“Wither away?”
Juniper’s creased eyes registered the irony, her compressed lips her refusal to let it deflect her. “Speaking of states that wither away,” she said, changing the subject adroitly, “if any of you find yourselves looking for new opportunities, when all this is over one way or another…”
Valentina and Andrei said nothing, at least not in Myra’s presence; but Myra herself smiled, and nodded, and said she’d bear it in mind.
“Well!” said Andrei Mukhartov, when the function was over and the guests had departed, the diplomats, the apparatchiks and captains of industry. Andrei, Valentina, Denis and Myra had retired to one of the hotel’s smaller and quieter bars. Hardwood and mirrors, leather and glass, plush carpets and quiet music. There were plenty of people in the bar who’d had nothing directly to do with the funeral. This made for a degree of security for the four remaining Commissars, huddled as they were around a vodka bottle on a corner table, like dissidents. “Thanks for your intervention earlier, comrades. I thought I was getting somewhere until you turned up.”
“You thought wrong,” said Myra. She didn’t feel like arguing the point. “I know Juniper, she’ll seem to agree with you and then start talking about the war. Which is where we came in. You didn’t lose anything.”
“Huh,” grunted Andrei. He knocked back a thumbnail glass. “Tell me why you need a Foreign Secretary at all.”
“Because I can’t do everything myself,” Myra told him. “Even if I can do every particular thing better than anyone. Division of labour, don’t knock it. It’s all in Ricardo.”
Andrei and Valentina were looking at each other with eye-rolling, exaggerated bafflement.
“Megalomania,” said Andrei sadly. “Comes to all the dictators of the proletariat, just before the end.”
“Think we should overthrow her before it’s too late?” Valentina straightened her back and sketched a salute. “Get Denis in on it and we can form a troika. Blame all the problems on Myra and declare a clean slate.”
“That is not funny,” said Myra. She poured another round, watched the clear spirit splash into the crystal ware, four times. “That is exactly how it will be. One day all the problems of the world will be blamed on me.” This was not funny, she thought. This was her deepest suspicion, in her darkest moments. She grinned at her confederates. “To that glorious future!”
They slugged back the vodka shots and slammed down the empty glasses. Myra passed up an offer of a Marley or a Moscow Gold, lit up a Dunhill from her last trip out. The double foil inside the pack, the red and the gold of its exterior—there was still, to her, something wicked and opulent about the brand, which she’d first smoked when duty-free still meant something.
“So, what’s the score, Andrei? Apart from today’s subtle approaches.”
“Ah.” Andrei exhaled the fragrant smoke through his nostrils. “Not good, I have to say. Kazakhstan’s still keeping out of it—after all, they have Baikonur to think about, and the Sheenisov threat. If it weren’t for previous bad blood between them and the space movement, I think they might be tempted to side with it. So their neutrality is something, when all’s said and done. As for the rest—1 have canvassed every country, I have checked with our delegates in New York, and frankly it looks as if next week’s vote will go through.”
“Valentina?”
Myra didn’t need to spell anything out. Kozlova had spent days and nights tracking reports from agents in the battlesats and the settlements. She replied by holding out her spread hand and waggling it.
“Nothing much we can do up there,” she said. “The other side have all the resources to tip the balance their way, whichever way the argument is going.”
“Not all the resources,” Myra said.
“Oh, come,” said Valentina, with careful calm. “We couldn’t.” She might have been talking about cheating at cards.
“But they don’t know we couldn’t,” Myra said. “We do have a hard reputation, after all. Most of the new countries, not to mention the settlements, probably think we’re some kind of ruthless Bolsheviks.”
They shared a cynical laugh.
“I’m sure Reid is disabusing them of that notion right now,” said Andrei. He seemed to have picked up on what they were talking about; and as for Denis Gubanov, he was leaning back with a smug smile, as if he’d known it for years. Probably had.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Myra said. “He’s a devious son of a bitch. He says his side don’t know what we’ve got, and he might still hold out a hope of winning us over—or using us as a threat to keep his own side in order.”
She inhaled again.
“Besides,” she added, “he doesn’t know all we’ve got. Or so I gathered. He thinks it’s all in Earth orbit.”
“It isnW Denis’s smile faded instantly. “So where is it?”
“Good question,” Myra said. “See if you can find out.”
Valentina was intently studying the reflection of the chandelier in the bar mirror.
“Is this a joke, or what?” Denis demanded.
Myra shook her head, laid her palm on the back of his hand. “Easy, man. Don’t waste too much time on it—just treat it as an exercise, see what you can find out about what people know or suspect—”
“And I’m not to know myself?”
“Double-blind,” Myra said firmly. “And double-bluff. I’ll let you know after you’ve brought back some results, but I don’t want your investigation dropping any inadvertent hints.”
Denis scowled. “OK,” he allowed, “I see the point of that.” He looked at his watch, sighed and stood up. “Three-fifteen,” he said. “Time I was back at the office.”
“The unsleeping sword of the Cheka,” Myra said. “Time we all went back, I guess.”
“No,” said Andrei. Tou and Valentina stay here and get drunk.” He pushed back his chair and raised himself ponderously to his feet. “We Russian men will take care of the rest of the day’s business.”
“Sure?”
“Sure.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Relax, Davidova. The coup won’t come today, or tomorrow.”
“I know that,” she said. “But we just lost one more commissar today—”
“Alex, huh, son of a bitch. No loss. I cleared his desktop and locked him out the second he mentioned he was leaving us.”
“He was good at his job, and we don’t have a replacement.”
“The economy can get along fine without a commissar for a while,” Andrei said. “The free market, don’t knock it. It’s all in Ricardo.”
The two men walked to the bar. Andrei gallantly laid a wad of currency on it, indicating Myra and Valentina with a glance, nodded to them and left with Denis.
“So,” said Valentina, looking after them, “what do you suppose they’re up to?”
“Anything but going back to work, I hope,” Myra laughed. “Hitting the spaceport bars, or plotting our demise. Whatever. What the fuck.” She downed another vodka; stared at the tip of a cigarette that had burnt down, unregarded; lit another.
“You’re drunk already,” Valentina accused.
“And bitter and twisted. Yeah, I know.”
“I’ll tell you why they left,” Valentina said. “Apart from the space-port attractions, that is.”
“Yeah?”
“They’re giving us space, my dear. For a caucus.”
“Women’s caucus? Bit dated, that.”
Valentina loosened her uniform jacket, removed her tie and rolled it up carefully. “Not—what was it called?—feminism, Myra. Socialism. A Party caucus.”