Page 191 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

Daisy said: "What?"

Lloyd said: "Don't be ridiculous. Do you imagine we're going to allow you to do that at your age? It must be illegal under German employment law, for one thing."

"Not all laws are strictly enforced," Dave argued. "I bet you illegally bought drinks in pubs before you were eighteen."

"I went to Germany with my mother when I was eighteen. I certainly never spent six weeks unsupervised in a foreign country at the age of fifteen."

"I won't be unsupervised. Cousin Lenny will be with me."

"I don't see him as a reliable chaperone."

"Chaperone?" said Dave indignantly. "What am I, a Victorian maiden?"

"You're a child, according to the law, and an adolescent, in reality. You're certainly not an adult."

"You've got a cousin in Hamburg," Dave said desperately. "Rebecca. She wrote to Mam. You could ask her to look after me."

"She's a distant cousin by adoption, and I haven't seen her for sixteen years. That's not a sufficiently close connection for me to dump an unruly teenager on her for the summer. I'd hesitate to do it to my sister."

Daisy adopted a conciliatory tone. "From her letter I got the impression of a kind person, Lloyd, dear. And I don't think she has children of her own. She might not mind being asked."

Lloyd looked annoyed. "Do you actually want Dave to do this?"

"No, of course not. If I had my wish, he would come to Tenby with us. But he is growing up, and we may have to loosen the apron strings." She looked at Dave. "He's going to find it harder work and less fun than he imagines, but he may learn some life lessons from it."

"No," said Lloyd with an air of finality. "If he were eighteen, perhaps I'd agree. But he's too young, much too young."

Dave wanted to scream with rage and burst into tears at the same time. Surely they would not spoil this opportunity?

"It's late," said Daisy. "Let's talk about it in the morning. Dave needs to get Linda home before her parents start to worry."

Dave hesitated, reluctant to leave the argument unresolved.

Lloyd went to the foot of the stairs. "Don't get your hopes up," he said to Dave. "It isn't going to happen."

Dave opened the front door. If he walked out now, without saying anything else, he would leave them with the wrong impression. He needed them to know they could not stop him going to Hamburg easily. "Listen to me," he said, and his father looked startled. Dave made up his mind. "For the first time in my life, I'm a success at something, Dad," he said. "Just understand me. If you try to take this from me, I'll leave home. And, I swear, if I leave I will never, ever, come back."

He led Linda out and slammed the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Tanya Dvorkin was back in Moscow, but Vasili Yenkov was not.

After the two of them had been arrested at the poetry reading in Mayakovsky Square, Vasili had been convicted of "anti-Soviet activities and propaganda" and sentenced to two years in a Siberian labor camp. Tanya felt guilty: she had been Vasili's partner in crime, but she had got away with it.

Tanya assumed Vasili had been beaten and interrogated. But she was still free and working as a journalist, therefore he had not given her away. Perhaps he had refused to talk. More likely, he might have named plausible fictitious collaborators who the KGB believed were simply difficult to track down.

By the spring of 1963 Vasili had served his sentence. If he was alive--if he had survived the cold, hunger, and disease that killed many prisoners in labor camps--he should be free now. Ominously, he had not reappeared.

Prisoners were normally allowed to send and receive one letter per month, heavily censored; but Vasili could not write to Tanya, for that would betray her to the KGB; so she had no information; and no doubt the same applied to most of his friends. Perhaps he wrote to his mother in Leningrad. Tanya had never met her: Vasili's association with Tanya was secret even from his mother.

Vasili had been Tanya's closest friend. She lay awake nights worrying about him. Was he ill, or even dead? Perhaps he had been convicted of another crime, and had his sentence extended. Tanya was tortured by the uncertainty. It gave her a headache.

One afternoon she took the risk of mentioning Vasili to her boss, Daniil Antonov. The features department of TASS was a large, noisy room, with journalists typing, talking on the phone, reading newspapers, and walking in and out of the reference library. If she spoke quietly she would not be overheard. She began by saying: "What happened about Ustin Bodian, in the end?" The ill treatment of Bodian, a dissident opera singer, was the subject of the edition of Dissidence Vasili had been giving out when arrested--an issue written by Tanya.

"Bodian died of pneumonia," Daniil said.

Tanya knew that. She was pretending ignorance only to bring the conversation around to Vasili. "There was a writer arrested with me that day--Vasili Yenkov," she said in a musing tone. "Any idea what happened to him?"

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