But even though Tanya was bursting with enthusiasm, she took the trouble to turn on the radio in the kitchen before speaking. She did not really think their apartment was bugged, but it was an old habit, and there was no need to take chances.
A radio commentator was describing a visit by Gorbachev and his wife to a jeans factory in Leningrad. Tanya noted the significance. Previous Soviet leaders had visited steel mills and shipyards. Gorbachev celebrated consumer goods. Soviet manufactures ought to be as good as those of the West, he always said--something that had not even been a pipe dream for his predecessors.
And he took his wife with him. Unlike earlier leaders' wives, Raisa was not just an appendage. She was attractive and well-dressed, like an American first lady. She was intelligent, too: she had worked as a university lecturer until her husband became first secretary.
All this was hopeful but little more than symbolic, Tanya thought. Whether it came to anything would depend on the West. If the Germans and the Americans recognized liberalization in the USSR and worked to encourage change, Gorbachev might achieve something. But if the hawks in Bonn and Washington saw this as weakness, and made threatening or aggressive moves, the Soviet ruling elite would retreat back into its shell of orthodox Communism and military overkill. Then Gorbachev would join Kosygin and Khrushchev in the graveyard of failed Kremlin reformers.
"There's a conference of scriptwriters in Naples," Tanya said to Vasili, as the radio burbled in the background.
"Ah!" Vasili saw the significance immediately. The city of Naples had an elected Communist government.
They sat together on the couch. Tanya said: "They want to invite writers from the Soviet bloc, to prove that Hollywood is not the only place where television shows are made."
"Of course."
"You're the most successful writer of television drama in the USSR. You ought to go."
"The writers' union will decide who will be the lucky ones."
"With advice from the KGB, obviously."
"Do you think I have a chance?"
"Make an application, and I'll ask Dimka to put in a good word."
"Will you be able to come?"
"I'll ask Daniil to assign me to cover the conference for TASS."
"And then we'll both be in the free world."
"Yes."
"And then what?"
"I haven't worked out all the details, but that should be the easy part. From our hotel room we can phone Anna Murray in London. As soon as she finds out we're in Italy she'll catch the next plane. We'll give our KGB minders the slip and go with her to Rome. She will tell the world that Ivan Kuznetsov is really Vasili Yenkov, and he and his girlfriend are applying for political asylum in Great Britain."
Vasili was quiet. "Could it really happen, do you think?" he said, sounding almost like a child talking about a fairy tale.
Tanya took both his hands in hers. "I don't know," she said, "but I want to try."
*
Dimka had a big office in the Kremlin now. There was a large desk with two phones, a small conference table, and a couple of couches in front of a fireplace. On the wall was a full-size print of a famous Soviet painting, The Mobilization Against Yudenich at the Putilov Machine Factory.
His guest was Frederik Biro, a Hungarian government minister with progressive ideas. He was two or three years older than Dimka, but he looked scared as he sat on the couch and asked Dimka's secretary for a glass of water. "Am I here to be reprimanded?" he said with a forced smile.
"Why do you ask that?"
"I'm one of a group of men who think Hungarian Communism has become stuck in a rut. That's no secret."
"I have no intention of reprimanding you for that or anything else."
"I'm to be praised, then?"
"Not that either. I assume you and your friends will form the new Hungarian regime as soon as Janos Kadar dies or resigns, and I wish you luck, but I didn't ask you here to tell you that."
Biro put down his water without tasting it. "Now I'm really scared."
"Let me put you out of your misery. Gorbachev's priority is to improve the Soviet economy by reducing military expenditure and producing more consumer goods."
"A fine plan," Biro said in a wary tone. "Many people would like to do the same in Hungary."
"Our only problem is that it isn't working. Or, to be exact, it isn't working fast enough, which comes to the same thing. The Soviet Union is bust, bankrupt, broke. The falling price of oil is the cause of the immediate crisis, but the long-term problem is the crippling underperformance of the planned economy. And it's too severe to be cured by canceling orders for missiles and making more blue jeans."
"What is the answer?"
"We're going to stop subsidizing you."
"Hungary?"
"All the East European states. You've never paid for your standard of living. We finance it, by selling you oil and other raw materials below market prices, and buying your crappy manufactures that no one else wants."
"It's true, of course," Biro acknowledged. "But that's the only way to keep the population quiet and the Communist Party in power. If their standard of living falls, it won't be long before they start asking why they have to be Communists."
"I know."
"Then what are we supposed to do?"
Dimka shrugged deliberately. "That's not my problem, it's yours."
"It's our problem?" Biro said incredulously. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"It means you have to find the solution."
"And what if the Kremlin doesn't like the solution we find?"
"It doesn't matter," Dimka said. "You're on your own now."
Biro was scornful. "Are you telling me that forty years of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe is coming to an end, and we are going to be independent countries?"
"Exactly."
Biro looked at Dimka long and hard. Then he said: "I don't believe you."
