The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [27]
Valentin never understood why young men joined the tough Spetsnaz regiment, though as an officer-cadet his lot was a very different one. He enjoyed the hard physical work but loathed the violence as well as the regimentation of his year’s training, and he hated even more the six months that followed it on active duty on the borders of Afghanistan. But he knew he was paying his dues.
His goal had been clear even as a boy. All his life he had been surrounded by men of great political power—his grandfather, his father, his uncle, and their friends. And like his father, his only other interest was music. When he was a boy his father had often taken him to the ballet to watch his mother dance, or to the opera and symphony concerts. They would sit side by side in the worn red-velvet seats of Moscow’s concert halls, lost in the music, and Valentin never felt closer to his father than he did at those times. Afterward, Sergei would treat him to supper at his favorite restaurant. It was run by an old gypsy family, and, to Valentin’s surprise, his father knew all their songs and sometimes he would sing along as the gypsies played their guitars and balalaikas.
But Sergei Solovsky had worried about his son. When Valentin was offered his first important post as an assistant in the Foreign Service Department, he warned him about the single-mindedness of his ambitions.
“Do not leave love out of your life, Valentin,” he had said as they walked together in the gardens of their dacha, after the special dinner to celebrate Valentin’s new job. “It’s one of the last real human emotions still free to us Russians, and it is the most valuable.”
“Of course not, Father,” he had replied, surprised. But even then he had known that his goal, to be Russia’s leader, would always come first. Life had stretched before him with every step toward that goal marked out, and he vowed he would let nothing stand in his way because he knew he wanted to unite the turbulent regions that formed the Soviet Union in a way they had not been united since Lenin and the first days of revolution. And from there, he promised himself he would make his nation the leader of the world powers.
Everything had gone as he had planned. Promotion had followed rapidly on promotion, and he secured the important foreign postings he needed to allow him to study the weaknesses and strengths of other nations at first hand, learning all the time and storing that knowledge for his future use.
He had been surprised when his father had called three months ago, requesting his return from Washington on urgent business, and even more surprised when the nature of the problem had been explained to him. The Ivanoff jewels were finally appearing on the market. Russia wanted the person selling them found and brought back to Russia at once. His uncle Boris was in charge and had “requested” Valentin for the job.
“But why me?” he had protested, pacing the red carpet in his father’s large Kremlin office angrily. “Why doesn’t he just put the KGB on to it?”
There was a strange look in his father’s eyes as he replied, “This is a matter of extreme ‘delicacy.’ America knows why we want the person selling the jewels. You are to be our front man, Valentin. As a diplomat you travel the world without attracting attention, you can attend the auction and bid for the jewel … but behind you, the KGB will be searching for this mysterious ‘Lady.’
“You will discuss the matter with Boris tomorrow,” his father concluded, holding up his hand to silence any further protest. “And now I am on my way to the TV station at Ostankino. They are televising a concert by the winners of the National Youth Orchestra Competition. Why don’t you join me?”
Valentin had known better than to bring up the subject of the Ivanoff emerald on the ride to the TV station in his father’s black bullet-nosed chauffeur-driven ZIL; if Sergei