They lay side by side, not talking but stroking until their breath exploded, until she moaned and rose above him, her long, black hair tumbling around his face like a tent. His tongue moistened the tips of her small, pointed breasts. His hips rose and he entered her as she pulled his head back, ran a hand through his hair, and covered his lips with a kiss. Legs stiffened, body arched, he let go at the exquisite moment when her lovely face was blemished by the convulsion of orgasm.
Her breath had returned to normal. She sat up in bed. Bars of late-afternoon sunlight falling through window blinds marched across her slim thighs and the damp, rumpled sheets. Zakayev, naked, moved about the room fiddling with his things, searching for wrinkles in the Russian naval officer’s uniform he had hung up on the bathroom door. The girl’s eyes roamed over his lean, pale body scarred by Russian bullets and shrapnel. The fresh white bandage over the wound on his arm almost matched the color of his skin.
“We’ll leave after it’s dark,” Zakayev said. They had let a room in a small, moldering hotel overlooking Murmansk’s busy harbor. It was a place where people didn’t ask questions and avoided eye contact with strangers.
“You will look handsome in your naval uniform,” she said. “I’ll want to kiss you.”
“A petty officer first class can’t kiss an admiral,” Zakayev said with mock seriousness.
They had discussed it so many times and she was eager to play her role. The uniform she would wear—
navy pants, striped jumper, a traditional Russian Navy flat hat with ribbon device — lay folded neatly on a chair.
“Ali, sit here.”
He let her kiss the pit of his neck, his chest and nipples, both hands. Her eyes suddenly welled up. “Ali, there isn’t much time, not even a week, you said.” Her voice quavered, a delicate flutter that he pretended he hadn’t heard.
He appraised her with cold objectivity. “You said you were not afraid to die.”
“I’m not. I chose this, so what is going to happen to me doesn’t matter as long as our mission succeeds; but even so, I want to know if you…I want to hear you say…”
“Don’t…” He got up and turned his back. Yes, he loved her, but could admit it only to himself. If he said the words she wanted to hear, everything would change. “Don’t ask; don’t say any more. We agreed not to. It’s all arranged and nothing can happen to change it. Litvanov and his men are waiting for us.” He faced her. “Now it’s time for you to prepare.”
She rose silently from the bed and went into the tiny bathroom. A naked bulb hanging from a twisted wire in the ceiling provided weak illumination. For a long time she stood looking at herself in the tarnished flyspecked mirror over the rusty sink. Then she picked up a pair of scissors and began cutting her hair, the long, silky strands falling like black rain.
Zakayev turned up his coat collar. A sharp wind laced with the stink of dead fish and diesel fuel sent paper and debris corkscrewing down a deserted wind tunnel of a street lined with ship chandleries and warehouses, with old packing cases, cargo pallets, and rubbish of all sorts. The wheels of heavy trucks had carved ruts in the frozen snow, which made footing treacherous. The girl slipped and almost fell but Zakayev caught her arm.
They turned off the main street into a narrow alley between darkened warehouses that rose on either side like the walls of a canyon. Zakayev found the battered wooden door, which he identified by the heavy iron crossbraces bolted to its face. The door was set into the brick wall of a warehouse over three crumbling concrete steps. He looked down the alley and saw a Guards stake body truck parked where he was told it would be, beside the seawall fronting the harbor.
Zakayev withdrew the H&K P7 from the pocket of his overcoat and tightened his fingers around the grip, cocking the pistol. He banged on the door and waited. A gust of wind plastered the skirt of his overcoat between his legs.
Heavy boots tramped over a plank floor. Bolts snapped open and door hinges squealed. A heavyset man in shabby work clothes, a greasy cap on his close-cropped head, stood in a rectangle of light spilling into the alley from the open door.
“Were you planning to shoot me, Ali?” said Kapitan Third Rank Georgi Litvanov.
Zakayev lowered the pistol. “You look well, Georgi Alexeyevich.”
They entered and Litvanov closed and bolted the door behind them, then looked them up and down.
“Here, let me see you.”
Zakayev shrugged out of his overcoat. The girl handed him a traditional Russian Navy garrison cap, which he put on his head at a rakish angle.
Litvanov stepped back and regarded Zakayev dressed in the uniform of a Russian kontr-admiral — rear admiral — complete with gold shoulder boards on the tunic and gold stripes on the sleeves.
“It’s perfect!” Litvanov said. “You look just like a Russian flag officer.”
Litvanov’s attention swung to the girl in her peacoat, jumper, and flat hat. He inspected her outfit, nodding approval. Her big eyes and full lips, triangular face, and short hair gave her an androgynous look that was strangely appealing.
“My men could take some pointers from this one, Ali, on how to wear their uniforms properly. Ha! You are both a credit to the Russian Navy.”
The girl didn’t speak but smiled to show she was pleased that she’d passed muster with the captain of the submarine K-363.
Litvanov beckoned they should follow him up a flight of stairs to a makeshift office that had a view from a pair of dirty windows onto the darkened warehouse floor below. Litvanov had laid out black bread, salted herring, and a bottle of vodka on one of the desks.
“You had no trouble finding the place?” Litvanov said.
“No, your instructions were clear,” Zakayev said. “We took an electrobus from the hotel and got off three blocks away.” Zakayev looked around the office at file cabinets and equipment that included modern computers and printers. “How did you come by this place?”
“I do a little business with the owner,” Litvanov said. “He’s always in the market for surplus goods the Northern Fleet has no use for. Particularly titanium and stainless steel. He was in a generous mood and lent his office for our meeting. Eat.”
The girl declined but Zakayev sampled the salted fish and nodded approval. “Your boat is set for departure?”
“Of course, General.” Litvanov paused to light a cigarette. “The schedule is tight. I’ve timed our departure so we won’t run into any vessels patrolling the main channel out of the Tuloma River or around Kil’din Island. Procedures have broken down and the harbor control units don’t keep track of ship arrivals and departures like they used to, but now and then you get a new skipper who goes by the book. Do you follow?”
“Of course. And your crew?”
“Handpicked,” Litvanov said, his voice thick from cigarette smoke, “stripped to only essential personnel. In other words, enough to operate the boat. The crew has trained nonstop for over a week while we’ve sat moored to a dock in Olenya Bay. They’re eager to get under way. They are good men.
All the high-flown lectures they receive about duty, honor, and the Motherland can’t change the fact that life at sea in a submarine is hard, that we have lousy food, live among the unwashed, breathe one another’s farts and smelly feet, and sleep in soggy bunks. And for this privilege we are not paid. But now that will change.”