Pipeline (26 page)

“Why would we want to do all that? We’re having too much fun.”

The table erupted in laughter. Uggin held up his hand in mock seriousness.

“Enough politics. Why don’t we take Tony on a walk? Let’s let him feel the fun.”

Uggin insisted on paying. The four got up and walked out of the restaurant. On the sidewalk, the three Russians talked heat
edly among themselves. Tony couldn’t understand a word but they seemed to be arguing about where to take him. Finally a consensus seemed to form.

“Come on.” Uggin smiled. “We’re going to show you something a little different. You’ve seen a bit of the chic part of the city. Now it’s time to show you the quiet Moscow.”

They walked a few blocks through crowded streets. At the Komsomolskaya subway station, the group descended on the electronic escalator and entered the station. His Russian friends smiled on seeing Tony’s predictably stunned look. The station looked more like a baroque theater than a public-transportation stop. Long oval porticoes lined the passageway. The yellow-domed roof of the station displayed museum-quality murals in marble-encrusted carved frames. Chandeliers with crystal cuttings hung every couple of yards.

“Yes, yes.” Nina giggled. “It’s beautiful. Personally, I never use the subway. But I love to show the Moscow underground to my foreign friends at this late hour.” Nina wrinkled her nose as she thought of the crowds commuting daily to work. “Yes, you definitely don’t want to be anywhere close to here when nine million people are on the trains at rush hour.”

They exited three stations later and walked the short distance to the Patriarch’s Pond. It was a serene water reservoir. A couple of cafés were set back among the trees, romantically lighted with Roman candles flickering in the night’s September breeze.

“We can have a nightcap at the pavilion over there.” Daniel pointed to a building where outside tables with flower vases were occupied by couples deep in romantic conversation. “But let’s first take a walk around the pond. Listen. There isn’t a sound. And we are right in the middle of Moscow.”

As they walked around the pond, Tony felt Nina’s arm encircling his own. He looked over and met her blue eyes. Wisps of blond hair flickered over the left half of her face. Her lips were smiling broadly, but her eyes were fixed on his.

Tony sensed a physical surge. He could feel heat at the spot where her arm was intertwined with his. His body temperature was literally rising with every step they took together. Tony was flattered by this beautiful woman’s attention. But her close physical proximity was too effortless, too fast. It made him feel awkward. Cautious.

You’re being a moron, he told himself. She is absolutely gorgeous and outgoing. He chalked his hesitation up to cultural discomfort, the embarrassment of a country Latino in the big foreign city.

After twenty minutes, Daniel suggested they go inside the pavilion for drinks. A few couples were on the dance floor, moving slowly to the music of a four-man band playing a good set of Frank Sinatra songs. Tony smiled at the heavily accented lyrics belted out by the young singer.

Once they ordered drinks, Nina looked his way with a big grin.

“All right, Mr. American. Let’s dance to your music.”

He followed her to the dance floor, striving to unlock his eyes from her long, tanned legs.

They swayed gently to Sinatra’s “Summer Winds.” Nina smiled in his direction as she moved herself against his body. His head just above her left shoulder, Tony’s face was for a moment covered in her blond hair. He closed his eyes as the clean perfume of her shampoo wafted into his nostrils.

As the couple moved on the dance floor, Nina came imperceptibly closer. Every second step he could feel a new part of her body slipping against his. First her thigh against his. Then her shoulder. Her hips.

There probably had been a moment earlier in the evening during which Tony Ruiz could have stopped the forward motion of his accelerating need to have this woman. If he had given it some serious thought, he would have realized the dangers of becoming involved with a woman he knew nothing about while on an official mission for the United States government.

But after the dance, it was too late. Sitting next to Nina on the plush sofa, his mind had become a radar device, registering her every
movement. When her hand rested on the couch, his brain performed meticulous calculations to calibrate the distance to his own hand. As her legs crossed, he computed the probabilities as to whether the quick swish against his pants had been intentional or not. He couldn’t help himself. With every passing second, she was becoming more beautiful, more exotic.

