Chapter 11

Connie

 

It was the longest, most gut-wrenching few hours of my life. I wandered the streets of Moscow clutching my shopping bags until darkness fell. I had nothing to do and nowhere to go; I stopped at a sidewalk café – but I was simply too overwrought and nervous to eat.

Time passed with painful slowness and every single minute was a fresh torture of angst and doubts and regrets. At seven o’clock I felt the first cramping pains of real terror as the shocking reality of what I had committed myself to do came crashing down on me.

A dozen times I turned abruptly on my heel and strode to the sidewalk to hail a taxi back to the embassy… and a dozen times I got to the curb and then meekly retreated.

I had no choice.

Cold fingers of dread wrapped themselves around my heart and squeezed.

 

 

At nine o’clock I found a taxi with its engine still idling, parked outside the closed front doors of a department store. I leaned in through the driver’s side window. “The Underground nightclub,” I said in slow, loud English, thinking that simply speaking loudly would help the driver overcome our language barrier.

“Underground?” the driver stumbled over the word with a frown. He looked at me, uncertain, and began to shake his head.

“Please take me there,” I said. The driver shrugged in resignation and I climbed into the back of a small sedan with a cold vinyl bench seat that had stains and tears in the fabric. The windows were grimy with sludge and the car creaked and rattled at every turn. The driver was an older man with a stubble of unshaven growth on his cheeks and chin, and his eyes hidden behind the peak of a soft cloth cap. He drove with the reckless abandon of a madman, gesticulating angrily at the surrounding traffic and slamming on the brakes at traffic lights.

When he finally slowed to a halt, I recognized the restaurant where Mitch and I had met for dinner with the Russian politician.

I paid the driver with a handful of crumpled notes. I had no understanding of the currency. The old man smiled, and I saw his teeth were tainted yellow and sparkled with stainless steel fillings.

I got out of the car and the taxi wheezed away into the night. I felt a last pang of forlorn despair.

I was alone.

The red neon light of the nightclub sign glowed dully through the misting night air.

 

 

When I turned the corner and started down the alleyway, I saw the young Russian thug standing outside the front door of the nightclub, talking quietly with a group of other young men. He noticed me, and his face registered recognition, but he seemed subdued. His reaction took me off guard; I had expected his features to coarsen with gloating lust. I saw his interest flash in his eyes, but it was held under tight restraint.

I followed him in through the front doors. The nightclub was already full; the press of bodies in the tight stifling space made me feel claustrophobic. The air reeked with the smells of tobacco smoke and a pungent odor like boiled cabbage. We passed down the same corridor I had seen Mitch disappear through. Partway along the passage the thug stopped before a door and pushed it open.

I stepped inside and he followed.

It was a small cubicle about the size of a prison cell. The gray walls were water-stained with brown patches and there was an opening in the far wall covered by a curtain. I realized it was the curtain that opened onto the small stage.

This was the holding room where the girls dressed and prepared to be sold.

There was a single lightbulb suspended from the ceiling by a length of black flex cord. On one wall hung a full-length mirror that was smudged and fly-spotted. The carpet felt damp under the soles of my shoes.

The Russian pushed the door closed behind him.

We were alone, and suddenly he let his lust off its leash.

“You are very fucking sexy,” he growled. His eyes crawled intimately across my body. He ran the pointed tip of his tongue along the inside of his mouth and the gesture gave me a chill of apprehension. He saw the bags I was clutching.

“Clothes?”

“Yes.”

“For you to wear on the stage?”

“Yes,” I said again.

He curled his top lip into a loathsome arrogant smile. “Then change.”

“Where?”

“Right here, of course.”

“When?”

“Now,” his voice thickened.

I shook my head and feigned an assured laugh. “Not with you in the room.”

The thug’s face darkened. I saw the flash of hot anger, but in an instant it had been extinguished. He glanced down at the expensive gold watch on his wrist.

“You have four minutes. I will be waiting on the other side of the door.”

 

 

It took me ten frantic minutes to change clothes. I teased out my hair and let it fall loose and tangled down my shoulders, and I went deliberately heavy with the makeup and glossy red lipstick. Before I pulled on the white blouse I had purchased, I discarded my bra. The heels and thigh-length white stockings were the last things I put on.

I looked at my reflection in the smudged mirror, appalled and shocked at the transformation.

I looked like a young slut.

The noise of the crowd through the curtain reached riotous peaks and crescendos as the patrons filled themselves with cheap vodka. I stole a nervous glimpse through a chink in the fabric and saw a dark swarm of faces.

When I turned away, I realized the young thug had come silently back into the room. He was lolling with his back against the door, ankles crossed and one hand thrust deep into the pocket of his jeans. He was leering at me.

“Very sexy,” his eyes were slitted and cunning. “Turn for me.” He made a circling motion with is hand. I felt a flush of hot indignation, and then I took up the challenge with all the cock-teasing vengeance and defiance I could muster.

I paraded and postured in the small space, folding myself forward at the waist with my legs wide apart, flaring the hem of my short skirt to expose the full length of my thighs. I ran my hands in lingering caresses across my breasts until the nipples hardened of their own volition. I could feel my own blood pounding in my ears and see the way I stirred the thug’s desire. His gaze became misted and I saw his hand moving within the pocket of his pants. He was touching himself.

“Enough?” I arched an eyebrow insolently. I was breathing deeply, and I could feel a flush of something warm spreading across my chest. The heady mix of adrenalin and nerves was slowly dissolving into something intoxicating I didn’t recognize.

“Not quite,” the thug said. He pushed himself away from the door and his hands went for the buckle of his belt. “You will not be allowed on stage until you have paid the required admission.” He spoke slowly and deliberately, giving weight and emphasis to every word. He began tugging at the zip of his jeans.

I watched the movement of his hands with a mixture of revulsion and mesmerized fascination.

“Come here,” he said.

I didn’t move.

“Come here.” His voice firmed and became an edged warning.

I obeyed. I felt like helpless prey snared in a trap.

“Now, get on your knees,” the thug commanded. I flinched and his voice cracked like a cruel whip. “Kneel down!”

I sank slowly to the damp carpet, kneeling in a pose of submission. I hung my head so that the hair about my face fell forward like a curtain. Behind the fringe, I felt the prickling sting of degraded tears.

The thug reached into his pants and pulled out his cock. It was pale and flaccid. “Suck me,” he said. “It’s the only way you will get to earn any money.”

I pressed my lips together and slowly shook my head. The thug growled. He was stroking himself slowly. His cock swelled and hardened in his hand like a dead thing given life. “Suck me!” He clawed a fistful of my hair and pulled my face towards his cock.

I tightened the muscles in my neck, resisting against the insistent pressure of him. Then the door to the room was suddenly flung back against its hinges and a middle-aged man with a stained grubby shirt sauntered into the room. He saw me on my knees and he lashed out at the thug, cuffing him across the ear so violently that the youth skittered off balance. The man roared at the thug, bellowing a string of violent threats, bunching his fist and waving it.

The man helped me to my feet.

I glared savagely at the thug. He was rubbing the side of his head where he had been hit.

In the background I heard the sound of sudden thumping music and I spun round towards the curtain in a fluster of wild panic…