Page 24 of Air Force One
Inessa shivered at the thought that her opportunity to fix Russia had slipped out of reach forever. She should have been able to shrug it aside as mere foolishness—but couldn’t.
When the speech and swearing-in of President Sarah Feldman was repeated on the television, she turned up the volume once more and studied it carefully. If there were any hidden meanings in the words of their forthright new President, Inessa could not find them.
After she muted the sound again, she dispassionately considered her own and her country’s status. Her conclusions were also distressingly forthright and lacking in subtlety.
20
Lieutenant General Artemy Turgenev stood at the foot of the stairs to the top floor of their Moscow townhouse. He hung onto the banister to keep from falling to the carpet. The gateway to his wife’s private social salon; he hadn’t crossed its threshold since they’d bought the house and she had declared the top floor hers. The security guard, who’d helped his driver get him out of the car and up to the front door, had informed him that Inessa was home. And that she was alone—upstairs. She only ever used that private suite when she had guests.
Unsure of how he’d arrived here, he stood at her stairs, holding on like it was a pitching ship.
Normally when he returned from his Lubyanka office, she would be in the living room, reading or writing letters. Of course, he wasn’t returning from the office today, hadn’t been back there since before lunch, but she never needed to know that.
Inessa was one of the last people he knew who still used the post. Her letters had been checked, of course, and he’d seen the reports. No more than friendly notes between women of society, mostly relationship advice and encouragement.
She was from a world gone by: a classic beauty, a gentle spirit, and so charmingly old-fashioned. He’d witnessed her effect on himself and others since their very first meeting; every room she entered seemed to slip back to a previous era: not of the Soviets but of the tsar and tsarina. The sensation was slow to fade when she departed. One of the few self-made billionaires of Russia with no obvious political connections or graft, she was unique. There wasn’t a fashion trend set in Russia that didn’t start with Inessa and end with her interconnected corporations of importers, designers, manufacturers, and shops.
She had trained him in how to speak, behave, and respond like the others of her class. Now, others sought his praise, his advice, and feared his retribution. But she couldn’t change the way he thought—the way he felt inside.
The higher his banner flew, the more he missed his days as a pilot. Though with the failing state of the nation’s aircraft and the wicked, pointless war to the west, he was glad to be clear of the fray. But every place she took him to see and be seen, he’d much prefer to have been kicked back in a run-down kabak reeking of wheel grease and kerosene fuel slopped on clothes. Sitting with a group of pilots swilling Green Mark, cheapest-on-the-shelf vodka, and peeling strings of salty Chechil cheese to at least suggest the harsh spirit had a flavor. Telling stories of close calls and hot women.
He knew that FSB Director General Mikhail Murov favored him because he’d been a pilot for years before his wife had turned him into a political animal. Yet she was the one who’d also taught him to always be military-first with Murov; the politics will take care of themselves if you take care of him. And she’d been right—as always. He would never have dreamed of reaching such heights. And now that he had, he wondered why it had all looked so desirable. One misstep, perhaps like today, and he’d?—
Except it wasn’t a misstep.
He rubbed at his forehead as he faced those stairs, her stairs, but nothing became the least bit clearer. General Murov had suggested the lunch. Not with him, of course, as he rarely left his desk. Rather lunch with the commander-in-chief of the entire Russian Aerospace Forces—space and air forces combined. He’d flown for the latter, back before the former existed.
His afternoon had started with a three-martini lunch.
Just like a Western businessman, one for each star! three-star General Sokolov had toasted him in Moscow’s most-exclusive Club Cloud 99.
Even with Sokolov as a dining companion—too powerful to keep out—the door wardens had hesitated over his own admission. Neither Sokolov nor being a two-star general in the FSB had tipped the balance. His wife’s name, Inessa, had opened the door wide.
Her. Again! He was a lieutenant general, yet she was the one who opened the door to the most elite club in Moscow. Not even her married name, his name, simply Inessa—as if he was nothing! That she’d probably never been there didn’t matter.
Artemy crossed into the master bedroom and made it to the small bar they kept for when they wanted a nightcap without going downstairs. Gin, scotch whisky, sherry, aperitifs. He poured three fingers out of a bottle of Beluga vodka into a crystal tumbler and knocked it back.
Sokolov, twenty years his senior, had been the oldest in the whole club. Turgenev himself was perhaps the next oldest. Inessa might be powerful, but even being on the young side of her generation wouldn’t let her fit there. Artemy was on the old side of the club’s members, but not beyond it.
Unlike Inessa’s quiet restaurants where she commanded the best table without asking and was greeted in careful whispers, Club Cloud 99—ironically hidden in a deep subbasement—vibrated. All of her fancy places with elegant materials were nowhere. They had black-leather-and-brass booth seating. Indirect lighting became hard-edged down-spots over tables so that one could lean in and out of the shadows as the conversations flowed.
And they flowed.
After Sokolov had departed on a pretext that sounded like an assignation with his mistress, people he’d never met joined his booth uninvited. They leapt into conversations without hesitation. Smart people—many Western-educated far beyond his training at the Gagarin Air Force Academy. Inspired people—driven by ideas, not fears.
Beautiful people.
Many of the women wore Inessa’s fashions, but so altered he barely recognized them. The way a half-shredded blouse slid from strap-free shoulders and offered creamy skin and unsupported cleavages made a whole different statement than his wife, the ever-so-lauded designer, probably ever intended. American jeans were a hot item. Some were so tight they showed every single curve. Some, cutoff shorts frayed right past the starting curve of their butts despite the chill January weather outside, were impossible to look away from.
And they were fit, athletic women. There were men too, but he didn’t notice them one way or the other.
Inessa’s body was a work of art. She had placed second in the last-ever Miss USSR beauty pageant and had allowed her figure to shift only as befit a mature woman. She still often modeled the top items of her fashion lines at the shows. And everyone applauded like it was still thirty-five years ago.
The women who gathered about his and the departed Sokolov’s table had figures that kept his head spinning with where to look. Party animals, athletes, the children of Inessa’s privileged class. These were the elite in every way imaginable: status, wealth, and body.
Gods above and below, it made him hard all over again remembering them.
He poured two more fingers of Beluga and turned to stare at their bed.
