FOREWORD Read online

  “Bert, we’ve been friends since college.” There was no anger in Mitchell’s voice. Sadness, perhaps, but no anger. “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have met Margaret. If it weren’t for you, I certainly wouldn’t be sitting in this chair now. I owe you everything, Bert. Everything. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Aldick understood perfectly. He’s firing me, he realized, wishing that his boss would get to the point.

  The President took a deep breath before dropping the bombshell. He had been rehearsing this moment almost constantly since learning of Aldick’s mistake (crime didn’t seem quite the correct word to apply in this case. Not at this stage, anyway). Yet now his carefully crafted words seemed oddly stilted. Diverting from the script, he cut straight to the chase.

  “I don’t know how else to tell you this,” he said, unable to meet Aldick’s eyes. “You may be facing charges of sexual misconduct, Bert.”

  “What?” Aldick snorted incredulously. “That’s completely preposterous. I mean, I know I’ve always had an eye for the ladies, but I’ve never… not ever… not against their will. Dammit. You don’t actually believe…”

  “Of course I don’t believe it,” the President snapped. “I’m not talking about rape, for crying out loud. I’m talking about having sex with a minor.”

  The color seemed to drain from Aldick’s face. His eyes drifted as he searched his mental database of one-night stands for anyone who might have been younger than they had appeared. “I swear to God, Ed… I never knowingly…”

  “That doesn’t matter any more.” Mitchell passed a manila envelope across the desk. The National Security Advisor momentarily stared at him in disbelief, then opened it.

  Inside was a set of photographs showing Aldick together with a pretty black girl. The pictures were arranged almost like a comic book story, showing them entering a seedy motel room together, then kissing on the bed. There were sixteen photos in the set, and by the sixth one, they were already naked, the girl astride him.

  “The photos were taken by the motel owner,” Mitchell explained as the National Security Advisor flicked through them, a stunned expression on his face. “Seems he’s something of a voyeur. A greedy one too. He’s just sold them to a tabloid newspaper for a pile of money. They won’t publish the more explicit ones, of course. But I’m sure that even those will eventually find their way onto the Internet.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Oh, about a week or so,” the President revealed. “We managed to keep a lid on it, and I hoped it would stay that way. But now it turns out that the girl is with child. That’s complicated things to say the least.”

  Bert looked up at the President, his eyes bulging with shock.

  “It may not be yours,” Mitchell admitted, “but the media won’t care much about that. The tabloid that bought the pictures has just offered her a small fortune for her story.” I can’t protect you any more, the President’s tone really said. The alleged crime had taken place in Texas, whose Governor was a sworn political enemy of Mitchell. That did not bode well with only six months to go until the election. The Governor had already informed Mitchell of his intention to press for criminal charges to be brought against Aldick, who was so closely associated with the President that such allegations could only damage his bid for a second term.

  Aldick was trying to remember the girl’s name. Tara? Tamara? Tanya? Something like that. It had happened about three months ago. From what he recalled, he had met her in the bar of a Houston hotel where he’d just given a speech. They’d started talking and, well, such things just tend to happen. She certainly hadn’t acted like a minor in bed; that much hedid recall.

  “Her name is Tabatha Canning,” Mitchell told him sourly. “She’s fourteen years old, although I’m sure you didn’t know that.” The implication was clear. The media would have a field day with this one. Mitchell was already envisaging the headlines: PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR FATHERS CHILD OF TEXAS MINOR… CRIMINAL CHARGES IMMINENT. Or perhaps even:BERT ‘ALL DICK’ IN UNDERAGE SEX SCANDAL . The point was that once Aldick’s sexual activities became a matter of public interest, dozens more women would appear, offering their own bedside tales involving the National Security Advisor. And that would cast a distracting shadow over Mitchell’s campaign for a second term.

  “Of course I didn’t know,” Aldick insisted. “Do you honestly think I would fuck around with a child?” He felt physically sick. How could I have been so stupid? “I would never do anything to hurt you politically, you know that.” It took him no more than a moment to consider his options. There was only one open to him; Mitchell’s expression made that eminently clear. “You’ll have my resignation on your desk by tomorrow morning, and I’ll do everything I can to stop this hurting you.”

  The President’s face turned beet red, and his quietly spoken monotone was edged with anger. “Do you know what really hurts me, Bert? It’s not the fact that this is gonna hit my approval ratings in an election year. It’s not the fact that I’m leading the second successive administration to be hit by a sex scandal. It’s not even the fact that I’m losing a brilliant National Security Advisor at a time when I need him most. What hurts me is that I thought I knew you. I credited you with more sense. I thought I knew you better than I knew myself. Sure I knew about your fondness for pretty girls, but I always thought you were careful enough not to let anything like this happen.”

