FOREWORD Read online

  The invitation hung over the conference table for several tense moments. Nobody took it up.

  Satisfied, Yazov continued. “There will, of course, be democratic elections soon after the Ukrainian situation has been resolved. At that time, I shall willingly resign my position as President. Until then, I suggest we consider the declaration of a State of Emergency and the imposition of martial law in order to allow us to reconstitute our government.”

  The Health Minister noted how smoothly Yazov had made the transition from discussing power as an abstraction to appointing himself Godonov’s natural successor. He wondered if anybody else in the room had made the same observation. Certainly, nobody seemed to object to the idea. Each man, for his own private reasons, was scared for Russia’s future. Yet none of them had the stomach for the risks that Yazov was prepared to take. So better to ally with him and let him suffer the consequences were the gambit to fail then to sit helplessly on the deck of a sinking ship. In that moment of enlightenment, the Minister thought that Yazov was either selflessly brave, or terminally stupid.

  “One small problem,” Interior noted. “Pushkin is the constitutional successor to Godonov. How do you intend to depose him?”

  Everybody was surprised to see Yazov laugh. It wasn’t something he did often. “I don’t,” he said, going on to explain precisely what he had in mind.

  Suddenly, Yazov’s plan was no longer an abstraction. The race to seize power of the world’s largest nation had begun.

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON D.C.

  That of the White House Press Room was one of the most famous images in the world yet was probably the most unkempt of all the rooms in that vast building, having fallen into a state of disrepair over the years. Other than the platform from where briefings were delivered, it was in little better condition than a high school locker room. Much of this was due to the lack of respect shown by thousands of journalists who had passed through this room over the years.

  Apart from being smaller than it appeared on television, the temperature of the Press Room was always chillier than that of any other room in the White House. This not only prevented the speaker from sweating before the cameras, but also tended to make reporters distinctly uncomfortable; a fortuitous convergence of necessity and circumstance.

  Even before Bert Aldick made his way to the lectern, carrying the sheet of paper that contained his resignation speech, the reason for his departure had become an open secret among the Washington press corps. Indeed, uncensored copies of the ‘Tabatha Photo file’, as it would become known, had already found their way onto some of the Internet’s less salubrious domains.

  As he took his place at the lectern, a hush fell on the room. He looked out at the faces that had become as familiar to him as those of his family during his three years as National Security Advisor. He did so in the full knowledge that not a single one of them would hesitate in tearing him apart in the feast of moralistic fervor that would inevitably follow. More than one member of the press corps noticed that Aldick seemed to have aged considerably since his last public appearance, less than two days earlier. Once the press had finished with him, he’d look even worse.

  “I’m going to make a short statement,” he told them, “but, under legal advice, will not be answering any questions at this time.”

  He smoothed out the printed copy of his speech on the lectern and took a deep breath. “As many of you will be aware by now, I am about to become the subject of certain allegations concerning sexual misconduct with a minor. I admit, I have a weakness for the opposite sex. And, yes, I did engage in an inappropriate encounter with the young lady in question. But at no time did I suspect, or have any reason to suspect, that she was underage. I met her in a hotel bar, where one wouldn’t normally expect to find a minor. Her appearance and demeanor gave me absolutely no reason to doubt that she was beyond the age of legal consent. However, this does not excuse the fact that I made a gross error of judgment that has left me humiliated and ashamed.

  “Accordingly, I have this morning tendered my resignation as Special Advisor for National Security Affairs. The President accepted my resignation with regret, but understands the reasons why I cannot continue to serve in my present capacity. President Mitchell has been a friend of mine for over three decades, and I continue to support him wholeheartedly. My misdeeds should in no way reflect upon either him or his administration. The President is an honest, moral and patriotic man who deserves better than to be let down by an old friend and trusted adviser in such a shabby manner.”

