Free (1980) The Second Lady by Irving Wallace Page B

the present. Africa had long been a vague bone of contention between the two world powers, and now suddenly Boende became a familiar proper noun in her vocabulary. Boende was an independent nation in central Africa. It was uranium rich. Both the United States and the USSR needed uranium. A democracy with an elected President named Mwami Kibangu, Boende had close ties with the United States. On its northern border, a huge rebel force -the Communist People’s Army, led by a Moscow-trained
    leader, Colonel Nwapa - waited for the Soviet signal to overrun the country and take control by staging a revolution. The Soviet Union was prepared to supply the rebel force with arms. The question was - how strongly had Kibangu’s government troops been armed by the United States? The stakes for the future were high. Not only ample uranium, but control of the heart of Africa.
    As the confrontation worsened, Premier Kirechenko called in Petrov and consulted him. Reassured, Kirechenko made
    | the first move. He suggested a two-way Summit Conference, delegations headed by the American President and himself, to meet at a neutral site as soon as feasible in the interests
    jof world peace. President Bradford had no choice but to accept the proposal. Next came the technicalities, the most important being the selection of a site for the Summit. The usual preliminary haggling began. Helsinki, Geneva and Vienna were suggested, and each rejected by one party or the other for various reasons. Then Premier Kirechenko made a surprising and astute suggestion. Although the Americans had been allies of the British for many years, the Soviet Union had recently signed several important agreements with Great Britain and their friendship had never been warmer.
    |To underscore his trust in the British, and at the same time to disarm right-wing conservatives in the United States, kirechenko suggested that the Summit be held in London. Taken off-guard, President Bradford could offer no objections. And so the turf would be London. President Bradford then proposed a date. Premier Kirechenko agreed to it at once. Then, a few weeks afterwards, almost as an afterthought, the Soviet Premier’s wife, Ludmila Kirechenko, announced that, one week preceding the London Summit, she would invite female leaders throughout the world to attend a three-day International Women’s Meeting in Moscow. The subject would be - woman’s rights, today and in the future. Despite Billie Bradford’s misgivings about so much travel and activity in so short a period, the subject of woman’s rights was closely identified with her. There was no possible way for her to decline the convention. She was among the first to promise to attend.
    While the International Women’s Meeting in Moscow had been arranged and scheduled solely for Vera Vavilova’s benefit, her own preparations were not affected by it. She would play no role in the convention itself. But the London Summit that would follow it presented Vera with an overload of extra work. New names entered her life, ones she was supposed to know already and ones she must anticipate meeting and learn about. Added research flowed in to her. Suddenly, Vera had to be familiar with London — a city familiar to Billie Bradford, unfamiliar to Vera Vavilova. And a new cast of characters like the Queen of England, the British Prime Minister Dudley Heaton, his wife Penelope Heaton, the British foreign secretary Ian Enslow, the Boendi President Kibangu and his ambassador to England, Zandi, were introduced to her.
    All of that had filled the papers that Petrov had been reviewing in Razin’s KGB office.
    Petrov was holding the last piece of paper in the last of the three files. It was Razin’s final typed memorandum on Vera Vavilova’s dress rehearsal nine hours ago.
    Petrov returned the third file to the desk, tossed down the remaining half-inch of vodka in his glass, and shook his massive head. ‘What a job. Three years work. Worth it, I hope.’