Love Behind the Lines

by M. L. Buchman

  An American man who—

  Irina tried to sit up—and flopped back on the mattress. Now that she’d tried to move, she could feel the ropes about her wrist and ankles. Not tight but, she pulled on them, not giving either.

  “Der’mo!” She opened her eyes. Oh shit!

  She was in a small, dingy bedroom. A battered dresser. A small, dust-hazed mirror. The ugliest wallpaper on the planet, blue with large red roses, that was peeling at the corners.

  And a bed, the one she was tied to. Her wrists were above her head, not uncomfortably so, but too far to reach the knots with her teeth. Her ankles were tied, but she could still feel her toes, so the circulation wasn’t cut off. A slight motion and she could tell that she still wore a shirt and her panties, but none of her weapons. A blanket lay over her, a woolen one. It itched.

  If this was an SVR prison cell, it was much more luxurious than she’d expected. If this was a hotel…it sucked!

  She raised her head to look about more carefully. Beyond the foot of the bed a man slumped deep in a battered armchair. He was slender, with dark hair that needed a trim. He needed a shave as well. His sidearm was on his lap, his booted feet were crossed on the foot of her bed, and his dark eyes were watching her.

  “Bet you feel like shit,” his voice was low and painfully astute.

  Her hangover sprang to the foreground. “Spasibo, parshiviy. I had not noticed.”

  “You’re welcome and I’m only an asshole when I’m in the mood. At the moment, I’m totally there. You know, it’s not your average person who falls asleep at gunpoint.”

  “Long day,” she countered.

  “Tell me about it.”

  She closed her eyes and swore to herself that she’d never drink vodka again.

  “Seriously, tell me about it. Start with your name.”

  “My name is Irina,” Irina what? Started with a K. “Irina Kovalenko.” Her gaff shouldn’t be too noticeable. “Had too much to drink.”

  “That explains the night, now tell me about the day.”

  She opened her eyes long enough to glare at him. A light curtain across the window kept her from telling what time of day it was, though it was still bright enough to hurt. She closed her eyes and let her head drop back to the pillow again.

  “Who are you, tolstak?” Because she wasn’t about to tell some unknown fat-ass about her day.

  5

  “Interesting place you have here, Grand Duchess.” Manny made it conversational when it became clear she wasn’t going to say anything more.

  She looked at him strangely when he called her that. Too far gone last night to remember naming herself as the youngest of the old Czar’s children.

  Once he’d been sure that she wasn’t feigning sleep, he’d stripped her outer clothes, tied her to the bed, and tucked her in. Then he’d investigated the house.

  The interior dimensions hadn’t matched the exterior and it hadn’t taken him long to figure out why. First and second floor each had hidden rooms, subtle ones, not easy to notice. Except he’d been trained by the very best instructors the US Army had on room clearing techniques—including identifying and opening hidden spaces. One space was packed with clothing in multiple sexes and sizes. He selected a few pieces that fit better than what he’d been able to scavenge off the clothesline. The other space had weapons, a nice forgery setup for making false passports, and a few radios.

  He’d also found a laptop and checked out the thumb drive he’d taken from her pocket. If she’d done even half of what was in the report he found there, he was impressed as hell. But it didn’t mean that he trusted her either.

  “Not my place,” the blond mumbled without opening her eyes. Christ, he could look at her all day. Even hungover she was a knockout. While crossing the city last night he’d noted that Ukrainian women were on the whole exceptionally attractive, but she was above and beyond.

  “CIA’s I assume, since they sent me here. Yet you had a key. What’s a drunken trollop doing with a key to a CIA safe house?”

  “I am no a drunken trollop!” She was angry enough to ignore her hangover and glare at him, at least one eye’s worth. He took pity on her and reached over to close one of the heavier curtains. “What is trollop?” She asked in a much gentler tone.

  “Whatever you say, Duchess. You were skunk-drunk last night, and parading around in men’s clothes without a bra despite your impressive figure. Now who the hell are you?” He’d had enough of stupid games. “And try to come up with a real name this time.”

  She sighed. “If I do, will you get me some aspirin?”

  “Sure. Might even let you take it too, Duchess.”

  “You would make lousy interrogator for SVR. No call me that.”

  “Whatever you say, Duchess. But I’m one hell of a pilot.”

  That brought her head back up to look at him, “Pilot for the Americans? The Night Stalkers?”

  He started to nod and then could only think of one way she could know that. It jolted him to his feet clenching his weapon.

  She cringed, so he slammed the pistol into his belt. He’d left his holster in the back of a handy police cruiser last night—which was bound to confuse the crap out of them though it had no markings on it.

  “You bitch!” She flinched as if he’d struck her. He’d never hit a woman, but he was awfully tempted to strangle one at the moment. “You cancelled an extract less than sixty seconds from pickup?”

  “No! I call three hours before. Three hours!”

  Manny didn’t even know how to answer that.

  It eventually led him to his untying her and the two of them sitting across the kitchen table from each other. It had one leg too short and kept rocking back and forth as they both drank burned coffee made with ancient grounds. The kitchen was as disreputable as the table and the only food was a bag of rice that probably had been there since before the Soviet Union had imploded.

