(1980) The Second Lady (25 page)

Vera stripped off her jewellery and began to undress. She would have to be careful about every move, she warned herself. He was high-strung, concerned about the Summit. He had probably taken the measure of Kirechenko and knew it was going to be a rough conference. Yet, he was not so preoccupied that he would overlook any unnatural behaviour on her part or fail to make such behaviour the target of his tension.

If his present mood continued, it was almost impossible that he would loosely discuss the American delegation’s plans. Almost impossible, except for one thing in her favour. The resumption of sex three nights from now. That might do it, yet it might undo her. She had been too anxious tonight. Daring to convey her fears to the Premier’s wife had been foolhardy. She had been naive not to assume that the reception would be infiltrated by double agents. Needlessly, she had stuck her neck out, and any minute the axe might fall. She considered the paradox: she might lose her head -because she had lost her head.

She was in her nightgown. She padded into the sitting room trying to calm herself and prepare for bed. When she returned to the bedroom, Andrew was still not to be seen. The bathroom door remained shut. She wondered if she

should wait for him. Actually, she did not want to talk to him any more tonight, not while he was in a foul mood.

She chased down Billie’s usual sleeping pill with water and got into bed.

Sleep did not come at once, as she had hoped. Vera lay there for ten minutes, trying not to think. When she heard the bathroom door open, she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. The lights went out and the other twin bed creaked.

She must have dozed off, she realized, because the next thing she knew, she was groggily awake, roused by the persistent ringing of the telephone near him.

Andrew woke with a start, struggled to a sitting position, turned on a lamp, and groped for the phone.

‘Yes?… Yes, it is.’ He listened. ‘Who?.. . Heaton, at this hour? … Okay, hold on, I’ll get it.’

Hanging up, he got out of bed, and was putting on his blue silk bathrobe when he saw that his wife had been awakened.

‘Prime Minister Heaton,’ he explained. ‘I’ve got to get to my desk. He wants me on the scrambler phone. Go back to sleep.’

Wide awake, she watched him leave the room, heard him unlock the connecting door to the adjacent suite that had been partitioned into the series of cubicles to serve as his temporary office. She could hear him speak to the Signal Corps night-duty man. Then silence.

Vera lay still, eyes open. The British Prime Minister calling the American President at 3.15 in the morning. What was this about? Vera would not allow herself to conjecture.

Eight minutes passed before Andrew Bradford returned, taking off his robe.

‘Anything wrong, Andrew?’ she asked.

‘Plenty,’ he said, cryptically. He reached the other side of the bed, sat down on it, rubbing his arms. ‘Our best agent in the Russian delegation - they just found him - dead.’

‘Dead!’

‘Scotland Yard fished him out of the Thames a half-hour ago - multiple knife wounds - stabbed to death.’

‘How horrible. Was it robbery?’

‘They doubt it. His money wasn’t touched. It appears to have been a political murder.’

‘One of our agents?’

‘British, but one of ours, yes. The British recruited him in Moscow years ago. He came here with the Soviet delegation, one of the bodyguards assigned to Mrs Kirechenko. He was at the affair tonight. Didn’t I point him out to you? I can’t remember. A fellow named Yankovich.’ He shook his head. ‘Bad loss. Not exactly an auspicious beginning for the Summit.’

He turned off the lamp and slid under the blanket.

‘I wonder,’ he said in the dark, ‘who gave him away?’ He yawned. ‘Anyway, we’d better sleep. Good night, Billie.’

‘Good night, dearest.’

Not until minutes later, when she heard him snore, did Vera dare think about what had happened.

The violence made her shudder.

She rolled on her side and snuggled deeper into the feathery pillow.

She felt light-headed with relief. She was safe, at least for three more days. Even that seemed less threatening right now. The KGB had protected her, as Alex had promised it would. It would protect her again.

Despite the fact that the President and First Lady and many of the key staff were away in London, Isobel Raines had endured an unusually busy day in the White House. There had been a steady stream of White House personnel dropping into Dr Rex Cumming’s office with minor complaints and ailments, and as the only nurse in the office Isobel had been forced to work overtime.

Now, as she swung her BMW into the driveway of her house in Bethesda, she was pressed for time. She had made an early dinner date with her two closest women friends at a restaurant in Georgetown, and she did not want to be late.

