The service passed in a blur. George managed to make the right responses, but all he could think was that Verena was his, now, for ever.
The ceremony was folksy, but there was nothing modest about the wedding breakfast thrown afterwards by the bride’s father. Percy rented Pisces, a Georgetown nightclub that featured a twenty-foot waterfall at the entrance emptying into a giant goldfish pond on the floor below, and an aquarium in the middle of the dance floor.
George and Verena’s first dance was to the Bee Gees’ ‘Stayin’ Alive’. George was not much of a dancer, but it hardly mattered: everyone was looking at Verena, holding up her train with one hand while disco-dancing. George was so happy he wanted to hug everyone.
The second person to dance with the bride was Ted Kennedy, who had come without his wife, Joan: there were rumours that they had split. Jacky grabbed the handsome Percy Marquand. Verena’s mother, Babe Lee, danced with Greg.
George’s cousin Dave Williams, the pop star, was there with his sexy wife, Beep, and their five-year-old son, John Lee, named after the blues singer John Lee Hooker. The boy danced with his mother, and strutted so expertly that he made everyone laugh: he must have seen
Saturday Night
Fever.
Elizabeth Taylor danced with her latest husband, the millionaire would-be-senator John Warner. Liz was wearing the famous square-cut thirty-three-carat Krupp diamond on the ring finger of her right hand. Seeing all this through a mist of euphoria, George realized dazedly that his wedding had turned into one of the outstanding social events of the year.
George had invited Maria Summers, but she had declined. After their brief love affair had ended in a quarrel, they had not spoken for a year. George had been hurt and bewildered. He did not know how he was supposed to live his life: the rules had changed. He also felt resentful. Women wanted a new deal, and they expected him to know, without being told, what the deal was, and to agree to it without negotiation.
Then Verena had emerged from seven years of obscurity. She had started her own lobbying company in Washington, specializing in civil rights and other equalities issues. Her initial clients were small pressure groups who could not afford to employ their own full-time lobbyist. The rumour that Verena had once been a Black Panther seemed only to give her greater credibility. Before long she and George were an item again.
Verena seemed to have changed. One evening she said: ‘Dramatic gestures have their place in politics, but in the end advances are made by patient legwork: drafting legislation and talking to the media and winning votes.’ You’ve grown up, George thought, and he only just stopped himself from saying it.
The new Verena wanted marriage and children, and felt sure she could have both and a career too. Once burned, George did not again put his hand in the fire: if that was what she thought, it was not up to him to argue.
George had written a tactful letter to Maria, beginning: ‘I don’t want you to hear this from someone else.’ He had told her that he and Verena were together again and talking about marriage. Maria had replied in tones of warm friendship, and their relationship had reverted to what it had been before Nixon resigned. But she remained single, and did not come to the wedding.
Taking a break from dancing, George sat down with his father and grandfather. Lev was downing champagne with relish and telling jokes. A Polish cardinal had been made Pope, and Lev had a fund of bad-taste Polish Pope jokes. ‘He did a miracle – made a blind man deaf!’
Greg said: ‘I think this is a highly aggressive political move by the Vatican.’
George was surprised by that, but Greg usually had grounds for what he said. ‘How so?’ said George.
‘Catholicism is more popular in Poland than elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and the Communists aren’t strong enough to repress religion there as they have in all other countries. There’s a Polish religious press, a Catholic university, and various charities that get away with sheltering dissidents and noting human rights abuses.’
George said: ‘So what is the Vatican up to?’
‘Mischief. I believe they see Poland as the Soviet Union’s weak spot. This Polish Pope will do more than wave at tourists from the balcony – you watch.’
George was about to ask what the Pope
would
do when the room went quiet and he realized that President Carter had arrived.
Everyone applauded, even the Republicans. The President kissed the bride, shook hands with George, and accepted a glass of pink champagne, although he took only one sip.
While Carter was talking to Percy and Babe, who were long-term Democratic fund-raisers, one of the President’s aides approached George. After a few pleasantries the man said: ‘Would you consider serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence?’
