(1980) The Second Lady (8 page)

In desperation, Razin tried to find ways to circumvent the sex problem. Perhaps President Bradford could meet with an accident that would disable him for a month. But then such an accident might also force him to postpone a conference and showdown with Kirechenko. This solution had not been a solution and had been dropped. Perhaps Billie, herself, could suffer an accident that would make sexual intercourse unlikely for three or four weeks. As this possibility was being debated, Razin had his big break.

A well-paid American agent for the KGB in Washington DC, in the White House itself, had overheard some secretarial gossip that suggested the young redhead who was Dr Cummings’s nurse also served as the President’s occasional mistress. Her name was Isobel Raines, and she owned a small bungalow (well beyond her means) in Bethesda, Maryland. The KGB put her under immediate surveillance, while running a check on her past. Soon enough it was learned that,

whenever the First Lady was out of the capital, the President would have Miss Raines in his bed until dawn. Shortly after this information had been confirmed, the KGB had its dossier on Isobel Raines’s previous activities. There was one unsavoury period. Five years earlier, Miss Raines had lived with a notorious Mafia boss in Detroit. The time had come for a sit with Miss Raines.

Two efficient KGB agents, members of the Rezidentura attached to the Soviet embassy in Washington, one named Grishin, the other Ilf, travelled to Bethesda to pay a social call upon Isobel Raines. The resultant conversation had been fairly frank. The KGB agents hardly bothered to disguise the fact that this was outright blackmail. Although stricken by the knowledge that her secret past in Detroit was no longer secret, and that any leak of her past would end her wonderful job in the White House, Isobel Raines proved staunchly loyal to the President and his wife. She would not, whatever the cost to her, discuss the bed habits of the President or what she had heard of his wife’s behaviour. She admitted to a few sexual encounters with the President, but only ‘when the first Lady was travelling out of the city or - or recently when she was ill and couldn’t do anything with him’.

Reporting their visit with Miss Raines to Razin in Moscow, Grishin and Ilf asked how they should proceed. One line in their report had made Razin curious and given him hope, the line that the First Lady recently was ill in a way that excluded sexual activity. Razin contacted his agents in Washington, told them not to expose Isobel Raines, not to see her again until ordered to do so.

Now, in his office, seated beside Petrov, who had the old report in his hand, Razin recalled what had followed. Increasingly nervous about the lack of information on Billie Bradford’s sex life, uncertain where to torn next, Razin saw his opportunity and seized upon it. Days before departing for the Summit Conference in London, while his wife was in Los Angeles, the President had enjoyed Isobel Raines in his W’hite House bed. The following evening a presidential aide had been trapped with a prostitute. The President had sum-marily dismissed him from his post. At the next morning’s press conference, when questioned about the aide, the President had lectured the reporters on morality in government.

This had not been lost on Razin in Moscow. Isobel Raines would be more fearful than ever. It was time for Grishin and Ilf to pay her another visit.

. Isobel Raines had, indeed, been nervous and frightened. If she refused to talk, her own immorality would be made public, harming the President and destroying her own career. This time she talked. Not much, but a little, enough. She insisted that she knew nothing about Mrs Bradford’s sexual behaviour with her husband. This was not the kind of thing the President would ever discuss. He had summoned her to his bed only because he needed sexual release and he could not have it with his wife at the present time. He had told Isobel Raines that his wife had some kind of problem, and, her gynaecologist had ordered her to avoid sexual activity for six weeks, until he could analyse her tests.

Unwittingly, Isobel Raines had given Razin what he wanted. In the three weeks that Vera Vavilova would be playing First Lady, there could be no sexual activity between herself and the President.

The last obstacle to Project Second Lady had been removed. Petrov was thrilled, Razin was pleased, and Vera Vavilova was relieved.