  Aldick swallowed hard, aware that his eyes were moistening. He wanted this ordeal to be over, for the ground to swallow him whole. There was no sympathy in the eyes of the media piranhas before him, and that told him precisely how they were going to cover his resignation in tomorrow’s papers.

  “I am proud of what we have achieved in the past three years. I have served my country to the utmost of my abilities. Yet America continues to face many dangerous challenges, particularly in the area of National Security. I urge the American people to focus on these challenges. In the meantime, I offer my best wishes to my successor, whoever he or she may be. I shall be vacating my office this afternoon, and intend to return to a private life. I ask only that you respect my wish for privacy.”

  As he walked away from the lectern, more than one reporter was heard to shout, “What about the baby?”

  90thSPACE WING, WARREN AFB, WYOMING

  In the gaming room of theGround Zero noncom bar, Captain Nick Pearson of the U.S. Air Force sunk his third beer of the evening before carefully lining up his next shot.

  “Twenty bucks riding on this nine ball, Nicky,” Captain Holly Kurato reminded him. She was thirty years old, petite and steadfastly single. Her Japanese ancestry had blessed her with delicate features, which certainly didn’t reconcile with her flair for whipping Pearson’s ass on the pool table. He was already sixty bucks down tonight, and it would have been far worse had Kurato not fouled the six ball in the last game.

  “Don’t talk to me about pressure,” he told her, lowering his chin onto the cue as he stretched it out in front of him. “Pressure is something I can deal with.” As petite as Kurato was, so Pearson was big. Six foot three and two hundred and thirty pounds of Arkansan muscle. Kurato thought it looked odd for such a big man to be bent over a pool table. She tried to imagine how uncomfortable it must have been for him.

  He modified his aim slightly, pulled his cue back like a trigger, and firmly struck the white ball.

  It made a one-third connection with the nine ball, sending it whizzing towards the top corner pocket -

  - and rattling in its jaws.

  Pearson stared in disbelief as the nine-ball inexplicably stayed up.

  “At this rate, Nick,” Kurato chided, “you’re going to have to remortgage your house.”

  “How the fuck did that happen?” He shook his head in bewilderment. “I swear, Holly, you’ve put some of that Jap voodoo shit on me.”

  She barely had to concentrate as she sunk the nine-ball. “Whatever. Pay up, buster.”

  He reluctantly whipped a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to her. Her smile was rich with smugness.

  Under other circumstances, Pearson thought that something might have developed between him and Kurato. But theirs weren’t normal circumstances. They formed one of a dozen ICBM launch crews at Warren, responsible for more firepower than had been released in the history of mankind. And although Pearson, like Kurato, was unmarried, he certainly wasn’t unsuccessful with women. Indeed, he had gained a studly reputation at Warren of which he was quite proud. God knows, it had taken enough effort to achieve. But when he closed his eyes at night, he often found himself thinking of Holly Kurato and what, under different circumstances, might have been. He’d never really thought about a woman in such terms before, and that troubled him somewhat. Perhaps it was the fact that her position and demeanor made her unattainable.

  Hell,he thought,if we didn�
��t work together, she probably wouldn’t even associate with the likes of me. Not an educated girl like her.

  “Another game?” she asked him. “I’m in ass-kicking mood tonight.”

  He shook his head. “No chance. Poor Arkansan boy like me can’t afford it.”

  “Aw,” Kurato grinned, theatrically playing an air violin.

  “Well, you can afford to buy me another beer with your winnings. I can still drink you under the table, you know.”

  She waved a twenty-dollar bill under his nose. “I doubt that too, but if you want me to open another can of whip-ass, it’s your funeral.”

  A few minutes later, she returned with two bottles. As they stood at the bar drinking and shooting the bull, they were joined by two of their fellow launch officers; Lee Simmons and Mike McAvoy. The four of them found a vacant table. That wasn’t hard. It was mid-afternoon, and most of the off-duty crews were spending time with their families. These four didn’t have families, a topic of frequent discussion among them.

