Rather than accompany Patricia on the maintenance runs Caroline had remained to keep Svetlana company, and as the Playboy Pair, as Pat thought of them, had struck up a good friendship whilst back in Scotland, Pat left her to it.
At just after noon, Svetlana suddenly sat bolt upright before standing and grinning.
“Okay, one volunteer to accompany me on an excursion?”
The prospect of actually doing something had brought almost instantaneous reactions from the aircrew, but the bombardier/navigator was beaten by the pilot to the punch by a hair.
Svetlana grinned slyly at Caroline’s smug expression, and as she left to run a bath, added.
“You haven’t seen the uniform of the day yet… follow me!”
The bathroom fittings were rather elderly, dating back to the original construction. The wood fired boiler, which served the house, was undersize and the result was a less than piping hot, half-filled tub, once Caroline had done the honours. She was attempting to coax the bar of soap into producing some lather when there was a slight commotion outside the door.
The old man had brought up towels to leave outside the door; he was straightening up, still puffing away on his pipe when Svetlana left her room, bound for the bathroom.
He was supposed to be exhaling a lung full of smoke at that exact instant, but involuntarily inhaled midway through the process. In all his married life he had never once seen his own wife naked, night clothes had always preserved her modesty, and now here in the latter years of his life a beautiful young woman had appeared, as naked as a jay bird striding unabashed towards him.
Svetlana helped him to his feet, thumping him on the back in order to aid the intake of oxygen once more, and then slipped into the bathroom still giving solicitous advice about not overdoing things and cutting down on his smoking.
Caroline did not consider herself prudish, individual shower stalls were not fitted as standard in USAF accommodation, yet when the naked Russian girl stuck a toe into the water she was occupying, clearly with the intention of joining her she felt somewhat uncomfortable. It was also the first time she had seen her naked, and it gave her an annoying feeling of inferiority even though she knew she had no reason to feel like that. Glancing down briefly at herself, she also felt rather overdressed compared to the Russian’s follicle free zone.
“Sorry Caroline, no time to heat more water, budge up… don’t worry, I promise not to pee!”
The American curled her legs up, relinquishing half the territory but Svetlana stepped in and merely rested on her knees at the free end.
“What was going on out there?” Caroline enquired, indicating the bathroom door with a nod of her head.
“Oh, the old ladies husband had a bit of a turn… can’t for the life of me think why!”
A guffaw burst from Caroline.
“Don’t you have any inhibitions?” It was meant as a joke but she was surprised at the answer, delivered in an offhand and rather matter-of-fact manner.
“Kind of hard to whore for your country and have guilt trips.”
She smiled at the pilot as she said it, but kept silent what was now in her mind. The fact that she was training for a year as a Sparrow before the possibility of escape had come about. A year where she quite literally saw everything did everything… and got marked on it for technique and artistic interpretation. It hadn’t all been sex though; language coaches had taught her to speak unaccented English, retired ballerinas had tutored her in grace of movement along with former models, until she became poetry in motion whether on a dance floor or merely walking down the street. Psychologist’s specialising in manipulation taught the students, there was a class every single day. She learnt from experts how to strip, how to pole dance, to lap dance and how also to waltz and tango with elegance. Art appreciation, current affairs and music lessons were also on the syllabus, it was a cultural ‘dressing up to dress down’ course, designed to produce someone who could adapt to any number of desired roles, from palace courtesan to street walker. These lessons were spaced between live demonstrations and porn movies, followed by homework with a talented and experienced partner but with tutors watching and making notes, ticking or crossing boxes.
The failure rate amongst the ‘students’ had been however on the low side, which was surprising as virtually everyone there had been pressed into the service, and this was probably due to a pretty seventeen year old blond who had refused point blank to cooperate from day one. The girl had been denied food or sleep in order to persuade her otherwise, but after four days her will had been unbroken, so the chief instructor had called all the students outside into the rear courtyard before the start of the fifth days lessons. The chief instructor was already awaiting them there as they filed out, a shotgun resting across his forearm, broken so as to show its barrels were empty. About his shoulders he had worn an ammunition belt with a dozen cartridges sat in the loops, there shiny brass ends gleaming against the polish of the tooled leather. The blond had been called forward to stand a dozen feet to his side, ordered to strip and then face the remainder, and all the time the man had spoken in a clear but neutral tone about the unacceptability of anything but total obedience. Svetlana had thought it to be a scare tactic, even after he carefully slipped a cartridge into each breech and closed the weapon with a sudden flourish, and she could still remember the sound it had made, the solid clunk as the locking levers had engaged. At the end of his speech he had said firmly.
“You will obey!” and then turning, he’d raised the weapon and fired both barrels into the side of the blond girls head. He repeated the phrase as he ejected the spent cartridges and loaded fresh ones, aiming at the torso on the ground, and firing into it again and again, each time at a different part of the body until all the cartridges were gone. Several of the girls had thrown up during the display of calculated destruction, two had fainted and Svetlana, who had tried to turn away, had been grabbed by the hair by an instructor and forced to watch.
The ground rules had been firmly laid out that morning, but two other girls had fallen by the wayside that year, one had tried to run away and one suffered a breakdown. They had disappeared in the night and all signs of their existence had been gone before the coming of dawn. No one for one moment believed that either girl had been simply thrown out for failing. Other, more subtle methods, were also used to provide the proper motivation; such as on the wall of the gymnasium, where there was displayed a poster depicting an empty cartridge case, and beside it the words ‘Cellulite kills’.
From time to time she was taken into the city, as were all the students, accompanied of course by tutors, and given a key to an apartment or hotel room, after which she would have to pick up someone of the instructors choosing, usually in a nightclub or hotel bar and seduce them back to the room. From start to finish her efforts would be watched, and recorded on hidden monitors, and a debrief would take place the next day. These were the 'test nights’ and in the beginning for Svetlana they were the worst. The targets were never terribly attractive physical specimens, giving them a hunk or a beauty to get into bed would have been too easy on the students. So various overweight, hairy, sweaty or downright ugly individuals got to find that the Christmas to end all Christmas’s, had for them come early. Svetlana had come so close to failing after one disastrous evening when she had fled from a hotel room, still only half undressed and unable to go through with the expected act. However, one of the demonstrators who lived and worked in the training facility had taken her to one side the next day and told her the secret. In order to survive, in order to reach old age without being disappeared or going insane, she had to be successful in the role chosen for her. In order to succeed in that then she had to be 100 % convincing, and the only way for that to happen was for her to enjoy what she was doing. Acting out the role, no matter how well, was not sufficient to reach the ultimate goal of dying of old age whilst still of sound mind. Svetlana had listened well to what the demonstrator had called a form self-hypnotism, but who admitted was really achieving a state of mind that could be put on at will, like a suit of clothes, and put away again afterwards.