Making Enemies (12 page)

‘Then what are you?’ I asked, trying to wrench him back to the point.

‘What indeed, my friend? What indeed? That is what I ask myself all days of my life.’

The argument was circular. He did not want to return to Russia because he was afraid he would be killed, though he refused to say why. He did not want to stay in England because he could not face a life of exile, and anyway he had nothing to offer the British. Then the fatalism surfaced again.

‘It is pointless, this pretending. There is no escape. They will find me, they will kill me. That much is certain. It was bad mistake to go to Cambridge. I will telephone Russian embassy now. I will give myself up.’

I tried vainly to argue with him. He wouldn’t listen. No need to telephone, he said. His people were probably waiting outside now in the square. All he had to do was open the door. What did it matter? His life was over. I should leave him to his fate.

I lost my temper.

‘For God’s sake, Leo. What’s keeping you? You’re free to walk out of here whenever you like. No one’s stopping you. So why not do it? Why not give your people the pleasure of taking you back to Moscow and putting a bullet through your head?’

He looked at me, hurt and disappointed.

‘That is first time you shout at me, Monty.’

I felt guilty at once. I was angry at his indecision and impatient of his justifiable reasons for it.

‘You’re driving me to it, Leo. I can’t interpret your wishes. I don’t know what you want me to do. If you don’t want me to help you stay here, say so and I’ll go. All you’ve got to do is make up your mind.’

We looked at each other in silence. Then he held my arm.

‘I am sorry, my friend,’ he said. ‘I am frightened. That is it. I am frightened of what they do to me when they find me. Forgive me.’

‘Keep your head down here and they won’t find you. I’ll see to that,’ I said rashly.

‘I wish I could believe that. They have eyes everywhere,’ Krasov said.

I wanted to hit him. ‘For God’s sake, Leo.’

‘You are good man, Monty. But you will never understand what is like to be Russian.’

I left him to his own devices soon after that, relieved to get away. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be Russian and I didn’t want to. I was angry with him, and angry with myself for not trusting him.

I replayed the conversation in my head, sensing there was more to this whole business than I had allowed for. I had made an offer to help Krasov stay in the West and he had refused without actually refusing. He had never said no but I had got the message. Did that mean he had changed his mind? Or had he never had any intention of defecting, and Corless was right after all? If so, what was the ‘escape’ to Cambridge about? What was he doing there? I thought of Peter’s warning about Stevens. Was Krasov’s visit connected with that? Did the change of mind that led to his return to London mean he had completed some task for his Soviet masters in Cambridge? What was he doing hiding in Lowndes Square now if he wasn’t on the run from his own people? As I failed to find satisfactory answers, I saw myself being manipulated and the man I had treated as a friend slowly turning into … what? A stranger? Or an enemy?

I was out of my depth. The moment I got home I telephoned the duty officer in Horseferry Road who reluctantly gave me a number for Corless. I tried it but there was no answer. I rang Corless every thirty minutes but there was no one home.

Two hours later I went back to Lowndes Square as we had agreed. The flat was empty. Krasov had vanished. Some decision had been taken, but I had no idea what.

The telephone rings twice and stops.

She is startled, even though she is expecting it. She looks at her watch. Twelve-eighteen. Why must it always be so late? Wearily she drags herself out of her chair, puts on her coat, scarf, fur hat and boots and quietly leaves the flat, locking the door behind her. Down in the elevator. Across the dimly lit lobby. (What business is it of the babushka’s what she does at this time of night? She can think what she likes.) Out into the dark street, the cold air hitting her like a blow.

She and Andropov no longer meet in his office. There are no more telephone calls for her at the Institute, no official car arrives to collect her during working hours. Each night she waits for the eloquent, commanding silence after the second ring before she sets out into the freezing dark. Three blocks away, parked outside the Novostny Bank building, its exhaust congealing in the night air, the black limousine waits for her.

Andropov sits inside, smoking. She opens the door, gets in and is driven off into the night. Not a word is spoken between them, no greeting, no acknowledgement of her presence. Andropov ignores her until they are alone. Their meeting places vary in location but little in setting; anonymous rooms in unlived-in apartments scattered all over Moscow. She wonders what else they are used for.

It is like this most nights now.

*

Her question at the progress meeting has touched a secret nerve among the senior scientific staff at the Institute, and set off a response beyond her imagining. She finds anonymous notes tucked into her overall pocket, slipped inside copies of minutes of meetings left in her in-tray; one is hidden behind the flowerpot she keeps on her window sill. The
text of each is similar: admiration at her courage in asking what others have never dared to ask. She is flattered but not beguiled.

Discretely her correspondents identify themselves. Secret smiles in the canteen, doors held open for her and a touch on the arm as she passes. The ladies’ lavatory becomes an unexpected centre of revelation, glances, smiles, nods – a Masonic language of recognition. As she adjusts the clips in her hair, faces appear next to hers in the mirror and knowing looks are exchanged.

