The Man of My Dreams (From Russia With Love Story Series)

by Kiera Zane

  When the familiar guards bring me before Sobchak and Dragunov again, I don’t know if it is as a failure or as the lone success. The question would come down to who put the bomb in that second car.

  When Sobchak says, “Congratulations, Agent Zolotov,” I have my answer.

  The KGB blew up the four failed candidates and always intended to, I realize. Of course, they couldn’t just return them to their families, not knowing as much as they did and having seen as much as they have seen.

  But what happened to the other two so-called diplomats? I hope my friend Ivanna is okay, suspecting that she may also have succeeded and is being assigned to a different case.

  I realize that it is not my place to ask, and that stepping out of place could cost me everything. So I resolve myself to not knowing what happened to them until fate reveals it or until I can discover it for myself safely.

  Until then there is information I need more urgently than that of my friend’s fate; that of my own.

  Sobchak drops a large folder on the desk. “Your first assignment.”

  I pick up the file and started looking through it; a dossier on a man whose handsome face is instantly familiar from my visions, his blond hair tinged with gray streaks, a roguish smile and white teeth. I am careful not to react although my heart skips a beat. I can’t believe this is the man of my dreams.

  “Senator Jonathan Caine,” Dragunov says, “Washington DC. He is said to be a rising star in the senate, with personal access to President Kennedy. His interests seem to lay in helping the poor and eradicating organized crime.”

  My eyes scan the pages, my mind racing with second-guesses. Am I to kill this man? Seduce him? Blackmail or otherwise destroy him?

  Perhaps all three?

  Sobchak says, “Get close to him, win his trust. Find out everything he knows and thinks and desires. We need to know what he will do before he does it; what those around him will do before they do it. You understand?”

  I nod my head. “Yes, KomDiv Sobchak. But, and I mean no disrespect, but aren’t there other senators who would be more suitable subjects for this mission, perhaps one who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or -- ?”

  “Send a Russian spy into the offices of the Senator most intimately associated with our own government? We want information from them, not the other way around. And nobody with a specialty in this cold war of ours would be fooled. It is more important that we have eyes and ears in the senate, and best if we can control one or more of the senators, eventually secure their representation of our best interests.”

  “I see, of course.”

  “I will be following your progress closely,” Agent Dragunov says, more than a suggestion of the lurid in his tone.

  “Do well and there will be other assignments,” Sobchak says. “Do poorly, and there will not be.”

  The threat to my life can hardly have been more clearly expressed, but at this point it isn’t new information.

  I’ll spend the rest of my life expecting death at any and every turn, for me or for someone near me, a lover or an enemy or both.

  Death; that is my life now.

  Chapter Five: The Job

  "I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life." -- Jean Giraudoux

  January 1963

  We fly into the United States on a commercial airline, having to make several stops so that our arrival cannot be traced directly to the Kremlin or the KGB. Agent Dragunov accompanies me, and I discover he’ll be shadowing me almost at all times. He’ll have other duties, but I will be high on his list of priorities. My success or failure will never be far from the eyes and ears of the beast himself, KomDiv Sobchak, and of course of the beast’s handlers as well.

  Everybody must serve somebody, after all.

  Dragunov’s American accent is quite good, as is mine. I have chosen to model my own on the flatter, Midwestern tones and phrasings. Dragunov has chosen a New England accent, with broader vowels and a distinctive cadence.

  “We have secured you a position as Senator Caine’s personal assistant,” he says, handing me another dossier, this one thick with glossy black-and-white photographs. The first is of Caine himself, the same picture that was included in his own personal dossier.

  “These people are his staff,” Dragunov says. The first picture under Caine’s is of a less-handsome man, his unsmiling face a terse and bitter mask. His dark brown hair is thinning, wire-frame glasses over his angular face.

  “Chief of Staff/Administrative Assistant Daniel Oglvy, fifty-six years old; reports directly to Caine. He runs the rest of the staff, the senator’s offices, evaluates the possible political outcome of various legislative proposals and constituent requests. Caine relies on him, and he’ll be suspicious of you. Try to work around him if you can. If you can’t, try harder.”

