Edge of Eternity (22 page)

Rebecca screamed.

The rope split, its end flying into the air over Bernauer Strasse.

Bernd fell like a stone.

The crowd scattered.

Bernd hit the sidewalk with a sickening thump.

Then he lay still.

•   •   •

Three days later Bernd opened his eyes, looked at Rebecca, and said: “Hello.”

Rebecca said: “Oh, thank God.”

She had been out of her mind with worry. The doctors had told her that he would recover consciousness, but she had not been able to believe it until she saw it. He had undergone several operations, and in between he had been heavily drugged. This was the first time she had seen the light of intelligence in his face.

Trying not to cry, she leaned over the hospital bed and kissed his lips. “You're back,” she said. “I'm so glad.”

He said: “What happened?”

“You fell.”

He nodded. “The roof. I remember. But . . .”

“The policeman broke your rope.”

He looked along the length of his body. “Am I in plaster?”

She had been longing for him to come round, but she had also been dreading this moment. “From the waist down,” she said.

“I . . . I can't move my legs. I can't feel them.” He looked panicky. “Have my legs been amputated?”

“No.” Rebecca took a deep breath. “You've broken most of the bones in your legs, but you can't feel them because your spinal cord is partially severed.”

He was thoughtful for a long moment. Then he said: “Will it heal?”

“The doctors say that nerves may heal, albeit slowly.”

“So . . .”

“So you may get some below-the-waist functions back, eventually. But you will be in a wheelchair when you leave this hospital.”

“Do they say how long?”

“They say . . .” She had to make an effort not to cry. “You must prepare for the possibility that it may be permanent.”

He looked away. “I'm a cripple.”

“But we're free. You're in West Berlin. We've escaped.”

“Escaped to a wheelchair.”

“Don't think of it that way.”

“What the hell am I going to do?”

“I've thought about this.” She made her voice firm and confident, more so than she felt. “You're going to marry me and return to teaching.”

“That's not likely.”

“I've already phoned Anselm Weber. You'll remember that he's now head of a school in Hamburg. He has jobs for both of us, starting in September.”

“A teacher in a wheelchair?”

“What difference will that make? You'll still be able to explain physics so that the dullest child in the class understands. You don't need legs for that.”

“You don't want to marry a cripple.”

“No,” she said. “But I want to marry you. And I will.”

His tone became bitter. “You can't marry a man with no below-the-waist functions.”

“Listen to me,” she said fiercely. “Three months ago I didn't know what love was. I've only just found you, and I'm not going to lose you. We've escaped, we've survived, and we're going to live. We'll get married, we'll teach school, and we'll love each other.”

“I don't know.”

“I want only one thing from you,” she said. “You must not lose hope. We'll confront all difficulties together, and we'll solve all problems together. I can put up with any hardship as long as I've got you. Promise me, now, Bernd Held, that you'll never give up. Never.”

There was a long pause.

“Promise,” she said.

He smiled. “You're a tiger,” he said.

D
imka and Valentin rode the Ferris wheel in Gorky Park with Nina and Anna.

After Dimka had been called away from the holiday camp, Nina had taken up with an engineer and had dated him for several months, but then they broke up, so now she was free again. Meanwhile, Valentin and Anna had become a couple: he slept over at the girls' apartment most weekends. Also, significantly, Valentin had told Dimka a couple of times that having sex with one woman after another was just a phase men went through when they were young.

I should be so lucky, Dimka thought.

On the first warm weekend of the short Moscow summer, Valentin proposed a double date. Dimka agreed eagerly. Nina was smart and strong-minded, and she challenged him: he liked that. But mainly she was sexy. He often thought about how enthusiastically she had kissed him. He wanted very much to do that again. He recalled how her nipples had stuck out in the cold water. He wondered whether she ever thought about that day on the lake.

His problem was that he could not share Valentin's cheerfully exploitative attitude to girls. Valentin, at least until he met Anna, would say anything to get a girl into bed. Dimka felt it was wrong to manipulate or bully people. He also believed that if someone said no, you should accept it, whereas Valentin always took no to mean “Maybe not yet.”

Gorky Park was an oasis in the desert of earnest Communism, a place Muscovites could go simply to have fun. People put on their best clothes, bought ice cream and candy, flirted with strangers, and kissed in the bushes.

Anna pretended to be scared on the Ferris wheel, and Valentin went
along with the charade, putting his arm around her and telling her it was perfectly safe. Nina looked comfortable and unworried, which Dimka preferred to phony terror, but it gave him no chance to get intimate.

Nina looked good in a cotton shirtwaist dress with orange and green stripes. The back view was particularly alluring, Dimka thought as they climbed off the wheel. For this date he had managed to get a pair of American jeans and a blue checked shirt. In exchange he had given two ballet tickets that Khrushchev did not want:
Romeo and Juliet
at the Bolshoi.

“What have you been doing since I saw you last?” Nina asked him as they strolled around the park, drinking lukewarm orange cordial bought from a stall.

