Winter of the World

21

1945 (III)

After the wedding Volodya and Zoya moved into an apartment of their own. Few Russian newlyweds were so lucky. For four years the industrial might of the Soviet Union had been directed to making weapons. Hardly any homes had been built, and many had been destroyed. But Volodya was a major in Red Army Intelligence, as well as the son of a general, and he was able to pull strings.

It was a compact space: a living room with a dining table, a bedroom so small the bed almost filled it; a kitchen that was crowded with two people in it; a cramped toilet with a washbasin and shower, and a tiny hall with a closet for their clothes. When the radio was on in the living room, they could hear it all over the flat.

They quickly made it their own. Zoya bought a bright yellow coverlet for the bed. Volodya’s mother produced a set of crockery that she had bought in 1940, in anticipation of his wedding, and saved all through the war. Volodya hung a picture on the wall, a graduation photograph of his class at the Military Intelligence Academy.

They made love more now. Being alone made a difference Volodya had not anticipated. He had never felt particularly inhibited when sleeping with Zoya at his parents’ place, or in the apartment she had used to share; but now he realized it had an influence. You had to keep your voice down, you listened in case the bed squeaked, and there was always the possibility, albeit remote, that somebody would walk in on you. Other people’s homes were never completely private.

They often woke early, made love, then lay kissing and talking for an hour before getting dressed for work. Lying with his head on her thighs on one such morning, the smell of sex in his nostrils, Volodya said: ‘Do you want some tea?’

‘Yes, please.’ She stretched luxuriously, reclining on the pillows.

Volodya put on a robe and crossed the tiny hallway to the little kitchen, where he lit the gas under the samovar. He was displeased to see the pots and dishes from last night’s dinner stacked in the sink. ‘Zoya! he said. ‘This kitchen’s in a mess!’

She could hear him easily in the small apartment. ‘I know,’ she said.

He went back to the bedroom. ‘Why didn’t you clean up last night?’

‘Why didn’t you?’

It had not occurred to him that it might be his responsibility. But he said: ‘I had a report to write.’

‘And I was tired.’

The suggestion that it was his fault irritated him. ‘I hate a filthy kitchen.’

‘So do I.’

Why was she being so obtuse? ‘If you don’t like it, clean it!’

‘Let’s do it together, right away.’ She sprang out of bed. She pushed past him with a sexy smile and went into the kitchen.

Volodya followed.

She said: ‘You wash, I’ll dry.’ She took a clean towel from a drawer.

She was still naked. He could not help but smile. Her body was long and slim, and her skin was white. She had flat breasts and pointed nipples, and the hair of her groin was fine and blonde. One of the joys of being married to her was her habit of moving around the apartment in the nude. He could stare at her body for as long as he liked. She seemed to enjoy it. If she caught his eye she showed no embarrassment, but just smiled.

He rolled up the sleeves of his robe and began to wash the dishes, passing them to Zoya to dry. Washing up was not a very manly activity – Volodya had never seen his father do it – but Zoya seemed to think such chores should be shared. It was an eccentric idea. Did Zoya have a highly developed sense of fairness in marriage? Or was he being emasculated?

He thought he heard something outside. He glanced into the hall: the apartment door was only three or four steps from the kitchen sink. He could see nothing out of the ordinary.

Then the door was smashed open.

Zoya screamed.

Volodya picked up the carving knife he had just washed. He stepped past Zoya and stood in the kitchen doorway. A uniformed policeman holding a sledgehammer was just outside the ruined door.

Volodya was filled with fear and rage. He said: ‘What the fuck is this?’

The policeman stepped back, and a small, thin man with a face like a rodent entered the flat. It was Volodya’s brother-in-law, Ilya Dvorkin, an agent of the secret police. He was wearing leather gloves.

‘Ilya!’ said Volodya. ‘You stupid weasel.’

‘Speak respectfully,’ said Ilya.

Volodya was baffled as well as angry. The secret police did not normally arrest the staff of Red Army Intelligence, and vice versa. Otherwise it would have been gang warfare. ‘Why the hell have you bust my door? I would have opened it!’

Two more agents stepped into the hall and stood behind Ilya. They wore their trademark leather coats, despite the mild late-summer weather.

Volodya was fearful as well as angry. What was going on?

