He shot her a mocking look, barely decreasing speed as the sports car swung onto a dark residential road, tall conifers huddling close to block the light.
“Don’t get excited, Counselor. While I was waiting for you outside that charming Uzbek restaurant, I placed a few calls. We’re borrowing a friend’s dacha for our ‘appointment.’”
“Who’s the friend?” A flicker of unease slid across her skin. They’d gone pretty far from the center of town for a discussion that could have been handled right there in the Embassy.
“Just a businessman,” he shrugged. “Since his business has nothing to do with ours, and since I rarely see him, one may be assured that his dacha is private.”
Meaning the place shouldn’t be bugged. Unless Kostenko himself was wired. But better not to comment on surveillance matters, since the car itself might not be clean. Depending on how much line his minders allowed their rogue submarine captain before they reeled him in.
She watched the night deepen, the orderly rows of yellow-lit windows gradually walled away behind the impenetrable forest. As they coasted along snugly in the heated car, the thunderous strains of Prokofiev streamed from the speakers.
She jumped when the driver’s window hummed open an inch. The captain propped a cigarette between his lips and lit up, the ember glowing red in the darkness.
“Cold?” he murmured, seeing her shiver.
“I’m fine.” Alexis felt compelled to fill the intimate silence that wrapped around them, to impose additional distance. Inoffensive chit-chat on neutral topics, that was what people did to fill the time with strangers.
“I understand you’re a sports enthusiast,” she ventured. “And it’s, um, obvious you keep in shape.”
Conjured by her words, an inconvenient memory reared up. God—that kiss. The muscled hardness of his body snugged against her, making her hotter than a five-alarm fire. The mind-blowing way he’d smelled, the way his hand parked against her derriere like it belonged there. Alexis thanked her lucky stars for the darkness that hid her face.
“I do some heli-skiing, deep-water diving, other things,” he said, through a smoky exhale. “Summited K2 without oxygen last year.”
“That’s rather impressive.” She had to give him credit for that little feat. “Didn’t I read somewhere that one in five who attempt the ascent without portable oxygen die trying? I understand it’s supposed to be a trickier mountain, technically speaking, than Everest.”
“It is, but I built up to it,” he said dryly. “Mostly, to maintain my parameters, I train at the dojo. There’s another similarity between us for you—both black belts in tae kwon do.”
“Of course, that would be in my dossier.” And wouldn’t she like to get her hands on that file, and find out exactly how many of her youthful indiscretions Kostenko already knew about?
She hadn’t tried anything most college kids didn’t: underage drinking, a few unconventional sexual exploits, the recreational use of a controlled substance or two. But then, most of her peers hadn’t gone on to occupy highly sensitive government positions that required a top-secret security clearance. In her world, there was no room to be anyone but the quintessential good girl. Over time, she’d learned to become what was called for—at least on the surface.
“You’re familiar with my background in archery, I suppose.” Deftly he knocked ash into the night. “I used to practice rather seriously, though I rarely touch a bow these days.”
Looked like his files were better than hers. “Our analysts tend to focus their efforts on professional matters. Hobbies are less interesting to them—as long as they’re legal.”
Archery would explain those powerful shoulders and the formidable biceps that bulged against his sleeves. The five-star physique that gave her shivers, though she was working hard to overcome that. There weren’t many guys who could overpower her in a fair fight, but she guessed he might be one of them.
And that ought to put her on guard, damn it, instead of turning her on.
“Tsk, tsk.” His mouth quirked as he ground out his cigarette. “It is a combat skill. How can your analysts have missed it?”
“I’ll have to reprimand them,” she countered. “Do tell, captain.”
“I made the Soviet Olympic team.” Minutely he adjusted the bass on the stereo, frowning as he listened. “This was before I joined the navy, when I was younger. But we boycotted the Los Angeles games, as you’ll recall, so I never competed.”
Archery, mountain-climbing, diving, karate. All power sports that required focus and discipline, as well as strength and stamina. And not a team sport in the lot. Victor Kostenko might be a superb athlete, but he was also definitely a loner.
