Free (1980) The Second Lady by Irving Wallace

events marking the development of the project were now revived in Razin’s mind as he sat in his office, beside Petrov, sipping his drink and watching the KGB chief reviewing the papers, flipping the pages, nodding, smiling, sometimes thinking, sometimes speaking.
    It was at this point, Razin recollected, that Vera had been converted from a Soviet actress trying to portray an American to a person who lived as an American and thought like an American. She was allowed to speak only English, dress in American garments (except for imports from Ladbury of London), eat American foods. At breakfast, she drank canned tomato juice and ate boxed sugar-free cereals brought in from the United States and read the previous day’s editions of the New York Times and the Washington Post. When she played records, they were American standards or current hits in the United States. When she turned on her closed-circuit television, she could see only videotaped American newscasts, American situation comedies, American talk shows, reruns of American movies.
    She was inundated by material relating to Billie Bradford, but never overwhelmed by it. She was a quick study, indeed, clever, intelligent, and possessed of a fantastic memory. She educated herself by absorbing Billie Bradford’s own education in grammar school, high school, college. She read Billie Bradford’s examinations, term papers, school newspapers, vearbooks. In the person of Russian actors (who believed they were auditioning or rehearsing for a movie, each one working briefly before being replaced), she met the First Lady’s old schoolmates, teachers, instructors, professors.
    She was briefed on her immediate family, on her father, sister, brother-in-law, nephew, on her mother dead a decade, on the family dog, on her aunts and uncles and secondary relatives in Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, New York. Slow-ly, the briefings expanded to encompass favourite shopkeepers, friends, and acquaintances from past to present. The studies broadened, widened, to take in her husband’s campaign staff and workers, the White House staff, her husband’s aides, his Cabinet, other department executives, congressmen, the Washington press.
    Above all, she was drilled daily on the background, quirks, prejudices, habits of Andrew Bradford, her husband, and as much as could be found out about their intimate relationship.
    Here, once more, Razin ran into a stumbling block that nearly forced Petrov to abandon the project. For over two years, Razin had tried to learn something, anything, about the sex life of the Bradfords. If Vera was to be substituted for Billie Bradford, she would have to know how Billie performed in bed with her husband. What was their behaviour? Did they engage in straight sexual intercourse, and if so, how often? Was Billie docile or aggressive? Did he or she prefer to engage in a wide variety of so-called perversions? Yet, in the first two years, assigning agent after agent to turn up a clue, Razin drew a blank. As time passed, Petrov began to realize that, without knowledge of this aspect of Billie Bradford’s life, Vera would not have a chance of succeeding except by pure luck. And no margin could be allowed for luck.
    In desperation, Razin tried to find ways to circumvent the sex problem. Perhaps President Bradford could meet with an accident that would disable him for a month. But then such an accident might also force him to postpone a conference and showdown with Kirechenko. This solution had not been a solution and had been dropped. Perhaps Billie, herself, could suffer an accident that would make sexual intercourse unlikely for three or four weeks. As this possibility was being debated, Razin had his big break.
    A well-paid American agent for the KGB in Washington DC, in the White House itself, had overheard some secretarial gossip that suggested the young redhead who was Dr Cummings’s nurse also served as the President’s occasional mistress. Her name was Isobel Raines,