Making Enemies

by Francis Bennett

  (‘Get him to hate the Reds and vote Tory,’ Charlie said later. ‘Simon’s recipe for peace of mind.’)

  ‘You and the boys can do it, Charlie. I know you can.’

  Smiles, bangs on the arm, warm encouragement and we were ushered out into the afternoon and the waiting Thomas. Not even time for tea and another word with Meredith.

  ‘If you’re wondering what that was,’ Charlie said as the Rolls turned into South Audley Street, ‘it was a bollocking by any other name.’

  ‘What can you do about it?’ I asked.

  ‘Simon’s the paymaster, which limits our freedom to act independently. But he’s wrong, the Soviets aren’t lurking under every stone as he wants us to believe. They aren’t waiting to take over the country as Simon implies. That’s dangerous nonsense. If we don’t keep some kind of balance, our readers will ignore what we say, and that will be worse still.’

  Charlie was thoughtful as we rounded Hyde Park Corner on our way back to Victoria.

  ‘We’ll do something in the next issue. Tony will write a piece about new times, new enemies. The need to be watchful. Warning signs of danger. How to police the peace. That’ll keep Simon happy and out of our hair for a while. In the meantime something else will come up to take his interest.’

  I hoped he was right. I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that there was more to Simon’s position than Charlie recognized, and we that we hadn’t heard the last of it by any means.

  *

  AN EXEMPLARY DEATH

  When we can recall the deaths of so many millions of people all too recently, what possible significance can one more death have? Philip Ridout was not a military or political leader. He was unknown outside his profession. He left no body of achievement by which he can be judged. He was a young man, at the beginning of a career in physics. All he had was promise. What his early death denies us is the gift of that promise. How many of us, in these post-wars years, can think back with sadness on promise lost for ever on the battlefield?

  Ridout spent his short life at Cambridge working to acquire knowledge that would benefit mankind. He approached the inherent dangers of nuclear physics with all the energy and enthusiasm of youth. He shared with all great scientists that rare intuition that directs one instinctively towards the right solutions to the problems one encounters. It was a privilege to work with such an original mind.

  During the years we worked together at Cambridge, Ridout had become convinced that nuclear energy was too dangerous to be entrusted to politicians. Only the scientist can understand the true nature of this elemental force we have released into the world, he argued. In the last weeks of his life he talked continually of the choice society has to make between destroying civilization or renouncing the weapons of war.

  Let us commemorate this young man’s death by making a permanent monument to his courage and his vision by ensuring that the ultimate power of nuclear weapons is not abused by those who govern us. Then Philip Ridout’s life will not have been in vain.

  *

  I read my father’s piece on Philip Ridout’s death with growing anger. How could he so misrepresent Ridout’s view on the need to build up our arsenal of nuclear weapons against the ever-present threats of the enemy? He must have known that Ridout believed in what he was doing, that in the last months of his life he used all his remaining energies to try to complete the task he had undertaken. He had a clear vision, as men facing the inevitability of their own death often do, which was that the Soviets were a dangerous enemy and that force should be met with force. Ridout was a scientist, not a humanitarian.

  Now my father was using his death to promote a different and contradictory point of view. He was betraying Ridout’s political position. He must have known better than anyone that Ridout saw the Russians as the enemy who had to be defeated and that the only weapon they understood was force.

  My father had knowingly distorted the truth. I wondered what could have brought him to that.

  *

  ‘That wasn’t the real Philip talking,’ my father said. ‘What I wrote was consistent with the views he held all the time we worked together, when he was fit. My piece was true to the man as I knew him. His illness changed him.’

  We were having a drink at his club. My father had telephoned earlier in the day to say that he was staying overnight in London, and why didn’t we have dinner? It was an unexpected overture and I had agreed. We had got on to the subject of Ridout almost at once. I said how sorry I was about his death, my father repeated how serious a loss he was to British science and then I had thoughtlessly raised the issue of Ridout’s political views.

  ‘When I saw him in Addenbrooke’s he was strongly in favour of building up our nuclear armoury against the Soviets. He saw them as a real threat.’

  That had elicited the unanswerable assertion from my father that he knew Ridout better than I did and that any changes in his views were the aberrations of a dying man. Once I might have pursued the argument; now I preferred to drop the matter. There was no point in quarrelling this early in the evening.

  ‘Now you’re back in London, do you see much of Monty?’ he asked me later over dinner.

  ‘Not as much as I’d expected,’ I said. ‘He’s always busy.’

  ‘You don’t know what he’s doing in Cambridge, then?’

  ‘I had no idea he was in Cambridge.’

  ‘I’ve seen him a few times over recent weeks. Not to speak to. I thought you might know what he’s up to.’

  ‘He never talks about his job.’

  I realized my mistake the moment I opened my mouth. My father had wanted my opinion on something that was clearly troubling him (why else would he have brought the subject up?), and, without thinking, out of perverse habit, I had rejected him. His question had held the promise of an intimacy that was now as remote as ever. I had been both hasty and foolish. The moment had come and gone and I was unable to do anything about it.

