Make Russia Great Again: A Novel Read online

  “Guess you missed your true calling, sir,” Katie said.

  Beulah rolled her eyes. She wore heavy mascara. Her default expression was a scowl. Together, these gave her the look of a chief matron at a women’s prison who’s just learned that someone in Block Six is keeping a pet mouse, and Big Momma is not pleased.

  She and Katie were not “girlfriends.” They loathed each other, and competed for Mr. Trump’s affection. Mr. Trump liked the tension between them and encouraged it.

  They were from very different worlds. Katie was a size 2 cheetah in high heels from the New York suburbs. Beulah was a—I don’t want to say “hippo”—full-figured, Bible-thumping, good old gal from Deliveranceville, Tennessee. I don’t think she grew up with running water and indoor plumbing. But she had a good heart, and bore the indignities that came her way as a public face of the Trump White House with true Christian grace.

  The day before the meeting, she’d been asked to leave yet another restaurant by its libtard owner, on the grounds that her presence was “making the other diners nauseous.” First—how rude is that? Second, it’s “nauseated,” not “nauseous.” Liberals. Spare me. They’re always screeching about “diversity,” then they tell the White House press secretary—and her family—to leave their restaurant? Would they do that to a black Beulah? I don’t think so. As a hospitality professional, I found it disgraceful. Beyond the pale. Beulah wrote a memoir: I Wasn’t Hungry Anyway. It’s very good. I recommend it.

  I don’t think Beulah had met many Jews, but she couldn’t have been nicer to me, personally. One time at Camp David, she offered me half of her BLT, then suddenly recoiled and blushed and started apologizing. Poor thing was mortified. To make her feel better, I ate it, even though I’m more of a tuna salad person. I think the incident speaks very well of her. I respected her faith, though I stopped shy of her view that Mr. Trump “was sent by God to save America.”

  The three TVs in the Oval were on, as usual, with the sound off. The one set to CNN showed a graph: POLL: MAJORITY OF AMERICANS “CONFUSED” BY PUTIN INVITE.

  “Why are people confused?” Mr. Trump said. “What’s confusing about it? Fucking idiots.”

  Beulah shifted in her chair. For someone who’d been raised in a home where “gosh” was considered profane, the Trump White House, where four-letter words were used as punctuation, must have taken adjusting to.

  “How are my evangelicals doing with it?” the president asked.

  “They’re doing just fine, sir,” Beulah said. “We’re emphasizing that Mr. Putin is a man of deep religious faith.”

  “He is. Good. Keep doing that.”

  “We’re also emphasizing that the Russian Orthodox Church is different from the Roman Catholic Church.”

  “It is? Okay. Does it matter? Is there a problem?”

  “Some of our more fundamentalist evangelicals view the Roman church as—”

  “The Whore of Babylon,” Katie said, rolling her eyes. “Cretins.”

  Mr. Trump grinned. He enjoyed it when his girls started hissing at each other.

  “Whore of Babylon?” he said, amused. “Really? Kinda harsh. I like it.”

  “Point is,” Beulah said, soldiering on, “we’re emphasizing that Mr. Putin is not Catholic. He’s Russian Orthodox. They’re different.”

  “How?” said the president. “Wait—let’s ask Monsignor Nutterman.”

  I froze. Mr. Trump realized he’d stuck his foot in it and quickly changed the subject by rounding on Lumpton.

  “Yo, Twiggy. How we doing? Everything good?”

  “We are proceeding apace, sir,” Lumpton said in his plummy voice.

  “What the fuck does that mean? Twiggy. English.”

  “Sorry, sir. Everything is going very well. We are coordinating harmoniously with the Russian embassy.”

  “Good. Sergey is happy?” Mr. Trump said, referring to the Russian ambassador.

  “He appears to be. Yes, sir.”

  “Well, let’s keep him happy. Anything Sergey wants, he gets. Including blow jobs.”

  Katie thought this was very witty. Beulah and Twiggy reserved comment.

  “We’re gonna put him up here.”

  “Sir?”

  “Putin. He’s gonna stay here. At the White House.”

  Lumpton cleared his throat, WASP for Are you out of your fucking mind, sir?

