Edge of Eternity (126 page)

‘We know how to deal with uprisings,’ said Opotkin.

Tania knew she was only damaging her career by contradicting Opotkin, but she was forty and sick of kowtowing to idiots. ‘Financial pressures made the Polish decision inevitable,’ she said. ‘Poland gets huge subsidies from us, but it needs loans from the West as well. President Carter was very tough when he went to Warsaw. He made it clear that financial aid was linked to what they call human rights. If you want to blame someone for the Pope’s triumph, Jimmy Carter is the culprit.’

Opotkin must have known this was true, but he was not going to admit it. ‘I always said it was a mistake to let Communist countries borrow from Western banks.’

Tania should have left it there, and allowed Opotkin to save face, but she could not restrain herself. ‘Then you face a dilemma, don’t you?’ she said. ‘The alternative to Western finance is to liberalize Polish agriculture so that they can produce enough of their own food.’

‘More reforms!’ Opotkin said angrily. ‘That is always your solution!’

‘The Polish people have always had cheap food: that’s what keeps them quiet. Whenever the government puts up prices, they riot.’

‘We know how to deal with riots,’ said Opotkin, and he walked away.

Daniil looked bemused. ‘Good for you,’ he said to Tania. ‘Though he may make you pay.’

Tania said: ‘I want some more of that champagne.’

At the bar she ran into Vasili. He was alone. Tania realized that lately he had been showing up to events like this without a floozie on his arm, and she wondered why. But she was focussed on herself tonight. ‘I can’t do this much longer,’ she said.

Vasili handed her a glass. ‘Do what?’

‘You know.’

‘I suppose I can guess.’

‘I’m forty. I have to live my own life.’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘I don’t know, that’s the trouble.’

‘I’m forty-eight,’ he said. ‘And I feel something similar.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t chase girls any more. Or women.’

She was in a cynical mood. ‘Don’t chase them – or just don’t catch them?’

‘I detect a note of scepticism.’

‘Perceptive of you.’

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure we need to continue the pretence that we barely know one another.’

‘What makes you say that?’

He leaned closer and lowered his voice, so that she had to strain to hear him over the noise of the party. ‘Everyone knows that Anna Murray is the publisher of Ivan Kuznetsov, yet no one has ever connected her to you.’

‘That’s because we’re ultra-cautious. We never let anyone see us together.’

‘That being the case, there’s no danger in people knowing that you and I are friends.’

She was not sure. ‘Maybe. So what?’

Vasili tried a roguish smile. ‘You once told me you’d go to bed with me if I would give up the rest of my harem.’

‘I don’t believe I ever said that.’

‘Perhaps you implied it.’

‘And anyway, that must have been eighteen years ago.’

‘Is it too late now to accept the offer?’

She stared at him, speechless.

He filled the silence. ‘You’re the only woman who ever really mattered to me. Everyone else was just a conquest. Some I didn’t even like. If I had never slept with her before, that was enough reason for me to seduce her.’

‘Is this supposed to make you more attractive to me?’

‘When I got out of Siberia I tried to resume that life. It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve realized the truth at last: it doesn’t make me happy.’

‘Is that so?’ Tania was getting angrier.

Vasili did not notice. ‘You and I have been friends for a long time. We’re soulmates. We belong together. When we sleep together, it will just be a natural progression.’

‘Oh, I see.’

He was oblivious to her sarcasm. ‘You’re single, I’m single. Why are we single? We should be together. We should be married.’

‘So, to sum up,’ Tania said. ‘You’ve spent your life seducing women you never really cared for. Now you’re pushing fifty and they don’t really attract you – or perhaps you no longer attract them – so, at this point, you’re condescending to offer me marriage.’

‘I may not have put this very well. I’m better at writing things down.’

‘You bet you haven’t put it well. I’m the last resort of a fading Casanova!’

‘Oh, hell, you’re upset with me, aren’t you?’

‘Upset comes nowhere near it.’

‘This is the opposite of what I intended.’

Over his shoulder, she caught the eye of Daniil. On impulse she left Vasili and crossed the room. ‘Daniil,’ she said. ‘I’d like to go abroad again. Is there any chance I could get a foreign posting?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You’re my best writer. I’ll do anything I can, within reason, to keep you happy.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And, coincidentally, I’ve been thinking that we need to strengthen our bureau in one particular foreign country.’

