Politika

The international food relief effort has stalled, crime barons rape the people at every turn, a moral degeneration has—”

“My God, Pedachenko, look around you! There are no television cameras here. So, please, save the sanctimony for your viewers. I’ve already asked you once to get to the point.”

Pedachenko’s face showed its rigid, superficial smile again. Starinov felt as if he were looking at a cardboard mask.

“The country needs one leader to guide it, not three,” Pedachenko said. “The troika’s fractured vision has made our people stagger in descending circles.” He gazed at Starinov with unblinking eyes. “I’ve come to propose that you step down. Cede power to me for the good of our motherland.”

Starinov looked at him.

“I wish I could say you’ve surprised me, Arkady,” he said. “But this is just the sort of thing I expected.”

“And?”

“And what alternative do you offer? This third Great Patriotic War I’ve been hearing about?” Starinov laughed. “It is nothing but an admittedly stirring diversion. Icons and fanfare and ethnic superiority holding it together. I can’t help but be reminded of the rallies at Nuremburg.”

Pedachenko’s smile drew in at the edges until it was gone. “You should choose your words more carefully,” he said.

Starinov gave him a look of mock surprise. “Ah, you take umbrage. I’m reminded of Milosevic in the Balkans.”

“Whom you embraced.”

“Out of political necessity, as I do in your case,” Starinov said. “How sensitive men like you become when we evoke comparisons with the Nazis. Why is that, Pedachenko? Do you fear the demon in the mirror?”

“I fear the loss of our national honor and dignity. I fear the humiliation of going to the United States for handouts. I fear having Russia sold out to its enemies. Zgranista nam pamoshit, foreign countries will help us. That is your solution to every problem.”

The wind flapped Starinov’s collar. He felt cold fingers of air slip under his scarf and fended off a shiver.

“Listen to me, please,” he said quietly. “The world is not as either of us would wish it to be, yet we are in an age when no nation can be a fortress.” He paused. “Do you know the American satellite station in Kaliningrad? The one being built by Roger Gordian? When it is completed, it will be technically possible to place a telephone booth on an upper slope of Mount Everest, and communicate with someone tens of thousands of miles away. Without wires, and with only solar batteries for power. Think of it, Arkady. Is that not miracle and wonder? You must recognize that mankind will be linked in the future, not divided.”

“And if your miracle means the mountain reaches will echo with American popular songs?”

“Then we will pray that what we have gained is worth what was lost,” Starinov said. He waited a moment, then shrugged. “To be plain, Arkady, I reject your proposal. There will be no retreat into the glorified past.”

Pedachenko stood there in silence. His eyes were a wall of ice.

“You can’t prevail,” he said finally. “The people will not stand by while the country goes to ruin. They will assemble behind me.”

“You speak so confidently, I might indeed think you had the power of prediction,” Starinov said. “Like Saint Basil.”

Pedachenko remained motionless for another long moment, fixing Starinov with his cold, blue stare. Then his shoulders stiffened, and he whipped around and strode across the cobbled plaza to his guards.

Starinov watched him move away until he’d faded into the darkness, then walked off in the opposite direction.

THIRTY-THREE

WASHINGTON, D.C. JANUARY 28, 2000

The light was lit atop the ornate Capitol dome. A red bulb glowed above the north doors. A bell tolled out a single extended note in the chamber. The majority and minority leaders greeted each other with courtly decorum and then repaired to their front-row desks at either side of the center aisle. The parliamentarian, clerks, and secretaries were seated, the president pro tempore took his gavel in hand, unobtrusive C-SPAN cameras winked to life, and the day’s session of the august legislative body came to order.

Up in the gallery, Roger Gordian watched the opening speaker, Senator Bob Delacroix of Louisiana, take the floor, striding toward the rostrum with starch, dark-suited dignity, a pair of well-groomed young aides respectfully following at his rear.

The stuffed black bear the aides were carrying between them stood six feet tall and had on red satin wrestling trunks embroidered with the hammer and sickle emblem of the long gone U.S.S.R.

“Friends and colleagues, today I’m going to introduce you to Boris the Wrestling Bear!” Delacroix boomed. “By the way, the reason he dragged his old shorts out of the closet is that they fit a whole lot better than the new ones!”

Chuckles and applause on his side of the aisle.

Sidewise glances and enduring sighs on the other.

“Boris might look like a nice bear, but don’t let him fool you. No matter how much he eats, he’s always hungry. That’s because he’s growing bigger and stronger every day… and you better believe he’ll bite the hand that feeds him!”

Gordian stifled a disgusted groan.

Ladeez and gents, he thought, welcome to the main attraction.

“Let me tell you a little story about Boris. It’s not pretty, and it won’t be for the fainthearted. But, hey, there’s a lesson to be learned from it,” Delacroix went on. “Once upon a time, Boris had an appetite so big he thought he could eat the whole world. Nothing would satisfy him! He ate and he ate and he ate until he got so heavy he collapsed from his own weight. That was when his kindly Uncle Sam stepped along, put him on the Dr. Freemarket diet, taught him manners, taught him how to be civilized, and tried convincing him to give up his gluttonous ways.”

Again there were snorts of laughter from slightly more than half the senators in the hall. The remainder looked embarrassed.

“Well, folks, for a few years the diet seemed to work, and Boris even squeezed himself into a pair of trunks that were the same red, white, and blue colors as Uncle Sam’s clothes — with the stripes in a different pattern, of course, just so nobody’d call him a copycat!” Delacroix’s voice projected to the chamber’s vaulted ceiling.

Gordian was suddenly reminded of Burt Lancaster in The Rainmaker. Or was he thinking of that other movie, the one in which Lancaster played a tent-show evangelical? And the amazing thing was that it seemed to be working. Even if he was only preaching to the converted and semiconverted, they were becoming visibly roused.

“But then Boris fell back on his old, bad habits,” Delacroix continued. “Boris got hungry again. Only this time he’d become used to begging for handouts from Uncle Sam, sort of like those grizzlies in Yosemite that’ll come right up to your tent for food. And Uncle Sam, decent, generous soul that he was — overly generous, if you ask me — couldn’t bring himself to say no. See, Sam had convinced himself that by keeping Boris close to his tent, by letting him watch Uncle Sam conduct his daily business through the flaps, Boris would learn how to stand on his own two feet. Believe it or not, Uncle Sam gave him hundreds of thousands of tons of food. Tens of millions of dollars. You heard me, tens of millions, just to keep him sticking around! And you know what happened? Can any of you guess? Boris turned on him! Boris sneaked into the tent and did something so horrendous, so unthinkable I can hardly bring myself to tell you about it. But I have to, you see, I have to. Because some of you still haven’t realized that you can take the bear out of the hammer and sickle, but you can never take the hammer and sickle out of the bear!”

Rapt silence in the hall. By now every one of the senators had read or heard about the intelligence reports linking Bashkir to the Times Square bloodbath, and they pretty well knew where Delacroix was heading.