Chapter 10

Connie

 

“Is this Nikolai?” I croaked. The hand holding my cell phone to my ear was shaking. I was so nervous that my whole body trembled. I was standing on the sidewalk near the café I had visited with Julius in the heart of Moscow.

It was early afternoon and the streets were full of pedestrians and passing traffic. I hadn’t dared make this call from the embassy; I had no idea about internal listening devices or if our own security people could monitor outgoing cell phone calls.

“Yes…” the voice was naturally wary. “Who is this who calls me?”

“It’s the blonde American girl,” I said. There was a tight knot of apprehension in my chest, choking every word I spoke.

“Aaah,” the voice suddenly came alive with interest. I pictured the young thug’s petulant face. I imagined him slouched in a chair in a dark room surrounded by his cronies and pretty young girls. “What do you want, American chick?” his English was thickly accented.

“To talk,” I said.

There was a long pause of silence on the line. I heard the scuffle of movement through the static of the phone. Then the man’s voice seemed clearer, more focused.

“So talk,” he grunted.

A group of people wrapped in fur coats and carrying umbrellas came along the sidewalk, moving in a cluster against the flow of traffic. I turned around into the face of a light breeze and felt it slap my cheeks.

“I want to know more about the auction I witnessed,” I said carefully. “I want to know exactly what happens.” As I had been speaking I heard my voice lower and drip with guilt.

The Russian thug laughed. It was a bitter, chilling sound.

“You know what happens, American chick,” his voice was oily. “You stand on the stage in sexy stuff and show your body to the men. You must make yourself look very temptation to them.” He stopped in mid-sentence. “Temptation?”

I knew exactly what he meant. “I understand. Go on.”

The thug sniffed. “If they like you very much and if they want to fuck you, they will make big bids, yes?”

“But what happens after the auction?” I whispered.

“After?” the thug sounded like he didn’t understand the meaning of the question. “After you have been bought, you go into my father’s office. He will transfer your share of the money into your account.”

I narrowed my eyes warily. “How would he have the money so quickly?” My instincts were on high alert, looking for a trap.

“Because everyone who wants to bid must first deposit funds,” the thug said simply. “It is all done before the auction. My father transfers your share into your account. You will stand with him and see this thing happen.”

“My share?”

“Da.” Then he laughed. “What? You think we do these auctions for like a charity?”

“How much would be my share?” I became wary again.

“Seventy percent,” the young thug said without hesitation. “The other thirty percent comes to us.”

Seventy percent of one hundred thousand was seventy thousand dollars.

That would be more than enough to save my grandmother’s bookstore.

“And after the money goes into my account?”

“Then you fuck.”

I licked my lips nervously. Despite the freezing cold of the gray afternoon, I could feel sweat trickling down the back of my blouse.

“What are the arrangements for concluding the transaction?” I asked. I couldn’t bring myself to talk in the graphic terms the Russian used. It made the whole thing too real.

“Arrangements?” the thug seemed not to understand the question.

“Where do we go…?” I broke the question off.

“Aah!” he understood my meaning at last. I felt that every word he said was wrapped around a lecherous smile. “You will go straight upstairs into our hotel,” the thug said. “It is all organized. We have some empty rooms. You will wait in one of them and the man who buys your pussy will come to you.”

I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the cold gray sky like a lost soul looking to their god for guidance.

“And it’s just for one night?”

“Of course!” the thug’s voice was incredulous. “How many times can you be a virgin, American?”

I grunted. The cloud was clearing, but the approaching night was already beginning to darken the day. Above the peaks and towers of the city skyline, evening loomed.

“Do you have an auction tonight?” I cringed as I asked the question, torn and dreading the answer for I knew it would seal my fate.

“Da.”

I felt my shoulders slump, and the tension went from me like a long exhalation of breath. Something flat and detached filled my eyes. I held the phone tight to my ear and hissed the words.

“Okay,” I said, assailed by a sudden turmoil of regrets, panic and a sense of fated relief. “I’m in, Nikolai.”

 

 

I bought a handful of postcards that featured panoramic shots of Moscow’s most famous landmarks to reinforce the souvenir-buying cover story I had told Mitch. Then I went shopping for clothes.

I had to look ‘very temptation’ the thug had explained, if I wanted to increase the bids from the crowd and ensure I earned enough money to cover my grandmother’s debts.

