76

He should have been angry. He wished he could be.

Alix looked as though she had been sprayed with money. Her hair had been miraculously restored to a honey blond mane that tumbled around her bare shoulders. Her skin seemed to glow golden brown. Her lips were a liquid red. There were diamonds glittering on her earlobes and in the bangles around her wrists. Her high-heeled black boots clung to her calves as tightly and smoothly as stockings.

The dress she was wearing was little more than a sliver of glittering, semitransparent material, like featherlight chain mail, that hung from her neck and fell to a point between her upper thighs. The firelight sparkled off the shimmering fabric as it stroked her breasts and stomach. It was clear that she had nothing on underneath. When she half-turned to whisper and giggle in Zhukovski’s ear, giving a quick, mocking glance in Carver’s direction as she bent down, her eyes flicking up and down his body like a lion tamer’s whip, he could see that the dress left her back completely bare before flirting with her naked buttocks in a whisper of silver.

So this, at last, was the true Alexandra Petrova, a courtesan, a professional, a valuable possession to be pampered, petted, and then used by her owner exactly as he desired. Carver’s throat tightened as he choked on his humiliation. The last pillar of his faith had been kicked away. There was nothing left now. The love that was supposed to redeem him had been revealed to be nothing at all.

Yes, he should have been angry. Fury would at least give him energy. But as he stood before her, stripped of all dignity, the emotion that filled him was forgiveness. Some last vestige of self-delusion forbade him from blaming Alix. It told him that this was not her fault, that the haughty prostitute who stood before him was not the real woman he had loved, but a false identity. He tried to give himself reasons not to believe the evidence of his own eyes and ears. And as he did so, he understood, for the first time in his life, what it meant to give oneself utterly to another human being, to lose one’s own identity in theirs.

Be that as it may, he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of seeing him grovel. He pulled back his shoulders, lifted his head, and asked Zhukovski, “How’s the land mine trade? Any more business since Sunday?”

Zhukovski nodded. “So you worked it out. Now I have a request to make of you.”

He leaned forward in his chair.

“Apologize, please.”

“Oh yeah?” said Carver. “Why should I do that?”

“You have caused me a great deal of trouble. But we can get to that later. First, I insist that you apologize to Miss Petrova. You forced her to endure your crude attempts at making love. Even worse, you bored her. Now you should say ‘sorry.’” He turned his head to look at Alix. “Don’t you agree, my dear?”

“Absolutely,” she said, then closed her eyes and gave a shiver of disgust that made her dress sparkle with every tremor.

Carver looked at her sadly. “You’re better than that,” he said. “I know you are.”

For a fraction of a second he thought he saw a shadow of remorse—or was it pity?—cloud her eyes. Then she blinked, and when her eyes opened they were stony again, communicating nothing but disdain.

“Make him apologize,” she said. “I would like that very much.”

Carver did not move.

Zhukovski nodded.

Titov smirked at Carver, then pressed a round white button on the black box in his hands.

The shock made every nerve scream in pain, jerking his body like an epileptic marionette, rocking his head from side to side and ripping an animal howl of pain from his throat.

Titov kept his thumb on the button. One second . . . two . . . three.

Unable to maintain his balance or control his limbs, Carver dropped to the floor, his fall barely broken by his tethered hands. He lay there writhing helplessly, his wrists and ankles tugging and scraping against their shackles, drawing blood. He was utterly controlled by the electric commands ripping through his central nervous system. His body was slippery with sweat. His heart was pounding. He was about to black out.

Then, at last, Zhukovski nodded again and Titov lifted his finger from the button. The current stopped flowing and Carver’s body flopped into blissful immobility.

Gradually, his pulse slowed. Carver lay immobile on the floor, while his Russian audience compared notes on his involuntary performance, the men jigging about on the couch and hooting with laughter as they mimicked him thrashing about. Then he gathered his breath and slowly, painfully, pulled his knees up behind him, so that he was sitting on his haunches, with his head on the ground, like a peasant prostrate before an emperor. It took him a few more seconds to gather his strength, and more seconds still before he could drag himself half upright and kneeling.

