Edge of Eternity (105 page)

In the end the economic arguments prevailed with the majority around the table. The aides recommended to the Politburo that Du
bek be questioned by other Warsaw Pact members at their next meeting in Dresden, East Germany. Dimka was exultant: the threat of a hardline purge had been warded off, at least for the moment. The thrilling Czech experiment in reformed Communism could continue.

Outside the room, Dimka said to Natalya: ‘My divorce has come through. I am no longer married to Nina, and that’s official.’

Her response was muted. ‘Good,’ she said, but she looked anxious.

Dimka had been living apart from Nina and little Grigor for a year. He had his own small place, where he and Natalya snatched a few hours of togetherness once or twice a week. It was unsatisfactory to both of them. ‘I want to marry you,’ he said.

‘I want the same.’

‘Will you talk to Nik?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Soon.’

‘What are you scared of?’

‘I’m not frightened for myself,’ she said. ‘I don’t care what he does to me.’ Dimka winced, remembering her split lip. ‘It’s you I’m worried about,’ she went on. ‘Remember the tape recorder man.’

Dimka remembered. The black market trader who had cheated Natalya had been so badly beaten that he ended up in hospital. Natalya’s implication was that the same might happen to Dimka if she asked Nik for a divorce.

Dimka did not believe this. ‘I’m not some lowlife criminal, I’m right-hand man to the premier. Nik can’t touch me.’ He was 99 per cent sure of this.

‘I don’t know,’ Natalya said unhappily. ‘Nik has high-up contacts too.’

Dimka spoke more quietly. ‘Do you still have sex with him?’

‘Not often. He has other girls.’

‘Do you enjoy it?’

‘No!’

‘Does he?’

‘Not much.’

‘Then what’s the problem?’

‘His pride. He’ll be angry to think I could prefer another man.’

‘I’m not afraid of his anger.’

‘I am. But I will talk to him. I promise.’

‘Thank you.’ Dimka lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you, too.’

Dimka returned to his office and summarized the aides’ meeting for his boss, Alexei Kosygin.

‘I don’t believe the KGB, either,’ Kosygin said. ‘Andropov wants to suppress Dub
ek’s reforms, and he’s fabricating evidence to support that move.’ Yuri Andropov was the new head of the KGB, and a fanatical hardliner. Kosygin went on: ‘But I need reliable intelligence from Czechoslovakia. If the KGB is untrustworthy, who can I turn to?’

‘Send my sister there,’ said Dimka. ‘She’s a reporter for
TASS.
In the Cuban missile crisis she sent Khrushchev superb intelligence from Havana via the Red Army telegraph. She can do the same for you from Prague.’

‘Good idea,’ said Kosygin. ‘Organize it, will you?’

*  *  *

Dimka did not see Natalya the next day, but the day after that she phoned just as he was leaving the office at seven.

‘Did you talk to Nik?’ he asked her.

‘Not yet.’ Before Dimka could express his disappointment she went on: ‘But something else happened. Filipov came to see him.’

‘Filipov?’ Dimka was astonished. ‘What does a Defence Ministry official want with your husband?’

‘Mischief. I think he told Nik about you and me.’

‘Why would he do that? I know we’re always clashing in meetings, but still . . .’

‘There’s something I haven’t told you. Filipov made a pass at me.’

‘The stupid prick. When?’

‘Two months ago, at the Riverside Bar. You were away with Kosygin.’

‘Incredible. He thought you might go to bed with him just because I was out of town?’

‘Something like that. It was embarrassing. I told him I wouldn’t sleep with him if he were the last man in Moscow. I probably should have been gentler.’

‘You think he talked to Nik for revenge?’

‘I’m sure of it.’

‘What did Nik say to you?’

‘Nothing. That’s what worries me. I wish he’d bust my lip again.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘I’m afraid for you.’

‘I’ll be fine, don’t worry.’

‘Be careful.’

‘I will.’

‘Don’t walk home, drive.’

‘I always do.’

