Making Enemies (10 page)

‘I am in Cambridge,’ the voice said. ‘You must help me.’

I found Krasov sheltering inside a telephone box on the Barton Road. His black overcoat, briefcase and hat made him sharply visible through the glass of the kiosk.

‘My dear friend,’ he said. He took off his glove to shake my hand. ‘Forgive me for dragging you out on such a day.’

He tried to smile but his face was stiff with cold. I was shocked at his appearance. He had not shaved for a day or two, and his eyes had sunk even further into his skull. He seemed smaller and more fragile than ever.

‘For now I have escaped,’ he said. ‘It was not difficult. As matter of fact, those cretins they send to follow me would not see me if they were standing on other side of road right now.’

But there was a hollowness to the bravura. This was not the man I had met only a few days before. The stuffing had been knocked out of him. Krasov hunched against the cold and pulled his overcoat tighter around him.

‘I am rather cold,’ he said. ‘Foolishly, I did not come prepared for English winter. If we might go together quickly to your house.’

We set off through the snow, Krasov with his head down to avoid detection and his arm through mine. I carried his briefcase.

‘You’re safe enough here,’ I said. ‘No one will recognize you.’

‘Me? I am not even safe in my dreams.’

Celia was waiting for us in the hall and she greeted Krasov with all the authority of a nurse at a casualty station. ‘Take your shoes off at once, Mr Krasov, and your socks. They’re soaked through. Poor man, you’re frozen. Come into the kitchen and warm up.’

Krasov followed her obediently and she sat him at the kitchen table with his back to the stove and gave him a cup of tea. The
children crept into the room, attracted by the sound of a strange voice, and stared-at him from the safety of the door. Krasov stared back and said nothing. Children, I suspected, had no place in his life.

Celia and I had a whispered conversation in the hall.

‘What does he want?’ she asked. ‘Has he said?’

‘Not a dicky bird.’

‘Is he expecting to stay?’

‘He won’t ask. He’ll wait for us to offer.’

‘And if we don’t?’

‘He’ll go away again.’

‘We can’t possibly let him go in this state.’

‘What about Geoffrey?’

‘Leave Geoffrey to me. We’ve got to help this poor man first.’

She went back into the kitchen, sending the children away as she did so. Krasov looked relieved.

‘Mr Krasov.’

‘Dear lady.’

‘What do you want us to do with you?’

‘What do I want to do with myself? That is question.’ He shrugged. ‘If I knew answer, I would be someone else.’

‘Are you in danger? Are you running away?’

He smiled forlornly. ‘I have been running away all my life, from myself and other enemies.’

‘Danny has told me everything.’ Celia was in no mood for equivocation. ‘What are we to do with you, Mr Krasov?’

‘I throw myself on your mercy, dear lady. Perhaps a day or two. If you could give me that. I will be no trouble.’

‘Somewhere to hide? Is that it?’

‘Staying in cupboard all day? Creeping out at night? No, I do not want to hide.’

‘Then what kind of arrangement are we talking about?’

‘An arrangement, dear lady, where I am transparent.’

He stared at her unblinking, black eyes shining out of the shrunken saucer of his face.

‘We’ll put you in the spare room,’ Celia said decisively. ‘I’ll make up the bed in a moment. Did you bring anything with you?’

‘I am what you see. No clothes, no papers. In my country, you can go anywhere without clothes, but without papers you are naked.’

‘First you must warm up. I’ll run you a bath. Danny, put a kettle
on for a hot-water bottle. You will spend the afternoon in bed, Mr Krasov. Then I shall bring you some soup. Later on we will decide what to do with you.’

Krasov followed her upstairs, meek as a child.

*

‘He can’t possibly stay here,’ had been my father’s immediate reaction when, on his arrival home, Celia had told him that a Soviet journalist was asleep upstairs. I was surprised at his hostility.

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t want an escaping Russian in my house.’

‘Nonsense, Geoffrey. He’s a poor frightened man who needs somewhere to rest.’

‘We know nothing about him.’

‘He’s Danny’s friend.’

‘That may not be a recommendation.’

