Yet still, in the West, and throughout the vast reaches of the Soviet dominions, nobody knew what exactly that version was.
Chapter Eighteen
At Sheremetyevo, Lydia handed Bukansky his briefcase.
“I’ll bring you back a pair of fine London boots. Dark-red leather,” he said. “English size seven.”
“Bring yourself back,” she said. “And don’t drink too much while you’re there.”
He looked at her in surprise.
She looked down. “I’m sorry, Igor Alexandrovich. I shouldn’t have said that.”
With his index finger he lifted her chin. “You keep your mind on the boots, Lydochka,” he said.
She smiled. “I will.”
“And someday, who knows, I’ll get a chance to take you with me somewhere.”
She smiled again. “Someday,” she said.
She watched him walk through customs with an airy wave to the chief officer. So huge, he seemed almost to block the door to the departure room. Then he was lost to sight.
The arrival of Igor Bukansky in London on Aeroflot A71 was noted by Scotland Yard’s Special Branch with neither great interest nor concern. All Western intelligence dossiers indicated that the editor of Novaya Literatura was over the hill. The extent of his alcoholism was variously estimated but all reports agreed that he had long lost the confidence of the Soviet leadership. His visit to London was known to be the result of a long-standing invitation by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain to speak at their Awards Dinner.
The invitation had no political significance. Rather it was aimed at developing further cooperation between Britain and the U.S.S.R. following the recently successful coproduction, Dickens’ London.
In retrospect some of the officers of the Writers’ Guild who sat with Bukansky at the top table in the ballroom of the Dorchester Hotel that night are prepared to say that he seemed quiet and preoccupied. Certainly he was observed to be drinking nothing more than mineral water until the awards were made and the President of the Guild welcomed the guests.
At that point Bukansky took a large whisky, drained the glass and stood up to reply. In his halting English he delivered a totally unexceptionable speech on coproduction and cooperation. He complimented the award winner and the producers of Dickens’ London and offered fraternal greetings from the Soviet Writers’ Union.
Then he looked toward the future. The world, he said, could not afford a war, the balance of nuclear forces being what it is. He noted with regret that since the high point under Leonid Brezhnev in the late 1970s détente had suffered badly. He professed to be unable to understand why this was so. Cold War attitudes, he said, were all too easy to adopt. Rigidity of viewpoint was safer (he seemed to be pointing the finger at no particular side) than flexibility. But flexibility, he suggested, was necessary for survival…
By this point most of his audience were wondering when he was going to finish and let the dancing begin.
Flexibility, Bukansky was now reading from a prepared script, could offer a totally new view of the world as it approached the year 2000. We had seen levels of military expenditure that even the richest countries were unable to endure. We had seen the West and the Soviet world poised on the brink of the nuclear abyss for over three decades.
And what had flexibility to offer? That of course was for the political leaderships to decide. But as a writer, looking to the future, Bukansky saw the possibility of a new détente, of that peaceful coexistence of which Nikita Khrushchev had first spoken. He saw the possibility of peaceful competition replacing armed rivalry in Africa. He saw the possibility of a reconsideration of the problems of central Europe. Even a separation of NATO and Warsaw Pact forces on the frontier of the two Germanies. Yes! Even a reunited Germany if adequate guarantees of nuclear and conventional disarmament were to be offered!
Bukansky reached for his refilled whisky and offered a Russian toast: To the president and officers of the Guild. And to that political cooperation on which the survival of all of us depended…
Fifteen minutes later the news hit Fleet Street. And fifteen minutes after that it was being pored over in newspaper offices in New York, Washington, Bonn, Paris and Rome. The London Daily Telegraph pulled down its front page and led with a four-column headline: Russia offers deal — German unity in exchange for NATO withdrawal?
The opening paragraphs read:
Last night as principal guest of the Writers’ Guild Awards Dinner at the Dorchester Hotel, influential Russian editor Igor Bukansky suggested the Soviet Union would be prepared to withdraw from East Germany if a new united Germany were to become a demilitarized zone.
They would undoubtedly be the most far-reaching Soviet proposal on the German question since the Potsdam Conference of 1945. If West Germany accepted, and it is difficult to see how Bonn could refuse, it would involve the withdrawal of American and British forces from German soil and a dramatic reduction of German forces.
Whether NATO could possibly survive such a blow is doubtful. Whether the United States would be prepared to continue to maintain forces on the European mainland is equally doubtful.
Indeed it seems now the most obvious move for the Soviets to make, divesting themselves of an increasingly troublesome ally in East Germany, and aiming a dagger at the heart of NATO at the same time…
The piece went on to discuss Igor Bukansky’s possible standing with the new collective leadership and, acutely, in a summing-up paragraph, detected the hand of Natalya Roginova behind the proposal.
Throughout the world, radio and television news editors were demanding that their stringers in London get some comment from Bukansky. But Bukansky was already on his way back to Moscow.
In NATO headquarters in Brussels senior officers hurried to the first of a series of late-night meetings. In Bonn politicians looked at each other aghast. They knew NATO could not survive German withdrawal.
Natalya Roginova had played her second trump card.
Tom Foster Yates thought the whole embassy had gone mad when he entered the new building that morning. A messenger, clutching his arm, almost dragged him toward the elevator. Every telephone within earshot seemed to be ringing. A group of agitated correspondents were demanding clarification on some issue from a retreating press officer.
His secretary, Harriet Bennerman, had already assembled a slim file of overnight international comment.
Tom Yates dropped into his chair and opened the file. As usual Harriet had underlined in blue pencil the more significant passages. He turned the pages quickly, reading only the underscored lines:
No more pathetically obvious ploy could have issued from the Kremlin in the days of Brezhnev himself. Let there be no mistake: This is a ploy aimed at China.
The most constructive alternative to have been presented by any country in the history of East-West relations since World War II.