Free The Property of a Lady by Elizabeth Adler Page B

portrait of his uncle, Boris Solovsky, stern and unsmiling, his head as naked as a billiard ball, with bitter lines running from nose to mouth and a perpetual frown between his paranoid dark eyes. Boris had never married, though rumors of his affairs were whispered throughout Moscow, none of them salubrious. His uncle was said to be a sadistic man not only in his love life but in his control of the KGB, of which he had been head for seven years.
    The largest photograph was of Valentin’s father, Sergei Solovsky, and his mother, Irina, taken on their wedding day. Both were smiling into the camera and it was Valentin’s favorite photograph because he had never, in all his life, seen his father look as happy as he did in that picture. Irina looked young enough to be his daughter, but there was no denying the glow of love on her sweet face. They made a beautiful couple: Sergei tall, blond, strong-jawed, and hawk-eyed, and Irina a petite, slender ballerina, her dark silken hair worn pulled back in the classical style of dancers. Valentin could never remember his mother making an ungraceful move, whether floatinglightly across the stage of the Bolshoi Theater or digging in the garden of their country
dacha
in Zhukova. The last photograph was of her alone on stage. Irina, daughter of a village carpenter and his illiterate wife, looked like a princess in the spangled tutu of Aurora in
The Sleeping Beauty
.
    The apartment had been Valentin’s home for ten years except when he was away on foreign assignments, and he hoped the only reason he would ever have to leave it would be because of a move to the top of the power ladder. And that was what he wanted more than anything in the world.
    Like all young Russian boys, Valentin had joined the Pioneers organization and, later, when he was fourteen, the Komsomol—the Communist League of Youth. Religion and God had never entered his life because the children were taught to devote themselves only to the Communist Party, and very few ever disobeyed. Valentin remembered how his schoolmates had taunted two boys whose parents still attended church, baiting them until their lives became unbearable and the family had suddenly been “relocated” from Moscow to a remote, frozen territory on the North Cape. He also knew that anyone who did not join the Komsomol would not be able to continue his education at a university. Of course in his case—the son of an important Party member—these questions had never arisen. He was automatically enrolled in everything suitable for the education and grooming of a clever boy toward high political position.
    He had completed his studies at Moscow University, reading international politics and law, followed by a year as an officer cadet at the infamous
Spetsnaz
training camp at Ryazan, in Byelorussia. His regiment’s motto was “Prepare to Sacrifice Yourself in the Name of Your Socialist Motherland,” and the unit lived up to that promise, training their ranks to obey their officers’ commands without hesitation, no matter how extreme. They soonbecame experts in murder, assassination, and terrorism. A hundred soldiers were crammed into each small cramped barracks, and they worked day and night. They marched everywhere: to p.e. after reveille then on to six hours of unarmed combat training. Then they marched to their noontime meal and afterward marched out for more exercise and more training. Later they marched to supper and to roll call before marching back to their quarters and bed. Every Sunday a few men were given leave to visit the local town, but the only time they were permitted home leave was if a family member died. They earned just enough to buy themselves toilet articles and cigarettes, but alcohol in any form was forbidden.
    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