As they got up to dance again, Nina giggled something in Russian to her two friends. This time there was nothing subtle about their movements on the dance floor. Within seconds, Nina was caressing his hair, kissing his cheek. She held him tightly as he felt her breasts against his chest. Their lips locked with passion.

To his surprise, when the song ended he looked around for Daniel and Dariya and found them gone.

“I told them to go away,” she said, her eyes downcast, pretending embarrassment.

They walked, nearly hugging, two blocks until the first free cab finally pulled over. She gave the driver quick instructions and they alighted at her apartment building. In the short six-floor elevator ride, she took him in her arms. He could feel her tongue on his neck. He reached down and took her smooth thighs in his palms as his fingers stroked upward, nicking the thin line of her lace underwear.

They spilled out of the elevator. She opened her apartment and, as they made their way to her room, he barely had time to notice the home’s ultra-Asian, high-tech design. In the bedroom, he nearly fell over the low, light-wood bed. The windows were dressed with shades that imitated Japanese bamboo doorways that slid silently from side to side. The walls were white.

Nina took her clothes off in front of him, leaving only her panties. He struggled fast to undress. Reaching out for his hand, she led him, naked, to the bathroom. There she squeezed a small amount of a high-powered mint gel manufactured somewhere in rural France onto a toothbrush. With her free hand she brushed a few times and then put the brush into his mouth. She moved the bristles gently,
side to side, against his teeth. As she handed him a glass to let him rinse, she turned around in front of him, looking at the mirror.

In the reflection, he could see her perfect round breasts swaying as she began a slow, rhythmic movement of her buttocks against him. She curved her back forward, leaving only his exposed skin pressing against her lace thong panties.

It did not take long for him to pick her up, turn her around, and sit her on the marble sink countertop. They kissed long and passionately and began making love right there on the counter. Slowly, very slowly, he saw her blue eyes fade and glaze in ecstasy.

At the end, they both poured into each other’s arms like a tumbling tower of cards. Giggling, the two walked hand in hand to the bed and made love all over again.

At six in the morning, she made him coffee and took it to the bed. Caressing his dark hair, she smiled at him gently.

“I want to do this again.”

“So do I. Can we see each other tonight?” Looking at her perfect blond face, Tony prayed for the right answer. She was beautiful, full of life. He had to see her again.

“Yes, please. When are you finished with your meetings?”

“We go all day. Can I call you in the evening?”

“I will wait for your call all day.” Nina smiled. She hesitated a moment before speaking again.

“Uggin tells me your meetings are important. He said that the tunnel can change history. What do you think?”

Tony was taken aback by the fact that Uggin had been chatting so casually about their confidential meetings. His answer was careful.

“Sure, it has a lot of possibilities. But it’s far from a done deal.”

Nina nuzzled against his neck, her breath warm.

“We should all hope this happens. It’s a good thing. It will moderate the bossy instincts of Russia’s leaders. For me, that is the most positive thing.”

“I guess I haven’t thought of that angle. But there are also lots
of problems with the idea. The world needs to find other energy sources that don’t harm the environment.” Tony purposely skipped the part about his misgivings with increasing America’s dependency on her country.

“Well, I think the idea is fascinating,” she said, suddenly serious. “And after tonight, so should you.”

For a tiny instant a cold, paralyzing flash of darkness spewed out from her eyes, catching him unaware. He felt a strange shiver. In the next instant, it was gone.

“Get dressed, get dressed, Mr. Anthony Ruiz,” Nina giggled. “Or that terrible CIA woman will punish you and not let you out again tonight. And that can’t happen because I need to see you.”

Nina called a taxi to take him to his hotel. Ten minutes later, she walked him to the elevator in a bathrobe and they again kissed deeply. Unable to let go, he walked into the elevator, his mouth still attached to her lips. They laughed and waved at each other as the elevator door closed.

Tony Ruiz hopped into the waiting taxi. Ordering the driver to the Metropol Hotel, Tony let his weight recede into the cab’s vinyl backseat. What a night! He had never met anybody—any woman—like Nina. She was part mischievous child, part goddess. He had slept less than three hours, yet he’d never felt more alive.

