Page 39 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

"Very. I can't imagine he . . ." George trailed off as he was struck by a thought. "What does this have to do with decisions about my future?"

"Bobby has decided to hire a young black lawyer to give the attorney general's team a Negro perspective on civil rights. And he asked me if there was anyone I could recommend."

George was momentarily stunned. "Are you saying . . ."

West raised a warning hand. "I'm not offering you the job--only Bobby can do that. But I can get you an interview . . . if you want it."

Jacky said: "George! A job with Bobby Kennedy! That would be fantastic."

"Mother, the Kennedys have let us down so badly."

"Then go to work for Bobby and change things!"

George hesitated. He looked at the eager faces around him: his mother, his father, his grandmother, his grandfather, and back to his mother again.

"Maybe I will," he said at last.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Dimka Dvorkin was abashed to be a virgin at the age of twenty-two.

He had dated several girls while at university, but none of them had let him go all the way. Anyway, he was not sure he should. No one had actually told him that sex should be part of a long-term loving relationship, but he sort of felt it anyway. He had never been in a frantic hurry to do it, the way some boys were. However, his lack of experience was now becoming an embarrassment.

His friend Valentin Lebedev was the opposite. Tall and confident, he had black hair and blue eyes and buckets of charm. By the end of their first year at Moscow State University he had bedded most of the girl students in the Politics Department and one of the teachers.

Early on in their friendship, Dimka had said to him: "What do you do about, you know, avoiding pregnancy?"

"That's the girl's problem, isn't it?" Valentin had said carelessly. "Worst comes to the worst, it's not that difficult to get an abortion."

Talking to others, Dimka found out that many Soviet boys took the same attitude. Men did not get pregnant, so it was not their problem. And abortion was available on demand during the first twelve weeks. But Dimka could not get comfortable with Valentin's approach, perhaps because his sister was so scornful about it.

Sex was Valentin's main interest, and studying took second place. With Dimka it had been the other way around--which was why Dimka was now an aide in the Kremlin and Valentin worked for the Moscow City Parks Department.

It was through his connections in Parks that Valentin had been able to arrange for the two of them to spend a week at the V. I. Lenin Holiday Camp for Young Communists in July 1961.

The camp was a bit military, with tents pitched in ruler-straight rows and a curfew at ten thirty, but it had a swimming pool and a boating lake and loads of girls, and a week there was a privilege much sought after.

Dimka felt he deserved a holiday. The Vienna Summit had been a victory for the Soviet Union, and he shared the credit.

Vienna had actually begun badly for Khrushchev. Kennedy and his dazzling wife had entered Vienna in a fleet of limousines flying dozens of stars-and-stripes flags. When the two leaders met, television viewers all over the world saw that Kennedy was several inches taller, towering over Khrushchev, looking down his patrician nose at the bald top of Khrushchev's head. Kennedy's tailored jackets and skinny ties made Khrushchev look like a farmer in his Sunday suit. America had won a glamour contest that the Soviet Union had not even known it was entering.

But once the talks began, Khrushchev had dominated. When Kennedy tried to have an amiable discussion, as between two reasonable men, Khrushchev became loudly aggressive. Kennedy suggested it was not logical for the Soviet Union to encourage Communism in Third World countries, then protest indignantly about American efforts to roll back Communism in the Soviet sphere. Khrushchev replied scornfully that the spread of Communism was a historic inevitability, and nothing that either leader did could stand in its way. Kennedy's grasp of Marxist philosophy was weak, and he had not known what to say.

The strategy developed by Dimka and other advisers had triumphed. When Khrushchev returned to Moscow he ordered dozens of copies of the summit minutes to be distributed, not only to the Soviet bloc, but to the leaders of countries as far away as Cambodia and Mexico. Since then Kennedy had been silent, not even responding to Khrushchev's threat to take over West Berlin. And Dimka went on holiday.

On the first day Dimka put on his new clothes, a checked short-sleeved shirt and a pair of shorts his mother had sewn from the trousers of a worn-out blue serge suit. "Are shorts like that fashionable in the West?" Valentin said.

Dimka laughed. "Not as far as I know."

While Valentin was shaving, Dimka went for supplies.

When he emerged he was pleased to see, right next door, a young woman lighting the small portable stove that was provided with each tent. She was a little older than Dimka, he guessed twenty-seven. She had thick red-brown hair cut in a bob, and an attractive scatter of freckles. She looked alarmingly fashionable in an orange blouse and a pair of tight black pants that ended just below the knee.

"Hello!" Dimka said with a smile. She looked up at him. He said: "Do you need a hand with that?"

She lit the gas with a match, then went inside her tent without speaking.

Well, I'm not going to lose my virginity with her, Dimka thought, and he walked on.

---