*
Tanya and Vasili went to the hospital to visit Tanya's aunt Zoya, the physicist. Zoya was seventy-four and had breast cancer. As the wife of a general, she had a private room. Visitors were allowed in two at a time, so Tanya and Vasili waited outside with other family members.
After a while Uncle Volodya came out, holding the arm of his thirty-nine-year-old son, Kotya. A strong man with a heroic war record, Volodya was now as helpless as a child, following where he was led, sobbing uncontrollably into a handkerchief that was already sodden with tears. They had been married forty years.
Tanya went in with her cousin Galina, the daughter of Volodya and Zoya. She was shocked by her aunt's appearance. Zoya had been head-turningly beautiful, even into her sixties, but now she was cadaverously thin, almost bald, and clearly only days or perhaps hours from the end. However, she was drifting in and out of sleep, and did not seem to be in pain. Tanya guessed she was dosed with morphine.
"Volodya went to America after the war, to find out how they had made the Hiroshima bomb," Zoya said, contentedly indiscreet under the influence of the drug. Tanya thought of telling her to say no more, then reflected that these secrets no longer mattered to anyone. "He brought back a Sears Roebuck Catalogue," Zoya went on, smiling at the memory. "It was full of beautiful things that any American could buy: dresses, bicycles, records, warm coats for children, even tractors for farmers. I wouldn't have believed it--I would have taken it for propaganda--but Volodya had been there and knew it was true. Ever since then I've wanted to go to America, just to see it. Just to look at all that plenty. I don't think I'll make it now, though." She closed her eyes again. "Never mind," she murmured, and she seemed to sleep again.
After a few minutes, Tanya and Galina went out, and two of the grandchildren took their places at the bedside.
Dimka had arrived and joined the group waiting in the corridor. He took Tanya and Vasili aside and spoke to them in a low voice. "I recommended you for the conference in Naples," he said to Vasili.
"Thank you--"
"Don't thank
me. I was unsuccessful. I had a conversation today with the unpleasant Yevgeny Filipov. He's in charge of this kind of thing now, and he knows that you were sent to Siberia for subversive activities back in 1961."
Tanya said: "But Vasili has been rehabilitated!"
"Filipov knows that. Rehabilitation is one thing, he said, and going abroad is another. It's out of the question." Dimka touched Tanya's arm. "I'm sorry, sister."
"We're stuck here, then," Tanya said.
Vasili said bitterly: "A leaflet at a poetry reading, a quarter of a century ago, and I'm still being punished. We keep thinking that our country is changing, but it never really does."
Tanya said: "Like Aunt Zoya, we're never going to see the world outside."
"Don't give up yet," said Dimka.
PART TEN
WALL
1988-1989
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Jasper Murray was fired in the fall of 1988.
He was not surprised. The atmosphere in Washington was different. President Reagan remained popular, despite having committed crimes far worse than those that had brought Nixon down: financing terrorism in Nicaragua, trading weapons for hostages with Iran, and turning women and girls into mangled corpses on the streets of Beirut. Reagan's collaborator Vice President George H. W. Bush looked likely to become the next president. Somehow--and Jasper could not figure out how this trick had been worked--people who challenged the president and caught him out cheating and lying were no longer heroes, as they had been in the seventies, but instead were considered disloyal and even anti-American.
So Jasper was not shocked, but he was deeply hurt. He had joined This Day twenty years ago, and he had helped make it a hugely respected news show. To be fired seemed like a negation of his life's work. His generous severance package did nothing to soothe the pain.
He probably should not have made a crack about Reagan at the end of his last broadcast. After telling the audience he was leaving, he had said: "And remember: if the president tells you it's raining, and he seems really, really sincere--take a look out of the window anyway . . . just to make sure." Frank Lindeman had been livid.
Jasper's colleagues threw a farewell party in the Old Ebbitt Grill that was attended by most of Washington's movers and shakers. Leaning against the bar, late in the evening, Jasper made a speech. Wounded, sad, and defiant, he said: "I love this country. I loved it the first time I came here, back in 1963. I love it because it's free. My mother escaped from Nazi Germany; the rest of her family never made it. The first thing Hitler did was take over the press and make it subservient to the government. Lenin did the same." Jasper had drunk a few glasses of wine, and as a result he was a shade more candid. "America is free because it has disrespectful newspapers and television shows to expose and shame presidents who fuck the Constitution up the ass." He raised his glass. "Here's to the free press. Here's to disrespect. And God bless America."
Next day Suzy Cannon, always eager to kick a man when he was down, published a long, vitriolic profile of Jasper. She managed to suggest that both his service in Vietnam and his naturalization as an American citizen were desperate attempts to conceal a virulent hatred of the United States. She also portrayed him as a ruthless sexual predator who had taken Verena away from George Jakes just as he had stolen Evie Williams from Cam Dewar back in the sixties.
The result was that he found it difficult to get another job. After several weeks of trying, at last another network offered him a position as European correspondent--based in Bonn.
"Surely you can do better than that," Verena said. She had no time for losers.
"No network will hire me as an anchor."
They were in the living room late in the evening, having just watched the news and about to get ready for bed.
