"Uh… sir," the secretary said carefully, eyes fixed on the tablet in her hands, "are you sure this is okay? I mean, this is… pretty graphic."
"What?"
The billionaire barely looked up.
He was sprawled across a white leather sofa by the pool, shirt open, skin gleaming with sunscreen, a glass of something expensive resting loosely in his hand. He waved lazily.
"I watched it. Nothing wrong with it at all," he said, grinning. "That commie loser's real face deserves to be shown to the whole world. Reagan will love it. Hell, he might jerk off to it. Hahaha."
Henry Weinstein, Reagan's close friend, donor, and unofficial cultural hitman laughed at his own joke.
The secretary swallowed.
"But sir… this movie, it's too realistic. I mean, Andrei's childhood, the school photos, the uh… the sexual frustration angle. And that new producer—"
"Ah!" Henry snapped his fingers. "Andy Zolan. What a fucking find. A real hidden gem. You know what I like best? He didn't ask for a single dollar. Not one. Kissinger won't find a fault and Washington will eat this up. Best deal of my life."
The secretary realized it was pointless. To Henry, this kind of thing wasn't controversial. Just another hit job with a bigger budget.
He poured himself another drink and, without even looking, let his hand drift onto her thigh casually.
She stared straight ahead.
God, I hate my life, she thought.
Out loud, she said dutifully, "Sir, it's almost time for Miss Bodyguard."
"What?!" Henry jolted upright. "Why didn't you say so earlier? This Russian timezone bullshit is unbearable. I'll tell Bush to fix it."
He grabbed the remote and flipped on the TV.
The screen lit up with Mao, shirtless, oiled, grinning like a used-car salesman on cocaine.
"Hello, comrades!" Mao shouted. "Do you have the courage to be a bodyguard?!"
"Yes!"
A lineup of women answered in unison, tall, short, curvy, athletic posing shamelessly as the camera glided over bare skin and tight smiles. The cameraman was clearly enjoying himself far too much.
At first, most contestants were from Soviet republics. But after two months that had changed.
The secretary watched in numb silence while Harvey shouted encouragements and obscenities at the screen, sloshing his drink.
"Jesus Christ, Andrei," he barked. "You sick communist bastard. Look at this degenerate shit!"
You're one to talk, she thought.
Mao began introducing the contestants.
"British! French! Italian! Swedish! Egyptian! Japanese! Chinese! Indian! Latin American!"
Then he paused.
"Oh? It seems we have a special participant today. Miss Amanda, please introduce yourself."
"Hi. I'm from Texas, USA. Ready to go."
"Oh! USA!" Mao laughed loudly. "Hee-haw! A cowgirl! Congratulations, you're our first American contestant. Unless…" He tilted his head. "You're actually an actress?"
The woman smirked.
"Well… since I already work in the pimp business, I ride horses pretty well."
She licked her lips. The audience laughed. The joke landed.
But then she went a bit too far.
"I was told the Soviet leader had a big thing down there and rotates one in each week. Maybe I just had to make him go for a chance."
"Who told you that? Bring me her contractor. Now."
Though it was a joke, Mao freaked out. After all, this was no different from slander against the Party.
Men in black suits appeared out of nowhere. KGB. Cameras were shoved aside and the broadcast stuttered.
This was not scripted.
Realizing he overreacted, Mao tried to calm the situation.
"Wait. Stop. What are you doing? You're ruining the show."
He turned back to the camera and gestured broadly.
"Miss, you misunderstand. My friend here would never behave improperly unless invited—and even then, only with consent."
"In the Soviet Union, bodyguards work eight-hour days. They receive pensions. They have commissioners to report inappropriate advances. We promote gender equality.""
He nodded solemnly.
"This is why my comrade the great general secretary supports 'Me Too' to ensure workplace safety. Thank you for your understanding."
"Now! On with the show!"
The feed stabilized and Mao clarified again that it was a small glitch. The audience applauded, sounding genuine enough.
But somehow, absurdly, it raised Soviet standards.
The secretary stared at the screen.
For the first time, a dangerous thought crossed her mind.
…Maybe I should apply.
_______________________________________________
There was a saying his former mentor from his reporting days used to repeat: authoritarian regimes always produce the funniest jokes.
One of them went like this.
One day, Ivan, a collective farm worker, caught a huge fish in the river. Beaming with pride, he ran home and told his wife, "Look! Tonight we eat fried fish!"
She glanced at it and said, "We don't have any oil."
"Fine," Ivan said. "Then we'll boil it."
"We don't have a pot."
"Then we'll roast it!"
"There's no firewood."
Ivan stared at the fish for a long moment, cursed, and threw it back into the river.
The fish swam for a bit, then suddenly leapt out of the water and shouted, "Long live Gorbachev!"
Andrei heard the joke on a newly launched late-night show on state television.
It wasn't about him. Not yet.
The effect was obvious. Natasha, usually so composed, couldn't hold back her laughter. Andrei could already imagine the rest of the country doing the same.
In Andrei's opinion, the joke was crude, lacking insight into political factors.
But did he really have any moral high ground left to judge others? He had ghostwritten his own biopic using his own country's intelligence agency. Even the most shameless narcissistic dictators had never done that.
In his defense, no one would ever find out. The biopic was technically the work of "independent" filmmakers in Hollywood. They are the enemy, don't you see?
Even if you don't believe me, at least consider all the evidence the prosecution dug up, don't you?
Despite all these tricks, he knew deep down that if he didn't do something soon, the joke would be about him.
Everything looked stable on the surface. The kind of calm that only existed because no one dared breathe too loudly.
Andrei wasn't blind. He was also painfully aware of another truth: he wasn't a genius. He was just a two-bit idiot who had stumbled into power. Even the clever men in the future, with better tools and better timing, would fail to hold it together. So how was he supposed to manage it?
He sighed and switched to news channels, finally turning to foreign affairs. The part he had been deliberately ignoring.
As General Secretary of the Soviet Union, he couldn't afford to look inward forever.
If he wanted to survive, he had to remind the world that the Union was still a superpower.