Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [53]
It was, Carlton thought, a gruesome way to manage a family. It had come as an enormous shock. During the years of their childless marriage, Emily had been good about financing her luxuries from her own income, but the burden of supporting them had fallen to Carlton and his government salary. Had they lived a modest middle-class life, this would have proven more than adequate—he’d done reasonably well in the CIA—but neither of them had come from middle-class lifestyles. They moved in circles that required more than they had, and over the years Carlton had been driven deeply into debt.
His move to Homeland Security had been motivated in part by a substantial increase in salary, as well as by a falling-out with his director. Regardless, he had found a way to alter his financial position to the positive. Almost like a miracle, if he believed in them.
Carlton coughed once, sipped brandy, took another puff on the cigar. Things were looking up to such an extent that he was considering dumping Emily, who’d been such a disappointment. If the cash flow continued as promised, he’d be living beside warm water and sipping drinks with umbrellas by year’s end. He could think of half a dozen young things he’d rather have with him, rather than horse-faced old Emily.
24
MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
ARARAT PARK
SATURDAY, AUGUST 19
12:11 P.M.
It was a beautiful day in Moscow.
Ivana wasn’t working this Saturday and insisted her husband leave their cramped apartment and take some air. “You need to be outdoors,” she said. “Away from this smelly place. You need to see some normal people, real people, and stop spending all your time on that computer talking with electronic messages.”
To pull Vladimir’s wheelchair backward out of the apartment had taken some effort, since he’d had new equipment delivered the previous day. With nowhere to put it he’d instructed that the man place it in the cleared path out the door. Before they’d done anything, however, he’d insisted on getting his external drive and taking it with him.
“If we had a fire,” Ivana said as she stacked boxes, “you’d be trapped here. We can’t keep living like this.”
At twenty-seven years of age, Ivana Adamov Koskov was a petite, dark beauty. Like her mother—indeed, like most traditional Russian woman—she was a pessimist. If anything could go wrong, you could count on it. Life was to be endured because there was no alternative. The one bright spot in her life had been her love of Vladimir Koskov. Their short early years had been filled with hope.
The bomb had nearly destroyed them. Though she had emerged essentially unscathed, her beautiful Vladimir bore terrible scars and had been crippled for life. The day Ivana was to go to the hospital and move him into the apartment she’d rented, her father, Sasha, had taken her aside.
“What are you doing?” he asked, the smell of vodka on his breath.
“Getting Vlad, of course,” she said haughtily. She had long since stopped listening to her father. “We have an apartment now.”
“You can’t be serious about this.” Ivana’s father was a veteran of the ill-fated Soviet war in Afghanistan. He’d seen, and once intimated that he’d done, terrible things. Since his discharge from the military he’d been adrift, never really settling at any job, despondent if not embittered, turning increasingly to his bottle. She’d watched her mother slowly retreat with resignation into the role of enabler for her father until she couldn’t bear to watch it any longer.
“I love Vlad, Father,” she said. “He is a good man.”
“He is a cripple! What future can you have with such a man?”
“His body is crippled, but his mind is whole. I love him for who he is. Please, you’re in my way.”
“You’re nineteen years old,” her father pleaded. “Don’t throw your life away like this.”
“Vlad needs me. He can’t live alone and he has nowhere to go. I’m late. Please, Father, I must do this.”
That had been eight years before. Her father had never accepted the situation, but at family gatherings he was