They said goodbye and hung up. Dimka put on his heavy coat and fur hat and left the building. His Moskvitch 408 was in the Kremlin car park, so he was safe there. He drove home, wondering whether Nik would have the nerve to ram his car, but nothing happened.

He reached his building and parked on the street a block away. This was the moment of greatest vulnerability. He had to walk from the car door to the building door under the street lights. If they were going to beat him up they might do it here.

There was no one in sight, but they might be hiding.

Nik himself would not be the one to carry out the attack, Dimka presumed. He would send some of his thugs. Dimka wondered how many. Should he fight back? Against two he might have a chance: he was no pussy. If there were three or more he might as well lie down and take it.

He got out of the car and locked it.

He walked along the pavement. Would they burst out of the back of that parked van? Come around the corner of the next building? Be lurking in this doorway?

He reached his building and went inside. Perhaps they would be in the lobby.

He had to wait a long time for the elevator.

When it arrived and the doors closed he wondered if they would be in his apartment.

He unlocked his front door. The place was silent and still. He looked into the bedroom, the living room, the kitchen and the bathroom.

The place was empty.

He bolted the door.

*  *  *

For two weeks Dimka walked around fearing he could be attacked at any minute. Eventually, he decided it was not going to happen. Perhaps Nik did not care that his wife was having an affair; or perhaps he was too wise to make an enemy of someone who worked in the Kremlin. Either way, Dimka began to feel safer.

He still wondered at the spite of Yevgeny Filipov. How could the man even have been surprised that Natalya rejected him? He was dull and conservative and homely-looking and badly dressed: what did he imagine he had to tempt an attractive woman who already had a lover as well as a husband? But, clearly, Filipov’s feelings had been deeply wounded. However, his revenge seemed not to have worked.

The main thing on Dimka’s mind was the Czech reform movement that was being called the Prague Spring. It had caused the most bitter Kremlin split since the Cuban missile crisis. Dimka’s boss, Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin, was the leader of the optimists, who hoped the Czechs could find a way out of the bog of inefficiency and waste that was the typical Communist economy. Muting their enthusiasm for tactical reasons, they proposed that Dub
ek be watched carefully, but that confrontation should be avoided, if possible. However, conservatives such as Filipov’s boss, Defence Minister Andrei Grechko, and KGB chief Andropov were unnerved by Prague. They feared that radical ideas would undermine their authority, infect other countries, and subvert the Warsaw Pact military alliance. They wanted to send in the tanks, depose Dub
ek, and install a rigid Communist regime slavishly loyal to Moscow.

The real boss, Leonid Brezhnev, was sitting on the fence, as he so often did, waiting for a consensus to emerge.

Despite being some of the most powerful people in the world, the top men in the Kremlin were scared of stepping out of line. Marxism-Leninism answered all questions, so the eventual decision would be infallibly correct. Anyone who had argued for a different outcome was therefore revealed to be culpably out of touch with orthodox thinking. Dimka sometimes wondered if it was this bad in the Vatican.

Because no one wanted to be the first to express an opinion on the record, they had to get their aides to thrash things out informally ahead of any Politburo meeting.

‘It’s not just Dub
ek’s revisionist ideas about freedom of the press,’ said Yevgeny Filipov to Dimka one afternoon in the broad corridor outside the Presidium Room. ‘He’s a Slovak who wants to give more rights to the oppressed minority he comes from. Imagine if
that
idea starts to get around places such as the Ukraine and Belarus.’

As always, Filipov looked ten years out of date. Nowadays almost everyone was wearing their hair longer, but he still had an army crop. Dimka tried to forget for a moment that he was a malicious troublemaking bastard. ‘These dangers are remote,’ Dimka argued. ‘There’s no immediate threat to the Soviet Union – certainly nothing to justify ham-fisted military intervention.’

‘Dub
ek has undermined the KGB. He’s expelled several agents from Prague and authorized an investigation into the death of the old Foreign Minister, Jan Masaryk.’