Corridors of Power (36 page)

‘You are prepared to think of war?’ said Arthur Mounteney.

‘Of course I am prepared to think of war. So is any realistic man,’ Brodzinski replied. ‘If there has to be a war, then we must win it. We can keep enough people alive. We shall soon pick-up. Human beings are very strong.’

‘And that is what you hope for?’ said Francis, in a dead, cold tone.

‘That is what will happen.’

‘You can tolerate the thought of three hundred million deaths?’

‘I can tolerate anything which will happen.’

Brodzinski went on, his eyes lit up, once more pure: ‘You will not see, there are worse things which might happen.’

‘I have to assume that you are responsible for your actions,’ said Francis. ‘If that is so, I had better tell you straight away I cannot sit in the same room with you.’

Faces, closed to expression, looked down the table at Brodzinski. There was a silence. He sat squarely in his chair and said: ‘I believe I am here by invitation, Mr Chairman.’

‘It would save trouble if you left,’ said Arthur Mounteney.

With exaggerated reasonableness, Brodzinski said: ‘But I can produce my invitation, Mr Chairman.’

‘In that case, I shall adjourn the meeting. And call another to which you are not invited.’

Later, that seemed to Rubin a masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon propriety.

Brodzinski stood up, massive, stiff.

‘Mr Chairman,’ he said, ‘I am sorry that my colleagues have seen fit to treat me in this fashion. But I expected it.’

His dignity was absolute. With the same dignity, he went, soft-footed, strong-muscled, out of the room.

A few hours later, in David Rubin’s bedroom, he and I were having a snack before we went on to Roger’s house. The room was modest, in a cheap, genteel Kensington hotel: the snack was modest too. Rubin had the entrée to Heads of State, but, despite the
Tailor and Cutter
elegance of his clothes, he lived more simply than an Embassy clerk. He was a poor man, he had never earned money, apart from his academic salary and his prizes.

He sat without complaint in the cold bedroom, nibbling a stale sandwich, sipping at a weak and un-iced whisky. He talked about his son at Harvard, and his mother who would scarcely have known what Harvard was, who had not spoken English in the home, and who had been ambitious for David – just as rapaciously as my mother for me. He spoke a little sadly. Everything had come off for him, spectacular achievement, happy marriage, the love of children. He was one of the men most venerated in the world. Yet there were times when he seemed to look back to his childhood, shrug his shoulders and think that he had expected more.

We had each been talking without reserve, like passengers at sea. He sat there, in elegant suit, silk shirt, hand-made shoes, shook his head, and looked at me with sad, kind eyes. It occurred to me that he had not given me a clue, not so much as a hint, why he was so insistent on talking to Roger that night.

When we arrived at Lord North Street, it was about half-past nine and Roger and Caro were still sitting in the dining-room. It was the place where Roger, nearly three years before, had interrogated Rubin. As on that evening, Rubin was ceremonious – bowing over Caro’s hand: ‘Lady Caroline’ – greeting Roger. As on that evening, Roger pushed the decanter round.

At Caro’s right hand, Rubin was willing to drink his glass of port, but not to open a conversation. Caro looked down the table at Roger, who was sitting silent and impatient with strain. She had her own kind of stoicism. She was prepared to chat with Rubin, in a loud brassy fashion, about his flight next day, about whether he hated flying as much as she did. She was terrified every time, she said, with the exaggerated protestations of cowardice that her brother Sammikins went in for.

All four of us were waiting for the point to come. At last Roger could wait no longer.

‘Well?’ he said roughly, straight at Rubin.

‘Minister?’ said David Rubin, as though surprised.

‘I thought you had something to tell me.’

‘Do you have time?’ said Rubin mysteriously.

Roger nodded. To everyone’s astonishment, Rubin began a long, dense and complex account of the theory of games as applied to nuclear strategy. Talk of over-simplification – this was over-complication gone mad. It was not long before Roger stopped him.

‘Whatever you’ve come for,’ he said, ‘it isn’t this.’

Rubin looked at him with an expression harsh, affectionately distressed. Suddenly his whole manner changed from the incomprehensibly devious to a brutal-sounding snap.

‘I came to tell you to get out while there’s time. If not, you’ll cut your own throat.’

