by Paul Kenyon
She shooed everybody out of the tent except Inga. "Unpack my hotsuit, will you?" she said.
Inga rummaged through the pile of gear against the tent wall. "The batteries are only good for sixty hours. You'll be using up survival time you might need on the Russian side."
"I'll try to conserve power."
Inga looked worried. "It's forty below. No wind, but if one comes up…"
"Then I'll use up some more survival time."
Inga handed her the hotsuit. It looked as flimsy as a body stocking: a smooth silky thing that you could have squeezed into a fist. But it wedded NASA's space age technology to the Air Force's survival research. There was an inner layer that somehow managed to be fluffy, despite the fact that it was thinner than a silk kerchief. The trick was a superdense mat of synthetic pressed fiber with thousands of microscopic air pockets and projecting cilia per square inch. There was a metallic middle layer that reflected back body heat. And another layer that trapped heat. And a tough, smooth, waterproof outer layer with an oddly structured cross section that had been developed, at a cost of millions, for a new type of skintight space suit. The polymer material acted as an impermeable membrane for anything — gases or liquid — trying to get in. But it let the wearer's body breathe, passing through moisture, carbon dioxide and — through pinpoint valves that became flaccid past a certain temperature — excessive body heat.
Penelope shucked off the long Johns and stood naked in the firelight. The flames played ruddy highlights on her smooth long limbs and rippling musculature. Her body was as taut and functional as any hunting animal's. She reached for the synthetic pelt that modern technology had made for her.
It was all one piece. She pushed her feet into the boots, soft and flexible as suede slippers, and pulled the hotsuit up her legs. It fit like a second skin, showing the powerful calf muscles and long line of the thigh. The upper part had built-in support; nothing, not even a bra, could be allowed to interfere with the efficient thermal design. The top held her breasts firmly but comfortably, allowing them to move without hindering her capacity for violent action. There were thin, sensitive gloves of the same space age materials, with extra heating wires for the fingers, and an attached hood and face mask, with two flaring, tip-up goggles that looked like cat's eyes.
The battery, a flat, flexible package of plastic electrolites, fit into a pocket at the thigh. It fed a network of fine platinum wires embedded in the suit.
"You look like the Snow Maiden," Inga said with a trace of awe.
It was a good description. The white clinging garment gave her the appearance of a naked woman, sculptured in snow, with a spectral featureless face out of some northern myth.
Penelope's laugh was muffled by the mask. "Good camouflage," she said.
Inga held out one of the Galil automatic rifles. "Here."
"I'll stick with the Bernardelli," Penelope said. "I'm taking no luggage this trip."
She checked the clip of the little gold-plated automatic and slipped it into the pocket on her left wrist. It hardly showed. Only four inches long and as thin as a Ronson lighter, it was the smallest .25 pistol ever made.
"It has no range."
"I'll work close," Penelope said.
"At least take a couple of grenades," Inga pleaded.
Penelope thought it over. "All right." She slipped two of the plastic grenades into the hotsuit's exterior pockets, molding the pliable material along the contours of her body. The grenades were sandwiched in flexible fabric, with detonators no larger than a lipstick. You could mold them like a snowball for accurate throwing.
Penelope picked up the belt kit and the book-sized package containing the telescoping skis and poked her head out the tent flap. Around her, the Lapp encampment was silvery in the starlight. The cone-shaped tents, like fur teepees, were scattered at intervals over the snowfield, the owners' sledges parked outside them. She could smell the smoke of cooking fires and the pungent aroma of dung and wet reindeer fur. Somewhere a dog barked, warning a stray deer back to the main body of the herd.
She slithered out of the tent on her belly, almost invisible against the snow. In a series of quick acrobatic turns, she rolled like a log, going a good fifty feet without leaving a recognizable track.
She stopped. Sitting in front of one tent was a drunken elderly Lapp, crooning to himself with an aquavit bottle in his hand. He raised it to his lips and took a swig.
