The Russian Affair

SIX



The following day, she urged her father not to forget to call Doctor Shchedrin that Wednesday, when the results of Petya’s tests would be in. She admonished the boy not to make things difficult for his grandfather and implored Viktor Ipalyevich to keep television watching within reasonable limits.

The bus stopped on the Kutuzovsky Prospekt, about a ten-minute walk from Anna’s apartment. The checkered travel bag bounded off her thighs as she walked. She hadn’t had enough sleep and felt generally confused, troubled by her vague sense of what lay ahead. When she reached the square, it didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for. The banner was legible from far away: WELCOME PIONEERS! OFF TO DUBNA, THE SCIENCE CITY! The words covered the whole side of the bus. Anna chose a window seat and wedged her bag into the space beside her feet. The orphanage director sat across the aisle and wanted to chat; Anna’s answers were so meager that he gave up. Most people climbed into the bus during the last ten minutes before its departure; the Aeroflot pilot was even a little late. With the help of her bulky bag, Anna kept the seat next to her empty. She wanted to sleep, she wanted to reflect, and she had to get busy with the book Kamarovsky had sent her.

It was still pretty dark outside—full daylight was a long way off, but some dawn grayness filtered through the window. The bus had hardly started moving when Anna laid her head back and closed her eyes. In a last flash of awareness, she recognized that they were swinging onto Dmitrovsky Chaussée; from there they would access the expressway and head north. The roar of the traffic was transformed into the shrieks of birds, ugly creatures that fluttered and flapped around her; their cries sounded like accusations. Although dozing, not fully conscious, Anna was nonetheless aware that an argument had flared up around her. The forewoman was of the opinion that Soviet science was ten years in advance of the Americans. When the orphanage director pointed out that the researchers who’d won the Nobel Prize in recent years had come overwhelmingly from the West, the slight fellow stepped into a crossfire aimed at him by the others. Wasn’t he aware that Stockholm was situated in the West? Had he ever taken a close look at the members of the Nobel committee? A person would have to be blind not to notice the tendency toward provocation in the selection of winners. And besides, as early as 1945, the Americans had started recruiting Nazi scientists, regardless of whether they were war criminals or not. “U.S. technology is nothing more than Nazi technology in its mature form,” the forewoman said, summarizing her position. “Soviet achievements, on the other hand, are a real result of cooperation among socialist states.”

The orphanage director was so bold as to observe aloud that in Dubna, despite the many socialist nations with scientific programs, the percentage of researchers from the DDR was disproportionately high. “I would assume that these people also worked for Hitler in the old days.”

There was something decidedly physical about the storm of objections to this remark. The members of the delegation crowded around the orphanage director, giving him pieces of their minds. When the bus unexpectedly turned off the main highway and came to a stop, the squabblers thought Popov had ordered the halt by way of calming things down. But this was, in fact, the first item on the day’s program: “Breakfast in Dmitrov, City of the Revolution.”

On the double, the former Pioneers were led into an unprepossessing wooden house, which accommodated a nursery school. Two rows of little children, wearing heavy clothes and holding hands, formed a guard of honor for the guests from Moscow. Inside, the headmistress of the school greeted them and invited them to sit at tables already prepared for their visit. The coffee was fresh, and the bread was still warm. Everyone tucked in hungrily; Anna refilled her coffee cup twice. As the guests ate, the headmistress explained that they were on historical ground: Prince Peter Kropotkin, an eminent forerunner of anarchist communism, had chosen this simple house for his residence when he returned to Russia from his long exile abroad. The guests hardly had time to finish their meal; still clutching their cups, they were escorted into Kropotkin’s study, which had been preserved in its original condition. Group leader Popov expressed his thanks in the name of the delegation, and everyone walked out past the guard of freezing children and climbed back aboard the bus.

The travel time to Dubna had been given out as an hour and a half, but Popov called for a second halt along the way. In a thick fog, they had to get off the bus and clamber up an unreal hill. “We are now on the outskirts of the industrial city of Yakhroma,” he declaimed. “Do you see that railroad bridge? It marks the farthest point that Hitler’s soldiers reached. The Germans were less than seventy miles from Moscow, but they underestimated the striking force of the Red Army, and in their plans of conquest, they had made no allowances for the pitiless Soviet winter!” The place Popov pointed to could have been anything at all; except for swaths of fog, nothing was identifiable. Nevertheless, the little gathering lingered there, gazing in silence, and nobody spoke on the way back to the bus. They drove along slowly; the bus was now traveling through a thick, milky fog its headlights could barely penetrate.

The blacktop road ran alongside the railroad line, bridges of various types crossed rivers and marshy areas, and, as scheduled, the group reached the city shortly before noon. At the city line, a banner greeted them: THE ATOM IS A WORKER, NOT A SOLDIER! The flags of the nations that were members of the Institute were flying above the hotel entrance; Anna could identify most of the flags, but the orphanage director had to help her with Albania and Vietnam. The bus turned ponderously around the circular flower bed in front of the hotel. A man in a fur coat was waiting for them; he greeted Popov but didn’t offer him his hand.

“Czestmir Adamek,” Popov said, presenting him. “Our scientific guide. When you have questions, you will address them only to him, and he will relay them to the Institute worker. In this way, we can prevent unqualified questions from stealing the researchers’ time.”

