Page 27 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

Dimka Dvorkin walked in with his mind in a whirl and his stomach in knots.

The room was the regular meeting place of aides to the ministers and secretaries who formed the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the governing body of the USSR.

Dimka was an aide to Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary and chairman of the Presidium, but all the same he felt he should not be here.

The Vienna Summit was a few weeks away. It would be the dramatic first encounter between Khrushchev and the new American president, John Kennedy. Tomorrow, at the most important Presidium of the year, the leaders of the USSR would decide strategy for the summit. Today, the aides were gathering to prepare for the Presidium. It was a planning meeting for a planning meeting.

Khrushchev's representative had to present the leader's thinking so that the other aides could prepare their bosses for tomorrow. His unspoken task was to uncover any latent opposition to Khrushchev's ideas and, if possible, quash it. It was his solemn duty to ensure that tomorrow's discussion went smoothly for the leader.

Dimka was familiar with Khrushchev's thinking about the summit, but all the same he felt he could not possibly cope with this meeting. He was the youngest and most inexperienced of Khrushchev's aides. He was only a year out of university. He had never been to the pre-Presidium meeting before: he was too junior. But ten minutes ago his secretary had informed him that one of the senior aides had called in sick and the other two had just been in a car crash, so he, Dimka, had to stand in.

Dimka had got a job working for Khrushchev for two reasons. One was that he had come top of every class he had ever attended, from nursery school through university. The other was that his uncle was a general. He did not know which factor was the more important.

The Kremlin presented a monolithic appearance to the outside world but, in truth, it was a battlefield. Khrushchev's hold on power was not strong. He was a Communist heart and soul, but he was also a reformer who saw failings in the Soviet system and wanted to implement new ideas. But the old Stalinists in the Kremlin were not yet defeated. They were alert for any opportunity to weaken Khrushchev and roll back his reforms.

The meeting was informal, the aides drinking tea and smoking with their jackets off and their ties undone--most were men, though not all. Dimka spotted a friendly face: Natalya Smotrov, aide to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. She was in her midtwenties, and attractive despite a drab black dress. Dimka did not know her well but he had spoken to her a few times. Now he sat down next to her. She looked surprised to see him. "Konstantinov and Pajari have been in a car crash," he explained.

"Are they hurt?"

"Not badly."

"What about Alkaev?"

"Off sick with shingles."

"Nasty. So you're the leader's representative."

"I'm terrified."

"You'll be fine."

He looked around. They all seemed to be waiting for something. In a low voice he said to Natalya: "Who chairs this meeting?"

One of the others heard him. It was Yevgeny Filipov, who worked for conservative defense minister Rodion Malinovsky. Filipov was in his thirties but dressed older, in a baggy postwar suit and a gray flannel shirt. He repeated Dimka's question loudly, in a scornful tone. "Who chairs this meeting? You do, of course. You're aide to the chairman of the Presidium, aren't you? Get on with it, college boy."

Dimka felt himself redden. For a moment he was lost for words. Then inspiration struck, and he said: "Thanks to Major Yuri Gagarin's remarkable space flight, Comrade Khrushchev will go to Vienna with the congratulations of the world ringing in his ears." Last month Gagarin had been the first human being to travel into outer space in a rocket, beating the Americans by just a few weeks, in a stunning scientific and propaganda coup for the Soviet Union and for Nikita Khrushchev.

The aides around the table clapped, and Dimka began to feel better.

Then Filipov spoke again. "The first secretary might do better to have ringing in his ears the inaugural speech of President Kennedy," he said. He seemed incapable of speaking without a sneer. "In case comrades around the

table have forgotten, Kennedy accused us of planning world domination, and he vowed to pay any price to stop us. After all the friendly moves we have made--unwisely, in the opinion of some experienced comrades--Kennedy could hardly have made clearer his aggressive intentions." He raised his arm with a finger in the air, like a schoolteacher. "Only one response is possible from us: increased military strength."

Dimka was still thinking up a rejoinder when Natalya beat him to it. "That's a race we can't win," she said with a brisk commonsense air. "The United States is richer than the Soviet Union, and they can easily match any increase in our military forces."

She was more sensible than her conservative boss, Dimka inferred. He shot her a grateful look and followed up. "Hence Khrushchev's policy of peaceful coexistence, which enables us to spend less on the army, and instead invest in agriculture and industry." Kremlin conservatives hated peaceful coexistence. For them, the conflict with capitalist imperialism was a war to the death.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dimka saw his secretary, Vera, enter the room, a bright, nervy woman of forty. He waved her away.

Filipov was not so easily disposed of. "Let's not permit a naive view of world politics to encourage us to reduce our army too fast," he said scornfully. "We can hardly claim to be winning on the international stage. Look at how the Chinese defy us. That weakens us at Vienna."

Why was Filipov trying so hard to prove that Dimka was a fool? Dimka suddenly recalled that Filipov had wanted a job in Khrushchev's office--the job that Dimka had got.

"As the Bay of Pigs weakened Kennedy," Dimka replied. The American president had authorized a crackpot CIA plan for an invasion of Cuba at a place called the Bay of Pigs: the scheme had gone wrong and Kennedy had been humiliated. "I think our leader's position is stronger."

"All the same, Khrushchev has failed--" Filipov stopped, realizing he was going too far. These pre-meeting discussions were frank, but there were limits.

Dimka seized on the moment of weakness. "What has Khrushchev failed to do, comrade?" he said. "Please enlighten us all."

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