She savoured these monthly dinners, the drinks and gossip, the chatting about life and the future. She did not want to miss any of it. By hurrying, she supposed she could still get in her bath before changing for dinner.

Isobel eased her car into the garage, set the hand brake, turned off the ignition. As she reached for the door handle, her eye caught something in the rearview mirror besides her own tousled red hair. When she had turned into her driveway, she had noticed a Ford with two nondescript men in it parked across from her house. She had paid no attention to the occupants of the Ford, assuming that they were waiting for someone in the house opposite.

She had been mistaken. The rearview mirror told her that the two men, or at least one of them, had been waiting for her.

One of them had stepped out of the Ford, crossed the street, and entered her driveway. He was a husky man, moustached, wearing dark glasses, and as far as she could make out a stranger. As he approached the rear of her car, growing larger in the mirror, she wondered if this was a hold-up. Not likely. It was still daylight. She kept her eyes riveted on the mirror with fascination. He seemed familiar, and at once she recognized him.

‘Shit!’ she exclaimed.

She started to open the car door to get away, but he was inside the garage, yanking at the passenger door on the other side.

‘Miss Raines,’ he called to her, ‘I suggest you stay behind the wheel. I have to have a little talk with you. It’s cosier here in the car.’

She had one foot out of the auto. ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘I’m in a hurry. Leave me alone.’

He calmly sat down in the front seat. “‘I need only a few minutes,’ he said.

‘No, I’m -‘

‘Miss Raines,’ he said too quietly, ‘stay put.’

She was half in the car, half out. She thought better of

leaving. It was no use. She had to face him sooner or later. She pulled herself back into the car and closed the door.

‘All right, what now?’ she demanded with irritation. ‘The last time you promised you’d never —’

‘Sorry,’ he interrupted. ‘I regret this call, but it is necessary. I have been requested to obtain a certain piece of information from you. Once I have it, I’ll take my leave, and no harm done. I promise you I won’t bother you again.’

‘I heard that before. Who in the hell are you?’

‘Who I am does not matter,’ said Grishin. ‘All that matters to you is what I know.’

She was perfectly aware of what he knew. Her old connection in Detroit with Da Costa. Her present position in the White House. Her occasional tumbles in the sack with President Bradford. Her two previous submissions to blackmail.

No matter what, she decided, this could not go on. They represented some foreign country, she had guessed from the start. Which one, she could not imagine — or maybe she could. To what purpose all these visits, she did not know. One thing certain. She could not continue betraying the President.

‘So you’ve come to blackmail me,’ she said.

‘We only seek your cooperation,’ he said.

‘Well, I’m not cooperating any more. I’m sick of this. There’s no end to it. I can see you’ll never leave me alone. So I might as well stop it right now. Go ahead and leak what you want to about my past. What’s the worst that can happen to me? I lose my job. There are other jobs somewhere. But I won’t let you off free, either. I’ll go to the FBI about you -‘

‘That would be inadvisable, Miss Raines.’ His tone almost carried a note of regret. ‘It would be bad for your health.’ He paused. ‘As to forcing us to leak your story, we wouldn’t want to do that. We don’t want to destroy you. Please reconsider. I promise you — this time I mean it - we will not be back. Answer one simple question, and it is over.’

She hesitated. He sounded sincere. Maybe he meant it. If she went along, maybe they would not bother her again. She

reconsidered. It depended on what they wanted from her. She would see. ‘The question,’ she said, ‘what is it?’

‘It’s about -‘ He was trying to find a way to phrase it. ‘— about the President’s bed habits.’

Her anger surfaced. ‘Don’t you get tired of asking that over and over. My God, this is the third time.’

‘We must know more.’

‘You must also know I’m not going to tell you. It’s no one’s business. Anyway, that’s not the kind of thing that can be explained.’

‘Let me make it easier for you, Miss Raines,’ he said quickly. ‘Let me put it another way. Someone told us - we heard this from another source - that the President does not like - well, to be blunt, the President does not like normal sex.’

Isobel could not believe her ears. She suddenly burst into laughter. She kept on laughing. She tried to control herself. ‘Who - who told you that?’

