Pipeline

“We have an opportunity today to create history. To bend the present into a better future. Russia and the United States are far apart in many ways. Yet one idea, one dream, one bold stroke can bring us together. What we accomplish here in the coming days has the potential to bind our two countries politically, strategically, and geographically. Shall we get to work?”

  All participants—four Americans and six Russians—took their seats. A young, impeccably dressed assistant distributed reams of paper to each delegation member. The document, its contents divided into two separate English and Russian columns, was ceremoniously titled “Agenda for Negotiating an Agreement on the Historic Construction of a Bering Strait Tunnel Between Our Countries.”

  After just one glance at the agenda, Tony Ruiz felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. In one fell swoop, his suspicions were confirmed. Tolberg had told him that the trip was to be only a fact-finding mission. Tony had doubted it then. And now, clear as daylight, the agenda he had in front of him said these meetings were real negotiations.

  The title wasn’t the only thing about the schedule that concerned him. The program also noted that, after long discussions on financing, engineering, environmental implications, tunnel contents, gas amounts, pricing, and political requirements, there would be a daily, end-of-afternoon, one-hour time period slotted simply as “Private Discussions Between Chairman Viktor Zhironovsky and General Martha Packard.”

  The truth hit him like a hammer, its implication obvious. The meetings were rigged. There was no doubt about what was happening. Martha Packard had come to Russia to ride the Bering Strait negotiation straight to a political career. She planned to use her mission to Moscow to show that she was the one person in the administration who had a long-term solution to America’s energy scarcity. The CIA director would return to Washington holding a document that was a fait accompli. A done deal.

  The more Tony thought about it, the clearer it became. Martha Packard intended to negotiate the Russians to near completion. She would then land in Washington with the agreement already hammered out. All that would be needed to seal the deal would be the president’s approval.

  Yes, yes. He could see it all in sharp focus now. Packard was going to force Gene Laurence’s hand. One way or another, she was going to get what she wanted. If the president agreed to the deal, the CIA director would get the credit for being the intellectual force behind a brave new shift in U.S. energy policy. If Laurence didn’t sign the agreement, Tony could already taste the acerbic headlines of leaked press reports about the president’s reluctance. Unnamed press sources would paint Packard as a patriotic victim, the brilliant woman who had offered a clear solution to her country’s problems only to have it spurned by a shortsighted president.

  Tony shook his head in disappointment. One look at the schedule the Russians had just passed out said it all. And there was almost nothing he could do to change the course of events. He was completely frozen out.

  MOSCOW

  SEPTEMBER 3, 11:30 P.M.

  THE CAFÉ PUSHKIN

  Spread over four floors in a gorgeous turn-of-the-century mansion, the Café Pushkin was a twenty-four-hour cascade of food, drink, and sophistication. The bar, with floor-to-ceiling windows and wood-paneled walls, was packed with a heady mix of good-looking humanity. Half the crowd looked like Swiss bankers, the other half like bohemian filmmakers.

  Having initially hesitated in agreeing to the outing, Tony Ruiz now felt relieved to be here with Daniel Uggin and his two gorgeous blond friends. The Café Pushkin’s loud, manic atmosphere swiveled his mind away from the directed fury every nerve in his body aimed toward Martha Packard.

  The discussions at Volga Gaz’s offices had been an endless numerical siege. The day had been entirely quantitative. In the morning, Packard’s deputy, Stuart Altman, had given a long presentation of the CIA’s analysis of America’s gas import requirements. Using ratios juxtaposing predicted U.S. economic growth with expanding gas needs, the American side outlined the millions of cubic feet of natural gas that could be purchased from the Russians over the next twenty years.

  The afternoon centered on gas production in the Kamchatka Peninsula. Engineers from Volga Gaz had presented a withering onslaught of numbers from geological and engineering analyses of the present and future output from the various eastern Siberian fields.

  Tony had tuned most of it out. Throughout the day, he had debated his next move. His choices were clear. His first instinct was to call Isaiah J. Tolberg and inform the White House chief of staff about what he thought Packard was doing in Moscow. But he doubted that the tattling would produce the one result he really wanted—to pull Packard off the trip.