“Working,” he said.

“Is that all?”

“I usually get to the office an hour before Khrushchev, to make sure everything is ready for him: the documents he needs, the foreign newspapers, any files he might want. He often works until late into the evening, and I rarely go home before he does.” He wished he could make his job sound as exciting as it really was. “I don't have much time for anything else.”

Valentin said: “Dimka was the same at university—work, work, work.”

Happily, Nina did not seem to think that Dimka's life was dull. “You're really with Comrade Khrushchev every day?”

“Most days.”

“Where do you live?”

“Government House.” It was an elite apartment building not far from the Kremlin.

“Very nice.”

“With my mother,” he added.

“I'd live with my mother for the sake of a place in that building.”

“My twin sister normally lives with us, also, but she's gone to Cuba—she's a reporter with TASS.”

“I'd like to go to Cuba,” Nina said wistfully.

“It's a poor country.”

“I could live with that, in a climate where there's no winter. Imagine dancing on the beach in January.”

Dimka nodded. He was thrilled by Cuba in a different way. Castro's revolution showed that rigid Soviet orthodoxy was not the only possible form of Communism. Castro had new, different ideas. “I hope Castro survives,” he said.

“Why shouldn't he?”

“The Americans have invaded once already. The Bay of Pigs was a disaster, but they will try again, with a bigger army—probably in 1964, while President Kennedy is running for reelection.”

“That's terrible! Can't something be done?”

“Castro is trying to make peace with Kennedy.”

“Will he succeed?”

“The Pentagon is against it, and conservative congressmen are making a fuss, so the whole idea is getting nowhere.”

“We have to support the Cuban revolution!”

“I agree—but our conservatives don't like Castro either. They're not sure he's a real Communist.”

“What will happen?”

“It depends on the Americans. They may leave Cuba alone. But I don't think they're that smart. My guess is they'll keep harassing Castro until he feels the only place he can look for help is the Soviet Union. So he'll end up asking us for protection, sooner or later.”

“What can we do?”

“Good question.”

Valentin interrupted them. “I'm hungry. Have you girls got any food at home?”

“Of course,” said Nina. “I bought a knuckle of bacon for a stew.”

“Then what are we waiting for? Dimka and I will buy some beer on the way.”

They took the Metro. The girls had an apartment in a building controlled by the steel union, their employer. Their place was small: a bedroom with two single beds, a living room with a couch in front of a television set, a kitchen with a tiny dining table, and a bathroom. Dimka guessed that Anna was responsible for the lacy cushions on the couch and the plastic flowers in the vase on top of the TV, and Nina had
bought the striped curtains and the posters on the wall showing mountain scenery.

Dimka worried about the shared bedroom. If Nina wanted to sleep with him, would the two couples make love in the same room? Such arrangements had not been unknown when Dimka was a university student in crowded accommodations. All the same he did not like the idea. Apart from anything else, he did not want Valentin to know just how inexpert he was.

He wondered where Nina slept when Valentin stayed over. Then he noticed a small stack of blankets on the living room floor, and he deduced that she slept on the couch.

Nina put the joint in a big saucepan; Anna chopped up a large turnip; Valentin put out cutlery and plates; and Dimka poured the beer. Everyone but Dimka seemed to know what was going to happen next. He was a little unnerved, but he went along.

Nina made a tray of snacks: pickled mushrooms, blinis, sausage, and cheese. While the stew was cooking they went into the living room. Nina sat on the couch and patted the place beside her to indicate that Dimka should sit there. Valentin took the easy chair and Anna sat on the floor at his feet. They listened to music on the radio while they drank their beer. Nina had put some herbs in the pot, and the aroma from the kitchen made Dimka hungry.

They talked about their parents. Nina's were divorced, Valentin's were separated, and Anna's hated one another. “My mother didn't like my father,” said Dimka. “Nor did I. Nobody likes a KGB man.”

“I've been married once—never again,” Nina said. “Do you know anyone who is happily married?”

“Yes,” said Dimka. “My uncle Volodya. Mind you, my aunt Zoya is gorgeous. She's a physicist, but she looks like a film star. When I was little I called her Magazine Auntie, because she resembled the impossibly beautiful women in magazine photos.”

Valentin stroked Anna's hair, and she laid her head on his thigh in a way Dimka found sexy. He wanted to touch Nina, and surely she would not mind—why else had she invited him to her apartment?—but he felt awkward and embarrassed. He wished she would do something: she was the experienced one. But she seemed content to listen to the music and sip beer, a faint smile on her face.

At last supper was ready. The stew was delicious: Nina was a good cook. They ate it with black bread.

When they had finished and cleared away, Valentin and Anna went into the bedroom and closed the door.

Dimka went to the bathroom. The face in the mirror over the washbasin was not handsome. His best feature was a pair of large blue eyes. His dark-brown hair was cut short in the military style approved for young apparatchiks. He looked like a serious young man whose thoughts were far above sex.