His fall had brought him closer to Zhukovski and Alix. They were only a few feet away now. His eyes were almost level with her breasts. With every breath he was bathed in her heady, spicy scent. His eyes were filled with the silver light dancing across her body. Even now, after everything that had happened, he was overwhelmed by desire, torn apart by longing for her.

“Apologize” said Zhukovski. “Kiss her feet and beg for forgiveness.”

Carver looked up, searching Alix’s eyes for some sign of hope, some recognition that he had not been utterly deceived.

“You don’t want this,” he said.

“I do,” she replied. Her voice was steady and cool, leaving no room for doubt.

He barely heard when Zhukvoski repeated the single word “Apologize,” or noticed when he nodded again to Titov.

As he endured that second electric whipping, it seemed to Carver that it was a voice other than his that screamed so loudly, another body that flopped and twisted so spastically. When the current stopped and he opened his eyes, he saw he was lying right at Alix’s feet. He did not need to get to his knees again. Once the power to move had returned, he could wriggle forward on his stomach, his pulse still racing, his chest heaving as he gasped for air, the sweat dripping from his body. He could stretch his neck so that his lips kissed the shining black leather as he whispered, “I’m sorry.” But whether he was apologizing to her, or simply to himself he really couldn’t tell.

Alix gave a flick of her foot, kicking his face away from her. Carver lay motionless, facedown on the rug, the gross physicality of his naked body a stark contrast to the intricate delicacy of the rug’s swirling, intersecting patterns.

Then she said a few words in Russian to Zhukovski. The Russian got off his chair, settled on his haunches, and grabbed Carver’s face, lifting it so that the two men were looking into each other’s eyes.

“Let me translate,” said Zhukovski. “Alexandra says you disgust her. She says she wishes to leave the room before the sight of you makes her physically sick.”

He paused for a moment as Alix turned on a four-inch heel and stalked from the room.

“Take a good look, Mr Carver. You will never see her again.”

“I won’t be missing much,” he croaked. His mouth was parchment-dry, his throat scarred by the force of his screams.

Zhukovski let go of his head, which flopped back down on the carpet. “Come now, you don’t really mean that. Even now, after she has reduced you to this pitiful state, you would crawl after her if you could, begging her to take you back.”

Carver didn’t reply. He was too busy trying to get back up on his feet. Paying painstaking attention to every movement, he made his way from his belly to his knees. He put one foot flat on the floor, then the other. He drew himself up until he was standing to attention in front of Zhukovski, who had returned to his chair and was watching the spectacle with amused interest. Carver swayed slightly, grinding his teeth as he struggled for his balance and his dignity. His cuffed hands were held down in front of him, pathetically preserving his modesty.

Zhukovski gave three slow, deliberate claps.

“Congratulations,” he said. “That was done like a true soldier. But my point remains. The woman has destroyed you. You fought my best man, Kursk, to a standstill. You overcame three of his subordinates—look at the mess you made of Titov here. You killed Trench and most of his men. But Alexandra brought you to your knees.”

Still Carver said nothing. It was taking all his concentration just to remain upright. Zhukovski watched his striving, then spoke a few words to Titov, who at once picked up an ornately carved wooden chair, heavily decorated with gold leaf, and placed it behind Carver.

“Sit down,” said Zhukovski. “Relax. I would be interested to hear your side of the story.”

He issued another order to Titov, who walked around to Zhukovski’s chair and handed his master the small black box.

Carver found himself staring at the omnipotent white button. Zhukovski caught his eye. Carver’s guts tightened as his system flooded with cortisol, the stress hormone, the anticipator of pain and bringer of fear. He swallowed hard. His armpits prickled.

Zhukovski smiled, then pressed the button, holding it for a single second, just enough to power another jolt through Carver’s body that picked him right off the chair, yelping like a wounded dog, and set him back down again with an impact that almost sent him toppling backward to the floor. Titov gave a gleeful cackle of delight and directed a sharp volley of Russian profanities in Carver’s direction. Zhukovski nodded contentedly.