George was flattered. Congressional Committees were important. A seat on a committee was a source of power. ‘I’ve been in Congress only two years,’ he said.
The aide nodded. ‘The President is keen to advance black congressmen, and Tip O’Neill agrees.’ Tip O’Neill was the House Majority Leader, who had the prerogative of granting committee seats.
George said: ‘I’ll be glad to serve the President any way I can – but Intelligence?’
The CIA and other intelligence agencies reported to the President and the Pentagon, but they were authorized, funded and in theory controlled by Congress. For security, control was delegated to two committees, one in the House and one in the Senate.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said the aide. ‘Intelligence committees are usually packed with conservative friends of the military. You’re a liberal who has criticized the Pentagon over Vietnam and the CIA over Watergate. But that’s why we want you. At present those committees don’t oversee, they just applaud. And intelligence agencies that think they can get away with murder will commit murder. So we need someone in there asking tough questions.’
‘The intelligence community is going to be horrified.’
‘Good,’ said the aide. ‘After the way they behaved in the Nixon era, they need to be shaken up.’ He glanced across the dance floor. Following his gaze, George saw that President Carter was leaving. ‘I have to go,’ the aide said. ‘Do you want time to think?’
‘Hell, no,’ said George. ‘I’ll do it.’
* * *
‘Godmother? Me?’ said Maria Summers. ‘Are you serious?’
George Jakes smiled. ‘I know you’re not very religious. We’re not, either, not really. I go to church to please my mother. Verena has been once in the last ten years, and that was for our wedding. But we like the idea of godparents.’
They were having lunch in the Members’ Dining Room of the House of Representatives, on the ground floor of the Capitol building, sitting in front of the famous fresco,
Cornwallis Sues for Cessation of Hostilities.
Maria was eating meat loaf; George had a salad.
Maria said: ‘When’s the baby due?’
‘A month or so – early April.’
‘How is Verena feeling?’
‘Terrible. Lethargic and impatient at the same time. And tired, always tired.’
‘It will soon be over.’
George brought her back to the question. ‘Will you be godmother?’
She evaded it again. ‘Why have you asked me?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Because I trust you, I guess. I probably trust you more than anyone outside my family. If Verena and I died in a plane crash, and our parents were too old or dead, I feel confident that you would make sure my children were cared for, somehow.’
Maria was evidently moved. ‘It’s kind of wonderful to be told that.’
George thought, but did not say, that it was now unlikely Maria would have children of her own – she would be forty-four this year, he calculated – and that meant she had a lot of spare maternal affection to give to the children of her friends.
She was already like family. His friendship with her had lasted almost twenty years. She still went to see Jacky several times a year. Greg liked Maria, too, as did Lev and Marga. It was hard not to like her.
George did not give voice to any of these considerations, but instead said: ‘It would mean a lot to Verena and me if you would do it.’
‘Is it really what Verena wants?’
George smiled. ‘Yes. She knows that you and I had a relationship, but she’s not the jealous type. Matter of fact, she admires you for what you’ve achieved in your career.’
Maria looked at the men in the fresco, with their eighteenth-century coats and boots, and said: ‘Well, I guess I’ll be like General Cornwallis, and surrender.’
‘Thank you!’ said George. ‘I’m very happy. I’d order champagne, but I know you wouldn’t drink it in the middle of a working day.’
‘Maybe when the baby is born.’
The waitress picked up their plates and they asked for coffee. ‘How are things in the State Department?’ George asked. Maria was now a big shot there. Her title was Deputy Assistant Secretary, a post more influential than it sounded.
‘We’re trying to figure out what’s happening in Poland,’ she said. ‘It’s not easy. We think there’s a lot of criticism of the government from inside the United Workers’ Party, which is the Communist party. Workers are poor, the elite are too privileged, and the “Propaganda of Success” just calls attention to the reality of failure. National income actually fell last year.’
‘You know I’m on the House Intelligence Committee.’
‘Of course.’
‘Are you getting good information from the agencies?’
‘It’s good, as far as we know, but there’s not enough of it.’
