Edge of Eternity (7 page)

The police escort turned back at the city line, but the other vehicles did not.

The men in the cars were shrieking so loud they could be heard over the sound of all the engines.

Beyond the suburbs, on a long lonely stretch of Highway 202, two cars overtook the bus, then slowed down, forcing the driver to brake. He tried to pass, but they swerved from side to side, blocking his way.

Cora Jones was white-faced and shaking, and she clutched her plastic handbag like a life preserver. George said: “I'm sorry we got you into this, Mrs. Jones.”

“So am I,” she replied.

The cars ahead pulled aside at last and the bus passed them. But the ordeal was not ended: the convoy was still behind. Then George heard a familiar popping sound. When the bus began to weave all over the road he realized it was a burst tire. The driver slowed to a halt near a roadside grocery store. George read the name: Forsyth & Son.

The driver jumped out. George heard him say: “
Two
flats?” Then he went into the store, presumably to phone for help.

George was as tense as a bowstring. One flat tire was just a puncture; two was an ambush.

Sure enough, the cars in the convoy were stopping and a dozen white men in their Sunday suits were piling out, yelling curses and waving their weapons, savages on the warpath. George's stomach cramped again as he saw them running toward the bus, ugly faces twisted with hatred, and he knew why his mother's eyes had filled with tears when she talked about Southern whites.

At the head of the pack was an adolescent boy who raised a crowbar and gleefully smashed a window.

The next man tried to enter the bus. One of the two burly white passengers stood at the top of the steps and drew a revolver, confirming Maria's theory that they were state troopers in plain clothes. The intruder backed off and the trooper locked the door.

George feared that might be a mistake. What if the Riders needed to get out in a hurry?

The men outside began to rock the bus, as if trying to turn it over, all the while yelling: “Kill the niggers! Kill the niggers!” Women passengers were screaming. Maria clung to George in a way that might have pleased him if he had not been in fear of his life.

Outside, he saw two uniformed patrolmen arrive, and his hopes lifted; but, to his fury, they did nothing to restrain the mob. He looked at the two plainclothesmen on the bus: they looked foolish and scared. Obviously the uniformed men did not know about their undercover colleagues. The Alabama Highway Patrol was evidently disorganized as well as racist.

George cast around desperately for something he could do to protect Maria and himself. Get out of the bus and run? Lie down on the floor?
Grab a gun from a state trooper and shoot some white men? Every possibility seemed even worse than doing nothing.

He stared in fury at the two highway patrolmen outside, watching as if nothing wrong was happening. They were cops, for Christ's sake! What did they think they were doing? If they would not enforce the law, what right did they have to wear that uniform?

Then he saw Joseph Hugo. There was no possibility of mistake: George knew well those bulging blue eyes. Hugo approached a patrolman and spoke to him, then the two of them laughed.

He was a snitch.

If I get out of here alive, George thought, that creep is going to be sorry.

The men outside shouted at the Riders to get off. George heard: “Come out here and get what's coming to you, nigger lovers!” That made him think he was safer on the bus.

But not for long.

One of the mob had returned to his car and opened the trunk, and now the man came running toward the bus with something burning in his hands. He hurled a blazing bundle through a smashed window. Seconds later the bundle exploded in gray smoke. But the weapon was not just a smoke bomb. It set fire to the upholstery, and in moments thick black fumes began to choke the passengers. A woman screamed: “Is there any air up front?”

From outside, George heard: “Burn the niggers! Fry them!”

Everyone tried to get out of the door. The aisle was jammed with gasping people. Some were pressing forward, but there seemed to be a blockage. George yelled: “Get off the bus! Everybody get off!”

From the front, someone shouted back: “The door won't open!”

George recalled that the state trooper with the gun had locked the door to keep the mob out. “We'll have to jump out the windows!” he yelled. “Come on!”

He stood on a seat and kicked most of the remaining glass out of the window. Then he pulled off his suit coat and draped it over the sill, to provide some protection from the jagged shards still remaining stuck in the window frame.

Maria was coughing helplessly. George said: “I'll go first and catch
you as you jump.” Grasping the back of the seat for balance, he stood on the sill, bent double, and jumped. He heard his shirt tear on a snag, but felt no pain, and concluded that he had escaped injury. He landed on the roadside grass. The mob had backed off from the burning bus in fear. George turned and held his arms up to Maria. “Climb through, like I did!” he shouted.