I knew what that meant… but I didn’t know exactly how to achieve the look. I’d seen what the other girls in the nightclub had been wearing at their auctions and I started looking at racks of see-through blouses in the nearest dress shop…

…before I had a sudden flash of inspiration.

 

 

 

Mitch

 

“Mike,” I leaned forward in the chair and fixed the Ambassador with a cold hard stare, “there’s just no other option. If we continue with the negotiations in their current form, we’re going to make zero progress.”

The Ambassador’s features were grim with resignation. He had his hands steepled, his legs crossed. His disappointment was palpable.

“And the President agrees?”

“Yes.” I inhaled a lungful of cigar smoke and then let it spill slowly from the corner of my mouth. The ceiling of the Ambassador’s office was wreathed in blue smoke. “He agrees with me. It’s not the deal, and it’s not that we can’t budge on the concession the Russians are insisting on. Our obstacle is the people we’re negotiating with. There isn’t one man on the Russian side of that table who can make a binding decision on behalf of their government… and not one man we can trust to make the agreement stick for the full term of the contract.”

“So, what do we do?”

“We go home,” I said. “And we keep working the diplomatic channels until one day a man emerges who has their leadership’s ear, and who we feel we can trust and work with.”

The Ambassador looked bewildered. “But that could take years.”

“Yes,” I said. I wasn’t happy about the situation either, but it was my call to make on behalf of the President. I knew the trade agreement was an important one, but so were all the others we’d negotiated. The past was littered with the torn up shreds of trade negotiations between our countries.

The Ambassador was about to say more when the phone on his desk rang. He looked surprised. He went to the phone and listened, then turned to me, frowning.

“It’s for you.”

I held the phone to my ear and heard clicking as the embassy exchange connected to an outside call.

“Hello? Who is this speaking?” It was a deep Russian voice.

“Mitch Stuyversant,” I answered, narrowing my eyes, suspicious and also alert.

“Good. It is Sergey. Say nothing to anyone. You must meet me. Now.”

I shot a glance at my wristwatch. It was four o’clock. Outside it would be almost dark. “Now?”

“Yes.”

“This is highly unusual…” I said.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“There is a park not far from your embassy…”

“I know it.”

“Good. Meet me there. Ten minutes. Come alone.”

The line clicked dead, the connection broken.

 

 

 

I stood in the drifting powder of snow, hunched into the warmth of an overcoat, staring up at the bare branches of a tree and the onrushing night. The park was empty of life, but I could see the tracks of pedestrians who had passed through the park earlier in the day. There was a wooden bench a hundred yards to my left. I buried my balled fists deep into the pockets of the coat and began to walk.

A dark vague figure emerged from the gloom and came towards me. I felt a prickle of anxiety. Sergey Volostok moved with a purposeful impatient stride.

We met by the bench. Sergey was breathing heavily, his head clouded by steaming air, and his eyes were made watery by the bite of the frigid breeze. He looked at me for a long moment of silence. His face looked pinched and hard, his gaze fraught with trouble.

“I imagine that whatever news you bring is highly confidential and extremely important, Sergey Volostok,” I said formally.

“Da,” the Russian narrowed his eyes and inclined his head a little to one side as though he was trying to study my expression from a different angle.

I braced myself, shoulders back, like I was about to receive bad news.

Had the Russians collapsed the trade negotiations completely?

Sergey struggled for a moment, searching perhaps for polite expressions, and then he finally gave up in a huff of frustration. Neither of us had the delicate vocabulary of the diplomats.

“I have received a phone call one hour ago from the owner of the Underground nightclub,” he said.

My expression became puzzled. “The grubby middle-aged man who was in the office counting his money while we spoke?”

“Da.”

I shrugged. “So?”

“He called me with shitting his pants,” Sergey mangled the expression but I understood his meaning. “He was very scared. Very frightened.”

“Of what?”

“Recriminations,” Sergey said.

I clawed my hand through my hair, trying to suppress a rising sense of frustration. This wasn’t making any sense, and I failed to understand what any of Sergey’s news had to do with me. “I’m not following,” there was an edge to my voice.

Sergey grunted. “His son – Nikolai, that we left to guard your assistant, remember him?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he had a call from your miss Connie earlier today, and when the father found out from Nikolai, then the old man phoned me in very much fear. He wanted to know what he should do.”

“Connie called the son of the nightclub owner?” I shook my head. I was spinning in a daze. Sergey shuffled his feet in the snow and then seemed to go off on another tangent.