  They determined that their watches were in sync. The abort-mission command had taken three hours (minus sixty seconds) to worm its way out of Langley and out to the field. Insane. Manny knew the Night Stalkers wouldn’t have delayed such a message; they’d know the risk.

  “Goddamn spooks,” he couldn’t help complaining.

  “Spooks? Ah, spies. I too am spy, but I am agreeing very much.”

  He smiled. It was hard not to smile at her. And not just because of her physical attributes. He enjoyed her in-your-face personality—milquetoast, quiet women never did it for him and she was anything but. Plus, he certainly did like the way she looked in just a men’s shirt, underwear, and socks. If she thought she was playing him by not getting fully dressed, it wasn’t going to work—but he wasn’t going to file any complaints about the scenery. For some reason the plain white socks just made the whole outfit real damn cute.

  She rested her elbows on the grimy table and leaned her head down into her hands. Her shirt hung forward and the scenery got a whole lot better. The upper part of her breasts were full, creamy…and bore dark patches the size of fingerprints.

  “Who marked you, Grand Duchess?”

  “I tell you to stop—” She glanced up at him, noticed the direction of his attention, then scowled before looking down at her own chest. “Moodak! That bloody dead bastard!”

  And she told him about the unlamented Sergey and the burned-out apartment.

  “If your cover was gone, why the hell did you cancel the extract?”

  “You supposed to save me, but you shot from sky?” She teased him. “Not the kind of hero-pilot a good girl is looking for.”

  “Then what kind of hero-pilot is ‘a good girl’ looking for?”

  6

  This girl was enjoying the hero-pilot sitting just across from her. He kept surprising her. Soon she might be telling him her real story. Actually, probably no reason not to. Why not.

  �
�I am Lyudmila Bykov. That is truth. I’m am named for Lyudmila the most famous woman sniper ever. She kill many German and Romanians here, in Sevastopol, during the World War Second. I am also pissed-off war orphan. Pissed-off, yes?”

  Manny nodded that she’d gotten it right.

  “I am nineteen when the Prime Minister Yanukovych enforcers put down the supporters of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. Yulia want closer ties to NATO and was jailed for it. Everybody except Russia declare her trial all bad. Unfair. My parents were very close to Yulia and were executed in their beds by ‘criminals unknown.’ A CIA recruiter found me when I was very drunk and very, very pissed-off. With their help I change my name, I start working here as coordinator, to help in government offices, with Russian Black Sea Fleet. You know they are stationed here? In Sevastopol?”

  “I almost got to see them up close and personal last night,” and she didn’t like the darkness of the frown on his face. Ever since he had untied her, he had looked relaxed and cheerful. But she did not forget the gun that was still sticking out from his belt and she could see the anger still there. She was glad it was not aimed at her.

  “I still work in office. No, no more. Last night I killed Alisa and became Irinia.”

  “Who is really Lyudmila. Good story, Grand Duchess.”

  “Why do you keep calling me this?”

  Manny shrugged as he crossed to the stove. His movements were quick and precise. It was the third time he had freshened their coffees though neither of them were drinking much. She had the feeling that he wasn’t very good at sitting still. Usually she wasn’t either, but the aspirin hadn’t gone to her head.

  “Where did you learn such good English?”

  “Parents. They buy me tutor so I’m ready to ready to serve in Tymoshenko’s government. As I say, true believers for all the no good it did them.”

  “So how to get out of here?” Manny was pacing about the kitchen.

  “Out of where?”

  “Crimea.”

  She looked up at him, “I’m not leaving.”

  “You don’t look stupid.”

  “There’s someone who betrayed me. I have to deal with that.” She was going to take Lesia Melnyk apart if it was the last thing she did to that sooka!

  “You going to end up dead in the process?”

  She didn’t have a good answer to that.

  This time Manny came to a stop. He squatted close in front of her. “There’s got to be a better choice than staying for revenge, Lyudmila.”

  If there was, she couldn’t think of it. Hope was something she had stopped believing in long before Sergey and his report.

  “My parents called me Mila,” and she did her best not to cry. Perhaps she would see them soon…too bad she didn’t believe in that either.

  7

  It rapidly became clear to Manny that he wasn’t going to make it out of Sevastopol alive without Mila’s help. She made a few discreet inquiries among her friends and Russian security was way up since the destruction of his helicopter. Nobody knew what had exploded outside their harbor, but their increased readiness eliminated any rescue by air. And by sea was even dodgier, which was why they’d risked the extraction by air in the first place.

  “Sometimes the only way out is through,” he had to solve this.

  For two days they barely slept as they strategized, discarding theories and escape routes as fast as they thought them up.

  “There’s no way that cutting your hair and dying it black would buy you more than a few days. It didn’t work in the Jason Bourne movies. It won’t work for you, Duchess. You’re too goddamn beautiful. And if you don’t show up for work on Monday, all sorts of alarms will going off.”

  After the initial sadness that had almost broken his heart to watch, Mila rallied. Her knowledge of government and the Russian military was deep…and not helping.

