She showed her papers. An official studied them carefully then dismissed her with a discourteous gesture.
She headed for the exit, not looking at the faces of the uniformed officials, all men, who stood scrutinizing passengers.
Then one of them stepped in front of her. ‘Tania Dvorkin?’
She almost burst into guilty tears. ‘Y-yes.’
He addressed her in German. ‘Please come with me.’
This is it, she thought; my life is over.
She followed him through a side door. To her surprise, it led to a parking area. ‘The director of the book fair has sent a car for you,’ the official said.
A driver was waiting. He introduced himself and put the incriminating suitcase into the trunk of a two-tone green-and-white Wartburg 311 limousine.
Tania fell into the back seat and slumped, as helpless as if she were drunk.
She began to recover as the car took her into the city centre. Leipzig was an ancient crossroads that had hosted trade fairs since the Middle Ages. Its railway station was the biggest in Europe. In her article Tania would mention the city’s strong Communist tradition, and its resistance to Nazism that continued into the 1940s. She would not include the thought that occurred to her now, that Leipzig’s grand nineteenth-century buildings looked even more gracious beside the brutalist Soviet-era architecture.
The taxi took her to the fair. In a large hall like a warehouse, publishers from Germany and abroad had erected stalls where they displayed their books. Tania was shown around by the director. He explained to her that the main business of the fair was the buying and selling, not of physical books, but of licences to translate them and publish them in other countries.
Towards the end of the afternoon she managed to get away from him and look around on her own.
She was astonished by the enormous number and bewildering variety of books: car manuals, scientific journals, almanacs, children’s stories, Bibles, art books, atlases, dictionaries, school textbooks, and the complete works of Marx and Lenin in every major European language.
She was looking for someone who might want to translate Russian literature and publish it in the West.
She began to scan the stalls for Russian novels in other languages.
The Western alphabet was different from the Russian, but Tania had learned German and English at school, and had studied German at university, so she could read the names of the authors and generally guess at the titles.
She spoke to several publishers, telling them she was a journalist for TASS and asking them how they were benefitting from the fair. She got some useful quotes for her article. She did not even hint that she had a Russian book to offer them.
At the stall of a London publisher called Rowley, she picked up an English translation of The Young Guard, a popular Soviet novel by Alexander Fadeyev. She knew it well, and amused herself by deciphering the English of the first page until she was interrupted. An attractive woman of about her own age addressed her in German: ‘Please let me know if I can answer any questions.’
Tania introduced herself and interviewed the woman about the fair. They quickly discovered that the editor spoke Russian better than Tania spoke German, so they switched. Tania asked about English translations of Russian novels. ‘I’d like to publish more of them,’ said the editor. ‘But many contemporary Soviet novels – including the one you’re holding in your hand – are too slavishly pro-Communist.’
Tania pretended to be prickly. ‘You wish to publish anti-Soviet propaganda?’
‘Not at all,’ the editor said with a tolerant smile. ‘Writers are permitted to like their governments. My company publishes many books that celebrate the British Empire and its triumphs. But an author who sees nothing at all wrong in the society around him may not be taken seriously. It’s wiser to throw in a soup?on of criticism, if only for the sake of credibility.’
Tania liked this woman. ‘Can we meet again?’
The editor hesitated. ‘Do you have something for me?’
Tania did not answer the question. ‘Where are you staying?’
‘The Europa.’
Tania had a room reserved at the same hotel. That was convenient. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Anna Murray. What’s yours?’
‘We’ll talk again,’ said Tania, and she walked away.
She felt drawn to Anna Murray on instinct, an instinct refined by a quarter of a century of life in the Soviet Union; but her feeling was supported by evidence. First, Anna was clearly British, not a Russian or East German posing as British. Second, she was neither Communist nor strenuously pretending to be the opposite. Her relaxed neutrality was impossible for a KGB spy to fake. Third, she used no jargon. People brought up in Soviet orthodoxy could not help talking about Party, class, cadres and ideology. Anna used none of the key words.
The green-and-white Wartburg was waiting outside. The driver took her to the Europa, where she checked in. Almost immediately she left her room and returned to the lobby.