Her pumps were flimsy compared with his toe-capped oxfords, and he was glad he had sacrificed his jacket when he saw her small feet on the sill. She was shorter than he, but her womanly figure made her wider. He winced when her hip brushed a shard of glass as she squeezed through, but it did not tear the fabric of her dress, and a moment later she fell into his arms.

He held her easily. She was not heavy, and he was in good shape. He set her on her feet, but she dropped to her knees, gasping for air.

He glanced around. The thugs were still keeping their distance. He looked inside the bus. Cora Jones was standing in the aisle, coughing, turning round and round, too shocked and bewildered to save herself. “Cora, come here!” he yelled. She heard her name and looked at him. “Come through the window, like we did!” he shouted. “I'll help you!” She seemed to understand. With difficulty, she stood on the seat, still clutching her handbag. She hesitated, looking at the jagged bits of glass all around the window frame; but she had on a thick coat, and she seemed to decide a cut was a better risk than choking to death. She put one foot on the sill. George reached through the window, grabbed her arm, and pulled. She tore her coat but did no harm to herself, and he lifted her down. She staggered away, calling for water.

“We have to get away from the bus!” he yelled to Maria. “The fuel tank might explode.” But Maria was so racked by coughing that she seemed helpless to move. He put one arm around her back and the other behind her knees and picked her up. He carried her toward the grocery store and set her down when he thought they were at a safe distance.

He looked back and saw that the bus was now emptying rapidly. The door had at last been opened, and people were stumbling through as well as jumping from the windows.

The flames grew. As the last passengers got out, the inside of the vehicle became a furnace. George heard a man shout something about
the fuel tank, and the mob took up the cry, shouting: “She's gonna blow! She's gonna blow!” Everyone scattered in fear, getting farther away. Then there was a deep thump and a sudden fierce gout of flame, and the vehicle rocked with the explosion.

George was pretty sure no one was left inside, and he thought: At least no one is dead—yet.

The detonation seemed to have sated the mob's hunger for violence. They stood around watching the bus burn.

A small crowd of what appeared to be local people had gathered outside the grocery store, many cheering the mob; but now a young girl came out of the building with a pail of water and some plastic cups. She gave a drink to Mrs. Jones, then came to Maria, who gratefully downed a cup of water and asked for another.

A young white man approached with a look of concern. He had a face like a rodent, forehead and chin angling back from a sharp nose and buck teeth, red-brown hair slicked back with pomade. “How are you doing, darling?” he said to Maria. But he was concealing something, and as Maria started to reply he raised a crowbar high in the air and brought it down, aiming at the top of her head. George flung out an arm to protect her, and the bar came down hard on his left forearm. The pain was agonizing, and he roared. The man lifted the crowbar again. Despite his arm George lunged forward, leading with his right shoulder, and barged into the man so hard that he went flying.

George turned back to Maria and saw three more of the mob running at him, evidently bent on revenging their ratlike friend. George had been premature in thinking the segregationists had had their fill of violence.

He was used to combat. He had been on the Harvard wrestling team as an undergraduate, and had coached the team while getting his law degree. But this was not going to be a fair fight with rules. And he had only one working arm.

On the other hand, he had gone to grade school in a Washington slum, and he knew about fighting dirty.

They were coming at him three abreast, so he moved sideways. This not only took them away from Maria, but turned them so that they were now advancing in single file.

The first man swung an iron chain at him wildly.

George danced back, and the chain missed him. The momentum of the swing threw the man off balance. As he staggered, George kicked his legs from under him, and he crashed to the ground. He lost hold of his chain.

The second man stumbled over the first. George stepped forward, turned his back, and hit the man in the face with his right elbow, hoping to dislocate his jaw. The man gave a strangled scream and fell down, dropping his tire iron.

The third man stopped, suddenly scared. George stepped toward him and punched him in the face with all his might. George's fist caught the man full on the nose. Bones crunched and blood spurted, and the man screamed in agony. It was the most satisfying blow George had ever struck in his life. To hell with Gandhi, he thought.

Two shots rang out. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked toward the noise. One of the uniformed state troopers was holding a revolver high in the air. “Okay, boys, you've had your fun,” he said. “Let's move out.”

George was furious. Fun? The cop had been a witness to attempted murder, and he called it fun? George was beginning to see that a police uniform did not mean much in Alabama.

The mob returned to their cars. George noticed angrily that none of the four police officers troubled to write down any license plates. Nor did they take any names, though they probably knew everyone anyway.

Joseph Hugo had vanished.

There was another explosion in the wreckage of the bus, and George guessed there must be a second fuel tank; but at this point no one was near enough to be in danger. The fire then seemed to burn itself out.

