by Ken Follett
‘It’s obvious whose command they’re under,’ Heinrich said.
At last there was quiet. Frau Schroeder explained the Soviet demand, and said that it could not apply outside the Soviet sector of Berlin unless it was ratified by the other Allies.
A Communist deputy made a speech accusing her of taking orders directly from New York.
Accusations and abuse raged to and fro. Eventually they voted. The Communists unanimously backed the Soviet decree – after accusing others of being controlled from outside. Everyone else voted against, and the motion was defeated. Berlin had refused to be bullied. Carla felt wearily triumphant.
However, it was not yet over.
By the time they left it was seven o’clock in the evening. Most of the mob had disappeared, but there was a thuggish hardcore still hanging around the entrance. An elderly woman councillor was kicked and punched as she left. The police looked on with indifference.
Carla and Heinrich left by a side door with a few friends, hoping to depart unobserved, but a Communist on a bicycle was monitoring the exit. He rode off quickly.
As the councillors hurried away, he returned at the head of a small gang. Someone tripped Carla, and she fell to the ground. She was kicked painfully once, twice, three times. Terrified, she covered her belly with her hands. She was almost three months pregnant – the stage at which most miscarriages occurred, she knew. Will Werner’s baby die, she thought desperately, kicked to death on a Berlin street by Communist thugs?
Then they disappeared.
The councillors picked themselves up. No one was badly injured. They moved off together, fearful of a recurrence, but it seemed the Communists had roughed up enough people for one day.
Carla got home at eight o’clock. There was no sign of Erik.
Werner was shocked to see her bruises and torn dress. ‘What happened?’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’
She burst into tears.
‘You’re hurt,’ Werner said. ‘Should we go to the hospital?’
She shook her head vigorously. ‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘I’m just bruised. I’ve had worse.’ She slumped in a chair. ‘Christ, I’m tired.’
‘Who did this?’ he asked angrily.
‘The usual people,’ she said. ‘They call themselves Communists instead of Nazis, but they’re the same type. It’s 1933 all over again.’
Werner put his arms around her.
She could not be consoled. ‘The bullies and the thugs have been in power for so long!’ she sobbed. ‘Will it ever end?’
(iv)
That night the Soviet news agency put out an announcement. From six o’clock in the morning, all passenger and freight transport in and out of West Berlin – trains, cars and canal barges – would be stopped. No supplies of any kind would get through: no food, no milk, no medicines, no coal. Because the electricity generating stations would therefore be shut down, they were switching off the supply of electricity – to Western sectors only.
The city was under siege.
Lloyd Williams was at British military headquarters. There was a short Parliamentary recess, and Ernie Bevin had gone on holiday to Sandbanks, on the south coast of England, but he was worried enough to send Lloyd to Berlin to observe the introduction of the new currency and keep him informed.
Daisy had not accompanied Lloyd. Their new baby, Davey, was only six months old, and anyway Daisy and Eva Murray were organizing a birth control clinic for women in Hoxton that was about to open its doors.
Lloyd was desperately afraid that this crisis would lead to war. He had fought in two wars, and he never wanted to see a third. He had two small children who he hoped would grow up in a peaceful world. He was married to the prettiest, sexiest, most lovable woman on the planet and he wanted to spend many long decades with her.
General Clay, the workaholic American military governor, ordered his staff to plan an armoured convoy that would barrel down the autobahn from Helmstedt, in the west, straight through Soviet territory to Berlin, sweeping all before it.
Lloyd heard about this plan at the same time as the British governor, Sir Brian Robertson, and heard him say in his clipped soldierly tones: ‘If Clay does that, it will be war.’
But nothing else made any sense. The Americans came up with other suggestions, Lloyd heard, talking to Clay’s younger aides. The Secretary of the Army, Kenneth Royall, wanted to halt the currency reform. Clay told him it had gone too far to be reversed. Next, Royall proposed evacuating all Americans. Clay told him that was exactly what the Soviets wanted.
