After what seemed an interminable time, they broke out onto the floodlit north lawn, and she saw the huge stone mansion sitting majestically on the hilltop.
They made her run more quickly across the lawn to the rear of the house, then swung around on the terrace until they came to the walled service court.
The Russians slowed to a march and Claudia gasped for breath. She was nearly numb with fatigue and barely aware of being marched through the walled court filled with parked vehicles. They passed through a set of double doors, down a half flight of steps, and walked down a long, dimly lit corridor off which were small doors evenly spaced. Servants’ quarters, she thought vaguely, but the narrow corridor and the small closed doors brought back memories of another place: The jackbooted Russians with their rifles, she dragged between them; two years of her life she wanted badly to forget. It struck her suddenly that this was what the world was coming to: dark, lonely corridors, armed guards, the sound of boots and bare feet on cold floors, and a journey to an unknown place.
The guards stopped, opened a door, and pushed her inside. She saw by the corridor’s light a small unlit room, furnished with a cot and a waste bucket and nothing else. The door slammed behind her and she heard the lock turn.
She stood motionless and listened to her hard breathing, then slowly wiped her cold, clammy body with the edge of her dress. She walked carefully to the far side of the room. There was a high window and she pulled the cot to it and stood on it. The window opened onto the dimly lit service court and a weak light filtered through the dirty panes. The window was barred on the outside and she couldn’t open the outward-swinging casements. The room was oppressively warm and stagnant. She stepped down from the cot and walked back to the door and felt for a light switch, but there wasn’t any. It would be on the outside, she knew. This was a cell, and after two years in cells, one knew something of them.
Claudia slumped down on the cot. It was the waiting and the uncertainty that eventually destroyed the mind and the will. The interrogations and abuse were almost welcome relief — if they didn’t go too far in inflicting pain. At least during the sessions you knew where you stood. Questions were asked, answers were given. Accusations were made, denials and apologies were offered. Eventually you were either freed, sentenced to a term, or shot. Sometimes, however, they did the other thing. They offered you a job. In her case they had offered her the job of impersonating Countess Claudia Lepescu, who had been arrested at the same time she had. She had accepted the job and spent a year in the same cell with the former countess, until the KGB was satisfied that Magda Creanga, which was her real name, was in every way, except by birth, Countess Lepescu. The countess had been taken away, presumably shot to protect the secret.
Eventually the new Claudia Lepescu was allowed to emigrate to America under the sponsorship of Patrick O’Brien and his friends, who had been pressing for her visa to leave Rumania.
And she had done her duty to her Russian masters, ingratiating herself into the circles of O’Brien and his friends. She had even tempted poor Tony Abrams onto the roof. They said he was to be kidnapped, but she had known otherwise. The Russians were treacherous. And now her usefulness as a spy was over.
There was, however, a glimmer of hope. In addition to her training as an impersonator and a spy, she had received extensive training in another area: She was an accomplished and very talented seductress, a very fine harlot. Perhaps, she thought, for that reason alone, Kalin or Androv, both of whom had taken her to bed, would show mercy.
She knelt beside the cot and found the waste bucket. The water was clear and she washed herself as best she could, then finger-combed her hair and hand-brushed her dress. Russian men, she reflected, were the easiest of sexual conquests. They knew less about advanced sexual technique than a fifteen-year-old American boy. Their women knew less than that.
Claudia heard footsteps in the hall. They stopped. A key turned in the lock. The door opened, revealing the dark outline of a man. She could tell he was not uniformed, but wearing civilian clothes. The man reached out and snapped on the light switch outside her door.
“Alexei!” She came toward him.
Kalin put his hand out and pushed her away as he pulled the door closed behind him. “Why did you come here that way? They expected you at the gate.”
She thought, I came that way because Van Dorn told me to: to give his men time to get in position. She said, “They were after me. They found out somehow—”
“The poison?”
She nodded quickly. “Yes. That’s all right. Roth did as he was told. I did as I was told.” She came to him again, and this time he let her put her arms around him. She said, “What is to become of me, Alexei?”
He replied coolly, “You can handle a rifle. Perhaps we will need you later.”
He did not, she noted, make any long-range promises. She saw his face in the dim overhead light. “What happened to you?”
“Your friend Abrams and I had an encounter. Where is the bastard now?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t see him at Van Dorn’s.” She buried her head in his chest and her fingers worked their way under his jacket and began pulling his shirt out of his pants.
He broke her grip and looked at his watch. “All right, but time is short.”
She undressed quickly and stood in the middle of the floor, naked, her clothes piled at her feet. She smiled. “I want you, Alexei.”
Kalin undressed, laying his clothes on the floor. He hung his shoulder holster on the doorknob. He said, “We don’t have time for your full repertoire. Please proceed to the finale.”
She crossed the small room and knelt in front of him, massaging his calves and thighs.
Kalin leaned back against the door. He said softly, “A woman like you will come in handy during a long siege… and I don’t think Androv will make you carry a rifle. No, you have other talents… ” He closed his eyes and let his head roll back against the door.
Claudia’s hands cupped his buttocks. She felt the smooth leather of his holster brushing against her forearm.
62
Davis was on the point, Cameron had established a fifteen-foot interval, and Abrams followed. Abrams glanced over his shoulder at Katherine, who was close behind him. They nodded to each other encouragingly.
They approached the stone wall and Davis hopped it without hesitation, as though it were not an international barrier but just another stone sheep wall in the Falklands. Cameron followed, then Abrams, then Katherine. The patrol moved quickly into the trees of the Russian property.
Abrams held his rifle by its pistol grip, the sling across his chest, as he had been taught at the Police Academy. He knew the M-16 rifle well enough but had not fired one in some years. He kept his muzzle pointed to the left, cueing off Cameron, whose rifle pointed to the right. Davis held his M-16 under his arm pointing straight ahead. Abrams glanced back at Katherine. She had turned and was walking backward for a few steps as she’d been told, then she swung back around and scanned to her flanks.
Abrams listened to the music behind them, carried through the trees by the north wind. To the front, skyrockets traveled in a low-angle trajectory, bursting close to the horizon. Their brief glow outlined the towering tree line ahead, and in one shower of golden sparks Abrams caught a quick glimpse of the Russian mansion. They altered course slightly and moved toward the bursting rockets.
Abrams looked to the front of the file. Davis was almost no longer visible. The night without light was disorienting, alien to civilized man, Abrams reflected, a terror from sundown to sunrise, a nightmare among nightmares. He could not conceive of a darkened continent.