“Bad things happen at Underground nightclub,” he began. “It is mafia and they have their own rules. They do sometimes things that are illegal and if it suits us, we look the other way.”

“What kind of things?” I still didn’t understand what Sergey was trying to tell me.

He shrugged. “Drugs, black market alcohol… and prostitution.”

“So? We have the same problems in the States.”

“Yes, but at Underground they sometimes also find young women and then auction off their virginity to the highest bidder.”

I widened my eyes in horror. “Sex slaves?”

“No,” Sergey smiled bleakly. “The girls who are auctioned are all volunteers. They sell their virginity to men because they want the money… or maybe the thrills.” He shrugged like the real reason a young woman would do such a thing was something he might never fully understand.

“It sounds barbaric,” I said. “But I still don’t –”

“Your miss Connie called the owner’s son today. She wants to auction her body and virginity at the club. Tonight.”

Thump!

The news hit me like a punch to the guts; I felt the air rush from my lungs in a gasp of disbelief and chilling shock. I stared incredulously at the Russian for long moments while I tried to process the information.

“Connie wants to auction her virginity at a sleazy Russian nightclub to the highest bidder?”

“Da,” Sergey too looked crestfallen. He had taken a shine to Connie. “Tonight.”

I turned away and took a kind of staggering step in the snow. Through the turmoil of confusion and emotion, my impressions of Connie Wyatt had shattered in the blink of an eye.

In the brief time I had known her I had seen her as a beautiful, determined young woman, still naïve in the ways of the world, still as fresh and delicate as an unplucked flower. Indeed, in the moments when I had caught myself admiring her figure or the beauty of her face, I had recriminated myself for thinking of a girl so young in such a manner.

Now I saw her entirely differently. Yes, she was obviously still a virgin, but behind the sweet and innocent façade, Connie’s decision to auction her body was the kind of act taken by a fully-grown woman who was either desperate for money… or fuelled by wicked erotic desires.

“What time is the auction?” my voice croaked.

Sergey shrugged. “Maybe nine or ten o’clock tonight.”

An image of Connie wearing a white dress flashed across my mind. She was standing angel-like in my bedroom doorway and there was a garland of flowers in her hair. The light from the corridor beyond showed through the flimsy material of her gown so that I could see the perfect long shape of her legs and the gap between her thighs. The picture faded, like it had never been, replaced by a vision of her standing on the stage at Underground. She was wearing lace panties, dancing and gyrating her body to the applause and admiration of a crowd of men who were all my age. Connie’s hair was tousled, her breasts swaying with every seductive move of her hips. Her hand slid slowly down the flat of her stomach and then disappeared inside the waistband of her panties. As she threw her head back and moaned, the men in the crowd began to applaud. I felt an involuntary clench of desire in my loins that was raw masculine arousal.

“ – do?”

I blinked, rattled. Sergey had spoken and I hadn’t heard him. I spun around, breathing tightly. “What?”

“I asked what you wanted to do about this matter?” Sergey repeated patiently. There was another long pause while I thought. Sergey too was thinking. He filled the silence, this time choosing his words with delicacy.

“You know, we could have used this to our advantage,” he said softly.

I understood instantly. “Yes.”

“There was some discussion. Our counter intelligence people…”

I nodded. “You could have let this happen tonight without informing me,” I agreed. “And then photographed the incident to use as blackmail evidence against Connie.”

The Russian nodded sagely. “It was tempting,” he conceded. “You are a very powerful man. You are connected directly to your president and she is your assistant.”

“Temporary assistant.”

The Russian shrugged as if the distinction was trivial. Either way, Sergey had surrendered the opportunity for his government to turn Connie into an unwilling but effective spy against the American government. The significance of the gesture struck me.

“You did a very courageous thing,” I said.

“I did it for Russia, and for the trade deal,” he said, straightening his back like a soldier and puffing out his chest. “You wanted an act of faith, Mr. Stuyversant. You said you wanted a man inside Russia you could trust through a display of good will. I present this to you as a measure of integrity.”

We locked eyes and then I clasped him firmly and meaningfully on the shoulder. “You are the man I was looking for,” I smiled fleetingly. “And you shall have your trade subsidy, Sergey, and a deal with America. I promise you that. But first I want your help to resolve the danger to Connie.”

We talked quietly together in the freezing cold of the afternoon for another thirty minutes before a plan was agreed upon and the details arranged.