6
The Nina Onilova Room in the Kremlin was named after a female machine-gunner killed at the Battle of Sevastopol. On the wall was a framed black-and-white photo of a Red Army general placing the Order of the Red Banner medal on her tombstone. The picture hung over a white marble fireplace that was stained like a smoker’s fingers. All around the room, elaborate plaster mouldings framed squares of light paintwork where other pictures had once hung, suggesting that the walls had not been painted since the revolution. Perhaps the room had once been an elegant salon. Now it was furnished with canteen tables pushed together to form a long rectangle and twenty or so cheap chairs. On the tables were ceramic ashtrays that looked as if they were emptied daily but never wiped.
Dimka Dvorkin walked in with his mind in a whirl and his stomach in knots.
The room was the regular meeting place of aides to the Ministers and Secretaries who formed the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the governing body of the USSR.
Dimka was an aide to Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary and Chairman of the Presidium, but, all the same, he felt he should not be here.
The Vienna Summit was a few weeks away. It would be the dramatic first encounter between Khrushchev and the new American President, John F. Kennedy. Tomorrow, at the most important Presidium of the year, the leaders of the USSR would decide strategy for the summit. Today, the aides were gathering to prepare for the Presidium. It was a planning meeting for a planning meeting.
Khrushchev’s representative had to present the leader’s thinking so that the other aides could prepare their bosses for tomorrow. His unspoken task was to uncover any latent opposition to Khrushchev’s ideas and, if possible, quash it. It was his solemn duty to ensure that tomorrow’s discussion went smoothly for the leader.
Dimka was familiar with Khrushchev’s thinking about the summit, but, all the same, he felt that he could not possibly cope with this meeting. He was the youngest and most inexperienced of Khrushchev’s aides. He was only a year out of university. He had never been to the pre-Presidium meeting before: he was too junior. But, ten minutes ago, his secretary had informed him that one of the senior aides had called in sick and the other two had just been in a car crash so he, Dimka, had to stand in.
Dimka had got a job working for Khrushchev for two reasons. One was that he had come top of every class he had ever attended, from nursery school through university. The other was that his uncle was a general. He did not know which factor was the more important.
The Kremlin presented a monolithic appearance to the outside world but, in truth, it was a battlefield. Khrushchev’s hold on power was not strong. He was a Communist, heart and soul, but he was also a reformer who saw failings in the Soviet system and wanted to implement new ideas. But the old Stalinists in the Kremlin were not yet defeated. They were alert for any opportunity to weaken Khrushchev and roll back his reforms.
The meeting was informal, the aides drinking tea and smoking with their jackets off and their ties undone – most were men, though not all. Dimka spotted a friendly face: Natalya Smotrov, aide to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. She was in her mid-twenties, and attractive, despite a drab black dress. Dimka did not know her well but he had spoken to her a few times. Now he sat down next to her. She looked surprised to see him. ‘Konstantinov and Pajari have been in a car crash,’ he explained.
‘Are they hurt?’
‘Not badly.’
‘What about Alkaev?’
‘Off sick with shingles.’
‘Nasty. So you’re the leader’s representative.’
‘I’m terrified.’
‘You’ll be fine.’
He looked around. They all seemed to be waiting for something. In a low voice he said to Natalya: ‘Who chairs this meeting?’
One of the others heard him. It was Yevgeny Filipov, who worked for conservative Defence Minister Rodion Malinovsky. Filipov was in his thirties but dressed older, in a baggy post-war suit and a grey flannel shirt. He repeated Dimka’s question loudly, in a scornful tone. ‘Who chairs this meeting? You do, of course. You’re aide to the chairman of the Presidium, aren’t you? Get on with it, college boy.’
Dimka felt himself redden. For a moment he was lost for words. Then inspiration struck, and he said: ‘Thanks to Major Yuri Gagarin’s remarkable space flight, Comrade Khrushchev will go to Vienna with the congratulations of the world ringing in his ears.’ Last month Gagarin had been the first human being to travel into outer space in a rocket, beating the Americans by just a few weeks, in a stunning scientific and propaganda coup for the Soviet Union and for Nikita Khrushchev.
The aides around the table clapped, and Dimka began to feel better.
