Edge of Eternity (68 page)

D
imka was with Khrushchev at the Black Sea holiday resort of Pitsunda, on Monday, October 12, 1964, when Brezhnev called.

Khrushchev was not at his best. He lacked energy and talked about the need for old men to retire and make way for the next generation. Dimka missed the old Khrushchev, the podgy gnome full of mischievous ideas, and wondered when he would come back.

The study was a paneled room with an oriental rug and a bank of telephones on a mahogany desk. The phone that rang was a special high-frequency instrument connecting party and government offices. Dimka picked it up, heard the subterranean rumble of Brezhnev's voice, and handed the phone to Khrushchev.

Dimka heard only Khrushchev's half of the conversation. Whatever Brezhnev was saying, it caused the leader to say: “Why? . . . On what issue? . . . I'm on vacation, what could be so urgent? What do you mean, you all got together? . . . Tomorrow? . . . All right!”

After he hung up, he explained. The Presidium wanted him to return to Moscow to discuss urgent agricultural problems. Brezhnev had been insistent.

Khrushchev sat thoughtfully for a long time. He did not dismiss Dimka. Eventually he said: “They haven't got any urgent agricultural problems. This is what you warned me of six months ago, on my birthday. They're going to throw me out.”

Dimka was shocked. So Natalya had been right.

Dimka had believed Khrushchev's reassurances, and his faith had seemed justified in June, when Khrushchev came back from Scandinavia and the threatened arrest did not take place. At that point, Natalya had
admitted that she no longer knew what was happening. Dimka assumed the plot had come to nothing.

Now it seemed that it had merely been postponed.

Khrushchev had always been a fighter. “What will you do?” Dimka asked him.

“Nothing,” said Khrushchev.

That was even more shocking.

Khrushchev went on: “If Brezhnev thinks he can do better, let him try, the big turd.”

“But what will happen with him in charge? He doesn't have the imagination and energy to drive reforms through the bureaucracy.”

“He doesn't even see much need for change,” the old man said. “Maybe he's right.”

Dimka was aghast.

Back in April he had considered whether to leave Khrushchev and try for a job with another senior Kremlin figure, but he had decided against it. Now that was beginning to look like a mistake.

Khrushchev became practical. “We'll leave tomorrow. Cancel my lunch with the French minister of state.”

Beneath a thundercloud of gloom Dimka set about making the arrangements: getting the French delegation to come earlier, ensuring the plane and Khrushchev's personal pilot would be ready, and altering tomorrow's diary. But he did it all as if in a trance. How could the end come so easily?

No previous Soviet leader had retired. Both Lenin and Stalin had died in office. Would Khrushchev be killed now? What about his aides?

Dimka asked himself how much longer he had to live.

He wondered if they would even let him see little Grigor again.

He pushed the thought to the back of his mind. He could not operate if he were paralyzed by fear.

They took off at one the following afternoon.

The flight to Moscow took two and a half hours, with no change of time zone. Dimka had no idea what awaited them at the end of the trip.

They flew to Vnukovo-2, south of Moscow, the airport for official flights. When Dimka got off the plane behind Khrushchev, a small group of minor officials greeted them, instead of the usual crowd of top
government ministers. At that point, Dimka knew for sure that it was all over.

Two cars were parked on the runway: a ZIL-111 limousine and a five-seater Moskvitch 403. Khrushchev walked to the limousine, and Dimka was ushered to the modest saloon.

Khrushchev realized they were being separated. Before getting into his car, he turned and said: “Dimka.”

Dimka felt close to tears. “Yes, comrade First Secretary?”

“I may not see you again.”

“Surely that cannot be!”

“Something I should tell you.”

“Yes, comrade?”

“Your wife is fucking Pushnoy.”

Dimka stared at him, speechless.

“Better you should know,” Khrushchev said. “Good-bye.” He got into his car and it pulled away.

Dimka sat in the back of the Moskvitch, dazed. He might never see the impish Nikita Khrushchev again. And Nina was sleeping with a stout middle-aged general with a gray mustache. It was all too much to take in.