All this, while Vera continued to learn and rehearse, working steadily from daybreak to nightfall. Soon her work became more feverish. For, even as she studied the people and events of her new past, she had to contend with fresh people and the events of the present. Africa had long been a vague bone of contention between the two world powers, and now suddenly Boende became a familiar proper noun in her vocabulary. Boende was an independent nation in central Africa. It was uranium rich. Both the United States and the USSR needed uranium. A democracy with an elected President named Mwami Kibangu, Boende had close ties with the United States. On its northern border, a huge rebel force -the Communist People’s Army, led by a Moscow-trained

leader, Colonel Nwapa - waited for the Soviet signal to overrun the country and take control by staging a revolution. The Soviet Union was prepared to supply the rebel force with arms. The question was - how strongly had Kibangu’s government troops been armed by the United States? The stakes for the future were high. Not only ample uranium, but control of the heart of Africa.

As the confrontation worsened, Premier Kirechenko called in Petrov and consulted him. Reassured, Kirechenko made

| the first move. He suggested a two-way Summit Conference, delegations headed by the American President and himself, to meet at a neutral site as soon as feasible in the interests

jof world peace. President Bradford had no choice but to accept the proposal. Next came the technicalities, the most important being the selection of a site for the Summit. The usual preliminary haggling began. Helsinki, Geneva and Vienna were suggested, and each rejected by one party or the other for various reasons. Then Premier Kirechenko made a surprising and astute suggestion. Although the Americans had been allies of the British for many years, the Soviet Union had recently signed several important agreements with Great Britain and their friendship had never been warmer.

|To underscore his trust in the British, and at the same time to disarm right-wing conservatives in the United States, kirechenko suggested that the Summit be held in London. Taken off-guard, President Bradford could offer no objections. And so the turf would be London. President Bradford then proposed a date. Premier Kirechenko agreed to it at once. Then, a few weeks afterwards, almost as an afterthought, the Soviet Premier’s wife, Ludmila Kirechenko, announced that, one week preceding the London Summit, she would invite female leaders throughout the world to attend a three-day International Women’s Meeting in Moscow. The subject would be - woman’s rights, today and in the future. Despite Billie Bradford’s misgivings about so much travel and activity in so short a period, the subject of woman’s rights was closely identified with her. There was no possible way for her to decline the convention. She was among the first to promise to attend.

While the International Women’s Meeting in Moscow had been arranged and scheduled solely for Vera Vavilova’s benefit, her own preparations were not affected by it. She would play no role in the convention itself. But the London Summit that would follow it presented Vera with an overload of extra work. New names entered her life, ones she was supposed to know already and ones she must anticipate meeting and learn about. Added research flowed in to her. Suddenly, Vera had to be familiar with London — a city familiar to Billie Bradford, unfamiliar to Vera Vavilova. And a new cast of characters like the Queen of England, the British Prime Minister Dudley Heaton, his wife Penelope Heaton, the British foreign secretary Ian Enslow, the Boendi President Kibangu and his ambassador to England, Zandi, were introduced to her.

All of that had filled the papers that Petrov had been reviewing in Razin’s KGB office.

Petrov was holding the last piece of paper in the last of the three files. It was Razin’s final typed memorandum on Vera Vavilova’s dress rehearsal nine hours ago.

Petrov returned the third file to the desk, tossed down the remaining half-inch of vodka in his glass, and shook his massive head. ‘What a job. Three years work. Worth it, I hope.’ He came slowly to his feet. ‘Well done, Razin. No holes, no flaws. Looks perfect to me.’

‘To me, too,’ said Razin.

‘The First Lady arrives tomorrow — actually, today. It’s definitely out of our hands. It’s all the Second Lady from now on. Well, thanks, and good night.’

After Petrov left, Razin put away his files and secured the cabinet. He closed his briefcase.

Something went through his head. As an atheist he had never prayed since becoming a Russian citizen, but what went through his head was a prayer learned at his mother’s knee in America. So long ago. A prayer, a prayer for the safety of his beloved Vera.

It was 2.23 in the morning when Alex Razin reached the high fence and gate in the Moscow outskirts, and was admitted into the restricted area by two KGB night sentries. He drove across the gravel road that wound past the imitation White House — the last time he would see it whole since it was being torn down starting early in the morning — and followed the yellowish ground lights that led him through the darkness toward the square, two-storey wooden house in the rear.