‘Would you like me to ask about that in the committee?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘It may be that we need additional intelligence personnel in Warsaw.’
‘I think we do. Poland could be important.’
George nodded. ‘That’s what Greg said when the Vatican elected a Polish Pope. And he’s usually right.’
* * *
At the age of forty, Tania became dissatisfied with her life.
She asked herself what she wanted to do with her next forty years, and found that she did not want to spend them as an acolyte to Vasili Yenkov. She had risked her freedom to share his genius with the world, but that had done nothing for her. It was time she focussed on her own needs, she decided. What that meant, she did not know.
Her discontent came to a head at a party to celebrate the award of the Lenin Literary Prize to Leonid Brezhnev’s memoirs. The award was risible: the three volumes of the Soviet leader’s autobiography were not well written, not true, and not even by Brezhnev, having been ghost-written. But the writers’ union saw the prize as a useful pretext for a shindig.
Getting ready for the party, Tania put her hair in a ponytail like Olivia Newton-John in the movie
Grease
, which she had seen on an illicit videotape. The new hairstyle did not cheer her up as much as she had hoped.
As she was leaving the building, she ran into her brother in the lobby, and told him where she was going. ‘I see that your protégé, Gorbachev, made a fulsome speech in praise of Comrade Brezhnev’s literary genius,’ she said.
‘Mikhail knows when to kiss ass,’ Dimka said.
‘You did well to get him on to the Central Committee.’
‘He already had the support of Andropov, who likes him,’ Dimka explained. ‘All I had to do was persuade Kosygin that Gorbachev is a genuine reformer.’ Andropov, the KGB chief, was increasingly the leader of the conservative faction in the Kremlin; Kosygin the champion of the reformers.
Tania said: ‘Gaining the approval of both sides is unusual.’
‘He’s an unusual man. Enjoy your party.’
The do was held in the utilitarian offices of the writers’ union, but they had managed to get hold of several cases of Bagrationi, the Georgian champagne. Under its influence, Tania got into an argument with Pyotr Opotkin, from
TASS.
No one liked Opotkin, who was not a journalist but a political supervisor, but he had to be invited to social events because he was too powerful to offend. He buttonholed Tania and said accusingly: ‘The Pope’s visit to Warsaw is a catastrophe!’
Opotkin was right about that. No one had imagined how it would be. Pope John Paul II turned out to be a talented propagandist. When he got off the plane at Okecie military airport, he fell to his knees and kissed the Polish ground. The picture was on the front pages of the Western press next morning, and Tania knew – as the Pope must have known – that the image would find its way back into Poland by underground routes. Tania secretly rejoiced.
Tania’s boss Daniil was listening, and he interjected: ‘Driving into Warsaw in an open car, the Pope was cheered by two million people.’
Tania said: ‘Two
million
?’ She had not seen this statistic. ‘Is that possible? It must be something like five per cent of the entire population – one in every twenty Poles!’
Opotkin said angrily: ‘What is the point of the Party controlling television coverage when people can see the Pope for themselves?’
Control was everything for men such as Opotkin.
He was not done. ‘He celebrated Mass in Victory Square in the presence of two hundred and fifty thousand people!’
Tania knew that. It was a shocking figure, even to her, for it starkly revealed the extent to which Communism had failed to win the hearts of the Polish people. Thirty-five years of life under the Soviet system had converted nobody but the privileged elite. She made the point in appropriate Communist jargon. ‘The Polish working class reasserted their reactionary old loyalties at the first opportunity.’
Poking Tania’s shoulder with an accusing forefinger, Opotkin said: ‘It was reformists like you who insisted on letting the Pope go there.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Tania scornfully. Kremlin liberals such as Dimka had urged letting the Pope in, but they had lost the argument, and Moscow had told Warsaw to ban the Pope – but the Polish Communists had disobeyed orders. In a display of independence unusual for a Soviet satellite, the Polish leader Edward Gierek had defied Brezhnev. ‘It was the Polish leadership that made the decision,’ Tania said. ‘They feared there would be an uprising if they forbade the Pope’s visit.’