  The next photo presents the face of an older woman, her wrinkled skin, sagging jowls and excessive makeup suggesting her age at nearer to sixty than fifty.

  “Vivian Galbraith,” Dragunov says, “Caine’s legislative director. She manages the legislative assistant and tends to the chief legislative priorities of the senator.”

  “So, the Chief of Staff handles what other people want from the senator, but the legislative director handles what the senator wants from other people.”

  “Quite so,” Dragunov says, nodding. “I know that our tests are stringent, but surely you can see as well as I that they produce the best candidates.”

  I try not to smile. “I had excellent teachers,” I say, hoping he doesn’t see through the excessive flattery of my insincerity.

  “You still have much to learn,” Dragunov says as I flip to the next photo and profile. “Legislative assistant Myron St. Matthews,” Dragunov says of the handsome, smiling young man trying to charm me from the black-and-white photo.

  Dragunov adds, “He’s primarily a strategist. The senator has a legislative cause, he gives it to his legislative director -- ”

  “And she turns it over this fellow. He seems... enthusiastic.”

  “Like most Americans, overly so. He’s well-known as a social climber, an aggressive and opportunistic sort. Some speculate that he used telephone wiretaps to blackmail others competing for his position. This man’s love isn’t politics, or even his career, but success; in any field, at any price. He happened to chose an excellent field for a man of his perspective.”

  I look at that smiling face, eyes just a little too close together. But a closer look at the smile reveals the frown beneath it, that optimist’s expression failing to obscure the soulless empty blackness that echoes behind it, endless and empty and lifeless like the Universe itself.

  Another picture, another white man, this one about the same age as the grinning greed-head St. Matthews. But unlike the other man, this one is pudgy, with thick eyeglasses and shaggy black hair.

  “Legislative correspondent Nathan Fellowsby,” Dragunov says. “Research, letter writer, spends almost of his career in a library or back room typing. Get close to him if you can. A woman like you should have no problem turning him to your purposes, whatever they might be on a given day. You will need help, Aleksandra, and I won’t be there to provide it.”

  “Then why will you be there?”

  “To make sure you don’t need too much of it. To see that you are faithfully serving the State. To kill you before you can defect.”

  The words ring in the back of my mind. Again, not new information, but hearing it brings more gravity to the information, a refreshed sense of urgency. And the cold fact that I am so helpless to defend myself that Dragunov would tell me so bluntly what might have otherwise have been kept secret feels like the chill of the grave itself.

  Another photo reveals a woman, my system registering a slight relief to see that I will not be entirely surrounded by male energy. And even though I know that female energy can be its own obstacle, I’ve always made friends with girls and I know this is a skill that will serve me well
and may even save my life.

  “Deloris Brooks,” Dragunov says, “press secretary. Can you imagine such a thing?”

  “A secretary to deal with the press?”

  “A press that dares to deal directly with a high-ranking politician. When the American empire crumbles, this will be why. Americans think they have a right to know everything their government knows. They don’t, of course, but given that illusion, they seem to be placated. Miss Brooks helps to maintain that delusion.”

  I say, “Miss? She can’t you under thirty. But she’s not married?” Off Dragunov’s suspicious look, I say, “If she is interested in men, she may already have the senator’s attention. And if not, that’s something I want to know.”

  “So you can use it to secure her an ally. Very good, Aleksandra, very good.”

  There are two other photos and single-page profiles. Dragunov glances at them and shrugs. “Not important. The black is Senator Caine’s driver,” he says of Tige, whose stoic face and chauffeur’s cap suggest his function. “The boy is just an intern.” I take a look at young Ralphie Adler’s face, a proud and excited smile between his smooth, whisker-free cheeks.

  “Those men will be of little help to you,” Dragunov says. “But you will be coming into contact with them, so take care not to reveal yourself in anyway, to them or anyone. Concentrate your efforts on the senator.”

