Edge of Eternity (15 page)

They had to stand in line an hour for a boat, but Muscovites were accustomed to queuing, and by late morning they were out on the clear, cold water. Valentin and Dimka took turns rowing, and the girls soaked up the sun. No one seemed to feel the need for small talk.

On the far side of the lake they tied up the boat at a small beach. Valentin pulled off his shirt, and Dimka followed suit. Anna took off her blouse and pants. Underneath she was wearing a sky-blue two-piece swimsuit. Dimka knew it was called a bikini, and was fashionable in the West, but he had never actually seen one, and he was embarrassed by how aroused he felt. He could hardly take his eyes off her smooth, flat stomach and her navel.

To his disappointment, Nina kept her clothes on.

They ate their sandwiches, and Valentin produced a bottle of vodka. No alcohol was sold in the camp store, Dimka knew. Valentin explained: ‘I bought it from the boat supervisor. He has a small capitalist enterprise going.’ Dimka was not surprised: most things people really wanted were sold on the black market, from television sets to blue jeans.

They passed the bottle around, and both girls took a long swallow.

Nina wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. ‘So, you two work together in the Parks Department?’

‘No,’ Valentin laughed. ‘Dimka’s too clever for that.’

Dimka said: ‘I work at the Kremlin.’

Nina was impressed. ‘What do you do?’

Dimka did not really like to say, because it sounded like boasting. ‘I’m an assistant to the First Secretary.’

‘You mean to Comrade Khrushchev!’ Nina said in astonishment.

‘Yes.’

‘How the hell did you get a job like that?’

Valentin put in: ‘I told you, he’s smart. He was top of every class.’

‘You don’t land a job like that just by getting top marks,’ Nina said crisply. ‘Who do you know?’

‘My grandfather, Grigori Peshkov, stormed the Winter Palace in the October Revolution.’

‘That doesn’t get you a good job.’

‘Well, my father was in the KGB – he died last year. My uncle is a general.
And
I’m smart.’

‘Modest, too,’ she said, but her sarcasm was genial. ‘What’s your uncle’s name?’

‘Vladimir Peshkov. We call him Volodya.’

‘I’ve heard of General Peshkov. So he’s your uncle. With a family like that, how come you wear home-made shorts?’

Dimka was confused now. She was interested in him for the first time, but he could not make out whether she was admiring or scornful. Perhaps it was just her manner.

Valentin stood up. ‘Come and explore with me,’ he said to Anna. ‘We’ll leave these two here to discuss Dimka’s shorts.’ He held out his hand. Anna took it and let him pull her to her feet. Then they walked off into the woods, holding hands.

‘Your friend doesn’t like me,’ said Nina.

‘He likes Anna, though.’

‘She’s pretty.’

Dimka said quietly: ‘You’re beautiful.’ He had not planned to say it: it just came out. But he meant it.

Nina looked at him thoughtfully, as if reappraising him. Then she said: ‘Do you want to swim?’

Dimka did not care much for water, but he was keen to see her in her swimsuit. He pulled off his clothes: he was wearing swimming trunks under his shorts.

Nina had on a brown nylon one-piece, rather than a bikini, but she filled it out so well that Dimka was not disappointed. She was the opposite of slim Anna. Nina had deep breasts and wide hips, and there were freckles on her throat. She saw his gaze on her body, and she turned away and ran into the water.

Dimka followed.

It was bitingly cold despite the sun, yet Dimka enjoyed the sensual feel of the water all over his body. They both swam energetically to keep warm. They went out into the lake, then returned more slowly to the shore. They stopped short of the beach, and Dimka let his feet drift to the bottom. The water came to their waists. Dimka looked at Nina’s breasts. The cold water made her nipples stick out, showing through her swimsuit.

‘Stop staring,’ she said, and playfully splashed his face.

He splashed her back.

‘Right!’ she said, and grabbed his head, trying to duck him.

Dimka struggled and caught her around the waist. They wrestled in the water. Nina’s body was heavy but firm, and he relished its solidity. He got both arms around her and lifted her feet off the bottom. When she thrashed, laughing and trying to free herself, he pulled her more firmly to him, and felt her soft breasts pressing against his face.

‘I give in!’ she yelled.