Discreetly she probed for more. “I take it you gave up archery when you enlisted?”
His shoulders stiffened, jaw knotted, biting off the words. “I scaled back in order to spend my limited off-duty hours—with the woman who later became my wife.”
So at last we come to the wife. That is, the ex-wife.
Keen interest sparked through her, though his demeanor hardly encouraged it. But who knew when he’d give her another opening? She moistened her lips and thrust, already braced for his riposte.
“Why did she leave you?”
“Isn’t that in my file?” He scowled into the rear-view mirror. “I’m certain your government is aware of the precise circumstances under which my father’s boat sank.”
“We know he was acquitted of criminal negligence after the inquest,” she admitted. “There was an article on it in Krasnaya Zvezda.”
“Yes, well.” His words were clipped, warning her away. “What Red Star didn’t print was the evidence that suggested mutiny by the crew. Because of his ethnicity, and the political tension between Russia and Ukraine at the time, the investigators concluded that my father was attempting to defect with the boat.”
His hands tightened on the wheel. “The crewmen who died with him were proclaimed heroes for stopping him.”
God, there was a minefield of pain—anger, betrayal, disillusionment—buried under those chewed-off words. Alexis had to admit she felt for the guy. “That was when you lost your command, wasn’t it?”
His reply was brusque, rebuffing any attempt to sympathize. “When they recalled me to Moscow, I returned to find that my wife, for whom I’d felt some affection, had left me. For obvious reasons, I chose not to contest the divorce.”
A beam of headlights from an approaching car swept briefly across his face, sealed up tight as a locked door. Sneaking a peek at his profile, Alexis wanted to ask if he’d thought his father guilty. But even if he felt like talking about it, this wasn’t something they could discuss in the car without objections from their listening audience. She could be accused of soliciting classified information, or he could be accused of divulging it.
Instead, she pursued the one truth she burned most to know—for what she hoped were purely professional reasons. She’d be more effective in negotiations with him if she knew what made him tick.
“Do you still love her?”
His piercing gaze arrowed over her, his tone inscrutable. “Is that for my dossier, Alexis? Or for yourself?”
“I’m just trying to understand you,” she breathed, her heart beating double-time, hands curled around her knees. “It’s the sort of question one colleague asks another over cocktails, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” he countered, his Nordic eyes guarded. “In that case, the answer is no. I stopped doing that a long time ago.”
Stopped loving your wife? she couldn’t help wondering. Or just stopped loving?
He swung the car into another tight turn, surging onto a dark driveway that wound through the trees—evidently private. The woods huddled so close against the narrow track, branches scratching against the hood, that Alexis would have missed the turn entirely. Now the vehicle’s beams sliced across the pitch-black forest, lighting heavy drifts of virgin snow. The car twisted among the trees, with no sign of human habitation
to be seen.
What am I doing here? She shivered. Alone in this remote location, at night, with this renegade Russian? And no one at the Embassy had a clue where she’d gone. Was she really willing to trust him? Or was she so naïve, so willfully blind that she’d pretend not to know why he’d brought her here?
The headlights swept across a swaybacked cottage tucked among the trees, snuggled low and protected under a blanket of snow. Quaint wooden lace crowded the eaves and shutters, the peasant style that hearkened to the land’s pagan roots—predating the Soviets by centuries. Through the veil of starched lace curtains, amber light glowed through the windows. Hearth-smoke puffed from the stone chimney.
“Here we are,” the captain murmured, pulling smoothly behind the house to park in a clump of sentinel pines, where the car could not be seen from the driveway. Alexis scanned their surroundings for other vehicles, but a Sherman tank could have been hidden in that stygian darkness and she’d never know it.
She fastened her coat and flipped up her fur-lined hood, collected her briefcase, and emerged into a sharp, brittle cold that threatened to shatter her skin like glass. Her boots broke through a crust of snow, and she floundered in knee-high drifts.
