Page 23 of Air Force One
She didn’t furnish the room for herself, but rather for the wives, mistresses, and other female confidants of Russia’s oligarchs. It communicated a clear message—femininity and security. She gathered them here to discuss culture, fashion, and news. And—most especially—to gossip. Inessa collected all their rumors and sent them to where she hoped they would do the greatest good for her country. Not the Russia that existed in the minds of the modern breed of oligarkhi, but of the Mother Russia she increasingly feared existed only in her imagination.
The powers that ruled had not found or stopped her yet any more than they’d stopped Miranda’s mother thirty years before when the Chases had swept her under their wing. It had taken until long years after their deaths to understand that they’d been CIA agents, not merely the most beneficent force of her entire life.
As a result of her women’s salon, greedy Russian capitalists were consumed and ruined by what they’d whispered between sweaty sheets. Avaricious social climbers often climbed the ladder of their wife’s woes only to be plunged straight into hell. Slowly, man-by-man, rumor-by-innuendo, Inessa removed the overtly powerful. The right word in the right ear, sometimes delivered by these very women while rumpling other sheets, would cause the rabid dogs to turn and consume another of their own. Someday the great oligarkhiya would find that they stood upon nothing but air—and then they would fall.
Or so she’d dreamt. With each passing year and each new travesty against justice and basic humanity, her achievement of those dreams faded like last year’s fashions.
Today Inessa sat alone and watched the American announcement on television. Because of her husband’s high status in the FSB—the latest and perhaps worst version of the KGB—she had access to all the Western news. She silently watched the captions on the BBC, Al Jazeera, and DD News in India. She didn’t bother with the Chinese as it would be even more skewed than Russia’s state-run TASS.
No one knew more than she did. In fact, most knew less—significantly less.
How fascinating that dear Miranda and her companion Andi were the ones to swear in the President. Inessa was very pleased they were still together as she’d liked both women upon their brief meeting. She hadn’t missed the kiss or the significance of the matching gold bands. There must be some safe way to send her congratulations.
If any other person had sworn in the new President, Inessa would assume that it was a planned conspiracy. Had it been in Russia, she would know it was a conspiracy. And Miranda would be the perfect person to plan an undetectable crash of their magnificent airplane.
She would also be the last person to ever do so.
Yet someone had.
Who would have a reason to remove President Cole despite so few days remaining in his leadership?
Had he survived, he would have been a formidable statesman-at-large. Especially with the changes she’d seen in him this last year since the lovely redhead had begun appearing at his side. Like recognized like. Inessa had researched Rose Cole and wished there had been some way for them to meet. She would have liked to know if the woman ran a spy network of her own and, if so, on whose behalf. It would have been a very interesting conversation.
Now Rose Cole was dead, and Inessa would never know.
Might they have faked their deaths?
If they had, they’d kept it from the overly serious President Feldman and from Miranda, as she would never assist in swearing in someone who didn’t belong. With her autism, she would never understand the need for such a subterfuge.
Subterfuge.
It raised two key questions, which Inessa only now understood had been plaguing her for quite some time.
How much longer should she continue her struggle to free her country from the dictatorial yoke it seemed to wear so comfortably?
And how much longer could she trust her husband?
She had been instrumental in elevating him from major, past lieutenant colonel, and on to colonel. She could claim some credit for his becoming a major general, though events of those few critical days had seemed to take on a life of their own. Or had someone else also been manipulating events from behind the scenes?
His recent and abrupt elevation to lieutenant general, and the two bright stars he now wore so proudly, spoke of an ambitious climber she had not thought existed in him. What, or more importantly who, was he feeding into the vicious maw of the FSB that the President’s right-hand man Murov would elevate him so quickly?
She couldn’t look away from the screen and its scrolling banners of the American President’s death. They were reporting that over five hundred people had already claimed responsibility, but none of them were considered as potentially valid. The streets of Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela appeared to be throwing massive block parties.
Had her husband been the one to give Murov the American President’s death? It was too horrid to contemplate…and too possible to ignore.
Artemy Turgenev, a decade her junior, was young enough to be positioning himself as a future leader, perhaps the future leader. He merely had to outlive the last few survivors of the KGB-era oligarchy—or wait for them to be disappeared by Murov’s men. There were fewer than twenty of them left.
Would Artemy overreach and cause the both of them to be quietly removed?
Or might Murov’s men become Artemy’s?
No, his mind simply didn’t work that way; she was sure of it. Nor would Murov tolerate it.
But if Murov, the puppet master behind the President, wanted a man with less ego and more pliable strings to pull, Artemy would make a fine choice.
And if that happened, would she be the next one to be disappeared?
Would Murov or even Artemy arrange some accident for her so that her general-husband would be free to marry the President’s powerful second daughter? The woman had already divorced one billionaire; might she be enticed into a liaison with a fast-rising FSB general next? She was not part of Inessa’s social circle despite several carefully couched attempts. Few of the daughters were. The wives and mistresses, yes, but not the daughters.