She made sure no one else was about, then ran at a crouch until she was over a low rise that put her out of sight of the encampment. She pulled the telescoping segments of the skis out to their six-foot lengths and locked them in place. They had teflon-coated bottoms, and were light as feathers. Her feet went into sock-like housings. Gas from a little aerosol can inflated the ingenious bladders, holding her feet as firmly as any Strolz binding.
She opened out the telescoping aluminum poles and twisted them to lock them. With a shove, she was on her way, gliding like a white wraith over the ghostly snowscape.
The little chemical detector on her wrist was about ten thousand times more sensitive than a bloodhound's nose. It could recognize as few as a hundred molecules in a cubic meter of air. The needle snapped westward, toward the source of gasoline fumes.
An hour later, the concentration of gasoline molecules had reached something like 200,000 per cubic meter. Penelope stopped.
The land here was a washboard of gentle undulations, dotted with Arctic scrub. There was nothing visible against the skyline.
Then she saw it. One of the stars in Orion was missing. It was Betelgeuse. It should have been just above the horizon. Something dark was hiding it.
She lifted the slanting goggles and squinted. There was a little dark shadow against the luminous sky that could have been the peak of a tent.
She deflated the bindings and took off the skis. She folded them into their flat book-shaped package and clipped it to her belt. She kept one of the poles to use as a staff.
She approached cautiously, taking whatever cover she could. From behind a skeletal stand of birch, she saw it from less than a hundred yards.
There were the fish-head shapes of two snowmobiles, rental plates on their hoods. Behind them stood a two-man pup-tent.
One man was dozing in front of a fire. He was bulky as a stuffed teddy bear in his snowmobile suit, his back propped against a knapsack. One gloved hand was flung out, close to a high-powered hunting rifle.
Penelope crouched, making herself small. Where was the other man?
As she watched, he came stooping out of the tent flap. He was taller and leaner than the dozing man, but the padded suit gave him a bolster-like shape too. He bent over his friend and said something. There was no response. He shook the other man, then turned around in disgust and went back into the tent.
The two of them were within the twenty-foot radius of her grenades. She only had to get another hundred feet closer for an accurate toss.
She hesitated. They could be a couple of innocent hunters. Perhaps they were after wolves. In that case there might be a reason for them to trail a Lapp reindeer migration. Bait.
It was highly unlikely. But she didn't fancy blowing up a pair of vacationing businessmen just because she was nervous. She began working her way around the stand of birch for a closer look.
The hood and the mask were what betrayed her. She had the flaps up over the perforated earholes, but her own keen hearing was more than half muffled. She didn't hear the crunch of a footstep in the snow until it was too late.
She whirled, her right hand darting toward the gun in the other sleeve.
"Nyet!" a harsh voice shouted.
He was a round-faced, chubby man, shivering in a flannel shirt and sweater. He was pointing a formidable-looking Tikka over-under shotgun-rifle at the exact center of her belly.
"You speak English, I'm told," he said. "Don't move. Don't move one little bit."
She studied the muzzle brake of the Finnish weapon and decided he was giving her excellent
advice. It was set for the twelve-gauge upper barrel. At this range, it would spill her guts out into the snow.
The chubby man lifted his head, not taking his eyes from her, and shouted.
"Karp, I've got her!"
The other man came out of the pop-tent. He picked up the rifle next to the stuffed figure by the fire and headed up the slope toward them.
"This tells the story, eh, Gorev?" he said when he arrived. "Look at her. She looks as if she's naked. Nobody has gear like that. Except the gneeloi bagahtee CIA and their gadgets."
"Are you warm enough, darling?" the chubby man said.
"Warmer than you are, dvayooradnee," she said.
His eyes strayed toward the stuffed snowmobile suit by the fire. "I believe it," he said. "I've been shivering out here for an hour. But it worked, didn't it?"
"How did you know I was coming?" Penelope said.