Ilya said in a shaky voice: ‘Put the knife down, Volodya.’

‘No need to be afraid,’ said Volodya. ‘I was just washing up.’ He handed the knife to Zoya, standing behind him. ‘Please step into the living room. We can talk while Zoya gets dressed.’

‘Do you imagine this is a social call?’ Ilya said indignantly.

‘Whatever kind of call it is, I’m sure you don’t want the embarrassment of seeing my wife naked.’

‘I am here on official police business!’

‘Then why did they send my brother-in-law?’

Ilya lowered his voice. ‘Don’t you understand that it would be much worse for you if someone else had come?’

This looked like bad trouble. Volodya struggled to keep up the facade of bravado. ‘Exactly what do you and these other assholes want?’

‘Comrade Beria has taken over the direction of the nuclear physics programme.’

Volodya knew that. Stalin had set up a new committee to direct the work and made Beria chairman. Beria knew nothing about physics and was completely unqualified to organize a scientific research project. But Stalin trusted him. It was the usual problem of Soviet government: incompetent but loyal people were promoted into jobs they could not cope with.

Volodya said: ‘And Comrade Beria needs my wife in her laboratory, developing the bomb. Have you come to drive her to work?’

‘The Americans created their nuclear bomb before the Soviets.’

‘Indeed. Could they perhaps have given research physics higher priority than we did?’

‘It is not possible that capitalist science should be superior to Communist science!’

‘This is a truism.’ Volodya was puzzled. Where was this heading? ‘So what do you conclude?’

‘There must have been sabotage.’

That was exactly the kind of ludicrous fantasy the secret police would dream up. ‘What kind of sabotage?’

‘Some of the scientists deliberately delayed the development of the Soviet bomb.’

Volodya began to understand, and he felt afraid. But he continued to respond belligerently: it was always a mistake to show weakness with these people. ‘Why the hell would they do that?’

‘Because they are traitors – and your wife is one!’

‘You’d better not be serious, you piece of shit.’

‘I am here to arrest your wife.’

‘What?’ Volodya was flabbergasted. ‘This is insane!’

‘It is the view of my organization.’

‘There is no evidence.’

‘For evidence, go to Hiroshima!’

Zoya spoke for the first time since she had screamed. ‘I’ll have to go with them, Volodya. Don’t get yourself arrested too.’

Volodya pointed a finger at Ilya. ‘You are in so much fucking trouble.’

‘I’m carrying out my orders.’

‘Step out of the way. My wife is going into the bedroom to get dressed.’

‘No time for that,’ said Ilya. ‘She must come as she is.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Ilya put his nose in the air. ‘A respectable Soviet citizen would not walk around the apartment with no clothes on.’

Volodya wondered briefly how his sister felt being married to this creep. ‘You, the secret police, morally disapprove of nudity?’

‘Her nakedness is evidence of her degradation. We will take her as she is.’

‘No you fucking won’t.’

‘Stand aside.’

‘You stand aside. She’s going to get dressed.’ Volodya stepped into the hall and stood in front of the three agents, holding his arms out so that Zoya could pass behind him.

As she moved, Ilya reached past Volodya and grabbed her arm.

Volodya punched him in the face, twice. Ilya cried out and staggered back. The two men in leather coats stepped forward. Volodya aimed a punch at one, but the man dodged it. Then each man took one of Volodya’s arms. He struggled, but they were strong and seemed to have done this before. They slammed him against the wall.

While they held him, Ilya punched him in the face with leather-gloved fists, twice, three times, four, then in the stomach, again and again until Volodya puked blood. Zoya tried to intervene, but Ilya punched her, too, and she screamed and fell back.

Volodya’s bathrobe came open in front. Ilya kicked him in the balls, then kicked his knees. Volodya sagged, unable to stand, but the two men in leather coats held him up, and Ilya punched him some more.

At last Ilya turned away, rubbing his knuckles. The other two released Volodya, and he crumpled to the floor. He could hardly breathe and felt unable to move, but he was conscious. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the two heavies grab Zoya and march her naked out of the apartment. Ilya followed.

As the minutes went by, the pain changed from sharp agony to deep, dull ache, and Volodya’s breathing began to return to normal.