Several people lay on the ground, many still gasping for breath after inhaling smoke. Others were bleeding from various injuries. Some were Riders, some regular passengers, black and white. George himself was clutching his left arm with his right hand, holding it against his side, trying to keep it motionless because every movement was excruciatingly painful. The four men he had tangled with were helping one another limp back to their cars.

He managed to walk to where the patrolmen stood. “We need an ambulance,” he said. “Maybe two.”

The younger of the two uniformed men glared at him. “What did you say?”

“These people need medical attention,” George said. “Call an ambulance!”

The man looked furious, and George realized he had made the mistake of telling a white man what to do. But the older patrolman said to his colleague: “Leave it, leave it.” Then he said to George: “Ambulance is on its way, boy.”

A few minutes later, an ambulance the size of a small bus arrived, and the Riders began to help each other aboard. But when George and Maria approached, the driver said: “Not you.”

George stared at him in disbelief. “What?”

“This here's a white folks' ambulance,” the driver said. “It ain't for nigras.”

“The hell you say.”

“Don't you sass me, boy.”

A white Rider who was already on board came back out. “You have to take everyone to the hospital,” he said to the driver. “Black and white.”

“This ain't a nigra ambulance,” the driver said stubbornly.

“Well, we're not going without our friends.” With that the white Riders began to leave the ambulance one by one.

The driver was taken aback. He would look foolish, George guessed, if he returned from the scene with no patients.

The older patrolman came over and said: “Better take 'em, Roy.”

“If you say so,” said the driver.

George and Maria boarded the ambulance.

As they drove away, George looked back at the bus. Nothing remained but a drift of smoke and a blackened hulk, with a row of scorched roof struts sticking up like the ribs of a martyr burned at the stake.

T
anya Dvorkin left Yakutsk, Siberia—the coldest city in the world—after an early breakfast. She flew to Moscow, a distance of a little over three thousand miles, in a Tupolev Tu-16 of the Red Air Force. The cabin was configured for half a dozen military men, and the designer had not wasted time thinking of their comfort: the seats were made of pierced aluminum and there was no soundproofing. The journey took eight hours with one refueling stop. Because Moscow was six hours behind Yakutsk, Tanya arrived in time for another breakfast.

It was summer in Moscow, and she carried her heavy coat and fur hat. She took a taxi to Government House, the apartment building for Moscow's privileged elite. She shared a flat with her mother, Anya, and her twin brother, Dmitri, always called Dimka. It was a big place, with three bedrooms, though Mother said it was spacious only by Soviet standards: the Berlin apartment she had lived in as a child, when Grandfather Grigori had been a diplomat, had been much more grand.

This morning the place was silent and empty: Mother and Dimka had both left for work already. Their coats were hanging in the hall, on nails knocked in by Tanya's father a quarter of a century ago: Dimka's black raincoat and Mother's brown tweed, left at home in the warm weather. Tanya hung up her own coat beside them and put her suitcase in her bedroom. She had not expected them to be in, but all the same she felt a twinge of regret that Mother was not here to make her tea, nor Dimka to listen to her adventures in Siberia. She thought of going to see her grandparents Grigori and Katerina Peshkov, who lived on another floor in the same building, but decided she did not really have the time.

She showered and changed her clothes, then took a bus to the
headquarters of TASS, the Soviet news agency. She was one of more than a thousand reporters working for the agency, but not many were flown around in air force jets. She was a rising star, able to produce lively and interesting articles that appealed to young people but nevertheless adhered to the party line. It was a mixed blessing: she was often given difficult high-profile assignments.

In the canteen she had a bowl of buckwheat kasha with sour cream, then she went to the features department, where she worked. Although she was a star, she did not yet merit an office of her own. She greeted her colleagues, then sat at a desk, put paper and carbons into a typewriter, and began to write.

The flight had been too bumpy even to make notes, but she had planned her articles in her head, and now she was able to write fluently, referring occasionally to her notebook for details. Her brief was to encourage young Soviet families to migrate to Siberia to work in the boom industries of mining and drilling: not an easy task. The prison camps provided plenty of unskilled labor, but the region needed geologists, engineers, surveyors, architects, chemists, and managers. However, Tanya in her article ignored the men and wrote about their wives. She began with an attractive young mother called Klara who had talked with enthusiasm and humor about coping with life at sub-zero temperatures.

Halfway through the morning Tanya's editor, Daniil Antonov, picked up the sheets of paper from her tray and began to read. He was a small man with a gentle manner that was unusual in the world of journalism. “This is great,” he said after a while. “When can I have the rest?”

