Mistress Read online

  Malkovich was mesmerizing in Dangerous Liaisons and hilarious as the foulmouthed ex–CIA agent in Burn after Reading. Every time he cussed, I laughed out loud.

  The light changes at the intersection from red to green. Traffic starts to move northbound. I start up again on the bike and pedal through the intersection.

  “So you must be close to something big,” she says.

  I pick up the pace on my bike. My destination is only ten minutes away now.

  “And if I’m right,” I say, “I’m about to get closer.”

  Chapter 71

  I sit on a bench outside the Bender Library looking over the Quad, where I spent four years eating my lunch or throwing a Frisbee or playing Hacky Sack between classes. The Quad is sort of the heart of American University’s main campus, a rectangular lawn bordered by the library on one end and the Kay Spiritual Life Center on the other. It’s crisscrossed with pedestrian walkways and has a seating area in the middle, complete with concrete benches. Some of the main academic buildings are situated along the borders. I haven’t been here since, oh, I think it was 2008, when I covered a student demonstration protesting the genocide in Darfur, complete with a mock refugee camp and a “die-in,” where all the students lay across the lawn to simulate the mass casualties.

  After I’ve told him my lengthy narrative—the tale of Benjamin Casper over the last two weeks—Professor Bogomolov, seated next to me, puts a frail hand on my shoulder. “A most troubling story,” he says.

  He should know about troubling stories. Andrei Bogomolov was born in the Soviet city of Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg, where he studied psychiatry and history. But he wanted to live free in the West. So in 1974, while serving as a psychiatrist on a Soviet boat, he jumped ship off the Ivory Coast and swam ashore. The KGB chased him through Ghana, where he reportedly was hidden by Peace Corps volunteers in a camp and later smuggled to the US embassy in Accra, where he was granted political asylum. The whole matter led to an international dustup in the heat of the Cold War period. (Can there be heat during a Cold War?)

  Anyway, Andrei came to American University to get a PhD in Russian history and never left. He’s been part of the history department ever since. He’s one of those professors who likes to sit out on the Quad eating his lunch with the students, enjoying the sunlight on his face and, I suppose, the feeling of freedom as well.

  I took one of his classes while I was an undergrad here, but the truth is, I’ve known Andrei since I was a kid. He and my father were colleagues in the history department for decades. Andrei would come to our house for dinner, always showing up with a present, usually some Russian coin and a story to go along with it.

  After Mother’s death, he was particularly nice to me. I remember him telling me about harsh winters in Russia, hunger pains in his stomach, a feeling that he had no control over his own destiny, and how his faith in God got him through all of it. You can suffer anything, Benjamin, he used to tell me, if you believe in yourself and God.

  I haven’t talked to Andrei in years, probably not since Father’s funeral, but I remember him being a man of understatement. After experiencing what he experienced, I guess most things pale in comparison.

  “A most troubling story,” he repeats.

  “Operation Delano, Andrei,” I say.

  He nods. He knew that was the question I was going to ask him, and his reaction tells me I’ve come to the right place. Ever since I heard the phrase, and then learned about Alexander Kutuzov, I’ve been thinking about the Russians. If anybody would know about the Russians, it’s Andrei.

  “Very well,” he finally says. “Operation Delano.”

  Chapter 72

  “Let us walk,” Andrei says. “They tell me walks are good.”

  I don’t understand the reference and want to ask, but not now. Andrei’s always been a man of few words, a reserve probably long instilled in someone who had planned since childhood to defect to the West but had to play along in the Soviet system until the moment presented itself. If he wants me to know about his ailment, he’ll tell me.

  Andrei pushes his small, withered frame off the bench. He tucks his hands into his slacks—completing the professorial look that his tweed sport coat began—and nods to the wood carving of an eagle in the garden next to us. “I love that bird,” he says. “Do you know why, Benjamin?”

