Suddenly Anna started: a man was climbing the stairs. Unfortunately, it wasn’t her lover, Alexei Somov. It was a fat, bald man who looked at her suggestively, probably taking her for a prostitute. Anna was wearing black stockings, a tight sweater, and high-heeled boots. Moreover, she was elegant, carefully made up, and alone. To avoid appearing provocative, she deliberately looked away.
Somov was late, as usual, which is why they always arranged to meet in public places.
Anna called the waitress over and ordered a cup of chocolate.
That was a mistake.
The chocolate arrived just as Somov’s bearlike figure appeared on the stairs, and Anna felt a wave of warmth in her crotch. When he reached the top, her thighs parted of their own accord, restrained only by her tight skirt. Somov stirred her sexually in a way no other man ever had.
Physically, he was an animal. He stood six feet five, and everything about him was big, from a pair of massive hands to a jaw like a hungry lion’s.
Grinning, Somov plopped into a chair next to Anna and automatically put his hand on her black-clad thigh.
“You’re looking very pretty, zaika maya,” he said, watching his “bunny’s” nipples stiffen under the sweater as he casually brushed against them.
The waitress came over to their table.
“What would you like, sir?”
Anna answered for him: “The check, please.”
Somov grinned, his almond-shaped eyes twinkling.
“You in a hurry?” he asked playfully.
Anna shot him a look that would give a dead man a hard-on. In a husky voice, she said:
“Yes, I am.”
She was already on her feet, taking her mink coat from the rack. Somov helped her into it, his touch on her shoulders enough to give her goose bumps.
Anna went downstairs first. Somov’s black Mercedes with the tinted windows was parked at the corner. She slipped inside and he joined her.
“I’m taking you to the GK tonight,” he said. “A very good pianist is playing there.”
Anna looked at him steadily.
“Afterward,” she said.
Somov got the point, and they headed directly to the Metropol instead. These days, only certain Russians used the old hotel, where Somov had a permanent reservation. The annual room rent was paid by some mysterious organization or other.
As Somov drove, Anna announced:
“I have a little surprise for you.”
“What’s that?”
Without answering, she took his right hand and set it on her thigh while shifting in her seat to free her skirt. Somov’s huge fingers slid up her stockings until they encountered naked skin…and something else.
“Bozhe moy!”—my God!
Somov’s hand had just encountered a garter belt. Feeling unexpectedly stirred, he gripped Anna’s thigh. She smiled.
“When I left the office, I did a little shopping at ZUM,” she said. “You always told me that garter belts turned you on. I slipped into this one in the Mitza ladies’ room…for you.”
Somov’s interest in the GK restaurant now vanished completely. It took them less than five minutes to get to the Metropol. Inside, Anna proudly led the way, the mink tails on her coat swaying. In the elevator she pressed herself against Somov, squeezing his cock through his pants. Then she stuck her slender tongue in his mouth while he played with her breasts.
But when he moved down to her crotch, Anna moaned and said:
“No! Wait!”
She was too excited, on the verge of coming at the slightest caress.
Somov’s room was at the end of the long hallway, and she practically ran down it. The room was dusty and ill lit, but it had a huge bed, six feet wide.
In seconds, Anna was undressing her lover. Every time she saw his powerful chest, huge thighs, and the bulge in his underwear, she melted.
Laughing, Somov stretched out on the bed and slowly slid his briefs down, revealing a thick cock, as upright as a ship’s mast. Staring at it, mesmerized, she reached behind her back to unzip her skirt, and stepped out of it.
Then Somov saw the black belt and garters holding up Anna’s stockings.
“Why, you dirty little slut!” he cried delightedly.
Anna jumped onto the bed without bothering to remove her coat or boots. First she stretched out next to her lover, rubbing against him like a cat. Then she straddled him, raising herself far enough to place the stiff cock between her legs. Her hand was barely big enough to go around it.
“You’re something else tonight!” she muttered.
