(1980) The Second Lady (7 page)

Petrov took the bulging top folder and opened it on his lap. ‘Let me just skim through this, the highlights. It won’t be long. Do you have a drink?’

‘Yes. But no ice.’

‘Ice only dilutes it.’ While Razin poured a drink of vodka for Petrov and one for himself, the KGB chief studied the earliest papers, i remember,’ he said. ‘We started with the White House, constructing most of the duplicate to an exact scale. Slow, costly, a real bitch.’

Razin pulled a chair up next to Petrov and peered over his shoulder. ‘But authentic,’ said Razin. ‘Once we had the last remodel plans and all the most recent photographs, I thought it went well.’ He sat back sipping his drink. ‘The only thing that’s ever bothered me about that was scaling down a few of the rooms to save costs and time. I’ve always worried that she might be disoriented when she actually got into the real rooms.’

‘She’s insisted that’ll be no problem.’

‘Maybe not,’ said Razin.

Their architect and builders had duplicated almost the entire interior of the White House, ground floor, first floor, second floor. Three sides of the exterior had been flat walls (again, costs, time), but the South Portico and outside area of the Oval Office and Rose Garden had been made faithful to the original.

Razin was looking over Petrov’s shoulder again. ‘Then, you can see, we doubled the number of our agents and informants in Washington, and increased the number around the country. While construction went on here, we started intensive fact-finding over there.’

Necessary materials had been funnelled into Moscow by the crateful, an endless stream of vital information. For the

most part, it had been relatively easy. More tapes of Billie Bradford speaking, for Vera Vavilova’s voice lessons. More film tapes of Billie Bradford in action inside the White House and in public. Over and over they had shown Vera film and tapes of the American First Lady, and had Vera imitate and rehearse Billie Bradford’s facial expressions, gestures, mannerisms. What was known was not taken for granted. More and more audio tapes were played to pick up and note not only the timbre of the First Lady’s voice, but to learn her preferences for word usages, phrases, figures of speech, repetitions.

The real First Lady’s physique was monitored on a week-to-week basis, to note a new crease in her forehead, to note a newly adopted hair style, to note even the smallest growth or loss of weight. For every change that occurred afar, a change was made in Vera Vavilova in Moscow.

Other aspects of the First Lady’s physique, the ones hidden from outside observers, were also considered. Her insurance company was secretly invaded, and her application forms and policies found and copied in case they might contain a record of some hidden deformity or blemish. Her dental files and X-rays were stolen or bought off and copied. The office of the White House physician, Dr Rex Cummings, was visited and records of her physical examinations photographed to provide information on any chronic illnesses.

For months, there was a troublesome gap. Friends and acquaintances could be deceived by duplication of a clothed or semi-clothed Billie Bradford. But what about the doctor, or her husband the President, mainly the President, who would see her in the nude? What did the nude First Lady look like? This would have to be known if Vera Vavilova could be expected to carry off successfully her masquerade stripped down. Razin had mulled over the problems and had finally come up with an inspiration. He recollected once seeing, in an Italian men’s magazine, five full-length colour photographs of Jacqueline Kennedy, then Onassis, utterly naked. The one-time American First Lady had been sunbathing in the nude on the island of Skorpios, her Greek

retreat. An Italian photographer, on a fishing boat offshore, had used a camera with a sharp telescopic lens to capture her in the buff. The pictures of Jacqueline Kennedy proved to be thoroughly revealing, clearly showing her small breasts and dark brown nipples, her full buttocks, the long growth of pubic hair covering her vaginal mound. Recalling those photographs, Razin reasoned that if he could obtain similar pictures of the newest First Lady, Billie Bradford, his problem would be solved.

Persistent rumours indicated that Billie Bradford, when in private quarters at a holiday resort, enjoyed swimming in the nude. Thereafter, Razin hired a photographer, with a powerful telescopic lens attached to his camera, to follow Billie Bradford carefully on all her vacations. The photographer had trailed the First Lady to Miami Beach and to Malibu, and on both occasions, whether she had swum in the nude or not, foliage or other obstructions had shielded her from view. Then, as luck would have it, during her second year in the White House, Billied Bradford had flown off to Sicily for a week’s vacation. The guest of the Italian ambassador to the United States, she had a small inlet and private beach to herself. The third morning early, she had emerged from the beach house in a light blue robe, reached a ringlet of sand, and while standing had shed her robe. She had been stark naked, turning lazily on the sand, eyes closed, to enjoy the blaze of sun. Razin’s determined photographer had been perched on the baking tile roof of a distant house, his telescopic lens pointed toward the nude First Lady.

