Winter of the World (99 page)

The universe became a disc of light that shrank slowly until it was a pinpoint.

Then it went out.

1943 (III)

‘Will you marry me?’ said Volodya Peshkov, and held his breath.

‘No,’ said Zoya Vorotsyntsev. ‘But thank you.’

She was remarkably matter-of-fact about everything, but this was unusually brisk even for her.

They were in bed at the lavish Hotel Moskva, and they had just made love. Zoya had come twice. Her preferred type of sex was cunnilingus. She liked to recline on a pile of pillows while he knelt
worshipfully between her legs. He was a willing acolyte, and she returned the favour with enthusiasm.

They had been a couple for more than a year, and everything seemed to be going wonderfully well. Her refusal baffled him.

He said: ‘Do you love me?’

‘Yes. I adore you. Thank you for loving me enough to propose marriage.’

That was a bit better. ‘So why won’t you accept?’

‘I don’t want to bring children into a world at war,’ she said.

‘Okay, I can understand that.’

‘Ask me again when we’ve won.’

‘By then I may not want to marry you.’

‘If that’s how inconstant you are, it’s a good thing I refused you today.’

‘Sorry. For a moment, there, I forgot that you don’t understand teasing.’

‘I have to pee.’ She got off the bed and walked naked across the hotel room. Volodya could hardly believe he was allowed to see this. She had the body of a fashion model or a movie
star. Her skin was milk-white and her hair pale blonde – all of it. She sat on the toilet without closing the bathroom door, and he listened to her peeing. Her lack of modesty was a perpetual
delight.

He was supposed to be working.

The Moscow intelligence community was thrown into disarray every time Allied leaders visited, and Volodya’s normal routine had been disrupted again for the Foreign Ministers’
Conference that had opened on 18 October.

The visitors were the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, and the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden. They had a hare-brained scheme for a Four-Power Pact including China. Stalin
thought it was all nonsense and did not understand why they were wasting time on it. The American, Hull, was seventy-two years old and coughing blood – his doctor had come to Moscow with him
– but he was no less forceful for that, and he was insistent on the pact.

There was so much to do during the conference that the NKVD – the secret police – were forced to co-operate with their hated rivals in Red Army Intelligence, Volodya’s outfit.
Microphones had to be concealed in hotel rooms – there was one in here, only Volodya had disconnected it. The visiting ministers and all their aides had to be kept under minute-by-minute
surveillance. Their luggage had to be clandestinely opened and searched. Their phone calls had to be tape-recorded and transcribed and translated into Russian and read and summarized. Most of the
people they met, including waiters and chambermaids, were NKVD agents, but anyone else they happened to speak to, in the hotel lobby or on the street, had to be checked out, perhaps arrested and
imprisoned and interrogated under torture. It was a lot of work.

Volodya was riding high. His spies in Berlin were producing remarkable intelligence. They had given him the battle plan for the Germans’ main summer offensive, Zitadelle, and the Red Army
had inflicted a tremendous defeat.

Zoya was happy, too. The Soviet Union had resumed nuclear research, and Zoya was part of the team trying to design a nuclear bomb. They were a long way behind the West, because of the delay
caused by Stalin’s scepticism, but in compensation they were getting invaluable help from Communist spies in England and America, including Volodya’s old school friend Willi Frunze.

Zoya came back to bed. Volodya said: ‘When we first met, you didn’t seem to like me much.’

‘I didn’t like men,’ she replied. ‘I still don’t. Most of them are drunks and bullies and fools. It took me a while to figure out that you were
different.’

‘Thanks, I think,’ he said. ‘But are men really so bad?’

‘Look around you,’ she said. ‘Look at our country.’

He reached over her and turned on the bedside radio. Even though he had disconnected the listening device behind the headboard, you couldn’t be too careful. When the radio had warmed up, a
military band played a march. Satisfied that he could not be overheard, Volodya said: ‘You’re thinking of Stalin and Beria. But they won’t always be around.’

‘Do you know how my father fell from favour?’ she said.

‘No. My parents never mentioned it.’

‘There’s a reason for that.’

‘Go on.’