Her face tense and chest upright, she pushed her panties aside with her right hand while firmly grasping Somov’s cock with her left. When she felt the swollen glans against her, she sighed and lowered herself onto it, biting her lip. For a moment nothing happened. She was incredibly excited, but her labia wouldn’t stretch far enough to admit the huge thing.
Fortunately, Somov was as excited as she was. He put his huge hands on her hips and pulled her downward. There was a kind of jerk, and he sank in an inch or so.
“Stop!” she cried. “You’re too big!”
She might as well have been talking to an icon on the wall. Somov simply pulled her down harder. Unresisting, Anna was open-mouthed, in pain, and happy.
He raised her up again, only to penetrate her even deeper. She was as tight as a virgin, and the sensation was so delicious, he could hardly stand it. Gradually, natural lubrication took over, and the huge cock slid easily. Anna began to ride him furiously, hissing like a steam engine. Slipping his huge hands under her, he grabbed her ass, giving her yet another spasm of pleasure.
“Oh, God,” she moaned. “I love it when you hold me like that.”
Shoving her bra aside, she played with her nipples while Somov rhythmically raised and lowered her, each time going deeper.
As he penetrated her as far as he could go, Anna suddenly cried out, then collapsed on top of him.
Somov, who hadn’t come, rolled away from her, then grabbed her hips and forced her to kneel on the bed. In the armoire mirror, the sight of the woman bent over, rump high and thighs stark white against the black garters, nearly drove him crazy.
When Anna felt the thick cock slamming into her from behind, she shouted and immediately started coming again. This triggered Somov’s own orgasm, and he crushed her under his weight.
After a long moment, Anna spoke up.
“Let’s go to the restaurant. I’m starving. We can come back here later.”
—
The GK pianist was playing Italian tunes to an almost empty dining room. Anna had slipped off one of her high heels and was using her right foot to stroke her lover’s crotch opposite her. The restaurant was dark, and anyway, nobody watched the customers too carefully.
A waiter arrived with a crystal bowl full of caviar—Beluga, smuggled from Kazakhstan. It had been a long time since you could get real caviar in Russia; it was all farmed but still cost 8,000 rubles a serving.
A delighted Anna started eating it by the spoonful, like an old Russian boyar. Money was never a problem with Somov. After leaving the GRU, he’d gone into black-market arms sales, specializing in bypassing Rosoboronexport and selling weapons to embargoed countries.
Anna couldn’t describe exactly what Somov did, except that he traveled a lot, abroad and to the Caucasus, which had a flourishing arms market. Russian soldiers’ pay was low and vodka expensive, so the troops often sold their equipment to their separatist Islamist opponents, at the risk of being killed with it.
“Stop that,” hissed Somov. “You’re gonna make me mess up my pants.”
Using her toes almost like a hand, Anna seemed to be trying to make him come.
“Can’t you wait a little?” he asked.
She quit fooling around and said:
“I just remembered something I wanted to tell you. You’d never believe it, but the Americans want to borrow an Igla-S from us.”
She told him about the FBI’s r
equest and the response from the FSB. Somov stopped eating the caviar. His brain cells were starting to fire, a Pavlovian response to the word “Igla.”
His Islamist customers in Dagestan had been asking for surface-to-air missiles for months. They weren’t the nicest of people, needless to say: a separatist Wahhabi group, though secretly supported by Dagestan president Astanov.
The Igla-S was the best surface-to-air missile on the market, but very hard to get hold of because Russia only sold them to a few trustworthy countries. However, Somov had learned that one unit had sold some to Chechen boiviki, who used them to shoot down Russian helicopters.
Naturally, that was a bit messy.
He also knew that people under Wahla Arsaiev—the most important Wahhabi separatist leader in the Caucasus—were prepared to pay a million dollars for a missile, though its list price was just $180,000. Dagestan was rich. The little country on the Caspian had a population of only two million, but Vladimir Putin gave it two billion dollars every year, to keep it quiet and within the Russian orbit. The money was distributed by Astanov, mainly to his relatives.
