Russian Spring (89 page)

“I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about. . . ,” the Ambassador stammered. But Franja noted that he was no longer in any hurry to hang up.

“All I’m asking you to do is your duty. Pass on what you’ve heard with no comment. I’m not asking you to stand behind it yourself. Just get this on Wolfowitz’s desk is all. The first law of bureaucracy is cover your own ass, as my mother always says, right?”

“I’m not promising anything, Reed,” the Ambassador said weakly.

“I’m not asking you to,” Bobby said, and then it was he who broke the connection.

“That was really masterful, Bobby,” Franja said, truly filled with admiration for her brother, and for once more than willing to admit it openly. “But do you think it’ll work?”

“It will if we can get through to Wolfowitz,” Bobby told her.

“Just because the man was once your friend?”

“Because I’m pretty sure Wolfowitz wants something like this as much as Gorchenko does. They’ve been blowing kisses at each other all along. It wouldn’t even surprise me to know that Gorchenko has gotten this through by other channels already.”

“Politique politicienne,” Father muttered.

“Don’t knock it, Dad,” Bobby told him. “This time, for once, it’s gonna be working
for
you.”

AN OPEN LETTER FROM PRESIDENT NATHAN
WOLFOWITZ TO CONSTANTIN GORCHENKO

It has been brought to my attention that Jerry Reed, the American responsible for the creation of the European Grand Tour Navette, suffered a severe accident prior to the first cruise of the
GTN
, which prevented him from going along as planned.

Now he is being told that he can’t fulfill the dream of his lifetime because his medical infirmities prevent him from being certified as an insurable passenger on a commercial flight to orbit.

Mr. Reed left this country many years ago in order to pursue that dream when the American space program was going nowhere but military hardware. For many years, he worked in secondary positions in the European space program, prevented by anti-American discrimination from working to the full extent of his considerable capacities. In the end, he was forced to surrender his American citizenship to gain his personal goals.

Somehow, Mr. Gorchenko, this is the story of our times, a story that I am sure you and the Soviet people wish to see have a happy ending as much as I do.

And at least in this small matter, you have, or I trust soon will have, the power to write it. So I appeal to you, Mr. Once-and-Future President, to give an Aeroflot ride to this son of America, up to a European Grand Tour Navette of his own design, and write a happy transnational ending to what has thus far been the same old unhappy international story.

Let it serve to light one small candle between us, in a world grown so dark. Together, let us show the world that, despite our present difficulties, our two great peoples share the same human heart.

—AP, UPI, Tass, StarNet, Agence France-Presse,
Reuters, USIA, Novosti

Jerry Reed had never imagined he would be watching so intently as election returns rolled in, let alone the results of an election in the Soviet Union. But Bobby had been right, for once the doings of the politicians running the world had indeed worked for him.

There had never been any confirmation from Washington or the Embassy that Bobby’s message had gotten through to Nathan Wolfowitz. But two days before the Russian election, a White House spokesman had released the text of what he called an open letter to Constantin Gorchenko from the President of the United States.

“He’s gone all the way,” Bobby exclaimed, after they had read through the text in the
Herald Tribune
a second time. “He’s actually used this to openly endorse Gorchenko. He’s betting the farm on a Eurorussian victory and he wants the world to know it. What have those two guys been cooking up together?”

But Jerry hadn’t paid any attention to the political message in the Wolfowitz letter, though the commentaries in all the papers were full
of it. Even the hope that he might now get his chance to walk on water after all, if the world survived, was emotionally distant in the face of the strange emotion that brought the tears to his eyes.

For the first time in his life, he found himself loving a politician, a man he had never met, and not just because Nathan Wolfowitz was championing his cause. For the President of the United States had spoken for the justice of that cause, and while Jerry understood that his statement had been carefully crafted to serve his own political ends, his words rang true, they had been written from the heart. He was using his power to right a wrong, and he was taking genuine pleasure in it.