When the frontal shots of the naked First Lady arrived, Razin had been elated. He had already arranged, the week before, to have a set of nude frontal shots taken of Vera Vavilova. They had been excellent, and had excited Razin. With both sets in hand, Razin had laid out the nude pictures of Billie Bradford in a row, and beneath them lined up the nude shots of Vera Vavilova. Then, with a magnifying glass, Razin had examined them, comparing one against the other. The full firm breasts of each were identical, the nipples just about the same. The navels and bellies could not be told

apart. Moments later, Razin had found a difference in their naked bodies, one small difference, then another. There was the tiniest mark on Billie Bradford’s lower right side. There was no mark on Vera Vavilova’s side. Further, the spread of the triangles of pubic hair covering their vaginal mounds and rising to their lower abdomens were not the same. Billie Bradford’s mat of pubic hair grew into a higher and wider triangle than Vera’s. Razin summoned a physician to take the magnifying glass and study the photographs. He did so. The mark on Billie Bradford’s body, not to be found on Vera Vavilova’s, proved easy to identify. The mark on the American First Lady’s body was a scar, the result of an appendectomy. The solution was to put Vera Vavilova into surgery and make an incision with a scalpel that would duplicate the First Lady’s scar. As for the differences in the contours and growth of their pubic hair, the physician thought that, too, could be resolved. More hair would be implanted and added to the area above Vera’s vagina.

It had been more simply said than done. Just before these decisions, Vera Vavilova had protested posing in the nude for photographs. Razin had overcome her resistance by convincing her that the nude art would serve an important purpose soon to be made known to her. But when told that she must undergo additional surgery, as well as a pubic-hair implant, Vera Vavilova had put her foot down.

Petrov had meant to tell her the truth about her role immediately after the Premier had given permission to proceed. But Petrov had kept delaying it, because he had wanted the project to remain a secret as long as possible. He knew that he could not continue to keep his real purpose a secret from Vera Vavilova and Alex Razin indefinitely. Too many demands were being made on them for the pair not to know the truth. Petrov had decided to tell them when the imitation White House, being constructed inside the new sound stage, had been completed. That time had come and gone, and Petrov had continued to withhold the truth. But when Razin had come to him with the need for more surgery and a hair implant, and told him that Vera Vavilova had balked at both, Petrov knew that he could no longer keep the truth from them.

They met late one afternoon, after a long day of rehearsal. They had settled down in the living room of Vera’s private quarters, each with a drink.

Petrov had spoken to Razin first. ‘Do you know what is going on? The purpose behind what we are doing?’

‘I think I’ve guessed,’ Razin had replied.

Petrov had swung toward his actress. ‘And you? Have you guessed?’

‘I know you’re not making another film,’ she had said. ‘I suppose it is some KGB matter I don’t understand.’

‘You are close,’ Petrov had said. ‘Now you are so deep in it - now I feel I can trust you - so now I will tell you.’

He told her and he told Razin the entire plan, from the project’s inception to this moment of truth. He left out nothing. He told it all. He admitted it might be futile, might never be required while Mrs Bradford was still in the White House. But the odds were that it would be used. Several major confrontations between the Soviet Union and the United States were looming, might come to a head in the following year. For that possibility, they must be prepared.

‘When it happens,’ he concluded, ‘you will replace Billie Bradford in the White House as America’s First Lady for a brief period. It would be the greatest role an actress has ever performed - and - the most dangerous.’ f He had not been concerned about Razin. Because Razin pas clever and would have guessed all but the details. It was Vera Vavilova he had been worried about. He had long ago assessed her toughness and loyalty. But how tough and how loyal he had not known. He would know now.

After his recital, he had expected her to flinch, frown, voice some doubts.

She had sat very still, face expressionless. I After an interval of silence, he had said, ‘Well, Comrade Vavilova?’

‘I will continue with the role,’ she had said. T like it. I’ll never have a better one.’

