he’s tired, so he needs some peace and quiet.”
Yemlin felt as if he were on the verge of collapse. So much had happened in the past week that he was in sensory overload. He wanted to sleep.
“Enjoy,” Cheremukhin said, and he left.
“That Vadim is a good guy,” Renee said innocently. “Whatever he says around here goes. So you just leave it to me, Viktor, okay?”
“Okay,” Yemlin mumbled, too tired to do anything but go with the flow.
She led him down one of the thickly carpeted corridors, the lighting subdued. Soft music played from hidden speakers and she chatted like a magpie about everything from Paris fashions to the wonderful people she’d met since coming to the university. At one point he stumbled and she pulled him up, and put his arm around her thin shoulders, his fingertips brushing her breasts.
“Silly me going on like this while you, poor man, are nearly dead on your feet,” she cooed. “But I have just the thing for your tired bones. You’ll see. Just what the doctor ordered.”
Although the club was busy there wasn’t a hint of noise or activity back here. Renee brought him into a three-room suite luxuriously furnished, and led him immediately into a palatial bathroom with a huge sunken tub filled with steaming, scented water.
A moment later a young man dressed only in a white swimming suit came in behind them with a bottle of champagne and one flute.
Yemlin stepped back.
“Here’s Valeri to help us,” Renee beamed. “Isn’t he just beautiful? We call him the little doll.”
Yemlin had never seen a more handsome man, not even among the American movie stars. In his mid twenties, his athletic body was slightly tanned, his facial features perfectly proportioned, his eyes startlingly blue, and his teeth gleaming white.
“Renee exaggerates,” Valeri said, smiling. His voice was deep, his Russian cultured. “But she’s cute. Would you care for a glass of wine while you’re in your bath, Mr. Yemlin?”
Yemlin said nothing. The girl tittered. “Valeri is just a masseur. He doesn’t bite.”
Yemlin smiled despite himself. For a moment he’d been star-struck like a silly old lady. “Sure. And after”’ my bath and rubdown, I want to get a few hours sleep.” He looked at the girl. “Alone.”
“Oh pooh,” Renee said, and she helped him undress as Valeri poured a glass of champagne.
The bath water was a perfect temperature. The heat seeped into Yemlin’s bones, and he sighed in contentment. Renee got undressed, her breasts high and firm and she got into the tub with him, and started on his broad back with a Finnish scrub sponge. Valeri handed him the champagne then went into the bedroom where he laid out his oils and lotions beside a low, towel draped massage table.
The champagne was Russian, sweet and cold, just as he liked it, the bath soothing, and Renee’s ministrations wonderful. After a few minutes Valeri refilled his glass, and Yemlin began to feel like he was drifting, the sensation wonderfully comforting. He was in a safe haven where for the first time since he could remember he felt warm, and secure.
When he was finished, Renee and Valeri helped him out of the bath, dried his body with warm towels, and led him to the massage table, where he lay down on his back.
Renee left, and Valeri began massaging Yemlin’s neck and shoulder muscles with an incredibly strong, but gentle touch, his hands slippery with warm oils.
Yemlin watched the young man for several minutes before realizing he was naked. Muscles corded down his back, and rippled his firm buttocks. When he straightened up, Yemlin saw that his penis was large and semierect. He knew that he should be embarrassed, but the boy was so handsome that watching him was like watching an erotic movie, and Yemlin began to respond despite himself. “That’s better, Viktor,” the young man said, gently massaging Yemlin’s inner thighs, his finger tips flicking around Yemlin’s anus. ” The effect was galvanizing. Yemlin had not felt anything like it since he’d had a prostitute in Tokyo. A groan of pleasure escaped from his throat.
Valeri’s lips closed around Yemlin’s penis, the sensation incredible. He could do nothing but lie back as the young man took him deep into his mouth. It was like nothing he’d ever felt, pleasure building and rising in waves. He’d been a thirty-five-year-old man before that Tokyo prostitute had done such a thing for him, and right now the pleasure was every bit as good, even though he felt a pang of guilt at the back of his mind for having it done to him by a man.
And then he was coming, as he’d not come for many years, the intense feeling of relief coursing through his body like nothing else could. His lotion-filled hand was on Valeri’s rigid penis now, the young man’s lips next to his head, cooing, and whispering softly.
“Paris was wonderful, Viktor. Just like now. Was it with your mistress?”
“McGarvey,” Yemlin murmured.
“Her name is McGarvey?”
“No, Kirk,” Yemlin mumbled. He wanted to return the pleasure the young man had given him. “Kirk has agreed. He’s here.”
“In Moscow?”
“Yes, he’s here.”
“Why, Viktor? Why is Kirk McGarvey in Moscow?” Valeri whispered.
“To help us. To save the Rodina.”
“How?”
“To kill the Tarantula. Kill Tarankov. It’s the only way.”
“That’s very good, Viktor,” Valeri cooed. “Very good. Now tell me about Kirk McGarvey. Tell me everything.”
FIFTEEN
McGarvey spent the afternoon in the lobby of the Metropol Hotel sipping mineral water and scouring a dozen of the newspapers and news magazines published in Moscow for anything pertaining to Tarankov.
As he suspected there was plenty of coverage about President Yeltsin’s heart attack, but none of the articles offered any speculation on the real cause of his death. No one was making a connection between the attack on the Riga nuclear power station in the Moscow suburb of Dzerzhinskiy and the bomb blast in Red Square. Nor did any of the articles on the power plant explosion mention Tarankov’s name. In fact most of the articles reported that the attack had been staged by so far unknown terrorists or dissidents, who possibly were disgruntled workers at the plant.
Russia’s capacity for self-inflicted delusions was almost as great as the nation’s capacity for suffering. If you’re hungry read a cookbook.
But read it alone, be cause your neighbors might see it and want to come to your house for a meal.
Novy Mir, the magazine that had serialized Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, however, reported, in a two paragraph piece buried in the middle under a column headed “Upheavals,” that General Yevgenni Tarankov gave a speech recently in Dzerzhinskiy, and was scheduled to speak again tomorrow in Nizhny Novgorod, a city about three hundred miles east of Moscow that under the Soviet rule had been renamed Gorki.
It was Russian doublespeak. Anyone in the know reading the article would immediately understand that the magazine suspected the attack on the Riga power plant had been staged by Tarankov. By reporting his next speaking engagement, the magazine was practically daring the government to do something about it.
Considering the liberties that Russian journalists had been taking for nearly ten years, the lack of coverage Tarankov was getting bespoke the seriousness with which his campaign was being taken. Everyone in Moscow was frightened to death that if and when Tarankov took over he would purge every newspaper or magazine that had given him bad press.
McGarvey’s guide book provided the information that the most convenient train to Nizhny Novgorad left at 11:10 p.m. from the Yaroslavl Station arriving overnight just before 7:30 a.m. But taking the train presented two immediate problems. The first was that going there just now as a foreigner would be dangerous. If Tarankov’s