  Aldick hung his head in shame. Part of him had always known that something like this might happen someday. But he simply hadn’t been able to stop himself from pursuing young, female companionship. It was part of his genetic make-up, he supposed; perhaps a need to substitute the motherly love he’d lacked as a child with something else. Still, he didn’t imagine that the media would care much for such excuses. He’d played at the riskiest game of all and ended up losing it all. The only scant consolation he could draw from the episode was that at least he wasn’t married and didn’t have to face the humiliation of being labeled a ‘love-rat’, or whatever the tabloids’ favorite term for such people happened to be these days.

  “You abused your position, Bert. I’ve always turned a blind eye to your dalliances, and I’ve managed to protect you from the media more times than you will ever know. But this is one fuck too far. What the hell were you thinking?”

  Aldick stood to leave the room. He was close to tears, his shoulders hunched against whatever emotions had to be assaulting his conscience right now. He had aged tangibly in the last ten minutes.

  “Same as any other man who sees a pretty girl,” Aldick said quietly as he stood. Before leaving the Oval Office for the last time, he stopped at the door and turned.

  “The only difference was that I did something about it.”

  DEFENSE MINISTRY, MOSCOW

  Within an hour of President Godonov’s secretary finding him sprawled out across the floor of his office, Moscow’s political community was awash with rumors of his death. Inevitably, there was less grief among this group of people than concern about how their own careers were to be affected. The consequence of this was a flurry of background activity as they jockeyed for position in the new regime. What very few of them could have known was that, in assuming a smooth and constitutional transition of power, they were essentially backing the wrong horse.

  Under the terms of the Russian Constitution, Prime Minister Nikolai Pushkin was the legal successor to the leadership, but he was widely seen as a caretaker President at best. Pushkin was a career technocrat who lacked the experience and authority to unite Russia’s vast array of political factions. The former Agriculture Minister had been appointed Prime Minister three months’ earlier, purely because his relative anonymity had guaranteed that his selection wouldn’t evoke any strong feelings in the State Duma. He was neither liked nor disliked by the major parliamentary blocs, but he lacked that one crucial quality that Russia tends to seek in its leaders, particularly in traumatic times.

  Charisma.

  Politi
cal analysts both in Russia and elsewhere had been speculating about who might be Godonov’s natural successor ever since his first coronary while on a state visit to Germany five years’ ago. Many of the leading contenders had since either disappeared into political obscurity or fallen foul of corruption charges, but there remained a small hardcore of candidates who had always lingered quietly and patiently in the wings.

  One of those candidates was General Gennady Andreiovich Yazov, commanding officer of theReketney Voiska Stratigichesko Naznacheniya - Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces, RVSN.

  Yazov had always been a loyal servant of the President, but like everybody else had known that Godonov would not last forever. That was why he had spent most of the past five years preparing for this very moment, devotedly serving his beleaguered political masters while covertly establishing a solid power base in the background of Russia’s chaotic political system.

  Fortuitously, Yazov had been working late in his office at the Defense Ministry when the rumors of Godonov’s death had first started circulating. In fact, he was one of the first people in Moscow to hear of the news; one of the benefits of having allies and contacts in every walk of political life. A few carefully placed phone calls later, he was in a conference room within the bowels of the Defense Ministry, addressing a selection of senior military officers and junior cabinet ministers from across the political spectrum.

  Godonov had been dead for precisely ninety minutes.

  Yazov was handsome in an oddly robust way. His high Slavic cheekbones framed grizzled features that were characterized by thick, black eyebrows and jet-black hair, shaped into a functional crew. Broad shoulders, sloping into oblivion, favored the impression that he lacked a neck as such. His penetrating blue eyes were both intelligent and intense. At barely fifty years old, he was one of the few members of the General Staff whose career had remained untarnished by the embarrassing military failures in Afghanistan, Chechnya and, more recently, the Ukraine. Although he represented a branch of the armed forces that many considered to be an anachronism these days, his influence stretched far beyond that of his command.

  He was, as everybody present in the conference room already knew, a brilliant orator, capable of using a subtle combination of modest rationale and fierce nationalism to touch the deepest, darkest fears of any red-blooded Russian. He would need those talents in the coming days, he knew.

  “… it is therefore obvious,” he was telling them, “that Russia faces its gravest crisis since Hitler’s troops captured Leningrad.” Significantly, he referred to the nation’s second city of St. Petersburg by its Communist-era name. Such subtle inferences, he knew, were bound to evoke the nostalgic sentiments of those who remembered the good old days when the world had feared the awesome - if overestimated - might of the Soviet Union. The implication was that Russia could once again be great, and the greater that Russia was, the more power these men would have. Although power in itself was not a motivation for Yazov, he understood that not everybody in the room felt the same way. Power was not only a language of sorts to these men, but it was a currency, to be traded among themselves like chips in a casino. Those were the rules of the game he was playing and, although he didn’t necessarily like them, he realized that he needed to become adept at them in order to realize his own goals.

  “Our people are confused, lost, directionless. They have always been accustomed to strong, decisive leadership, qualities they have lacked since the early nineties. Look at what fills that vacuum. Crime and corruption on an epic scale. Poverty. Our people are facing famine this winter. Our once proud military is in a state of disarray, and no wonder. Many of our brave soldiers in the Ukraine have not been paid in over a year. They have families to feed. Is it any wonder that they turn to the bosom of organized crime to earn a living?”

