“Gets your cork, don’t it, me using them ethnic remarks? Keep in touch, you hear?”
He walked off, shuffling along in his black high-topped shoes. Captain Herman Steel watched him, fighting back the anger he felt at the Congressman’s words, realizing that the old man had deliberately baited him as part of the price he was going to have to pay to get rid of Mike Brannon.
Sophia Blovin got out of bed in an easy, fluid motion and walked to the window and scratched at the frost on the pane with a fingernail. She turned and smiled at Igor Shevenko, who was lying in bed with the down quilt pulled up to his chin.
“You’re an idiot, woman,” he said in an affectionate voice. “It’s like the North Pole out of the bed. Come back.” She smiled and walked slowly toward the bed, completely unconscious of her nudity. Shevenko watched appreciatively as she moved toward the bed, his eyes roaming over her full breasts, her rounded belly and the thick triangle of pubic hair. She slid underneath the covers and reached down and grasped him, giggling as he gasped at the coldness of her fingers.
“Make my hand warm, fill it, please,” she coaxed. She reached around with her other hand and pulled his head down under the covers and put his face against one of her breasts. He nuzzled happily and she smiled.
“That’s better,” she murmured. “My hand is filling up with you and I’m getting all wet. Take me, now!” She pulled at him and he rolled over on top of her as she spread herself for him, clamping her long, powerful legs around his waist. She guided him into her and began to thrust with her hips, her breath coming in short gasps. She cried out suddenly and relaxed and he rolled to one side, pulling her with him, her leg over his hips. He lay there, moving gently, until she moaned and then he thrust at her savagely until she suddenly tensed and then sighed and relaxed.
“You only have to touch me and I begin to orgasm,” she said softly. “If I were your wife I would drain you every night and morning. You would have no desire for Stefan.”
He pulled his head away and stared at her.
“What do you mean?” he snapped.
“Stefan is, how do you say it, a homo, a queer,” she murmured. She pulled his head toward her and tickled his ear with her tongue.
“You’re crazy!” he said. “He’s not a big strong man, frail, in fact. But not a homosexual.”
“He is,” she said. “I have two of those kind in my section. Brilliant analysts, both of them. They are jealous of Stefan because they think he has not one but two very powerful lovers.”
Shevenko sat up in bed, ignoring the chill air on his bare chest and shoulders. “Who are his lovers?” he demanded.
“You are supposed to be one,” she said. “I never believed that. The way you looked at me when I was assigned to your Directorate gave me doubts about that. Now I know you are not, you like a woman’s body too much to be a pederast.”
“Who is the other one supposed to be?”
“You will be angry if I tell you,” she answered.
“I will be more than angry if you do not. Who is he?”
“You won’t hit me if I tell you? Promise?”
“I don’t hit women,” he snapped. “His name.”
“Admiral Zurahv.”
He sank back on the pillow and pulled the quilt up to his chin, his mind racing.
“That’s a very serious charge,” he said slowly. “It should not be said even in jest. It should not be said unless you have solid proof.”
“One of my boys was the Admiral’s lover,” she said. She eyed his stern face. “He was displaced by Stefan about six months ago. He hates Stefan for that.”
“That’s not proof,” Shevenko growled. “That’s nothing more than gossip.”
“It is more than that. I began to check when I first heard the story. I heard little things, that the Admiral likes young men with nice round bottoms.
“I went to the old files, the military files. I have access to them, as you know, because of my classification. I found several mentions of charges that were to be brought against the Admiral and then were never carried through.
“I know a girl in the First Department of the Second Chief Directorate. She’s a lesbian. They use her to compromise the wives of American diplomats and military attaches. She checked for me and found that the Admiral was accused of pederasty with young men, some of them officers on his staff. Nothing was ever done about the charges, the Admiral is too powerful.”
“I suppose you and this lesbian were great friends,” Shevenko said, his voice harsh.
“No,” she said in a soft voice. “She tried, once, but I like what you have, not what women don’t have. I understand her weakness, she understands my desires. We are just good friends, girl friends.” She reached down and began to caress him gently. He felt the warmth of her tears on his shoulder.
“Sophia,” he said, fighting to keep his voice gentle. “What a lesbian says is not considered to be responsible evidence. I will have to have her in, to demand the files she said she saw.”
“You don’t have to do that. She gave me the files and I made copies. I have them here, in my apartment.”
“Why did you make copies, for what purpose?”
She moved in the bed so her right breast was against his shoulder. “Because when you had me in for my interview, before you hired me, when I first saw you my heart exploded. I wanted you for my lover. What can I bring a man such as you, a man as powerful as you are except my love, my body?
“When I first heard the gossip I thought that if I could bring you this, something that you could use to protect yourself against the Admiral — everyone knows that you two are enemies — I thought that I would be serving you.”
Shevenko laid back against the big pillow, his face rocklike. She looked at him and then ducked her head under the covers and began to caress his chest and stomach with her tongue. Her head went lower and lower and he spread his legs to accommodate her and then her mouth was on him and he began to groan in ecstasy despite himself.
“And what is it you want?” he asked when she had emerged from beneath the quilt.
“Just you,” she said. “As often as you can arrange to be away from your wife.” She leaned over him and kissed him, her tongue searching for his.
“If you wish, I would like to be your chief aide. That would end the dangerous gossip among the pretty boys in the building that you put your manhood in Stefan’s ass.”
“And Stefan,” he said. “What about him? He has been an efficient aide. He does a great deal of work.” He ground his teeth together and she shuddered at the sound. “A great deal of work, much of it highly confidential.”
“I leave that to you,” she said softly “I have disturbed you, you are too tense. I am tense as well. Love me as I taught you to do last night.” She pushed gently against his head, pushing it down underneath the covers. As he kissed her soft belly and then the moist area of her groin, hearing her moans of joy, he wondered if Sophia Blovin worked for him or for one of the many enemies he had made since he took over as the head of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. She cried out in ecstasy and he shuddered. The honey trap, as he knew very well, had brought other powerful men down in disgrace.
Vice Admiral Mike Brannon flipped through his Rolodex, looking for the number of the Commander, Submarines, Pacific Fleet. He dialed the switchboard and gave the number to the operator and sat back and waited for the connection to be made. In ComSubPac’s office at the Naval Base in Pearl Harbor a Chief Yeoman took the call and put it through to Vice Admiral Homer Ross.