Winter of the World (Century Trilogy 2)

23

1947

At the beginning of 1947 it seemed possible that all Europe might go Communist.

Volodya Peshkov was not sure whether to hope for that or its opposite.

The Red Army dominated Eastern Europe, and Communists were winning elections in the West. Communists had gained respect for their role in resisting the Nazis. Five million people had voted Communist in the first French postwar election, making the Communists the most popular party. In Italy a Communist-Socialist alliance won 40 per cent of the vote. In Czechoslovakia the Communists on their own won 38 per cent and led the democratically elected government.

It was different in Austria and Germany, where voters had been robbed and raped by the Red Army. In the Berlin city elections, the Social Democrats won 63 of 130 seats, the Communists only 26. However, Germany was ruined and starving, and the Kremlin still hoped that the people might turn to Communism in desperation, just as they had turned to Nazism in the Depression.

Britain was the great disappointment. Only one Communist had been sent to Parliament in the postwar election there. And the Labour government was delivering everything Communism promised: welfare, free health care, education for all, even a five-day week for coal miners.

But in the rest of Europe, capitalism was failing to lift people out of the postwar slump.

And the weather was on Stalin’s side, Volodya thought as the layers of snow grew thick on the onion domes. The winter of 1946–7 was the coldest in Europe for more than a century. Snow fell in St Tropez. British roads and railways became impassable, and industry ground to a halt – something that had never happened in the war. In France, food rations fell below wartime levels. The United Nations Organization calculated that 100 million Europeans were living on 1,500 calories a day – the level at which health begins to suffer from the effects of malnutrition. As the engines of production ran slower and slower, people began to feel they had nothing to lose, and revolution came to seem the only way out.

Once the USSR had nuclear weapons, no other country would be able to stand in its way. Volodya’s wife, Zoya, and her colleagues had built a nuclear pile, at Laboratory No. 2 of the Academy of Sciences, a deliberately vague name for the powerhouse of Soviet nuclear research. The pile had gone critical on Christmas Day, six months after the birth of Konstantin, who was at the time sleeping in the laboratory’s crèche. If the experiment went wrong, Zoya had whispered to Volodya, it would do little Kotya no good to be a mile or two away: all of central Moscow would be flattened.

Volodya’s conflicting feelings about the future took on a new intensity with the birth of his son. He wanted Kotya to grow up a citizen of a proud and powerful country. The Soviet Union deserved to dominate Europe, he felt. It was the Red Army that had defeated the Nazis, in four cruel years of total warfare: the other Allies had stood on the sidelines, fighting minor wars, joining in only for the last eleven months. All their casualties put together were only a fraction of those suffered by the Soviet people.

But then he would think of what Communism meant: arbitrary purges, torture in the basements of the secret police, conquering soldiers urged on to excesses of bestiality, the whole vast country forced to obey the wayward decisions of a tyrant more powerful than a tsar. Did Volodya really want to extend that brutal system to the rest of the continent?

He remembered walking into Penn Station in New York and buying a ticket to Albuquerque, without asking anyone’s permission or showing any papers; and the exhilarating sense of total freedom that had given him. He had long ago burned the Sears-Roebuck Catalogue, but it lived in his memory, with its hundreds of pages of good things available for everyone to have. Russian people believed that stories of Western freedom and prosperity were just propaganda, but Volodya knew better. A part of him longed for Communism to be defeated.

The future of Germany, and therefore of Europe, was to be decided at the Conference of Foreign Ministers held in Moscow in March 1947.

Volodya, now a colonel, was in charge of the intelligence team assigned to the conference. Meetings were held in an ornate room at Aviation Industry House, conveniently close to the Hotel Moskva. As always, the delegates and their interpreters sat around a table, with their aides on several rows of chairs behind them. The Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, Old Stone Arse, demanded that Germany pay ten billion dollars to the USSR in war reparations. The Americans and British protested that this would be a death blow to Germany’s sickly economy. That was probably what Stalin wanted.

