Page 387 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

"Good-bye, then," said Dave, and he hurried out of the room so that she would not see him cry.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

The Kremlin is in a panic about Nixon's visit to China," said Dimka to Tanya.

They were in Dimka's apartment. His three-year-old daughter, Katya, was on Tanya's knee, and they were looking through a book with pictures of farm animals.

Dimka and Natalya had moved back into Government House. The Peshkov-Dvorkin clan now occupied three apartments in the same building. Grandfather Grigori was still in his original place, living now with his daughter, Anya, and granddaughter, Tanya. Dimka's ex-wife, Nina, lived there with Grisha, eight years old and a little schoolboy. And now Dimka and Natalya and little Katya had moved in. Tanya adored her nephew and niece and was always happy to babysit. Government House was almost like a peasant village, Tanya sometimes thought, with the extended family minding the children.

People often asked Tanya whether she did not want children of her own. "There's plenty of time," she always answered. She was still only thirty-two. But she did not feel she was free to marry. Vasili was not her lover, but she had dedicated her life to the undercover work they did together, first in publishing Dissidence, then in smuggling Vasili's books to the West. Occasionally she was courted by one of the diminishing number of eligible bachelors her age, and sometimes she would go on a few dates and even go to bed with one of them. But she could not let them into her clandestine life.

And Vasili's life was now more important than her own. With the publication of A Free Man he had become one of the world's leading writers. He interpreted the Soviet Union to the rest of the planet. After his third book, The Age of Stagnation, there was talk of a Nobel Prize, except that apparently they could not award it to a pseudonym. Tanya was the conduit by which his work reached the West, and it would be impossible to keep such a big, terrible secret from a husband.

The Communists hated "Ivan Kuznetsov." The whole world knew that he could not reveal his real name for fear that his work would be suppressed, and this made the Kremlin leaders look like the Philistines they were. Every time his work was mentioned in the Western media, people pointed out that it had never been published in Russian, the language in which it had been written, because of Soviet censorship. It drove the Kremlin mad.

"Nixon's trip was a big success," Tanya said to Dimka. "In our office we get news feeds from the West. People can't stop congratulating Nixon on his vision. This is a giant leap forward for the stability of the world, they say. Also, his poll ratings have jumped--and this is election year in the United States."

The idea that the capitalist-imperialists might link with the maverick Chinese Communists to gang up on the USSR was a terrifying prospect to the Soviet leadership. They immediately invited Nixon to Moscow in an attempt to redress the balance.

"Now they're desperate to make sure Nixon's visit here is also a success," Dimka said. "They'll do anything to keep the USA from siding with China."

Tanya was struck by a thought. "Anything?"

"I exaggerate. But what did you have in mind?"

Tanya felt her heart beat faster. "Would they release dissidents?"

"Ah." Dimka knew, but would not say, that Tanya was thinking of Vasili. Dimka was one of a very few people who knew of Tanya's connection to a dissident. He was too cautious to mention it casually. "The KGB is proposing the opposite--a clampdown. They want to jail everyone who might possibly wave a protest placard at the American president's passing limousine."

"That's stupid," said Tanya. "If we suddenly put hundreds of people in jail, the Americans will find out--they have spies, too--and they won't like it."

Dimka nodded. "Nixon doesn't want his critics saying that he came here and ignored the whole issue of human rights--not in an election year."

"Exactly."

Dimka looked thoughtful. "We must make the most of this opportunity. I have a meeting tomorrow with some people from the U.S. embassy. I wonder if I can use that . . ."

*

Dimka had changed. The invasion of Czechoslovakia had done it. Until that moment he had clung stubbornly to the belief that Communism could be reformed. But he had seen, in 1968, that as soon as a few people began to make progress in changing the nature of Communist government, their efforts would be crushed by those who had a stake in keeping things just the same. Men such as Brezhnev and Andropov enjoyed power, status, and privilege: why would they risk all that? Dimka now agreed with his sister: Communism's biggest problem was that the all-embracing authority of the party always stifled change. The Soviet system was helplessly frozen in a terrified conservatism, just as the regime of the tsars had been sixty years earlier, when his grandfather had been a foreman at the Putilov Machine Works in St. Petersburg.

How ironic that was, Dimka reflected, when the first philosopher to explain the phenomenon of social change had been Karl Marx.

Next day Dimka chaired another in a long series of discussions about Nixon's visit to Moscow. Natalya was there, but unfortunately so was Yevgeny Filipov. The American team was led by Ed Markham, a middle-aged career diplomat. Everyone spoke through interpreters.

Nixon and Brezhnev would sign two arms limitation treaties and an environmental protection agreement. "The environment" was not an issue in Soviet politics, but apparently Nixon felt strongly about it, and had promoted pioneering legislation in the States. Those three documents would be sufficient to guarantee that the visit would be hailed as a historic triumph, and go a long way toward guarding against the dangers of a Chinese-American alliance. Mrs. Nixon would visit schools and hospitals. Nixon was insisting on having a meeting with a dissident poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, whom he had met previously in Washington.

At today's meeting the Soviets and the Americans discussed security and protocol, as always. In the middle of the meeting Natalya said the words she had previously agreed on with Dimka. Speaking in a casual tone to the Americans, she said: "We have been carefully considering your demand that we release a large number of so-called political prisoners, as a token gesture toward what you call human rights."

Ed Markham threw a startled look at Dimka, who was chair of the meeting. Markham knew nothing of this. That was because the Americans had made no such demand. Dimka made a quick, surreptitious brushing-away gesture, indicating that Markham should keep quiet. A skilled and experienced negotiator, the American said nothing.

Filipov was equally surprised. "I have no knowledge of any such--"

Dimka raised his voice. "Please, Yevgeny Davidovitch, do not interrupt Comrade Smotrov! I insist that one person speaks at a time."

Filipov looked furious, but his Communist Party training forced him to follow the rules.

Natalya went on: "We have no political prisoners in the Soviet Union, and we cannot see the logic of releasing criminals onto the streets to co

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