‘If you could have seen him, Geoffrey,’ Celia said. ‘His awful worn coat. Paper shoes. In this weather, too. The dear man was nearly dead with cold.’

My father gave ground, acknowledging Celia’s decision with a shrug and a muttered: ‘I’m not at all happy about it.’

‘You’ll meet him at supper, Geoffrey,’ Celia said. ‘Provided he’s well enough to get up. I shall be the judge of that.’

Krasov was well enough. In fact, he was much restored by his sleep, he assured us as he thanked Celia for her kindness to the ‘lonely Russian who had arrived so unexpected on your doorstep’, and he was very ready to accept my father’s offer of a glass of whisky in his study.

‘Will you join us, Daniel?’

I refused. Looking back, how I wished I hadn’t. Then the study door closed and I went back into the kitchen.

During the time Krasov and my father were alone together something happened to upset my father deeply. When I opened the door half an hour later to say that supper was ready, Krasov was sitting at my father’s lectern looking like a bird of prey poised to swoop and strike. Circling around him in the restricted space of the study, hands thrust deep in his pockets, chin resting on his chest, my father had the appearance of a caged animal. However hard he struggled he could not get free.

Again and again in the days that followed I replayed my impressions
of those few seconds. I saw Krasov, sharp, attentive, his huge eyes facing me warily and with suspicion. My father had his back to me. He turned at the sound of my voice and his expression was dazed. Krasor moved quickly away from the lectern to distract my attention from my father, giving him time to recover.

‘Time to eat, Professor,’ he said, smiling at me. He took my father’s arm and led him firmly to the door. The unexpected gesture roused my father, and in the few yards between the study and the kitchen I watched the enormous effort of will he made to conceal his distress from Celia. He was not very successful.

At dinner, he appeared flushed and excitable, his words coming out in a rush as his thoughts tumbled over each other. He was clearly very tense. He hardly touched his food, while Krasov’s appetite remained undiminished. I saw concern on Celia’s face but she said nothing. But the image of my father coming out of his study, Krasov holding his arm, eyes wide as if he had been badly frightened, did not go away easily.

Krasov’s bitter humour entertained us while we ate. He was a fatalist, and that gave him the ability to live for the moment. For the immediate present he was safe, and that allowed him to relax.

Why didn’t we question him about his sudden appearance in Cambridge? Why did we let him invade our lives without asking what had driven him to seek refuge with us on the strength of one meeting? The truth is, we saw a man in need and we responded. We took him in because we trusted him and feared for his safety. I shall never understand how we could have been so naive.

One moment she is caught up in her narrative, the next her mental energy drains away and she hears the sound of her own voice. She is no longer inside the story she is telling, she is drifting apart from it, the events becoming more and more distant as they turn into shapeless clouds and evaporate in her mind. A sense of desperation rises within her that she can hardly control. She stops in mid-sentence, unable to go on, at least for the moment. She looks at Stevens despairingly.

(How much longer do we have? Is it dawn yet? How can I cram everything into a single night?)

He has already got to his feet (she remembers that he is never still when he talks, he is lecturing to his pupils, up and down the narrow dais from which he addresses them) and she knows he is going to give her time to get her breath back. Once again she is aware of how he responds instinctively to her needs.

‘The day Krasov came to my house was particularly cold,’ he says. ‘I arrived home about three o’clock after a Governing Body meeting to be greeted with the news that a strange Russian was asleep in the spare room upstairs, and would I make as little noise as possible. He appeared before dinner and joined me in my study for a drink. An extraordinary, birdlike man: huge head, thin arms, enormous eyes that seemed to trap you in their gaze.’

Little Krasov, she thinks. Geoffrey has met Little Krasov. How strange that their lives should be connected in this way. She listens carefully while he tells her how Little Krasov brought her back into the life of her English professor.

*

‘My son Daniel tells me you’re running away,’ Stevens said. ‘Cambridge is an odd place to hide.’

‘That is story I give Daniel,’ Krasov said. ‘Like most Russian stories, it is part truth, part invention.’

‘You’re not running away?’