Swiftly the captain strode around the car, taking her arm in his firm protective grip. Even in a casual gesture, she noted wryly, he got everything right. Captain Victor Kostenko handled her the way every woman wanted to be touched.
Together they waded through the snow to the back door. He fished out the key from the ledge above the door and let them in. Alexis ducked into the welcome warmth, then stared around the common room in astonishment.
Against the rough-planked walls, a circle of carved wooden faces stared back at her: eyes wide or narrowed, mouths grinning or stern, hooked noses, snub noses, bushy brows, curling whiskers and long-handled pipes. Beneath these examples of someone’s hobby, patches of color gleamed on the hardwood floors from faded Uzbek and Azeri carpets.
Under a delicate lace tablecloth that was probably some babushka’s treasure, the little table groaned with traditional fare: blue-and-white china piled with homemade pickles, sprays of fresh dill and parsley, a loaf of black bread, the inevitable dish of sour cream. A bottle of local vodka saluted them.
Yet it was clear to Alexis that whoever’d prepared the table was long gone. The cluttered kitchen was empty, the darkened bedroom barely visible behind an almost-closed door. And they’d passed the tiny outhouse on their way in.
“Will your friend be returning soon?” Alexis asked casually, shrugging out of her coat.
“He’s in Novosibirsk on a business trip.” Kostenko locked the door behind them and helped with her coat. “His housekeeper opened the dacha and arranged the table at my request.”
“Nice of her.” She turned away to conceal another attack of nerves, toed off her snowy boots—a common courtesy in this climate—and slipped her feet into the felt-lined slippers every Russian kept for guests. Swiftly the captain circled the room, going from window to window, tugging the curtains closed.
“Are we, ah, expecting someone else?” She eyed him. Thinking about the locked door behind them, the car tucked away in the trees, the remote location, the way he’d driven. Maybe not ego or recklessness after all, but evasive maneuvers?
“No.” For a moment, his features were shuttered as he checked the display on his mobile phone, then powered it off. He twisted open the vodka, and glanced up at her hesitation with a glimmer of amusement in those glacial eyes. “Sorry.”
Deliberately, she chose the scratchy green armchair near the crackling fire. God knew she wasn’t going anywhere near the sofa—or the bedroom—with him in the house. Better just gather the information he’d promised, ask her questions, then get the hell out. Questionable enough to be here alone with him in the first place.
“Perhaps you’d better give me those talking points, captain, on the Ukraine crisis.” Gingerly, she accepted a brimming glass of vodka, its fumes sharp as gasoline. Just smelling the stuff made her eyes water.
“Always working, Ms. Castle,” he mocked, saluting her with his glass before he tossed back the rotgut. Like all Russian males over the age of ten, he seemed immune to its corrosive effects. “But I did promise.”
Unbuttoning his uniform jacket and claiming the couch, Kostenko proceeded to inform her, in the crisp diction of a man imparting distasteful news, how the sizable ethnic Russian minority in Ukraine had actually entreated the Russian military to ramp up its presence there. How ethnic tensions between pro-Russian and pro-Ukraine parties were mounting in the run-up to Kiev’s presidential elections. How the Russian minority needed protection from the ethnic violence threatened by their own nationalistic neighbors.
Entirely believable, Alexis thought, that ethnic tensions in the sharply-divided fledgling country were reaching a boiling point. But no one who knew the Russians would buy for a second this new assertion that Moscow was motivated by genuine concern for human rights and democracy in the region. Washington would never swallow this preposterous claim that the Russian blockade was some sort of unilateral peacekeeping exercise, designed to protect threatened minorities and prop up the faltering Ukrainian government.
But at least the Russians seemed to have dropped the flimsy argument that the blockade was a training exercise, undertaken with Kiev’s full concurrence.
Only the discipline of an experienced diplomat kept Alexis in her chair, scribbling notes. Her entire body quivered with the overpowering urge to lunge for her cell phone. This latest propaganda offensive was something her government needed to know ASAP, before the Russians debuted it in the UN or another public venue.
