Edge of Eternity

  The real boss, Leonid Brezhnev, was sitting on the fence, as he so often did, waiting for a consensus to emerge.

  Despite being some of the most powerful people in the world, the top men in the Kremlin were scared of stepping out of line. Marxism-Leninism answered all questions, so the eventual decision would be infallibly correct. Anyone who had argued for a different outcome was therefore revealed to be culpably out of touch with orthodox thinking. Dimka sometimes wondered if it was this bad in the Vatican.

  Because no one wanted to be the first to express an opinion on the record, as always they had to get their aides to thrash things out informally ahead of any Politburo meeting.

  "It's not just Dubcek's revisionist ideas about freedom of the press," said Yevgeny Filipov to Dimka one afternoon in the broad corridor outside the Presidium Room. "He's a Slovak who wants to give more rights to the oppressed minority he comes from. Imagine if that idea starts to get around places such as Ukraine and Belarus."

  As always, Filipov looked ten years out of date. Nowadays almost everyone was wearing their hair longer, but he still had an army crop. Dimka tried to forget for a moment that he was a malicious troublemaking bastard. "These dangers are remote," Dimka argued. "There's no immediate threat to the Soviet Union--certainly nothing to justify ham-fisted military intervention."

  "Dubcek has undermined the KGB. He's expelled several agents from Prague and authorized an investigation into the death of the old foreign minister Jan Masaryk."

  "Is the KGB entitled to murder ministers in friendly governments?" Dimka asked. "Is that the message you want to send to Hungary and East Germany? That would make the KGB worse than the CIA. At least the Americans only murder people in enemy countries such as Cuba."

  Filipov became petulant. "What is to be gained by allowing this foolishness in Prague?"

  "If we invade Czechoslovakia, there will be a diplomatic freeze--you know that."

  "So what?"

  "It will damage our relations with the West. We're trying to reduce tension with the United States, so that we can spend less on our military. That whole effort could be sabotaged. An invasion might even help Richard Nixon get elected president--and he could increase American defense spending. Think what that could cost us!"

  Filipov tried to interrupt, but Dimka overrode him. "The invasion will also shock the Third World. We're trying to strengthen our ties with nonaligned countries in the face of rivalry from China, which wants to replace us as leader of global Communism. That's why we're organizing the World Communist Conference in November. That conference could become a humiliating failure if we invade Czechoslovakia."

  Filipov sneered: "So you would simply let Dubcek do what he likes?"

  "On the contrary." Dimka now revealed the proposal favored by his boss. "Kosygin will go to Prague and negotiate a compromise--a nonmilitary solution."

  Filipov in his turn put his cards on the table. "The Defense Ministry will support that plan in the Politburo--on condition that we immediately begin preparations for an invasion in case the negotiation should fail."

  "Agreed," said Dimka, who felt sure the military would make such preparations anyway.

  The decision made, they went in opposite directions. Dimka returned to his office just as his secretary, Vera Pletner, was picking up the phone. He saw her face turn the color of the paper in her typewriter. "Has something happened?" he said.

  She gave him the receiver. "Your ex-wife," she said.

  Suppressing a groan, Dimka took the instrument and spoke into it. "What is it, Nina?"

  "Come at once!" she screamed. "Grisha's gone!"

  Dimka's heart seemed to stop. Grigor, whom they called Grisha, was not quite five years old, and had not yet started school. "What do you mean, gone?"

  "I can't find him, he's disappeared, I've looked everywhere!"

  There was a pain in Dimka's chest. He struggled to remain calm. "When and where did you last see him?"

  "He went upstairs to see your mother. I let him go on his own--I always do, it's only three floors in the lift."

  "When was that?"

  "Less than an hour ago--you have to come!"

  "I'm coming. Phone the police."

  "Come quickly!"

  "Phone the police, okay?"

  "Okay."

  Dimka dropped the phone and left the room. He raced out of the building. He had not paused to put on his coat, but he hardly noticed the cold Moscow air. He jumped into his Moskvitch, shoved the steering-column gearshift into first, and tore out of the compound. Even with his foot flat to the floor, the little car did not go fast.