Motion eventually returned to his limbs, and he dragged himself upright. He made it to the phone and dialled his father’s number, hoping the old man had not yet left for work. He was relieved to hear his father’s voice. ‘They’ve arrested Zoya,’ he said.

‘Fucking bastards,’ Grigori said. ‘Who was it?’

‘It was Ilya.’

‘What?’

‘Make some calls,’ Volodya said. ‘See if you can find out what the fuck is going on. I have to wash off the blood.’

‘What blood?’

Volodya hung up.

It was only a couple of steps to the bathroom. He dropped his bloodstained robe and got into the shower. The warm water brought some relief to his bruised body. Ilya was mean but not strong, and he had not broken any bones.

Volodya turned off the water. He looked in the bathroom mirror. His face was covered with cuts and bruises.

He did not bother to dry himself. With considerable effort, he got dressed in his Red Army uniform. He wanted the symbol of authority.

His father arrived as he was trying to tie the laces of his boots. ‘What the fucking hell happened here?’ Grigori roared.

Volodya said: ‘They were looking for a fight, and I was foolish enough to give them one.’

His father was unsympathetic at first. ‘I’d have expected you to know better.’

‘They insisted on taking her away naked.’

‘Fucking creeps.’

‘Did you find out anything?’

‘Not yet. I talked to a couple of people. No one knows anything.’ Grigori looked worried. ‘Either someone has made a really stupid mistake . . . or for some reason they’re very sure of themselves.’

‘Drive me to my office. Lemitov is going to be mad as hell. He won’t let them get away with this. If they are allowed to do it to me, they’ll do it to all of Red Army Intelligence.’

Grigori’s car and driver were waiting outside. They drove to the Khodynka airfield. Grigori stayed in the car while Volodya limped into Red Army Intelligence headquarters. He went straight to the office of his boss, Colonel Lemitov.

He tapped on the door, walked in, and said: ‘The fucking secret police have arrested my wife.’

‘I know,’ said Lemitov.

‘You know?’

‘I okayed it.’

Volodya’s jaw dropped. ‘What the fuck?’

‘Sit down.’

‘What is going on?’

‘Sit down and shut up, and I’ll tell you.’

Volodya eased himself painfully into a chair.

Lemitov said: ‘We have to have a nuclear bomb, and fast. At the moment, Stalin is playing it tough with the Americans, because we’re fairly sure they don’t have a big enough arsenal of nuclear weapons to wipe us out. But they’re building a stockpile, and at some point they will use them – unless we are in a position to retaliate.’

This made no sense. ‘My wife can’t design the bomb while the secret police are punching her in the face. This is insane.’

‘Shut the fuck up. Our problem is that there are several possible designs. The Americans took five years to figure out which would work. We don’t have that much time. We have to steal their research.’

‘We’ll still need Russian physicists to copy the design – and for that they have to be in their laboratories, not locked in the basement of the Lubyanka.’

‘You know a man called Wilhelm Frunze.’

‘I was at school with him. The Berlin Boys’ Academy.’

‘He gave us valuable information about British nuclear research. Then he moved to the States, where he worked on the nuclear bomb project. The Washington staff of the NKVD contacted him, scared him by their incompetence, and fucked up the relationship. We need to win him back.’

‘What has all this got to do with me?’

‘He trusts you.’

‘I don’t know that. I haven’t seen him for twelve years.’

‘We want you to go to America and talk to him.’

‘But why did you arrest Zoya?’

‘To make sure you come back.’

(ii)

Volodya told himself he knew how to do this. In Berlin, before the war, he had shaken off Gestapo tails, met with potential spies, recruited them, and made them into reliable sources of secret intelligence. It was never easy – especially the part where he had to talk someone into turning traitor – but he was expert.

However, this was America.

The Western countries he had visited, Germany and Spain in the thirties and forties, were nothing like this.

He was overwhelmed. All his life he had been told that Hollywood movies gave an exaggerated impression of prosperity, and that in reality most Americans lived in poverty. But it was clear to Volodya, from the day he arrived in the USA, that the movies hardly exaggerated at all. And poor people were hard to find.

New York was jammed with cars, many driven by people who clearly were not important government officials: youngsters, men in work clothes, even women out shopping. And everybody was so well dressed! All the men appeared to be wearing their best suits. The women’s calves were clad in sheer stockings. Everyone seemed to have new shoes.

