• • •

Dimka had a big office in the Kremlin now. There was a large desk with two phones, a small conference table, and a couple of couches in front of a fireplace. On the wall was a full-size print of a famous Soviet painting, The Mobilization Against Yudenich at the Putilov Machine Factory.

His guest was Frederik Bíró, a Hungarian government minister with progressive ideas. He was two or three years older than Dimka, but he looked scared as he sat on the couch and asked Dimka’s secretary for a glass of water. “Am I here to be reprimanded?” he said with a forced smile.

“Why do you ask that?”

“I’m one of a group of men who think Hungarian Communism has become stuck in a rut. That’s no secret.”

“I have no intention of reprimanding you for that or anything else.”

“I’m to be praised, then?”

“Not that either. I assume you and your friends will form the new Hungarian regime as soon as János Kádár dies or resigns, and I wish you luck, but I didn’t ask you here to tell you that.”

Bíró put down his water without tasting it. “Now I’m really scared.”

“Let me put you out of your misery. Gorbachev’s priority is to improve the Soviet economy by reducing military expenditure and producing more consumer goods.”

“A fine plan,” Bíró said in a wary tone. “Many people would like to do the same in Hungary.”

“Our only problem is that it isn’t working. Or, to be exact, it isn’t working fast enough, which comes to the same thing. The Soviet Union is bust, bankrupt, broke. The falling price of oil is the cause of the immediate crisis, but the long-term problem is the crippling underperformance of the planned economy. And it’s too severe to be cured by canceling orders for missiles and making more blue jeans.”

“What is the answer?”

“We’re going to stop subsidizing you.”

“Hungary?”

“All the East European states. You’ve never paid for your standard of living. We finance it, by selling you oil and other raw materials below market prices, and buying your crappy manufactures that no one else wants.”

“It’s true, of course,” Bíró acknowledged. “But that’s the only way to keep the population quiet and the Communist Party in power. If their standard of living falls, it won’t be long before they start asking why they have to be Communists.”

“I know.”

“Then what are we supposed to do?”

Dimka shrugged deliberately. “That’s not my problem, it’s yours.”

“It’s our problem?” Bíró said incredulously. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“It means you have to find the solution.”

“And what if the Kremlin doesn’t like the solution we find?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dimka said. “You’re on your own now.”

Bíró was scornful. “Are you telling me that forty years of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe is coming to an end, and we are going to be independent countries?”

“Exactly.”

Bíró looked at Dimka long and hard. Then he said: “I don’t believe you.”