Volodya renewed his acquaintance with Woody Dewar, who was now a news photographer assigned to cover the conference. He was married, too, and showed Volodya a photo of a striking dark-haired woman holding a baby. Sitting in the back of a ZIS-110B limousine, returning from a formal photo session at the Kremlin, Woody said to Volodya: ‘You realize that Germany doesn’t have the money to pay your reparations, don’t you?’

Volodya’s English had improved, and they could manage without an interpreter. He said: ‘Then how are they feeding their people and rebuilding their cities?’

‘With handouts from us, of course,’ said Woody. ‘We’re spending a fortune in aid. Any reparations the Germans paid you would be, in reality, our money.’

‘Is that so wrong? The United States prospered in the war. My country was devastated. Maybe you should pay.’

‘American voters don’t think so.’

‘American voters may be wrong.’

Woody shrugged. ‘True – but it’s their money.’

There it was again, Volodya thought: the deference to public opinion. He had remarked on it before in Woody’s conversation. Americans talked about voters the way Russians talked about Stalin: they had to be obeyed, right or wrong.

Woody wound down the window. ‘You don’t mind if I take a cityscape, do you? The light is wonderful.’ His camera clicked.

He knew he was supposed to take only approved shots. However, there was nothing sensitive on the street, just some women shovelling snow. All the same, Volodya said: ‘Please don’t.’ He leaned past Woody and wound up the window. ‘Official photos only.’

He was about to ask for the film out of Woody’s camera when Woody said: ‘Do you remember me mentioning my friend Greg Peshkov, with the same surname as you?’

Volodya certainly did. Willi Frunze had said something similar. It was probably the same man. ‘No, I don’t remember,’ Volodya lied. He wanted nothing to do with a possible relative in the West. Such connections brought suspicion and trouble to Russians.

‘He’s on the American delegation. You should talk to him. See if you’re related.’

‘I will,’ said Volodya, resolving to avoid the man at all costs.

He decided not to insist on taking Woody’s film. It was not worth the fuss for a harmless street scene.

At the next day’s conference the American Secretary of State, George Marshall, proposed that the four Allies should abolish the separate sectors of Germany and unify the country, so that it could once again become the beating economic heart of Europe, mining and manufacturing and buying and selling.

That was the last thing the Soviets wanted.

Molotov refused to discuss unification until the question of reparations had been settled.

The conference was stalemated.

And that, Volodya thought, was exactly where Stalin wanted it.

(ii)

The world of international diplomacy was a small one, Greg Peshkov reflected. One of the young aides in the British delegation at the Moscow conference was Lloyd Williams, the husband of Greg’s half-sister, Daisy. At first Greg did not like the look of Lloyd, who was dressed like a prissy English gentleman; but he turned out to be a regular guy. ‘Molotov is a prick,’ Lloyd said in the bar of the Hotel Moskva over a couple of vodka martinis.

‘So what are we going to do about him?’

‘I don’t know, but Britain can’t live with these delays. The occupation of Germany is costing money we can’t afford, and the hard winter has turned the problem into a crisis.’

‘You know what?’ said Greg, thinking aloud. ‘If the Soviets won’t play ball, we should just go ahead without them.’

‘How could we do that?’

‘What do we want?’ Greg counted points on his fingers. ‘We want to unify Germany and hold elections.’

‘So do we.’

‘We want to scrap the worthless Reichsmark and introduce a new currency, so that Germans can start to do business again.’

‘Yes.’

‘And we want to save the country from Communism.’

‘Also British policy.’

‘We can’t do it in the east because the Soviets won’t come to the party. So fuck them! We control three quarters of Germany – let’s do it in our zone, and let the eastern part of the country go to blazes.’

Lloyd looked thoughtful. ‘Is this something you’ve discussed with your boss?’

‘Hell, no. I’m just running off at the mouth. But listen, why not?’

‘I might suggest it to Ernie Bevin.’

‘And I’ll put it to George Marshall.’ Greg sipped his drink. ‘Vodka is the only thing the Russians do well,’ he said. ‘So, how’s my sister?’