And that was a thing to love in a man, politician or not. Was this what politicians meant by real leadership? Was this why all of Europe loved this man? Was this why the world believed beyond all reason that Nathan Wolfowitz would see them through?

Perhaps it was. And perhaps that was why, in that moment, Jerry had the entirely irrational feeling that Nathan Wolfowitz had done it already.

A feeling that grew even stronger when Constantin Gorchenko answered the President during a final televised campaign rally in Leningrad on election eve.

Gorchenko spoke from the very railway station where Lenin had proclaimed the Bolshevik Revolution, there was a big Soviet flag behind him, and either a breeze or a wind machine dramatically ruffling his thinning gray hair. He wore a sharply tailored black suit and a white peasant blouse and looked like a Hollywood actor playing an old farmer, in short, like the Russian version of an American media-consultant’s tailored image of a political winner.

And like an American politician, he went on and on, in rolling, roaring Russian simultaneously translated into florid singsong French.

They all sat there in the living room while Gorchenko recited his version of the entire history of the Soviet Union as an epic struggle for social democracy and political freedom—the overthrow of the Czars, the fight to survive as the first socialist state in a hostile capitalist world, the perversions of Stalin, the lost new beginning of Khrushchev, the dawning of glasnost, the flowering of the Russian Spring, the fraternal entry at long, long last as respected equals in the community of Europe.

Finally, he worked himself up to the climactic election-eve pitch.

“Is all that our parents and our grandparents and our great-grandparents worked and bled and died for to be swept away by primitive chauvinistic passions that have no place in a society that would live
up to the transnational idealism of Marx and Lenin and Gorbachev?” he shouted at the top of his lungs.

“What kind of Russian patriots are willing to see Mother Russia herself devastated in the name of Russian honor? In what manner does the illegal action of the Red Army serve the principles of Socialist Legality that have at long last allowed the people of the Soviet Union to stand hand in hand with the rest of the civilized world?”

And then Gorchenko had lowered his voice and spoken in a much softer tone. “Two days ago I received a request from my good friend President Wolfowitz asking me to assist in getting an American a ride into orbit on a Soviet Concordski. A simple request, easily granted by the next duly elected Soviet President, and one which I shall certainly honor if the Soviet people choose to make me that man.

“I promise this because I know it will make me more popular. Oh yes, I’m a politician, and our sort of animal wants to be popular, even with people who cannot vote for us. But a
responsible
politician wants to be popular for doing the right thing. And just now, the world needs a Soviet government that can be popular for doing the right thing. And the world needs to see what truly lies in the Russian heart. So I stretch out my hand to Mr. Reed, as I stretch it out to President Wolfowitz. Let this be the first of many candles we light together in the dark.”

“Jesus, the same exact phrase, that can’t be an accident!” Bobby exclaimed. “They’re talking to each other in some kind of code, we’ve been part of some elaborate put-up job!”

But Jerry didn’t care if he had been a pawn in the game of politique politicienne this time. He had certainly been screwed by it often enough before, but this time he was going to come out a winner if anyone did, and this time, it seemed the players really did seem to be trying their best to make sure it wasn’t a zero-sum game.

And so here he sat with his half-Russian, half-American family, watching the election returns from the Soviet Union and actually rooting for a Eurorussian victory harder than he ever had for the Dodgers or the Lakers or the Rams.

For in rooting for Gorchenko’s team, he was rooting for his own team too, for Franja’s chosen country and for Bobby’s, for Sonya’s homeland and his own, and, like any rabid rooter watching breathlessly from the stands, for himself too.

There was only one home team now.

They smiled together as the early projections showed the Eurorussians way out ahead. The smiles grew broader when early returns began to confirm them. They started slapping each other on the back
when CBS and Agence France-Presse and StarNet called the election, giving the Eurorussians at least 67 percent of the seats in the new Supreme Soviet.

“Th . . . th . . . th . . . that’s all, folks!” Bobby said when Gorchenko went on the air to claim victory, and he turned off the wall screen.

Sonya went into the kitchen for a bottle of champagne.

