Free Making Enemies by Francis Bennett

you’ve read a single word.’
    He gave me a folder full of cuttings.
    ‘They edit me. They cut bits out. They rewrite sentences. I find it very unsettling. I’ve not been edited since I was an undergraduate. What’s worse, they do it rather well.’
    *
    I did not sleep much that night. I read what my father had written not once but again and again. As I did so, I began to sense the cause of his anxiety. There was a struggle going on within him, a conflict between the beliefs that had made him a pioneer in nuclear research and something new, a moral position he had reached, I presumed, in the year since we had last met. What had led him to this point I had no idea. If I had never really known my father before, now I knew him even less.
    The West had exploded a nuclear device, his argument went, and the world knew that the Russians were racing to build a similar or better weapon. There was talk now of a ‘superweapon’, whose destructive powers were many times greater than those of any atomic device. The dangers the world faced if either side were to explode such a device were too grim to contemplate. We had within our power the ability not only to wreak havoc upon our enemies but upon ourselves as well. We could blow up the world through a never-ending chain reaction, cause the end of civilization, create a poisonous desert after a thermonuclear storm in which life in any form would be unsustainable. The earth would be a poisoned graveyard, hurtling pointlessly through time. Was this to be the legacy of the war to end all wars?
    We had harsh choices to make, made harder by the debts we owed to the New World. But choices, however difficult, had to be made if the possibility of a lasting peace, a world for ever freed of conflict, was not to slip out of our grasp. That, surely, was what the sacrifice of the war years had been for.
    Throughout all the articles I sensed a pessimism I had not encountered before. This was not the rhetoric of the politician, seeking to persuade. It was the desolate cry of the parent who sees his child running headlong into the path of an oncoming car.

6
RUTH
    ‘Is Valery home?’
    Her mother nods. She goes into Valery’s room. He is sitting on the bed facing the wall. His school books are open on his table. For a moment she thinks he is crying, but she dismisses the thought. He has not cried for years.
    ‘Valery?’
    He says nothing and does not turn to face her.
    ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
    She sits on the edge of the bed and puts her hand on his shoulder. He does not respond to her touch. It is as if she were not there. Suddenly, she is terrified.
    ‘Valery.’
    She pulls him roughly so he has to turn towards her. His face is pale and drawn and his cheeks are wet with tears. He looks at her as if he had never seen her before and says nothing.
    ‘I cannot help you unless you tell me what’s happened.’
    She holds his stiff body against hers. She wants to cry but there are no tears.
    ‘Tell me,’ she says.
    He points to the ceiling. ‘How do I know they are not listening?’
    ‘We are not important enough for that.’
    She doesn’t believe it herself but her son is satisfied. He dries his eyes on his sleeve and talks in whispers.
    ‘These men came to see me at school today. They asked me questions.’
    They stand in the opened door of his classroom looking in, these two men. Andropov’s men. How she hates the power he has to terrify her into submission.
    Which one? the teacher’s expression asks. Which innocent victimdo I deliver today? He can offer no resistance on behalf of his pupils because his will was broken years before in a camp a thousand miles away. They look around the room and point at Valery Marchenko.
    A chalk-stained finger beckons him. His heart beating faster with every step, he walks through the ranks of his classmates. There is not a movement, not a murmur: all he can hear is the sound of his own boots on the wooden floor. He submits without