Knowing the difficulties writers faced in the Soviet Union, I sympathised with Kuznetsov’s bid to get away from it all, and had to ask myself whether I would have helped him had I been approached. I was not put to the test, but knew for sure that I wouldn’t have done anything to get a friend like George into trouble. We could only feel sorry for him, on the grounds that whatever else happened he wouldn’t be allowed out of Russia again.
He told me his side of the story many years later in Moscow, beginning from when I dropped him off at his hotel on 26 July. After our convivial meal he took to his bed for a much needed nap. In the evening he and Kuznetsov had supper with the novelist Basil Davidson, and his wife, who were old friends of Ivasheva’s. They later took their guests out in the car to see the sights of London.
Next morning Kuznetsov told George he wanted to visit Madame Tussaud’s. If a secret assignation had been set up it was the perfect place, in view of what was to happen. One can imagine hilarious dodgings among the dummies so that George wouldn’t see or hear, but if someone had set up a meeting he hadn’t known that the exhibits were to be moved that day, and temporarily installed elsewhere. George made an effort to find out the location, but no one could tell him. His attempt went on for some time until Kuznetsov, who had a weak heart, said he was exhausted. The search was called off, and they went to the embassy for lunch, and then to the hotel for a rest.
On the 28th they were expected to dine at Jack Lindsay’s, another writer. In the morning George worked on translating a play about Lenin for the BBC, which they too hoped to use for the centenary. Kuznetsov went out for a walk. When he seemed to have been away for a long time George thought he’d called on a man named Feifer whom he claimed to know. George found out later in Moscow that he was a ‘Sovietologist’ and none too friendly towards the USSR.
The morning of the 29th was very wet, and Kuznetsov hadn’t come back to the hotel. George feared he might have had a heart attack on the street, or gone again to Soho and been mugged. He should have telephoned the embassy and explained the situation, but hesitated because he didn’t want to get Kuznetsov into trouble. If he suddenly appeared for lunch and found out that his lapse was known about he would be angry at whoever had snitched on him. Kuznetsov had all along made a point of getting on close terms with George, well before their trip to London had been confirmed, and had even entertained him in his Tula flat.
At eleven o’clock he took a call from a reporter on the Daily Telegraph, who asked if he knew where Kuznetsov was. Smelling a very big rat even on the telephone, George responded that as far as he knew he had gone out walking. ‘And in this rain as well,’ for it was streaming down the window.
No sooner had the reporter hung up than George telephoned the embassy, telling them that Kuznetsov had not slept in his bed last night. He was advised to go and see them right away, but when he got there the diplomats did not seem worried. One of the secretaries gave him tea, saying that Kuznetsov was no doubt having a fine old time somewhere and would turn up sooner or later. How could he not? He was a famous and well-respected author whose books were widely bought and read. As a wealthy man he lived the good life, with a datcha in the country, a flat in Tula and one in Moscow.
That same evening — it was still raining — George went to the novelist Walter Allen’s for dinner, knowing that Kuznetsov was expected as well, but he passed his absence off as a joke, saying that his charge must have got lost somewhere on his interminable walks in the footsteps of Lenin.
After eating supper they heard on the television news that Kuznetsov had been in touch with the Home Office, and requested political asylum. The kindly and sympathetic Allens advised shocked George not to go back to the hotel but to spend the night with them, since there would be crowds of reporters waiting for him, and he ought to think about what he would sooner or later have to say to such people.
George telephoned the night porter, with whom he had become friendly — they had smoked some of his Russian cigarettes together — and was told that the press were indeed waiting for him.
He went back on the Underground in a very depressed mood. It was as if a grenade had exploded under his feet. Disbelief, sensations of failure, incompetence, and above all guilt took him over. He felt bitter at Kuznetsov’s betrayal of trust, not only of him but of his country as well which, in George’s view, had done so much for them both.
Apart from that, how could such a terrible event have come about, on his first trip out of the USSR? Disaster was too mild a word. He would need every moral resource to face whatever might come. Above all he steeled himself into accepting full responsibility for Kuznetsov’s action. Any consequences would be his, and he would endure them with the dignity of a Georgian prince which, he once told me, had been inherited from his ancestors. But he was utterly downhearted for the rest of his stay (and long afterwards) though he fought bravely not to let it show. Nevertheless, he said, they were the worst days of his life. ‘I just couldn’t understand why Kuznetsov had taken such a rash and fatal step.’
He was met a little way up the street by the hotel manager who, on George telling him he didn’t care to meet the press at that moment, avoided the score of reporters by leading him to another entrance, and by some back stairs to his room.
At one o’clock in the morning two police officers announced themselves at George’s door. They told him that Kuznetsov was now officially listed as ‘missing’ so they wanted details of his appearance, which George gave, saying also that he had a weak heart, and could speak no English. Polite and even friendly, they smoked George’s Moscow cigarettes. ‘People disappear in London all the time,’ the inspector said on leaving, ‘and are never found.’
Next morning, Wednesday, Secretary Chikvaidze came and took George to the embassy. George expected stormy accusations for his neglect, but the people there showed sympathy, Chikvaidze’s wife comforting him as best she could. The KGB in Moscow were already demanding they get hold of Kuznetsov ‘by any means’, and pack him off back to Moscow, a clearly impossible task since he was well hidden by now.
Later they went to Feifer’s address, hoping for clues, only to be told by a porter that he had gone to America a month ago. Back at the embassy a score of pressmen were waiting, and after discussions with the diplomatic staff it was agreed that George would face them at the hotel in the afternoon. He knew he would be taking a risk in doing this, and that every word would be weighed in the balance against his future prospects if anything anti-Soviet appeared in the papers that he was supposed to have said, but resolved that he would keep as much savoir-faire as could be mustered, confident by now that he could pull it off, while never losing a sense of dread.
He treated them at first with distaste, demanding to know why they were behaving so rudely in pushing microphones into his face, but gradually they became more amiable, and so did George, who answered their questions politely and at times with some humour. He talked to them for an hour and a half, and the session hadn’t been as intolerable as he expected.
In the afternoon a reporter from the Daily Telegraph, who had stayed behind when all the others had left, got into George’s room by claiming to be a traffic clerk from Aeroflot. It was impossible to get rid of him, so they went out, and talked in a bar on the Cromwell Road. At the end of their conversation the reporter said with a smile: ‘There’s not much more for you to do, Mr Andjaparidze, now that you’re in such trouble, than join Mr Kuznetsov and also defect. Think of what will happen to you when you get back to Russia.’