  There was only one other alternative, namely, to force a showdown with Packard. He had no choice, really. The only way to get Tolberg to take action from Washington was to convince the White House chief of staff that Tony had tried everything possible to rein her in. Tomorrow Altman would be going alone to a first meeting that centered on construction obstacles. The rest of the group was assembling at ten A.M. at Volga Gaz.

  This would give Tony more than enough time in the morning to demand a meeting with Packard at the hotel.

  It had taken nearly all day for Tony to decide what to do. In the late afternoon, Zhironovsky and Packard had, as dictated by the agenda, retired to the Volga Gaz chairman’s office for private discussions. The elegant dinner for both nations’ teams had been long in speechmaking but blissfully short in duration. Martha Packard may have had the sleeping quarters on the airplane, but by 10:00 P.M. she had begged off more toasts, asking for her host’s understanding of her acute jet lag.

  Daniel Uggin had slid close to Tony. “Are you tired, my friend? Come on; let me show you the city.”

  Tony knew he probably should go to bed, but he desperately needed the distraction. Nodding in the affirmative, Uggin reached for the cell phone in his coat pocket.

  “I’m going to ask some friends to join us. No business. Only fun, okay?”

  Now, sitting in the Café Pushkin, Tony thanked his lucky stars for Daniel Uggin’s insistence. He liked the group. Besides gorgeous, both girls were spunky. One of them, Dariya, was clearly close to Uggin.

  The other woman, Nina, wore an Armani dress that Tony swore he had seen the previous evening in a swank fashion magazine on his hotel room’s coffee table. Her smooth, tawny-colored shoulders were totally bare. The dress she wore began in black, tightly fashioned around ample round breasts. From there, the outfit converted to broad diagonal white-and-black stripes of shiny sequins that fell straight down, but only a very short distance. Indeed, the dress was extraordinarily mini, ending suddenly at the top third of Nina’s thighs. The rest was long, perfectly shaped legs.

  “I have to tell you,” Tony said, leaning over Nina. “I never expected Russia to be like this. In the United States, we still have this outdated image of Soviet shabbiness. But Moscow is incredibly alive. And all the people are gorgeous.”

  “All?” Nina asked. Her nose wrinkled in a cute smile as she fished for a compliment.

  Putting a warm hand on her shoulder, Tony laughed. “All of them. But none more than both of you.”

  “I heard that,” interrupted Dariya, breaking away from her conversation with Uggin. “So American guys do know how to compliment pretty girls after all. I was under the impression you were all tough cowboys.”

  “Look, let me ask you guys a question,” said Tony, turning serious. “How did all this money, good looks, and sophistication happen so fast? I guess part of our outdated image of Russia is that we haven’t realized the depth of the change. It’s been only fifteen years since you had a repressive communist system.”

  “Well,” said Nina firmly, “we don’t exactly have a government like yours now either. Don’t let Daniel’s friend Rudzhin hear me; he would throw me in jail. But the fact is that these guys in charge of our country have trouble holding back their authoritarian tendencies too.”

  “She’s right,” l
aughed Dariya. “But, unlike the communists, at least today the government lets us dress well and eat good food in nice places.”

  Tony wondered why Uggin didn’t join the conversation. Was he part of the government establishment? But if he was, how bad could these bureaucrats be? He seemed to be enjoying the women’s antigovernment banter.

  “Okay. Here you are teasing about the government. Your jokes are good natured. But I hear real complaints. Why doesn’t anybody do anything about it?”

  “Like what?” both girls asked in unison. They seemed genuinely puzzled by the question.

  “I don’t know. Write a newspaper column. Organize a march. Take a protest advertisement out in the newspaper. Convince your neighbors to sign a petition. There are lots of things to do.”

  Dariya and Nina looked at each other in utter surprise. Nina turned to Tony, her blue eyes sparkling with mirth.

  “Why would we want to do all that? We’re having too much fun.”

  The table erupted in laughter. Uggin held up his hand in mock seriousness.