  The conversation after that was desultory and pointless. We both knew an opportunity had been lost and neither knew how to make a new approach. We kept away from any topic of substance.

  As I walked back to Strutton Ground, I was unable to clear my mind of my father’s question about Monty. Why was he interested in him? He never had been before.

  Monty was in Cambridge, his remark told me, for days at a time, possibly longer. No wonder I hadn’t seen much of him since my return to London. What was he doing there? Was he watching my father? Was he working on the basis that what Krasov had told me was true? I felt a sudden pang of guilt. I had assumed that Monty had accepted my verdict on that long night’s meeting and I had interpreted his reluctance to talk about it and his absence from my life as confirmation. Now I was faced with the awful thought that perhaps my assumptions were wholly wrong and the opposite was true. What if Monty had believed every word Krasov said? What if my father was now under suspicion of dealing with the Russians? If that was so, I knew only too well who was responsible for placing him in this position.

  6

  RUTH

  She watches the procession pass by. The coffin is carried by four elderly men in black overcoats, followed by a silently weeping woman holding a bunch of white flowers and supported by two young men, presumably her sons. No mourners. No friends. No players from any part of the life just ended. A last journey of true loneliness.

  How different from the hollow stage management of her father’s funeral, when he was escorted to his grave by an honour guard of senior Party officials. Her brother walked behind the coffin carrying a huge, garlanded photograph of a man she hardly recognized, taken many years before when his hair still fell over his forehead. Ranks of politicians and officials in black hats and coats followed, whispering to each other, the hypocrisy of their show of public grief striking her with as much force as the driving wind on that bitterly cold December morning. Her father had fought with so many of them during his life. Now they were walking to his grave to satisfy themselves that he was well and
truly dead.

  The small procession has stopped near a group of ancient, wind-torn gravestones. They are preparing for the burial. She shudders. How long before her mother is carried in a box and lowered into the ground, while flowers are dropped on to the wooden surface of the coffin and the cold earth is shovelled over her too? Will she be mourned by only her daughter and her grandson?

  As she checks the directions given her by the keeper of the cemetery (she knows that he will already have reported her presence to someone in authority) she notices the silhouette of a man by the iron gates. He is too far away to be identifiable but his presence disturbs her. What is he doing in this unkempt garden of the dead? Is he watching her? Following her? She experiences an all too familiar spiral of fear.

  The grave is newly dug; there is no tombstone and probably never will be, nor any name board to identify whose body lies there. A single bunch of dried flowers has been placed at the head of the grave, or what she imagines is the head, and attached to it a card with a scrawled signature. She bends to read it.

  My beloved Miklos. Farewell.

  Miklos Khudiakov. Tall, thin, balding, with delicate white hands and a studious expression. He would listen with infinite patience to her requests. When he spoke it was always thoughtfully and practically. Now he was dead, killed by a bomb, and he would never be able to help her again.

  She feels rage burning within her and she closes her eyes. Can the dead renew the living? Can she draw the strength she needs from the fact that his damaged body lies under the earth? She is in pain, suffering outrage at the crime that has been committed, frustrated that there can be no justice, no righting of wrongs, no moment of judgement for the guilty.

  Tears spring to her eyes and she weeps openly. No one can see. No one can hear. She lets herself go, sobbing as if Miklos Khudiakov were her husband or her son. She cries for him, his wife and children, for herself, her mother and her son, for her life without Stevens, for Miskin.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She turns round, terrified at the sound of a voice.

  ‘Pavel! You gave me a fright.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m sorry.’

  She blows her nose and wipes her eyes. She does not want him to see her like this.

  ‘He’s left a widow and three small children,’ Lykowski says, pushing at the earth with the toe of his shoe. ‘I wonder what will happen to them?’

  She cannot think of the woman whose handwriting is on the card at her feet. It is too much to bear.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asks.

  Is it her imagination or does he hesitate before he speaks?

  ‘I have been wanting to talk to you for days. I could never find you alone. That is why I followed you.’

  She is not convinced by his explanation. This is not the Pavel she knows, a young man full of emotional fervour, secure in the simplicity of his beliefs. He is hesitant, nervous, without any sign of the assurance she has previously found to be unwavering.

  ‘You can say what you like,’ she says. ‘Only the dead can hear. I am sure they have better things to do than listen to us.’

  He smiles, but his eyes don’t meet hers. When he offers her a cigarette his hand shakes. She refuses. He takes one for himself and lights it, cupping both hands around the lighter. She watches the smoke drift away on the clear morning air.

  ‘Poor Miklos,’ he says. ‘How we will miss him.’

  Is he nervous because of what he wants to tell her? Or is he there to betray her? Will the secret police step out from behind the battered gravestones or from the shadows of the fir trees, and drag her to the airless basement in the Lubyanka where she will be forced to bargain for her life?

  ‘What happens now?’ he asks.

  That is the question she has been asking herself ever since she heard from Andropov and Little Krasov that the explosion in D4 was not an accident. It is the reason she is standing now beside the grave of a young man who died in that explosion. The knowledge she seeks is not to be found in the mound of earth before her, but in the private territory of her mind. She must stand before Miklos’s grave and remind herself that he is dead, and find the strength to fight. How easy it is to accept the inevitability of what happens, to shrug your shoulders in defiance of what you know and get on with your own life. How hard to find the courage to oppose what you know to be wrong.