  The eagle is made from the wood of a hundred-year-old tree that had to be removed from the Quad. One of the classes carved out this beautiful bird as a gift to the university.

  “Because it’s our national bird?” I guess.

  He manages a smile. Andrei was waiting for me here on this bench when I arrived, and seeing him now on his feet, struggling, I’m struck by how ill he appears.

  “Because something beautiful came of something dying,” he says.

  I let him lead, and we walk along the borders of the Quad, past the Mary Graydon Center. I remember meeting there once a week for the Young Democrats of America. Not that I was a Democrat, or, for that matter, a Republican. I joined for the same reason most college guys would join something: because there was a hot girl in the group. I chased after Cassandra Richley for over two years. It was worth the wait.

  “Yalta was a time of great uncertainty,” says Andrei. He’s referring to the Yalta Conference, where Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill gathered to divvy up the spoils after the Nazis went down in flames. “Of course, you have studied this.”

  “Of course.”

  “Stalin was truly dealing from a position of strength. He was already occupying many of the countries he wanted to enclose in the Soviet bloc, and he had twice the troops of the Allies. Still, he didn’t know if he had Roosevelt’s trust. He was rather sure he didn’t have Churchill’s. He was looking for leverage in the negotiations.”

  I stop in my tracks. Andrei doesn’t seem to notice at first, but then he stops as well and faces me.

  “What are you telling me, Andrei?” I say. “Operation Delano was an attempt to gain leverage on FDR?”

  Andrei’s heavy, tired eyes rise up to mine.

  “None of this has been verified,” he says. “There is only talk.”

  “Then tell me about the talk, Andrei.”

  Andrei breaks eye contact with me and stares off in the distance, as I recall him often doing. Back then he conveyed quiet strength—shoulders back, a broad chest, a defiant chin. Now he is frail, his shoulders curled inward, a stoop to his posture, his skin heavy and ill-fitting on his weathered face, only wisps of white hair covering his head. But those eyes, that glassy stare, haven’t changed. Probably no one will ever know what is contained in that stare. Memories, I assume. Memories of things best forgotten.

  “The talk,” he says, “is that Operation Delano was the Soviets’ attempt to blackmail the president of the United States.”

  Chapter 73

  “There were always rumors about Roosevelt,” says Andrei. “Some of them have since been printed as fact, but in my mind, they remain rumors. Roosevelt was a man of privilege, of course. Some such men…did not regard marital vows as solemnly as they might.”

  I’d read about that. My father had written about Roosevelt, who was believed to have had an affair with his wife’s social secretary for years. Eleanor reportedly discovered the affair and offered FDR a divorce. The affair broke off but then rekindled in Roosevelt’s last term in office. And there was another woman, too, so the story goes—FDR’s own secretary. Andrei’s right—true or false, most of this information has been reported by now.

  But it wasn’t back then, after World War II ended.

  “Stalin wanted to blackmail FDR about his extramarital affairs?” I ask.

  We’re walking again, past the Battelle-Tompkins Building, where I took many of my undergrad classes. We are moving slowly. It is clearly difficult for Andrei to walk.

  Andrei waves a hand. “This Operation Delano may all be fiction, an old wives’ tale. All I can say with certainty is, if Stalin got so much out of the negot
iations at Yalta because he blackmailed FDR, nobody has ever said so. And much has been said, and written, about Yalta.”

  Spoken like a true professor, one who demands careful support for every statement before he makes it. He’s been full of disclaimers thus far—none of this has been established as fact—but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe it.

  “I must sit,” says Andrei, and he finds a bench at the Kay center’s plaza. “You must forgive a tired old man.”

  I sit next to him. “I forgive you, old friend. But does this mean the Russians are trying to blackmail President Francis?”

  Andrei takes a minute to catch his breath. He lets out a painful cough and apologizes. He’s not doing well, that’s clear.

  “I cannot possibly know such a thing,” he says. “Certainly, I know nothing of this president.”

