‘Taxi, sir?’ asked the doorman.
‘No, thank you,’ said Sasha, who’d already decided to run all the way to St Thomas’s Hospital rather than wait for a taxi that would have to drive around Parliament Square and contend with half a dozen sets of traffic lights before reaching the hospital. He was out of breath by the time he was halfway across Westminster Bridge, having had to dodge in and out of camera-laden tourists. With each step he was made painfully aware just how unfit he had allowed himself to become over the years.
Charlie had suffered two miscarriages since the birth of their daughter, and Dr Radley had advised them that this could well be their last chance of having another child.
When Sasha reached the southern end of the bridge, he ran down the steps and along the Thames until he reached the hospital entrance. He didn’t ask the woman on reception which floor his wife was on, because they had both visited Dr Radley the previous week. Avoiding the overcrowded lift, he continued on up the stairs to the maternity wing. This time he did stop at the desk to give the nurse his name. She checked the computer while he caught his breath.
‘Mrs Karpenko is already in the delivery room. If you take a seat, it shouldn’t be long now.’
Sasha didn’t even look for a seat, but began pacing up and down the corridor, while offering a silent prayer for his unborn son. Elena hadn’t approved of them wanting to know the child’s sex before it was born. He could only wonder why a situation like this always caused him to pray, when he didn’t at any other time. Well, perhaps at Christmas. He certainly neglected to thank the Almighty when things were going well. And they couldn’t have been going much better at the moment. Natasha, whom he adored, had had him obeying her every command for the past fifteen years.
‘Otherwise what’s the point of fathers?’ Charlie had overheard her telling a friend.
Although they’d tightened their belts – another of his mother’s expressions – after the closure of Elena Three, it had taken another four years before the company was back in profit and the taxman had been paid in full. Elena One and Two were now making a comfortable profit, although Sasha was aware that he could have made a lot more money if he hadn’t chosen to follow a political career. The prospect of a second child made him wonder about his future. A minister of the Crown? Or would his constituents dismiss him? After all, Merrifield was still a marginal seat, and only a fool took the electorate for granted. Perhaps they were never going to be rich, but they led a civilized and comfortable life, and had little to complain about. Sasha had long ago accepted that if you decide to pursue a political career, you can’t always expect to travel first class.
He had been delighted by his promotion to shadow Minister of State at the Foreign Office when Tony Blair took over as leader of the opposition. A man who seemed to have an unusual failing for a Labour leader: he actually wanted to govern.
Robin Cook, the shadow Foreign Secretary, was calling for an ethical foreign policy, and told Sasha that he expected him to keep reminding his Russian counterparts that their country’s new-found wealth should be distributed among the people, and not handed out to a group of undeserving oligarchs, many of whom had not only taken up residence in Mayfair, but weren’t paying any tax.
Sasha told Cook privately that not only did he agree with those sentiments, but he had even given some thought to returning to his homeland and contesting the next presidential election if things didn’t improve. Although he had been delighted to see the end of Communism, he didn’t much care for what had replaced it.
Getting any reliable information out of Russia was never easy at the best of times, but Sasha had become a close friend of Boris Nemtsov, who was now a junior minister in the Duma, as well as developing a close circle of friends among the younger diplomats at the embassy. They met regularly at official gatherings, conferences and parties at other embassies, and Sasha quickly discovered that one young second secretary, Ilya Resinev, was even willing to pass on information from his uncle.
When President Gorbachev was replaced by Yeltsin, Ilya let Sasha know that his old school friend Vladimir was among the new president’s inner circle, and was expecting to be promoted. Vladimir had recently resigned as a colonel when the KGB was dissolved, and thrown in his lot with his old university professor Anatoly Sobchak, who had become the first democratically elected mayor of Saint Petersburg. Vladimir was among his early appointments as head of the city’s foreign and economic relations committee. Ilya told Sasha that no oil or gas deal in the province could be closed without Vladimir’s approval, although he rarely put his signature to the final document, and no one seemed surprised when he moved house three times in three years, always into an ever grander establishment, despite being on a government salary.
Ilya warned Sasha that if Sobchak was re-elected, there would be no prizes for guessing who would be his successor as the next mayor of Saint Petersburg. ‘And after that, who knows where Vladimir could end up?’
Sasha stopped pacing and looked in the direction of the delivery room, but the doors remained stubbornly closed. His mind drifted back to Russia, and his upcoming meeting with Boris Nemtsov, who, as a rising minister, was planning to visit London in the autumn, when he would bring Sasha up to date as to whether it was at all credible for him to consider standing as president. Yeltsin had disappointed even his most ardent supporters, who felt he lacked the reforming zeal they had been looking for. And too many world leaders were complaining in private that they couldn’t hold a meeting with the Russian president after four o’clock in the afternoon. By then, he was no longer coherent in any language. During a recent stopover in Dublin, Yeltsin hadn’t even been able to get off the plane, leaving the Irish Taoiseach standing on the runway waiting in vain to greet him.
Sasha checked his watch for the umpteenth time, and could only wonder what was going on behind those closed doors, when suddenly they swung open, and Dr Radley, still in his scrubs, stepped out into the corridor. Sasha walked eagerly towards him, but when the doctor removed his mask, he didn’t need to be told that he would never have a son.
*
Sasha wondered if he would ever come to terms with Konstantin’s death. He had held the baby in his arms for a few moments before they took him away.
His colleagues in the Commons couldn’t have been more understanding and sympathetic. But even they began to wonder if Sasha had lost his appetite for politics after he missed several three-line whips, and on a couple of occasions failed to turn up for his front bench duties.
The leader of the opposition had a word with the shadow Foreign Secretary, and they agreed to say nothing until the House returned in the autumn following the long summer recess.
Elena suggested that what they both needed was a holiday, and as far away from Westminster as possible.
‘Why not visit Rome, Florence and Milan,’ suggested Gino, ‘where you can indulge yourself in the finest opera houses, art galleries and restaurants on earth. Pavarotti and Bernini, accompanied by endless pasta and Sicilian red. What more could anyone ask for?’
‘New York, New York,’ suggested another Italian from their car radio. Charlie and Sasha decided to take Sinatra’s advice.
‘But what shall we do about Natasha?’
‘She can’t wait to get rid of you,’ Elena assured them. ‘In any case, she was hoping to join her school friends on a trip to Edinburgh to see Kiki Dee.’
‘Then that’s settled.’
*