‘Which one?’

‘Poland.’

‘You’d send me to Warsaw?’

‘That’s where it’s all happening.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Poland it is.’

*  *  *

Cam Dewar was fed up with Jimmy Carter. He thought the Carter administration was timid, especially in its dealings with the USSR. Cam worked on the Moscow desk at CIA headquarters in Langley, nine miles from the White House. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was a tough anti-Communist, but Carter was cautious.

However, it was election year, and Cam hoped Ronald Reagan would get in. Reagan was aggressive on foreign policy, and promised to liberate intelligence agencies from Carter’s milk-and-water ethical constraints. He would be more like Nixon, Cam hoped.

Early in 1980, Cam was surprised to be summoned by the deputy head of the Soviet Bloc section, Florence Geary. She was an attractive woman a few years older than Cam: he was thirty-three, she was probably about thirty-eight. He knew her story. She had been hired as a trainee, used as a secretary for years, and given training only when she kicked up a stink. Now she was a highly competent intelligence officer, but she was still disliked by many of the men because of the trouble she had caused.

Today she was wearing a plaid skirt and a green sweater. She looked like a schoolteacher, Cam thought; a sexy schoolteacher, with good breasts.

‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘The House Intelligence Committee thinks our information out of Poland is poor.’

Cameron took a seat. He looked out of the window to avoid staring at her chest. ‘Then they know who to blame,’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘The Director of the CIA, Admiral Turner, and the man who appointed him, President Carter.’

‘Why, exactly?’

‘Because Turner doesn’t believe in Humint,’ he said. Human Intelligence, or Humint, was what you got from spies. Turner preferred Sigint, Signals Intelligence, obtained by monitoring communications.

‘Do
you
believe in Humint?’

She had a nice mouth, he realized; pink lips, even teeth. He forced himself to concentrate on answering the question. ‘It’s inherently unreliable, because all traitors are liars, by definition. If they’re telling us the truth, they must be lying to their own side. But that doesn’t make Humint worthless, especially if it’s assessed against data from other sources.’

‘I’m glad you think so. We need to beef up our Humint. How do you feel about working overseas?’

Cameron’s hopes leaped. ‘Ever since I joined the Agency, six years ago, I’ve been asking for a foreign posting.’

‘Good.’

‘I speak Russian fluently. I’d love to go to Moscow.’

‘Well, life’s a funny thing. You’re going to Warsaw.’

‘No kidding.’

‘I don’t kid.’

‘I don’t speak Polish.’

‘You’ll find your Russian useful. Polish schoolchildren have been learning Russian for thirty-five years. But you should learn some Polish too.’

‘Okay.’

‘That’s all.’

Cameron stood up. ‘Thanks.’ He went to the door. ‘Could we discuss this some more, Florence?’ he said. ‘Maybe over dinner?’

‘No,’ she said firmly. Then, just in case he had not got the message, she added: ‘Definitely not.’

He went out and closed the door. Warsaw! On balance, he was pleased. It was a foreign posting. He felt optimistic. He was disappointed she had turned down his invitation to dinner, but he knew what to do about that.

He picked up his coat and went outside to his car, a silver Mercury Capri. He drove into Washington and threaded through the traffic to the Adams Morgan district. There he parked a block away from a storefront massage parlour called Silken Hands.

The woman at the reception desk said: ‘Hi, Christopher, how are you today?’

‘Fine, thanks. Is Suzy free?’

‘You’re in luck, she is. Room Three.’

‘Great.’ Cam handed over a bill and went farther inside.

He pushed aside a curtain and entered a booth containing a narrow bed. Beside the bed, sitting on a plastic chair, was a heavy-set woman in her twenties reading a magazine. She wore a bikini. ‘Hello, Chris,’ she said, putting down the magazine and standing up. ‘Would you like a hand job, as usual?’

Cam never had full intercourse with prostitutes. ‘Yes, please, Suzy.’ He gave her a bill and started taking off his clothes.

‘It’ll be my pleasure,’ she said, tucking the money away. She helped him undress then said: ‘You just lie down and relax, baby.’