After parking near the front door, he felt about in his jacket pocket for one of the three keys (Petrov had the third one) to the hideaway and let himself into the weather vestibule. Going through the living room, he went up the stairs to the bedroom and quietly entered it.

Vera had left two floor lamps on for him, and a crack of light was showing where the bathroom door stood ajar. The bedroom was large, comfortable, furnished in early American. Petrov had not stinted on the furnishings. He believed in the best for his star. He believed everything in the room should remind her that she was to be an American.

Razin squinted towards the queen-sized bed.

He had expected that she would be asleep by now, and she was. She lay on her side, partially covered by the blanket, her bare back to him. He could hear her soft, regular breathing.

He removed his shoes, and padded to the bathroom. In the fluorescent whiteness of the room, closing the door behind him, he spotted a sheet of paper by the side of the sink. It contained a pencilled message to him —

Darling heart,

Before going to sleep, wake me. Don’t forget.

I love you. For ever. Vera

xxxx

Razin smiled to himself. Slowly, he began to undress. He thought about her, about the first time he had met her in Petrov’s office, and the earliest times he had met her after that.

Of course, for him, it had been love at first sight. At least, he was certain of it by the third or fourth time he had been with her. But he had deliberately not allowed his deep emotional feeling for her to surface.

Many times he had tried to analyse the reasons for his inhibition. He did so once more. Although he had known many women, had enjoyed satisfying affairs with some, none of them had affected him like Vera. Most of the other women had much to offer, but all of them had been flawed in various ways that made serious commitment impossible. Maybe he had been immature in his hopes. Nevertheless, he had waited.

And then Vera had come along. Yet, from the start, he had not been able to act out his feelings for her. He had found her totally intimidating: her incredible beauty, her femininity, her cleverness, her assurance, her poise. Then there was the actress part of her, meant to be savoured only from a distance. That, and her new role, which made her unique, precious, an untouchable state commodity.

Also, in the beginning, he had questioned his own worthiness in measuring up to her. Certainly, on a physical level, she could have any man she wanted. She was a goddess. He was plain. He had no feelings of inferiority about his appearance, but he could be lost in a crowd; she, never. Continuing to undress, he sought himself in the bathroom mirror. Flat black hair combed back. Bushy eyebrows, narrow eyes, a somewhat bashed nose, thick lips, a dark thirty-nine-year-old complexion. 5 feet 10, broad shoulders, small waist. He needed glasses to read. He was smart, but suspected she might be smarter. His horizons were limited. He was a small wheel in a machine. He might be a bigger wheel some day, but never more. Her future was infinite.

And here they were, together, together for almost two years.

It had been the necessity of daily contact with each other the first year, the closeness, that developed into intimacy. Her life, her survival, was dependent upon him. She had needed to know him as she had not known any other man. He had to know her as he had not known any woman, to be sure she would come through what was ahead, and because he was in love with her. To his surprise, he learned that she was in love with him. Each had found what was needed from another.

He remembered the day he had received the nude photographs of her, to compare her body to Billie Bradford’s. He had tried to be clinical about those photographs. Inside, he had seethed with the desire to possess her, to love and be loved by her. Nevertheless, he had stayed at arm’s length, had played the mentor.

Still, they had been drawn closer and closer to one another by their common purpose. After a day’s hard work, instead of returning to his office or home, Razin had gradually begun to linger on, walking Vera back to her house, accompanying her inside to join her in a drink or two. They had relaxed together, sometimes continuing to discuss their work, more often sharing information about their pasts. The transition from drinks together to dining together had come naturally. As mutual trust had grown, they had begun to exchange confidences, aspirations, dreams.

It had not taken Razin long to realize that Vera’s background was more disciplined than he had imagined. She had not become a consummate actress by accident. Her dossier, which he had read and memorized, gave little indication of the depth of her interest in — and experience on - the stage. He had believed her to be the product of two unlettered factory workers, people far removed from the world of the theatre, who had permitted their daughter to indulge her fantasy about becoming an actress.