It foamed all over the rug when she popped the cork, but no one gave a damn. She filled the glasses, and they all stood there in front of the dead wall screen holding them high.

“To Nathan-fucking-Wolfowitz!” Bobby shouted.

“To Constantin Gorchenko!” said Franja.

“To the Russian Spring!” Sonya declared.

“To the Soviet Union!”

“To the United States!”

“Down with the gringos!”

“Down with the Bears!”

They all laughed, and then they all looked at Jerry, who had offered no toast.

And Jerry looked back at them. At the wife he had found again at the end of his life. At the son who had come home to him against the odds in his hour of need. At the daughter who had understood a foolish father’s dream.

He was dying. They all might die before he had the chance to live that dream. But they were all together now, as they had never been before, and out there there were men of goodwill fighting not to destroy each other but to keep hope alive.

“To the impossible come true,” he said. “To walking on water!”

They clinked glasses, and downed their champagne. Tonight was a night when everyone could drink to that.

Sonya found herself unable to fall asleep that night. She lay in bed beside Jerry, thinking of all that had come to pass. A son returned to her as a man to be proud of. A daughter and father reunited. A world pulling back from the brink of nuclear war. A Russian Spring not yet extinguished by the winter frost. A dream that might yet be fulfilled before it was too late.

Was she happy? It was hard to know. Gorchenko might never be allowed to take office. Jerry would probably not live out the year. What right did she have to be happy?

Perhaps it was the champagne, though she hadn’t drunk that much, but, yes, she did feel happy, whether she had a rational or moral right
to that happiness or not. And she felt something else, something that she had never thought to feel again.

“Jerry, are you awake?” she whispered. And then, when he didn’t answer, louder. “Jerry, are you awake?”

“I am now,” he said.

“Jerry, I love you,” she said.

“I love you too, Sonya,” he muttered groggily.

“No, I really love you,” she said, and reached out to touch his thigh.

“What is it, Sonya?” Jerry said in a clearer voice.

“I don’t know, Jerry,” she said, “but I want to make love to you. Maybe it’s because I’m happy. Maybe because I’m afraid the world could still end tomorrow. Maybe because I’ve just remembered what it felt like. Maybe because . . . because I know I’m going to lose you.”

For a long moment, she could hear nothing but his breathing beside her in the darkness, breathing that would not even be possible were it not for the machine beside the bed. In her mind’s eye, she could see nothing but a mysterious stranger across a dull and stupid party. A bedroom in their first apartment on the Île St.-Louis. A comatose figure in a hospital bed. A distant face on a videotel screen. The father of her children. The man whom she had betrayed. The love of her life.

“Wot do ya say, ducks, ya think we can still do it?” she said in a hokey English accent. “I’ve always wanted to have a bit of the old in-and-out wiff a bloody cyborg.”

Jerry felt his heart racing as the hibernautika tried to cope with the blood rushing southward from his head. He could feel himself losing capillaries, he could imagine brain cells starving for oxygen, but that didn’t prevent his long-dormant manhood from rising to the challenge.

He hadn’t had a real sexual thought since the accident, and indeed, he had not felt anything that could really be called desire since Sonya had left him. But accident or not, whatever it was costing him, he had a hard-on now.

He could feel the blood humming behind his eardrums. He could feel his breath going short. He knew that what he was going to do might cost him weeks of life span, but he didn’t care.

“Don’t mind if I do, luv,” he said, and carefully unreeled a loop of his life-support cable and draped it over the nightstand, to give himself slack to move.

Then he rolled over onto his side and hugged her to him, kissing her gently, and let her guide him home.

They lay there side by side, only their hips moving, and it was very slow and easy, and it took a long sweet time to happen, but still, when it did, it left him gasping for air, with his heart thumping and a million stars occluding his vision, and he could feel brain cells dying and blood vessels popping, and a little bit of his life spurting out of his cock.

But it didn’t matter. He had been willing to give up that and more to walk on his own water alone.