He opened a bottle of Georgian champagne and put snacks on the table, squares of toast with egg salad and tomato, and fish roes on cucumber. Tania wondered who had made them. It would not be beyond him to have one of his girlfriends do it.
The apartment was comfortable, full of books and pictures. Vasili had a tapedeck that played cassettes. He was affluent now, even without the fortune in foreign royalties that he could not receive.
He wanted to know all about Poland. How had the Kremlin defeated Solidarity without an invasion? Why had Jaruzelski betrayed the Polish people? He did not think his apartment was bugged, but he played a Tchaikovsky cassette just in case.
Tania told him that Solidarity was not dead. It had gone underground. Many of the men arrested under martial law were still in jail, but the sexist secret police had failed to appreciate the major role played by women. Almost all the female organizers were still at large, including Danuta, who had been arrested then released. She was again working undercover, producing illegal newspapers and pamphlets, rebuilding lines of communication.
All the same, Tania had no hope. If they rebelled again, they would be crushed again. Vasili was more optimistic. ‘It was a near thing,’ he said. ‘In half a century, no one has come so close to defeating Communism.’
This was like the old days, Tania thought, feeling comfortable as the champagne relaxed her. Back in the early sixties, before Vasili was jailed, they had often sat around like this, talking and arguing about politics and literature and art.
She told him about the phone call from Mikhail Gorbachev. ‘He’s an odd one,’ Vasili said. ‘We in the agriculture ministry see a lot of him. He’s Yuri Andropov’s pet, and he seems to be a rock-solid Communist. His wife is even worse. Yet he backs reformist ideas, whenever he can do it without offending his superiors.’
‘My brother thinks highly of him.’
‘When Brezhnev dies – which can’t be far distant now, please, God – Andropov will make a bid for the leadership, and Gorbachev will back him. If the bid fails, both men will be finished. They’ll be sent to the provinces. But if Andropov succeeds, Gorbachev has a bright future.’
‘In any other country Gorbachev, at fifty, would be just the right age to become leader. Here, he’s too young.’
‘The Kremlin is a geriatric ward.’
Vasili served borsch, beetroot soup with beef. ‘This is good,’ Tania said. She could not help asking: ‘Who made it?’
‘I did, of course. Who else?’
‘I don’t know. Do you have a housekeeper?’
‘Just a babushka who comes to clean the apartment and iron my shirts.’
‘One of your girlfriends, then?’
‘I don’t have a girlfriend at the moment.’
Tania was intrigued. She recalled the last conversation they had had before she went to Warsaw. He had claimed to have changed, and grown up. She had felt he needed to show that, not just say it. She had been sure it was just another line of chat intended to get her into bed. Could she have been wrong? She doubted it.
After they had eaten, she asked him how he felt about those royalties piling up in London.
‘You should have the money,’ he said.
‘Don’t be silly. You wrote the books.’
‘I had little to lose – I was already in Siberia. They couldn’t do much more to me, except kill me, and I would have been relieved to die. But you risked everything – your career, your freedom, your life. You deserve the money more than I do.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t take it, even if you could give it to me.’
‘Then it will stay there until I die, probably.’
‘You wouldn’t be tempted to escape to the West?’
‘No.’
‘You sound sure.’
‘I am sure.’
‘Why? You’d be free to write whatever you like, all the time. No more radio serials.’
‘I wouldn’t go . . . unless you went, too.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t expect you to believe me. Why should you? But you’re the most important person in my life. You came to Siberia to find me – no one else did. You tried to get me released. You smuggled my work out to the free world. For twenty years, you’ve been the best friend a person could have.’
She was moved. She had never looked at it that way. ‘Thank you for saying that,’ she said.
‘It’s no more than the truth. I’m not leaving.’ Then he added: ‘Unless, of course, you go with me.’
She stared at him. Was he making a serious suggestion? She was frightened to ask. She looked out of the window at the snowflakes whirling in the lamplight.
Vasili said: ‘Twenty years, and we’ve never even kissed.’
‘True.’
‘Yet still you think I’m a heartless Casanova.’
In truth she no longer knew what to think. Had he changed? Did people ever really change? She said: ‘After all this time, it would be a shame to spoil our record.’
‘And yet I want to, with all my heart.’
She changed the subject. ‘Given the chance, would you defect to the West?’
‘With you, yes. Not otherwise.’
‘I always wanted to make the Soviet Union a better place, not leave it. But after the defeat of Solidarity I find it difficult to believe in a better future. Communism could last a thousand years.’
‘It could last longer than me or you, at least.’
Tania hesitated on the brink. She was surprised by how much she wanted to kiss him. And more: she wanted to stay here, talking to him, on this couch in this warm apartment with those snowflakes falling outside the window, for a long, long time. What a strange feeling that was, she thought. Perhaps it was love.
So she kissed him.
After a while, they went into the bedroom.
*
Natalya was always first with the news. She came to Dimka’s office in the Kremlin on Christmas Eve looking anxious. ‘Andropov is not going to be at the Politburo meeting,’ she said. ‘He’s too ill to leave the hospital.’
The next Politburo meeting was scheduled for the day after Christmas.
‘Damn,’ said Dimka. ‘That’s dangerous.’
Strangely, Yuri Andropov had turned out to be a good Soviet leader. For the previous fifteen years he had been the efficient head of a cruel and brutal secret service, the KGB. And now, as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he continued to repress dissidents ruthlessly. But within the party he was astonishingly tolerant of new ideas and reforms. Like a medieval Pope who tortured heretics yet discussed with his cardinals arguments against the existence of God, Andropov talked freely to his inner circle – which included both Dimka and Natalya – about the shortcomings of the Soviet system. And the talk led to action. Gorbachev’s brief was extended from agriculture to the entire economy, and he produced a programme to decentralize the Soviet economy, taking some of the power of decision away from Moscow and giving it to managers closer to the problems.
Unfortunately, Andropov fell ill shortly before Christmas 1983, having been leader for barely a year. This worried Dimka and Natalya. Andropov’s stick-in-the-mud rival for the leadership had been Konstantin Chernenko, who was still number two in the hierarchy. Dimka feared that Chernenko would take advantage of Andropov’s illness to regain the ascendancy.
Now Natalya said: ‘Andropov has written a speech to be read out.’
Dimka shook his head. ‘That’s not enough. In Andropov’s absence, Chernenko will chair the meeting, and once that happens everyone will accept him as leader-in-waiting. And then the whole country will go backwards.’ The prospect was too depressing to contemplate.
‘Obviously we want Gorbachev to chair the meeting.’
‘But Chernenko is number two. I wish he’d go to hospital.’
‘He will soon – he’s not a well man.’
‘But probably not soon enough. Is there any way we can bypass him?’
Natalya considered. ‘Well, the Politburo must do what Andropov tells it to do.’
‘So he could just issue an order saying Gorbachev will chair the meeting?’
‘Yes, he could. He’s still the boss.’
‘He could add a paragraph to his speech.’
‘Perfect. I’ll call him and suggest it.’
Later that afternoon, Dimka got a message summoning him to Natalya’s office. When he got there he saw that her eyes were gleaming with excitement and triumph. With her was Arkady Volsky, Andropov’s personal aide. Andropov had summoned Volsky to the hospital and had given him a handwritten addendum to the speech. Volsky now gave it to Dimka.
The last paragraph read:
For reasons which you understand, I will not be able to chair meetings of the Politburo and Secretariat in the near future. I would therefore request members of the central committee to examine the question of entrusting the leadership of the Politburo and Secretariat to Mikhail Sergeyevitch Gorbachev.