  One of Yazov’s closest allies, General Anatoly Mikhailovich Kalushin, took his cue. Kalushin, Commanding General of the depleted Air Force, had endlessly rehearsed this moment with his old friend over the past eighteen months. He knew precisely what to say and when to say it. Incredibly, he was the only man in the room who understood just how contrived this entire episode was. That nobody else had noticed was testament to Yazov’s intricate eye for detail.

  “The problem as I see it, General Yazov,” he remarked, “is the Ukrainian war. It is draining us both militarily and economically. Not to mention the effect on our troops’ morale. Our internal problems are largely symptomatic of this conflict. If we are to address them, we need first to make a breakthrough on the Ukrainian front.”

  Yazov theatrically arched his thick eyebrows as if he hadn’t previously considered that point.

  “A good point, Anatoly Mikhailovich, with which I agree entirely. It is, of course, obvious that we must bring a rapid cessation to hostilities in the Ukraine before we can begin to address our domestic problems.”

  “You suggest surrender,” noted the Interior Minister, a small, rotund man with oddly bulbous eyes and a known fancy for teenage boys. “The Russian people will not tolerate another…”

  Yazov cut him off with a disarmingly warm smile. “I suggest nothing of the sort, my friend. Quite the contrary.” Make them quiver in the shadow of defeat, and then offer deliverance, he thought. Those seated closest to the General detected an almost mischievous glint in his eye. Only Yazov himself knew how afraid he truly was. But it was for the Motherland that he was afraid, not himself. What he was about to propose amounted to no less than the ultimate reaction to years of rule by weak and greedy politicians with no real concept of the true exercise of power other than using it to grow fatter at the expense of the masses. Well, the civilian leaders had now grown fat to the point of bursting, and the Russian people had been bled dry. So the moment of truth was at hand, and Fate had chosen Yazov to be its champion. Would history remember him as a hero or a treasonous madman? Right now, he didn’t care. History often chose to ignore thought processes that hadn’t been blessed with the gift of hindsight. After all, history was always written by the victors, not by the vanquished. If he proved to be Russia’s savior, his actions would be seen as justified in the context of the times. If not… well, he probably wouldn’t live long enough to hear what the historians said about him. He knew it, and everybody else in the room knew it also. They were quite prepared to see him take that risk for now, especially since none of them had either the stomach or intellect for such a dangerous game.

  Yazov had learned by studying the shortcomings of the political masters he had served over the years that power was a subtle art form. Something to be applied with discretion, not with the flamboyance of an Arab sheik brandishing chips at a casino. Power was a finite resource, and abusing it merely had the effect of sterilizing its effect over time, like a virus that strikes often enough for the body to develop an immunity to it. Had Hitler, Napoleon or indeed the late Czar understood this simple fact, they might not have failed so abjectly in the face of their respective goals. Each of them had abused vast reserves of power until it became impotent in the face of concerted opposition.

  Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat history’s mistakes…

  Yazov had no intention of repeating such mistakes.

  His plan, which took barely five minutes to outline, provoked uproar around the conference table. Precisely as he had hoped. Before his very eyes, moderates were being drawn into open conflict with those who supported his radical strategy for ending the Ukrainian conflict. Yazov observed the debate impassively, making a mental note of those who he would draw into his inner circle - which didn’t necessarily exclude those who disagreed with his strategy - and those who would be shut out. He was looking for patriots; men with strong convictions, regardless of whether or not their ideas coincided with his own. That was a subtle, yet important point lost on many of the quarreling idiots in the room.

  “… totally unthinkable,” the Health Minister was shouting at a naval officer. “If the Americans think…”

  “The Ame
ricans are irrelevant,” another voice barked. “We have nothing to fear from them. They will not start a war over this…”

  “… there is no other option,” Kalushin was reasoning with an Army General, whose expression was a wide-eyed mask of shock. “Of course it is an undesirable solution, but what alternative is there? Surrender? Or a war of attrition that we will lose anyway?”

  Yazov allowed the argument to rage until he was satisfied that the consensus had swung decisively in his favor. At that moment, he raised a hand, swiftly restoring order to the room.

  “Our country,” he explained in the manner of a teacher addressing his students, “needs unity in order to survive. I shall welcome opinions and advice from across the political spectrum, and will embrace all of Russia’s legitimate political parties, for I represent not a party but an entire people. We need to work together to bring order to Mother Russia. Our country is sick, in great pain. Conflict, either internal or external, will serve only to aggravate its condition, perhaps terminally.

  “I am a military officer by nature and training. I lack the arrogance to pretend to know anything about health, education or economics, and I will need the assistance of experts in all of these fields to repair the damage caused to our nation by years of political mismanagement. But, although I know little of these topics, I know much about warfare. And I know, as each of you know, that this war with the Ukraine will destroy our nation. I cannot permit that. If anybody knows of a better way to end it with our dignity intact, then please speak now.”