When she was certain he’d finished speaking and she’d captured all the details, Alexis dug the phone out. “My Ambassador needs to know about this right away.”
“He will,” the captain said calmly, topping off his glass. “As we speak, your Ambassador Stuart Malvaux is incommunicado, is he not, on an overnight flight from Vladivostok back to Moscow? When his plane touches down at Domodedovo airport tomorrow at 1000 hours, you’ll be there waiting to deliver this report.”
“You’re pretty well informed on the Ambassador’s schedule,” she noted tartly, matching his remarks with her recollection of Stu’s itinerary. If she hadn’t been so worked up about this latest curve ball the Russians had lobbed at them, she’d have remembered herself that Stu was en route from the Far East, eight time zones away. “I should brief the Russia desk in Washington at least.”
“It’s Friday evening,” he pointed out. “Your capital will do nothing until the relevant experts can obtain your Ambassador’s perspective, which he will doubtless instruct you to convey via the State Department’s duty officer on Saturday. And nothing is going to happen in Ukraine until the elections occur in two weeks.”
He aimed a sardonic glance at her untouched glass. “Drink your vodka.”
Alexis wrestled with the impulse to launch a barbed comment on his detailed knowledge of internal U.S. government procedures. Although he was right about the next steps, that was the hell of it.
Still, she vibrated with the need to take action. If Russia was going to play the ethnic minority card, and cite human rights as the justification for its blockade, Washington would want to give the issue immediate airplay at the United Nations. And that would take time to arrange.
In short, she couldn’t afford to sit on her ass and do nothing.
“I’m going to call this in.” She thumbed open her Motorola. “At a minimum, the Deputy Chief of Mission should know.”
“You’ll observe that your mobile telephone is receiving no signal from this dacha, since we’re well outside the city limits. I repeat, Ms. Castle: at the moment, there is nothing you can do. Drink your vodka.”
She mastered an irritated impulse to toss the damn vodka in his lap, the more so because—once again—he was right. Her bloody phone was getting no signal.
Even if Kostenko’s own phone was working, by some technolo
gical miracle, she could hardly discuss sensitive matters with Geoff or anyone else in the USG on a Russian officer’s mobile phone. It would be equivalent to speaking directly into a tape recorder for the Federal Security Bureau, Moscow’s equivalent to the FBI.
“It must be tiresome, captain, to be always right,” she muttered. Just to show him she could handle it, to remind him she was his equal, she tossed back the vodka. Immediate tears rose in her eyes, and her throat burned like she’d pounded a shot of battery acid.
“Jesus.” She choked down a pickle to chase it, Russian style, and struggled not to cough. “I really need to get back to the Embassy.”
“You will,” he reassured her, leaning to pour her another potent dose. She was opening her mouth to decline—but was distracted when he loosened the black tie knotted at his throat, and tugged his collar open.
Alexis’s mouth went dry. The stark contrast between that starched linen and the sinewed, sun-bronzed column of his throat made her spine tingle. And the rough texture of golden stubble against his hard jaw made her palms itch to touch him.
So far, she’d stayed in control, kept the discussion focused on their work. But that glimpse of skin reminded her that she was very much alone with him, a man for whom she could no longer deny…at least to herself…feeling a certain attraction.
Hell. She’d better be honest with herself. She’d never in her life wanted to climb inside a guy’s trousers this badly. Even though he had to be the most inappropriate and downright dangerous guy on the entire planet for her to screw. She had to stop imagining herself unzipping his fly and straddling him—stop it.
Nervously she tossed back the vodka, hard and fast, and fought not to sputter as it seared her lungs. Standing her glass on the table firmly, she rose to her feet. “You have to take me back, captain.”
“Don’t worry, Alexis,” he murmured, lids dropping over his electric blue eyes as they slid slowly down her body. “I’m not going to abandon you to catch a bus.”
The Russian Seduction Page 8