  “Sir, typically, heads of state stay at their own embassies. In certain cases we accommodate them across the street, at Blair House.”

  “No, no, no. We’re not doing ‘typical.’ We’re putting him here. It’s a big honor, right? He’ll be very impressed. You know, FDR had Churchill stay here during World War I.”

  Lumpton shot Judd a look: Please say something.

  Judd stirred. “Sir, there are serious security issues.”

  “Like what? They’re gonna plant bugs? Come on. He’s staying here. Twiggy—do we know yet if he’s bringing someone?”

  Lumpton consulted his notes. “I have thirty-seven people in the immediate entourage, not counting—”

  “No, no, no,” the president interrupted. “You’re being very slow today, Twiggy. Did you only have Grape-Nuts for breakfast? You need to eat more. Putin’s divorced. I’m asking, is he bringing a friend? A squeeze. Someone told me he’s dating some ice skater with tremendous thighs.”

  “Uh…” Lumpton shuffled through his papers. “I don’t have anything on that, sir. Perhaps Mr. Wootten…”

  The president turned to Judd.

  “I’ll have to get back to you on that, sir,” Judd said. “The Kremlin tends to be guarded on those details. During the Soviet era, we didn’t even know if Andropov had a wife. It’s probably safe to assume that Mr. Putin doesn’t lead a monkish existence.”

  “What’s the name of that female rock group he threw in jail?”

  “Pussy Riot.”

  Mr. Trump smiled. “Pussy Riot. Find out from the CIA who he’s shtupping. Not that they know anything. Idiots. Twiggy.”

  “Sir?”

  “Tell Sergey we would be very happy if he brings a friend.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Or two friends.” The president grinned. “Then he could have a pussy riot in the Lincoln Bedroom. What would old Abe think of that, huh?”

  “If I may, sir?” Beulah said. “Not to put the cart before the horse, but that could be a complication.”

  “How?”

  As a hospitality professional, I knew right away what concerned Beulah. And I didn’t envy the poor thing having to explain it.

  The evangelicals had been stalwart in supporting Mr. Trump, a thrice-married man. They’d withheld comment during the “grab ’em by the pussy” unpleasantness, and the Stormy Daniels unpleasantness. And the other unpleasantnesses. There’d been no tut-tutting or ahem-ing or sanctimoniousness. They’d bitten their tongues bloody throughout The Apprentice Does Moscow videos. But a state dinner with a presidential mistress? Evangelicals had standards.

  “Sir, not to be a Debbie Downer,” she said, “but the leadership of the Evangelical Council might find it awkward.”

  Mr. Trump scowled. “What, you’re telling me the president of Russia can’t bring his squeeze because it might offend the fucking evangelicals?”

  “I’m only raising it as a potential area of discomfort, sir.”

  “Jesus Christ,” the president grumbled. Katie sighed heavily to show that she, too, found this unbelievably prudish.

  “Excuse me,” the president said rhetorically. “I thought it was the twenty-first century. I didn’t realize we were still in the fucking Puritan era.”

  Katie and Beulah took off the earrings and went at each other. Katie declared she was tired of hearing about the “delicate sensibilities of these idiots.” Who were they “to dictate morality to the president of the United States”? Beulah, now in full Big Momma mode, countered that white evangelicals constituted the president’s single most loyal core. Their support had never wavered, despite “some
challenging moments.” (Delicately put, I thought.) What purpose was served, she said, by “making these folks sit down to dinner with some Russian strumpet with tremendous thighs?”

  She immediately apologized to the president for her choice of words. No matter. Mr. Trump was loving it. He liked to watch the female wrestlers on the Fox show Bitch-Mania Smackdown. Fox had tried without success to pitch it as “family fare.”

  Lumpton came to the rescue with a proposal: Why not invite Russian Orthodox patriarch Kirill to the dinner? Seat him with the evangelicals. It would divert them from harrumphing about Mr. Putin’s strumpet and her tremendous thighs. He’d regale them with stories about how Mr. Putin was making Russia Orthodox again.

  Katie and Beulah wiped each other’s blood from their fingernails. Beulah said she thought it was “Solomonic.” Mr. Trump expressed his approval by not calling Lumpton Twiggy anymore.