She did not want to draw attention to herself even by merely asking at reception for Anna Murray’s room number. At least one of the desk clerks would be an informant for the Stasi, and might make a note of a Soviet journalist seeking out an English publisher.
However, behind the reception desk was a bank of numbered pigeonholes where the staff deposited room keys and messages. Tania simply sealed an empty envelope, wrote on it ‘Frau Anna Murray’, and handed it in without speaking. The clerk immediately put it in the pigeonhole for room 305.
There was a key in the space, which meant that Anna Murray was not in her room right now.
Tania went into the bar. Anna was not there. Tania sat for an hour, sipping a beer, roughing out her article on a notepad. Then she went into the restaurant. Anna was not there either. She had probably gone out to dinner with colleagues at a restaurant in the city. Tania sat alone and ordered the local speciality, allerlei, a vegetable dish. She sat over her coffee for an hour, then left.
Passing through the lobby, she looked again at the pigeonholes. The key for 305 had gone.
Tania returned to her own room, picked up the typescript, and walked to the door of room 305.
There she hesitated. Once she had done this, she was committed. No cover story would explain or excuse her action. She was distributing anti-Soviet propaganda to the West. If she were caught, her life would be over.
She knocked on the door.
Anna opened it. She was barefoot and there was a toothbrush in her hand: clearly she had been getting ready for bed.
Tania put her finger on her lips, indicating silence. Then she handed Anna the typescript. She whispered: ‘I’ll come back in two hours.’ Then she walked away.
She returned to her own room and sat on the bed, shaking.
If Anna simply rejected the work, that would be bad enough. But, if Tania had misjudged her, Anna might feel obliged to tell someone in authority that she had been offered a dissident book. She might fear that, if she kept quiet about it, she could be accused of taking part in a conspiracy. She might think that the only sensible thing to do would be to report the illicit approach that had been made to her.
But Tania believed most Westerners did not think that way. Despite Tania’s dramatic precautions, Anna would have no real sense that she was guilty of a crime just by reading a typescript.
So the main question was whether Anna would like Vasili’s work. Daniil had, and so had the editors of New World. But they were the only people who had read the stories, and they were all Russian. How would a foreigner react? Tania felt confident that Anna would see that the material was well written, but would it move her? Would it break her heart?
At a few minutes past eleven, Tania returned to room 305.
Anna opened the door with the typescript in her hand.
Her face was wet with tears.
She spoke in a whisper. ‘It’s unbearable,’ she said. ‘We have to tell the world.’
*
One Friday night, Dave found out that Lew, the drummer in Plum Nellie, was homosexual.
Until then he had thought that Lew was just shy. A lot of girls wanted to have sex with boys who played in pop groups, and the dressing room was sometimes like a brothel, but Lew never took advantage. This was not astonishing: some did, some did not. Walli never went with ‘groupies’. Dave occasionally did, and Buzz, the bass player, never said no.
Plum Nellie were getting gigs again. ‘I Miss Ya, Alicia’ was in the Top Twenty at number nineteen, and rising. Dave and Walli were writing songs together, and hoping to make a long-playing record. Late one afternoon they went to the BBC studios in Portland Place and pre-recorded a radio performance. The money was peanuts but it was an opportunity to promote ‘I Miss Ya, Alicia’. Maybe the song would go to Number One. And, as Dave sometimes said, you could live on peanuts.
They came out blinking into the evening sunshine and decided to go for a drink at a nearby pub called the Golden Horn.
‘I don’t fancy a drink,’ said Lew.
‘Don’t be daft,’ Buzz said. ‘When have you ever said no to a pint of beer?’
‘Let’s go to a different pub, then,’ said Lew.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t like the look of that one.’
‘If you’re afraid of being pestered, put your sunglasses on.’
They had been on television several times, and they were sometimes recognized by fans in restaurants and bars, but there was rarely any trouble. They had learned to stay away from places where young teenagers might gather, such as coffee bars near schools, for that could lead to a mob scene; but they were all right in grown-up pubs.