Page 409 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

She went to the TASS office. Before she reached her desk she was accosted by Pyotr Opotkin, the editor in chief for features, the department's political overseer. As always a cigarette dangled from his lips. "I've had a call from the Agriculture Ministry. Your piece on Stavropol can't go out," he said.

"What? Why not? The bonus system has been passed by the ministry. And it works."

"Wrong." Opotkin liked to tell people they were wrong. "It's been scrapped. There's a new approach, the Ipatovo Method. They send fleets of combine harvesters all over the region."

"Central control again, instead of individual responsibility."

"Exactly." He took the cigarette from his mouth. "You'll have to write a completely new article about the Ipatovo Method."

"What does the regional first secretary say?"

"Young Gorbachev? He's implementing the new system."

Of course he was, Tanya reflected. He was an intelligent man. He knew when to shut up and do as he was told. Otherwise he would not have become first secretary.

"All right," she said, stifling her anger. "I'll write a new piece."

Opotkin nodded and walked away.

It had been too good to be true, Tanya thought: a new idea, bonuses paid for good results, improved harvests in consequence, no input required from Moscow. It was a miracle the system had been permitted for a few years. In the long run, such a system was totally out of the question.

Of course it was.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

George Jakes wore a new tuxedo. He looked pretty good in it, he thought. At forty-two he no longer had the wrestler's physique he had been so proud of in his youth, but he was still slim and straight, and the black-and-white wedding uniform flattered him.

He stood in Bethel Evangelical Church, which his mother had been attending for decades, in the Washington suburb he now represented as congressman. It was a low brick building, small and plain, and normally it was decorated only with a few framed quotations from the Bible: THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD and IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD. But today it was decked out for celebration, with streamers and ribbons and masses of white flowers. The choir was belting out "Soon Come" while George waited for his bride.

In the front row, his mother wore a new dark-blue suit and a matching pillbox hat with a little veil. "Well, I'm glad," Jacky had said when George told her he was getting married. "I'm fifty-eight years old, and I'm sorry you waited so gosh-darn long, but I'm happy you got here in the end." Her tongue was always sharp, but today she could not keep the proud smile from her face. Her son was getting married in her church, in front of all her friends and neighbors, and on top of that he was a congressman.

Next to her was George's father, Senator Greg Peshkov. Somehow he was able to make even a tuxedo look like creased pajamas. He had forgotten to put cuff links in his shirt, and his bow tie looked like a dead moth. No one minded.

Also in the front row were George's Russian grandparents, Lev and Marga, now in their eighties. Both looked frail, but they had flown from Buffalo for the wedding of their grandson.

By showing up at the wedding, and sitting in the front row, George's white father and grandparents were admitting the truth to the world; but no one cared. This was 1978, and what had once been a secret disgrace now hardly mattered.

The choir began to sing "You Are So Beautiful" and everyone turned and looked back toward the church door.

Verena came in on the arm of her father, Percy Marquand. George gasped when he saw her, and so did several people in the congregation. She wore a daring off-the-shoulder white dress that was tight to midthigh, then flared to a train. The caramel skin of her bare shoulders was as soft and smooth as the satin of her dress. She looked so wonderful it hurt. George felt tears sting his eyes.

The service passed in a blur. George managed to make the right responses, but all he could think was that Verena was his, now, forever.

The ceremony was folksy, but there was nothing modest about the wedding breakfast thrown afterward by the bride's father. Percy rented Pisces, a Georgetown nightclub that featured a twenty-foot waterfall at the entrance emptying into a giant goldfish pond on the floor below, and an aquarium in the middle of the dance floor.

George and Verena's first dance was to the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive." George was not much of a dancer, but it hardly mattered: everyone was looking at Verena, holding up her train with one hand while disco-dancing. George was so happy he wanted to hug everyone.

The second person to dance with the bride was Ted Kennedy, who had come without his wife, Joan: there were rumors that they had split. Jacky grabbed the handsome Percy Marquand. Verena's mother, Babe Lee, danced with Greg.

George's cousin Dave Williams, the pop star, was there with his sexy wife, Beep, and their five-year-old son, John Lee, named after the blues singer John Lee Hooker. The boy danced with his mother, and strutted so expertly that he made everyone laugh: he must have seen Saturday Night Fever.

Elizabeth Taylor danced with her latest husband, the millionaire would-be senator John Warner. Liz was wearing the famous square-cut thirty-three-carat Krupp diamond on the ring finger of her right hand. Seeing all this through a mist of euphoria, George realized dazedly that his wedding had turned into one of the outstanding social events of the year.

George had invited Maria Summers, but she had declined. After their brief love affair had ended in a quarrel, they had not spoken for a year. George had been hurt and bewildered. He did not know how he was supposed to live his life: the rules had changed. He also felt resentful. Women wanted a new deal, and they expected him to know, without being told, what the deal was, and to agree to it without negotiation.

Then Verena had emerged from seven years of obscurity. She had started her own lobbying company in Washington, specializing in civil rights and other equality issues. Her initial clients were small pressure groups who could not afford to employ their own full-time lobbyist. The rumor that Verena had once been a Black Panther seemed only to give her greater credibility. Before long she and George were an item again.

Verena seemed to have changed. One evening she said: "Dramatic gestures have their place in politics, but in the end advances are made by patient legwork: drafting legislation and talking to the media and winning votes." You've grown up, George thought, and he only just stopped himself from saying it.

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