State Of The Union

The woman placed a cool compress on his forehead in an attempt not only to calm him, but also to help assuage the fever that had racked his body for the last week. Bullet wounds were extremely prone to infection and try as she might, most of her efforts appeared to be in vain. Karganov was hanging on to life, but just barely. She changed the dressings, administered the antibiotics and kept him nourished. That was all she could do. The fight was Karganov’s at this point, not hers, at least not entirely.

The man had cost her precious time. He had information she needed, but he was in no condition to give it. It was extremely difficult to play nursemaid to one of the men responsible for her father’s greatest embarrassment and eventual downfall, but she had been lucky to find him alive at all. The bullet wound had been serious, but not fatal, though the subsequent infection could prove to be the man’s ultimate undoing. When they had rolled him into his grave, he landed on his side, with his arm above his head. It had been just enough to create a small pocket of air. With the grazing wound the bullet had caused to his head, it was a wonder he had regained consciousness at all, but he had. The man’s primal instinct for survival and self-preservation had eventually kicked in and he had managed to claw his way out of the grave and collapse beside it.

The woman who now tended him had been watching the meeting from the woods. The distance had been less than optimal for the operation of her parabolic microphone. All she had been able to pick up were scattered words and phrases. There had been names-maybe first names, maybe last, as well as a few names of American cities. She also had made out the wordsairspace andguidance systems. They were pieces of a maddening puzzle that without the overall picture from one of the players, were near impossible to comprehend, much less begin to put together.

She knew only what her father had known. In his last days, as the cancer ate away at what was left his body, he chose to die at home. Though the doctors told him they could make him more comfortable if he remained in the hospital, he chose to return to the things which had provided so much comfort during the darkest days of his life-his books and his only daughter. After all, he was Russian, and thereby no stranger to discomfort.

His daughter followed the doctors’ orders to the letter, administering the morphine in the appropriate doses at the appropriate times. When he shared with her the secret of his undoing, the reason why their previously comfortable life had been reduced to one of shame and hardship, she thought that it was the medication speaking and not her father. It was too fantastic to be believed. There were so many things that didn’t make sense. She just smiled at him and pretended to listen as her mind wandered. It had been incredibly painful to watch her father die such an ignoble death.

When the time came, she paid for his funeral out of her own pocket. That was expected, as was the fact that no one from her father’s professional career and years of service to his country had attended his memorial. The state had all but turned its back on her father many years ago, though it could never prove any of the allegations against him. In Russia, allegations were enough to break a man, and indeed they had. She comforted herself with the fact that at least her father had not died alone. Broken, yes, but not alone.

And so had been the measure of her defiance. She had stood by as her father’s most formidable defender right until the end. This was one of the greatest reasons his ranting had hurt her so deeply. After years of her defending him, he died admitting that the state had been right all along. He drew a large measure of satisfaction from the fact that though they had known what he was up to, they could never prove it. He had outsmarted them. He had outplayed them at their own game.

The daughter had followed in his footsteps, choosing the same career, and by all accounts had exceeded her father. She had been one of the best Russia had ever seen, and the state never bore her any overt ill will for her father’s failings. They did, however, whisper and talk behind her back, but this made her want to succeed all the more. She wasn’t only doing it for herself and the advancement of her career, she was also doing it for him. And through it all, her father had reminded her never to confuse the state with the country. Governments, as well as political ideologies, would come and go like the tides. What mattered most was her country and the people who dwelled within it and relied upon it. “Never forget that you are a Russian first,” he always told her. And she never did.