Besides Caucasians, Somov’s customers included Syrians, Armenians, several African countries, and in general anybody who wanted to buy weapons and had the means to pay for them but couldn’t acquire them on the open market—like Colombia’s FARC guerrillas.
Of course he couldn’t carry on such delicate work in Russia without an influential protector. Somov’s kricha was General Anatoly Razgonov, currently the GRU’s number three man, and a veteran of black ops and the Caucasus.
The arrangement between the two men was simple. Somov would strike a deal only after getting approval from Razgonov. In return, the general supplied Somov with the weapons he needed. Payments were made in Luxembourg to offshore accounts that Razgonov managed. Thanks to generous commissions on the arms sales, plus the fees earned on these outside funds, both parties profited. The GRU officers got secret funds to draw on, and Somov got a life of luxury.
Anna’s Igla-S story now gave Somov an idea. It would have golden possibilities, provided he could put together a somewhat tricky operation. It would be like the old days, like the time the Ministry of Defense sold Syria 150 brand-new T-72 tanks in 1995. They were carried on the army’s books as having been destroyed by Chechen boiviki. In fact, their paint hadn’t even been scratched.
Anna withdrew her foot and slipped her shoe back on. With a questioning look at her lover, she said:
“Shall we?”
She was clearly eager for a rematch.
Somov dropped a fistful of five-thousand-ruble notes on the table and followed her out. This is really a red-letter day, he thought to himself. Not only was he going to fuck a woman wearing porn-star stockings, but she might have put him onto a very lucrative deal.
CHAPTER
7
Bruce Hathaway’s black Chevrolet stopped in front of 4 Bolshaya Lubyanka, but he told the driver to park a little farther up the gently rising street. Hathaway, the head of the FBI office in Moscow, was feeling tense. That morning, Colonel Tretyakov of the FSB’s Fifth Directorate had sent word that he wanted to see him at two thirty.
The Fifth handled international relations, so this had to be the answer to Hathaway’s request for an Igla-S to bait the trap the bureau was setting for Parviz Amritzar. If it worked, the Pakistani American would be facing decades in jail.
Unless the Russians said nyet.
Hathaway glanced up at the dark façade of FSB headquarters, which reminded him of the ominous black monolith in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. This was the seat of power in Russia, the place where the Kremlin’s darker schemes were put into effect.
Entering the tiled lobby, he was promptly accosted by a guard in a gray uniform.
“May I help you, sir?”
“I have an appointment with Colonel Sergei Tretyakov,” he said in passable Russian.
The guard led him to the front desk, where his passport was taken and the colonel’s office called. A few moments later, a receptionist announced blandly:
“Colonel Tretyakov is expecting you. You’ll be escorted upstairs.”
Hathaway was given a visitor’s badge and asked to follow an officer in a gray uniform who moved as smoothly as a robot.
On the eighth-floor landing, an attractive secretary awaited him. She was wearing a long straight skirt, high-heeled boots, and a gray sweater that matched her eyes. She waved him toward an open office door.
“Good morning, Gospodin Hathaway. I’m Anna. Please come in.”
Colonel Tretyakov was in civilian clothes. A short, stocky man with an expressionless face, he slowly got up and came over to shake hands with his much taller visitor. The two men sat on a red Chesterfield sofa, and the secretary appeared carrying a tea tray.
“Chai?” asked the colonel, who didn’t offer any other choice.
“Da, pozhaluista,” said Hathaway. He remained silent while the colonel filled two cups with very hot tea, Russian style.
Tretyakov then got to the point.
“We have studied your request, Gospodin Hathaway,” he said in excellent English. “After consulting with the appropriate authorities, Director Bortnikov has decided to grant it. We are deeply committed to the fight against terrorism.”
“We appreciate that,” said the FBI official warmly. Hathaway had come up with the idea of asking for a missile and was so pleased, he could have hugged the little colonel.
“We are happy to apply the terms of the 2003 accords,” said Tretyakov in the same monotone, as if to give himself cover.
