The Lieutenant's Lover
Page 33
Misha had started up his foundry again. With a proper currency and free movement in and out of the city, there was no stopping him. His factory grew to employ two hundred people. His products were among the best in a Germany that now brimmed with excellence.
Harry Hollinger had been a close friend all the time he’d been in Berlin. But with the partition of the city and the withdrawal of the bulk of the occupying forces, Hollinger had been transferred back to London. He was still a family friend though, and visited often.
As for the others they had known, old age had carried most of them away, Rodyon had had the opportunity to leave Russia too – another case of rescue by a Japanese trawler – but he’d preferred to live out his days in the motherland he’d done his best to serve. He had died eighteen years back of a lung problem, caused by the kind of damp and inadequate housing he had once sought to eradicate.
Pavel too was dead. He had risen one more step in the NKVD, from lieutenant-colonel to colonel, but he hadn’t been able to hold onto his position. In the turmoil following Stalin’s death and the arrest and shooting of Beria, Pavel had been caught out in a game of politics. He’d been briefly sent to the Gulag, before his sentence was commuted to internal exile. His drinking problem had returned with a vengeance, and liver disease had carried him off in 1969.
The two old folk drank their coffee and tasted the cakes. The cakes were very bad – old, stale, made from cheap and bad ingredients. Well, it wouldn’t be for long. The unrest on the streets of Leipzig had begun with the slogan ‘Wir sind das Volk’, we are the people. But the slogan had already changed to ‘Wir sind ein Volk’, we are one people, one Germany. The divided country would unify once more; and its reunification would seal the new order in Europe. In a reunited Germany, Berlin’s cakes would soon improve.
Misha dropped a lot of money on the table, a hundred Deutschmarks or more, everything he had in his pocket. Tonya watched him, smiling. They walked back out into the sunshine, heading back to the Brandenburg Gate.
‘Well,’ said Misha, ‘I was right.’
‘Right? You’re never right. Right about what?’
‘I said it would all be over soon.’
‘What would all be over soon?’
‘The revolution, comrade Lensky. We had a discussion about it in 1918, if I remember right. I said that the French revolution hadn’t lasted long, that our own Russian revolution would have to change.’
‘Idiot.’
‘Well, it has changed, hasn’t it? Not just here, and Poland, and Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. But everywhere. Russia can’t go on as it is. It’ll change too. It’ll have to.’
He smiled at her. Her hair was now completely grey, but her eyes, always a little slanted, were still the same clear green of old. He used to think they were the most beautiful eyes in the world. He still did.
‘Well?’ he persisted.
‘Well what?’
‘I was right. You haven’t admitted it yet.’
‘I’ve admitted that you’re an idiot.’
‘Comrade Lensky, you have to admit it or I will make you dance, right here, right now.’
She laughed at him. He pushed her gently. She pushed him back. The pair of them, old as they were, walked like young lovers back under the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE LIEUTENANT’S LOVER
Harry Bingham was born in England in 1967. After graduating from Oxford University, he worked as an investment banker for ten years, before giving it up to care for his disabled wife and to write his first book. Harry Bingham lives near Oxford with his wife and dogs. He now writes full time and also runs the Writers’ Workshop, an advisory service for first-time writers.
OTHER WORKS
Also by Harry Bingham
The Money Makers
Sweet Talking Money
The Sons of Adam
Glory Boys
COPYRIGHT
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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This paperback edition 2006
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2006
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