Justin pulled her close. “Hey, you don’t do that stuff, remember?” She looked at him defiantly, then laughed. “Just take it easy,” he said. “It’ll be a long night.”
“Not long enough for me,” she said.
Andrei arranged to receive Marion Andrews in his office while Kimberly was still dressing. The three of them would take the flight together, but he knew that Marion would expect time alone with him. He didn’t mind; he thought she was one of the most interesting American women he had met. She had become a powerful political figure in the PPP stronghold of Chicago, and she was also Petya Samanov’s mistress— an intoxicating combination.
Marion swept in, elegant as always in a blur of French perfume, pale blue silk, and glowing pearls. “Marion, you look stunning,” he said, kissing her cheek. “Petya sends his love.”
“I’m jealous. You saw Mm today, and I haven’t been with him in two weeks.”
“He plans to rectify that situation very soon,” Andrei said. “Can I fix you a drink?”
“No, thank you. We have a long night ahead.”
“As you wish,” said Andrei. “But tell me what is on your mind.”
“I hate to trouble you with what may seem a personal matter.”
Andrei sat beside her on the sofa. “I understand from Mikel that your former husband has been released and you are concerned for your safety and that of your sons.”
Her eyes darted quickly to meet Andrei’s stare. “I don’t know why they paroled him,” she said bitterly.
“I imagine he’s rehabilitated,” he said. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have been released.”
“He could be dangerous. He should never have been freed. Maybe there was a bureaucratic error,” she continued.
“I understand you have police protection.”
“Yes. But that’s not enough. I want assurance that he never leaves Milford County.”
Andrei nodded. “I’ve given this some thought, Marion. You know Peter Bradford, the Milford County administrator?”
“Of course I do. He was Devin’s best friend—they were in Vietnam together. I haven’t seen Mm in years.”
“Is he a man you would trust?”
She gave the question a moment’s thought. “Yes. He’s an effective administrator.” She paused for a moment. “He’s not a stooge, if that’s what you mean.”
“I’m going to meet him tonight at the Omaha dinner. Maybe he would find it in his interest to look after your husband. I’ll make it clear that certain bureaucratic plums he wants for this county depend on his satisfying me on this matter.”
Marion smiled for the first time that evening. “Thank you, Andrei.”
“Tell me more about Peter Bradford,” he said. “He’s not particularly imaginative or ambitious politically. People like him. I imagine he is a good county administrator.”
“Excellent. He’s emerged as a dark-horse candidate for governor-general of the entire five-state Central Administrative Area. The Heartland, as it will soon be called.”
“You know the party advisory committee supports Governor Smith of Missouri.”
“The wonderful thing about advisory committees is that you can always tell them what to advise.”
Marion nodded. “He’s not dangerous like Devin, there’s nothing visionary about him. But there’s this streak of midwestem stubbornness in him. You might regret such an appointment.”
“The question is, can a man serve two masters? Could Peter Bradford, a patriotic American, serve our interests and those of his own people too?”
She smiled icily. “That depends on who defines those interests.”
Andrei looked at his watch. “Kimberly should be here soon. The plane is waiting.”
“Oh, you’re still seeing your actress?”
“Yes.”
“Appearance and illusion.”
“Beauty and soul,” he countered.
“Instability.”
“Madness.”
Marion laughed. “Yes. I forgot. With you that would be a virtue.”
Kimberly arrived, and walked into their conversation. She was dressed elegantly in a low-cut, black sequined gown. “I’m not interrupting, am I?” She kissed Andrei. He breathed deeply against her hair, which gave off a scent of hothouse orchids.
“Not at all.” Marion rose from the couch. “You look beautiful.”
“I’ll second that,” Andrei said, moving toward the door. “Ladies, shall we?”
The gilt and red plush ballroom of Omaha’s Riverfront Hotel was packed with several hundred middle-aged county administrators and their spouses. Streamers and balloons adorned the huge room, and, above the speaker’s platform, a giant U.S.-UN-USSR flag hung limp amid blue clouds of cigar smoke.
Kimberly, backed by a twelve-piece band, was singing “Younger Than Springtime.” The music, and the women’s gowns—carefully preserved, most of them, from pre-Transition days, and vaguely brittle—created a kind of time warp, as if the Forties or Fifties had somehow returned. Peter and Amanda were among the dancers, Amanda humming along with the music, eyes closed.
“Reminds me of the senior prom,” Peter said. “Wanna neck?” Peter spun Amanda around expertly. She laughed, her tension melting away. “Glad you came?”
“Sure, but what’s it all about?”
“Coordination. Regional unity. All that good stuff.”
“What was the call from Chicago about?”
“Nothing, really.”
“Chicago calls for nothing?”
“Well, we’ve had a good production record, and I may get some award or something.”
“My hero.”
Kimberly concluded her medley with “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right out of My Hair.”
“Let’s go outside,” Amanda said, taking Peter’s hand.
He guided her onto a terrace that overlooked the Missouri River; mist rose lazily from the placid water.
“Do you remember,” asked Amanda, “when we were first going out, you used to hold your breath during a kiss. I always expected you to suddenly turn blue and keel over.”
“That’s what you were thinking about when we kissed?”
“After we had been married a few years you learned to breathe.”
He laughed and shook his head.
“I remember the first time we made love—I had this terrible thought: what if he has to hold his breath? That’ll be ninety seconds maximum.”
Peter couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You did not.”
“Absolutely. The important thing is you did not.” They hugged affectionately, listening to the songs that continued from inside, making the moment seem a suspension of time. Amanda turned in his arms and looked at the river.
“Sometimes—it seems as though nothing has happened.”
Peter nodded. “You know what I always wanted to do? Just get on that river—take it down through Kansas and Missouri, all the way to the Gulf. Devin and I—well, it was Devin’s idea. We were reading Huckleberry Finn. We must’ve been nine, or maybe eleven or twelve. Anyway, his old man called the state police. They found us about a half hour after we’d launched our raft—probably about fifteen minutes before we would’ve sunk.”
Amanda smiled. “I’m game.”
“We’d better get back in.”
“No guts, huh?”
“We’d have to carry too many travel permits,” he said, pulling them abruptly back to the present. “No room for your knapsack.”
They had just returned to the noisy ballroom when a young man in a dark suit stopped them.
“Mr. Peter Bradford?”
“Yes.”
“Colonel Denisov would like a word with you.”
“Of course.” He shrugged to Amanda. “Save my place.”
Ward Milford had feared it might go this way. The old man hadn’t had a good word to say about Devin in more than two years. For that matter, he hadn’t exactly been jumping up and down about Devin’s campaign platform back in 1992, all that fiery rhetoric that sounded to a conservative man-of-the-farm like revolutionary talk. But when Devin had disappeared… that was it. Traitor. He might as well have been a terrorist.