Reluctantly he put her down. For a moment they looked at one another. In her eyes he saw a gleam of desire. Something had changed her attitude to him: the vodka, the realization that he was a high-powered apparatchik, the exhilaration of horseplay in the water, or perhaps all three. He hardly cared. He saw the invitation in her smile, and kissed her mouth.

She kissed him back with enthusiasm.

He forgot the cold water, lost in the sensations of her lips and tongue, but after a few minutes she shivered and said: ‘Let’s get out.’

He held her hand as they waded through the shallows on to dry ground. They lay on the grass side by side and started kissing again. Dimka touched her breasts, and began to wonder whether this was the day he would lose his virginity.

Then they were interrupted by a harsh voice speaking through a megaphone: ‘Return your boat to the dock! Your time is up!’

Nina murmured: ‘It’s the sex police.’

Dimka chuckled, despite his disappointment.

He looked up to see a small rubber dinghy with an outboard motor passing a hundred yards offshore.

He waved acknowledgement. They were supposed to keep the boat for two hours. He guessed that a bribe to the supervisor would have secured an extension but he had not thought of it. Indeed, he had hardly dreamed that his relationship with Nina would progress so fast.

‘We can’t go back without the others,’ Nina said; but a moment later Valentin and Anna emerged from the woods. They had been only just out of sight, Dimka guessed, and had heard the megaphone summons.

The boys moved a little apart from the girls and they all put on their outer clothes over their swimsuits. Dimka heard Nina and Anna talking in low voices, Anna speaking urgently and Nina giggling and nodding agreement.

Then Anna gave Valentin a meaningful look. It seemed to be a prearranged signal. Valentin nodded and turned to Dimka. Quietly he said: ‘The four of us are going to the folk dancing evening tonight. When we come back, Anna will come into our tent with me. You’re to go with Nina in their tent. Okay?’

It was more than okay, it was thrilling. Dimka said: ‘You’ve arranged it all with Anna?’

‘Yes, and Nina has just agreed.’

Dimka could hardly believe it. He would be able to spend all night embracing Nina’s firm body. ‘She likes me!’

‘Must be the shorts.’

They got into the boat and rowed back. The girls announced that they wanted to shower as soon as they returned. Dimka wondered how he could make the time pass quickly until the evening.

When they reached the dock, they saw a man in a black suit waiting.

Dimka knew instinctively that this was a messenger for him. I might have known, he thought regretfully; things were going too well.

They all got out of the boat. Nina looked at the man sweating in his suit and said: ‘Are we going to be arrested for keeping the boat too long?’ She was only half joking.

Dimka said: ‘Are you here for me? I’m Dmitriy Dvorkin.’

‘Yes, Dmitriy Ilich,’ the man said, respectfully using his patronymic. ‘I’m your driver. I’m here to take you to the airport.’

‘What’s the emergency?’

The driver shrugged. ‘The First Secretary wants you.’

‘I’ll get my bag,’ said Dimka regretfully.

By way of a small consolation, Nina looked awestruck.

*  *  *

The car took Dimka to Vnukovo airport, south-west of Moscow, where Vera Pletner was waiting with a large envelope and a ticket to Tbilisi, capital of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Khrushchev was not in Moscow but at his dacha, or second home, in Pitsunda, a resort for top government officials on the Black Sea, and that was where Dimka was headed.

He had never flown before.

He was not the only aide whose holiday had been cut short. In the departure lounge, about to open the envelope, he was approached by Yevgeny Filipov, wearing a grey flannel shirt as usual, despite the summer weather. Filipov looked pleased, which had to be a bad sign.

‘Your strategy has failed,’ he said to Dimka with evident satisfaction.

‘What’s happened?’

‘President Kennedy has made a television speech.’

Kennedy had said nothing for seven weeks, since the Vienna Summit. The United States had not responded to Khrushchev’s threat to sign a treaty with East Germany and take West Berlin back. Dimka had assumed that the American President was too cowed to stand up to Khrushchev. ‘What was the speech about?’

‘He told the American people to prepare for war.’

So that was the emergency.

They were called to board. Dimka said to Filipov: ‘What did Kennedy say, exactly?’

‘Speaking of Berlin, he said: “An attack upon that city will be regarded as an attack upon us all.” The full transcript is in your envelope.’