“Well, we’ve established that this keeps you under control,” he said. “We can talk alone, just the two of us.”

His men were dismissed with a wave of Zhukovski’s hand. On his way from the room, Titov stopped by Carver’s chair, looked at him for a second, and smacked a right-handed haymaker into the side of Carver’s face.

The punch wasn’t as powerful as it might have been. Titov had to hit downward to reach his seated target and Carver was able to twist his head, deflecting some of the impact. So he was stunned, rather than knocked out cold; his jawbone was cracked, not shattered. But the pain was just as bad. As Titov left the room, happily rubbing his bruised knuckles, Carver twisted and rotated his head, trying to clear his brain. His mouth was filled with blood from his shredded cheek and battered gums. His tongue gingerly probed his teeth. A couple of molars felt as loose as baby teeth.

Suddenly, without any warning, his body shook with a tremor that seized him from head to toe—an unwanted reminder of his earlier convulsions, like the aftershock that follows an earthquake.

“Titov has never had much self-control,” mused Zhukovski, ignoring Carver as he squirmed and shivered. “So far as he is concerned, that is just an opening skirmish. He will want a lot more satisfaction before his score is settled. And I agree with him. I too have not finished with you. I want you to understand about Alexandra, that you never meant anything to her at all. So let me tell you about the real woman, not your fantasy lover.”

He got up from his chair and moved to a sideboard on which bottles and glasses were arrayed. There he poured himself a glass of vodka, neat, and returned to his chair.

“It was my wife, Olga, who discovered her, you know, at a Komsomol gathering. She was just a slip of a girl from the provinces—Kirov, if I recall. . . .”

“Not Kirov,” said Carver. “It was . . .” He frowned. He knew where Alix had lived as a child. The name was on the tip of his tongue. But for the life of him he couldn’t recall it.

Zhukovski shrugged indifferently. “I do not really care where it was. What was obvious from the moment Olga brought her to my attention was that this was a girl of astonishing capacities. Her eyes were crazy, of course. . . .”

“She told me,” said Carver. That much he did remember.

“Her teeth too. Did she tell you that? We had to fix those. But the rest was all Alexandra.”

He put his vodka on a side table to the right of his chair, taking the time to compose his thoughts.

“It was her hunger that struck me most,” Zhukovski continued. “She was hungry for a better life, hungry for experience, and, yes, hungry for sex. Every atom of that girl was female, yet she had a masculine desire for sexual conquest. There was no form of pleasure she would not explore. And then, as the duckling turned into a swan and for the first time in her life she became aware of her powers of attraction, she acquired a hunger for power. Perhaps she wished for revenge on all the boys who had spurned and mocked her, who can say? But she used her power over men like an empress. Some girls had to be persuaded, even forced, to put their bodies at the service of the motherland. Not Alexandra. She gloried in it.”

“What did she do afterward, when the wall came down?” Carver asked. He was starting to gather his senses now, the pain of his electrocution was fading, his body was back under control. He could sit still in his chair without twitching like an impatient schoolboy.

“You see,” Zhukovski said with a smile, nodding in satisfaction that he had been proved right, “you could not resist. You still want to know everything about her. Well, I will tell you. I left the committee for State security—what you would call the KGB—preferring to pursue my interests in private enterprise. Alexandra came with me.”

“You were her pimp?”

“Is that what she told you? I will have words with her about that. No, I kept her for my own use. As I have already told you, she is my mistress.”

“So why would you send your little pet on a suicide mission to Paris?”

“Because it was not a suicide mission. My orders to Wake were clear. His chosen assassin had to die. That was you, of course. I could not trust a man I did not know. But I had no intention of losing two of my most valued people. It was the English who decided to kill them as well.”

Carver grimaced. “But Alix . . . why send her?”

Zhukovski shrugged. “Because she was bored. She had started complaining that she had nothing to do all day except shop, eat lunch, and go to beauty salons. I told her that every other woman in Russia would kill to have her life. But she was not convinced. She said she wanted to work in my organization. . . .”