  Nina still had the apartment they had lived in together at Government House, less than a mile from the Kremlin. Dimka double-parked and ran in.

  There was a KGB doorman in the lobby. "Good afternoon, Dmitri Ilich," the man said politely.

  "Have you seen Grisha, my little boy?" said Dimka.

  "Not today."

  "He's disappeared--could he have gone out?"

  "Not since I came back from my lunch break at one."

  "Have any strangers entered the building today?"

  "Several, as always. I have a list--"

  "I'll look at it later. If you see Grisha, call the apartment immediately."

  "Yes, of course."

  "The police will be here any minute."

  "I'll send them right up."

  Dimka waited for the elevator. He was slick with perspiration. He was so jumpy he pressed the wrong button and had to wait while the lift stopped at an intermediate floor. When he reached Nina's floor she was in the corridor with Dimka's mother, Anya.

  Anya was wiping her hands compulsively in her flower-print apron. She said: "He never reached my apartment. I don't understand what happened!"

  "Could he have got lost?" said Dimka.

  Nina said: "He's gone there twenty times before--he knows the way--but yes, he could have got distracted by something and gone to the wrong place, he's five years old."

  "The doorman is sure he hasn't left the building. So we just have to search. We'll knock at every apartment door. No, wait, most of the residents have telephones. I'll go down and use the doorman's phone to call them."

  Anya said: "He might not be in an apartment."

  "You two search every corridor and staircase and cleaning closet."

  "All right," said Anya. "We'll take the elevator to the top floor and work down."

  They got in the lift and Dimka ran down the stairs. In the lobby he told the doorman what was happening and began to phone apartments. He was not sure how many there were in the building: maybe a hundred? "A little boy is lost, have you seen him?" he said each time his call was answered. As soon as he heard "No" he hung up and dialed the next apartment. He made a note of the apartments where there was no answer or no phone.

  He had done four floors without a glimmer of hope when the police arrived, a fat sergeant and a young constable. They were maddeningly calm. "We'll take a look around," the sergeant said. "We know this building."

  "It'll need more than two of you to search properly!" Dimka said.

  "We'll send for reinforcements if necessary, sir," the sergeant said.

  Dimka did not want to spend time arguing with them. He went back to phoning, but he was beginning to think that Nina and Anya had the best chance of finding Grisha. If the boy had wandered into the wrong apartment, surely the occupier would have phoned the doorman by now. Grisha might be going up and down staircases, lost. Dimka wanted to weep when he thought of how scared the little boy would be.

  After he had been phoning for another ten minutes, the two policemen came up the stairs from the basement with Grisha walking between them, holding the sergeant's hand.

  Dimka dropped the phone and ran to him.

  Grisha said: "I couldn't open the door, and I cried!"

  Dimka picked him up and hugged him, striving not to weep with relief.

  After a minute he said: "What happened, Grisha?"

  "The poli
cemen found me," he said.

  Anya and Nina appeared from the stairwell and came running, ecstatic with relief. Nina snatched Grisha from Dimka and crushed the boy to her bosom.

  Dimka turned to the sergeant. "Where did you find him?"

  The man looked pleased with himself. "Down in the cellar, in a storeroom. The door wasn't locked, but he couldn't reach the handle. He's had a scare, but otherwise he seems to have come to no harm."

  Dimka addressed the boy. "Tell me, Grisha, why did you go down to the basement?"

  "The man said there was a puppy--but I couldn't find the puppy!"

  "The man?"

  "Yes."

  "Someone you know?"

  Grisha shook his head.

  The sergeant put his cap on to leave. "All's well that ends well, then."

  "Just a minute," Dimka said. "You heard the boy. A man lured him down there with talk of a puppy."

  "Yes, sir, he told me that. But no crime seems to have been committed, as far as I can see."

  "The child was abducted!"

  "Difficult to know exactly what happened, especially when the information comes from one so young."