They went on board, Dimka still wearing his holiday shorts. The plane was a Tupolev Tu-104 jetliner. Dimka looked out of the window as they took off. He knew how aircraft worked, the curved upper surface of the wing creating an air-pressure difference, but all the same it seemed like magic when the plane lifted into the air.

At last he tore his gaze away and opened the envelope.

Filipov had not exaggerated.

Kennedy was not merely making threatening noises. He proposed to triple the draft, call up reservists, and increase the American Army to a million men. He was preparing a new Berlin airlift, moving six divisions to Europe, and planning economic sanctions on Warsaw Pact countries.

And he had increased the military budget by more than three
billion
dollars.

Dimka realized that the strategy Khrushchev and his advisors had mapped out had failed catastrophically. They had all underestimated the handsome young president. He could not be bullied, after all.

What could Khrushchev do?

He might have to resign. No Soviet leader had ever done that – both Lenin and Stalin had died in office – but there was a first time for everything in revolutionary politics.

Dimka read the speech twice and mulled over it for the rest of the two-hour journey. There was only one alternative to Khrushchev’s resignation, he thought: the leader could sack all his aides, take on new advisors, and reshuffle the Presidium, giving his enemies more power, as an acknowledgement that he had been wrong and a promise to seek wiser counsel in the future.

Either way, Dimka’s short career in the Kremlin was over. Perhaps it had been too ambitious, he though dismally. No doubt a more modest future awaited him.

He wondered whether the voluptuous Nina would still want to spend a night with him.

The flight landed at Tbilisi and a small military aircraft shuttled Dimka and Filipov to an airstrip on the coast.

Natalya Smotrov from the Foreign Ministry was waiting for them there. The humid seaside air had curled her hair, giving her a wanton air. ‘There’s bad news from Pervukhin,’ she said as she drove them away from the plane. Mikhail Pervukhin was the Soviet ambassador to East Germany. ‘The flow of emigrants to the West has turned into a flood.’

Filipov looked annoyed, probably because he had not received this news before Natalya. ‘What numbers are we talking about?’

‘It’s approaching a thousand people a day.’

Dimka was flabbergasted. ‘A thousand a
day
?’

Natalya nodded. ‘Pervukhin says the East German government is no longer stable. The country is approaching collapse. There could be a popular uprising.’

‘You see?’ Filipov said to Dimka. ‘This is what your policy has led to.’

Dimka had no answer.

Natalya drove along the coast road to a forested peninsula and turned in at a massive iron gate in a long stucco wall. Set amid immaculate lawns was a white villa with a long balcony on the upper floor. Beside the house was a full-size swimming pool. Dimka had never seen a home with its own pool.

‘He’s down by the sea,’ a guard told Dimka, jerking his head towards the far side of the house.

Dimka found his way through the trees to a shingle beach. A soldier with a sub-machine gun looked hard at him then waved him on.

He found Khrushchev under a palm tree. The second most powerful man in the world was short, fat, bald and ugly. He wore the trousers of a suit, held up by suspenders, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled. He was sitting on a wicker beach chair, and on a small table in front of him were a jug of water and a glass tumbler. He seemed to be doing nothing.

He looked at Dimka and said: ‘Where did you get those shorts?’

‘My mother made them.’

‘I should have a pair of shorts.’

Dimka said the words he had rehearsed. ‘Comrade First Secretary, I offer you my immediate resignation.’

Khrushchev ignored this. ‘We will overtake the United States, in military might and economic prosperity, within the next twenty years,’ he said, as if he were continuing an ongoing discussion. ‘But, meanwhile, how do we prevent the stronger power from dominating global politics and holding back the spread of world Communism?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Dimka.

‘Watch this,’ said Khrushchev. ‘I am the Soviet Union.’ He picked up the jug and poured water slowly into the glass until it was full to the brim. Then he handed the jug to Dimka. ‘You are the United States,’ he said. ‘Now you pour water into the glass.’

Dimka did as he was told. The glass overflowed, and water soaked into the white tablecloth.

‘You see?’ said Khrushchev as if he had proved a point. ‘When the glass is full, no more can be added without making a mess.’

Dimka was mystified. He asked the expected question. ‘What’s the significance of this, Nikita Sergeyevitch?’