‘She’s expecting our second baby.’

‘What is Daisy like as a mother?

Lloyd laughed. ‘You think she’s probably terrible.’

Greg shrugged. ‘I never saw her as the domestic type.’

‘She’s patient, calm and organized.’

‘She didn’t hire six nurses to do all the work?’

‘Just one, so that she can come out with me in the evenings, usually to political meetings.’

‘Wow, she’s changed.’

‘Not completely. She still loves parties. What about you – still single?’

‘There’s a girl called Nelly Fordham that I’m pretty serious about. And I guess you know that I have a godson.’

‘Yes,’ said Lloyd. ‘Daisy told me all about him. Georgy.’

Greg felt sure, from the slightly embarrassed look on Lloyd’s face, that he knew Georgy was Greg’s child. ‘I’m very fond of him.’

‘That’s great.’

A member of the Russian delegation came up to the bar, and Greg caught his eye. There was something very familiar about him. He was in his thirties, handsome apart from a brutally short military haircut, and he had a slightly intimidating blue-eyed gaze. He nodded in a friendly way, and Greg said: ‘Have we met before?’

‘Perhaps,’ the Russian said. ‘I was at school in Germany – the Berlin Boys’ Academy.’

Greg shook his head. ‘Ever been to the States?’

‘No.’

Lloyd said: ‘This is the guy with the same surname as you, Volodya Peshkov.’

Greg introduced himself. ‘We might be related. My father, Lev Peshkov, emigrated in 1914, leaving behind a pregnant girlfriend, who then married his older brother, Grigori Peshkov. Could we be half-brothers?’

Volodya’s manner altered immediately. ‘Definitely not,’ he said. ‘Excuse me.’ He left the bar without buying a drink.

‘That was abrupt,’ Greg said to Lloyd.

‘It was,’ said Lloyd.

‘He looked kind of shocked.’

‘It must have been something you said.’

(iii)

It could not be true, Volodya told himself.

Greg claimed that Grigori had married a girl who was already pregnant by Lev. If that was the case, the man Volodya had always called father was not his father but his uncle.

Perhaps it was a coincidence. Or the American could just be stirring up trouble.

All the same Volodya was reeling with shock.

He returned home at his usual time. He and Zoya were rising fast and had been given an apartment in Government House, the luxury block where his parents lived. Grigori and Katerina came to the apartment at Kotya’s suppertime, as they did most evenings. Katerina bathed her grandson, then Grigori sang to him and told him Russian fairy tales. Kotya was nine months old and not yet talking, but he seemed to like bedtime stories just the same.

Volodya followed the evening routine as if sleepwalking. He tried to behave normally, but he found he could hardly speak to either of his parents. He did not believe Greg’s story, but he could not stop thinking about it.

When Kotya was asleep, and the grandparents were about to leave, Grigori said to Volodya: ‘Have I got a boil on my nose?’

‘No.’

‘Then why have you been staring at me all evening?’

Volodya decided to tell the truth. ‘I met a man called Greg Peshkov. He’s part of the American delegation. He thinks we’re related.’

‘It’s possible.’ Grigori’s tone was light, as if it did not much matter, but Volodya saw that his neck had reddened, a giveaway sign of suppressed emotion in his father. ‘I last saw my brother in 1919. Since then I haven’t heard from him.’

‘Greg’s father is called Lev, and Lev had a brother called Grigori.’

‘Then Greg could be your cousin.’

‘He said brother.’

Grigori’s blush deepened and he said nothing.

Zoya put in: ‘How could that be?’

Volodya said: ‘According to this American Peshkov, Lev had a pregnant girlfriend in St Petersburg who married his brother.’

Grigori said: ‘Ridiculous!’

Volodya looked at Katerina. ‘You haven’t said anything, Mother.’

There was a long pause. That in itself was significant. What did they have to think about, if there was no truth in Greg’s story? A weird coldness descended on Volodya, like a freezing fog.