Sir Brian wanted to supply the city by air. Most people thought that was impossible. Someone calculated that Berlin required 4,000 tons of fuel and food per day. Were there enough airplanes in the world to move that much stuff? No one knew. Nevertheless, Sir Brian ordered the Royal Air Force to make a start.
On Friday afternoon Sir Brian went to see Clay, and Lloyd was invited to be part of the entourage. Sir Brian said to Clay: ‘The Russians might block the autobahn ahead of your convoy, and wait and see if you have the nerve to attack them; but I don’t think they’ll shoot planes down.’
‘I don’t see how we can deliver enough supplies by air,’ Clay said again.
‘Nor do I,’ said Sir Brian. ‘But we’re going to do it until we think of something better.’
Clay picked up the phone. ‘Get me General LeMay in Wiesbaden,’ he said. After a minute he said: ‘Curtis, have you got any planes there that can carry coal?’
There was a pause.
‘Coal,’ said Clay more loudly.
Another pause.
‘Yes, that is what I said – coal.’
A moment later, Clay looked up at Sir Brian. ‘He says the US Air Force can deliver anything.’
The British returned to their headquarters.
On Saturday Lloyd got an army driver and went into the Soviet zone on a personal mission. He drove to the address at which he had visited the von Ulrich family fifteen years ago.
He knew that Maud was still living there. His mother and Maud had resumed correspondence at the end of the war. Maud’s letters put a brave face on what was undoubtedly severe hardship. She did not ask for help, and anyway there was nothing Ethel could do for her – rationing was still in force in Britain.
The place looked very different. In 1933 it had been a fine town house, a little run down but still gracious. Now it looked like a dump. Most of the windows had boards or paper instead of glass. There were bullet holes in the stonework, and the garden wall had collapsed. The woodwork had not been painted for many years.
Lloyd sat in the car for a few moments, looking at the house. Last time he came here he had been eighteen, and Hitler had only just become Chancellor of Germany. The young Lloyd had not dreamed of the horrors the world was going to see. Neither he nor anyone else had suspected how close Fascism would come to triumphing over all Europe, and how much they would have to sacrifice to defeat it. He felt a bit like the von Ulrich house looked, battered and bombed and shot at but still standing.
He walked up the path and knocked.
He recognized the maid who opened the door. ‘Hello, Ada, do you remember me?’ he said in German. ‘I’m Lloyd Williams.’
The house was better inside than out. Ada showed him up to the drawing room, where there were flowers in a glass tumbler on the piano. A brightly patterned blanket had been thrown over the sofa, no doubt to hide holes in the upholstery. The newspapers in the windows let in a surprising amount of light.
A two-year-old boy walked into the room and inspected him with frank curiosity. He was dressed in clothes that were evidently homemade, and he had an Oriental look. ‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘My name is Lloyd. Who are you?’
‘Walli,’ he said. He ran out again, and Lloyd heard him say to someone outside: ‘That man talks funny!’
So much for my German accent, Lloyd thought.
Then he heard the voice of a middle-aged woman. ‘Don’t make such remarks! It’s
impolite.’
‘Sorry, Grandma.’
Next moment Maud walked in.
Her appearance shocked Lloyd. She was in her mid-fifties, but looked seventy. Her hair was grey, her face was gaunt, and her blue silk dress was threadbare. She kissed his cheek with shrunken lips. ‘Lloyd Williams, what a joy to see you!’
She’s my aunt, Lloyd thought with a rather queer feeling. But she did not know that: Ethel had kept the secret.
Maud was followed by Carla, who was unrecognizable, and her husband. Lloyd had met Carla as a precocious eleven-year-old: now, he calculated, she was twenty-six. Although she looked half-starved – most Germans did – she was pretty, and had a confident air that surprised Lloyd. Something about the way she stood made him think she might be pregnant. He knew from Maud’s letters that Carla had married Werner, who had been a handsome charmer back in 1933 and was still the same.
