his greatcoat, draped behind him over the chair, he got up, tipping over the chair in his urgency, flinging the coat onto the bed to take away the chill of the sheets. Then he lowered her to it.
“I’m sorry, Ilya,” she said plaintively. “I’m so jealous. Sometimes—”
She kissed the lobe of his ear, bit it. She hated him, his sour breath now reeking with nicotine and sweat.
He smelled like the OMON thugs, and she felt a rush of panic. She knew they wouldn’t give up looking for her. Of all the prisoners who had escaped Baikal, she knew she had earned the OMON’s special hatred. As well as being instrumental in helping the Americans to uncover the secret of the vast, frozen lake — the midget ship-to-surface- armed missile submarines that had almost turned the tide against the Americans, until the spectacular joint British SAS/ American Delta commando raid on Baikal — she and other Jewish saboteurs from the JAO had wrecked part of the Trans-Siberian, in trying to stop the military support trains heading east from Novosibirsk.
The commandos had completely wrecked the sub base at Baikal. If Ilya even suspected who she really was, she knew she’d be shot — and most likely he, too, for having given her shelter from the OMON bloodhounds, albeit unknowingly. She heard him grunting, his body heavy, suffocating, his belly sliding in perspiration on hers, his arms, barely able to support his weight, shaking. She was still a prisoner. In order to get the necessary travel papers she so desperately needed, the very sex she was giving him as the price might well induce him to take his own good time issuing the papers. Why should he hurry? He might even refuse, just to keep her on tap.
He was covering her in wet kisses, the cloying mixture of vodka and stale breath flooding over her, his rutting rough and hard, confident he was exciting her. She sighed and gasped to maintain his illusion, and to take her mind off the sheer horror of it, wondered how she could possibly end the liaison she’d started when she had determined to “accidentally” bump into him in Zhaolin Park. And now she had more reason to get out of Harbin — to get north with the vital information of the massive Chinese buildup that was streaming over the Yangtze across the Nanking Bridge. The American satellites wouldn’t pick it up through Harbin’s souplike pollution, even if there was a satellite passing over Harbin.
Suddenly she had the answer. “Alexsandra — Alex—” cried Ilya. “I love you — I—”
Seized by inspiration, she pulled harder, slipped her shawl between them to stop the sucking noise of his sweat-slicked paunch slithering reptile-like against her, and pulled him harder into her, kissing him, her nails digging hard into his back, his mouth now moving quickly away from hers, kissing, slobbering over her breasts. “Harder!” she told him, and she could see them raping her in the jail at Baikal, her hatred of them so intense she feared she might never again be capable of genuine sexual love. She was crying, he mistaking it for passion, his thrusting becoming more violent. Through the maelstrom, she turned her head to the rime-covered window that looked out on the blurry pink glow of Zhaolin Park.
His rutting took on a manic quality, and, snorting frantically now like a pig, he drove her back against the headboard of the bed with such force that she heard a bone click in her neck, the pain shooting down her spine — then suddenly she felt lighter as the blubber rolled off her. It was panting, trying to talk, but unable — grunting incomprehensibly. Finally, gathering his spittle, he asked, “Was it good?”
The fat pig!
As he lit his cigarette, he saw her smiling. “It was that good, eh?”
“Yes,” she said, without betraying her contempt, genuinely relaxing now. “It shouldn’t be better!” she added, invoking an old Russian proverb that meant when things were going so well, one had no right to ask for anything more.
“Alexsandra…” he began as he started to dress.
“Yes?” It was becoming windy outside, fine snow striking the window like sand, the room pierced by flashes of red light from the wildly swinging lanterns. “What?” she said.
“It was nice,” and with that he walked over and opened the door. The two Black Berets, their faces covered by the usual black balaclavas, walked in unhurriedly but moved purposefully, one standing to the side of the open door, the other coming over, handing Alexsandra her coat and shawl.
“And this time,” said Ilya, as he was zipping up outside the door, looking back at them, “don’t let her escape. Find out who her contacts are in the city — what other Jewish bastards are in the area — before you get rid of her. Understand?”
This angered the Black Beret closest to her. “Hell,” he told his comrade when Latov was gone. “We weren’t the bastards who blew the jail apart!”
The other Black Beret, still looking down at her, wasn’t listening. Alexsandra stared at the balaclavas, the mark of their obsession with anonymity. Then, as if reading her thoughts, the one nearest — she could smell him — pulled up his mask and grinned. They knew it didn’t matter whether she could identify them or not — it would do her no good now. She was finished. An interrogation session, maybe with help from their Chinese hosts — after all, she would be in a Chinese jail — and then execution as a spy. In China that meant a bullet into the neck, or would they insist on the OMON way and garrote her?
“Too bad the Americans won’t know,” one of them said to her. She was speechless with fright, shivering so violently she could hear her teeth chattering. “… about the Nanking Bridge,” he continued. He glanced back at the other OMON by the door. “You think the Americans are in for a surprise, comrade?”
“I think so, comrade,” the other answered. “I think so,” and they both laughed. “I’ll have a bit of that,” the unmasked one said, watching her breasts rising and falling quickly in her panic.
“Left tit for me,” said the other man.
“Picky bastard,” joked his companion with mock severity. “You’ll take what’s left, comrade.”
The unmasked one walked toward her. He had the crude, gold-capped teeth that had given Soviet dentistry a bad name, and when he smiled, it made him look even more malevolent.
“Marshal Yesov,” he told her, bending down on his haunches so close she could smell a strong, cheesy odor pervading the dark room. “Marshal Yesov, my lovely, wants some information from you. All right?” He was unbuttoning his fly. “We want to know all about your yid underground. Its contacts with the Americans, understand?” She wasn’t looking at him, but could smell him. Slowly he wound her hair about his wrists, forcing her to look up at him, her lips parted in pain. “You have contacts with Freeman’s HQ, eh?” He now pushed her head down between his legs. “Tell Niki what you know.”
CHAPTER THREE
Already a legend in his time, for his part in America’s sweeping, outflanking armored movements of the Iraqi War and in the battles since, General Douglas Freeman, a tall, silver-gray-haired officer whose clear blue eyes belied the weather-beaten exterior of middle age, was, for all his toughness, an optimistic man — a smile more his armor in Second Army than a frown. But when he scowled, as he was this late afternoon, striding as briskly as deep snow would allow and pulling his gloves on tightly against the bitter Siberian cold, his troops said he was a dead