After that, she went into the hospital for the surgery and the implant.

No sooner had Vera been released from the hospital than one final package concerning Vera’s body belatedly arrived from KGB operatives in the United States. The package contained several items - copies of Billie Bradford’s dental X-rays and duplicate plaster models of impressions made of her upper and lower teeth. Premier Kirechenko’s own dentist studied and compared these to Vera’s dental X-rays and models.

‘Remarkably similar in alignment,’ the Russian dentist announced, ‘except the rear molars.’

‘The teeth in back?’ asked Razin.

‘Yes. Comrade Vavilova’s are a bit out of line, so they don’t match exactly.’

‘Would anyone be able to see them or know the difference?’ Razin wondered.

‘Only a dentist.’

Razin considered this. When Vera replaced Billie, it would be for merely a short time, and she would probably not need a dentist. If she had a toothache, she would be forced to live with it. If for some unimaginable reason she had to see a dentist, it would be in a foreign capital and not in Washington DC, where Billie Bradford’s dentist resided.

‘Is there anything else?’ inquired Razin.

‘Just one major discrepancy clearly shown in the X-rays. Comrade Vavilova’s teeth are all her own. No work has ever been done on them. On the other hand, Mrs Bradford’s lower left first and second bicuspids and first molar have been drilled down and capped. It is the only obvious difference between the two sets of teeth.’

This troubled Razin. ‘Could Comrade Vavilova’s teeth in that area be made to resemble Mrs Bradford’s?’

‘By drilling and capping them, yes, certainly.’

Razin hated to tell Vera that she must lose three good teeth to caps, and he was uncertain of her reaction. To his immense relief, she was understanding and cooperative. By

now she had become obsessed with playing her role to perfection.

All of those events marking the development of the project were now revived in Razin’s mind as he sat in his office, beside Petrov, sipping his drink and watching the KGB chief reviewing the papers, flipping the pages, nodding, smiling, sometimes thinking, sometimes speaking.

It was at this point, Razin recollected, that Vera had been converted from a Soviet actress trying to portray an American to a person who lived as an American and thought like an American. She was allowed to speak only English, dress in American garments (except for imports from Ladbury of London), eat American foods. At breakfast, she drank canned tomato juice and ate boxed sugar-free cereals brought in from the United States and read the previous day’s editions of the New York Times and the Washington Post. When she played records, they were American standards or current hits in the United States. When she turned on her closed-circuit television, she could see only videotaped American newscasts, American situation comedies, American talk shows, reruns of American movies.

She was inundated by material relating to Billie Bradford, but never overwhelmed by it. She was a quick study, indeed, clever, intelligent, and possessed of a fantastic memory. She educated herself by absorbing Billie Bradford’s own education in grammar school, high school, college. She read Billie Bradford’s examinations, term papers, school newspapers, vearbooks. In the person of Russian actors (who believed they were auditioning or rehearsing for a movie, each one working briefly before being replaced), she met the First Lady’s old schoolmates, teachers, instructors, professors.

She was briefed on her immediate family, on her father, sister, brother-in-law, nephew, on her mother dead a decade, on the family dog, on her aunts and uncles and secondary relatives in Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, New York. Slow-ly, the briefings expanded to encompass favourite shopkeepers, friends, and acquaintances from past to present. The studies broadened, widened, to take in her husband’s campaign staff and workers, the White House staff, her husband’s aides, his Cabinet, other department executives, congressmen, the Washington press.

Above all, she was drilled daily on the background, quirks, prejudices, habits of Andrew Bradford, her husband, and as much as could be found out about their intimate relationship.

Here, once more, Razin ran into a stumbling block that nearly forced Petrov to abandon the project. For over two years, Razin had tried to learn something, anything, about the sex life of the Bradfords. If Vera was to be substituted for Billie Bradford, she would have to know how Billie performed in bed with her husband. What was their behaviour? Did they engage in straight sexual intercourse, and if so, how often? Was Billie docile or aggressive? Did he or she prefer to engage in a wide variety of so-called perversions? Yet, in the first two years, assigning agent after agent to turn up a clue, Razin drew a blank. As time passed, Petrov began to realize that, without knowledge of this aspect of Billie Bradford’s life, Vera would not have a chance of succeeding except by pure luck. And no margin could be allowed for luck.