Then Filipov spoke again. ‘The First Secretary might do better to have ringing in his ears the inaugural speech of President Kennedy,’ he said. He seemed incapable of speaking without a sneer. ‘In case comrades around the table have forgotten, Kennedy accused us of planning world domination, and he vowed to pay any price to stop us. After all the friendly moves we have made – unwisely, in the opinion of some experienced comrades – Kennedy could hardly have made clearer his aggressive intentions.’ He raised his arm with a finger in the air, like a schoolteacher. ‘Only one response is possible from us: increased military strength.’
Dimka was still thinking up a rejoinder when Natalya beat him to it. ‘That’s a race we can’t win,’ she said with a brisk common-sense air. ‘The United States is richer than the Soviet Union, and they can easily match any increase in our military forces.’
She was more sensible than her conservative boss, Dimka inferred. He shot her a grateful look and followed up. ‘Hence Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful coexistence, which enables us to spend less on the army, and instead invest in agriculture and industry.’ Kremlin conservatives hated peaceful coexistence. For them, the conflict with capitalist-imperialism was a war to the death.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dimka saw his secretary, Vera, enter the room, a bright, nervy woman of forty. He waved her away.
Filipov was not so easily disposed of. ‘Let’s not permit a naive view of world politics to encourage us to reduce our army too fast,’ he said scornfully. ‘We can hardly claim to be winning on the international stage. Look at how the Chinese defy us. That weakens us at Vienna.’
Why was Filipov trying so hard to prove that Dimka was a fool? Dimka suddenly recalled that Filipov had wanted a job in Khrushchev’s office – the job that Dimka had got.
‘As the Bay of Pigs weakened Kennedy,’ Dimka replied. The American president had authorized a crackpot CIA plan for an invasion of Cuba at a place called the Bay of Pigs: the scheme had gone wrong and Kennedy had been humiliated. ‘I think our leader’s position is stronger.’
‘All the same, Khrushchev has failed—’ Filipov stopped, realizing he was going too far. These pre-meeting discussions were frank, but there were limits.
Dimka seized on the moment of weakness. ‘What has Khrushchev failed to do, comrade?’ he said. ‘Please enlighten us all.’
Filipov amended quickly. ‘We have failed to achieve our main foreign policy objective: a permanent resolution of the Berlin situation. East Germany is our frontier post in Europe. Its borders secure the borders of Poland and Czechoslovakia. Its unresolved status is intolerable.’
‘All right,’ Dimka said, and he was surprised to hear a note of confidence in his own voice. ‘I think that’s enough discussion of general principles. Before I close the meeting I will explain the trend of the First Secretary’s current thinking on the problem.’
Filipov opened his mouth to protest against this abrupt termination, but Dimka cut him off. ‘Comrades will speak when invited by the chair,’ he said, deliberately making his voice a harsh grind; and they all went quiet.
‘In Vienna, Khrushchev will tell Kennedy we can wait no longer. We have made reasonable proposals for regulating the situation in Berlin, and all we hear from the Americans is that they want no changes.’ Around the table, several men nodded. ‘If they will not agree a plan, Khrushchev will say, then we will take unilateral action; and if the Americans try to stop us, we will meet force with force.’
There was a long moment of silence. Dimka took advantage of it by standing up. ‘Thank you for your attendance,’ he said.
Natalya said what everyone was thinking. ‘Does that mean we are willing to go to war with the Americans over Berlin?’
‘The First Secretary does not believe there will be a war,’ said Dimka, giving them the evasive answer that Khrushchev had given him. ‘Kennedy is not mad.’
He caught a look of mingled surprise and admiration from Natalya as he walked away from the table. He could not believe he had been so tough. He had never been a *cat, but this was a powerful and smart group of men, and he had bullied them. His position helped: new though he was, his desk in the First Secretary’s suite of offices gave him power. And, paradoxically, Filipov’s hostility had helped. They could all sympathize with the need to come down hard on someone who was trying to undermine the leader.
Vera was hovering in the anteroom. She was an experienced political assistant who would not panic unnecessarily. Dimka had a flash of intuition. ‘It’s my sister, isn’t it?’ he said.
Vera was spooked. Her eyes widened. ‘How do you do that?’ she said in awe.
It was not supernatural. He had feared for some time that Tania was heading for trouble. He said: ‘What has she done?’
‘She’s been arrested.’
‘Oh, hell.’