After a minute, the driver said: “Home or office?”

Dimka was surprised he had a choice. That meant he was not being taken to the basement prison of the Lubyanka; at least not today. He was reprieved.

He considered his options. He could hardly work. There was no point in making appointments and preparing briefings for a leader who was about to fall. “Home,” he said.

When he got there, he found himself surprisingly reluctant to accuse Nina. He was embarrassed, as if he were the wrongdoer.

And he
was
guilty. One night of oral sex with Natalya was not the same as the ongoing affair that Khrushchev's words implied, but it was bad enough.

Dimka said nothing while Nina fed Grigor. Then Dimka bathed him and put him to bed, and Nina made supper. While they ate, he told her that Khrushchev would resign tonight or tomorrow. It would be in the newspapers in a couple of days, he guessed.

Nina was alarmed. “What about your job?”

“I don't know what will happen,” he said anxiously. “Right now no one is worrying about aides. They're probably deciding whether or not to kill Khrushchev. They'll deal with the small fry later.”

“You'll be all right,” she said after a moment's reflection. “Your family is influential.”

Dimka was not so sure.

They cleared away. She noticed he had not eaten much. “Don't you like the stew?”

“I'm on edge,” he said. Then he blurted it out. “Are you Marshal Pushnoy's mistress?”

“Don't be stupid,” she said.

“No, I'm serious,” Dimka said. “Are you?”

She put the plates in the sink with a bang. “What gave you that stupid idea?”

“Comrade Khrushchev told me. I assume he got the information from the KGB.”

“How would they know?”

Dimka noticed that she was answering questions with questions, usually a sign of deceit. “They watch the movements of all senior government figures, looking for nonconformist behavior.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” she said again. She sat down and took out her cigarettes.

“You flirted with Pushnoy at my grandmother's funeral.”

“Flirting is one thing—”

“And then we got a dacha right next to his.”

She put a cigarette in her mouth and struck a match, but it went out. “That did seem a coincidence—”

“You're a cool one, Nina, but your hands are shaking.”

She threw the dead match on the floor. “Well, how do you think I feel?” she said angrily. “I'm in this apartment all day with nobody to talk to but a baby and your mother. I wanted a dacha and you weren't going to get us one!”

Dimka was taken aback. “So you admit that you prostituted yourself?”

“Oh, be realistic, how else does anyone get anything in Moscow?”
She got the cigarette alight and drew on it hard. “You work for a general secretary who is mad. I open my legs for a marshal who is horny. There's not much difference.”

“So why did you open your legs for me?”

She said nothing, but involuntarily looked around the room.

He understood instantly. “For an apartment in Government House?”

She did not deny it.

“I thought you loved me,” he said.

“Oh, I was fond of you, but since when was that enough? Don't be such a baby. This is the real world. If you want something, you pay the price.”

He felt a hypocrite, accusing her, so he confessed. “Well, I might as well tell you that I've been unfaithful too.”

“Ha!” she said. “I didn't think you had the nerve. Who with?”

“I'd rather not say.”

“Some little typist in the Kremlin, of course.”

“It was just one night, and we didn't have intercourse, but I don't feel that makes it much better.”

“Oh, for God's sake, do you think I care? Go ahead—enjoy it!”

Was Nina raving in her anger, or revealing her true feelings? Dimka felt bewildered. He said: “I never foresaw that kind of marriage for us.”

“Take it from me, there's no other kind.”

“Yes, there is,” he said.

“You dream your dreams, I'll dream mine.” She switched on the television.

Dimka sat staring at the screen for a while, not seeing or hearing the program. After a while he went to bed, but he did not sleep. Later, Nina got into bed next to him, but they did not touch.

Next day Nikita Khrushchev left the Kremlin forever.

Dimka continued to go into work every morning. Yevgeny Filipov, walking around in a new blue suit, had been promoted. Obviously he had been part of the plot against Khrushchev, and had earned his reward.