‘As matter of fact I come to Cambridge to see you.’

‘I didn’t imagine you were aware of my existence until today.’

‘Yes, we know of Professor Stevens in Soviet Union.’ Krasov grinned. ‘Not widely, you understand, but where it matters.’

‘I’m flattered. But that doesn’t explain your presence here.’

‘I am messenger. I bring greetings from old Russian friend.’

‘Do I have any old Russian friends?’

‘Ruth Marchenko,’ he said. ‘Isn’t she your friend?’

Stevens was stunned. ‘Is she alive?’

‘I am told she was few days ago. Of course, in Soviet Union, in few days, much can change.’ Again the grin.

Ruth Marchenko
.

How can he describe that moment? It was like a huge rush of water bursting through a door that had remained tightly shut for years. The past rushed out at him, throwing him off balance with its roaring flood of memories.

‘So, you remember her?’ Krasov asked.

‘Of course I do.’

‘She will be pleased. She was afraid you forget her.’

‘How is she?’

‘Quite well, I think.’

‘How have you come across her?’

Krasov smiled. ‘Marchenko is my friend also. We grow up together. We are neighbours. Our parents are friends. She is good woman, always good to me. Clever too. She is nuclear physicist but you know that already.’

‘Tell me about her.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘We have not seen each other for sixteen years.’

‘She lives in Moscow with her mother and son.’

‘She has a son?’

‘Sure. Her husband was engineer, like me. I was trained as engineer, you know. Husband is dead. She works on secret project at the Institute of Nuclear Research. She has good reputation in Soviet Union.’

‘She is well?’

‘I think, yes. We have shortages, worse than here. Marchenko is lucky, she is scientist, she has privileged life.’

‘Yet something is not well,’ Stevens said, ‘and you are here to tell me about it. Am I right?’

Krasov looked at him over the rim of his glass. ‘I am happy you understand,’ he said. ‘Yes, Marchenko has problem.’

‘What kind of problem?’

‘Her life is in danger.’

‘In danger from what?’

‘I will need a little more whisky before I can tell you that,’ Krasov said, handing his glass to Stevens.

*

‘What did he tell you about me?’ she asks.

He describes how she stood up at the monthly progress meeting to ask her questions; how a group under her leadership presented a list of demands to the Institute’s directorate; how she and her colleagues matched the directorate’s failure to reply with a progressive slowing down of the work on the Soviet nuclear bomb, until nothing was done.

‘He told me that, almost single-handed, you brought the Soviet nuclear programme to a halt,’ Stevens replies. ‘Is that true?’

‘More or less,’ she answers.

‘You must have been very brave.’

She is not listening to him. Wait, she wants to say. This is the story I came to Helsinki to tell you but what Krasov told you is not my story.
Wait.
It is like her story but it is
not
what happened. Krasov gave Stevens the version he was instructed to tell. How is he connected to the Institute? Who is telling him what is going on? Why? What is happening?

Who told Krasov to go to Cambridge to speak to Stevens? Krasov is taking instructions from someone, that is obvious. Someone unknown who knows about her. She doubts it is Andropov but if not Andropov, who? Maybe there is some other purpose at work now, a secret agenda she does not understand but which frightens her. Maybe Krasov is working against her. That is what distresses her. Her oldest friend, Little Krasov, whom she has always trusted, is betraying her, and, hanging over everything, who are they after: her or Stevens?

She wants to stop Stevens telling her anything more, she wants to say to him, don’t believe any of this, it is an invention, a trap, all lies. There is no truth any more, it is lost, obliterated, forgotten. Krasov lied to you. I was acting on instructions. Nothing is what it seems.

Listen, the voice inside her says. Listen to what he tells you. Let
him finish. You may learn something. If Stevens is in danger, then you must help him. If you are in danger, then you may help yourself. Remember those who depend on you.

‘Krasov told me,’ Stevens said, ‘that you and your colleagues feared the continuing silence of the political authorities to your opposition. With each day that passed you became more sure that when they did react to your refusal to work, they would do so repressively. They would arrest you, try you secretly and execute you. That was the message you had asked Krasov to come to Cambridge to give me. I was your last resort. Am I right?’

