Page 469 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

She was not going to let him make the best of it. "There are better jobs," she said. "Didn't The Washington Post offer you your own comment column?"

"I've worked in television all my life."

"You haven't applied to local TV," she said. "You could be a big fish in a small pond."

"No, I couldn't. I'd be a has-been on his way down." The prospect made Jasper shudder with humiliation. "I'm not going to do that."

Her face took on a defiant look. "Well, don't ask me to go to Germany with you."

He had been anticipating this, but he was taken aback by her blunt determination. "Why not?"

"You speak German, I don't."

Jasper did not speak very good German, but that was not his best argument. "It would be an adventure," he said.

"Get real," Verena said harshly. "I have a son."

"It would be an adventure for Jack, too. He'd grow up bilingual."

"George would go to court to stop me from taking Jack out of the country. We have joint custody. And I wouldn't do it anyway. Jack needs his father and his grandmother. And what about my work? I'm a big success, Jasper--I have twelve people working for me, all lobbying the government for liberal causes. You can't seriously ask me to give that up."

"Well, I guess I'll come home for the holidays."

"Are you serious? What kind of a relationship would we have? How long will it be before you're bouncing on a bed with a plump Rhinemaiden in blond plaits?"

It was true that Jasper had been promiscuous most of his life, but he had never cheated on Verena. The prospect of losing her suddenly seemed insupportable. "I can be faithful," he said desperately.

Verena saw his distress, and her tone softened. "Jasper, that's touching. I think you even mean it. But I know what you're like, and you know what I'm like. Neither of us can remain celibate for long."

"Listen," he pleaded. "Everyone in American television knows I'm looking for a job, and this is the only one I've been offered. Don't you understand? My back is up against the goddamn wall. I don't have an alternative!"

"I do understand, and I'm sorry. But we have to be realistic."

Jasper found her sympathy worse than her scorn. "Anyway, it won't be forever," he said defiantly.

"Won't it?"

"Oh, no. I'm going to make a comeback."

"In Bonn?"

"There will be more European stories leading the American television news than ever before. You just fucking watch me."

Verena's face turned sad. "Shit, you're really going, aren't you."

"I told you, I have to."

"Well," she said regretfully, "don't expect me to be here when you come back."

*

Jasper had never been to Budapest. As a young man he had always looked west, toward America. Besides, all his life Hungary had been overcast by the gray clouds of Communism. But in November 1988, with the economy in ruins, something astonishing happened. A small group of young reform-minded Communists took control of the government and one of them, Miklos Nemeth, became prime minister. Among other changes, he opened a stock market.

Jasper thought this was astounding.

Only six months earlier Karoly Grosz, the thuggish chief of the Hungarian Communist Party, had told Newsweek magazine that multiparty democracy was "an historic impossibility" in Hungary. But Nemeth had enacted a new law allowing independent political "clubs."

This was a big story. But were the changes permanent? Or would Moscow soon clamp down?

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