At last his mother said: ‘I was a flighty girl.’ She looked at Zoya. ‘Not sensible, like your wife.’ She sighed deeply. ‘Grigori Peshkov fell in love with me, more or less at first sight, poor idiot.’ She smiled fondly at her husband. ‘But his brother, Lev, had fancy clothes, cigarettes, money for vodka, gangster friends. I liked Lev better. More fool me.’

Volodya said amazedly: ‘So it’s true?’ Part of him still hoped desperately for a denial.

‘Lev did what such men always do,’ Katerina said. ‘He made me pregnant then left me.’

‘So Lev is my father.’ Volodya looked at Grigori. ‘And you’re just my uncle!’ He felt as if he might fall over. The ground under his feet had shifted. It was like an earthquake.

Zoya stood beside Volodya’s chair and put her hand on his shoulder, as if to calm him, or perhaps restrain him.

Katerina went on: ‘And Grigori did what men such as Grigori always do: he took care of me. He loved me, he married me, and he provided for me and my children.’ Sitting on the couch next to Grigori, she took his hand. ‘I didn’t want him, and I certainly didn’t deserve him, but God gave him to me anyway.’

Grigori said: ‘I have dreaded this day. Ever since you were born I have dreaded it.’

Volodya said: ‘Then why did you keep the secret? Why didn’t you just speak the truth?’

Grigori was choked up, and spoke with difficulty. ‘I couldn’t bear to tell you that I wasn’t your father,’ he managed to say. ‘I loved you too much.’

Katerina said: ‘Let me tell you something, my beloved son. Listen to me, now, and I don’t care if you never listen to your mother again, but hear this. Forget the stranger in America who once seduced a foolish girl. Look at the man sitting in front of you with tears in his eyes.’

Volodya looked at Grigori and saw a pleading expression that tugged at his heart.

Katerina went on: ‘This man has fed you and clothed you and loved you unfailingly for three decades. If the word father means anything at all, this is your father.’

‘Yes,’ Volodya said. ‘I know that.’

(iv)

Lloyd Williams got on well with Ernie Bevin. They had a lot in common, despite the age difference. During the four-day train journey across snowy Europe Lloyd had confided that he, like Bevin, was the illegitimate son of a housemaid. They were both passionate anti-Communists: Lloyd because of his experiences in Spain, Bevin because he had seen Communist tactics in the trade union movement. ‘They’re slaves to the Kremlin and tyrants over everyone else,’ Bevin said, and Lloyd knew exactly what he meant.

Lloyd had not warmed to Greg Peshkov, who always looked as if he had dressed in a rush: shirtsleeves unbuttoned, coat collar twisted, shoelaces untied. Greg was shrewd, and Lloyd tried to like him, but he felt that underneath Greg’s casual charm there was a core of ruthlessness. Daisy had said that Lev Peshkov was a gangster, and Lloyd could imagine that Greg had the same instincts.

However, Bevin jumped at Greg’s idea for Germany. ‘Was he speaking for Marshall, do you suppose?’ said the portly Foreign Secretary in his broad West Country accent.

‘He said not,’ Lloyd replied. ‘Do you think it could work?’

‘I think it’s the best idea I’ve heard in three bloody weeks in bloody Moscow. If he’s serious, arrange an informal lunch, just Marshall and this youngster with you and me.’

‘I’ll do it right away.’

‘But tell nobody. We don’t want the Soviets to get a whisper of this. They’ll accuse us of conspiring against them, and they’ll be right.’

They met the following day at No. 10 Spasopeskovskaya Square, the American Ambassador’s residence, an extravagant neoclassical mansion built before the revolution. Marshall was tall and lean, every inch a soldier; Bevin rotund, nearsighted, a cigarette frequently dangling from his lips; but they clicked immediately. Both were plain-speaking men. Bevin had once been accused of ungentlemanly speech by Stalin himself, a distinction of which the Foreign Secretary was very proud. Beneath the painted ceilings and chandeliers they got down to the task of reviving Germany without the help of the USSR.

They agreed rapidly on the principles: the new currency, the unification of the British, American, and – if possible – French zones; the demilitarization of West Germany; elections; and a new transatlantic military alliance. Then Bevin said bluntly: ‘None of this will work, you know.’