‘According to my mother, there was an election at my father’s factory for a deputy to attend the Moscow Soviet. A Menshevik candidate stood against the Bolshevik, and my father went
to a meeting to hear him speak. He did not support the Menshevik, nor vote for him; but everyone who went to that meeting was sacked, and a few weeks later my father was arrested and taken to the
Lubyanka.’

She meant the NKVD headquarters and prison in Lubyanka Square.

She went on: ‘My mother went to your father and begged him to help. He immediately went with her to the Lubyanka. They saved my father, but they saw twelve other workers shot.’

‘That’s terrible,’ Volodya said. ‘But it was Stalin—’

‘No. This was 1920. Stalin was just a Red Army commander fighting in the Soviet–Polish War. Lenin was leader.’

‘This happened under Lenin?’

‘Yes. So, you see, it’s not just Stalin and Beria.’

Volodya’s view of Communist history was badly shaken. ‘What is it, then?’

The door opened.

Volodya reached for his gun in the bedside-table drawer.

But the person who came in was a girl wearing a fur coat and, as far as he could see, nothing else.

‘Sorry, Volodya,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you had company.’

Zoya said: ‘Who the fuck is she?’

Volodya said: ‘Natasha, how did you open my door?’

‘You gave me a pass key. It opens every door in the hotel.’

‘Well, you might have knocked!’

‘Sorry. I just came to tell you the bad news.’

‘What?’

‘I went into Woody Dewar’s room, just as you told me. But I didn’t succeed.’

‘What did you do?’

‘This.’ Natasha opened her coat to show her naked body. She had a voluptuous figure and a luxuriant bush of dark pubic hair.

‘All right, I get the picture, close your coat,’ said Volodya. ‘What did he say?’

She switched to English. ‘He just said: “No.” I said: “What do you mean, no?” He said: “It’s the opposite of yes.” Then he just held the door wide
open until I went out.’

‘Bugger,’ said Volodya. ‘I’ll have to think of something else.’

(ii)

Chuck Dewar knew there was going to be trouble when Captain Vandermeier came into the enemy land section in the middle of the afternoon, red-faced from a beery lunch.

The intelligence unit at Pearl Harbor had expanded. Formerly called Station HYPO, it now had the grand title of Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Area, or JICPOA.

Vandermeier had a marine sergeant in tow. ‘Hey, you two powder puffs,’ Vandermeier said. ‘You got a customer complaint here.’

The operation had grown, everyone began to specialize, and Chuck and Eddie had become experts at mapping the territory where American forces were about to land as they fought their way island by
island across the Pacific.

Vandermeier said: ‘This is Sergeant Donegan.’ The marine was very tall and looked as hard as a rifle. Chuck guessed that the sexually troubled Vandermeier was smitten.

Chuck stood up: ‘Good to meet you, Sergeant. I’m Chief Petty Officer Dewar.’

Chuck and Eddie had both been promoted. As thousands of conscripts poured into the US military, there was a shortage of officers, and pre-war enlisted men who knew the ropes rose fast. Chuck and
Eddie were now permitted to live off base. They had rented a small apartment together.

Chuck put out his hand, but Donegan did not shake it.

Chuck sat down again. He slightly outranked a sergeant, and he was not going to be polite to one who was rude. ‘Something I can do for you, Captain Vandermeier?’

There were many ways a captain could torment petty officers in the navy, and Vandermeier knew them all. He adjusted rotas so that Chuck and Eddie never had the same day off. He marked their
reports ‘adequate’, knowing full well that anything less than ‘excellent’ was, in fact, a black mark. He sent confusing messages to the pay office, so that Chuck and Eddie
were paid late or got less than they should have, and had to spend hours straightening things out. He was a royal pain. And now he had thought up some new mischief.

Donegan pulled from his pocket a grubby sheet of paper and unfolded it. ‘Is this your work?’ he said aggressively.

Chuck took the paper. It was a map of New Georgia, a group in the Solomon Islands. ‘Let me check,’ he said. It was his work, and he knew it, but he was playing for time.

He went to a filing cabinet and pulled open a drawer. He took out the file for New Georgia and shut the drawer with his knee. He returned to his desk, sat down, and opened the file. It contained
a duplicate of Donegan’s map. ‘Yes,’ Chuck said. ‘That’s my work.’

‘Well, I’m here to tell you it’s shit,’ said Donegan.

‘Is it?’

