Edge of Eternity (107 page)

He locked his car and walked to the Bar Madrid.

He pushed open the door and stepped inside. He stood still and looked around. It was a bleak modern place, cold and plastic, insufficiently warmed by an electric fire and some photographs of flamenco dancers on the walls. The handful of customers gazed at him with interest. They looked like petty crooks. None resembled the photo of Nik in the file.

At the far end of the room was a corner bar with a door next to it marked ‘Private’.

Dimka strode through the room as if he owned it. Without stopping, he spoke to the man behind the bar. ‘Nik in the back?’

The man looked as if he might be about to tell Dimka to stop and wait, but then he looked again at Dimka’s face and changed his mind. ‘Yes,’ he said.

Dimka pushed open the door.

In a small back room four men were playing cards. There was a lot of money on the table. To one side, on a couch, two young women in cocktail dresses and heavy make-up were smoking long American cigarettes and looking bored.

Dimka recognized Nik immediately. The face was as handsome as the photograph had suggested, but the camera had failed to capture the cold expression. Nik looked up and said: ‘This is a private room. Piss off.’

Dimka said: ‘I’ve got a message for you.’

Nik put his cards face-down on the table and sat back. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘Something bad is going to happen.’

Two of the card players stood up and turned to face Dimka. One reached inside his jacket. Dimka thought he might be about to draw a weapon. But Nik held up a cautionary hand, and the man hesitated.

Nik kept his eyes on Dimka. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘When the bad thing happens, you’ll ask who’s causing it.’

‘And you’ll tell me?’

‘I’m telling you now. It’s Dmitriy Ilich Dvorkin. He’s the cause of your problems.’

‘I don’t have any problems, asshole.’

‘You didn’t, until yesterday. Then you made a mistake – asshole.’

The men around Nik tensed, but he remained calm. ‘Yesterday?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you the creep she’s fucking?’

‘When you find yourself in so much trouble that you don’t know what to do, remember my name.’

‘You’re Dimka!’

‘You’ll see me again,’ said Dimka, and he turned slowly and walked out of the room.

As he walked through the bar, all eyes were on him. He looked straight ahead, expecting a bullet in the back at any moment.

He reached the door and went out.

He grinned to himself. I got away with it, he thought.

Now he had to make good on his threat.

He drove six miles from the city centre to the Khodinka Airfield and parked at the headquarters of Red Army Intelligence. The old building was a bizarre piece of Stalin-era architecture, a nine-storey tower surrounded by a two-storey outer ring. The directorate had expanded into a newer fifteen-storey building nearby: intelligence organizations never got smaller.

Carrying the KGB file on Nik, Dimka went into the old building and asked for General Volodya Peshkov.

A guard said: ‘Do you have an appointment?’

Dimka raised his voice. ‘Don’t fuck around, son. Just call the general’s secretary and say I’m here.’

After a flurry of anxious activity – few people dropped by this place without a summons – he was directed through a metal detector and led up in the lift to an office on the top floor.

This was the highest building around and it had a fine view over the roofs of Moscow. Volodya welcomed Dimka and offered him tea. Dimka had always liked his uncle. Now in his mid-fifties, Volodya had silver-grey hair. Despite the hard blue-eyed stare, he was a reformer – unusual among the generally conservative military. But he had been to America.

‘What’s on your mind?’ said Volodya. ‘You look ready to kill someone.’

‘I’ve got a problem,’ Dimka told him. ‘I’ve made an enemy.’

‘Not unusual, in the circles within which you work.’

‘This is nothing to do with politics. Nik Smotrov is a gangster.’

‘How did you come to fall foul of such a man?’

‘I’m sleeping with his wife.’

Volodya looked disapproving. ‘And he’s threatening you.’

Volodya had probably never been unfaithful to Zoya, his scientist wife, who was as beautiful as she was brilliant. But that meant he had scant sympathy for Dimka. Volodya might have felt differently if he had been so foolish as to marry someone like Nina.

Dimka said: ‘Nik kidnapped Grisha.’

Volodya sat upright. ‘What? When?’

‘Yesterday. We got him back. He was only shut in the cellar of Government House. But it was a warning.’

‘You have to give up this woman!’