They spent an hour catching up. The family had been through unimaginable horror, and said so frankly, yet Lloyd still had a sense that they were editing out the worst details. He told them about Daisy, Evie and Dave. During the conversation a teenage girl came in and asked Carla if she could go to her friend’s house.
‘This is our daughter, Rebecca,’ Carla said to Lloyd.
She was about sixteen, so Lloyd supposed she must be adopted.
‘Have you done your homework?’ Carla asked the girl.
‘I’ll do it tomorrow morning.’
‘Do it now, please,’ Carla said firmly.
‘Oh, Mother!’
‘No argument,’ said Carla. She turned back to Lloyd, and Rebecca stomped out.
They talked about the crisis. Carla was deeply involved, as a city councillor. She was pessimistic about the future of Berlin. She thought the Russians would simply starve the population until the West gave in and handed the city over to total Soviet control.
‘Let me show you something that may make you feel differently,’ Lloyd said. ‘Will you come with me in the car?’
Maud stayed behind with Walli, but Carla and Werner went with Lloyd. He told the driver to take them to Tempelhof, the airport in the American zone. When they arrived he led them to a high window from which they could look down on the runway.
There on the tarmac were a dozen C-47 Skytrain aircraft lined up nose to tail, some with the American star, some with the RAF roundel. Their cargo doors were open, and a truck stood at each one. German porters and American airmen were unloading the aircraft. There were sacks of flour, big drums of kerosene, cartons of medical supplies, and wooden crates containing thousands of bottles of milk.
While they watched, empty aircraft were taking off and more were coming in to land.
‘This is amazing,’ said Carla, her eyes glistening. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘There has never been anything like it,’ Lloyd replied.
She said: ‘But can the British and Americans keep it up?’
‘I think we have to.’
‘But for how long?’
‘As long as it takes,’ said Lloyd firmly.
And they did.
25
1949
Almost halfway through the twentieth century, on 29 August 1949, Volodya Peshkov was on the Ustyurt Plateau, east of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan. It was a stony desert in the deep south of the USSR, where nomads herded goats in much the same way as they had in Bible times. Volodya was in a military truck that bounced uncomfortably along a rough track. Dawn was breaking over a landscape of rock, sand, and low thorny bushes. A bony camel, alone beside the road, stared malevolently at the truck as it passed.
In the dim distance, Volodya saw the bomb tower, lit by a battery of spotlights.
Zoya and the other scientists had built their first nuclear bomb according to the design Volodya had got from Willi Frunze in Santa Fe. It was a plutonium device with an implosion trigger. There were other designs, but this one had worked twice before, once in New Mexico and once at Nagasaki.
So it should work today.
The test was codenamed RDS-1, but they called it First Lightning.
Volodya’s truck pulled up at the foot of the tower. Looking up, he saw a clutch of scientists on the platform, doing something with a snake’s nest of cables that led to detonators on the skin of the bomb. A figure in blue overalls stepped back, and there was a toss of blonde hair: Zoya. Volodya felt a flush of pride. My wife, he thought; top physicist and mother of two.
She conferred with two men, the three heads close together, arguing. Volodya hoped nothing was wrong.
This was the bomb that would save Stalin.
Everything else had gone wrong for the Soviet Union. Western Europe had turned decisively democratic, scared off Communism by bully-boy Kremlin tactics and bought off by Marshall Plan bribes. The USSR had not even been able to take control of Berlin: when the airlift had gone on relentlessly day after day for almost a year, the Soviet Union had given up and reopened the roads and railways. In Eastern Europe, Stalin had retained control only by brute force. Truman had been re-elected President, and considered himself leader of the world. The Americans had stockpiled nuclear weapons, and had stationed B-29 bombers in Britain, ready to turn the Soviet Union into a radioactive wasteland.
But everything would change today.