‘Look, right here. You show the jungle coming down to the sea. In fact, there’s a beach a quarter of a mile wide.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Sorry!’ Donegan had drunk about the same amount of beer as Vandermeier, and he was spoiling for a fight. ‘Fifty of my men died on that beach.’

Vandermeier belched and said: ‘How could you make a mistake like that, Dewar?’

Chuck was shaken. If he was responsible for an error that had killed fifty men, he deserved to be shouted at. ‘This is what we had to work on,’ he said. The file contained an
inaccurate map of the islands that might have been Victorian, and a more recent naval chart that showed sea depths but almost no terrain features. There were no on-the-spot reports and no wireless
decrypts. The only other item in the file was a blurred black-and-white aerial reconnaissance photograph. Putting his finger on the relevant spot in the photo, Chuck said: ‘It sure looks as
if the trees come all the way to the waterline. Is there a tide? If not, the sand might have been covered with algae when the photograph was taken. Algae can bloom suddenly, and die off just as
fast.’

Donegan said: ‘You wouldn’t be so goddamn casual about it if you had to fight over the terrain.’

Maybe that was true, Chuck thought. Donegan was aggressive and rude, and he was being egged on by the malicious Vandermeier, but that did not mean he was wrong.

Vandermeier said: ‘Yeah, Dewar. Maybe you and your nancy-boy friend should go with the marines on their next assault. See how your maps are used in action.’

Chuck was trying to think of a smart retort when it occurred to him to take the suggestion seriously. Maybe he ought to see some action. It
was
easy to be blasé behind a desk.
Donegan’s complaint deserved to be taken seriously.

On the other hand, it would mean risking his life.

Chuck looked Vandermeier in the eye. ‘That sounds like a good idea, Captain,’ he said. ‘I’d like to volunteer for that duty.’

Donegan looked startled, as if he was beginning to think he might have misjudged the situation.

Eddie spoke for the first time. ‘So would I. I’ll go, too.’

‘Good,’ said Vandermeier. ‘You’ll come back wiser – or not at all.’

(iii)

Volodya could not get Woody Dewar drunk.

In the bar of the Hotel Moskva he thrust a glass of vodka in front of the young American and said in schoolboy English: ‘You’ll like this – it’s the very best.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Woody. ‘I appreciate it.’ And he left the glass untouched.

Woody was tall and gangly and seemed straightforward to the point of naivety, which was why Volodya had targeted him.

Speaking through the interpreter, Woody said: ‘Is Peshkov a common Russian name?’

‘Not especially,’ Volodya replied in Russian.

‘I’m from Buffalo, where there is a well-known businessman called Lev Peshkov. I wonder if you’re related.’

Volodya was startled. His father’s brother was called Lev Peshkov and had gone to Buffalo before the First World War. But caution made him prevaricate. ‘I must ask my father,’
he said.

‘I was at Harvard with Lev Peshkov’s son, Greg. He could be your cousin.’

‘Possibly.’ Volodya glanced nervously at the police spies around the table. Woody did not understand that any connection with someone in America could bring down suspicion on a
Soviet citizen. ‘You know, Woody, in this country it’s considered an insult to refuse to drink.’

Woody smiled pleasantly. ‘Not in America,’ he said.

Volodya picked up his own glass and looked around the table at the assorted secret policemen pretending to be civil servants and diplomats. ‘A toast!’ he said. ‘To friendship
between the United States and the Soviet Union!’

The others raised their glasses high. Woody did the same. ‘Friendship!’ they all echoed.

Everyone drank except Woody, who put his glass down untasted.

Volodya began to suspect that he was not as naive as he seemed.

Woody leaned across the table. ‘Volodya, you need to understand that I don’t know any secrets. I’m too junior.’

‘So am I,’ said Volodya. It was far from the truth.

Woody said: ‘What I’m trying to explain is that you can just ask me questions. If I know the answers, I’ll tell you. I can do that, because anything I know can’t possibly
be secret. So you don’t need to get me drunk or send prostitutes to my room. You can just ask me.’

It was some kind of trick, Volodya decided. No one could be so innocent. But he decided to humour Woody. Why not? ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I need to know what you’re after.
Not you personally, of course. Your delegation, and Secretary Hull, and President Roosevelt. What do you want from this conference?’