‘They are behaving as I expected,’ Andropov tells her. ‘Encourage them.’

One night Leon Gromsky (he is an expert on explosive lenses), catches up with her as they leave the Institute. He whispers that he has been unable to sleep since her brave statement at the progress meeting. His conscience has been reawakened. He now questions their work at the Institute.

‘We cannot create such a mighty weapon of destruction without establishing political limits to its use,’ he says. He is not alone in this opinion, he tells her. There are others who share his doubts and are willing to join them.

‘Join what?’ she asks, terrified at this unexpected level of involvement. She has never joined anything in her life. She hates joining.

He doesn’t hear her question in his enthusiasm to enlist her support in a new cause. Gromsky is an enthusiast.

She tries to steer him away from the idea of any meeting of ‘those of like mind.’ She is ashamed of the deception she is practising, but how does she know Gromsky hasn’t been set up by the secret police to trap her? (Later, Andropov puts her mind at rest on this point.) Gromsky brushes aside her objections. Her courage has aroused in him a sense of responsibility for what they are doing.

‘Given the nature of our work, we cannot remain passive. We must act.’

She concedes to his request because Andropov has told her she must. Late one evening four of her colleagues from the Institute arrive separately at her apartment.

She listens to them talk, using the presence of her mother and son in the next room as an excuse for them to keep their voices down, privately terrified that her neighbours will report to the secret police the unusual noise in her flat and that suddenly the door will burst open and they will all be arrested. Twice during the evening she goes into the kitchen by herself, turns out the light and looks
through the curtain at the street below. Once she opens her front door and peers into the corridor. She sees and hears nothing. Her absences go unnoticed by the others, who are gripped by the fever of their new-found freedom to speak their minds.

Buoyed up by their success, they agree to meet again. She does not remember what they said at their first meeting, only the excitement of their discussion. She herself has said little.

The next time four have become nine. There is hardly room for them in the flat. Her eyes and throat burn from the smoke of their cigarettes. She does not have enough glasses. Three of them have to drink vodka from cups.

‘If the risks of meeting like this are to be justified,’ says Leon Gromsky, ‘and if we are to consolidate the position Ruth Marchenko has so courageously set up for us, then these gatherings must have some purpose. I propose a statement of aims.’

Andropov has already prepared her for this.

‘Establish the common ground between you. It is important, at this stage, that first you talk, get used to each other. Then organize yourselves, make plans. There will be time for action later:’

She encourages them to talk. ‘First we must organize ourselves,’ she says. ‘There will be time for action later.’

They are impressed by her wisdom.

Pavel Lykowski, whose youthful face conceals the most brilliant mind in the Institute, smiles at the possibility of future action. She wishes he would drink less at these meetings but she does not know how to broach the subject without sounding like his mother. She knows Pavel dislikes his mother.

Led by Alexei Tomasov, a researcher in her department, they agree the need for an agenda. What topics should they discuss? Prompted by her meeting with Andropov the night before (or was it earlier that morning?), she proposes they begin by discussing the implications of the scale of destruction caused by the explosions in Japan.

The importance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she tells them, is that they provide the only available evidence of the impact of nuclear explosions on concentrated areas of social and economic activity. (Why can’t she says ‘towns’ or ‘cities’? What’s happening to her?) They have never before discussed among themselves the possible consequences on the
civilian
population of a nuclear explosion. If the information and analysis of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are correct (and they have no reasons to doubt the official reports, copies of
which are in the Institute’s library), then they are involved in a process that could lead to the deaths of many thousands of innocent people. A nuclear bomb is by its very nature indiscriminate.

Two meetings later the possibility of casualties from a single bomb has grown from a few thousand to millions in a war in which the exchange of nuclear weapons lasts only a few hours. Civilians will die, they agree, in increasing numbers because nuclear destruction cannot discriminate between military and civilian targets.

What can they do? They agree that, on the basis of the projections they are making, using the empirical evidence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they cannot remain indifferent in the face of the appalling truth that they now openly acknowledge to each other.

‘Organize,’ Gromsky says, echoing Andropov’s words. ‘Now is the time to organize.’ (Organization is the Soviet solution to any circumstance.)

‘And change the world,’ Elizabeth Markarova whispers knowingly to Ruth. Is this cynicism? The voice of weary experience? Or a new-found belief?

There are murmurs of assent. No one knows what this means but it sounds right. It is what people in their position
ought
to be saying to each other.

‘Create a movement, subvert and oppose, above all oppose,’ someone says (who? Gromsky? Probably).

‘Stop the murder of innocent people,’ Lykowski shouts in support at this point. ‘Change for ever the nuclear policy of the Soviet Union.’

He is hastily subdued by Tomasov and Gromsky, who are aware of Ruth’s concerns about arousing the neighbours. Others take up the idea. Warn the world of the dangers it faces. Make a better, safer world. Banish nuclear weapons. Banish war. Nuclear energy as the servant of society, not its destroyer. They are carried away by their own enthusiasm and the vodka that they have brought, concealed in the folds of their overcoats, as they paint the future of their dreams.

