Smiling warmly, Orlov took the girl’s hands and led her over to the divan. He undressed her, and Alexsi could see she was shaking with fear.
Once she was naked also, Orlov said, again as if she didn’t exist, “As you can see, I am not aroused by her in the slightest. To do so, I press myself to her body to make physical contact and look only in her eyes. You will note that the eyes of every woman are beautiful, even if she is not. In a case like this where there is no attraction you must think of the most satisfying sexual experience you have ever had. In an opposite case where a woman deeply attracts you, in order to achieve longevity you must think of something that repels you.”
Now Orlov stopped talking. Rubbing his body gently against the girl on the divan, he gazed into her eyes and became erect.
Alexsi sat there like a theatergoer watching a play he did not really want to see.
Orlov began making love to the girl, using the primary and secondary zones of arousal and all the tricks he had lectured about, which Alexsi had also dutifully recounted in his paper. At least the girl had stopped shaking, but otherwise she didn’t seem to be responding at all.
Orlov entered her, and the intercourse continued for such a long time that Alexsi had to force himself not to time it, just out of curiosity. Then the girl suddenly gripped Orlov’s shoulders, arched her back, and let out that unmistakable cry of ecstasy. But Orlov didn’t slacken. He continued apace, and after a few minutes more the girl cried out again. Alexsi wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t been sitting there, and he would be willing to swear her climax had been genuine.
Orlov pulled out, and the girl actually hugged him. He gave her a little tap and gesture, and she dressed and left the room.
Standing there before him, Orlov said, “As you can see, the proper state of mind is vitally important. But as we have discussed previously, once you have achieved arousal your points are breathing, recognizing the moment of impending ejaculation and retreating before you reach it, and muscle control. And this muscle is…?”
“The one that stops the flow during urination,” Alexsi repeated dutifully. He couldn’t say much for the experience of being lectured by a naked and fully erect man, though it did make it easy to keep your attention fixed upon his face.
“Good,” said Orlov. “As you have seen, if you have done your work properly in bringing her to the proper level of arousal before penetration, and then sustain your erection, her climax is assured. And without ejaculation on your part, your endurance can be indefinite.”
Alexsi thought that the class must be over, but Orlov pushed the button by the door again. And proceeded to have five more girls over the next five hours.
The demonstration was undeniably impressive, but Alexsi would be hard-pressed to say whether torture would have been preferable to sitting in a chair and watching someone else fucking for five hours.
Orlov finally put on his clothes, and Alexsi’s relief was indescribable.
“Now, the student,” Orlov said, taking his place in the other armchair and lighting a cigarette.
As Alexsi had feared, Orlov was going to be sitting there. He dutifully took off his clothes, and his stomach felt like it had shrunk down to a hard little nut in the center of his gut. Never mind the first girl, he had to concentrate to keep his legs from shaking.
He pushed the button, expecting the worst.
But the girl who emerged through the door was extremely beautiful. A redhead with pale green eyes and skin like cream. She looked at him boldly and smiled. Normally that would have been more than enough to get him as hard as a rock, but no such luck with the feeling of Orlov’s eyes burning into his back.
Alexsi led her over to the divan and began to undress her, telling himself: slowly, slowly, slowly, and feeling like a schoolboy reciting in front of the chalkboard. Her body was gorgeous, with pert breasts, nipples like puffy buttons, and a warm flame of pubic hair between her legs.
He stroked her face and her neck and her shoulders and her arms. He slowly circled her breasts until he reached the nipples that he ever so lightly held with his thumb and forefinger. And, following his lessons, letting her breathing tell him when it was time to move on.
He touched the very tip of her nipple with the tip of his tongue, lightly circling across the surface as if the end of his tongue was the finest abrasive. He teased it as slowly as he could, until she grabbed his shoulders and tried to pull his mouth onto her breast. He let her, taking the nipple into his mouth with gentle sucking pressure while still teasing it with his tongue.
