Mitch Silver - The Bookworm

“You mean a man holding cue cards?”

Gerasimov smiled indulgently. “We’re a little more up-to-date. These days it’s all electronic: the TelePrompTer operator types the questions as they’re sent in from the schools around the country, and they show up on a clear glass monitor that sits right over the camera lens. You read the words a moment before you say them, trying not to look like you’re reading, and translate them for the president. It’s a little tricky, because you have to keep looking away when you speak with your guest, and then glance back to the camera for the next question.”

Lara frowned. “Gee, I don’t know…”

Gerasimov smiled. “All you need is an hour of practice in a studio and you’ll do fine. I know where one’s available; I could drive over and pick you up tomorrow.”

Lara sighed. What choice did she have? “I’ll call you when I’m free.”

“Wonderful!” He looked over to the waiter and snapped his fingers for the check. “And better bring a few changes of clothes. We’ll have to see what works best on camera.”

The waiter quickly put down the check on a small silver tray, and Gerasimov signed it with the gold Montblanc pen he took from his pocket. He scribbled his phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to Lara.

The three of them rose from the table. “I’m really looking forward to working with you, Dr. Klimt. Until tomorrow.” Unexpectedly, he took her hand in his and kissed it. Then he looked up at her, and Lara saw that one of his eyes was blue-gray, the other blue-green.

Waiting behind another woman at the coat check, Lara was dismayed to see Pavel say goodbye to his boss and circle back.

“I was hoping you’d still be here. Larissa Mendelova, I have something important to tell you.”

Uh-oh.

“I’ve been wanting to say this, Lara, ever since you returned from America, and, well, at first I was too shy. I mean, you were a big shot at the University and who was I? Just a guy from your hometown, you know, the boy next door, so to speak.”

The other woman was putting on her coat now, slowly, so she could listen in. Without thinking, Lara stabbed both claim checks into the hand of the old garderob in the booth. This was going to be bad enough without a stranger eavesdropping.

Pavel, as usual, was oblivious. “And then you met Viktor, and all of a sudden you were married and, uh, the moment was gone.”

She eyed him evenly. “And now it’s back?”

He seemed to take her words for encouragement. “Yes, it’s back! With you and Viktor, um, not together for much longer, I want you to know I have the deepest feelings for you. I always have, even before you left for America.”

The stranger, her coat fully on, was still hovering. Lara turned to look directly at her. The woman, startled, smiled confidentially before walking away.

Lara decided to make this painless for both of them. “Pavel, I have only the strongest feelings for you.” Which, technically, was true. “But not romantic ones. I consider you the brother I never had.”

“But, Lara, you already have a brother.”

The coat check lady was holding her wrap out to her, and she took it. “Exactly. Lev is the brother I do have; you’re the brother I don’t have.”

“Huh?”

She pecked him on both cheeks, Russian style, and was about to leave him there, befuddled, when the coat check woman produced her shopping bag and slid it across the wooden barrier to Lara. Not wanting to stand there for another moment with Pavel, Lara picked it up and walked out of the restaurant.

Afterward, crossing the Crystal Bridge on her way back to the Metro, Lara didn’t notice the tins as they rattled around in the bag. She wasn’t thinking of Pavel, either, or Gerasimov. Nor the changes she’d have to make in her meticulously crafted lesson plans. No, her brain was focused on something else entirely: In less than three days she’d be sitting beside the world’s most powerful man on national television—not just the leader of the free world, but a world-class womanizer who’d been with beauty queens from all over the globe—and she was going to look like a complete mouse.

Ahandful of dignitaries greeted the American president as he touched down at Sheremetyevo, people chosen because they spoke English, however haltingly. To prove it, they all had to say something longwinded out there on the tarmac. Then it was into the limos—late model, heavily tinted Lincolns and Mercedes—for the flying trip into town. The road they traveled was half a football field wide, lined with banners showing the American’s picture alongside that of his Russian counterpart.

That was his up moment of the day. Downer Number One came when he took a call in the limo from Carl back in Alaska, one more proof that if you give a government bureaucrat a chance to mess up, he’ll make the most of it. Apparently, some idiot up in Prudhoe blew it and started pumping oil into the pipeline from one of the tankers. Before the deal was actually signed.

They’d stopped him an hour after he’d begun, but the damage was done. To make matters worse, a second numbnut, covering for the first, hushed the whole thing up, pretending it never happened. So he was just hearing of it now, more than a week after the incident. And only because the inspector at the other end in Valdez was making a stink about something wrong with the oil.

There was only one thing to do. “The Valdez guy, buy him off. Make up a cover story and pay him whatever it takes. Just shut him up.” Can’t have any more screwups now, not when we’re so close.

If ever a deal had to get done, it was this one. Executive Order Number One back in January made good on his campaign pledge to open the wildlife refuge and to drill, baby, drill—even if he hadn’t coined the phrase—right where the geologists told them to. Seven disappointing seismic tests later, all he had to show for it were twenty thousand stupid caribou who couldn’t come up with a new migration route, at least one angry Eskimo for every caribou, and a couple million fundraising letters filling the wallets of the guys he beat last time around.

This deal would buy him time; buy America time, that is. Had to be done, simple as that.

The follow-up call from Alaska found the President in a black mood. The afternoon papers were spread out on the bed in their suite overlooking Red Square, and one of them, the leftover Communist daily Pravda , had decided to pick up all the old tabloid lies about the women, pictures included. It was starting to rain and, as it turned out, you could have more screwups.

“Yes?” he shouted into the encrypted cell phone. The thing was great at scrambling your voice so no one else could listen in, but lousy at being an actual phone. There were thirty seconds in which the President listened to whoever it was explain Downer Number Two, and then his wife, freshening up in the bathroom, heard him explode. “Damn it Carl, if you had half a brain you’d be dangerous! When I said ‘Do what it takes”… Christ Carl, I’m a little busy right now, getting our country’s future straightened out. Do I have to fly back there and fire your sorry ass? Take a little initiative, that’s what I’m paying you for. DO… WHAT… IT… TAKES!”

He slammed the cell phone down on the dresser. She hurried out of the bathroom to find him grinning that grin she knew wasn’t a smile.

“When we get back, there’ll be a new regime, honey. A whole new regime.”