  “You hear anything about missile cuts?” McAvoy said. He had a reputation as the base gossip. If there was a rumor going around, you could bet even money that he’d started it.

  “Usual stuff,” Pearson said. “Rumors. Believe me, they ain’t gonna start downsizing nukes while the Russkies are playing with their toy soldiers in Ukraine.”

  “That’s not what we heard,” Simmons said gravely. “Word is that the Prez has offered aquid pro quo to the Reds.” Even though Communism in Russia was long dead, many officers still used old terms to describe the Russians. Some cultural habits died hard. “You know the kind of thing,” he elaborated. “We cut some of our Minutemen, and you pull your troops out of Ukraine.”

  Kurato snorted derisively. “That won’t happen, Lee, and you know it. I know Mitchell is a bit of a wimp, but it’s an election year. You don’t win elections by lowering your guard. Everybody knows that.”

  “Don’t know what difference it makes,” Pearson said. “They ain’t ever gonna use ‘em. If they were, they would’ve done it by now.” He started laughing. “Shit, can you imagine Mitch pressing the button? No way, man. He probably doesn’t even know we’re here. And that’s the truth. We’re the forgotten guardians of peace, man.”

  “But we’re also some of the best paid,” McAvoy added.

  “Amen to that,” Kurato enthused. “The stalwart defenders of” - she furrowed her brow - “what the hell is it we’re supposed to be defending?”

  Amid the laughter, the four officers raised their beer bottles and clinked.

  II

  DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS

  It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

  (Alfred Adler)

  JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICAL CENTER, MARYLAND

  The staff cafeteria was bristling as ever with chatter and gossip, but the Director of Cardiology was oblivious to it all, staring into a cup of coffee, watching a granule of powdered milk rotate around the cup as it stubbornly resisted the thermal pressure to dissolve. Just like life, she reflected sourly. You can try to stay intact for as long as possible, but eventually you dissolve into the mass just like everyone else. Just another inconsequential molecule.

  Inevitably, the granule surrendered to the hot liquid. Professor Joanne Miller lifted the cup and took a sip, hoping the caffeine boost would help to negate the effects of thirty-six sleepless hours.

  “You look like shit, honey.”

  She looked up and managed only a weak smile at her friend and colleague Dr Ivan Rosenberg, a kindly looking neurosurgeon twenty years her senior. Rosenberg was an Alabaman Jew and spoke with a lazy southern drawl that complemented an easygoing charm, making him the one person who could have gotten away with making such an observation in Jo’s current mood. Anybody else might have gotten that hot cup of coffee thrown in their face.

  Rosenberg pulled up a chair and sat at her table with a glass of fresh orange and a couple of slices of toast, an anxious expression on his face as he studied hers. She saw the look and recognized it immediately for what it was.

  “What?” she said, trying to force a smile as she braced herself for the inevitable lecture on how she should stop being such a workaholic. What in her life did she have other than work? Long, empty nights in front of the TV, occasionally being invited into the lives of married friends who took pity on her? No thank you very much.

  “How long is it since you slept?” Rosenberg raised an accusatory eyebrow.

  “Sleep,” she sighed dreamily, resting her chin on her hand. “Oh, yeah. I remember that. Did it once, didn’t like it much. Decided I’d rather be a surgeon.”

  Rosenberg had known Jo long enough to that he recognized the sarcasm as a sure sign of her exhaustion. Jo’s biggest problem had always been an acute inability to recognize her own limitations. She was the type of woman who would quite willingly give everything to her job until she quite literally collapsed of nervous and mental exhaustion. That hadn’t happened yet, but Rosenberg suspected that it could happen before very much longer. Stubbornness was a dangerous trait in someone whose job it was to save lives. Tired people made mistakes, he knew from bitter experience, and mistakes in the medical profession often ended in tragedy.

  But Jo didn’t need to hear that right now. She knew the score.

