Page 34 of Ascendent
“Oh, compared to their first flight?”
“Alan Shepherd had a couch in his spacecraft.”
Sergey laughed.
“NASA also says Shepherd piloted his spacecraft. Technically, he was the first toflyin space. Gagarin just floated and fell.”
“Are you buying into NASApropaganda?” Mock outrage spilled out of Sergey. His beaming grin spoiled his stern image, he knew. “Look at you, I’ve already lost you to the Americans! Soon you’ll be eating hot dogs and saying John Glenn and Neil Armstrong were the best astronauts ever!”
“No!” Sasha chuckled. “Russians are the best. Alexey Leonov was the first human to ever do a spacewalk. Vladimir Shatalov, the first pilot to dock two manned spacecraft. Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. And Vladimir Lyakhov has logged the most hours in space.”
“Ahh, you do respect your Russian history.” Sergey kissed Sasha’s forehead. “Don’t you let those Americans play games with the past. Russians were the first in space, and we hold the best records. They’ve been playing catch-up ever since. And that business on the moon was just an American temper tantrum at being second into orbit. Pure overcompensation.”
“I’ll remind them, Mr. President.” Sasha laughed.
Sasha lounged in his hold, as happy and relaxed as a cat, redolent and languorous in front of the fire. He stretched, his long legs gleaming in the firelight, his pale skin almost iridescent. Sergey rubbed his hands over Sasha’s arms, down to his legs. At last, Sasha was starting to warm up. “Feeling better?”
There was something in Sasha’s gaze as he answered. “With you, always.” He reached for Sergey’s hand and slid their fingers together. Sergey’s thumb brushed over healing scabs. Sasha said he’d lost track of time on the punching bag, had zoned out, thinking about NASA and Sergey. He’d bandaged the knuckles for Sasha over the weekend, dropped kisses to them every night, and held them to his chest as they slept.
“How was your day?” Sasha asked quietly.
It was almost domestic, this simplicity, this ease. A fire was burning in his chest, consuming his heart, his soul. He’d never felt so alive, so happy. So perfectly content as this moment, sharing laughs and this lassitude with Sasha. He wanted to pull Sasha in, wrap him up in the wonder he felt, the perfectly right feeling that suffused his bones.I want this for the rest of my life. You in my arms. You smiling. I don’t care where we are or what is outside these walls.
Sasha’s question brought reality back in, let the strain and ugly stress of his daily woes seep around the edges of his contentment. He sighed. “Long,” he said. “And tiring. Ilya is chasing ghosts. He won’t tell me what he’s up to. Half our military bases are abandoned or destroyed. I’m trying to rebuild Russia with shoestrings and spit. I’ve borrowed so much money to keep the economy going that I’ve run out of banks and international creditors. Each day, I just hope the country holds until sundown. If we can’t pay our debts and the economy collapses, we won’t be able to import the food we need. I remember what the food riots were like in St. Petersburg when the Soviet Union fell. I never want the country to experience that again.”
Sasha rolled out of his lap. He laid on his side, propped up his head with one hand. Their other hands stayed locked together. A straight frown line appeared down the center of Sasha’s forehead. “What was it like? Going through the breakup?”
Which one,he almost asked. Our first? My wives? Oh, the Soviet Union.“I was young. I was a teenager, trying to fight for what was right in the world, trying to find my way through the collapse of the old and the rush of the new. I lived on the edge of hope. Other people saw only despair. The collapse of the state, the loss of security. I loved it. The future was wide open. The world was suddenly larger than I’d ever believed, and words like ‘democracy’ and ‘voting’ and ‘freedom’ were intoxicants. You know, most people back then, they had no idea how to vote? They didn’t know what it meant. Some were scared to vote. Why should their opinions matter? The state was the mighty, the all-knowing. Every day, something changed. Something dramatic happened. It was a crazy time to be alive.”
He laid on his side, facing Sasha. “I lived in St. Petersburg when Putin was the mayor’s deputy. Those two ran St. Petersburg like aBratvacrime family. The whole country was in debt, couldn’t pay anything. Almost like now, but back then, the economy had completely collapsed. So Moscow allowed the cities, the districts, to directly export resources for trade. St. Petersburg exported lumber for food.”
“Sounds like a good plan. What happened?”
“Putin was put in charge of the exports.” Sergey snorted. “He sold the lumber to a friend, at an insanely low price, and then the friend resold it to outside buyers at an insanely high price, kicking half the profit back to Putin. Putin grew wealthy personally, but allowed the city to starve.”
Sasha’s jaw dropped.
“I never understood the breathless excitement of his election. His appointment to prime minister under Yeltsin, and then his election to the presidency in 2000. He, and his KGB friends, they poisoned the country. Twisted reality, until he could fake his own news, his own history. I watched it happen. You know, his team used to meet with the head of the public television station in Russia once a week? To plan the news, the coverage of the Kremlin, and of himself. To shape the public’s understanding of Putin’s Russia.” Sergey shook his head. “I felt like I was the only one in the whole world who remembered Putin from St. Petersburg.” He scoffed. “Actually, I might have been. He had most of his colleagues from that time killed, including the old mayor.”
“Did you work for him then?”
“No. I was in university. I watched, and I did odd jobs for the city government. I was picked up by the FSB in my third year. I was moved to Moscow. I spent three decades purposely staying as far from his orbit as possible. It’s the only way I survived. Back then, when you worked in the civil service, you learned how not to be civil or of service to anyone, for any reason.”
“I used to like him.” Sasha chewed on his bottom lip. “President Putin. I’d never known Russia without Putin. He was elected the year I was born. I used to think he was strong. That he was defending Russia against the West. Against the constant attacks, the Russophobia, the way the West loved to disparage Russia, always throw us away, discount us. I thought he was bringing us more respect in the world.”
Sergey smiled sadly. “That was exactly his goal. What changed?”
“You.” Sasha squeezed his hand. “Your election. After Putin finally relinquished power, we all thought there would be a war. Something, some kind of conflict. He held onto power for almost thirty years.”
“The first president after him was assassinated.”
Sasha’s lips thinned. “Could have been you.”
“No, no, I knew better than to be the first. I was the head of the FSB at the time. I took over after Putin’s man quit, after Putin was forced out. I was the moderate. The negotiator. And I went between all the factions. The military, the students, the Duma, the Federation Council, the intelligence services, the dissidents. I worked with everyone, tried to find the common ground. Promised the moon to everyone.”
“And they supported your election?”
“They decided I would be the right man for the job. A moderate everyone put their own hopes on. In a way, I did the same thing Putin did. I allowed them to project their hope onto me. Of course, I wasn’t planning on robbing our nation blind.” He sighed. “But, half of everyone who supported me are now in jail. And half of those who remain are sweating, frantic about the state of our country. Bet they wish they could change their minds,hmm?”