He checked the condom in his pocket. Such things were in short supply and he had gone to a lot of trouble to get some. However, he did not agree with Valentin's contention that pregnancy was the woman's problem. He felt sure he would not enjoy sex if he felt he might be forcing the girl to go through either childbirth or abortion.

He returned to the living room. To his surprise, Nina had her coat on.

“I thought I'd walk you to the Metro station,” she said.

Dimka was baffled. “Why?”

“I don't think you know this neighborhood—I wouldn't like you to get lost.”

“I mean, why do you want me to leave?”

“What else would you do?”

“I'd like to stay here and kiss you,” he said.

Nina laughed. “What you lack in sophistication, you make up for in enthusiasm.” She took off her coat and sat down.

Dimka sat beside her and kissed her hesitantly.

She kissed him back with reassuring enthusiasm. He realized with mounting excitement that she did not care if he was inexpert. Soon he was eagerly fumbling with the buttons of her shirtwaist. She had wonderfully large breasts. They were encased in a formidable utilitarian brassiere, but she took that off, then offered them to be kissed.

Things moved quickly after that.

When the big moment arrived, she lay on the couch with her head on the armrest and one foot on the floor, a position she assumed so readily that Dimka thought she must have done it before.

He hastily took out his condom and fumbled it out of the packet, but she said: “No need for that.”

He was startled. “What do you mean?”

“I can't bear children. I've been told by doctors. It's why my husband divorced me.”

He dropped the condom on the floor and lay on top of her.

“Easy does it,” she said, guiding him inside.

I've done it, Dimka thought; I've lost my virginity at last.

•   •   •

The speedboat was the kind once known as a rumrunner: long and narrow, extremely fast, and painfully uncomfortable to ride in. It crossed the Straits of Florida at eighty knots, hitting every wave with the impact of a car knocking down a wooden fence. The six men aboard were strapped in, the only way to be halfway safe in an open boat at such a speed. In the small cargo hold they had M3 submachine guns, pistols, and incendiary bombs. They were going to Cuba.

George Jakes really should not have been with them.

He stared across the moonlit water, feeling seasick. Four of the men were Cubans living in exile in Miami: George knew only their first names. They hated Communism, hated Castro, and hated everyone who did not agree with them. The sixth man was Tim Tedder.

It had started when Tedder walked into the office at the Justice Department. He was vaguely familiar, and George had placed him as a CIA man, although he was officially “retired” and working as a freelance security consultant.

George had been on his own in the room. “Help you?” he had said politely.

“I'm here for the Mongoose meeting.”

George had heard of Operation Mongoose, a project that the untrustworthy Dennis Wilson was involved in, but he did not know the full details. “Come in,” he had said, waving at a chair. Tedder had walked in with a cardboard folder under his arm. He was about ten years older than George, but looked as if he had got dressed in the 1940s: he wore a double-breasted suit and his wavy hair was brilliantined with a high side parting. George said: “Dennis will be back any second.”

“Thanks.”

“How's it going? Mongoose, I mean.”

Tedder looked guarded and said: “I'll report at the meeting.”

“I won't be there.” George looked at his wristwatch. He was deceitfully implying that he had been invited, which he had not; but he was curious. “I have a meeting at the White House.”

“Too bad.”

George recalled a fragment of information. “According to the original plan, you should now be in phase two, the buildup.”

Tedder's face cleared as he inferred that George was in the loop. “Here's the report,” he said, opening the cardboard folder.

George was pretending to know more than he did. Mongoose was a project to help anti-Communist Cubans foment a counterrevolution. The plan had a timetable whose climax was the overthrow of Castro in October of this year, just before the midterm congressional elections. CIA-trained infiltration teams were supposed to undertake political organization and anti-Castro propaganda.

Tedder handed George two sheets of paper. Pretending to be less interested than he was, George said: “Are we keeping to our timetable?”

Tedder avoided the question. “It's time to pile on the pressure,” he said. “Furtively circulating leaflets that poke fun at Castro is not achieving what we want.”

“How can we increase the pressure?”

“It's all in there,” Tedder said, pointing at the paper.

George looked down. What he read was worse than he expected. The CIA was proposing to sabotage bridges, oil refineries, power plants, sugar mills, and shipping.

At that moment Dennis Wilson walked in. He had his shirt collar undone, his tie loose, and his sleeves rolled, just like Bobby, George noticed; although his receding hairline would never rival Bobby's vigorous thatch. When Wilson saw Tedder talking to George he looked surprised, then anxious.

George said to Tedder: “If you blow up an oil refinery, and people are killed, then anyone here in Washington who approved the project is guilty of murder.”

Dennis Wilson spoke angrily to Tedder. “What have you told him?”

“I thought he was cleared!” said Tedder.

“I am cleared,” said George. “My security clearance is the same as
Dennis's.” He turned to Wilson. “So why have you been so careful to keep this from me?”