“I'm typing as fast as I can.”

He lingered. “While you were in Siberia, did you hear anything about Ustin Bodian?” Bodian was an opera singer who had been caught smuggling in two copies of
Doctor Zhivago
he had obtained while singing in Italy. He was now in a labor camp.

Tanya's heart raced guiltily. Did Daniil suspect her? He was unusually intuitive for a man. “No,” she lied. “Why do you ask? Have you heard something?”

“Nothing.” Daniil returned to his desk.

Tanya had almost finished the third article when Pyotr Opotkin stopped beside her desk and began to read her copy with a cigarette dangling from his lips. A stout man with bad skin, Opotkin was editor in chief for features. Unlike Daniil he was not a trained journalist but a commissar, a political appointee. His job was to make sure features did not violate Kremlin guidelines, and his only qualification for the job was rigid orthodoxy.

He read Tanya's first few pages and said: “I told you not to write about the weather.” He came from a village north of Moscow and still had the north-Russian accent.

Tanya sighed. “Pyotr, the series is about Siberia. People already know it's cold there. Nobody would be fooled.”

“But this is
all
about the weather.”

“It's about how a resourceful young woman from Moscow is raising her family in challenging conditions—and having a great adventure.”

Daniil joined the conversation. “She's right, Pyotr,” he said. “If we avoid all mention of the cold, people will know the article is shit, and they won't believe a word of it.”

“I don't like it,” Opotkin said stubbornly.

“You have to admit,” Daniil persisted, “Tanya makes it sound exciting.”

Opotkin looked thoughtful. “Maybe you're right,” he said, and dropped the copy back into the tray. “I'm having a party at my house on Saturday night,” he said to Tanya. “My daughter graduated college. I was wondering if you and your brother would like to come?”

Opotkin was an unsuccessful social climber who gave agonizingly boring parties. Tanya knew she could speak for her brother. “I'd love to, and I'm sure Dimka would too, but it's our mother's birthday. I'm so sorry.”

Opotkin looked offended. “Too bad,” he said, and walked on.

When he was out of earshot Daniil said: “It's not your mother's birthday, is it?”

“No.”

“He'll check.”

“Then he'll realize I made a polite excuse because I didn't want to go.”

“You should go to his parties.”

Tanya did not want to have this argument. There were more important things on her mind. She needed to write her articles, get out of there, and save the life of Ustin Bodian. But Daniil was a good boss and liberal minded, so she suppressed her impatience. “Pyotr doesn't care whether I attend his party or not,” she said. “He wants my brother, who works for Khrushchev.” Tanya was used to people trying to befriend her because of her influential family. Her late father had been a colonel in the KGB, the secret police; and her uncle Volodya was a general in Red Army Intelligence.

Daniil had a journalist's persistence. “Pyotr gave in to us over the Siberia articles. You should show that you're grateful.”

“I hate his parties. His friends get drunk and paw each other's wives.”

“I don't want him to bear a grudge against you.”

“Why would he do that?”

“You're very attractive.” Daniil was not coming on to Tanya. He lived with a male friend and she was sure he was one of those men not drawn to women. He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. “Beautiful, and talented, and—worst of all—young. Pyotr won't find it difficult to hate you. Try a little harder with him.” Daniil drifted away.

Tanya realized he was probably right, but she decided to think about it later, and returned her attention to her typewriter.

At midday she got a plate of potato salad with pickled herrings from the canteen and ate at her desk.

She finished her third article soon afterward. She handed the sheets of paper to Daniil. “I'm going home to bed,” she said. “Please don't call.”

“Good work,” he said. “Sleep well.”

She put her notebook in her shoulder bag and left the building.

Now she had to make sure she was not being followed. She was tired, and that meant she was likely to make foolish mistakes. She felt worried.

She went past the bus stop, walked several blocks to the previous stop on the route, and caught the bus there. It made no sense, which meant that anyone who did the same had to be following her.

No one was.

She got off near a grand pre-revolutionary palace now converted to apartments. She walked around the block, but no one appeared to be
watching the building. Anxiously she went around again to make sure. Then she entered the gloomy hall and climbed the cracked marble staircase to the apartment of Vasili Yenkov.

Just as she was about to put her key in the lock the door opened, and a slim blond girl of about eighteen stood there. Vasili was behind her. Tanya cursed inwardly. It was too late for her to run away or pretend she was going to a different apartment.