  Outside the Oval, Katie said to me, “What did he mean by that ‘Monsignor Nutterman’ crack?”

  “Who knows?” I said.

  34

  Paul called from the pay phone at his luxury residence at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Oleg had thought it over and was agreeable to a meeting.

  I greeted the news with mixed emotions.

  Where, this time? North Korea? Bhutan?”

  “Russia.”

  “Russia?” I said.

  “He says you tried to kill him last time. He only feels safe on home turf.”

  “It wasn’t us who did the shooting,” I said, weary of explaining. “I was there.”

  “Any progress on my pardon? This place is depressing, Herb. I’m going to end up like Jeffrey Epstein if you don’t get me out of here.”

  I couldn’t tell if Paul was threatening to hang himself, or if he was suggesting that someone might hang him and make it look like suicide. I didn’t really want to get into it.

  “The president said to tell you, ‘Hang tight.’ ”

  I realized this was an unfortunate choice of words. I sympathized with Paul’s predicament. With the election approaching, the dozen odd members of the Trump White House Alumni Felon Association were sweating it out about pardons. But Mr. Trump could hardly free them in the middle of a general election. Talk about bad optics. I urged Paul to be patient. But patience is a tough sell to people who spend their days trying to avoid being shanked or sodomized.

  Meanwhile—Russia? How was a White House chief of staff supposed to get to and from Russia in the middle of a presidential campaign without ending up on the front page of the Washington Post?

  I explained the situation to Mr. Trump. He considered.

  “Come on the Anchorage trip. You can duck out from there. The air force can fly you over and back. It’s not far. Sarah Palin says you can see Russia from Alaska.”

  Mr. Trump’s trip to Alaska was controversial. Our political people were having fits.

  Senator Umtiq—a Republican—was the other Republican senator who’d voted to convict Mr. Trump. As a consequence of her vote, Umtiq was now facing a very tough primary challenge, and Mr. Trump was determined to campaign for her challenger.

  I studied the atlas, looking for a place to have my tête-a-tête with Oleg. The only place that didn’t look like an outpost of the Gulag archipelago was Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (pop. 180,000). Grim, to be sure, but less grim than anything within a thousand miles. On the plus side, there would be no need to go in Catholic drag. (I decided not to tell Miriam about this outing, in case the CIA wanted to dress me like an Orthodox patriarch.) I could be reasonably confident no one in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky would recognize me.

  I searched the most expensive restaurants on Yelp. The choices were Da Vinci (“Very disappointing, Expensive”), Kalylan (“local folk restaurant with Dance”), and Pastrami Kamchatka (“Great wine and whole Kamchatka crab”). Pastrami? A no-brainer.

  I slipped away from Mr. Trump’s Anchorage rally while he was in the midst of a scorching denunciation, comparing Senator Umtiq to Benedict Arnold and predicting that she would soon take her rightful place in hell with John McCain.

  The air force flew me across the Bering Sea in one of their small, unmarked planes. I was a bit nervous. Kamchatka air space is not historically known for hospitality. I didn’t want to be a noodge, but I went forward to the cockpit several times to establish that Russian ground air defense knew we were friendly. We landed. I almost told the guys, “Keep the engines running.”

  Oleg was sitting at a corner table. (They prefer corner tables, Russian oligarchs.) Only half his normal private army was in attendance.

  No sooner had I sat down than he started in with, “Why you try to kill me in Rome, Errbert?”

  “Oleg,” I said firmly. “Enough. Please. I didn’t come this great distance to listen to you talk gibberish.”

  He rejoined that he had flown eight time zones. Hoping to end discussion on the topic, I pointed out that the bullets came just as close to hitting me as they did him.

  “Russian oligarchs tend to have more mortal enemies than someone who’s spent his entire career running hotels. So can we please move on?”

  We ordered our whole Kamchatka crabs. I’d have preferred pastrami, but Kamchatka crab you can’t get back home. To be companionable, I joined Oleg in shots of the local kelp-infused vodka—which I do not recommend—and we got down to business.

  He listened to what I had to say.

  “If Donald want videos to continue, why he don’t post them? I gave you thumb drive.”

  I’d anticipated this question.