  I nod, trying to imagine circumventing all these other people, each harried and hurried and hampered by their own duties and agendas. “What will I be doing for the senator as his personal assistant?”

  “You’ll do whatever the senator wants you to do, is that understood?” Dragunov’s voice is a quick snap of authoritarian rule, suppressing my naiveté. “The senator is recently divorced.”

  “I am to be his concubine?”

  “If that is what he wishes, absolutely. But you will bring him his breakfast, run his errands, pick up his pet doggie’s filthy waste from the yard if that is what he wishes. Win his trust and eventually, he will open up to you. If this requires that you first open up to him, so to speak, then so be it.”

  Washington was cold, frigid with a hint of snow on the horizon. It reminded me of home, of Siberia where our spring would be like this. I loved this time of year. Dragunov escorts me to the apartment building where we both will have small, one-room dwellings, his one floor above mine. It is not much distance, but I’m relieved not to have him right next door.

  To say my apartment is stark would a serious overstatement. Mother Russian didn’t spare any expense on accommodations. The irony of the situation struck me. They want me to get classified secrets worth millions, but they couldn’t even give me a place that was a little bit comfy. It was like the story my grandfather told me once about the way they used to motivate soldiers in World War II – retreat and we will shoot you. Looking around can be cause for depression.

  I’ve just flown thousands of miles to live in an apartment that is barely furnished: the living room was outfitted with a large, burgundy clothe chair, hideous, pea green ottoman, rickety coffee table and a black and white television; the bedroom is not much better - plain wooden dresser and armoire set, plus a bed that has an obvious dip in the center noticeable even with the shabby quilt on top.

  The cupboards and drawers in the kitchen are equally uninspiring: four plates, four cups, four bowls, eight forks, knives and spoons, and four drinking glasses. The cutlery is flimsy; the dishes cheap plastic. I think it is called Melmac; cut-rate and scratched from previous use. I didn’t come from rich roots, but at least we had a home that was well furnished with old Russian furniture, china handed down through the generations, linens and cutlery that didn’t bend when used. No, I didn’t hail from wealth, but I did have a bed that didn’t cause back pain rather than rest.

  I stand alone now abandoned by Dragunov looking out the only window in the living room, the lights of the United States capital flickering and twinkling in the darkness; a thousand points of light, the black and white television blathering on about the news in Washington. A neon sign advertising this dump flashes on and off, orange and annoying. At least I sleep in the other room where only the cacophony of belching cars, backfiring trucks and the occasional scream accompany my attempt at sleeping. I miss the silence and soft sounds of nature at home. I don’t think I will ever hear those sweet, comforting sounds again.

  ***

  My first day at Senator Caine’s office is a whirlwind of activity. I don’t even catch a glimpse of the senator all day. Instead I spend most of my time being sent from one staff member to another. Without the Senator’s actual person in the office, his personal assistant is left to acclimate and prepare for whatever need the senator would next express.

  And since nobody ever seems to sit down, I spend a lot of time and energy following around one person or another. I’m first introduced to Legislative Director Vivian Galbraith, who puts her liver-spotted hand to her breast every time she mentions the senator by name, as though she were swooning over him.

  “The senator loves ballroom dancing, and he’s magnificent at it,” she says, walking with surprising quickness for a woman of her age and stocky build. “He’s dedicated to helping the poor people of this country, which is a pretty fancy dance all its own. But mind you, he’s pretty great at that too. So my advice would be to toss some change to any bum you both pass, and you’ll have to be pretty quick to beat him to the punch. And...”

  “And...?”

  After a brief pause, Vivian adds, “And brush up on your waltz and your flamenco.” Amid the constant din of phones ringing, typewriter’s clattering and people muttering, somebody calls out Vivian’s name and we both turn to see Myron St. Matthews holding up a telephone and pointing at it.