The blonde gave Tanya a hard, appraising stare, taking in her hairstyle, her figure, and her clothes. Then she kissed Vasili on the mouth, threw a triumphant look at Tanya, and went down the staircase.

Vasili was thirty but he liked girls young. They yielded to him because he was tall and dashing, with carved good looks and thick dark hair always a little too long and soft brown bedroom eyes. Tanya admired him for a completely different set of reasons: because he was bright, brave, and a world-class writer.

She walked into his study and dropped her bag on a chair. Vasili worked as a radio script editor and was a naturally untidy man. Papers covered his desk, and books were stacked on the floor. He seemed to be working on a radio adaptation of Maxim Gorky's first play,
The Philistines.
His gray cat, Mademoiselle, was sleeping on the couch. Tanya pushed her off and sat down. “Who was that little tart?” she said.

“That was my mother.”

Tanya laughed despite her annoyance.

“I'm sorry she was here,” Vasili said, though he did not look very sad about it.

“You knew I was coming today.”

“I thought you'd be later.”

“She saw my face. No one is supposed to know there is a connection between you and me.”

“She works at the GUM department store. Her name is Varvara. She won't suspect anything.”

“Please, Vasili, don't let it happen again. What we're doing is dangerous enough. We shouldn't take additional risks. You can screw a teenager any day.”

“You're right, and it won't happen again. Let me make you some tea. You look tired.” Vasili busied himself at the samovar.

“I am tired. But Ustin Bodian is dying.”

“Hell. What of?”

“Pneumonia.”

Tanya did not know Bodian personally, but she had interviewed him, before he got into trouble. As well as being extraordinarily talented, he was a warm and kindhearted man. A Soviet artist admired all over the world, he had lived a life of great privilege, but he was still able to get publicly angry about injustice done to people less fortunate than himself—which was why they had sent him to Siberia.

Vasili said: “Are they still making him work?”

Tanya shook her head. “He can't. But they won't send him to hospital. He just lies on his bunk all day, getting worse.”

“Did you see him?”

“Hell, no. Asking about him was dangerous enough. If I'd gone to the prison camp they would have kept me there.”

Vasili handed her tea and sugar. “Is he getting any medical treatment at all?”

“No.”

“Did you get any idea of how long he might have to live?”

Tanya shook her head. “You now know everything I know.”

“We have to spread this news.”

Tanya agreed. “The only way to save his life is to publicize his illness and hope that the government will have the grace to be embarrassed.”

“Shall we put out a special edition?”

“Yes,” said Tanya. “Today.”

Vasili and Tanya together produced an illegal news sheet called
Dissidence.
They reported on censorship, demonstrations, trials, and political prisoners. In his office at Radio Moscow, Vasili had his own stencil duplicator, normally used for making multiple copies of scripts. Secretly he printed fifty copies of each issue of
Dissidence.
Most of the people who received one made more copies on their own typewriters, or even by hand, and circulation mushroomed. This self-publishing system was called
samizdat
in Russian and was widespread: whole novels had been distributed the same way.

“I'll write it.” Tanya went to the cupboard and pulled out a large cardboard box full of dry cat food. Pushing her hands into the pellets,
she drew out a typewriter in a cover. This was the one they used for
Dissidence.

Typing was as unique as handwriting. Every machine had its own characteristics. The letters were never perfectly aligned: some were a little raised, some off center. Individual letters became worn or damaged in distinctive ways. In consequence, police experts could match a typewriter to its product. If
Dissidence
had been typed on the same machine as Vasili's scripts, someone might have noticed. So Vasili had stolen an old machine from the scheduling department, brought it home, and buried it in the cat's food to hide it from casual observation. A determined search would find it, but if there should be a determined search Vasili would be finished anyway.

Also in the box were sheets of the special waxed paper used in the duplicating machine. The typewriter had no ribbon: instead, its letters pierced the paper, and the duplicator worked by forcing ink through the letter-shaped holes.

Tanya wrote a report on Bodian, saying that General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev would be personally responsible if one of the USSR's greatest tenors died in a prison camp. She recapitulated the main points of Bodian's trial for anti-Soviet activity, including his impassioned defense of artistic freedom. To divert suspicion away from herself, she misleadingly credited the information about Bodian's illness to an imaginary opera lover in the KGB.

When she had done, she handed two sheets of stencil paper to Vasili. “I've made it concise,” she said.

“Concision is the sister of talent. Chekov said that.” He read the report slowly, then nodded approval. “I'll go in to Radio Moscow now and make copies,” he said. “Then we should take them to Mayakovsky Square.”