His head bobbed, but he mimed his fingers along the buttons of his pajama top, and she mouthed, Oh!, and unbuttoned her blouse, exposing most of her bosom in a teasingly provocative way. The moonlight conspired with her, streaming in from the little round window, providing her with a nice soft-focus key light. Too bad a photographer wasn’t around, to show just how sumptuous a pin-up girl Marilyn Monroe could still be in her thirties.
Nikita — moving in remarkable silence for so large a man — positioned himself in the shadows to one side of the staircase opening; he got on his knees with a shoe in his right hand, poised to strike from the darkness.
She shot him a look, as if to say, Well — how is this? And, briefly, as he glimpsed her posing there, he wore a stunned expression she’d seen countless times on many a man.
Which made her think this strategy just might work…
Nikita gave her an approving nod; and Marilyn gave him an encouraging wink, before half-closing her eyes, then breathing deeply, affecting slumber.
Suddenly she was no longer frightened. It was as if a movie camera had started to roll, and the fear that clenched her before she was on set, and working, had vanished. She was doing what she did so welclass="underline" acting out a scenario, playing a part… She did not allow herself to realize this might well be the most important role of her life.
Marilyn Monroe would be the first thing the killer saw, as he stealthily climbed the last flight of stairs, his head cautiously rising above the opening in the floor, eyes piercing the darkness in search of his victims… then — if she was any judge — those eyes would pop at the sight of the semi-nude Marilyn, her blonde hair shimmering in the moonlight, bedroom eyes seductively closed, sensual lips parted provocatively, white creamy skin inviting a man’s touch, full breasts half exposed under the open plaid shirt…
He wouldn’t stand a chance.
A thought jumped into her mind: unless he was gay!
Long seconds ticked by, as wood below them creaked, the sound of feet on stairs soft, subtle, yet building as the party-crasher drew nearer…
Through her slitted eyes she saw him, an Asian face on a head that sneaked itself up into view, a hand with a gun in it, a bulky thing, nosing up over the edge of the hole in the floor; then dark eyes fastened on her and opened wide, his mouth gaping, too…
…and a shoe flashed out of the darkness and she opened her eyes wide as that brown hammer came around and smacked the intruder in the forehead, hard, and the open mouth yelped in pain and the eyes narrowed with the same thing. Nikita slammed the shoe down again, this time on a mostly out-of-sight gun hand, apparently knocking the weapon from the man’s grasp because she could hear it fall clatteringly down the stairwell to make a distant thunk at the bottom.
Somehow the assassin managed to swivel toward Nikita, in a posture that suggested a martial arts move might be next; but the premier dealt firmly with the matter, Nyet!, whamming the shoe down on top of the man’s head like he was driving a nail, finally dislodging him from the stairs, sending him toppling down a flight, plunging out of her view, whumping to the landing below.
Nikita was moving quickly, nimbly, amazingly so for such a corpulent man, and a wounded one at that; he was already out of sight, heading down to the landing below when she leapt to her feet and rushed to the stairs, and looked down. The assassin was sprawled on the landing, on his back, like an overturned black beetle, groaning in pain, a red welt the shape of a heel rising on his forehead.
Nikita, finishing his two-stairs-at-a-time descent, seemed about to leap on the man, as Marilyn — halfway down the stairs herself now — saw a glint of steel in the killer’s hand, winking at her flirtatiously.
She yelled, “Nikkie! He’s got a knife!”
As Nikita jumped back, again with unusual grace, the assassin sprang to his feet, and smiled at his target, showing him a long, slender blade, threateningly thrust forward in an assured hand.
Afraid for her friend, Marilyn — a bystander on the stairs — wondered desperately what she could do to help… She remembered the assassin’s gun, but it had fallen somewhere below… and she could hardly reach it in time, even if she did get past the two men who faced each other now, like western gunfighters.
Nikita withdrew something from his pocket — Marilyn wondered if this was the object he’d slipped away, before arming himself with a shoe, minutes before.
“I do not want to kill you,” Nikita said conversationally. “Is better for trash like you to live… and talk.”
But the assassin wasn’t talking; maybe he didn’t even understand English.
Then the man did understand, obviously — as did Marilyn — why Nikita was so unafraid: the premier, with a confident flip, threw open the blade of the straight razor, and now its sharp, glistening edge was doing the winking… and nothing flirtatious about it.
The two men with blades circled one another on the landing, waiting for the right moment to attack — the assassin, small but nimble, skilled in hand-to-hand combat and wielding a knife, wore a confident smirk, Nikita’s weapon not seeming to give him any worry… and Nikita — determined, armed himself now, but tired, wounded — made a very big target.
Marilyn refused to play the damsel in distress, hovering helplessly on the periphery… she had to do something!
The actress ran back up the stairs and went to the small round window in the cone of the ship, and — using one of her own shoes — knocked out the glass on the first try. She leaned her head out through the jagged teeth of the broken window and began to scream — big, blood-curdling shrieks that could summon someone, anyone, who might be at the park.
Soon Marilyn was growing hoarse, her voice cracking with each new scream, realizing that she couldn’t keep yelling much longer, when finally a figure below — running down one of the curving pathways — revealed itself.
Then came another figure… and another… racing down the path.
Marilyn cried out again, managing one last shriek, but this one was tinged with joy.
“We’re in here!” she yelled. “Hurry! Hurry!”
And the men — Agent Harrigan, and policemen, Secret Service, and uniformed KGB — streamed toward the spaceship like ants to a picnic.
Marilyn extracted her head from the window and rushed back down the stairs, onto the landing where the two warriors were on the floor now, locked in a deadly embrace, the man in black on top.
The assassin was trying to stab Nikita in the throat, Nikita holding the man’s hand back with one hand, his own blade in the other hand, wrist pinned to the floor by his adversary. They grunted and squirmed and then the killer kneed Nikita in the side, and the pain-wracked premier lost his grip on the razor, which the assassin swept away with a hand releasing itself from Nikita’s wrist, sending the razor skittering into the darkness, even as the blade of the knife drew closer to the premier’s throat. But this allowed Nikita, his hand freed, to deliver a short yet powerful blow, a fist to the chest that sent the assassin reeling back, off of the Russian…
“Stop!” Marilyn shouted, jumping up and down like a child in a tantrum. “It’s over! They’re coming!”
But even with the end drawing near — Marilyn could hear the shouts of men far below — she could see that the assassin would not stop until his grim task was finished.