  “Frankly, Oleg—and don’t take this personally—there was concern that the thumb drive might contain malware or something else that might infect our computers. It’s the White House. You can’t just insert Russian thumb drives into our computers. I’m sure you understand.”

  He looked at me curiously.

  “You don’t look to see what is on thumb drive?”

  “No. As I just told you. Out of concern for security.”

  He smiled.

  “So, this explains. Now everything is making sense. Okeydokey, arty-choky.” He seemed greatly amused.

  I asked, “Is there something on it other than your, may I say, highly indiscreet videos of Mr. Trump interacting with the beauty contestants?”

  Our crabs arrived. I can report that Kamchatka crabs are identical to Alaska king crabs. Their six-foot leg spans make them look like the aliens in War of the Worlds. Oleg stuffed his napkin into his collar and dug in.

  “What’s word you use? For what Donald do with girls?”

  “Interacting.”

  He laughed and snapped a meter-long crab leg in two with feral delectation.

  “Interacting. Yes. Much interacting by Donald with girls. So… Donald tells eighteen girls: each of you will win, pussycat. But first you must make interacting with me.

  “So. They make interacting. But—only one girl can win. Which is leaving seventeen girls unhappy. But Oleg, being good friend to Donald, says he will make okay. Oleg gives girls presents, money. Bling. Much bling. Bling, bling, bling.”

  “Yes, Oleg. I get it. Lots of bling. And?”

  “It’s expensive, making seventeen girls happy. But Oleg does. Because is good friend. But one girl—Katya is her name. Miss Ukraine. Oh, she is wery unhappy not to win. She say, ‘Fuck off with bling. This is not right. Donald promise me I win. I don’t win. I will make big noise.’

  “I say to her, ‘Darling. No. Take bling. You are young. You are beautiful. You give men erection from distance of a thousand meters. Go be model, find nice rich husband.’

  “But she says no. This is not right, not fair. Interacting with Donald was wery unpleasant. She will make fuss. Ukrainians. Wery difficult people. So.”

  Oleg tore off another primeval crab limb. I waited.

  “Yes? I said.

  “She died.”

  Oleg shrugged.

  “She… died?”

  “Um. Wery sad.”

  “Died… o
f what?”

  “Who knows. Wirus, maybe.”

  “Wirus?”

  “Um. From bacterias.”

  I was beginning to get a wery bad vibe.

  “Oleg,” I said, “are you telling me this woman died of… the same thing Glebnikov died of?”

  “Maybe. Who knows?”

  I tried to process.

  “Oleg,” I said, “is there something on the thumb drive other than the videos?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “What, exactly?”

  “Some conwersations between me and Donald.”

  “About…?”

  “Me telling Donald that girls are making fuss. And he’s saying, ‘Can you take care of?’ And I’m saying, ‘Yes, okay.’ ”

  I felt my chest constricting.

  “He said… ‘Can you take care of?’ Yes.”

  “But that only means… Oleg. He didn’t specifically ask you to… kill someone?”

  “No. Of course. He mean give them bling, whatever. Whatever is needed to make them not make fuss.”

  I exhaled so hard I thought I might pass out from lack of oxygen. “Phew” does not begin to express my relief.

  Oleg said: “Donald is wery naughty boy, yes. But he’s not asking Oleg to extinkuish girl.”

  “Understood, yes. But you say this Katya creature died? What…”

  “After contest, Katya is becoming girlfriend of Oleg. For a while, it’s nice. She is wery, wery hot, this girl. But soon she is becoming big pain in ass. Making all kinds trouble for Oleg. So, she get sick from wirus. Dasvidaniya. Bye-bye, Katya.”

  I suppose smearing Oil of Oleg on a troublesome girlfriend is one way of saying, “I don’t think this relationship is going anywhere.” Still. Russian oligarchs. One despairs.

  I said, “So, just to be clear, Oleg: there is absolutely no suggestion whatsoever on the tape that Mr. Trump asked you to…” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.

  “No, no. But,” he said, arriving at the nub of the matter. “Errbert. Think what media—enemies of people!—will say if they hear tape of Donald saying, ‘Can you take care of?’ And then knowing Katya dies. Would make big problem for Donald, I think.”