He had to keep reminding himself of the bad side of America. There was poverty, somewhere. Negroes were persecuted, and in the South they could not vote. There was a lot of crime – Americans themselves said that it was rampant – although, strangely, Volodya did not actually see any evidence of it, and he felt quite safe walking the streets.

He spent a few days exploring New York. He worked on his English, which was not good, but it hardly mattered: the city was full of people who spoke broken English with heavy accents. He got to know the faces of some of the FBI agents assigned to tail him, and identified several convenient locations where he would be able to lose them.

One sunny morning he left the Soviet consulate in New York, hatless and wearing only grey slacks and a blue shirt, as if he were going to run a few errands. A young man in a dark suit and tie followed him.

He went to the Saks Fifth Avenue department store and bought underwear and a shirt with a small brown checked pattern. Whoever was tailing him had to think he was probably just shopping.

The NKVD chief at the consulate had announced that a Soviet team would shadow Volodya throughout his American visit, to make sure of his good behaviour. He could barely contain his rage at the organization that had imprisoned Zoya, and he had to repress the urge to take the man by the throat and strangle him. But he had remained calm. He had pointed out sarcastically that in order to fulfil his mission he would have to evade FBI surveillance, and in doing so he might inadvertently also lose his NKVD tail; but he wished them luck. Most days he shook them off in five minutes.

So the young man tailing him was almost certainly an FBI agent. His crisply conservative clothes corroborated that.

Carrying his purchases in a paper bag, Volodya left the store by a side entrance and hailed a cab. He left the FBI man at the kerb waving his arm. When the cab had turned two corners Volodya threw the driver a bill and jumped out. He darted into a subway station, left again by a different entrance, and waited in the doorway of an office building for five minutes.

The young man in the dark suit was nowhere to be seen.

Volodya walked to Penn Station.

There he double-checked that he was not being followed, then bought his ticket. With nothing but that and his paper bag he boarded a train.

The journey to Albuquerque took three days.

The train sped through mile after endless mile of rich farmland, mighty factories belching smoke, and great cities with skyscrapers pointing arrogantly at the heavens. The Soviet Union was bigger, but apart from the Ukraine it was mostly pine forests and frozen steppes. He had never imagined wealth on this scale.

And wealth was not all. For several days something had been nagging at the back of Volodya’s mind, something strange about life in America. Eventually he realized what it was: no one asked for his papers. After he had passed through immigration control in New York, he had not shown his passport again. In this country, it seemed, anyone could walk into a railway station or a bus terminus and buy a ticket to any place without having to get permission or explain the purpose of the trip to an official. It gave him a dangerously exhilarating sense of freedom. He could go anywhere!

America’s wealth also heightened Volodya’s sense of the danger his country faced. The Germans had almost destroyed the Soviet Union, and this country was three times as populous and ten times as rich. The thought that Russians might become underlings, frightened into subservience, softened Volodya’s doubts about Communism, despite what the NKVD had done to him and his wife. If he had children, he did not want them to grow up in a world tyrannized by America.

He travelled via Pittsburgh and Chicago and attracted no attention en route. His clothes were American, and his accent was not noticed for the simple reason that he spoke to no one. He bought sandwiches and coffee by pointing and paying. He flicked through newspapers and magazines that other travellers left behind, looking at the pictures and trying to work out the meanings of the headlines.

The last part of the journey took him through a desert landscape of desolate beauty, with distant snowy peaks stained red by the sunset, which probably explained why they were called the Blood of Christ Mountains.

He went to the toilet where he changed his underwear and put on the new shirt he had bought in Saks.

He expected the FBI or Army security to be watching the train station in Albuquerque, and sure enough he spotted a young man whose check jacket – too warm for the climate of New Mexico in September – did not quite conceal the bulge of a gun in a shoulder holster. However, the agent was undoubtedly interested in long-distance travellers who might be arriving from New York or Washington. Volodya, with no hat or jacket and no luggage, looked like a local man coming back from a short trip. He was not followed as he walked to the bus station and boarded a Greyhound for Santa Fe.

He reached his destination late in the afternoon. He noted two FBI men at the Santa Fe bus station, and they scrutinized him. However, they could not tail everyone who got off the bus, and once again his casual appearance caused them to dismiss him.

