Dimka laughed. ‘Is she getting drunk?’
‘And flirting.’
Dimka was not perturbed. Anyway, he was in no position to condemn Nina: he did the same when he went to the Riverside Bar with Natalya. He said: ‘It is a party.’
Tania had no inhibitions about what she said to her twin. ‘I noticed that she went straight for the most high-ranking men in the room. Brezhnev just left, but she’s still making eyes at Marshal Pushnoy – who must be twenty years older than her.’
‘Some women find power attractive.’
‘Did you know that her first husband brought her to Moscow from Perm and got her the job with the steel union?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Then she left him.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Her mother told me.’
‘All Nina got from me was a baby.’
‘And an apartment in Government House.’
‘You think she’s some kind of gold-digger?’
‘I worry about you. You’re so smart about everything – except women.’
‘Nina is a little materialistic. It’s not the worst of sins.’
‘So you don’t mind.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Okay. But if she hurts my brother, I’ll scratch her eyes out.’
*
Daniil came and sat opposite Tania in the canteen at the TASS building. He put down his tray and tucked a handkerchief into his shirt collar to protect his tie. Then he said: ‘The people at New World like Frostbite.’
Tania was thrilled. ‘Good!’ she said. ‘It took them long enough – it must be at least six months. But that’s great news!’
Daniil poured water into a plastic tumbler. ‘It will be one of the most daring things they’ve ever printed.’
‘So they’re going to publish?’
‘Yes.’
She wished she could tell Vasili. But he would have to find out on his own. She wondered if he was able to get the magazine. It must be available at libraries in Siberia. ‘When?’
‘They haven’t decided. But they don’t do anything in a hurry.’
‘I’ll be patient.’
*
Dimka was awakened by the phone. A woman’s voice said: ‘You don’t know me, but I have information for you.’
Dimka was confused. The voice belonged to Natalya. He threw a guilty look at his wife, Nina, lying beside him. Her eyes were still closed. He looked at the clock: it was five-thirty in the morning.
Natalya said: ‘Don’t ask questions.’
Dimka’s brain started to work. Why was Natalya pretending to be a stranger? She wanted him to do the same, obviously. Was it for fear that his tone of voice would betray his fondness for her to the wife beside him in bed?
He played along. ‘Who are you?’
‘They’re plotting against your boss,’ she said.
Dimka realized that his first interpretation had been wrong. What Natalya feared was that the phone might be tapped. She wanted to be sure Dimka did not say anything to reveal her identity to the listening KGB.
He felt the chill of fear. True or false, this meant trouble for him. He said: ‘Who is plotting?’
Beside him, Nina opened her eyes.
Dimka shrugged helplessly, miming: ‘I have no idea what is going on.’
‘Leonid Brezhnev is approaching other Presidium members about a coup.’
‘Shit.’ Brezhnev was one of the half-dozen most powerful men under Khrushchev. He was also conservative and unimaginative.
‘He has Podgorny and Shelepin on his side already.’
‘When?’ said Dimka, disobeying the instruction not to ask questions. ‘When will they strike?’
‘They will arrest Comrade Khrushchev when he returns from Sweden.’ Khrushchev was planning a trip to Scandinavia in June.
‘But why?’
‘They think he’s losing his mind,’ said Natalya, and then the connection was broken.
Dimka hung up and said ‘Shit’ again.
‘What is it?’ Nina said sleepily.
‘Just work problems,’ Dimka said. ‘Go back to sleep.’
Khrushchev was not losing his mind, though he was depressed, see-sawing between manic cheerfulness and deep gloom. At the root of his disquiet was the agricultural crisis. Unfortunately, he was easily seduced by quick-fix solutions: miracle fertilizers, special pollination, new strains. The one proposal he would not consider was relaxing central control. All the same, he was the Soviet Union’s best hope. Brezhnev was no reformer. If he became leader, the country would go backwards.
It was not just Khrushchev’s future that worried Dimka now: it was his own. He had to reveal this phone call to Khrushchev: on balance that was less dangerous than concealing it. But Khrushchev was still enough of a peasant to punish the bringer of bad news.
Dimka asked himself whether this was the moment to jump ship, and leave Khrushchev’s service. It would not be easy: apparatchiks generally went where they were told. But there were ways. Another senior figure could be persuaded to request that a young aide be transferred to his office, perhaps because the aide’s special skills were needed. It could be arranged. Dimka could try for a job with one of the conspirators, Brezhnev perhaps. But what was the point of that? It might save his career, but to no purpose. Dimka was not going to spend his life helping Brezhnev hold back progress.
However, if he was to survive, he and Khrushchev needed to be ahead of this conspiracy. The worst thing they could do would be to wait and see what happened.
Today was 17 April 1964, Khrushchev’s seventieth birthday. Dimka would be the first to congratulate him.
In the next room, Grigor began to cry.
Dimka said: ‘The phone woke him.’
Nina sighed and got up.
Dimka washed and dressed quickly, then wheeled his motorcycle out of the garage and rode fast to Khrushchev’s residence in the suburb called Lenin Hills.
He arrived at the same time as a van bringing a birthday present. He watched as security men carried into the living room a huge new radio-television console with a metal plaque inscribed: FROM YOUR COMRADES AT WORK IN THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AND THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS.
Khrushchev often grumpily told people not to waste public money buying him presents, but everyone knew he was secretly happy to receive them.
Ivan Tepper, the butler, showed Dimka upstairs to Khrushchev’s dressing room. A new dark suit hung ready to be put on for the day of congratulatory ceremonies. Khrushchev’s three Hero of Socialist Labour stars were already pinned to the breast of the jacket. Khrushchev sat in a robe drinking tea and looking at the newspapers.
Dimka told him about the phone call while Ivan helped Khrushchev on with his shirt and tie. The KGB wiretap on Dimka’s phone, if there was one, would confirm his story that the call was anonymous, supposing that Khrushchev checked. Natalya had been clever, as always.
‘I don’t know whether it’s important or not, and I didn’t think it was for me to decide,’ Dimka said cautiously.
Khrushchev was dismissive. ‘Aleksandr Shelepin isn’t ready to be leader,’ he said. Shelepin was a deputy prime minister and former head of the KGB. ‘Nikolai Podgorny is narrow. And Brezhnev isn’t suited either. Do you know they used to call him the Ballerina?’
‘No,’ said Dimka. It was hard to imagine anyone less like a dancer than the stocky, graceless Brezhnev.
‘Before the war, when he was secretary of Dnepropetrovsk province.’
Dimka saw that he was supposed to ask the obvious question. ‘Why?’
‘Because anyone could turn him round!’ said Khrushchev. He laughed heartily and put his jacket on.
So the threatened coup was dismissed with a joke. Dimka was relieved that he was not being condemned for crediting stupid reports. But one worry was replaced by another. Was Khrushchev’s intuition right? His instincts had proved reliable in the past. But Natalya always got news first, and Dimka had never known her to be wrong.