Two days later, on Friday, the newspaper
Pravda
announced Khrushchev's resignation.

Sitting in his office with little to do, Dimka noticed that Western
newspapers for the same day announced that the British prime minister had also been deposed. Upper-class Conservative Sir Alec Douglas-Home had been replaced by Harold Wilson, leader of the Labour Party, in a national election.

To Dimka in a cynical mood there was something askew when a rampantly capitalist country could fire its aristocratic premier and install a social democrat at the will of the people, whereas in the world's leading Communist state such things were plotted in secrecy by a tiny ruling elite and then announced, days later, to an impotent and docile population.

The British did not even ban Communism. Thirty-six Communist candidates had stood for Parliament. None had been elected.

A week ago, Dimka would have balanced these thoughts against the overwhelming superiority of the Communist system, especially as it would be when reformed. But now the hope of reform had withered, and the Soviet Union had been preserved with all its flaws for the foreseeable future. He knew what his sister would say: barriers to change were an integral part of the system, just another of its faults. But he could not bring himself to accept that.

The following day
Pravda
condemned subjectivism and drift, harebrained scheming, bragging and bluster, and several other sins of Khrushchev's. All that was crap, in Dimka's opinion. What was happening was a lurch backward. The Soviet elite were rejecting progress and opting for what they knew best: rigid control of the economy, repression of dissenting voices, avoidance of experiment. It would make them feel comfortable—and keep the Soviet Union trailing behind the West in wealth, power, and global influence.

Dimka was given minor tasks to perform for Brezhnev. Within a few days he was sharing his small office with one of Brezhnev's aides. It was only a matter of time before he was ousted. However, Khrushchev was still in the Lenin Hills residence, so Dimka began to feel that his boss and he might live.

After a week Dimka was reassigned.

Vera Pletner brought him his orders in a sealed envelope, but she looked so sad that Dimka knew the envelope contained bad news before he opened it. He read it immediately. The letter congratulated
him on being appointed assistant secretary of the Kharkov Communist Party.

“Kharkov,” he said. “Fuck it.”

His association with the disgraced leader had clearly outweighed the influence of his distinguished family. This was a serious demotion. There would be a salary increase, but money was not worth much in the Soviet Union. He would be assigned an apartment and a car, but he would be in Ukraine, a long way from the center of power and privilege.

Worst of all, he would be living four hundred fifty miles from Natalya.

Sitting at his desk, he sank into a depression. Khrushchev was finished, Dimka's career had gone backward, the Soviet Union was heading downhill, his marriage to Nina was a train wreck, and he was to be sent away from Natalya, the bright spot in his life. Where had he gone wrong?

There was not much drinking in the Riverside Bar these days, but that evening he met Natalya there for the first time since coming back from Pitsunda. Her boss, Andrei Gromyko, was unaffected by the coup, and remained foreign minister, so she had kept her job.

“Khrushchev gave me a parting gift,” Dimka said to her.

“What?”

“He told me Nina is having an affair with Marshal Pushnoy.”

“Do you believe it?”

“I presume the KGB told Khrushchev.”

“Still, it might be a mistake.”

Dimka shook his head. “She admitted it. That wonderful dacha we got is right next door to Pushnoy's place.”

“Oh, Dimka, I'm sorry.”

“I wonder who watches Grigor while they're in bed.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I can't feel very indignant. I'd be having an affair with you if I had the nerve.”

Natalya looked troubled. “Don't talk like that,” she said. Her face showed different emotions in quick succession: sympathy, sadness, longing, fear, and uncertainty. She pushed back her unruly hair in a nervous gesture.

“Too late now, anyhow,” said Dimka. “I've been posted to Kharkov.”

“What?”

“I heard today. Assistant secretary of the Kharkov Communist Party.”

“But when will I see you?”

“Never, I imagine.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I can't live without you,” she said.

Dimka was astonished. She liked him, he knew that, but she had never spoken this way, even during the single night they had spent together. “What do you mean?” he said idiotically.