‘Never mind. What’s funny about it?’

Isobel had found a Kleenex in her purse and wiped her eyes. ‘The thought of it, that’s all. Because it’s so wrong.’

‘So wrong?’

‘100 per cent wrong. Because he’s straight as an arrow. You understand? Straight.’

‘Do you mean —?’

She pulled herself together. ‘You know what I mean. Now get out of here. Leave me alone.’

He nodded pleasantly. ‘Thank you, Miss Raines.’ He opened the door on the passenger side and left the car.

She watched his departure in the rearview mirror. She waited until the car across the street had gone. Then she got out of her BMW and started for the house.

There would not be time for a bath.

In the living room of her Kremlin suite in Moscow, Billie Bradford sat on the sofa, legs curled under her, trying to read an English edition, printed in Moscow, of Jack London’s

The Call of the Wild. She was not particularly interested in the book, except as a time filler before dinner in two hours.

Alerted by the turn of the lock in the front door, she saw Alex Razin enter. She immediately closed her book, cast it aside, and lowered her legs. While she still classified him with the enemy, she did so uncertainly. She liked him. He was the only decent one on the other side. Besides, she wanted human company.

He dropped the latest newspapers on a table, and came towards her. ‘How are you today, Mrs Bradford?’

She gave her usual answer. ‘Frustrated and a bit bored.’

‘I can understand that. Will you join me for a drink?’ The drinking together had become part of their new daily routine for late afternoon.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Only make mine double.’

At the side bar, pouring her a Scotch, himself a vodka, he inquired, ‘Did you keep yourself busy today?’

‘After a fashion. It was very depressing.’

‘How so?’

He brought her the double Scotch, handed it to her, as he sipped his vodka.

She patted the sofa cushion beside her. ‘Sit here.’ He obliged her. She said, ‘Listen to my tale of woe.’

‘That bad?’

She drank down an inch of the Scotch. T started with the radio news in English. Mostly about my husband and Premier Kirechenko, their activities on their first day in London, their meeting at the Prime Minister’s state dinner, some political speculation about the Summit and Boende, and a good deal about a Soviet bodyguard found floating in the Thames, stabbed to death.’

‘Unfortunately true,’ said Razin.

‘Not a word about the First Lady, except that she accompanied the President to the state dinner. Then I turned on the taped television news. There I was, this time, in all my glory. Glamorous on Andrew’s arm, in Whitehall, entering the Banqueting House.’ She turned toward Razin. ‘Do you know that vile little faker was actually wearing my new

Ladbury evening dress, the gold one? I couldn’t believe my eyes. I could have killed her. And there were all those people, cheering her, greeting her, the spectators, press, guards, British escorts, and not one of them could see through her. Andrew least of all. It drove me up the wall. I simply can’t imagine how she gets away with it. You know, Alex —’ She stopped. ‘There, I called you Alex. You’ll have to call me Billie - if I am Billie.’

‘Thank you, Billie.’

‘You know, it made me feel so hopeless, so lost. As if I didn’t exist. As if I’d become a non-person. Not anyone anywhere seems to know I’m ,on earth. No one needs me, misses me. Do you wonder that I got depressed? You have no idea -‘ Her eyes had moistened. She bit her lip, dumbly shaking her head.

Moved, Razin instinctively put his arm around her, wanting to comfort her. ‘I can understand your feelings,’ he said. Quickly, he withdrew his arm. ‘Drink up,’ he said.

They both drank without speaking.

He set down his glass, and for a while his fingers fidgeted with his trouser crease. ‘There is something I have to discuss with you,’ he said. ‘Your mood makes it doubly hard for me.’

‘I’m fine now,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘It is something I shouldn’t tell you, but I feel I must.’

Billie was becoming increasingly nervous. ‘Tell me.’

‘You remember the other day when I was forced to ask you in general terms how you regarded your husband as a lover? I hated to do it, but you knew the situation and you were kind enough to help me out. I had to repeat to Petrov what you told me. You were aware of that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I repeated to Petrov what you had told me. The information was very general, in fact useless to them, except for one thing. It was a means of testing your veracity. Anyway, right after, the KGB went to other sources in America. To learn if you had been truthful about your husband. I’m afraid they now feel you were being untruthful. From what