“And you believed her?”

“I believed that she was bored. And I knew that a woman who feels like that will soon cause trouble. She gets drunk in public, or she screws her tennis coach. So I thought, okay, this is a simple job. All she has to do is sit on a motorcycle and flash a camera. If it works, then maybe I can think of further assignments.”

Carver could imagine Alix being driven crazy by a life that required nothing of her except a futile fight against time. She was approaching thirty. Zhukovski might start looking elsewhere. She would see other, younger girls examining her, waiting for the first wrinkle, the slightest thickening of her waist or drooping of her breasts, the first sign that her power was waning. She was smart enough to plan another life. But would that life have to be within Zhukovski’s organization, or had she been telling the truth when she talked of wanting to escape?

Stupid question. She’d made her feelings perfectly clear on that score. A boot in the face wasn’t exactly a subtle hint. Forget her, she didn’t want to be rescued. If she wanted to be part of Zhukovski’s crew, she could go to hell with the rest of them. He could still turn things around.

He measured the distance between him and Zhukovski. He could cover the gap in a single leap, he was sure. Zhukovski would be hampered, being in a soft armchair. He’d find it tougher to get to his feet.

Carver let his head sag on his shoulders, then mumbled, “It’s over, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Zhukovski. “For you it is.”

The Russian relaxed, confident that Carver was a broken man. He reached his right arm out toward the vodka sitting on the table beside the chair, turning his head toward the glass as he did so. And in that moment of vulnerability, Carver leaped.

He had tensed his feet against the ground, pressing his toes into the carpet, bunching the muscles on his upper thighs and sucking in his stomach. Then he’d pushed up and away from the chair with every remaining ounce of his strength, aiming to smash headfirst into Zhukovski’s face.

He stopped dead in midair as fifty thousand volts jack-knifed his body for the fourth time, crashing him down to the carpet, leaving him groveling in agony once again.

“Did you really think I would be that careless?” asked Zhukovski, getting up from his chair. He stood over Carver. “Well, did you?” he repeated. Then he kicked Carver in the guts, driving the breath from his body.

“Don’t you understand who I am?” Zhukovski did not raise his voice so much as refrigerate it, delivering every word with a frozen, deliberate matter-of-factness. “I was a colonel in the KGB. I made dissidents watch as their entire families were burned alive: wives, children, mothers, fathers, everyone. I made prisoners place their hands in boiling water, then peeled their skin off like a tomato. Do you want me to do that to you?”

“No,” groaned Carver. “Please. I beg you. I’ll help you. I can do that. I know the password to the consortium’s computer. I have the key to decrypt all the files. I’ll tell you. Just, please . . . just stop hurting me.”

“Well now . . .” Zhukovski was almost whispering to himself. He was walking around Carver, circling his body. “Why would I want to do that?”

He kicked Carver again, this time at the base of his spine, making him arch backward as the wounded muscles went into spasm. As Zhukovski kept moving around him, Carver shrank into a fetal curl. He was dry retching, unable to speak.

Zhukovski stamped on his ankles.

“I’m not impressed,” he said. “I had expected a former member of the special boat service to have a greater resistance to physical pain. Perhaps you have gone soft. Or perhaps you are merely pretending to give in. What do you say?”

Carver’s face was lying to one side on the floor. He was resting the weight of his head on the undamaged side of his jaw. Zhukovski could clearly see the angry red swelling that marked the area where Titov’s punch had connected, so he ground his heel into the center of the bruising, gradually increasing the pressure on Carver’s face, pinning his battered head while his body writhed helplessly. Carver let out a muffled howl of pain.

“No, that was not pretense,” said Zhukovski. “But still, you might have set a trap for me. For a man of your skills, it would be no problem to booby trap a computer. Replace the battery with explosives and one strike of a single key would set it off. I have used that method of assassination myself. Perhaps we will finally discover what secrets are hidden in this ridiculous machine. But if it really is a trap, you will be the one who dies.”