He grinned a sloppy grin. "Our primitive friend saw the Ice Queen head west out of camp…"
"Gorev!" Karp snapped. "Shut up!"
Gorev looked sulky. He waved his twin-barreled weapon. "Let's get back down there. I'm freezing."
They herded her down toward the pop-tent. It was very professional the way they got her inside. Karp made her lie on her belly, the hunting rifle prodding the nape of her neck, her arms held behind her. She had to wriggle through the low flap with Karp stooping and straddling her. There wasn't a fraction of a second when she could have rolled over to an effective position and caught him coming through the entrance.
He was just as ingenious about immobilizing her without having to approach her frontally. He told her to insert her hands between the tent fabric and two of the umbrella struts that supported it. Only after she was sitting against the wall of the tent, her arms stretched horizontally outward, did he allow Gorev to lash her wrists to the struts.
Gorev peeled off her hood and face mask. His little eyes flickered when he saw the rich cascade of dark hair tumble free, and took in her flawless beauty.
"Exceptional, my dear Karp," he said with a sly expression.
Impatience showed on Karp's ascetic features. "Search her."
Gorev began patting her down from the armpits, sneaking his hands around for a good feel of her breasts. "She can't be concealing much in this outfit," he said.
He found the tiny automatic and the plastic grenades, and put them aside with her utility kit. The skis intrigued him.
"Everything with the Americans folds up," he said. "Chairs, beds, now even skis."
Penelope tugged at her ropes. They seemed firm. "Are you two boys the KGB representatives at the Helsinki embassy?" she said.
"We'll ask the questions," Karp said sharply.
"You're on Finnish territory, you know."
"So are you. And planning to cross over into Russia."
"Who told you? Your primitive friend?"
Karp gave Gorev an annoyed look. Gorev looked resentful. The two men got on one another's nerves. Penelope filed the fact away for future reference.
"Why are you crossing over to the Kola Peninsula?" Karp said.
"I'm running a reindeer survey," Penelope said. "For Santa Claus."
Karp slapped her across the face, hard. Gorev looked pained.
"What interests you on Kola?" Karp shouted.
Penelope said nothing.
"Or maybe it isn't Kola," Karp said. "Maybe it's Kanin."
"That's right," Penelope said. "With this suit I can walk on water."
Karp slapped her again.
Gorev pursed his lips. "She may be telling the truth," he said. "My man went through the equipment on their sledges. There couldn't have been anything larger than a rubber raft. And you can't cross all that open Arctic water on a rubber raft."
Karp whirled on him. "We don't know what arrangements they may have made at the waterfront," he said. He turned back to Penelope. "What's going on across the bay?"
"Didn't they tell you?" Penelope said sweetly. She watched Karp's face. He was getting rattled. Her attitude wasn't what he expected.
"We'd better notify Penkin," Gorev sighed. "He can take care of it from here."
Penelope could have kissed the chubby man. He'd just told her that these two clowns hadn't gone any further with the information their Lapp agent had given them.
"No!" Karp said. "We'll get it out of her. Then well round up her friends with the regular security force on Kola. We'll wrap it up for Moscow ourselves."
"Who's your Lapp friend?" Penelope said. "Is it Vana?"
Karp was thumbing through a handbook. Penelope recognized the cover. She'd studied it herself during her training. It was the KGB manual of interrogation techniques.
"Here we are," Karp said. "Page 43. Women. Gorev, get me a razor blade from your shaving kit. And a pair of pliers." He turned a page. "And melt some paraffin in a tin cup. I'll need a small funnel — you'll find one with the extra fuel cans. And put the little crowbar in the fire to heat."
Penelope shuddered. She remembered page 43 vividly. But it didn't get really bad until page 46. That was where the permanent mutilation started.
Gorev spread out an assortment of improvised torture implements on the nylon tent floor in front of Penelope. It was an incredible array: needles and pins and tweezers and a cake of soap soaking in a cup of hot water and a shovel handle with a sheet of abrasive tacked around the end, and all the other makeshift devices the KGB handbook recommended when you couldn't get to a proper interrogation room.