Doing his best to look as if he knew where he was going, he strolled along the streets. The low flat-roofed pueblo-style houses and squat churches baking in the sun reminded him of Spain. The storefront buildings overhung the sidewalks, creating pleasantly shady arcades.

He avoided La Fonda, the big hotel on the town square next to the cathedral, and checked in to the St Francis. He paid cash and gave his name as Robert Pender, which might have been American or one of several European nationalities. ‘My suitcase will be delivered later,’ he said to the pretty girl behind the reception desk. ‘If I’m out when it comes, can you make sure it gets sent up to my room?’

‘Oh, sure, that won’t be a problem,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ he said, then he added a phrase he had heard several times on the train: ‘I sure appreciate it.’

‘If I’m not here, someone else will deal with the bag, so long as it has your name on it.’

‘It does.’ He had no luggage, but she would never realize that.

She looked at his entry in the book. ‘So, Mr Pender, you’re from New York.’

There was a touch of scepticism in her voice, no doubt because he did not sound like a New Yorker. ‘I’m from Switzerland originally,’ he explained, naming a neutral country.

‘That accounts for the accent. I haven’t met a Switzerland person before. What’s it like there?’

Volodya had never been to Switzerland, but he had seen photographs. ‘It snows a lot,’ he said.

‘Well, enjoy our New Mexico weather!’

‘I will.’

Five minutes later he went out again.

Some of the scientists lived at the Los Alamos laboratory, he had learned from his colleagues in the Soviet Embassy, but it was a shanty town with few civilized comforts, and they preferred to rent houses and apartments nearby if they could. Willi Frunze could afford it easily: he was married to a successful artist who drew a syndicated strip cartoon called Slack Alice. His wife, also called Alice, could work anywhere, so they had a place in the historic downtown neighbourhood.

The New York office of the NKVD had provided this information. They had researched Frunze carefully, and Volodya had his address and phone number and a description of his car, a pre-war Plymouth convertible with whitewall tyres.

The Frunzes’ building had an art gallery on the ground floor. The apartment upstairs had a large north-facing window that would appeal to an artist. A Plymouth convertible was parked outside.

Volodya preferred not to go in: the place might be bugged.

The Frunzes were an affluent, childless couple, and he guessed they would not stay at home listening to the radio on a Friday night. He decided to wait around and see if they came out.

He spent some time in the art gallery, looking at the paintings for sale. He liked clear, vivid pictures and would not have wanted to own any of these messy daubs. He found a coffee shop down the block and got a window seat from which he could just see the Frunzes’ door. He left there after an hour, bought a newspaper, and stood at a bus stop pretending to read it.

The long wait permitted him to establish that no one was watching the Frunze apartment. That meant that the FBI and Army security had not tagged Frunze as a high risk. He was a foreigner, but so were many of the scientists, and presumably nothing else was known against him.

This was a downtown commercial district, not a residential neighbourhood, and there were plenty of people on the streets; but all the same after a couple of hours Volodya began to worry that someone might notice him hanging around.

Then the Frunzes came out.

Frunze was heavier than he had been twelve years ago – there was no shortage of food in America. His hair was beginning to recede, although he was only thirty. He still had that solemn look. He wore a sports shirt and khaki pants, a common American combination.

His wife was not so conservatively dressed. Her fair hair was pinned up under a beret, and she wore a shapeless cotton dress in an indistinct brown colour, but she had an assortment of bangles on both wrists, and numerous rings. Artists had dressed like that in Germany before Hitler, Volodya remembered.

The couple set off along the street, and Volodya followed.

He wondered what the wife’s politics were, and what difference her presence would make in the difficult conversation he was about to have. Frunze had been a staunch social democrat back in Germany, so it was not likely that his wife would be a conservative; a speculation that was borne out by her appearance. On the other hand, she probably did not know he had given secrets to the Soviets in London. She was an unknown quantity.

He would prefer to deal with Frunze alone, and he considered leaving them and trying again tomorrow. But the hotel receptionist had noticed his foreign accent, so by the morning he might have an FBI tail. He could deal with that, he thought, though not as easily in this small town as in New York or Berlin. And tomorrow was Saturday, so the Frunzes would probably spend the day together. How long might Volodya have to wait before catching Frunze alone?