  “Enough politics. Why don’t we take Tony on a walk? Let’s let him feel the fun.”

  Uggin insisted on paying. The four got up and walked out of the restaurant. On the sidewalk, the three Russians talked heatedly among themselves. Tony couldn’t understand a word but they seemed to be arguing about where to take him. Finally a consensus seemed to form.

  “Come on.” Uggin smiled. “We’re going to show you something a little different. You’ve seen a bit of the chic part of the city. Now it’s time to show you the quiet Moscow.”

  They walked a few blocks through crowded streets. At the Komsomolskaya subway station, the group descended on the electronic escalator and entered the station. His Russian friends smiled on seeing Tony’s predictably stunned look. The station looked more like a baroque theater than a public-transportation stop. Long oval porticoes lined the passageway. The yellow-domed roof of the station displayed museum-quality murals in marble-encrusted carved frames. Chandeliers with crystal cuttings hung every couple of yards.

  “Yes, yes.” Nina giggled. “It’s beautiful. Personally, I never use the subway. But I love to show the Moscow underground to my foreign friends at this late hour.” Nina wrinkled her nose as she thought of the crowds commuting daily to work. “Yes, you definitely don’t want to be anywhere close to here when nine million people are on the trains at rush hour.”

  They exited three stations later and walked the short distance to the Patriarch’s Pond. It was a serene water reservoir. A couple of cafés were set back among the trees, romantically lighted with Roman candles flickering in the night’s September breeze.

  “We can have a nightcap at the pavilion over there.” Daniel pointed to a building where outside tables with flower vases were occupied by couples deep in romantic conversation. “But let’s first take a walk around the pond. Listen. There isn’t a sound. And we are right in the middle of Moscow.”

  As they walked around the pond, Tony felt Nina’s arm encircling his own. He looked over and met her blue eyes. Wisps of blond hair flickered over the left half of her face. Her lips were smiling broadly, but her eyes were fixed on his.

  Tony sensed a physical surge. He could feel heat at the spot where her arm was intertwined with his. His body temperature was literally rising with every step they took together. Tony was flattered by this beautiful woman’s attention. But her close physical proximity was too effortless, too fast. It made him feel awkward. Cautious.

  You’re being a moron, he told himself. She is absolutely gorgeous and outgoing. He chalked his hesitation up to cultural discomfort, the embarrassment of a country Latino in the big foreign city.

  After twenty minutes, Daniel suggested they go inside the pavilion for drinks. A few couples were on the dance floor, moving slowly to the music of a four-man band playing a good set of Frank Sinatra songs. Tony smiled at the heavily accented lyrics belted out by the young singer.

  Once they ordered drinks, Nina looked his way with a big grin.

  “All right, Mr. American. Let’s dance to your music.”

  He followed her to the dance floor, striving to unlock his eyes from her long, tanned legs.

  They swayed gently to Sinatra’s “Summer Winds.” Nina smiled in his direction as she moved herself against his body. His head just above her left shoulder, Tony’s face was for a moment covered in her blond hair. He closed his eyes as the clean perfume of her shampoo wafted into his nostrils.

  As the couple moved on the dance floor, Nina came imperceptibly closer. Every second step he could feel a new part of her body slipping against his. First her thigh against his. Then her shoulder. Her hips.

  There probably had been a moment earlier in the evening during which Tony Ruiz could have stopped the forward motion of his accelerating need to have this woman. If he had given it some serious thought, he would have realized the dangers of becoming involved with a woman he knew nothing about while on an official mission for the United States government.

  But after the dance, it was too late. Sitting next to Nina on the plush sofa, his mind had become a radar device, registering her every movement. When her hand rested on the couch, his brain performed meticulous calculations to calibrate the distance to his own hand. As her legs crossed, he computed the probabilities as to whether the quick swish against his pants had been intentional or not. He couldn’t help himself. With every passing second, she was becoming more beautiful, more exotic.

  As they got up to dance again, Nina giggled something in Russian to her two friends. This time there was nothing subtle about their movements on the dance floor. Within seconds, Nina was caressing his hair, kissing his cheek. She held him tightly as he felt her breasts against his chest. Their lips locked with passion.