  "It's not difficult at all. A man inveigled the child down to the cellar, then abandoned him there."

  "But what would be the point of that?"

  "Look, I'm grateful to you for finding him, but don't you think you're taking the whole thing rather lightly?"

  "Children do go astray every day."

  Dimka began to be suspicious. "How did you know where to look?"

  "A lucky guess. As I say, we're familiar with this building."

  Dimka decided not to voice his suspicions while he was still in a state of high emotion. He turned away from the officer and spoke to Grisha again. "Did the man tell you his name?"

  "Yes," said Grisha. "His name is Nik."

  *

  Next morning, Dimka sent for the KGB file on Nik Smotrov.

  He was in a rage. He wanted to get a gun and kill Nik. He had to keep telling himself to remain calm.

  It would not have been difficult for Nik to get past the doorman yesterday. He could have faked a delivery, entered close behind some legitimate residents so that he looked part of the group, or just flashed a Communist Party card. Dimka found it a little more difficult to figure out how Nik could have known that Grisha would be moving from one part of the building to another on his own, but on reflection he decided Nik had probably reconnoitered the building a few days earlier. He could have chatted to some neighbors, figured out the child's daily schedule, and picked the best opportunity. He had probably paid off those local policemen, too. His aim was to scare Dimka half to death.

  He had succeeded.

  But he was going to regret it.

  In theory, Alexei Kosygin as premier could look at any file he liked. In practice, KGB chief Yuri Andropov would decide what Kosygin could and could not see. However, Dimka felt sure that Nik's activities, though criminal, had no political dimension, so there was no reason for the file to be withheld. Sure enough, it arrived on his desk that afternoon.

  It was thick.

  As Dimka suspected, Nik was a black market trader. Like most such men, he was an opportunist. He would buy and sell whatever came his way: flowered shirts, costly perfume, electric guitars, lingerie, Scotch whisky--any illegally imported luxury difficult to obtain in the Soviet Union. Dimka went carefully through the reports, looking for something he could use to destroy Nik.

  The KGB dealt in rumors, and Dimka needed something definite. He could go to the police, report what the KGB file said, and demand an investigation. But Nik was sure to be bribing the police--otherwise he could not have got away with his crimes for so long. And his protectors would naturally want the bribes to continue. So they would make sure the investigation got nowhere.

  The file contained plenty of material on Nik's personal life. He had a mistress and several girlfriends, including one with whom he smoked marijuana. Dimka wondered how much Natalya knew about the girlfriends. Nik met business associates most afternoons at the Bar Madrid near the Central Market. He had a pretty wife, who--

  Dimka was shocked to read that Nik's wife was having a long-term affair with Dmitri Ilich "Dimka" Dvorkin, aide to Premier Kosygin.

  Seeing his own name felt horrible. Nothing was private, it seemed.

  At least there were no pictures or tape recordings.

  There was, however, a photo of Nik, whom Dimka had never seen. He was a good-looking man with a charming smile. In the picture he wore a jacket with epaulets, a high-fashion item. According to the notes he was just under six feet tall with an athletic build.

  Dimka wanted to pound him into jelly.

  He put revenge fantasies out of his mind and read on.

  Soon he struck gold.

  Nik was buying television sets from the Red Army.

  The Soviet military had a colossal budget that no one dared question for fear of being thought unpatriotic. Some of the money was spent on high-technology equipment bought from the West. In particular, every year the Red Army bought hundreds of expensive televisions. Their preferred brand was Franck, of West Berlin, whose sets had a superior picture and great sound. According to the file, most of these TVs were not needed by the army. They were ordered by a small group of mid-ranking officers, who were named in the file. The officers then declared the televisions obsolete and sold them cheaply to Nik, who resold them at a huge price on the black market and shared out the profits.

  Most of Nik's dealings were penny-ante, but this scam had been making him serious money for years.

  There was no proof that the story was true, but it made total sense to Dimka. The KGB had reported the story to the army, but an army investigation had turned up no proof. Most likely, Dimka thought, the investigator had been cut in on the deal.