There was never an easy way to do this. On balance he decided to go ahead tonight.

The Frunzes went into a diner.

Volodya walked past the place and glanced through the window. It was an inexpensive restaurant with booths. He thought of going in and sitting down with them, but he decided to let them eat first. They would be in a good mood when full of food.

He waited half an hour, watching the door from a distance. Then, full of trepidation, he went in.

They were finishing their dinner. As he crossed the restaurant, Frunze glanced up then looked away, not recognizing him.

He slid into the booth next to Alice and spoke quietly in German. ‘Hello, Willi, don’t you remember me from school?’

Frunze looked hard at him for several seconds, then his face broke into a smile. ‘Peshkov? Volodya Peshkov? Is it really you?’

A wave of relief washed over Volodya. Frunze was still friendly. There was no barrier of hostility to overcome. ‘It’s really me,’ Volodya said. He offered his hand and they shook. Turning to Alice, he said in English: ‘I am very bad speaking your language, sorry.’

‘Don’t bother to try,’ she replied in fluent German. ‘My family were immigrants from Bavaria.’

Frunze said in amazement: ‘I’ve been thinking about you lately, because I know another guy with the same surname – Greg Peshkov.’

‘Really? My father had a brother called Lev who came to America in about 1915.’

‘No, Lieutenant Peshkov is much younger. Anyway, what are you doing here?’

Volodya smiled. ‘I came to see you.’ Before Frunze could ask why, he said: ‘Last time I saw you, you were secretary of the Neukölln Social Democratic Party.’ This was his second step. Having established a friendly footing, he was reminding Frunze of his youthful idealism.

‘That experience convinced me that democratic socialism doesn’t work,’ Frunze said. ‘Against the Nazis we were completely impotent. It took the Soviet Union to stop them.’

That was true, and Volodya was pleased Frunze realized it; but, more importantly, the comment showed that Frunze’s political ideas had not been softened by life in affluent America.

Alice said: ‘We were planning to have a couple of drinks at a bar around the corner. A lot of the scientists go there on a Friday night. Would you like to join us?’

The last thing Volodya wanted was to be seen in public with the Frunzes. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. In fact he had been too long with them in this restaurant. It was time for step three: reminding Frunze of his terrible guilt. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Willi, did you know the Americans were going to drop nuclear bombs on Japan?’

There was a long pause. Volodya held his breath. He was gambling that Frunze would be wracked by remorse.

For a moment he feared he had gone too far. Frunze looked as if he might burst into tears.

Then the scientist took a deep breath and got control of himself. ‘No, I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘None of us did.’

Alice interjected angrily: ‘We assumed the American military would give some demonstration of the power of the bomb, as a threat to make the Japanese surrender earlier.’ So she had known about the bomb beforehand, Volodya noted. He was not surprised. Men found it hard to keep such things from their wives. ‘So we expected a detonation some time, somewhere,’ she went on. ‘But we imagined they would destroy an uninhabited island, or maybe a military facility with a lot of weapons and very few people.’

‘That might have been justifiable,’ Frunze said. ‘But . . .’ His voice fell to a whisper. ‘Nobody thought they would drop it on a city and kill eighty thousand men, women and children.’

Volodya nodded. ‘I thought you might feel this way.’ He had been hoping for it with all his heart.

Frunze said: ‘Who wouldn’t?’

‘Let me ask you an even more important question.’ This was step four. ‘Will they do it again?’

‘I don’t know,’ Frunze said. ‘They might. Christ forgive us all, they might.’

Volodya concealed his satisfaction. He had made Frunze feel responsible for future use of nuclear weapons, as well as past.

Volodya nodded. ‘That’s what we think.’

Alice said sharply: ‘Who’s we?’

She was shrewd, and probably more worldly-wise than her husband. She would be hard to fool, and Volodya decided not to try. He had to risk levelling with her. ‘A fair question,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t come all this way to deceive an old friend. I’m a major in Red Army Intelligence.’

They stared at him. The possibility must have crossed their minds already, but they were surprised by the stark admission.

‘I have something I need to say to you,’ Volodya went on. ‘Something hugely important. Is there somewhere we can go to talk privately?’

They both looked uncertain. Frunze said: ‘Our apartment?’