Dimka ignored that. ‘There’s a particular reason why I’ve come to you, Uncle. There’s a way you could help me and do the army some good at the same time.’

‘Go on.’

‘Nik is behind a fraud that costs the army millions every year.’ Dimka explained about the TV sets. When he had finished, he put the file on Volodya’s desk. ‘It’s all in there – including the names of the officers who are organizing the whole thing.’

Volodya did not pick up the file. ‘I’m not a policeman. I can’t arrest this Nik. And if he’s bribing police officers, there’s not much I can do about it.’

‘But you can arrest the army officers involved.’

‘Oh, yes. They will all be in army jails within twenty-four hours.’

‘And you can shut down the whole business.’

‘Very quickly.’

And then Nik will be ruined, Dimka thought. ‘Thank you, Uncle,’ he said. ‘That’s very helpful.’

*  *  *

Dimka was in his apartment, packing for Czechoslovakia, when Nik came to see him.

The Politburo had approved Kosygin’s plan. Dimka was flying with him to Prague to negotiate a non-military solution to the crisis. They would find a way to allow the liberalization experiment to continue while at the same time reassuring the diehards that there was no fundamental threat to the Soviet system. But what Dimka hoped was that, in the long term, the Soviet system
would
change.

Prague in May would be mild and wet. Dimka was folding his raincoat when the doorbell rang.

There was no doorman in his building, and no intercom system. The street door was permanently unlocked and visitors walked upstairs to the apartments unannounced. It was not as luxurious as Government House, where his ex-wife was living in their old apartment. Dimka occasionally felt resentful, but he was glad Grisha was near his grandmother.

Dimka opened the door and was shocked to see his lover’s husband standing there.

Nik was an inch taller than Dimka, and heavier, but Dimka was ready to take him on. He stepped back a pace and picked up the nearest heavy object, a glass ashtray, to use as a weapon.

‘No need for that,’ said Nik, but he stepped into the hall and shut the door behind him.

‘Piss off,’ said Dimka. ‘Go now, before you get into any more trouble.’ He managed to sound more confident than he felt.

Nik glared at him with hot hatred in his eyes. ‘You’ve made your point,’ he said. ‘You’re not afraid of me. You’re powerful enough to turn my life to shit. I should be scared of you. All right, I get it. I’m scared.’

He did not sound it.

Dimka said: ‘What have you come here for?’

‘I don’t give a toss for the bitch. I only married her to please my mother, who’s dead now. But a man’s pride is hurt when another man pokes his fire. You know what I mean.’

‘Get to the point.’

‘My business is ruined. No one in the army will speak to me, let alone sell me TV sets. Men who have built four-bedroom dachas from the money I’ve made for them now walk past me in the street without speaking – those who aren’t in jail.’

‘You shouldn’t have threatened my son.’

‘I know it now. I thought my wife was opening her legs for some little apparatchik. I didn’t know he was a fucking warlord. I underestimated you.’

‘So bugger off home and lick your wounds.’

‘I have to make a living.’

‘Try working.’

‘No jokes, please. I’ve found another source of Western TV sets – nothing to do with the army.’

‘Why should I care?’

‘I can rebuild the business you destroyed.’

‘So what?’

‘Can I come in and sit down?’

‘Don’t be so fucking stupid.’

Rage flared again in Nik’s eyes, and Dimka feared he had gone too far, but the flame died down, and Nik said meekly: ‘Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll give you ten per cent of the profits.’

‘You want me to go into business with you? In a criminal enterprise? You must be mad.’

‘All right, twenty per cent. And you don’t have to do anything except leave me alone.’

‘I don’t want your money, you fool. This is the Soviet Union. You can’t just buy anything you want, like in America. My connections are worth far more than you could ever pay me.’

‘There must be something you want.’

Until this moment Dimka had been arguing with Nik just to keep him off balance, but now he saw an opportunity. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘There is something I want.’

‘Name it.’

‘Divorce your wife.’

‘What?’

‘I want you to get a divorce.’

‘Divorce Natalya?’

‘Divorce your wife,’ Dimka said again. ‘Which of those three words are you having trouble understanding?’

‘Fuck me, is that all?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can marry her. I wouldn’t touch her now anyway.’

‘If you divorce her, I’ll leave you alone. I’m not a cop, and I’m not running a crusade against corruption in the USSR. I have more important work to do.’