  He phoned Natalya's office. "Quick question," he said. "What brand of TV do you have at home?"

  "Franck," she said immediately. "It's great. I can get you one, if you like."

  "No, thanks."

  "Why do you ask?"

  "I'll explain later." Dimka hung up.

  He looked at his watch. It was five. He left the Kremlin and drove to the street called Sadovaya-Samotyochnaya.

  He had to scare Nik. It would not be easy, but he had to do it. Nik had to be made to understand that he must never, ever, threaten Dimka's family.

  He parked his Moskvitch but did not get out immediately. He recalled the frame of mind he had been in throughout the Cuban missile project, when he had to keep the mission secret at all costs. He had destroyed men's careers and ruined their lives without hesitation, because the job had to be done. Now he was going to ruin Nik.

  He locked his car and walked to the Bar Madrid.

  He pushed open the door and stepped inside. He stood still and looked around. It was a bleak modern place, cold and plastic, insufficiently warmed by an electric fire and some photographs of flamenco dancers on the walls. The handful of customers gazed at him with interest. They looked like petty crooks. None resembled the photo of Nik in the file.

  At the far end of the room was a corner bar with a door next to it marked PRIVATE.

  Dimka strode through the room as if he owned it. Without stopping he spoke to the man behind the bar. "Nik in the back?"

  The man looked as if he might be about to tell Dimka to stop and wait, but then he looked again at Dimka's face and changed his mind. "Yes," he said.

  Dimka pushed open the door.

  In a small back room four men were playing cards. There was a lot of money on the table. To one side, on a couch, two young women in cocktail dresses and heavy makeup were smoking long American cigarettes and looking bored.

  Dimka recognized Nik immediately. The face was as handsome as the photograph had suggested, but the camera had failed to capture the cold expression. Nik looked up and said: "This is a private room. Piss off."

  Dimka said: "I've got a message for you."

  Nik put his ca
rds facedown on the table and sat back. "Who the fuck are you?"

  "Something bad is going to happen."

  Two of the card players stood up and turned to face Dimka. One reached inside his jacket. Dimka thought he might be about to draw a weapon. But Nik held up a cautionary hand, and the man hesitated.

  Nik kept his eyes on Dimka. "What are you talking about?"

  "When the bad thing happens, you'll ask who's causing it."

  "And you'll tell me?"

  "I'm telling you now. It's Dmitri Ilich Dvorkin. He's the cause of your problems."

  "I don't have any problems, asshole."

  "You didn't, until yesterday. Then you made a mistake--asshole."

  The men around Nik tensed, but he remained calm. "Yesterday?" His eyes narrowed. "Are you the creep she's fucking?"

  "When you find yourself in so much trouble that you don't know what to do, remember my name."

  "You're Dimka!"

  "You'll see me again," said Dimka, and he turned slowly and walked out of the room.

  As he walked through the bar, all eyes were on him. He looked straight ahead, expecting a bullet in the back at any moment.

  He reached the door and went out.

  He grinned to himself. I got away with it, he thought.

  Now he had to make good on his threat.

  He drove six miles from the city center to the Khodynka airfield and parked at the headquarters of Red Army Intelligence. The old building was a bizarre piece of Stalin-era architecture, a nine-story tower surrounded by a two-story outer ring. The directorate had expanded into a newer fifteen-story building nearby: intelligence organizations never got smaller.

  Carrying the KGB file on Nik, Dimka went into the old building and asked for General Volodya Peshkov.

  A guard said: "Do you have an appointment?"

  Dimka raised his voice. "Don't fuck around, son. Just call the general's secretary and say I'm here."

  After a flurry of anxious activity--few people dropped by this place without a summons--he was directed through a metal detector and led up in the lift to an office on the top floor.

  This was the highest building around and it had a fine view over the roofs of Moscow. Volodya welcomed Dimka and offered him tea. Dimka had always liked his uncle. Now in his midfifties, Volodya had silver-gray hair. Despite the hard blue-eyed stare, he was a reformer--unusual among the generally conservative military. But he had been to America.