  I don’t, either, but I probably follow the president a lot more closely than Andrei does. Blake Francis and Libby Rose Francis seem about as compatible as Jerry Falwell and Paris Hilton. It’s always looked to me more like a marriage of convenience. The president stepping out on Libby? Not a hard swallow at all.

  “But you do know the Russians,” I say. “Why would they want to blackmail Blake Francis?”

  Andrei lets out a chuckle, which I mistakenly take as a cough at first.

  “Why wouldn’t they?” he muses. “Having control of the leader of the free world?”

  Fair enough. That’s probably true.

  “But you are correct, Benjamin, that such a thing could not have permanence. Certainly not even a compromised president could allow another powerful country free rein to do whatever it wished. There would have to be limits, surely.”

  “You mean, like maybe there could be one thing.”

  He cocks his head to the side. Like I’m getting warm.

  “What would be the one thing?” I ask. “What are the Russians trying to do?”

  Chapter 74

  My former professor looks at me as if we have reverted to old roles, like I’m back in undergrad and he’s giving me a lesson.

  “I have no idea whether the Russians are blackmailing our president, or even attempting to do so,” says Andrei. “But I do believe I have a good assessment of Russian leadership these days. So let us assume that there is blackmail taking place.” He opens his hands. “What is the one thing Russia wants?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “Oil? Power?”

  Andrei stares at me, blank-faced. I feel like I’m in an episode of that old Kung Fu show, where Andrei is blind Master Po and I’m David Carradine. You disappoint me, Grasshopper. Yet it is not I whom you have failed. It is you. Look within, Grasshopper.

  “Land,” I say.

  “Land,” he says in agreement.

  You have done well, Grasshopper.

  “And if the Russians wanted land, Benjamin, where would they go?” Andrei wags his finger at me. “History, Benjamin, is the best teacher.”

  “Afghanistan,” I say, but immediately I know I’m wrong. What was true in the 1970s and ’80s is no longer true today. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, a number of independent countries now stand between Russia and Afghanistan—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, I think, and probably some other hard-to-pronounce names.

  “More recent history, Benjamin.”

  Oh, right. Of course. “Georgia,” I say. For years, Russia has been backing independence movements in various republics in Georgia. In 2008, there was an armed conflict between Georgia and two of its would-be breakaway republics in South Ossetia, which most observers saw in reality as a war between Georgia and Russia.

  And how quickly I forget what I saw just last night on CNN, before I went over to Anne’s place and had mind-altering sex. “The Russians just arrested a Georgian spy in Moscow.”

  Andrei nods his head. “Supposedly,” he says. “Conveniently. Next, expect a terrorist act in a major Russian city that is blamed on the Georgians.”

  Ah. So the Russians are setting the table for a war with Georgia.

  “If Russia really wanted to take Georgia, Benjamin, would it be hard?”

  “Militarily? No.”

  “But diplomatically, Benjamin.”

  “Diplomatically, yes. Georgia has a relationship with NATO now.”

  “A problem,” he acknowledges. “Tell me this, Benjamin. How much would the American public care if Russia invaded Georgia and overtook it?”

  I let out a sigh. “I mean, for some of us who’ve been around awhile, it would conjure up images of the old Soviet Union. But these days, our military is stretched thin—”

  “Just so.”

  “—and we probably have bigger things to worry about.”

  “Probably.” Andrei nods slowly. “But certainly? Could the Russians be certain how we would respond? Remember, Benjamin, NATO is a presence in this conversation. There could be pressure on an American president to resist this aggression. If not by force, then by sanctions, at a minimum.”

  “So the Russians would want some tools of persuasion at their disposal.”

  “Just so,” says Andrei. “If the United States acquiesces to this aggression, who will challenge Russia?”

  “Nobody,” I say.

  “Certainly nobody of importance,” he says. “If the Russians can compromise the president of the United States, they could succeed in their plan.”