By the time he worked his way down to her pussy the girl was throbbing like an engine. But he was still as limp as a shoelace. Between following his steps as if he were taking a test, and Orlov sitting there staring at him, there was no hope. No matter what he thought of didn’t work.
He caught the girl looking around him to Orlov, and then as if at a signal she pushed him back a bit with a hand on his chest, bobbed her head down, and took him into her mouth.
No girl had ever done that before. She forced herself down onto him like a sword-swallower and sucked him in like a vacuum pump. He forgot Orlov, the room, the house, everything—and he was hard now.
While she was sucking him she swirled her tongue around the head of his cock just like he had done to her nipples, and all the detailed instruction and muscle control sailed away on a tide of pleasure. Her mission accomplished, the girl drew her head back while still sucking, and when he came out of her mouth with a pop he came all over her face.
Alexsi was mortified. He held his breath and waited for the girl to shriek in disgust. Her eyes widened with surprise, and then she began to giggle loudly.
Alexsi had no idea what to do. His first impulse was to grab a piece of clothing and clean off her face. But before he could do anything Orlov was suddenly between them, pushing him out of the way and violently beating the girl with his fists.
She screamed in terror and he knocked her off the divan onto the floor. Now that she was out of range of punches he kicked her toward the door as she scrambled wildly on her hands and knees to get away from him.
She went through the doorway like a soldier under fire diving for cover. Orlov aimed a final kick as she disappeared, and still in a towering rage grabbed up her clothes and heaved them through the doorway, finally slamming the door shut hard enough to take it off the hinges.
He turned to face Alexsi and his face was white with rage. “I’ll teach that little pig to laugh at a Soviet officer!” And then that rage flowed down to the only remaining target. “And you! Pathetic! Everything that you were taught, forgotten! Fucking dogs take longer to come than you. All the technique in the world is useless, useless without self-discipline!”
Alexsi just stood there naked and at attention. Face burning like it was afire, limp as a boiled noodle once again.
“Even if you could get it up again tonight, it would only be because you’re seventeen, not because you learned anything,” Orlov said contemptuously. “Any further training now would be a waste of time. Put on your clothes and get out of here. Practice on yourself so there won’t be a repeat of this disaster. Well? Get out!”
In the car the driver was looking at Alexsi in the rearview mirror. “Didn’t go so well?”
The last thing in the world Alexsi wanted was to talk about it. But here was someone else who would be reporting on his every expression. “No,” he muttered.
The driver leaned over the seat. He was an older man, with a gray moustache that was a duplicate of Stalin’s. “Don’t worry about it, son. You’re not the only one I’ve seen go in there, and the first time almost always ends badly. But when they’re done with you, you’ll be able to do it in Red Square at noon. Atop Lenin’s tomb. On May Day.”
Now that was something to look forward to, Alexsi thought.
24
1936 Moscow
“Your training is now complete,” Yakushev said. “The time has come for you to be operational.”
“Yes, Comrade,” Alexsi replied. If the entire point of their training was to make him happy to go out into the unknown, then it had worked. He felt like he hadn’t slept in a week after surviving all their final examinations. Chased by dogs, interrogated by policemen, pounding out Morse code in total darkness and up to his ass in freezing water, having sex with an audience watching. Yakushev assured him that it would be harder than the actual spying. He had better be right. At least he would be free of this bloodless vulture of a man. Now would come his final orders, all practicality. No emotional parting, no sentimental Russian kisses on the cheek from this one.
“There are a few things I should like to tell you now,” said Yakushev, as always lighting another cigarette. “We almost never send an agent as young as yourself into the field, mainly for reasons of maturity. But, as you know, in this case the legend and the operational situation demands it. I have complete confidence in you.”
“Thank you, Comrade.”
