Winter of the World

Grigori looked troubled. ‘Don’t speak like that, even in private.’

‘Why not? I’ll probably be dead soon anyway.’

His mother started to cry.

His father said: ‘Now look what you’ve done.’

Volodya left the room. Putting on his boots, he asked himself why he had shouted at his father and made his mother cry. He saw that it was because he now believed that Germany would defeat the Soviet Union. His mother’s stash of vodka to be used as currency during a Nazi occupation had forced him to confront the reality. We’re going to lose, he said to himself. The end of the Russian revolution is in sight.

He put on his coat and hat. Then he returned to the kitchen. He kissed his mother and embraced his father.

‘What’s this for?’ said his father. ‘You’re only going to work.’

‘It’s just in case we never meet again,’ Volodya said. Then he went out.

When he crossed the bridge into the city centre he found that all public transport had stopped. The metro was closed and there were no buses or trams.

It seemed there was nothing but bad news.

This morning’s bulletin from SovInformBuro, broadcast on the radio and from black-painted loudspeaker posts on street corners, had been uncharacteristically honest. ‘During the night of 14 to 15 October, the position on the Western Front became worse,’ it had said. ‘Large numbers of German tanks broke through our defences.’ Everyone knew that SovInformBuro always lied, so they assumed the real situation was even worse.

The city centre was clogged with refugees. They were pouring in from the west, with their possessions in handcarts, driving herds of skinny cows and filthy pigs and wet sheep through the streets, heading for the countryside east of Moscow, desperate to get as far away as possible from the advancing Germans.

Volodya tried to hitch a lift. There was not much civilian traffic in Moscow these days. Fuel was being saved for the endless military convoys driving around the Garden Ring orbital road. He was picked up by a new GAZ-64 jeep.

Looking from the open vehicle, he saw a good deal of bomb damage. Diplomats returning from England said this was nothing by comparison with the London Blitz, but Muscovites thought it was bad enough. Volodya passed several wrecked buildings and dozens of burned-out wooden houses.

Grigori, in charge of air raid defence, had mounted anti-aircraft guns on the tops of the tallest buildings, and launched barrage balloons to float below the snow clouds. His most bizarre decision had been to order the golden onion domes of the churches to be painted in camouflage green and brown. He had admitted to Volodya that this would make no difference to the accuracy – or otherwise – of the bombing but, he said, it gave citizens the feeling that they were being protected.

If the Germans won, and the Nazis ruled Moscow, then Volodya’s nephew and niece, the twin children of his sister, Anya, would be brought up not as patriotic Communists but as slavish Nazis, saluting Hitler. Russia would be like France, a country in servitude, perhaps partly ruled by an obedient pro-Fascist government that would round up Jews to be sent to concentration camps. It hardly bore thinking about. Volodya wanted a future in which the Soviet Union could free itself from the malign rule of Stalin and the brutality of the secret police and begin to build true Communism.

When Volodya reached the headquarters building at the Khodynka airfield, he found the air full of greyish flakes that were not snow but ash. Red Army Intelligence was burning its records to prevent them falling into enemy hands.

Shortly after he arrived, Colonel Lemitov came into his office. ‘You sent a memo to London about a German physicist called Wilhelm Frunze. That was a very smart move. It turned out to be a great lead. Well done.’

What does it matter, Volodya thought? The Panzers were only a hundred miles away. It was too late for spies to help. But he forced himself to concentrate. ‘Frunze, yes. I was at school with him in Berlin.’

‘London contacted him and he is willing to talk. They met at a safe house.’ As Lemitov talked, he fiddled with his wristwatch. It was unusual for him to fidget. He was clearly tense. Everyone was tense.

Volodya said nothing. Obviously some information had come out of the meeting, otherwise Lemitov would not be talking about it.

‘London say that Frunze was wary at first, and suspected our man of belonging to the British secret police,’ Lemitov said with a smile. ‘In fact, after the initial meeting he went to Kensington Palace Gardens and knocked on the door of our embassy and demanded confirmation that our man was genuine!’

Volodya smiled. ‘A real amateur.’

‘Exactly,’ said Lemitov. ‘A disinformation decoy wouldn’t do anything so stupid.’

The Soviet Union was not finished yet, not quite; so Volodya had to carry on as if Willi Frunze mattered. ‘What did he give us, sir?’

‘He says he and his fellow scientists are collaborating with the Americans to make a super-bomb.’