"But Germany?" Verena said. "Isn't that a post for a kid on his way up the ladder?"
"Not necessarily. Eastern Europe is in turmoil. There could be some interesting stories coming out of that part of the world in the next year or two."
She was not going to let him make the best of it. "There are better jobs," she said. "Didn't The Washington Post offer you your own comment column?"
"I've worked in television all my life."
"You haven't applied to local TV," she said. "You could be a big fish in a small pond."
"No, I couldn't. I'd be a has-been on his way down." The prospect made Jasper shudder with humiliation. "I'm not going to do that."
Her face took on a defiant look. "Well, don't ask me to go to Germany with you."
He had been anticipating this, but he was taken aback by her blunt determination. "Why not?"
"You speak German, I don't."
Jasper did not speak very good German, but that was not his best argument. "It would be an adventure," he said.
"Get real," Verena said harshly. "I have a son."
"It would be an adventure for Jack, too. He'd grow up bilingual."
"George would go to court to stop me from taking Jack out of the country. We have joint custody. And I wouldn't do it anyway. Jack needs his father and his grandmother. And what about my work? I'm a big success, Jasper--I have twelve people working for me, all lobbying the government for liberal causes. You can't seriously ask me to give that up."
"Well, I guess I'll come home for the holidays."
"Are you serious? What kind of a relationship would we have? How long will it be before you're bouncing on a bed with a plump Rhinemaiden in blond plaits?"
It was true that Jasper had been promiscuous most of his life, but he had never cheated on Verena. The prospect of losing her suddenly seemed insupportable. "I can be faithful," he said desperately.
Verena saw his distress, and her tone softened. "Jasper, that's touching. I think you even mean it. But I know what you're like, and you know what I'm like. Neither of us can remain celibate for long."
"Listen," he pleaded. "Everyone in American television knows I'm looking for a job, and this is the only one I've been offered. Don't you understand? My back is up against the goddamn wall. I don't have an alternative!"
"I do understand, and I'm sorry. But we have to be realistic."
Jasper found her sympathy worse than her scorn. "Anyway, it won't be forever," he said defiantly.
"Won't it?"
"Oh, no. I'm going to make a comeback."
"In Bonn?"
"There will be more European stories leading the American television news than ever before. You just fucking watch me."
Verena's face turned sad. "Shit, you're really going, aren't you."
"I told you, I have to."
"Well," she said regretfully, "don't expect me to be here when you come back."
*
Jasper had never been to Budapest. As a young man he had always looked west, toward America. Besides, all his life Hungary had been overcast by the gray clouds of Communism. But in November 1988, with the economy in ruins, something astonishing happened. A small group of young reform-minded Communists took control of the government and one of them, Miklos Nemeth, became prime minister. Among other changes, he opened a stock market.
Jasper thought this was astounding.
Only six months earlier Karoly Grosz, the thuggish chief of the Hungarian Communist Party, had told Newsweek magazine that multiparty democracy was "an historic impossibility" in Hungary. But Nemeth had enacted a new law allowing independent political "clubs."
This was a big story. But were the changes permanent? Or would Moscow soon clamp down?
Jasper flew into Budapest in a January blizzard. Beside the Danube, snow lay thick on the neo-Gothic turrets of the vast parliament building. It was in that building that Jasper met Miklos Nemeth.
Jasper had got the interview with the help of Rebecca Held. Although he had not previously met her, he knew about her from Dave Williams and Walli Franck. As soon as he got to Bonn he had looked her up: she was the nearest thing he had to a German contact. She was now an important figure in the German Foreign Office.
Even better, she was a friend--perhaps a lover, Jasper guessed--of Frederik Biro, aide to Miklos Nemeth. Biro had fixed up the interview.
It was Biro who now met Jasper in the lobby and escorted him through a maze of corridors and passageways to the office of the prime minister.
Nemeth was just forty-one. He was a short man with thick brown hair that fell over his forehead in a kiss curl. His face showed intelligence and determination, but also anxiety. For the interview he sat behind an oak table and nervously surrounded himself with aides. No doubt he was vividly aware that he was speaking not just to Jasper, but to the United States government--and that Moscow would be watching, too.
Like any prime minister, he talked mostly in predictable cliches. There would be hard times ahead, but the country would emerge stronger in the long run. And yadda yadda yadda, thought Jasper. He needed something better than this.
He asked whether the new political "clubs" could ever become free political parties.
Nemeth gave Jasper a hard, direct look, and said in a firm, clear voice: "That is one of our greatest ambitions."
Jasper concealed his astonishment. No Iron Curtain country had ever had independent political parties. Did Nemeth really mean it?
Jasper asked whether the Communist Party would ever give up its "leading role" in Hungarian society.
Nemeth gave him that look again. "In two years I could imagine that the head of government might not be a Politburo member," he said.
Jasper had to stop himself saying Jesus Christ!
He was on a roll, and it was time for the big one. "Might the Soviets intervene to stop these changes, as they did in 1956?"