As Chairman of the Fifth, Kuba proved an immense success. He informed the whole organization with the slogan: “When in doubt take no chances whatsoever.” During the years before the Helsinki Accords it worked well. And afterward, trembling on the edge of promotion to general, and though he had never traveled outside the borders of the Soviet Union, he was appointed head of foreign Espionage, Chairman of the First Chief Directorate, KGB Lubyanka. It was not a period of the Soviet Union’s greatest espionage successes but by now Kuba was sufficiently well placed to protect his rear against any but the most formidable Party attack.
He was of course a senior Party member himself and on succeeding Andropov as Chairman of the Ministry of State Security he had been appointed first candidate member, then full member of the Politburo.
A child of the Revolution, he saw the Soviet Union as beset by enemies, foreign and domestic. There was no greater term of opprobrium in his limited vocabulary than “envious cosmopolitan.” Cosmopolitans envied the West its goods — but somehow in Kuba’s mind envied the Revolution its success at the same time. Natalya Roginova he saw as one among many.
He never paused to ask what the Revolution was or what it had done for the Soviet people, that question in itself would have been close to treason. He saw the Revolution as an icon to be defended. An icon of such rarity that no one could question its beauty. Cosmopolitans who looked too closely at the icon, he regarded as obscene violators of its intrinsic spirit.
Under Stalin, when the handsome Yezhov controlled the secret police and Russians in their millions trudged in rags through the Gulag gate, the age came to be known as the Yezhovschina, the days of Yezhov. Now, as the Kuba purges gained pace, men began to talk of the Kubaschina. The term was not inappropriate. A massive building program was ordered at all Gulag camps throughout the Soviet Union. The door knock at midnight became almost as familiar under Kuba as it was under Yezhov or his successor, Beria. The Party structure in the national republics shuddered under waves of arbitrary arrests. Loyalty and disloyalty again lost their meaning.
The execution squads too were at work, secretly in prison courtyards or among smoking rubbish dumps on the edge of town. With an awesome rapidity men learned again to refuse to talk to their neighbors and to keep packed bags by their beds against the expectation of arrest. Denunciations increased daily — and were acted upon. As winter became spring, and spring summer the security forces of Kuba’s Bureau extended their grip on the land.
It is said that where three Russians are gathered together the man in uniform naturally deals the cards. Authority is the traditional adhesive of the Russian State. But it is not respect for authority. It is the joy in its exercise.
And so, sadly there was once again in Russia’s unhappy history, no lack of men prepared, on behalf of their masters, to wield the knout.
Perhaps in these days of the Kubaschina some dissident estimates of five to seven million unfortunates behind the wire is correct. The lower figure would certainly not have included the penal brigades, the only part of the concentration camp population for which a figure is known. Within six months of Roginova’s fall these soldier-prisoners, mostly from Russia’s southern dominions, numbered close to half a million men. At the height of the Kubaschina no one could guess it, but these lowly, half-starved penals were destined to have, within months, a decisive impact on the course of history.
Chapter Twenty-Four
She awoke that morning and lay in bed trembling with excitement. It was the day Letsukov was due back from the Ukraine.
Brilliant sunshine flooded through the bedroom windows. No childhood memory equaled the happiness she felt. She got up quickly, took a shower and dressed. Sitting over a first cup of coffee she realized it was still barely seven o’clock. She smiled wryly to herself. It was going to be a long, long day.
At seven-thirty Tom Yates emerged from the bedroom, yawning. He sat in his robe at the kitchen table while she poured him coffee.
“I’ve been doing some calculations,” he said. “I’m building up a healthy stock of leave. I thought we might fly down to Italy for a couple of weeks with Jack and Harriet.”
Carole carefully poured herself more coffee. “Seems a waste,” she shrugged, “when there’s so much to see here.”
“For Christ’s sake, Carole,” he said, “you spend half your time complaining that you’ve seen all there is in Moscow, and now you don’t want to leave.”
“Perhaps I just don’t take to the idea of a solid fortnight with the Bennermans.” She sat at the table and picked up her cup. “They’re more your friends than mine, Tom.”
“You’d sooner take off somewhere with David Butler you mean?”
“Frankly, yes.” She felt a mounting excitement
“While I go to Italy with the Bennermans.”
“If that’s what you want to do.”
“Goddammit, I don’t feel I know you any longer, Carole.”
She would have liked to have been able to tell him that their marriage was over but she was still dependent on the status that being his wife conferred. There was no other way of remaining indefinitely in Moscow.
She sipped her coffee, eyeing him across the table. “I don’t want to go to Italy, Tom.”
“Okay, I’ll go by myself,” he said angrily.
She found she felt no guilt, only, as the day wore on, a gnawing impatience for the late afternoon to come. At the airport she was almost two hours early. She sat on a hard plastic bench watching the painfully long drawn-out movements of the clock hand.
The Kiev plane was on time. She had already chosen her position beside a vast concrete pillar, not too conspicuous but with a clear view of the arrival gate. As the passengers began to file through she felt a sudden, sickening charge of apprehension. There was no sign of him among the first group of men. No sign of him among the stragglers. No sign of him beyond the barrier among the final knot of airline officials.
She returned for the next Kiev flight, and the next. The following day she returned again to the airport for each flight, and between times drove back into Moscow to his apartment in case, for some reason, he had arrived by train.
On the third day her husband left with the Bennermans on a hurriedly organized trip to Italy. Her time was now her own and to her fears and disappointment and apprehensions was added a yawning sense of waste.
Five days later she was driving past his apartment at evening when she saw a light. She was trembling as she parked the car. Climbing the stairs her legs shook violently. As she pressed the bell she found she was supporting herself with the other hand on the doorjamb.
The door opened and he stood before her. She drew back, stunned at the coldness of his face.
“I had some leave due to me,” he said when she was sitting in the small familiar room trying to bring the flame of her lighter to the tip of her cigarette. “I took the opportunity to go down to my mother’s village.”
“My husband had some leave due too,” she said bitterly. “He took the opportunity to go to Italy. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
I suppose [Carole wrote long afterward], that if there is a difference between loving and being in love it is this: that to be in love is to accept the total vulnerability of endowing another person with the responsibility for your happiness. I was in love with Alex. I had freely handed to him powers which I had never parted with before. And when he withdrew from me I suffered in a way I had not imagined possible. It’s true that there were times in the next few weeks when I felt he was suffering almost as much as I was. We met less and less frequently. We behaved more and more as intimate strangers. Sometimes I exploded and his misery seemed to match my own. I hung on and on, humiliated, but I knew beyond all doubt that it was the end of the affair.