  ‘What can we do?’

  This time their eyes meet. She reads the simple appeal in his expression. He is more frightened than she is. She is angry with herself for misjudging him. She takes his hand in hers.

  ‘We will have to face the truth sooner or later,’ she says.

  ‘Nothing went wrong that night.’ She feels his hand tighten in hers. They are allies in their secret knowledge. ‘The explosion was not an accident. Miklos did not make a mistake. He was murdered,’ he says. ‘The pensioners too. They were all murdered.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’ she asks. She is not challenging him. She is looking for reassurance. He will know from her expression and the pressure of her hand that she has reached the same conclusion. What he says next shocks her when she thinks of the risks he must have taken.

  ‘I’ve checked the D4 worksheets for the past three months. Nothing they were working on could have caused an explosion on that scale, it’s not scientifically possible. They weren’t so behind schedule that they needed to work at night to catch up. Yet Miklos and his colleagues died at three in the morning.’

  ‘Do you know why they were working that night?’

  ‘They were instructed to do so.’ He hands her the familiar carbon copy of the worksheet they have to fill before the laboratory will act on their behalf. ‘See who signed it?’

  Miskin. Miskin signed it. She cannot believe this. Miskin could not have told Khudiakov to work that night.

  ‘Miskin never signed worksheets. We both know that.’

  ‘It’s his signature, isn’t it?’

  ‘Or a forgery.’

  ‘All Khudiakov would have looked for is a signature on the sheet. No one ever reads who signs these papers.’

  She holds the forgery as if it might contaminate her.

  ‘There’s something else.’ He digs in the pocket of his overcoat and hands her a piece of paper. ‘I’ve calculated how strong the explosion would have to have been to carry all the way from from D4 to the block of flats. It must have been enormous. I’m sure there was a separate explosion in the flats, soon after the damage had been done in D4. It’s the only possible explanation.’

  She takes the paper from him and checks the calculations. He is right, of course, as she knew he would be. It fits. It all fits. What can she say?

  In the distance, the burial is over. The pall-bearers are shaking hands with the widow and moving away. How many at her father’s funeral knew the secret of her mother’s dignity, so praised in the Pravda report? She didn’t cry that day because after the years of her father’s persistent infidelities there was nothing left to cry for. The marriage had been held together by her mother’s respect for convention and her courage. The man so lauded in death had in more than twenty years of marriage made her mother’s life almost intolerable.

  ‘You’re right.’ She says it so quietly she wonders if he has heard.

  ‘I began to despair of anyone listening to me.’

  ‘I believe everything you say is true.’

  ‘Why did it happen?’ he asks. He can’t keep still. He fiddles with the pockets of his overcoat, his scarf, his fur hat, incessant nervous movements. ‘That’s what I cannot understand. Why kill a man like Khudiakov on whom we all depended? Why kill those old people? They never did anyone any harm. What’s going on, Ruth? Sometimes I think I’m going mad.’

  ‘If I knew I’d tell you.’ That’s not true. If she tells him what she knows she will reveal her sources and then she will put her own life in jeopardy. ‘Explanations are beyond me.’

  He turns his back to her, pretending to survey
the cemetery. He is making sure they are not being watched.

  ‘At least we know what happened.’

  ‘What’s the point of knowing the truth if we are powerless to act on it?’ The bitterness in her voice surprises him.

  ‘Are you saying we should do nothing?’ He sounds incredulous.

  ‘Even if we knew the names of those who are behind all this, how can we avenge Miklos Khudiakov’s death? If we move a finger, who will suffer? His wife and children. Can you live with the thought of what might happen to them? We’re powerless, Pavel. Surely you see that?’

  ‘I won’t accept that.’ He is angry with her, his face mottled with red spots which mingle with his ginger freckles. ‘A great wrong has been committed, Ruth. We can’t leave it there.’

  ‘We have to, Pavel. We have no power. There’s nothing we can do.’

  ‘Why did you come here today to visit Miklos’s grave?’

  She says nothing, too afraid and distressed to speak.

  ‘I found you weeping by his grave, Ruth. You were weeping for the wrong of it all. That was why you came. To find the strength to continue in the face of it all.’

  ‘No.’ He has taken hold of her arms. She pushes him away. ‘I should never have come here. It was a mistake.’ Tears burst from her suddenly. She is desperate, confused, ‘I don’t know what I am doing here. Go away, Pavel. Leave me, leave me alone.’

  She turns from him and runs away.

  7

  MONTY

  Horseferry Road was gripped by the idea of a coup d’état in Moscow. The work of the Department was inspired by the hope that one day (and the sooner the better) the Soviet empire would collapse. The possibility of a popular revolt, the people rising up in arms against their oppressors, was remote. We had come to accept that the Soviet citizen had been stunned into acceptance of the status quo, his responses to the aberrations of Soviet policy numbed by years of terror and crisis.