“You have no frame of reference, so perhaps you think your preparation has been identical to every other agent’s. I assure you this is not the case. We send thousands of secret agents outside our borders every year. In most cases they are trained to a certain level, and our expectations for them are at a certain level also. If they fail it is no great loss. We supply them with equipment that is necessary to their work, but if discovered will mark them as a spy and ensure their violent interrogation and eventual execution. They operate in networks that, if one betrays, others fall. You, however, will be different. You will take nothing with you but your wits, your memory, and your training. Normally an agent in your category would be teamed with another who would act as your radio and cipher operator. But not knowing the course of your future life, how could anyone remain alongside you? This level of security is unprecedented, and a mark of how much we value your potential as a penetration agent in one of our main adversary nations. It will be up to you to fulfill that potential.”
Alexsi would have been disappointed if there had been no threat.
“You know nothing about me,” said Yakushev. “I will tell you this. I have spent my career catching spies. Not like that pathetic little group of revanchists you were sent to infiltrate, but dangerous professionals from France, Germany, Japan, and England. All dedicated to overthrowing the Communist Revolution. Have you ever heard of Sidney Reilly, whose real name was Rosenblum?”
Alexsi shook his head.
“No matter. Suffice it to say that he and the others like him are dead, their missions failed. And every mistake they made has been stored away.” He tapped his forehead. “I have used this knowledge to make you uncatchable. It is why you were never sent to any of our special schools. I will never leave the Soviet Union. You cannot be betrayed. If you fail it will be because of yourself alone.”
Alexsi unfortunately recognized the import of that statement. If he was caught and the Germans began pulling out his fingernails, he could give them nothing. No identities of other spies he had gone through training school with. No secrets, except perhaps how the Soviets train a spy. He had only ever been in the Lubyanka as a prisoner. Apartments, streets, parks, factories, houses—he hadn’t the faintest idea what a secret police building looked like on the inside. It was very clever of them.
“Your legend is perfect,” said Yakushev. “You have no idea. Nothing is more difficult than for a Russian to impersonate a native German among Germans—just as difficult for a German, no matter how perfect their training, to come into this country and pose convincingly as a native Russian. You will be posing as a frightened, German-speaking Russian teenager who is traveling to a strange land for the very first time. In reality you are that Russian teenager. With good luck and your natural talents it should be possible for you to eventually rise to a position in Germany where you will be able to uncover their greatest secrets. Perhaps even personally bring about the inevitable victory of Communism in that country. Do not think I exaggerate. We gather information by many means, but a single spy in the right place and at the right moment may change the course of history. This will require years of patient effort on your part. Rest assured that we will always be with you to take care of everything you need. If you succeed you will join the greatest heroes of the Revolution and the highest honors will be yours. Complete your mission and you will never have a worry in your life.”
Now comes the stick, Alexsi thought.
“Open the album on the table beside you,” Yakushev ordered.
It was like a scrapbook. Full of dead men and women. Clippings of news articles, photographs of violent death. Shooting, strangling, poisoning, road accidents, bomb blasts. Germany, France, Switzerland, England, Holland, Sweden, Turkey, Egypt, Mexico, America. It went on and on.
“As you can see, our arm reaches everywhere,” said Yakushev. “You recall I once said that we are merciless toward anyone who betrays us? There is no escaping Soviet justice. Only two entities know you are a Soviet secret agent. Yourself and the Organs of State Security. So you can only be trapped by the Germans if you blunder. If, however, after some time in the West you begin to feel that you are beyond the reach of the Soviet government and therefore free to abandon your work, well, recall that many have made that mistake, and it is always their last. If we choose not to deal with you ourselves, it would be a simple matter for a German agent in this country, under our control, to discover and pass along the fact that you are in the service of the Soviet Union. And then your fate, rather than your reward, would be assured.”
Alexsi didn’t say a word.
“Your loyalty is not in question,” said Yakushev.
Everyone’s loyalty is always in question, Alexsi thought. It should be the national motto.
“It is just that the life of an agent has highs and lows. It is during the low moments that one can become weak. One final point. Never forget that those you will live among are our most bitter enemies. You are a Soviet fighter in plainclothes, and you must be merciless toward them.”
