Old Flames by John Lawton Page B

Bulganin.
Neither Troy, nor HM Government it seemed, had any doubts as to where the real power lay. As far as Troy was concerned, Khrushchev was a rocket waiting for someone to light the blue touch paper and
retire. The only thing that was predictable about the man was that he was unpredictable. In his public persona Khrushchev had often struck Troy as having the fundamental defining characteristic of
a kitten—a boundless, reckless curiosity.
    Sometime between the war and the fall of Beria, cousin Leo had vanished. Troy’s brother Rod had been in the Cabinet in the dying days of the Labour Government and had used what influence
he could. All Rod’s enquiries had yielded was that the man had never existed in the first place. A non-person, even in death. In a nation where simply to have survived was an achievement,
Khrushchev was the survivor par excellence.
    For weeks now rumours had circulated in the Western press that he had denounced Stalin, denounced him as a tyrant responsible for the slaughter of countless numbers of his own people. No one
knew for certain, and no one had been able to quote a word the man said as gospel. The Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had been addressed by Khrushchev in a closed
session. Yet the effects were noticeable. Reports came in from Poland and from Hungary of a change in the political climate, amounting to a faith in the veracity of the rumour—it was, as so
many journalists had remarked, the first sign of a thaw in the cold war, the tinsel rustle of political spring.
    The Band of the Royal Marines struck up. Troy looked up at the ship. An interminable row of Soviet dignitaries stood to attention for their national anthem. At their head, two stout little men
in vast black coats. Bulganin was not a well-known figure, Khrushchev was, yet they both seemed to Troy to be variations on the same theme as they made their way down the red-carpeted gangplank to
the quay. They were stout men, they were little men, but their stoutness was at odds with their boyishness. He could think of no other word to describe them. With their round, smiley faces, and
bright, darting eyes they were like two little boys, two schoolboys blown up into men with a bicycle pump.
    They approached the start of the British line and began pumping flesh, Khrushchev following and smiling fiercely, Bulganin leading, smiling, it seemed, more naturally, his beautiful blue eyes
shining and his hair coiffured like icing on a cake. As he shook Troy’s hand he looked to Troy like a living parody of Sir Thomas Beecham, right up to the goatee beard. And Khrushchev,
Khrushchev only a foot away now, shaking the giant paw of Norman Cobb and looking like the Russian peasant he really was, another rendition of the Ur-Russian face that Troy had seen staring back at
him from countless pictures and photographs all his life.
    Khrushchev let go of Cobb’s hand. Troy let go of Bulganin’s, and in the twinkling of an eye he found himself clasping the podgy hand of Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, looking into
the nut-brown eyes of the leader of the Other World, and counting the warts on the face of the most fascinating man alive.

§8
    Khrushchev was a bore. A bully and a bore. There were no two ways about it, the man was terrible. He had all the character and gusto that Troy had expected of him, but shot
through with the corruption of power, an easy manipulation of others that manifested itself in an utter lack of regard for the feelings of those others.
    In public he deferred to the nominal head of state, Bulganin, and took an impish delight in back-seat driving. In private he bawled him out, shouted at him, called him stupid and told him to the
nth detail what to say. He was scarcely better behaved towards his son Sergei, a twenty-two-year-old, slim, quiet version of his father, hidden behind what appeared to be National Health
spectacles, who smiled pleasantly at everyone and seemed as eager to