Page 286 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

Tanya liked this woman. "Can we meet again?"

The editor hesitated. "Do you have something for me?"

Tanya did not answer the question. "Where are you staying?"

"The Europa."

Tanya had a room reserved at the same hotel. That was convenient. "What's your name?"

"Anna Murray. What's yours?"

"We'll talk again," said Tanya, and she walked away.

She felt drawn to Anna Murray on instinct, an instinct refined by a quarter of a century of life in the Soviet Union; but her feeling was supported by evidence. First, Anna was clearly British, not a Russian or East German posing as British. Second, she was neither Communist nor strenuously pretending to be the opposite. Her relaxed neutrality was impossible for a KGB spy to fake. Third, she used no jargon. People brought up in Soviet orthodoxy could not help talking about party, class, cadres, and ideology. Anna used none of the key words.

The green-and-white Wartburg was waiting outside. The driver took her to the Europa, where she checked in. Almost immediately she left her room and returned to the lobby.

She did not want to draw attention to herself even by merely asking at reception for Anna Murray's room number. At least one of the desk clerks would be an informant for the Stasi, and might make a note of a Soviet journalist seeking out an English publisher.

However, behind the reception desk was a bank of numbered pigeonholes where the staff deposited room keys and messages. Tanya simply sealed an empty envelope, wrote on it "Frau Anna Murray," and handed it in without speaking. The clerk immediately put it in the pigeonhole for Room 305.

There was a key in the space, which meant that Anna Murray was not in her room right now.

Tanya went into the bar. Anna was not there. Tanya sat for an hour, sipping a beer, roughing out her article on a notepad. Then she went into the restaurant. Anna was not there either. She had probably gone out to dinner with colleagues at a restaurant in the city. Tanya sat alone and ordered the local speciality, allerlei, a vegetable dish. She sat over her coffee for an hour, then left.

Passing through the lobby, she looked again at the pigeonholes. The key for 305 had gone.

Tanya returned to her own room, picked up the typescript, and walked to the door of Room 305.

There she hesitated. Once she had done this, she was committed. No cover story would explain or excuse her action. She was distributing anti-Soviet propaganda to the West. If she were caught, her life would be over.

She knocked on the door.

Anna opened it. She was barefoot and there was a toothbrush in her hand: clearly she had been getting ready for bed.

Tanya put her finger on her lips, indicating silence. Then she handed Anna the typescript. She whispered: "I'll come back in two hours." Then she walked away.

She returned to her own room and sat on the bed, shaking.

If Anna simply rejected the work, that would be bad enough. But if Tanya had misjudged her, Anna might feel obliged to tell someone in authority that she had been offered a dissident book. She might fear that, if she kept quiet about it, she could be accused of taking part in a conspiracy. She might think that the only sensible thing to do was to report the illicit approach that had been made to her.

But Tanya believed most Westerners did not think that way. Despite Tanya's dramatic precautions, Anna would have no real sense that she was guilty of a crime just by reading a typescript.

So the main question was whether Anna would like Vasili's work. Daniil had, and so had the editors of New World. But they were the only people who had read the stories, and they were all Russian. How would a foreigner react? Tanya felt confident that Anna would see that the material was well written, but would it move her? Would it break her heart?

At a few minutes past eleven, Tanya returned to Room 305.

Anna opened the door with the typescript in her hand.

Her face was wet with tears.

She spoke in a whisper. "It's unbearable," she said. "We have to tell the world."

*

One Friday night Dave found out that Lew, the drummer in Plum Nellie, was homosexual.

Until then he had thought that Lew was just shy. A lot of girls wanted to have sex with boys who played in pop groups, and the dressing room was sometimes like a brothel, but Lew never took advantage. This was not astonishing: some did, some did not. Walli never went with "groupies." Dave occasionally did, and Buzz, the bass player, never said no.

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