Simon Montefiore - One Night in Winter

‘Not to me,’ Andrei said, speaking in a rush. ‘You were always entirely your own person, and now you’re even more so. You’ve probably forgotten that I saw you off on the train that day when you were leaving to be married in the West. I told myself then that I’d meet the train when you came back.’

‘You did see me off,’ Serafima said, remembering his face as the train pulled away. She had not thought about him once in eight years yet now she was nourished by the feeling he had been with her even then and that somehow she’d known him well a long time. ‘It’s cold here, isn’t it? I’m shivering.’

He picked up her case. ‘May I? I suppose you want to go to your parents’ place, but’ – he searched her face – ‘I have a small apartment, and it’s warm and full of books and…’

As he pushed his way through the crowd into the street where his car was parked, Serafima followed him with tears streaming down her face; she was crying not just out of gratitude for his kindness, but because it was only at this very second that she was really letting go of Frank Belman. This was the end of her old life and the start of a new one with Andrei Kurbsky.

As she passed through the arches of the station, she saw a tall man in the shadows. Through the blur of her tears, she glimpsed a face that reminded her of Hercules Satinov. But it couldn’t be him: he was more important than ever now, so what would he be doing here? Pulling down his black fedora, the man disappeared into the night and when Serafima blinked, he was gone.

The guards called up from the checkpoint on Granovsky: ‘The guest is on the way up, comrade marshal.’

‘Thank you,’ said Satinov. Mid-seventies but as lean as a much younger man, he looked at his watch. It was seven in the morning; Tamriko was at the dacha with Mariko, who had never married, and an American delegation was in Moscow to negotiate an arms-limitation treaty, so he, as Defence Minister, had been busy entertaining the Westerners at the Bolshoi and a banquet until the early hours. When he finally got home, the phone was ringing. Satinov had listened carefully.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Come early in the morning.’

So he was expecting this visit – but he had scarcely slept, imagining what it might mean.

Now he got up and crossed the chandeliered living room, conscious that, in this age of Nixon and Brezhnev, there was no longer a lifesize portrait of Stalin on the wall; instead there was one of himself in marshal’s uniform. He walked down the gleaming parquet corridor to the front door, hesitated for a second, opened the door – and gasped in shock.

At her book-lined apartment in the block on Patriarchy Prudy, Serafima Kurbskaya was sitting down.

‘I’ve had a phone call,’ she said to her husband, who was standing in the doorway watching her.

‘I know.’

‘It was from the American Embassy. They want me to meet someone.’

‘I thought so.’

‘How did you know?’

‘I’ve always expected that call,’ said Andrei, ‘and I happened to see his name in Pravda. He’s in charge of the American delegation.’

‘I didn’t say I’d go.’

‘Do you want to?’

‘I’m happy not to go. I don’t want it to worry you.’

‘But do you want to see him again?’

‘I think I do.’

‘Then you must. Serafima?’

‘Yes?’

‘I owe you this. And if you still have feelings…’

‘Oh, Andrei. You don’t owe me anything. I owe you a lot. Twenty happy years. We have our children, our books, poetry, theatre.’

Andrei came over, sat down beside her and took her hand. She noticed how pale he was looking. ‘We haven’t really spoken about this, but when we were at the school, I… I did something that I’ve always regretted. I agreed to watch people for the Organs, to protect myself and my mother – a sort of insurance policy after all we’d been through. Even then I loved you so I tried to do as little harm as I could, but… still… When I look back, as I lie beside you at night…’ Andrei got up, walked over to the far side of the room, cleaned his spectacles, and then came back to sit beside her again. ‘It was me who told them about you going to the House of Books every afternoon, and now I wonder if I played a part in them finding out about you and Frank Belman.’

Serafima put her head on his shoulder. ‘I knew you worked for the Organs. I worked it out in my cell in Lubianka. I had a lot of time. And when I came back from the Gulags, you knew which train I’d be on because you asked your KGB controller to tell you.’ She paused. ‘Dearest Andryusha, I’ve never held it against you. I know you, like millions of others, had no choice, especially when we were schoolchildren. You had to protect your mother. You’re a good person. You’re mine.’

Andrei sighed; then he put his arms around her. ‘Thank you, but I’d still like to drive you to meet him and I want you to be free to do whatever you want and go wherever you want. I’ve been so lucky to have you all these years. Now it’s my turn to make amends.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Satinov at the open door, wiping his brow. ‘For a second, you looked so like…’

‘My mother?’

‘Yes. Forgive me, Professor Dorov, I’m getting old.’

‘I suppose she was my age, around forty, when you knew her?’

‘Yes.’ Satinov turned round and gestured towards his sitting room. ‘Please come in.’

When they were both sitting down, Senka Dorov, who had dark eyes and a few freckles across his cheeks, thick dark hair and a full mouth with a slightly crooked grin, looked around at the grand room. The giant portrait of his distinguished host, the fire blazing and the chandelier all reminded him of his childhood when both his parents were members of the leadership. A maid brought tea.

‘What can I do for you?’ asked Satinov.

‘I’ll get straight to the point if I may,’ replied Senka. ‘My mother died two days ago.’

The news punched Satinov in the solar plexus. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘She died of cancer in Pyatogorsk, where my parents retired. She’d been ill for a while.’ Senka paused. ‘She asked me to deliver a package to you personally.’

‘Thank you. As a child you were closest to your mother.’

‘We continued to be close. Right until the end. You hadn’t actually seen her for a long time, I think?’

‘No, not really since 1945. You do look very like her, Senka, just as you did when you were a boy, the Little Professor.’

‘But you knew her well.’ It was not quite a question.

‘In a way.’ Satinov had never regretted staying with Tamriko, just as he had never considered leaving her. After his affair with Dashka, he had returned to become the man he had been before – on the surface, at least. The rigid life of the élite continued under Stalin and his successors, and everyone treated him as if he was still his reticent, cold former self. Yet all this time, Dashka had existed in his life like one of those unexploded Luftwaffe bombs they sometimes found, buried deep in someone’s garden yet still capable of destroying the entire neighbourhood. Over the years, he had realized that he had made a fool of himself with Dashka – and yet it was a folly that he would treasure all his life.

‘Well, this is what she asked me to deliver,’ said Senka awkwardly, proffering a package wrapped in brown paper and crisscrossed with string. ‘There! Duty done!’

‘Thank you again.’ Satinov was aware that his face was expression-free. After all, to hide his feelings was second nature to him.

‘Before I go, Comrade Satinov, may I ask you something? My mother’s arrest was such a blow to me as a child. But I never quite understood why she was arrested. You were in the leadership at the time. I wondered if you knew anything?’