Cam lay on the bed and closed his eyes while Suzy went to work. He pictured Florence Geary in her office. In his mind, she pulled the green sweater over her head and unzipped her plaid skirt. ‘Oh, Cam, I just can’t resist you,’ she said in Cam’s imagination. Wearing only her underwear, she came around her desk and embraced him. ‘Do anything you like to me, Cam,’ she said. ‘But please, do it hard.’

In the massage parlour booth, Cam said aloud: ‘Yeah, baby.’

*  *  *

Tania looked in the mirror. She was holding a small container of blue eye-shadow and a brush. Make-up was more easily available in Warsaw than in Moscow. Tania did not have much experience with eye-shadow, and she had noticed that some women applied it badly. On her dressing table was a magazine open at a photograph of Bianca Jagger. Glancing frequently at the picture, Tania began to colour her eyelids.

The effect was pretty good, she thought.

Stanislaw Pawlak sat on her bed in his uniform, with his boots on a newspaper to keep the covers clean, smoking and watching her. He was tall and handsome and intelligent, and she was crazy about him.

She had met him soon after arriving in Poland, on a tour of army headquarters. He was part of a group called the Gold Fund, able young officers selected by the Defence Minister, General Jaruzelski, for rapid advancement. They were frequently rotated to new assignments, to give them the breadth of experience necessary for the high command to which they were destined.

She had noticed Staz, as he was called, partly because he was so good-looking, and partly because he was obviously taken with her. He spoke Russian fluently. Having talked to her about his own unit, which handled liaison with the Red Army, he had then accompanied her on the rest of the tour, which was otherwise dull.

Next day he had turned up on her doorstep at six in the evening, having got her address from the SB, the Polish secret police. He had taken her to dinner at a hot new restaurant called The Duck. She quickly realized that he was as sceptical about Communism as she was. A week later she slept with him.

She still thought about Vasili, wondering how his writing was going, and whether he missed their monthly meetings. She was viscerally angry with him, though she was not sure why. He had been crass, but men
were
crass, especially the handsome ones. What she was really seething about was the years before his proposal. Somehow she felt that what she had done for him during that long time had been dishonoured. Did he believe she had just been waiting, year after year, until he was ready to be her husband? That thought still infuriated her.

Staz was now spending two or three nights a week at her apartment. They never went to his place: he said it was little better than a barracks. But they were having a great time. And all along, in the back of her mind, she had been wondering if his anti-Communism might one day lead to action.

She turned to face him. ‘How do you like my eyes?’

‘I adore them,’ he said. ‘They have enslaved me. Your eyes are like—’

‘I mean my make-up, idiot.’

‘Are you wearing make-up?’

‘Men are blind. How are you going to defend your country with such poor powers of observation?’

His mood became dark again. ‘We make no provision for defending our own country,’ he said. ‘The Polish Army is totally subservient to the USSR. All our planning is about supporting the Red Army in an invasion of Western Europe.’

Staz often talked like this, complaining about Soviet domination of the Polish military. It was a sign of how much he trusted her. In addition, Tania had found that Poles spoke boldly about the failings of Communist governments. They felt entitled to complain in a way that other Soviet subjects did not. Most people in the Soviet bloc treated Communism as a religion that it was a sin to question. The Poles tolerated Communism as long as it served them, and protested as soon as it fell short of their expectations.

All the same, Tania now switched on her bedside radio. She did not think her apartment was bugged – the SB had their hands full spying on Western journalists, and probably left Soviet ones alone – but caution was an ingrained habit.

‘We are all traitors,’ Staz finished.

Tania frowned. He had never before called himself a traitor. This was serious. She said: ‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘The Soviet Union has a contingency plan to invade Western Europe with a force called the Second Strategic Echelon. Most of the Red Army tanks and personnel carriers headed for West Germany, France, Holland and Belgium will pass through Poland on their way. The United States will use nuclear bombs to try to destroy those forces before they reach the West – that is, while they are still crossing Poland. We estimate that four hundred to six hundred nuclear weapons will be exploded in our country. There will be nothing left but a nuclear wasteland. Poland will have disappeared. If we co-operate in the planning of this event, how can we not be traitors?’