If the bomb exploded as it should, the USSR and the USA would be equals again. When the Soviet Union could threaten America with nuclear devastation, American domination of the world would be over.
Volodya no longer knew whether that would be good or bad.
If it did not explode, both Zoya and Volodya would probably be purged, sent to labour camps in Siberia or just shot. Volodya had already talked to his parents, and they had promised to take care of Kotya and Galina.
As they would if Volodya and Zoya were killed by the test.
In the strengthening light Volodya saw, at various distances around the tower, an odd variety of buildings: houses of brick and wood, a bridge over nothing, and the entrance to some kind of underground structure. Presumably the army wanted to measure the effect of the blast. Looking more carefully he saw trucks, tanks, and obsolete aircraft, placed for the same purpose, he imagined. The scientists were also going to assess the impact of the bomb on living creatures: there were horses, cattle, sheep, and dogs in kennels.
The confab on the platform ended with a decision. The three scientists nodded and resumed their work.
A few minutes later Zoya came down and greeted her husband.
‘Is everything all right?’ he said.
‘We think so,’ Zoya replied.
‘You think so?’
She shrugged. ‘We’ve never done this before, obviously.’
They got into the truck and drove, across country that was already a wasteland, to the distant control bunker.
The other scientists were close behind.
At the bunker they all put on welders’ goggles as the countdown ticked away.
At sixty seconds, Zoya held Volodya’s hand.
At ten seconds, he smiled at her and said: ‘I love you.’
At one second, he held his breath.
Then it was as if the sun had suddenly risen. A light stronger than noon flooded the desert. In the direction of the bomb tower, a ball of fire grew impossibly high, reaching for the moon. Volodya was startled by the lurid colours in the fireball: green, purple, orange and violet.
The ball turned into a mushroom whose umbrella kept rising. At last the sound arrived, a bang as if the largest artillery piece in the Red Army had been fired a foot away, followed by rolling thunder that reminded Volodya of the terrible bombardment of the Seelow Heights.
At last the cloud began to disperse and the noise faded.
There was a long moment of stunned silence.
Someone said: ‘My God, I didn’t expect that.’
Volodya embraced his wife. ‘You did it,’ he said.
She looked solemn. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But what did we do?’
> ‘You saved Communism,’ said Volodya.
(ii)
‘The Russian bomb was based on Fat Man, the one we dropped on Nagasaki,’ said Special Agent Bill Bicks. ‘Someone gave them the plans.’
‘How do you know?’ Greg asked him.
‘From a defector.’
They were sitting in Bicks’s carpeted office in the Washington headquarters of the FBI at nine o’clock in the morning. Bicks had his jacket off. His shirt was stained in the armpits with sweat, though the building was comfortably air-conditioned.
‘According to this guy,’ Bicks went on, ‘a Red Army intelligence colonel got the plans from one of the scientists on the Manhattan Project team.’
‘Did he say who?’
‘He doesn’t know which scientist. That’s why I called you in. We need to find the traitor.’
‘The FBI checked them all out at the time.’
‘And most of them were security risks! There was nothing we could do. But you knew them personally.’
‘Who was the Red Army colonel?’
‘I was coming to that. You know him. His name is Vladimir Peshkov.’
‘My half-brother!’
‘Yes.’
‘If I were you, I’d suspect me.’ Greg said it with a laugh, but he was very uneasy.
‘Oh, we did, believe me,’ Bicks said. ‘You’ve been subjected to the most thorough investigation I have seen in twenty years with the Bureau.’
Greg gave him a sceptical look. ‘No kidding.’
‘Your kid’s doing well in school, isn’t he?’
Greg was shocked. Who could have told the FBI about Georgy? ‘You mean my godson?’ he said.
‘Greg, I said thorough. We know he’s your son.’
Greg was annoyed, but he suppressed the feeling. He had probed the personal secrets of numerous suspects during his time in Army security. He had no right to object.
‘You’re clean,’ Bicks went on.
