Page 80 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
“You’re so close,” Merlin says. “Surely that’s worth taking some pride in?”
I look over at my old friend. We are in the back room of a Kiev restaurant, waiting for two Carpathians to join us in a meeting I shouldn’t be having and neither should they, and Merlin seems as remote and as composed as ever. I, on the other hand, am weary as shit and I’m sure I look like it. It’s as if everything over the last three years has finally come to bear against me, all these emotional debts have now come due, and I can’t pay them. The cumulative weariness of the office and the campaign and Greer’s loneliness and Embry’s betrayal and my faraway son…and and and.
There will never be an end to the ands. Once upon a time, all I wanted was a horse farm with the soldier boy I loved—now I’m in an Escher staircase of crisis and exhaustion.
“I’ll take pride when it’s finished,” I say, rubbing my thumb along my forehead. “I’m still not sure I trust that it’s real.”
“You’ve built this carefully over three years,” Merlin assures me. “Of course it’s real.”
Careful is another word for secret, and while Merlin has never been uncomfortable with secrets, I certainly have. Perhaps it’s the soldier in me, but all the plotting and late-night phone calls and even this trip, which we hid from the press and everyone else for as long as possible, makes me tired and doubtful. I wanted to avoid war at all costs, but subterfuge doesn’t sit well with me, and all this sneaking around is beginning to feel like a fairly high cost indeed. Especially if we fail.
The door to the private dining room opens and in steps a man I’ve never seen before, short and balding and eminently bland, and then behind him comes the delicate doll-figure of Lenka Kocur, Melwas Kocur’s wife. She is the person who will destroy Melwas. Not me, not Embry. This will be her victory and hers alone.
I stand and take her hands, kissing her on the cheek. She flushes warm and smiles at me. “Hello, President Colchester,” she says in Ukrainian. “May I introduce Denys Shevchenko?”
I release Lenka and give Shevchenko a handshake. His grip is firm and dry, and his face when he meets mine is honest, creased with the faintest edge of concern. And he absolutely should be concerned. I’ve brought him and Lenka here to discuss treason, after all, and if he wasn’t nervous, if he didn’t grasp the gravity of what this meeting could reap for him, then I’d think less of him.
“Let’s sit,” I say, also in Ukrainian. “Mr. Shevchenko, I assume Mrs. Kocur has informed you why we are here today?”
He nods.
“And what are your thoughts?”
“On Melwas? On this plan?” he sighs, and he looks like any middle-aged man sighing over something thorny and difficult. Both his ordinariness and his sighs make me trust him more. When Lenka told me about him, I’d immediately seen the wisdom in the choice. Shevchenko is the current Carpathian minister of state, with a long resume of work for the Ukrainian government before the war and also within various intergovernmental agencies in Europe. He’s a bureaucrat, a genuine diplomat, and however boring he would look giving national addresses, he’s sedate and mild of temper and he knows how to run a country.
“Both,” I say.
“Melwas is a monster,” he says with a shrug. “And this plan could be madness, but I think it is necessary madness. Carpathia will not survive under his rule, and the people know it. And especially once they learn the truth, I think they will be very eager to be rid of him.”
“And you have the support of your parliament? What about the military?”
“They are with me,” Shevchenko says, with cautious confidence. “They are ready to move as soon as the information goes public.”
“And they will support you as interim president?”
At this, Shevchenko gives me a reluctant, sad smile. I recognize my own reluctance in that smile, the same hesitation I showed Merlin when he asked me to lead his new party. “For better or worse, I suppose,” he says. “I still believe it should be someone else, someone with more, ah, charisma.” There’s a self-aware tilt to his lips. “I know I’m not the picture of a leader.”
Lenka shakes her head, puts her hand over his. “Melwas was the picture of a leader, Denys, and look where that got us. We need someone with the heart of a leader now.”
I stare at them both for a long minute, then glance over to Merlin, who is sitting back in his chair with his legs crossed and his head propped on his hand, his expression seeming to say, Well?
I take a breath. Perhaps it had been a formality, insisting on meeting Shevchenko in person, but I’m glad I did, because I trust him.
“You have my support,” I say. “And my country’s, provided you act fast. There’s a possibility I won’t be in office within a few months, and I can’t speak for what will happen then. But you do this now and I will do everything in my power to help.”
Lenka breathes a sigh of relief. “Tonight, then. We will do it tonight.”
I turn to her. “And you will be safe?”
She nods. “Melwas believes I’m visiting family now, but I’ve already arranged for asylum here until he’s imprisoned and it’s safe to return.”
“You are very brave, Lenka,” I tell her. “This is a courageous thing to do.”
Her eyes shine as she says, “I never would have been brave enough to start without that ballroom dance so long ago. Thank you for being patient with me, and for your friendship.”
“Always.”
And then it’s arranged and done, the overthrow of my greatest enemy. And it happened in suits and heels over an expensive dinner, and while it’s everything I’ve always hated about politics, I know we’ve done the right thing by moving slowly and quietly.