  So the Russians discover that President Francis is having an extramarital affair. They somehow document this. And they have a private chat with the president. They make him a deal. Keep quiet while we invade Georgia, and we keep quiet about these photographs. Or resist us, and you’ll be embroiled in a scandal that could cost you a second term in office.

  Wow. It’s audacious. But so are the Russians.

  I take a moment with this. “You think Russia would do all this just so they could take over a tiny neighbor?”

  Andrei stares at me, again with a blank face, before a chuckle bursts from his mouth. “Certainly not,” he says. “History, Benjamin, history.”

  I throw up my hands. “Help me out here, Andrei. It’s been a long week.”

  “You are excused, my friend.” Andrei pats my knee. “Certainly Georgia would simply be a testing ground for the world’s reaction. And a precedent-setting reaction by the United States. This would almost certainly be the beginning, not the end.”

  My head falls back on my shoulders. The sky is darkening, promising rain. “Tell me you aren’t saying what I think you’re saying, Andrei.”

  “Most regrettably, I am,” he says. “Oh, Benjamin, I have little doubt that the Russians plan to rebuild the old Soviet bloc, country by country.”

  Chapter 75

  I race my bike off American University’s campus with adrenaline surging through me. I have to find a cash machine, but I’m not even looking, I’m just riding as my thoughts are running rampant in so many directions, so many questions, so many twists and turns—

  But at least I have the main picture. I’m finally there. The Russians dusted off the playbook from the Stalin era, even giving their operation the same name, sentimental softies that they are. Operation Delano is the Russians’ plan to blackmail President Blake Francis so he will stand down when Russia starts invading her neighbors. And they’ve already begun the initial stages of moving toward an invasion of the Republic of Georgia. So—are they blackmailing the president right now? Did their plan work? Or are they still in the process of executing it? Clearly, our government knows about it. So what’s going on right now? Is the president going to let all this happen?

  And where does Diana fit in? I had her pegged for a CIA spy. So—what? She was trying to stop them, and—but why would someone fake her death, and—

  Oh. Oh, shit—

  I skid my bike to a halt, almost toppling forward in the process.

  No. No, it can’t be.

  All those evenings Diana spent at the White House, as an aide to the president’s close ally Craig Carney. A blackmail scheme. And now the US go
vernment desperately wants everyone to believe that Diana’s dead. Which means she must be a liability.

  Could it be true?

  Is Diana the president’s mistress?

  Chapter 76

  Lots to think about, but necessities first. I need money.

  After getting a considerable distance away from the university campus, I spot an ATM at the intersection of Columbia Road and Euclid Street. But now I have to go through my routine. I head into a Burger King bathroom and change into normal clothes—a button-down shirt and jeans—and then walk over to the ATM. I leave the Rockhopper a good distance from the walk-up ATM, so the camera won’t pick it up. The Russians, or the CIA, are looking for me in civilian clothes, riding a kick-ass motorcycle. No reason to let them know I’m in biking gear on a Rockhopper.

  If Diana is the president’s mistress, then what happened on her balcony that night? Did the US government fake her death in an attempt to thwart the blackmail? Does that mean that our government killed Nina Jacobs? There are so many possible permutations. But at least I’m getting closer. Watch out, Mr. Carney, here I come.

  At the ATM, I avoid eye contact with the little camera watching me and quickly swipe my card and run through the transaction. Password, withdrawal, checking account, one thousand dollars. I look over both shoulders and don’t see anything that raises the hair on my neck.

  But when I look back at the ATM screen, the hair rises all the same.

  Insufficient funds, the screen tells me.

  “Bullshit,” I say. I transferred more than ten thousand dollars into checking earlier this week so I could remain liquid.

  I run through the whole thing again, password-withdrawal-checking, but this time I go with five hundred dollars. All along, I am cognizant of the ticking clock. Anyone monitoring my account already knows my precise location.

  Insufficient funds, it tells me again.