‘Get out of what?’

‘Out of your present planning, or design, or whatever you like to call it. You don’t stand a chance.’

‘You think so, do you?’ said Roger.

‘Why else should I come?’

Then Rubin’s tone became once more quiet and reasonable: ‘Wait a minute. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to let it go. It’s because we respect you–’

‘We want to hear,’ said Caro. This wasn’t social, it wasn’t to make him comfortable. It was said with absolute attention.

Roger and Rubin sat blank-faced. In the room, each sound was clear. To an extent they liked each other: but that didn’t matter. Between them there was something quite different from liking or disliking, or even trust. It was the sense of actuality, the sense of events.

‘First of all,’ said Rubin, ‘let me make my own position clear. Everything you’ve planned to do is sensible. This is right. Anyone who knows the facts of life, knows that this is right. For the foreseeable future, there can only be two nuclear powers. One is my country, and the other is the Soviet Union. Your country cannot play in that league. As far as the economic and military side go, the sooner you get out the better. This is correct.’

‘You told us so,’ said Roger, ‘in this very room, years ago.’

‘What is more,’ said Rubin, ‘we will want you out. The way our thinking is shaping up, we will decide that these weapons ought to be concentrated in as few hands as possible. Meaning, us and the Soviets. This is right also. Before long, I’m ready to predict that you’ll be under some pressure from us–’

‘You’re saying it in different terms, and for slightly different reasons.’ Roger spoke without either intransigeance or suggestibility. ‘But you’re saying what I’ve been saying, and what I’ve been trying to do.’

‘And what you can’t do.’ Rubin’s voice hardened as he added: ‘And what you must get out of, here and now.’

There was a pause. Then, as though he were being simple, Roger asked: ‘Why?’

Rubin shrugged his shoulders, spread his hands.

‘I’m a scientist. You’re a politician. And you ask me
that
?’

‘I should still like to hear the answer.’

‘Do I have to tell you that a course of action can be right – and not worth a second’s thought? It’s not of importance that it’s right. What is of importance, is how it’s done, who it’s done by, and most of all, when it’s done.’

‘As you say,’ said Roger, ‘one’s not unfamiliar with those principles. Now I wish you’d tell me what you know.’

Rubin stared down at the table.

‘I mustn’t say that I know,’ he said at last. ‘But I suspect. A foreigner sometimes picks up indications that you wouldn’t give such weight to. I believe you’re swimming against the tide. Your colleagues will not admit it. But if you swim too far, they wouldn’t be able to stay loyal to you, would they?’

Rubin went on: ‘They’re not fools, if you don’t mind me saying so. They’ve been watching you having to struggle for every inch you’ve made. Everything’s turned out ten per cent, twenty per cent, sometimes fifty per cent, more difficult than you figured on. You know that better than any of us. Lewis knows.’ For an instant, under the hooded lids, I caught a glance, glinting with
Weltschmerz
and fellow-feeling. ‘Everything’s turned out too difficult. It’s my view of almost any human concern, that if it turns out impossibly difficult, if you’ve tried it every way, and it still won’t go, then the time has come to call it a day. This is surely true of intellectual problems. The more I’ve seen of your type of problem the more I believe it’s true of them. Your colleagues are good at keeping a stiff upper lip. But they’re used to dealing with the real world. I suspect that they’ll be compelled to think the same.’

‘Do you
know
?’ Roger spoke quietly, and with all his force.

Rubin raised his head, then let his eyes fall again. ‘I’ve made my own position clear to everyone I know in Washington. They’ll come round to thinking that you and I were right. But they haven’t got there yet. They don’t know what to think about your weapons. But I have to tell you something. They are worried about your motives for wanting to give them up.’

‘Do you think we ought to care about that?’ cried Caro, with a flash of arrogance.

‘I think you’ll be unwise not to, Lady Caroline,’ said Rubin. ‘I don’t claim they’ve analysed the situation. But as of this moment, they’re not all that interested in what you do – as long as you don’t seem to be sliding out of the Cold War. This is the one thing that they’re scared of. This is the climate. This is the climate in which some of them are anxious about you now.’

‘How much have they listened to Brodzinski?’ I said angrily.