“Yes, Comrade,” Alexsi said dutifully. And then parroted what was expected: “I serve the Soviet Union!”
“I am not worried,” Yakushev said, patting the folder on his desk as if it were a puppy. “When I first read your file I told myself: this is a boy who has no mercy in him. And now I see I was correct.”
More fool you, then, Alexsi thought. He didn’t care a fig for Stalin or Communism or world revolution. He worked for them because he had to—he’d always done what he had to. They thought he was one of them; they’d put him in their special orphanage because he’d denounced his father and everyone who destroyed the Shultz family to the secret police. But he’d only done that because he wasn’t strong enough to kill them himself.
“Your pseudonym of Dante is now obsolete,” said Yakushev. “You will require a new one, to be used in all your communication and identification procedures.”
Wonderful, Alexsi thought. Now I have to think up something else.
“I have taken the liberty of choosing one for you,” said Yakushev, looking distinctly pleased with himself. “Your new pseudonym will be David.”
Alexsi just stared at him blankly. He supposed one name was as good as any other.
Yakushev looked disappointed. “You have never heard of the Bible story, of the boy who with only a rock and sling killed a giant?”
“No, Comrade.” A Bible in a Soviet library? If he had ever come across one, he’d think it was a trap so they could see who tried to read it.
PART II
The Sling and the Stone
25
1937 Munich, Germany
Alexsi stepped out onto the roofed but open-air platform of Munich’s Central Station. His breath and that of his fellow passengers condensed into a thick gusting cloud as they jostled together in their rush to free themselves from the train, but it was barely freezing—balmy compared to Moscow. It was still winter, though spring was near enough for hopeful anticipation. The air smelled of cigars and roasted chestnuts.
>
Most of the Germans knew where they were going. They put their heads down, squared their shoulders, and strode off as if they were pulling plows. Others, bewildered, looked about for signs or directions.
The Russian boy stood there as if anchored to the concrete, watching. Waiting. The wind shrieked around the metal roof like a soul in torment. They had taken away his sharp Moscow suit and cleverly picked out traveling clothes for him. A threadbare suit, typical Russian quality, seams coming apart, two sizes too large. It made him look small and helpless. During the trip older women had clucked over him and offered the food they’d packed for their own journeys.
There was no need for him to act tired and forlorn and bedraggled. The trip had actually been only slightly shorter and marginally more comfortable than the prison train from Baku to Moscow, except that at least there was food and drink and he could go to the toilet whenever he wanted.
No Russian, or German for that matter, could cross Poland now in safety, even by train, so he had traveled from Moscow to Leningrad to Finland. Then Sweden and down to Denmark into Germany. Train and ferry. At each border crossing he and his small battered case containing only a change of clothing, toilet articles, and a few books in German for the journey had been examined like bacteria under a microscope.
Alexsi was carrying a laissez-passer issued by the German embassy in Moscow, travel documents good only for a one-way trip. His name was Friedrich Shultz. The Russians didn’t just issue passports and open their gates to any of their citizens who wanted to leave. Anyone bearing a Soviet passport other than a Soviet diplomat might just as well wear a sign that said SPY. So perhaps even while they were hunting him in Baku the NKVD had let the German embassy fight with the Soviet Foreign Ministry to let Friedrich Shultz leave the country. Perhaps they had even made the Germans pay for him; Alexsi didn’t know.
The little traveling money he had left in his pocket were German marks. Just like a German, the Russians had all exclaimed, laughing, when it arrived from the embassy along with his papers. Just enough, not too much, until the capitalist had a good look at what he bought, they said. As always Alexsi had been silent, though based on his smuggling experience it was clear that no one anywhere else in the world would offer up anything they had, even a single ripe apple, for a Soviet ruble. And these Hitler Reichsmarks actually had value, unlike the Weimar marks that required a wheelbarrow full to buy a loaf of bread.
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