Before she can answer his question there is something she must know first.

‘When did Little Krasov come to Cambridge?’ she asks. ‘What month?’

‘January.’

January
?

‘Can you remember the exact date?’

He takes out his red leather university diary that she remembers so well.

‘It was the day of the Governing Body. January the ninth.’

‘
The ninth?
’

‘What does that tell you?’ he asks.

That was at least a week
before
she had asked her question at the monthly progress meeting. Ten days before the secret committee was formed. How did Krasov know everything before it had happened?

‘I asked my question at the monthly progress meeting on January the eighteenth. The events that Little Krasov described to you had not yet happened on the day that he told you about them.’

‘Good God.’ Stevens stares at her.

‘He was lying to you. What his purpose was, I don’t know.’

‘Did what he described happen?’

‘More or less.’

‘But later.’

‘Days later, yes.’

‘Krasov said he was your friend.’

‘Until I heard what you told me, he was my friend.’

‘Tell me what happened at the Institute. You and your colleagues refused to work on your nuclear bomb programme. Is that true?’

‘Yes.’

‘On what grounds did you refuse?’

How can she answer that? She refused because she was instructed to do so by Andropov. She feared the consequences if she did not obey. Only later (how much later?) did she come to believe the arguments that he gave her; only then did the cause whose script he had written become her own. How can she explain that conversion to Stevens?

‘A number of us who were working on the bomb had become aware of the possible consequences of what we were doing,’ she says. ‘It was a slow process, it didn’t happen all at once. We studied the effects of the American bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We created models predicting the effects of explosions of different sizes of nuclear bomb. We came to understand the implications of the work we were involved in.’

‘So you acted on your beliefs,’ he says.

What choice did I have? she wants to say. At that time she had no beliefs – they came later.

‘Yes,’ she says, not sure if she’s telling the truth.

‘Krasov said your life was in danger. Was that true?’

‘Probably.’

‘You aren’t certain?’

‘It was a strange time. Nothing happened as we expected it to. We made our protest and there was no reaction. Only silence.’

‘Krasov made a good case. He convinced me.’

‘I had no knowledge that Krasov was coming to Cambridge to see you, nor that he knew anything about what was happening at the Institute.’

‘Then why did he tell me that he was speaking on your behalf?’

Someone must have told him about Leiden, she wants to say. Why can’t Stevens see this? Have the years taught him nothing about the ways of the world?

‘If I knew I would tell you. He is the agent of someone – who that someone is, I do not know. What they want I do not know. Krasov and his masters were using me without my knowledge. I am sorry that you believed him.’

‘If I hadn’t been convinced, I wouldn’t be here now. At least we have that to thank him for. He has brought us together again.’

‘You are wrong,’ she said. ‘We did not choose to meet like this.’

*

‘She is a brave woman,’ Krasov said. ‘But you know that already.’

‘Will she survive?’ Stevens asked.

‘How do I know?’ There was an unexpected coldness in his voice which disturbed Stevens.

‘I suspect you know a great deal more than you are telling me,’ Stevens said.

‘Maybe yes, maybe no.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘You want me to say yes, but how do I know if such an answer is right? What if I say yes and I am wrong?’

‘Tell me what you think.’

‘Without your help, no, I doubt she will live much longer.’

‘What kind of help?’

‘You must make it impossible for the authorities to execute her.’

‘How would you suggest I do that?’

‘You must defend her.’

‘I’m a scientist, Krasov, not a lawyer.’

‘You write in newspaper. So, write about Marchenko. Tell the world what she and the others are doing. How brave they are to risk their lives to bring peace. You have contacts in Government. Remind them not all Russians have lost their conscience. You know scientists from other Western countries who agree with these views. Tell them about Marchenko and her crusade. Get them to join their voices to yours. Raise your voices loud enough, all of you, and our leaders may hear. Whisper and they never will. Do you understand what I am asking? Is important message.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘Will happen as I say. Her life is in your hands. Ah, here is your son calling us to eat.’