Yeltsin sat there at his desk with his eyes closed, the curtains drawn over his windows to block out the sunlight pouring in over the high east wall of Red Square. He wondered what the headaches, dizziness and early morning drinking said about the general state of his health. Certainly nothing good. And why not be expansive and think about its meaning vis-à-vis the state of the body politic? If, as he believed, the power of an elected president was largely symbolic in the modern world, how might the declining condition of a man who held that position be interpreted? A man who had scarcely had so much as a cold—and never had a drink during the day—in his entire life before taking office was now a man who had lost his appetite for sex but arose from bed each morning with an irresistible lust for his vodka. A man who had already spent too much time under the surgeon’s knife, he thought, absently rubbing the scar left by his last bypass surgery.

Yeltsin straightened, opened his eyes. The bookcase opposite his desk doubled and trebled in his vision. He took a deep breath, blinking twice, but the room remained unfocused. Dear heaven, he felt ugly. Much of it, he knew, was due to the pressures of dealing with Korsikov and Pedachenko. Especially the latter. He had been infecting the nation with his rhetoric for some time... and the infection had been spreading more rapidly than ever since he’d acquired a televised platform from which to promote his extremist views. What would happen if the situation in the southern agricultural areas worsened? It was one thing for Pedachenko to rail about the corrupting influence of Western dollars, and the threat that he believed NATO—and especially the Founding Act—represented to Russian interests. These were abstractions to his audience. But hunger was another matter. Everyone was capable of understanding it. And it would not be assuaged by calming words from political rivals. Pedachenko was clever and opportunistic. He knew which buttons to push. And there was no escaping his charisma. If the dreadful projections being made about the crop failure were even close to accurate...

Yeltsin jettisoned the thought before it could complete itself. He capped off the vodka, put it into his bottom drawer. At any minute the lights on his phone would begin to flash. His aides would arrive with their file folders and summary briefings. He would be presented with a multitude of problems, many requiring his immediate attention. Be given documents to read and sign.

He needed to pull himself together.