“Comrade—Comrade—Comrade—” The fur-clad man nodded to each of them as they stepped out of the bus; he took a moment longer to assess the women.

In the entrance hall, there were two stairways and an elevator with paint flaking off its metal doors. The reception desk was raised, offering an overview of the lobby, and the front desk manager was waiting at his post with the room keys lined up on the counter in front of him. List in hand, Popov stepped up to the desk and organized the distribution of rooms. He began in alphabetical order: “Armiryev, Butyrskaya—”

The front desk manager interrupted him: “Is there a Comrade Tsazukhina among you?”

Anna needed a moment to react to her father’s surname, even though Anna Tsazukhina was what she’d been called when she was a Pioneer Girl. Her first thought was of Petya. Were his test results so bad as to necessitate a telephone call to Dubna? She pushed her way through the group.

“You’re Comrade Anna Tsazukhina?” the uniformed manager asked, holding out an envelope. “This was left at the desk for you.” Having turned over the envelope, he began to compare Popov’s list with his own and to hand out the keys.

Avoiding the eyes of those around her, Anna retreated to a chair near a window. She opened the sealed envelope, which bore her name, and unfolded the sheet of paper inside. “Welcome, Pioneer Girl,” she read. The words were written in the Deputy Minister’s sloping hand. “Your program ends today at nine. Anton will be parked at the rear entrance.”

She turned around. Couldn’t everyone see how the hot flush spread over her face?

Nadezhda approached her. “Something unpleasant?” she asked.

“On the contrary.” Anna quickly shoved the note back into the envelope, picked up her bag, and returned to the waiting line. At that moment, though she could not have said why, Alexey’s lines made her unspeakably happy, so much so that her eyes became moist. She forgot the delegation, her new surroundings, even Kamarovsky’s assignment. She was going to see him again, Alexey, her big, clumsy wolf; somewhere in this settlement in the woods, he was waiting for her with cooled wine and some delicacy to eat. His simple message proved to Anna that it had really been his idea to fetch her to this place. He missed her; for the sake of her company, he’d organized a complicated process and used his influence, just for two nights with her. She stuffed the envelope into her coat pocket. In a year and a half, she and Alexey had never yet spent an entire night together, and Anna was looking forward to the experience. At the same time, it made carrying out her assignment even more repugnant. She stood there, deep in thought, surrounded by the other “distinguished visitors,” who were comparing their room numbers, stowing their baggage, and making plans for lunch. Popov, standing on the stairs and speaking loudly, informed them that their first activity would be a visit to the synchrocyclotron.

“Tsazukhina,” the receptionist said, holding up the key to room number seven. Anna nodded and took the key. This time, she permitted the orphanage director to carry her bag.


The main course had just been served when Czestmir Adamek entered the dining room. The scientific guide spotted Popov at the Aeroflot pilot’s table, slipped past the other tables, all of them occupied by members of the visiting delegation, and hissed something in the group leader’s ear. Popov wanted to finish his meal, but he rose to his feet when Adamek gestured toward the clock on the wall.

“Everyone listen up!” Popov said. He informed his group that the sightseeing tour had been rescheduled. “We meet at the bus in five minutes.” Popov wiped his hands on the tablecloth, assumed that everyone would comply with the new instructions, and hurried to the exit. When he looked back, he saw that only the bus driver had stood up.

“You’re not at some coffee klatch!” Adamek cried out. “The science center is a high-precision operation. Every man-minute costs the State a million rubles. Your conduct is harmful to Soviet research!”

As though they were puppets on a string, the members of the delegation stood up and pressed toward the door. No one thought about their coats; dressed as they were, they rushed through the dining room and into the open. Because of the cold, the bus wouldn’t start right away, and the driver kept looking apologetically at Adamek and pleadingly at his dashboard. At last, the diesel engine sputtered to life, and the bus swung away from the hotel and onto the main road. The snow lay a yard thick on the roofs of the Institute. Something was glinting among the bare larches; Adamek confirmed that the Volga, at that time of the year still covered with thick ice, was what they were seeing through the trees.

They reached a complex that looked like a factory building; as they got closer, it became clear that the structure was about one hundred feet high and entirely of concrete. The Pioneers sprang from the bus and followed Adamek through a steel door, into a stairwell, and up the stairs, their boots resounding militarily in the narrow space. In an anteroom, Adamek had everyone stop and pointed to a radioactivity-measuring device set in the wall. The needle was at rest in the green area.

“We’re taking advantage of a pause between two work processes to view the accelerator. We shall move in an exactly straight line, very close together. There will be no talking.” Adamek pressed a button, the door clattered, and a high-pitched acoustic signal sounded; some visitors held their ears. An Asian man in light gray overalls and a close-fitting hood that left only his face uncovered was awaiting them. He distributed caps and overshoes, all of the same white, synthetic material.

“The air around the accelerator is purified,” Adamek explained. “Hurry up and put those things on. Work time on a synchrocyclotron is worth more than gold.”

The Asian shoved a box toward them. “For the watches,” he said.

Adamek was the first to remove his from his wrist. “The magnetic field hasn’t been neutralized yet. The mechanism of your watches would go crazy in there.” At the next door, he stopped yet again. “The nuclear spectroscopy section has just completed a test. You will observe how the researchers dismantle their target, which has just been bombarded with protons. From this point on, there must be absolute silence.” He entered and stood next to the door until Popov had ushered the group inside.