‘It has probably been bugged by the FBI.’

Frunze had some experience of clandestine work, but Alice was shocked. ‘You think so?’ she said incredulously.

‘Yes. Could we drive out of town?’

Frunze said: ‘There’s a place we go sometimes, around this time of the evening, to watch the sunset.’

‘Perfect. Go to your car, get in, and wait for me. I’ll be a minute behind you.’

Frunze paid the check and left with Alice, and Volodya followed. During the short walk he established that no one was tailing him. He reached the Plymouth and got in. They sat three across the front seat, American style. Frunze drove out of town.

They followed a dirt road to the top of a low hill. Frunze stopped the car. Volodya motioned for them all to get out, and led them a hundred yards away, just in case the car was bugged too.

They looked across the landscape of stony soil and low bushes towards the setting sun, and Volodya took step five. ‘We think the next nuclear bomb will be dropped somewhere in the Soviet Union.’

Frunze nodded. ‘God forbid, but you’re probably right.’

‘And there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it,’ Volodya went on, pressing home his point relentlessly. ‘There are no precautions we can take, no barriers we can erect, no way we can protect our people. There is no defence against the nuclear bomb – the bomb that you made, Willi.’

‘I know it,’ said Frunze miserably. Clearly he felt it would be his fault if the USSR was attacked with nuclear weapons.

Step six. ‘The only protection would be our own nuclear bomb.’

Frunze did not want to believe that. ‘It’s not a defence,’ he said.

‘But it’s a deterrent.’

‘It might be,’ he conceded.

Alice said: ‘We don’t want these bombs to spread.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Volodya. ‘But the only sure way to stop the Americans flattening Moscow the way they flattened Hiroshima is for the Soviet Union to have a nuclear bomb of its own, and threaten retaliation.’

Alice said: ‘He’s right, Willi. Hell, we all know it.’

She was the tough one, Volodya saw.

Volodya made his voice light for step seven. ‘How many bombs do the Americans have right now?’

This was a crucial moment. If Frunze answered this question he would have crossed a line. So far the conversation had been general. Now Volodya was requesting secret information.

Frunze hesitated for a long moment. Finally he glanced at Alice.

Volodya saw her give an almost imperceptible nod.

Frunze said: ‘Only one.’

Volodya concealed his triumph. Frunze had betrayed trust. It was the difficult first move. A second secret would come more easily.

Frunze added: ‘But they’ll have more soon.’

‘It’s a race, and if we lose, we die,’ Volodya said urgently. ‘We have to build at least one bomb of our own before they have enough to wipe us out.’

‘Can you do that?’

That gave Volodya the cue for step eight. ‘We need help.’

He saw Frunze’s face harden, and guessed he was remembering whatever it was that had made him refuse to co-operate with the NKVD.

Alice said to Volodya: ‘What if we say we can’t help you? That it’s too dangerous?’

Volodya followed his instinct. He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I go home and report failure,’ he said. ‘I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. I wouldn’t want to pressure you or coerce you in any way.’

Alice said: ‘No threats?’

That confirmed Volodya’s guess that the NKVD had tried to bully Frunze. They tried to bully everyone: it was all they knew. ‘I’m not even trying to persuade you,’ Volodya said to Frunze. ‘I’m laying out the facts. The rest is up to you. If you want to help, I’m here as your contact. If you see things differently, that’s the end of it. You’re both smart people. I couldn’t fool you even if I wanted to.’

Again they looked at each other. He hoped they were thinking how different he was from the last Soviet agent who had approached them.

The moment stretched out agonizingly.

It was Alice who spoke at last. ‘What kind of help do you need?’

That was not a yes, but it was better than rejection, and it led logically to step nine. ‘My wife is one of the physicists on the team,’ he said, hoping this would humanize him at a moment when they might be in danger of seeing him as manipulative. ‘She tells me there are several routes to a nuclear bomb, and we don’t have time to try them all. We can save years if we know what worked for you.’

‘That makes sense,’ Willi said.

Step ten, the big one. ‘We have to know what type of bomb was dropped on Japan.’

Frunze’s expression was agonized. He looked at his wife. This time she did not give him the nod, but neither did she shake her head. She seemed as torn as he did.

Frunze sighed. ‘Two kinds,’ he said.