  To his surprise, when the song ended he looked around for Daniel and Dariya and found them gone.

  “I told them to go away,” she said, her eyes downcast, pretending embarrassment.

  They walked, nearly hugging, two blocks until the first free cab finally pulled over. She gave the driver quick instructions and they alighted at her apartment building. In the short six-floor elevator ride, she took him in her arms. He could feel her tongue on his neck. He reached down and took her smooth thighs in his palms as his fingers stroked upward, nicking the thin line of her lace underwear.

  They spilled out of the elevator. She opened her apartment and, as they made their way to her room, he barely had time to notice the home’s ultra-Asian, high-tech design. In the bedroom, he nearly fell over the low, light-wood bed. The windows were dressed with shades that imitated Japanese bamboo doorways that slid silently from side to side. The walls were white.

  Nina took her clothes off in front of him, leaving only her panties. He struggled fast to undress. Reaching out for his hand, she led him, naked, to the bathroom. There she squeezed a small amount of a high-powered mint gel manufactured somewhere in rural France onto a toothbrush. With her free hand she brushed a few times and then put the brush into his mouth. She moved the bristles gently, side to side, against his teeth. As she handed him a glass to let him rinse, she turned around in front of him, looking at the mirror.

  In the reflection, he could see her perfect round breasts swaying as she began a slow, rhythmic movement of her buttocks against him. She curved her back forward, leaving only his exposed skin pressing against her lace thong panties.

  It did not take long for him to pick her up, turn her around, and sit her on the marble sink countertop. They kissed long and passionately and began making love right there on the counter. Slowly, very slowly, he saw her blue eyes fade and glaze in ecstasy.

  At the end, they both poured into each other’s arms like a tumbling tower of cards. Giggling, the two walked hand in hand to the bed and made love all over again.

  At six in the morning, she made him coffee and took it to the bed. Caressing his dark hair, she smiled at him gently.

  “I want to do this again.”

 
“So do I. Can we see each other tonight?” Looking at her perfect blond face, Tony prayed for the right answer. She was beautiful, full of life. He had to see her again.

  “Yes, please. When are you finished with your meetings?”

  “We go all day. Can I call you in the evening?”

  “I will wait for your call all day.” Nina smiled. She hesitated a moment before speaking again.

  “Uggin tells me your meetings are important. He said that the tunnel can change history. What do you think?”

  Tony was taken aback by the fact that Uggin had been chatting so casually about their confidential meetings. His answer was careful.

  “Sure, it has a lot of possibilities. But it’s far from a done deal.”

  Nina nuzzled against his neck, her breath warm.

  “We should all hope this happens. It’s a good thing. It will moderate the bossy instincts of Russia’s leaders. For me, that is the most positive thing.”

  “I guess I haven’t thought of that angle. But there are also lots of problems with the idea. The world needs to find other energy sources that don’t harm the environment.” Tony purposely skipped the part about his misgivings with increasing America’s dependency on her country.

  “Well, I think the idea is fascinating,” she said, suddenly serious. “And after tonight, so should you.”

  For a tiny instant a cold, paralyzing flash of darkness spewed out from her eyes, catching him unaware. He felt a strange shiver. In the next instant, it was gone.

  “Get dressed, get dressed, Mr. Anthony Ruiz,” Nina giggled. “Or that terrible CIA woman will punish you and not let you out again tonight. And that can’t happen because I need to see you.”

  Nina called a taxi to take him to his hotel. Ten minutes later, she walked him to the elevator in a bathrobe and they again kissed deeply. Unable to let go, he walked into the elevator, his mouth still attached to her lips. They laughed and waved at each other as the elevator door closed.

  Tony Ruiz hopped into the waiting taxi. Ordering the driver to the Metropol Hotel, Tony let his weight recede into the cab’s vinyl backseat. What a night! He had never met anybody—any woman—like Nina. She was part mischievous child, part goddess. He had slept less than three hours, yet he’d never felt more alive.