Ivan could get in, then he could do so. It was simply a matter of finding a way.
Two nights later he crept out of the apartment after his mother had gone to bed and ran the mile to the Kremlin. There he watched the guards march up and down, he noted the times they were relieved and the procedure by which the new guard took over. Once or twice official cars entered. It was too dark to see who was inside. Only just before dawn did the routine change. Garbage trucks stopped on the apron before the gate, the guards checked the drivers’ passes and waved the trucks in.
The following night, his heart racing, he ran across the huge forecourt as the rain poured down and jumped into the back of a lorry that had halted briefly at the gates. A short ride and he was in. He jumped off as the lorry slowed and hid in a doorway. So far so good. But now where?
He tried a door. It was locked. Another: locked again. The windows? Secure on the inside. There was no chance of entry there unless he broke a window and forced the catch but the noise would give his presence away. He ran across the road, the rain lashing him as he did so, and tried another building. Again the doors were locked. No lights were on anywhere. There was no sign of any guards.
He found a door that yielded to his push and went into a warm room filled with brooms, buckets and cleaning fluid. It smelled, but at least it was dry. He lay down on the wooden floor. In his excitement and exhaustion he fell asleep.
*
‘He was sleeping in a cupboard,’ the guard said. ‘His clothes were dry so he must have been there some time.’
‘What is your name?’ the officer asked.
‘Andrei Berlin.’ He toyed with calling himself Ivan, but decided that was too great a risk.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I am a representative of the children of the Soviet Union,’ he said, quoting Ivan. ‘I am here to see our Great Leader.’
Was the officer smiling? ‘Why?’
‘He is the Father of the children of the Soviet Union. I have come to thank him for his great leadership, and to tell him of the bright future we will build under his guidance.’
Had Ivan said that? He could no longer remember.
‘Would you like to write a message for him?’
‘I must see him,’ Andrei persisted.
‘That may not be possible.’
‘I am sure if he knows I am here he will want to see me.’ How easily the words came back to him. They had worked for Ivan. He felt braver now.
The two men turned away and talked in whispers. He was unable to catch what they were saying. The officer picked up the telephone and spoke sharply.
‘Someone’s coming for you in a moment or two.’
‘Thank you.’
He was escorted down a long, well-lit corridor, just like those Ivan had travelled along before him. A knock on a door, a summons to enter, and he was shown into a darkened room.
‘Come in. Sit down.’
He couldn’t see the speaker but he responded to the command and did as he was told. He was in a small private cinema. He could hear a faint clicking as the film ran through the machine. As his eyes got used to the dark, he could make out three or four people in the small room. He looked at the screen. Two naked bodies were writhing around, one on top of the other, both were groaning, the woman making short rhythmic cries as the man lunged at her. They seemed to have no heads, only torsos, the camera focusing on the man’s enormous thing which was plunging in and out of the woman. Andrei looked away.
‘No, look at the screen. It is important you look at the screen.’
He felt no desire to do so. He stared straight ahead and covered his eyes with his hands. A man came up behind him and pulled his hands away.
‘Do as you’re told.’
He knew without looking who the man on the screen was. He had never seen the woman before. An old mattress had been dragged out from somewhere onto the floor of the studio and his father was sucking at the woman’s thing – how could he do that? He looked away, horrified. The men around him were laughing.
Suddenly the bodies were gone and the studio was deserted. Night became day. Why was the camera running when there was nothing to record? The door opened. He saw himself entering the room. The next minute he was defacing the statues, modelling the clay. He watched himself, astonished. They knew all along that he had done it. There had been a secret camera and they had captured him on film. He felt sickened, dirty, horrified. He was their accomplice, and they were all around him now, laughing at his horror, knowing he was their captive and there was nothing he could do to escape. He put his hands over his ears, but by now the sound of mocking laughter was inside his head and a voice was saying, ‘Now you’ll never escape from us. Never, never, never.’
17 March 1962
The Soviet news agency TASS today reported the death of the great Soviet realist film director, Grigor Penkovsky. He was seventy-three. The director of more than twenty films, he was best known for his production Ivan’s Search for His Father, which many critics saw as setting the style for the heroic sacrifices of the Soviet military in the war against fascism.
The death of Viktor Radin, space engineer, was reported. He was sixty-two.
Gerry Pountney devoted the whole of his weekly current affairs programme to a televised reconstruction of the Moscow trial of the dissenter, Valery Marchenko, who had been sentenced to five years’ hard labour for anti-Soviet activities. The production was based on transcripts of the trial which had been smuggled to the West. The programme concluded with a moving plea for Marchenko’s release by his father, Professor Geoffrey Stevens of Cambridge University.
The cellist Kate Buchanan, recognised as one of the country’s leading young musicians, who had made her name in a remarkable solo performance, Song of Freedom from an Unknown Land, by an unknown composer, today began a solitary vigil outside the Soviet Embassy in London in support of efforts to release Valery Marchenko.
KGB Colonel Vadim Medvedev was taken from his prison cell at four in the morning and shot for betraying Soviet secrets to the West.
Vassily Vinogradoff left hospital after a fourth operation to restore movement to two fingers of his left hand which were damaged when the car in which he wa
s a passenger was hit by a lorry.
Hugh Hart received a letter from Bobby Martineau saying that he and Eva Balassi were living under an assumed name in a small town south of Stockholm. Eva’s daughter, Dora, was studying to be a doctor at the medical school in Lund.
The First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union secretly approved the first planning document for the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He commented at the time: ‘The rehearsal is over. This time we mean business.’
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© Francis Bennett, 2001
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ISBN 978–0–571–32205–3
Dr Berlin Page 39