The wrecking-ball stroke of the tsar of all the Russians never changed, just a steady rhythm devoid of all the heady variations of positions, or pillow talk, without the ecstasies of edging or beads, or what she had seen in Hong Kong with those crazy chakras. The president’s blue eyes never left her face, looking for the slightest trace of feigned reaction, which, she was sure, would equate in his mind as deception, and the equivalent of disloyalty. Fake an orgasm with Vlad, baby, and you’re off his favorites’ list. Not even Benford would have calculated that bit of tradecraft.
At Sparrow School they intensely studied (and filmed hundreds of women experiencing) sexual climax, including the physical rhythmic contractions, the psychosomatic euphoria, and the chemical release of endorphins during the refractory period. Sparrows faking orgasm, therefore, were trained to avoid the novice’s display of histrionic screaming, head thrashing, hair tossing, and the clawing of the partner’s back. A pro Sparrow instead knew the orgasmic subtleties of a change in respiration, a stiffening of the limbs, the brief, racking shudder(s) through the body, followed by the frantic levitating off the bed if the man touched overly sensitive plumbing sooner than five minutes after. Dominika put on her Sparrow mask of pleasure-pain, as if waiting for salvation, for ecstasy, at the hands of her blue tsar. Then the impossible happened.
It started as a little buzz in her stomach—the whisper hints of a real orgasm, not faked—that radiated to her crotch, then grew, and hovered like an antique vase on the edge of the mantelpiece after an earthquake, waiting for the next trembler that would set it wobbling over the edge to the floor below. This cannot be happening, she thought. Not with this lizard cleaning her chimney. The sensation grew; her orgasm was going to happen if she let it, and it would be a big one, it had been too long without Nate, a time of prolonged stress, and she had built up a lot of, well, kilowatts, that were ready to arc and burn someone’s eyebrows off. She no longer used her grandmother’s long-handled hairbrush, for she assumed her official residences—here and in Moscow—were filled with audio and video. Bogu moy, my God, the vase on the mantelpiece started chittering, vibrating closer to the edge.
This cannot happen. This will not happen, she thought. Even as she began the Sparrow School routine for Putin’s benefit (No. 44, “A single snowflake will start the avalanche”), Dominika shut down her real climax, chased it away by thinking about Bratok, banished it back to her spleen, or her liver, or wherever it resided. It was easy enough to do, considering the dibbuk, the ogre who was hunched over her, nose-whistling as he plowed in and out.
Putin was himself laboring; it was catching up to him too: the image of this unattainable Venus, head back, throat offered to him, eyes white in their sockets, was having its effect, not to mention the quite remarkable sensation of her pubococcygeus muscle actually milking his organ with the result that he felt the telltale gathering in his groin, the insidious thickening of his member, and finally the leaden palsy that sweeps over the limbs at the moment of spuskat, of ejaculation. He said nothing, blinked once—his expression did not change—and disengaged the moment he was done, wiping his face, sliding off the bed, and collecting his tracksuit pants off the floor. The tsar was not one for kissy endearments, or stroking of hair, or tender embraces in the soft après-sex twilight. It was sufficient that he had deposited on his bedewed Director of Foreign Intelligence, an SVR general, the imperial spoor that marked one of the boundaries of his predatory range.
She was outwardly languid, but breathing hard and sweaty between the breasts. Dominika’s thoughts raced madly in the postcoital asylum that was her brain. She had to get rid of the president. Agnes in the closet probably had to pee. Would the freshening land breeze prevent Benford’s USV—due in fifty minutes—from landing on the beach below? Ugh, her thighs were sticky. As a trained Sparrow, Dominika knew that a healthy man ejaculates approximately 5 milliliters (a teaspoon) of semen, which contains approximately one hundred million sperm. That meant one hundred million melon-headed Putin spermatozoa with whippy tails were all on the move inside her, intent on annexing her cervix like the Crimean peninsula. (Thank God for the Agency-issued IUD, a copper coil PARAGARD device developed [purely by coincidence] by Lockheed in 1962 during the design phase of the SR-71 Blackbird supersonic reconnaissance aircraft.) The president was saying something, and Dominika stilled the cascade of her disjointed thoughts.
“I would like you to have this,” said Putin, sliding a long velvet box onto the end table. “Wear it tomorrow at the concert.” Tomorrow’s entertainment was to be a live performance by a hugely famous American music artist, also well-known as a vocal and committed progressive activist who, despite the absence of demonstrable human rights in Russia, found he could accept $5 million from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation to appear at Cape Idokopas to entertain the siloviki. Dominika opened the case. Nestled inside was a priceless strand of multicolored South Sea and Tahitian pearls, each one 114 millimeters, as big as marbles, sea green, gold, ivory, and mocha, a sublime strand.
“Mr. President, these pearls are magnificent. I couldn’t possibly . . .”
Putin put up his hand to quiet her, took the strand from the box, and fastened it around her neck, where a separate pearl nestled heavily in the hollow of her neck. Personal gifts exchanged between governmental colleagues—Dominika’s pizda in exchange for the pearls—did not pose the slightest conflict of interest in this tsar’s Russia. “I would like you to accept them,” he said.
Dominika fingered the pearls. “Thank you, Mr. President,” she said. “And thank you for a wonderful evening.” His blue halo glowed.
CIA star asset DIVA saw Vladimir Vladimirovich to the door. She did not kiss him good night, with all the shining raccoon eyes of the security detail fixed on her in her silk kimono from the darkness. They shook hands instead, the feel of the president’s calluses scratching her palm.
The electric whine of the golf carts speeding uphill faded. It was dead quiet inside, but the pines outside stirred noisily in the breeze. No audio bugs working tonight in the dacha, right? Dominika retrieved Agnes from the closet and they walked downstairs in silence. Dominika opened another bottle of champagne and poured two glasses, leaning on the marble island with her elbows, her head in her hands, exhausted. Forty minutes to the arrival of the USV.
Agnes ran her fingers through her white forelock. “Half a cup of white vinegar with a teaspoon of baking powder,” she said, also leaning on the marble top. They were like two cowpokes at a bar.
“What?” said Dominika, looking at her glass.
Agnes shook her head. “Not to drink; it’s a homemade douche solution. I assume you’d rather not carry the president around with you all night.” Dominika laughed. She liked this Polish Cold Warrior. Thank God she could carry Dominika’s message to Benford personally. And thank God Dominika would be able to get her out of Russia in one piece. But she didn’t have vinegar and there was no time.
“How often does this happen?” asked Agnes.
“This is the first time,” said Dominika, trying not to sound defensive. She noted Agnes’s nonjudgmental expression. “But I expect his attention will grow more acute now that I am a member of his inner circle.”
“It’s important not to blame yourself. No self-recrimination, not ever.”