Notwithstanding the early hour, Moscow’s streets were clogged. Just as well, Tony thought. He was in no hurry to get back to the hotel and face Packard. The notion of going straight from his night’s excitement to a showdown with the CIA director and her cold aloofness worried him. He wondered if he was really ready to face her.

Suddenly, the thought of Martha Packard connected with a slamming jolt of horrible realization. It was like an electric stab. His stomach turned and he suddenly felt sick. Tony Ruiz shot up in his cab seat, ramrod straight.

It couldn’t be. Please. It just couldn’t be true. His brain suddenly echoed with one loud voice—Nina’s voice. He recalled her chiding him to get dressed quickly so that the “terrible CIA woman” would
let him out to see her again tonight. How had she known about Packard? How could she have known?

Tony Ruiz’s mind became mush. He couldn’t think straight. His fingers quivering, he tried to replay the chronological events of the previous evening in his mind. The mental pictures would not stay in order. Trying to slow his brain, thoughts jumbled together, coming and going too fast to control.

Nina clearly had wanted the night to end in her bed. Sure, he had been seduced; he had known it was happening. It had gone fast, but nothing about the evening had been suspicious or out of place. Until this morning. Until the conversation about the tunnel. Until her out-spoken support of the Bering Strait project.

Until she had warned him, in that single, fast nanosecond of chill, that he had to be for it.

And then she had mentioned Packard. Sickened and pale, Tony realized there was no other way to read what had happened. The quick, offhand comment about the American intelligence chief had been Nina’s cold warning. Her threat. Her way of putting Tony on official notice that he had been duped. Blackmailed.

Nina knew about Packard because it was her job to know.

The implication was obvious. The Russians probably had the whole night on videotape. The toothbrush, the sex, the caressing words, his desperation to see her again.

For one fleeting instant, Tony’s mind grasped at straws. Perhaps Uggin had innocently told her about Packard’s presence in Moscow. Couldn’t that be possible? Wasn’t that the obvious explanation?

That thought was a natural human reaction. In desperation, humans clutch at any small inkling of optimism. Tony knew that his life would be over without that single strand of hope. Finished. Devoid of that tiny flicker of confidence, he knew that his career and his soul would be distilled down to a choice between a humbling resignation or spending the rest of his life at the behest of Russian intelligence services blackmailing him into ever-deeper waters.

Alas, the thought was futile. The excuse was a sham, vanishing
as quickly as it had come. Tony was in sufficient control of his mind to know that no matter how chatty Uggin was, he would never have told her about Packard. He was a Russian bureaucrat. He didn’t reveal things accidentally to just any pretty girl.

Unless the pretty girl was an FSB agent.

MOSCOW
SEPTEMBER 4, 8:05 A.M.
THE METROPOL HOTEL

One hour later, Tony Ruiz descended in the Metropol’s elevators to the fourteenth floor and walked down the hall. He had considered calling ahead, but had discarded the idea.

He rapped loudly on the door. No answer. Tony hesitated momentarily. Alone in the hotel hallway, he shrugged. No choice. An hour ago, he had been nervous about having to face down a senior U.S. government official acting contrary to the president’s instructions.

Instead, he was now here for a very different reason.

He knocked again. Louder.

This time he heard the locks open. Martha Packard opened the door and stared blankly at her visitor.

She was dressed in an outfit that was the photographic negative of yesterday’s clothes. This time her skirt and jacket were a light brown, her brass-buttoned blouse a dark navy blue. The stockinged feet meant that she had not yet had time to put on shoes. Behind her, on the coffee table in the suite’s living room, was a breakfast tray surrounded by papers piled neatly on the sofa and chairs.

“Mr. Ruiz,” she said coldly, not moving an inch. “Good morning. What can I do for you?”

“We need to talk, General.” Tony felt a shiver. The next ten minutes would be the most important ones in his life.

“Yes, I guess we do. I’ve been waiting for your inevitable outburst.”

He had been prepared for a million excuses to avoid this conversation. Tony was taken aback by her absolute directness.

“Can I come in?” Tony asked.

She thought about it for a second and then silently moved away from the door. Packard motioned him to a chair.