They were laid out in strict order. Karp was going by the book.
"Open up her suit," Karp said.
Gorev obeyed eagerly. He unzipped the hotsuit from throat to crotch, looking disappointed when the built-in cups continued to hold her breasts on either side of the bare vee between them. He took the edges in his hands and pulled them further apart. Her breasts spilled out.
"Enjoying yourself?" Penelope said.
Gorev was staring the way a starving man stares at a feast. Karp was looking at Gorev in disgust.
Penelope arched her back, as if she were trying to squirm away. Her breasts rippled. Gorev grew more agitated. So did Karp.
She kept up her squirming. Their distraction increased. So far, so good.
"Gorev, can you get her the rest of the way out of that suit without untying her hands? I'll need access to her vagina." He said the word with a grimace of distaste.
"You'll have to help me," Gorev said.
Together they pulled and tugged until her legs were out of the hotsuit. She cooperated, while seeming to resist. It wouldn't have been possible without her agile acrobatics. When they finished, the hotsuit covered only her arms and shoulders, dangling behind her like a cape.
Her feet were bare. That was the important thing.
She picked up the razor blade in her toes. They were still busy, peeling the hotsuit up an extra inch or two. They didn't notice that her kicking feet had brushed the neat row of torture implements.
Still writhing and tossing to distract them, she made a long slit in the nylon floor of the tent. It was easy. During her training she'd put in long hours practicing the art of picking things up with her toes and manipulating tools with them.
She put the razor blade back where she'd found it. Her leg covered the slit in the floor and stayed there.
The two Russians moved back and studied her. Karp picked up the first object, a pin.
She gritted her teeth. She'd just have to endure it. She couldn't do anything while there were two of them in the tent.
An hour later, Karp squatted back on his heels for a rest. He was sweating. He surveyed her naked body, looking at the marks he'd left.
"You're very stubborn," he said.
Mentally, Penelope inventoried the damage herself. Not too bad, so far. Nothing that wouldn't heal. There were some pin punctures in her breasts, hurting like hell and making her feel sick. It was going to bum for a few days whenever she urinated. There were a few painful minor burns here and there. And one of her finge
rnails was turning black.
Karp studied the row of implements. The next object was a cigar.
He held it out to Gorev. "Light it," he said.
Karp was a non-smoker.
Gorev puffed at the cigar till its tip was a cherry red. He handed it back to Karp.
"Which eye?" Karp said. "The left or the right?"
Gorev looked sick.
Penelope felt a little sick herself. This was phase two. From here on it was downhill all the way.
Karp knelt in front of her with the cigar. "Last chance," he said.
She shook her head. She could feel the heat of the cigar on her cheek.
"Too bad," he said. He raised the cigar.
"Karp," she said.
He waited, the cigar poised in front of her eyes.
"Aren't you out of sequence?" she said. "The poker is next."
Karp looked startled. He picked up the KGB manual and flipped the page. He flushed with embarrassment.
"You're right," he said. "I forgot. It's heating outside."
Penelope held her breath. Thank God, Karp was compulsive!
"Gorev," Karp said, "go outside and get the crowbar. It should be white-hot by now." He turned back to Penelope. "You needn't congratulate yourself," he said. "If you know the handbook, you know what I'm going to do with the crowbar."
"It's the only way you could do it, Karp darling," Penelope said.
He flushed again. "Did you hear me, Gorev? Get the bar."
Gorev went outside. Penelope showed her teeth in a sneer. She had only a few seconds to get Karp mad enough to come close to her. It wouldn't work otherwise.
"Pravda glaza kolet!" she spat.
He walked on his knees toward her and slapped her face. She thrust both legs through the slit in the floor and stood up.
It took all her strength: a mighty heave that tightened her leg muscles and strained her arms and shoulders, bound to the tent struts. She could feel the snow, cold on her bare feet.