‘He hasn’t helped,’ said Rubin. ‘He’s done you some harm. But it’s deeper than that.’

‘Yes,’ said Roger, ‘it’s deeper than that.’

‘I’m glad you know.’ Rubin turned to Caro. ‘I told you, Lady Caroline, you’ll be unwise not to care about this. Some of our people are in a state of tension about it. At various levels. Including high levels. Some of that tension is liable to be washed across to this side. Maybe some of it has been washed across already.’

‘That wouldn’t be so astounding,’ said Roger.

‘Of course, it’s frustrating to disengage oneself,’ said Rubin. ‘But the facts are very strong. So far as I’ve observed anything on this side, you’ve only to play it cool and put it aside for five, ten years. Then you’ll be right at the top here, unless my information is all wrong. And you’ll be swimming with the tide, not against it. As for Washington, they’ll be begging you to do exactly what you can’t do now.’ Rubin gave a sharp, ironic smile. ‘And you’re the one person in this country who will be able to do it. You’re a valuable man. Not only to Britain, but to all of us. This is why I’m giving you this trouble. We can’t afford to waste you. And I am as certain as I am of anything that if you didn’t take one step backwards now, you would be wasted.’

For an instant, none of us spoke. Roger looked down the table at his wife and said: ‘You hear what he says?’

‘You have heard too, haven’t you?’ said Caro.

All the social clangour had left her voice. It held nothing but devotion. She was speaking as they did when they were alone. They had said very little, but enough. Roger knew what she thought, and what answer she wanted him to give. Their marriage might be breaking on his side, but it still had its shorthand. The message was simple. She was, though Rubin did not know it, his supporter.

Right through Roger’s struggle, she had been utterly loyal. One expected nothing else: and yet, one knew what she was concealing. In her heart she couldn’t give up her chauvinistic pride. Just as she had flared out against David Rubin, when she reminded them that the English power had sunk, so she couldn’t accept that the great days were over. Her instincts were as simple as my mother’s would have been.

But that wasn’t the main force which drove her to Rubin’s side, made her cheeks glow and eyes shine as she answered Roger. For Rubin had just offered Roger a prospect of the future: and that was her prospect too. It would have seemed to her absurd, finicky, hypocritical and above all genteel, not to want the top place for Roger. If he didn’t want that, she would have said, then he ought not to be in politics at all. If she didn’t want that for him, she ought not to be his wife.

‘I agree with almost everything you’ve said.’ Roger spoke directly to Rubin. ‘You’ve made it very clear. I’m extremely grateful to you.’ His tone was subdued, reasonable, a little submissive. At that moment he sounded like one willing to be converted, or perhaps already converted, arguing for the sake of self-respect. ‘You know,’ he said, with an abstracted smile, ‘I’ve thought out some of these things for myself. You’ll give me credit for that?’

Rubin smiled.

‘Of course,’ Roger went on, ‘if you want to get anywhere in politics, you’ve got to be good at pushing on open doors. If you can’t resist pushing on closed ones, then you ought to have chosen another job. That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it? Of course you’re right. I shouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t wasted some energy on closed doors in your time. Much more than I ever have. But then, of course, you’re not a politician.’

It might have been a jibe, I couldn’t tell. If so, it was a gentle one. Roger was speaking without strain or edge. He said: ‘My one trouble is, I can’t help thinking the present situation is slightly different. I think, if we don’t bring this one off now, we never shall. Or we shan’t until it’s too late. Isn’t that the only difference between us? Perhaps you can tell me that it isn’t so.’

‘The honest answer is,’ said Rubin slowly, ‘that I don’t know.’

‘You believe everything will drift along, with no one able to stop anywhere?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Most of us understand the situation. Can none of us affect it?’

‘Does any one person matter very much? Can any one person do very much?’

‘You’re a wise man,’ said Roger.

There was a long pause. Roger spoke with complete relaxation, so that it was surprising to hear how strong his voice sounded. He said: ‘You’re saying, we’re all caught. All the world. The position has crystallized on both sides. There’s nothing for any of us to do. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? All we can do is stick to our position, and be humble enough to accept that there’s practically nothing we can do.’

‘In detail there may be a little,’ said Rubin.