Hathaway could hardly sit still.
“When do you think we can get what we asked for, Colonel?”
Tretyakov remained impassive.
“Very soon, but there is a technical problem. We can’t put our hands on an Igla-S right away. They are all assigned to military units, and the Izhevsk factory is on a tight schedule fulfilling an order from a foreign country. We will therefore use our Kolomna research center, which can produce the missiles in small batches.”
“Thank you very much,” said Hathaway, who knew exactly what the colonel was talking about.
For his part, Tretyakov was aware that the Americans knew all about Igla-S manufacturing; he wasn’t giving any secrets away.
Glancing ostentatiously at his watch, he wrapped up the meeting.
“There you have it, Mr. Hathaway. I will contact you as soon as we have solved this little problem, and our two services will set up the operation.”
He was already on his feet. The two men shook hands.
Once outside, the American briskly strode the hundred yards to his Chevrolet. Bolshaya Lubyanka was one of the few streets in Moscow where parking regulations were enforced. One of the others was Petrovka Street, where politsiya headquarters was located at number 38.
Hathaway was eager to share his good news, but he refrained from phoning his office, knowing the call would be monitored. But once in the embassy, he ran to his deputy Jack Salmon’s office. He found him reading Sports Illustrated, which had just arrived in the diplomatic pouch.
“We’re in, Jack!” said Hathaway. “The Russians have agreed. We’re going to screw that damned Pakistani.”
Salmon jumped up and gave his boss a high five.
“Well done!”
The two men did a little jig that is nowhere described in the FBI training manual. Then Hathaway came down to earth.
“Where is our actor now?” he asked, reverting to bureau-speak.
“He’s in Vienna, buying carpets. We can contact him through Mahmud’s cybercafe to get him to come here.”
“Go ahead,” said Hathaway. “I’ll update Washington by email. But we’ll have to bring Mahmud to Moscow.”
“Not necessarily,” said Salmon. “We’re introducing Amritzar to a new ‘terrorist,’ so we don’t have to give the guy a legend. He’s supposed to be an arms dealer, so he could be Russian or Caucasian. Let me see who’s available in-house. I think Soloway cou
ld play the part.”
“Have Amritzar tell Mahmud what hotel he’s staying at here,” said Hathaway as he left.
Once in his own office, he switched on his secure computer and treated himself to a cigarette. Smoking was forbidden, of course, but this was a big day.
—
Leslie Bryant, head of the FBI’s Vanguard program, could have kissed his computer screen when he saw Hathaway’s email appear.
The bureau was going to catch a terrorist in the act, and do it with the help of its longtime enemy, the Russian FSB. A real coup.
Bryant would cast it as a textbook case of effective collaboration, and it might well give his career a boost. This was the best day of his life since the death of Osama bin Laden.
He picked up the telephone.
“Get me Special Agent Chanooz right away, please.”
He would have to stay on top of this, he knew. But he could already see the front pages of the newspapers, announcing this extraordinary success.
—
Amritzar read the message that had just arrived from the now-familiar Hotmail address: “Go on to Moscow. Things look good. Give me the name of the hotel where you will be staying. Mahmud.”
Thrilled, Amritzar gazed at the message. He’d been right to persist. His dream was getting closer. He would become famous and avenge his family. He hadn’t met his local contacts in Moscow yet, but he was sure that they would help him.
He also didn’t know where in Russia Air Force One would be landing, and he still had to work out the logistics. But if these people could get him an Igla-S, they could certainly help him with those details. After all, he and the Caucasus Wahhabists had a common enemy, the United States of America.
Benazir gave her husband an intrigued look.
“Good news?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said with a smile. “I got an interesting bid for a batch of Caucasian carpets in Moscow. I think we’re going there before heading home.”
The young woman glowed with pleasure.
“That’s wonderful! I’ve always dreamed of going to Russia. Do you suppose we can sample their caviar?”
“I’m sure we can.” He had gotten Benazir a visa at the Russian consulate in New York, just in case.
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