The Russian Affair (11 page)

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.

SEVEN

A
nna was in her hotel room. She’d locked the door, and now she was staring out the window. The streetlights dyed the terrain a dismal orange. She was disillusioned. Certainly, the platform and roof of the accelerator were colossal in size, extending for hundreds of feet, but in the center all that could be seen was a control console, set in concrete, with dials and instruments whose illuminated arrows quivered in different positions. All at once, loud detonations like gunfire had sounded from down below, and everybody had flinched. Discharges, Adamek had explained. While the electromagnetic bursts followed one another more and more closely, a team of researchers had come out onto the platform. They were wearing protective suits that covered them completely, including their faces, and they carried a cloth about ten square feet in size, mounted on supports. An unscientific observer might have thought that the researchers were bringing in their dirty laundry to be cleaned. Before they reached the control center, Adamek had already ordered his group to leave. Inaudible in their synthetic slippers, the visitors had hastily marched to the exit; in the passage, the Asian had given them back their watches.

Anna was exhausted. Since early morning, she and the others had been bombarded with impressions, had seen things the likes of which
few Soviet citizens would ever get to see in their entire lifetimes. Despite her weariness, she sat at the table and took from her bag the book she’d brought along. It was a standard text in theoretical physics for students in their first semester.

“In the condensed phase, matter appears as either a solid or a liquid. Free atoms form a crystal, producing a binding energy of an order of magnitude equivalent to …”

Anna considered the sequence of signs that followed and then read them aloud: “A hundred kcal divided by mol equals one hundred times two point six times ten to the twenty-second power divided by six times ten to the twenty-third power eV …” It was the first formula in the book, and one of the simplest.

“The empirical fact that the band structures of free electrons diverge shows that valence electrons are only weakly scattered on ionic cores.”

Discouraged, Anna slammed the book shut. Reading it was pointless. Even if she were to get close to the physicist who was the subject of her assignment, even if she should manage to have a conversation with him, she wouldn’t understand the information she obtained! She paced helplessly around the room: wallpaper, closet, bed, her bag, and, outside, the silent street. She felt dead tired and, at the same time, exceedingly nervous. From childhood on, she’d been taught this principle: Every individual must undertake and carry out tasks assigned by the Party. Today, however, Anna wanted to slip out of her otherwise so reliable skin and admit to herself that there was no coping with her present assignment.

Sounds from outside her door indicated that dinner was imminent. She felt hungry, but when she looked at the clock, she realized that it wasn’t worth the trouble to go to the dining room, because Anton would be picking her up very soon. Anna opened the closet; the short dress would be inconspicuous under her coat. She undressed and washed her face in front of the mirror.

Punctual to the minute, the black ZIL turned into the rear courtyard. Anna was waiting on the steps. The kitchen was at its busiest, the windows
were open, but no one observed the member of the visiting group who slid onto the backseat of the limousine and pulled the door shut behind her.

“Today we don’t have far to go,” said Anton, nodding to her in the rearview mirror.

They drove past two blocks of houses on the main street, turned into the riverfront promenade, and stopped in front of a one-story villa.

“Who lives here?”

“The house belongs to a member of the Academy who’s seldom in Dubna.” Anton got out, opened the gate, and drove onto the grounds.

Alexey received Anna neither outside the house nor at the front door. Curious, she stepped into a comfortable room; there was a wing chair close to the fireplace. Alexey sat in the chair with one hand pressed against his forehead and the other raised in a formal gesture of greeting. Anna laughed—Alexey was imitating a famous painting of Stalin. “Little Father, how are you?” she asked, giving the Pioneers’ hand signal and stepping before the Great Leader.

“One grows old, Comrade,” he answered in the familiar rasping intonation. “It does one good to see you young activists, your fresh faces.” Bulyagkov sprang to his feet. “And your splendid bodies!” He took Anna in his arms and stroked her hair. Composed as always, Anton brought in a load of firewood and disappeared.

“So this is the way our worthy Soviet scientists live?” she asked, looking around.

“This is the way I live when I visit our worthy Soviet scientists.” Alexey went to the table, a cork popped, and Sovetskoye Shampanskoye—Soviet Champagne—sizzled in the glasses. Anna knelt down and felt the fine, silvery threads of the carpet. Alexey brought her drink; still kneeling, she clinked glasses with him and watched his bobbing Adam’s apple as he swallowed.

“How wonderful that you’re here,” he said, sinking down next to her. His belly spilled over his belt. “Were you surprised when you got my
note?” She embraced him; his stubbly beard scratched her. “It’s a good thing you got something to eat in the hotel,” he said over her shoulder.

“Why?”

“The Dubna grocery warehouse was already closed. Not even my influence could make it open again this evening.” He shrugged. “I dined out with the physicists.”

Anna thought about the pike in aspic that was being served in the hotel dining room, and her mouth watered. “You mean you don’t have anything at all here?”

“Don’t they give you enough to eat in the hotel?”

“I just thought … because otherwise, this bubbly will go to my head.”

“What if it does?” He poured her some more from his glass.

“Tomorrow I have to understand some really difficult things.”

“Who cares if you don’t understand them?”

Alexey’s dismissal of the official reason for her sojourn as unimportant infuriated her. “I want to take advantage of the opportunity! This is a fabulous place, and I want to learn as much as possible!”