  Vivian turns to me and says, “Follow me,” and we cross the room toward Myron. As Vivian takes the phone from Myron, she says, “Ali something, the senator’s new personal assistant.”

  “Aleksandra,” I say, adding, “Tomanek, Aleksandra Tomanek, from Montana.” Pudgy comes to mind when I look at him like a snowman with glasses. Unlike most snowmen, Myron’s countenance is sour, his lips frozen in a permanent downturn.

  Contempt for me, huh? Narrowed eyes, he squints through his glasses. Even if he smiled, his balding, out-of-shape physique would not be attractive. I doubt he’s been found attractive by anyone in quite a long time. I watch his gaze flit away from sizing me up to the young intern hurrying past with papers in his arms. He smiles slightly, licking his lips. So, you like little boys, do you? I tuck that tidbit away for the future.

  His attention and gaze return to me, looking me up and down. He sniffs. “Kinda small for a plains girl. But I’m sure you’ll do. Just keep one thing in mind.”

  There is silence between us. “And that is?”

  “Stay the hell out of my way. I’ve been here for eight months, and full terms with two senators before Caine. No way I’m letting some cheese-farming, floozy muscle in on my action. You can personally assist him all you want, but if you wind up on my bad side, I’ll take you out.”

  Is this supposed to scare me? This eblan is threatening me? Govno, do you have any idea who you’re talking to?

  “Will do, Mr. St. Matthews.” You hui, cocksucker, if I have the chance, I will see you gone from my sphere of influence. You won’t last to serve a fourth senator if I have my way. I nod, my lips turning up into a stiff smile.

  “I don’t recall Vivian introducing me, just you.”

  Govno! I keep my face neutral. Quick think of something or he’ll become suspicious. “Vivian told me about you on our way across the room. What a great woman.”

  “Yeah, she’s real faithful to the senator; probably be her undoing in the end. Another little bit of advice; this is Washington, sweetie. Trust nobody, love nobody, look out for number one.”

  Behind us, a man clears his throat. I turn to see another pudgy man who I recognize as Legislative Correspondent Nathan Fellowsby. His disposition is friendlier, and he’s smil
ing through his chubby jowls under his thick glasses, Nathan nods politely at me as he hands Matthew several sheets of white paper covered in black type. Does every man in Washington eventually wind up chubby and wearing glasses?

  “Here’s the senator’s speech on that waste bill; thought you’d like to have a look.”

  “Of course I do, Fellowsby. When have I not?”

  “Well, that’s why I thought it.”

  “Any word on that business, on... the island?”

  “The... oh, you mean Cuba?”

  Myron frowns at Nathan and juts his head to indicate I am standing within earshot, a supposedly secretive motion that failed to slither around my notice.

  Nathan just shakes his head. He turns to me and extends his hand. “Nathan Fellowsby, legislative correspondent.”

  “Aleksandra Tomanek, the senator’s personal assistant.”

  “Welcome aboard, Aleksandra. Say, that’s quite a pretty name. German?”

  “Oh no, heavens no,” I say with a nervous giggle. “Polish, actually.”

  “Tomanek is Polish?” His smile gives way to a bit of confusion.

  “Shortened a couple of generations ago from

  “Nice, your people make tremendous sausages. Glad to have you aboard. Come on, I’ll introduce you around.”

  I follow him as we step away from Myron St. Matthews. I turn to give him a smile and tell him it was nice to meet him, but he’s already reading Nathan’s speech for the senator and doesn’t care enough about me to see me off with the slightest courtesy.

  Nathan leads me to Deloris Brooks, whose fading beauty only accentuates her underlying sorrow. She smiles at me, but I know she’s faking it. She looks me up and down, the differences between my own body and hers fairly natural for a fifteen-year gap. It isn’t my fault that I was born more recently than she, even if I instantly have the impression that she is ready to hold me personally accountable.

  Nathan introduces us and Deloris shakes my hand, baubles rolling on her bony wrist. I say, “I’m so happy to meet you. All this male energy in the room, am I right?”