Marshall was taken aback. ‘Then I fail to understand why we’re discussing it,’ he said sharply.

‘Europe’s in a slump. This scheme will fail if people are starving. The best protection against Communism is prosperity. Stalin knows that – which is why he wants to keep Germany impoverished.’

‘I agree.’

‘Which means we’ve got to rebuild. But we can’t do it with our bare hands. We need tractors, lathes, excavators, rolling stock – all of which we can’t afford.’

Marshall saw where he was going. ‘Americans aren’t willing to give Europeans any more handouts.’

‘Fair enough. But there must be a way the USA can lend us the money we need to buy equipment from you.’

There was a silence.

Marshall hated to waste words, but this was a long pause even by his standards.

Then at last he spoke. ‘It makes sense,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

The conference lasted six weeks and, when they all went home again, nothing had been decided.

(v)

Eva Williams was a year old when she got her back teeth. The others had come fairly easily, but these hurt. There was not much Lloyd and Daisy could do for her. She was miserable, she could not sleep, she would not let them sleep, and they were miserable too.

Daisy had a lot of money, but they lived unostentatiously. They had bought a pleasant row house in Hoxton, where their neighbours were a shopkeeper and a builder. They got a small family car, a new Morris Eight with a top speed of almost sixty miles per hour. Daisy still bought pretty clothes, but Lloyd had just three suits: evening dress, a chalk stripe for the House of Commons, and tweeds for constituency work at the weekends.

Lloyd was in his pyjamas late one evening, trying to rock the grizzling Evie to sleep, and at the same time leafing through Life magazine. He noticed a striking photograph taken in Moscow. It showed a Russian woman, wearing a headscarf and a coat tied with string like a parcel, her old face deeply lined, shovelling snow on the street. Something about the way the light struck her gave her a look of timelessness, as if she had been there for a thousand years. He looked for the photographer’s name and found it was Woody Dewar, whom he had met at the conference.

The phone rang. He picked it up and heard the voice of Ernie Bevin. ‘Turn your wireless on,’ Bevin said. ‘Marshall’s made a speech.’ He hung up without waiting for a reply.

Lloyd went downstairs to the living room, still carrying Evie, and switched on the radio. The show was called American Commentary. The BBC’s Washington correspondent, Leonard Miall, was reporting from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ‘The Secretary of State told alumni that the rebuilding of Europe is going to take a longer time, and require a greater effort, than was originally foreseen,’ said Miall.

That was promising, Lloyd thought with excitement. ‘Hush, Evie, please,’ he said, and for once she quietened.

Then Lloyd heard the low, reasonable voice of George C. Marshall. ‘Europe’s requirements, for the next three or four years, of foreign food and other essential products – principally from America – are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help . . . or face economic, social and political deterioration of a very grave character.’

Lloyd was electrified. ‘Substantial additional help’ was what Bevin had asked for.

‘The remedy lies in breaking the vicious circle and restoring the confidence of the European people in the economic future,’ Marshall said. ‘The United States should do whatever it is able to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world.’

‘He’s done it!’ Lloyd said triumphantly to his uncomprehending baby daughter. ‘He’s told America they have to give us aid! But how much? And how, and when?’

The voice changed, and the reporter said: ‘The Secretary of State did not outline a detailed plan for aid to Europe, but said it was up to the Europeans to draft the programme.’

‘Does that mean we have carte blanche?’ Lloyd eagerly asked Evie.

Marshall’s voice returned to say: ‘The initiative, I think, must come from Europe.’

The report ended, and the phone rang again. ‘Did you hear that?’ said Bevin.

‘What does it mean?’

‘Don’t ask!’ said Bevin. ‘If you ask questions, you’ll get answers you don’t want.’

‘All right,’ Lloyd said, baffled.

‘Never mind what he meant. The question is what we do. The initiative must come from Europe, he said. That means me and you.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Pack a bag,’ said Bevin. ‘We’re going to Paris.’