Page 343 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

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For two weeks Dimka walked around fearing he could be attacked at any minute. Eventually he decided it was not going to happen. Perhaps Nik did not care that his wife was having an affair; or perhaps he was too wise to make an enemy of someone who worked in the Kremlin. Either way, Dimka began to feel safer.

He still wondered at the spite of Yevgeny Filipov. How could the man even have been surprised that Natalya rejected him? He was dull and conservative and homely-looking and badly dressed: what did he imagine he had to tempt an attractive woman who already had a lover as well as a husband? But clearly Filipov's feelings had been deeply wounded. However, his revenge seemed not to have worked.

But the main thing on Dimka's mind was the Czech reform movement that was being called the Prague Spring. It had caused the most bitter Kremlin split since the Cuban missile crisis. Dimka's boss, Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin, was the leader of the optimists, who hoped the Czechs could find a way out of the bog of inefficiency and waste that was the typical Communist economy. Muting their enthusiasm for tactical reasons, they proposed that Dubcek be watched carefully, but that confrontation should be avoided if possible. However, conservatives such as Filipov's boss, Defense Minister Andrei Grechko, and KGB chief Andropov were unnerved by Prague. They feared that radical ideas would undermine their authority, infect other countries, and subvert the Warsaw Pact military alliance. They wanted to send in the tanks, depose Dubcek, and install a rigid Communist regime slavishly loyal to Moscow.

The real boss, Leonid Brezhnev, was sitting on the fence, as he so often did, waiting for a consensus to emerge.

Despite being some of the most powerful people in the world, the top men in the Kremlin were scared of stepping out of line. Marxism-Leninism answered all questions, so the eventual decision would be infallibly correct. Anyone who had argued for a different outcome was therefore revealed to be culpably out of touch with orthodox thinking. Dimka sometimes wondered if it was this bad in the Vatican.

Because no one wanted to be the first to express an opinion on the record, as always they had to get their aides to thrash things out informally ahead of any Politburo meeting.

"It's not just Dubcek's revisionist ideas about freedom of the press," said Yevgeny Filipov to Dimka one afternoon in the broad corridor outside the Presidium Room. "He's a Slovak who wants to give more rights to the oppressed minority he comes from. Imagine if that idea starts to get around places such as Ukraine and Belarus."

As always, Filipov looked ten years out of date. Nowadays almost everyone was wearing their hair longer, but he still had an army crop. Dimka tried to forget for a moment that he was a malicious troublemaking bastard. "These dangers are remote," Dimka argued. "There's no immediate threat to the Soviet Union--certainly nothing to justify ham-fisted military intervention."

"Dubcek has undermined the KGB. He's expelled several agents from Prague and authorized an investigation into the death of the old foreign minister Jan Masaryk."

"Is the KGB entitled to murder ministers in friendly governments?" Dimka asked. "Is that the message you want to send to Hungary and East Germany? That would make the KGB worse than the CIA. At least the Americans only murder people in enemy countries such as Cuba."

Filipov became petulant. "What is to be gained by allowing this foolishness in Prague?"

"If we invade Czechoslovakia, there will be a diplomatic freeze--you know that."

"So what?"

"It will damage our relations with the West. We're trying to reduce tension with the United States, so that we can spend less on our military. That whole effort could be sabotaged. An invasion might even help Richard Nixon get elected president--and he could increase American defense spending. Think what that could cost us!"

Filipov tried to interrupt, but Dimka overrode him. "The invasion will also shock the Third World. We're trying to strengthen our ties with nonaligned countries in the face of rivalry from China, which wants to replace us as leader of global Communism. That's why we're organizing the World Communist Conference in November. That conference could become a humiliating failure if we invade Czechoslovakia."

Filipov sneered: "So you would simply let Dubcek do what he likes?"

"On the contrary." Dimka now revealed the proposal favored by his boss. "Kosygin will go to Prague and negotiate a compromise--a nonmilitary solution."

Filipov in his turn put his cards on the table. "The Defense Ministry will support that plan in the Politburo--on condition that we immediately begin preparations for an invasion in case the negotiation should fail."

"Agreed," said Dimka, who felt sure the military would make such preparations anyway.

The decision made, they went in opposite directions. Dimka returned to his office just as his secretary, Vera Pletner, was picking up the phone. He saw her face turn the color of the paper in her typewriter. "Has something happened?" he said.

She gave him the receiver. "Your ex-wife," she said.

Suppressing a groan, Dimka took the instrument and spoke into it. "What is it, Nina?"

"Come at once!" she screamed. "Grisha's gone!"

Dimka's heart seemed to stop. Grigor, whom they called Grisha, was not quite five years old, and had not yet started school. "What do you mean, gone?"

"I can't find him, he's disappeared, I've looked everywhere!"

There was a pain in Dimka's chest. He struggled to remain calm. "When and where did you last see him?"

"He went upstairs to see your mother. I let him go on his own--I always do, it's only three floors in the lift."

"When was that?"

"Less than an hour ago--you have to come!"

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