Mistress

Chapter 73

“There were always rumors about Roosevelt,” says Andrei. “Some of them have since been printed as fact, but in my mind, they remain rumors. Roosevelt was a man of privilege, of course. Some such men…did not regard marital vows as solemnly as they might.”

I’d read about that. My father had written about Roosevelt, who was believed to have had an affair with his wife’s social secretary for years. Eleanor reportedly discovered the affair and offered FDR a divorce. The affair broke off but then rekindled in Roosevelt’s last term in office. And there was another woman, too, so the story goes-FDR’s own secretary. Andrei’s right-true or false, most of this information has been reported by now.

But it wasn’t back then, after World War II ended.

“Stalin wanted to blackmail FDR about his extramarital affairs?” I ask.

We’re walking again, past the Battelle-Tompkins Building, where I took many of my undergrad classes. We are moving slowly. It is clearly difficult for Andrei to walk.

Andrei waves a hand. “This Operation Delano may all be fiction, an old wives’ tale. All I can say with certainty is, if Stalin got so much out of the negotiations at Yalta because he blackmailed FDR, nobody has ever said so. And much has been said, and written, about Yalta.”

Spoken like a true professor, one who demands careful support for every statement before he makes it. He’s been full of disclaimers thus far-none of this has been established as fact-but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe it.

“I must sit,” says Andrei, and he finds a bench at the Kay center’s plaza. “You must forgive a tired old man.”

I sit next to him. “I forgive you, old friend. But does this mean the Russians are trying to blackmail President Francis?”

Andrei takes a minute to catch his breath. He lets out a painful cough and apologizes. He’s not doing well, that’s clear.

“I cannot possibly know such a thing,” he says. “Certainly, I know nothing of this president.”

I don’t, either, but I probably follow the president a lot more closely than Andrei does. Blake Francis and Libby Rose Francis seem about as compatible as Jerry Falwell and Paris Hilton. It’s always looked to me more like a marriage of convenience. The president stepping out on Libby? Not a hard swallow at all.

“But you do know the Russians,” I say. “Why would they want to blackmail Blake Francis?”

Andrei lets out a chuckle, which I mistakenly take as a cough at first.

“Why wouldn’t they?” he muses. “Having control of the leader of the free world?”

Fair enough. That’s probably true.

“But you are correct, Benjamin, that such a thing could not have permanence. Certainly not even a compromised president could allow another powerful country free rein to do whatever it wished. There would have to be limits, surely.”

“You mean, like maybe there could be one thing.”

He cocks his head to the side. Like I’m getting warm.

“What would be the one thing?” I ask. “What are the Russians trying to do?”