‘It’s a deal.’ Nik opened the door. ‘I’ll send her up.’

That took Dimka by surprise. ‘She’s here?’

‘Waiting in the car. I’ll have her things packed up and sent around tomorrow. I don’t want her in my place ever again.’

Dimka raised his voice. ‘Don’t you dare hurt her. If she’s even bruised, the whole deal is off.’

Nik turned in the doorway and pointed a threatening finger. ‘And don’t you renege. If you try to screw me, I’ll cut off her nipples with the kitchen scissors.’

Dimka believed he would. He suppressed a shudder. ‘Get out of my flat.’

Nik left without closing the door.

Dimka was breathing hard, as if he had been running. He stood still in the small hall of the apartment. He heard Nik clattering down the stairs. He put the ashtray down on the hall table. His fingers were slippery with perspiration, and he almost dropped it.

What just happened seemed like a dream. Had Nik really stood in this hallway and agreed to a divorce? Had Dimka really scared him off?

A minute later he heard footsteps of a different kind on the stairs: lighter, faster, coming up. He did not go out of the apartment: he felt stuck where he was.

Natalya appeared in the doorway, her broad smile lighting up the whole place. She threw herself into his arms. He buried his face in her mass of curls. ‘You’re here,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And I’m never going to leave.’

44

Rebecca was tempted to be unfaithful to Bernd. But she could not lie to him. So she told him everything in a convulsion of repentance. ‘I’ve met someone I really like,’ she said. ‘And I’ve kissed him. Twice. I’m so sorry. I’ll never do it again.’

She was scared of what he would say next. He might immediately ask for a divorce. Most men would. Bernd was better than most men, though. But it would break her heart if he were not angry but simply humiliated. She would have hurt the person she loved most in the world.

However, Bernd’s response to her confession was shockingly different to anything she had expected. ‘You should go ahead,’ he said. ‘Have an affair with the guy.’

They were in bed, last thing at night, and she turned over and stared at him. ‘How can you say that?’

‘This is 1968, the age of free love. Everyone is having sex with everyone else. Why should you miss out?’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘I didn’t mean it to sound so trivial.’

‘What did you mean?’

‘I know you love me,’ he said, ‘and I know you like having sex with me, but you mustn’t go through the rest of your life without experiencing the real thing.’

‘I don’t believe in the real thing,’ she had said. ‘It’s different for everyone. It’s much better with you than it was with Hans.’

‘It will always be good, because we love each other. But I think you need a really good fuck.’

And he was right, she thought. She loved Bernd and she liked the peculiar sex they had, but when she thought about Claus lying on top of her, kissing her and moving inside her, and how she would lift her hips to meet his thrusts, she immediately got wet. She was ashamed of this feeling. Was she an animal? Perhaps she was, but Bernd was right about what she needed.

‘I think I’m weird,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s because of what happened to me in the war.’ She had told Bernd – but no one else, ever – how Red Army soldiers had been about to rape her when Carla had offered herself instead. German women rarely spoke of that time, even to one another. But Rebecca would never forget the sight of Carla going up that staircase, head held high, with the Soviet soldiers following her like eager dogs. Rebecca, thirteen years old, had known what they were going to do, and she had wept with relief that it was not happening to her.

Bernd asked perceptively: ‘Do you also feel guilty that you escaped while Carla suffered?’

‘Yes, isn’t that strange?’ she said. ‘I was a child, and a victim, but I feel as if I did something shameful.’

‘It’s not unusual,’ Bernd said. ‘Men who survive battles feel remorse because others died and not them.’ Bernd had got the scar on his forehead during the battle of Seelow Heights.

‘I felt better after Carla and Werner adopted me,’ Rebecca said. ‘Somehow that made it all right. Parents make sacrifices for their children, don’t they? Women suffer to bring children into the world. Perhaps it doesn’t make much sense, but once I became Carla’s daughter I felt entitled.’

‘It makes sense.’

‘Do you really want me to go to bed with another man?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why?’

‘Because the alternative is worse. If you don’t do it, you’ll always feel, in your heart, that you missed out on something because of me, that you made a sacrifice for my sake. I’d rather you went ahead and tried it. You don’t have to reveal the details: just come home and tell me you love me.’