  “Maybe our ticket out of here is the woman who betrayed you. Tell me about your traitor”—weird thing to say to a spy. “This Lesia who informed on you to the SVR. We have to figure this out.”

  When he said “we” she’d shot him a smile that could have lit up the sky.

  “What?”

  “For almost a decade it has been ‘me’,” her voice was an intimate whisper. “You said ‘we’.”

  “That’s how the world spins,” he spoke quickly to cover what he really wanted to do next.

  He crossed to the window to get a little more distance.

  “I’ve got a team out there working the problem for me,” he waved toward the back of the building next door, an abandoned warehouse.

  His team had fed him several ideas during very brief radio calls, though none had panned out yet.

  “The whole world doesn’t work like the Russians and the CIA. Hell, I thought Patty and Quinn were going to fly right into the Russians’ guns to extract me. I had to risk the radio to call them off while I was swimming for shore.”

  And when he was sure that he once again had control of himself, they went back to their planning, but it had changed. It had changed from ‘me’ to ‘we’ in a way that Manny hadn’t anticipated. High pressure situation be damned, every single thing he learned about Grand Duchess Lyudmila of Sevastopol, the more he appreciated her. At a level of risk that only a Night Stalker could understand, she had fed a constant stream of actionable intelligence to the West. It hadn’t been enough to save Crimea from the Russians, but it had probably saved the rest of the country from invasion.

  By Sunday night they had a plan.

  It was shaky as hell, but they had one.

  When they were both too weary to think up another contingency, they’d dropped down side by side on a couch in what could laughably be called a living room.

  “What do you think our chances are? To survival?”

  Manny shrugged, “Anyone else, thirty percent at best. You and me, Duchess? I’m betting my life on it being a hundred.”

  “Are you always so positive?”

  “Never saw much fun in focusing on the other side of that coin. I mess up plenty, but that’s not where I live.”

  “That is good,” she nodded to herself, then nodded again. Her hair a slick slide of gold that he wanted to toy with every time she moved. “It’s not what I have done in past, but it’s what I will do in future. What about after?”

  “You mean after, as in if we get out of this alive?”

  8

  She poked him in the ribs, “When we get out of this alive.” She liked the intimacy of the gesture.

  “Right. Well, I’ve got some buddies who would love to meet you.”

  Mila could feel her skin go cold. She knew what kind of “buddies” people wanted to introduce pretty blonds to. It had served her well as a spy in the Ukraine, but Alisa, Irina, and Lyudmila were all three sick of being used for their body.

  “They’re in this odd little intelligence group with no name. Finding a trained insider in Ukrainian politics, fluent in English and Russian…they’re definitely going to want to meet you.”

  “That…” wasn’t what she’d been expecting. “Do they work with you very much?” Or would he be far away if she worked with them?

  Manny was nodding. “That’s kind of their purpose. It would be nice if…”

  She could hear him taper off, as if worried that he’d crossed some line. He was the strangest man she’d ever met.

  First, she hadn’t woken up naked and being raped.

  Once he’d released her—which he had done long before she would have if their roles had been reversed—she’d waited through the first day, expecting it to happen anyway. Or at least sex to happen; he didn’t strike her as a cruel man.

  But by now, they’d rarely been more than a step apart for two days and still he’d done nothing, though the way he watched her there was no question he’d wanted to.

 
Well, now she wanted to as well. No matter what he said, their chances weren’t good—their plan was simply the best of many terrible options.

  She rose and, taking him by the hand, pulled him to his feet. Once they reached the bedroom, he did an incredible job of making her feel absolutely grand.

  9

  “Hi, honey. Look who else decided to come along with Lesia?”

  Manny just about swallowed his tongue. Their plan had included a dinner with the woman who had betrayed Mila’s—no, she was back to being Alisa for one more night—Alisa’s trust.

  Just her.

  Instead, the two women were followed closely by a man in full military uniform who wore the one star and no red stripes insignia of a major general of the Russian Federation.

  “This is Lesia. Who I told you so much about,” Alisa was being a bubbly blond that he barely recognized, the party-girl facade worn by the Grand Duchess of sheer balls—bringing a major general to dinner. She turned to her former friend, a very attractive brunette. “And this is Manny. Isn’t he just the cutest?”

  That was a new one, but Manny wasn’t going to argue.

  Their escape plan was to convince Lesia to invite them out to her dacha in the country…where she apparently played mistress with her lover the general. Once clear of Sevastopol and the heavy protection surrounding the Black Sea Fleet, they could signal Patty and Quinn to meet them at the dacha, backed up by the hammer blow of the 5E Company in close support.

  However, Lesia had not come alone.

  “And this is Vlad,” the crazy blond hung onto the general’s arm for a moment. “He’s in charge of the Naval helicopter fleet at Kacha.” Alisa said that last bit like it was a slightly confusing throwaway line, but Manny heard “helicopter fleet” loud and clear. In that moment he forgave Alisa everything. There had to be a way to use this.

  He was suddenly damn glad that he’d arranged for the fliers of the 5E to hold at thirty kilometers out, pending his final call. He wanted to avoid a reenactment of three nights ago and it was a distance they could cover in six minutes or less. Who could predict where the evening was headed.