Say no. Say no. We must teach the world how to say no.

Ruth is alarmed. They continue to talk and drink. In their heads they are fighting a war and winning. In reality, she sees this event running away with itself. What began as a lone voice of protest only a few days ago has grown with alarming speed into a rebellion that is straining to free itself of her (or of any) control. The conventional reserve which dictated the initial actions of herself and her colleagues has been discarded
in favour of a reckless openness within the group that has formed around her. Sooner or later a careless word or an undisciplined act will betray them. She fears the brutal response of the secret police to any talk of opposition. She tells Andropov of her anxieties.

‘Hold them back,’ he says urgently. ‘You must exercise control over them. That is your essential task now. You must succeed.’

This is the moment of greatest risk in his plan, when he is dependent solely on her to achieve what he wants. She feels inadequate and desperate. There is no one she can turn to. She tries her best to bring them back to reality.

‘Courage,’ her companions say, defying her efforts. They are beyond the reach of argument by now. ‘We will win.’

‘We will be betrayed,’ she says. She reminds them of the powers of the secret police whose spies surround them.

They laugh at her fears. The secret police are buffoons, they reply. We will outwit them. Their task is of major importance, Gromsky tells her (he is drunk). They alone can save the world from destruction. That has become their mission. In their own country, they will be listened to because their skills as nuclear scientists cannot be replaced.

‘Where are the other nuclear scientists in the Soviet Union?’ Tomasov asks. ‘Without us they can do nothing’. They will tell the state what to do and the state will have to obey. What a bargaining position. ‘We are inviolate.’

Ruth knows, as they do, that other institutes are working on the bomb too. They are not inviolate. Far from it. She cannot hold them back, she tells Andropov. She bursts into tears of strain and despair.

‘It is time to form a committee,’ Andropov instructs. ‘Give them a world they can understand. They are the creatures of committees. They will respond.’

Elizabeth Markarova is her ally. She whispers to Ruth one day in the ladies’ lavatory, ‘We must form a committee.’ They agree that discipline must be imposed or the advantage they have gained will be lost; their energies will be wasted through disorganization, which is no doubt what the political authorities expect. With Markarova’s help, during a difficult meeting, a committee is formed. Votes are taken. Roles are assigned. Energies that threatened to get out of hand are now channelled. There is even an ‘agitation secretary’, a concession to the possibility of future action. The vote goes against Pavel Lykowski for this role. He is inconsolable. Slowly some kind of order is restored. Ruth’s anxieties diminish.

Further meetings are planned, other venues chosen. No longer will they risk always meeting at her apartment. A strategy paper will be presented, Gromsky says – he is now political secretary. The drafting has begun but like so much Soviet activity, it is already behind schedule. When completed, it will be discussed and agreed and will form the basis of the demands that they will put before the Institute’s directorate.

There is heated discussion at this point and the committee threatens to divide into two camps, those who believe they must plan each stage with care, and the hotheads (Ruth is surprised that Tomasov supports Lykowski in this), who are all for action now. What action is unclear, but anything to keep the cause alive. Prudent counsels prevail.

Ruth is elected Comrade Chairman, an honour she tries to decline. Elizabeth Markarova deserves that honour, she argues. They will have none of it: her candidacy is put to the vote and she wins. The event now has a momentum of its own. She sees a new excitement in the faces of her companions, she senses the pitch of the emotions in their hearts, she feels the extraordinary energies that have been released.

She remains untouched by everything she says and hears. She performs her role for Andropov faultlessly. She feels hollow, empty and vulnerable. She is giving the performance of her life because she knows her life depends upon it.

*

He is taking her on a journey but where to she doesn’t know and he does not tell her.

He arrives at their midnight meetings without papers (never even a briefcase) and he hands her none. He allows her to take no written notes. He insists they both commit everything to memory.

‘There must be no evidence,’ he says, ‘to prove that these conversations have ever taken place.’

At each meeting he reveals the next stage in his complex design, the shape of which she cannot comprehend. It is like unfolding a map an inch at a time. Each day she knows the distance she has travelled, but she is denied a sense of direction or destination. He tells her what she needs to know, not what she wants to know. She has tried questioning him but he refuses to answer her. Now she has given that up. She accepts.

The routine has become predictable. He asks her to describe the
latest activity of her ‘group’, as he calls it. Where did they meet? Who was there? Who said what? What decisions have they taken? This irritates her because she is certain he already knows what has gone on (she cannot bring herself to believe that he hasn’t got an informant on the committee). Perhaps he asks for her account to test her commitment to him. She hates it but there is nothing she can do.

Then he gives her a prepared position for the next meeting and they rehearse the arguments. She dislikes the sublimation of her own identity that this act demands but she has travelled too far with him now to reject his script. Without his guidance she is disorientated and vulnerable. She does what he asks and she performs well, as he knows she will.