Making Enemies Read Online Free Page A

Andropov says.
    ‘What is there to deny? It all happened so long ago. It was not important then. How can it be now?’
    At the end of the week, Marchenko returns to Moscow, Stevens to Cambridge. They part knowing it is unlikely they will meet again, though they say to each other that they will move heaven and earth to make such a meeting possible. In the emotion of their parting, promises are made. There are other conferences and Stevens has his red university diary with him. He skims through the pages and recites the names of cities she has heard of but never seen.
    Milan. Basle. Oslo.
    She says she will try, but the decision is not in her power; she thinks it will be difficult if not impossible to persuade the Institute’s authorities to let her go.
    Moscow, then, Stevens says. He will come to Moscow in January. He will give a paper to the Academy of Sciences. Only a few months to wait, then they will be together again.
    For a moment they dream of a few days in the city in which she has spent all her life. But in their hearts they know how enormous are the obstacles they must overcome and that makes their parting so difficult. Now, all these years later, she knows that what they dared not say to each other that day has come true. They were not to meet again, and now there is no likelihood that they will ever do so.
    ‘Perhaps there are people who would not share your view that your affair with Stevens was unimportant.’
    She hears the threat in Andropov’s voice, but she cannot stop herself defying him.
    ‘They would have to explain their reasons,’ she says.
    Enemies, she thinks, have long memories. She never expected the enemy to be the man with whom she briefly shared her life.
    ‘Stevens was married. So were you.’
    ‘Adultery is not a crime.’
    ‘We are dealing with deviant not criminal behaviour.’
    ‘I cannot see why a brief encounter with an English physicist so many years ago is of the slightest concern to anyone. It was a trivial event.’
    Andropov considers her answer. She does not know whether it is important in his eyes, since he has chosen to resurrect the event after so much time, or whether it is just an excuse to arrest her.
    ‘Let us wind the clock forward sixteen years. What has happened to Stevens? He is still at Cambridge, he is one of the most important scientists in the British nuclear programme, he is a Nobel prizewinner. He has an international reputation,’ Andropov is saying, but she is hardly listening to him: a flood of memories is enveloping her. It is a joyful process, remembering those days with Stevens.
    ‘He was always going to succeed. It was obvious even then.’
    She says it carelessly, without thinking. It is her only mistake but it is enough. Andropov has been waiting for such a moment. He has caught her off guard. In those few words, she has betrayed herself and possibly Stevens too, and though she stops herself from saying anything more, it is too late. She has revealed her secret to Andropov, and he knows that Stevens is not dead for her, that some memory lives on deep within her, nourished secretly all these years. That is what he came to find and he has not been disappointed. He has learned her weakness, and now he has the power to exploit her. She knows he will do so mercilessly.
    Andropov leans back into his chair, confident and relaxed. She shivers even though she is not cold.

2
DANNY
    ‘If we believe all they tell us,’ Toby Milner said at the end of a grim day of listening to men and women denying a past that was undeniable, ‘there weren’t enough Nazis in this country to fill a paper bag, let alone form an army. So how did Hitler manage to survive for so long? That’s what I’d like to know.’
    The snow was falling again and had started to settle in drifts. It had been snowing on and off all day, and the bitter wind had returned. The city was silent.
    ‘God, I hate this place. Why can’t we go home and leave them to it? They got themselves into