Volodya was thrilled and startled. ‘Two different designs?’

Frunze nodded. ‘For Hiroshima they used a uranium device with a gun ignition. We called it Little Boy. For Nagasaki, Fat Man, a plutonium bomb with an implosion trigger.’

Volodya could hardly breathe. This was red-hot data. ‘Which is better?’

‘They both worked, obviously, but Fat Man is easier to make.’

‘Why?’

‘It takes years to produce enough U-235 for a bomb. Plutonium is quicker, once you have a nuclear pile.’

‘So the USSR should copy Fat Man.’

‘Definitely.’

‘There is one more thing you could do to help save Russia from destruction,’ Volodya said.

‘What?’

Volodya looked him in the eye. ‘Get me the design drawings,’ he said.

Willi paled. ‘I’m an American citizen,’ he said. ‘You’re asking me to commit treason. The penalty is death. I could go to the electric chair.’

So could your wife, Volodya thought; she’s complicit. Thank God you haven’t thought of that.

He said: ‘I’ve asked a lot of people to put their lives at risk in the last few years. People like yourselves, Germans who hated the Nazis, men and women who took terrible risks to send us information that helped us win the war. And I have to say to you what I said to them: a lot more people will be killed if you don’t do it.’ He fell silent. That was his best shot. He had nothing more to offer.

Frunze looked at his wife.

Alice said: ‘You made the bomb, Willi.’

Frunze said to Volodya: ‘I’ll think about it.’

(iii)

Two days later he handed over the plans.

Volodya took them to Moscow.

Zoya was released from jail. She was not as angry about her imprisonment as he was. ‘They did it to protect the revolution,’ she said. ‘And I wasn’t hurt. It was like staying in a really bad hotel.’

On her first day at home, after they made love, he said: ‘I have something to show you, something I brought back from America.’ He rolled off the bed, opened a drawer, and took out a book. ‘It’s called the Sears-Roebuck Catalogue,’ he said. He sat beside her on the bed and opened the book. ‘Look at this.’

The catalogue fell open at a page of women’s dresses. The models were impossibly slender, but the fabrics were bright and cheerful, stripes and checks and solid colours, some with ruffles, pleats, and belts. ‘That’s attractive,’ Zoya said, putting her finger on one. ‘Is two dollars ninety-eight a lot of money?’

‘Not really,’ Volodya said. ‘The average wage is about fifty dollars a week, rent is about a third of that.’

‘Really?’ Zoya was amazed. ‘So most people could easily afford these dresses?’

‘That’s right. Maybe not peasants. On the other hand, these catalogues were invented for farmers who live a hundred miles from the nearest store.’

‘How does it work?’

‘You pick what you want from the book and send them the money, then a couple of weeks later the mailman brings you whatever you ordered.’

‘It must be like being a tsar.’ Zoya took the book from him and turned the page. ‘Oh! Here are some more.’ The next page showed jacket-and-skirt combinations for four dollars ninety-eight. ‘These are elegant too,’ she said.

‘Keep turning the pages,’ Volodya said.

Zoya was astonished to see page after page of women’s coats, hats, shoes, underwear, pyjamas, and stockings. ‘People can have any of these?’ she said.

‘That’s right.’

‘But there’s more choice on one of these pages than there is in the average Russian shop!’

‘Yes.’

She carried on slowly leafing through the book. There was a similar range of clothing for men, and again for children. Zoya put her finger on a heavy woollen winter coat for boys that cost fifteen dollars. ‘At that price, I suppose every boy in America has one.’

‘They probably do.’

After the clothes came furniture. You could buy a bed for twenty-five dollars. Everything was cheap if you had fifty dollars a week. And it went on and on. There were hundreds of things that could not be bought for any money in the Soviet Union: toys and games, beauty products, guitars, elegant chairs, power tools, novels in colourful jackets, Christmas decorations, and electric toasters.

There was even a tractor. ‘Do you think,’ Zoya said, ‘that any farmer in America who wants a tractor can have one right away?’

‘Only if he has the money,’ said Volodya.

‘He doesn’t have to put his name down on a list and wait for a few years?’

‘No.’

Zoya closed the book and looked at him solemnly. ‘If people can have all this,’ she said, ‘why would they want to be Communist?’

‘Good question,’ said Volodya.