  “You know,” he remarked thoughtfully, taking a sip of his juice, “you have a damn good staff in cardio. I’m sure they wouldn’t miss you for a few hours. Hell, they’d probably appreciate you coming back in a better mood. Ever hear of the wordvacation ?”

  Jo snickered at that. “Thanks for the advice, Ivan, but I’d rather not be alone right now if it’s all the same to you.”

  Rosenberg noticed that she was toying with a bare finger where, until quite recently, she had worn a gold wedding band. Ding!

  “Missing him?” More an observation than a question.

  She looked up vaguely towards the ceiling, her clear blue eyes moist with sadness. It was no use pretending. Better to pour out her guts to someone who would understand. Rosenberg’s wife had left him for a young plastic surgeon from California two years ago, so who better to confide in?

  “It’s a year today since the divorce became final,” she told her colleague. “And still I can’t look at anyone else. I keep thinking he’ll come back a changed man, you know? That we’ll pick up where we left off, make a home, make…” Her voice trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid. Jo had always wanted children, as had her ex-husband, but the laws of biology had brutally conspired against them. They’d separated without ever discovering the reasons why. Just one of those things, she supposed, and that was the most unsatisfying answer of all, wasn’t it? Instead, she was left to wonder whether things might have panned out differently had they been blessed with an offspring.

  Rosenberg gently touched her cheek. With the perfect symmetry of features inherent to the Irish; beautiful, big blue eyes and a smooth, creamy complexion outlined by a cascade of thick black hair, Jo’s good looks had attracted several propositions from male colleagues and even more from patients, all of which she had rejected flatly. She just could not let go of her ex-husband, and that was tragic for such a beautiful woman in the prime of her life.

  “You’re a beautiful girl,” he told her. “You can have your pick of the men out there. Why don’t you make consider a fresh start, maybe even relocate? It could be exactly what you need.”

  “I could have my pick of the men,” she repeated sourly, “but none of them are…” She couldn’t even say his name without engaging emotions that were better kept locked away, since she didn’t know whether, once she had unlocked those emotions, she could control them. Better to maintain the cold, clinical facade that had become familiar to her colleagues in the past couple of years. Only Rosenberg knew that it was a facade, and that was because he was astute enough to understand why she had erected it in the first place. He had, after all, been there and done that.

  “Love has a price, Jo. And very often tha
t price is knowing when to let go. I know what you’re feeling, believe me. When Cheryl left me, I didn’t want to hear from nothing or nobody. I became paranoid. I thought my friends only called me because they felt sorry for me. Problem was, they weren’t reallymy friends at all. They wereour friends. So I dropped them and made a fresh start. If I hadn’t done that, I would have stuck around and let it eat at me, just as you’re doing now. Go figure.”

  Jo chuckled bitterly. “Yeah, but the difference between you and me is that you had no choice. Cheryl left you. My circumstances were rather different. I kicked my husband out, remember?”

  Rosenberg shrugged. “You had no choice either. I do remember that. I remember how much it was killing you to see him burning himself out with stress. You did it for his sake as much as yours. You did it because you loved him, and because you thought some time apart might shake him up enough to straighten out his priorities. But you must’ve known there was a chance it would go the other way. And now look at you. You’re doing precisely the same thing you accused him of - burning yourself out. What are you trying to prove? That you can burn out as good as him?”

  “Okay, there’s no need to rub it in.”

  “I’m not rubbing it in,” he insisted. “All I’m saying is that you have to accept the possibility that he’s rebuilt his life now, perhaps even with someone else. You have to do the same, move on. How long since you heard from him?”

  “About six months.” How time flies, she realized. One of the reasons Jo tried to avoid sleep was because every time she closed her eyes, her mind was consumed with the prospect that her ex-husband might have found another woman; someone younger, prettier. That thought terrified her even more than that of spending the rest of her life alone. His framed photograph still graced her nightstand, and she had left his old office in the basement of the house untouched, just in case he decided to return one day.