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

by Kiera Zane

  “No,” Jon says, “it’s to assist me.”

  “What about as your friend?”

  Jon smiles and so do I. We really are becoming friends.

  And those KGB mind control techniques really do work.

  Jon says, “Things are getting complicated, things I can’t even explain to certain members of my staff.” Jon looks around his office. “Things we shouldn’t even be discussing here. Have you had lunch?”

  I barely have time to shake my head before he and I are hustling through the bullpen. I can feel Vivian glare at me, and Deloris, too. They’re both jealous of me, and they’re both in love with Jon. I know that.

  But they’re no threat to me or my efforts to get close to Jon, whether for the KGB’s purposes or my own, which are quickly becoming two very different things.

  Walking quickly through the streets of Washington, Jon explains, “Cars could be bugged too. We have to be really careful here.”

  “We?”

  He looks at me and nods. I’ve won his trust.

  He says, “I’ve been trying to get the mafia to believe they’re getting a great deal. With these contracts, they’ll have enough control to feel like they’ve succeeded. And that’ll keep ‘em out of the federal arena, which means I’ve succeeded.”

  I recognize the technique from Sobchak’s class, a detail I neglect to introduce into the conversation. Instead, I let Jon speak as we walk past a filthy man sitting huddled on the sidewalk.

  Jon stops and stoops to him, pulling a few bills out of his pocket and handing them to him. “Get something to eat, partner.”

  He stands and we move on, my body flush with admiration for him and attraction to him.

  Jon says, “Anyway, now they want to have a meeting, probably to discuss terms.”

  “And you can’t meet in public,” I say. “They can’t come to you, you can’t just stop into one of their joints. Even phone calls and letters are out.”

  “That’s right. But it also gives them the upper-hand. They work best in secret, that’s their strength.”

  As I know only too well. It’s the same mentality that governs the decisions of big government and small back in Siberia, and even more so in the rest of the Russian empire.

  Jon says, “And if they think I’ve double-crossed them, I won’t be coming back from the meeting.”

  I look around with new concern. “And you can’t tell anyone or arrange to have them there to back you up.”

  “Exactly. I hate having to meet secretly with these dirtbags, but it’s the only way I can see that’ll keep them out of Washington. They’re fighting to survive, like everybody else. And I won’t have them slipping their people into the senate, the house, or even... I don’t dare say it.”

  “The presidency.”

  “It’s bad enough, what’s going on with Kennedy and his so-called connections. I’m going to stop it where I can before it spreads like a cancer and brings the whole government down.”

  I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but I do ask, “Aren’t their more... legal ways to shut them out?”

  Jon chuckles, looking both ways before leading me across the street. “We’ve been trying those for decades, that’s why we’re in this mess now.”

  We get to the restaurant and Jon nods at the owner, who ushers us to a table in the corner. “Then what are you going to do?”

  Jon shrugs, taking the napkin off the table and laying it across his lap. “I’m going to the meeting.”

  “But Jon -- ”

  “Look, chances are I’ll be fine. If they whack me, they lose their big contract, I think they know that.”

  “What’s to stop them from just doing business with somebody else?”

  “Lexy, I’m a U.S. Senator. If I just disappear, that’s not going to be so easy to cover up. And it’ll make approaching any other senator or getting any real business done next to impossible for them.” After a tense moment, he adds, “Of course, they do have their ways.”

  A waiter brings us two glasses of water, but I’m too nervous to drink. The waiter asks Jon, “The usual, Senator?”

  “For me, please.” Jon looks at me, and I look up at the waiter.

  “Caesar salad and some minestrone soup, please.”

  The waiter nods and steps away.

  I sit on the other side of our little table trying to figure things out.

  I don’t want them to kill him, I reason. He’s such a good man, such a waste of life is incomprehensible, especially if I can stop it. Can I pit Dragunov and his resources against the mafia and somehow pull Jon free of the crossfire? Wouldn’t that satisfy Dragunov’s agenda and my own? But how do I do this without tipping Jon off to my connections and, thus, my true intentions?

  And if I do manage to pit the KGB against the mafia, Jon and I would be right in the center of a massive war that we’d never be able to outrun.

  There must be another way.

  I say, “You’ll be taking that little car of yours,” I say. “You can’t have your driver sitting in the limo while you have this clandestine meeting, right?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Shouldn’t you have it checked out? Did you say it might be bugged?” Jon considers it for a moment, nodding. I add, “But couldn’t a bug have been placed there by someone on your staff?”

  “An inside job?”

  I shrug. “Who else could get close enough to you? And you know I’m not involved, I only just started working here recently -- ”

  “Long after this whole mess started,” Jon says, “that’s for sure. Then again, you could be a member of the mob, working undercover.”

  I sit in the tense silence, not knowing what to say. My stomach sinks with a cold dread, my lips go slack.

  Then Jon breaks out laughing and shaking his head. “As if, right?”

  I laugh too, nervously. “Yeah, good joke. Hey, faget-aboud-it!” It was my best Italian mobster imitation, and I already know it is pretty bad. I giggle as he looks at me. It probably sounded more Russian than Italian.

  We both chuckle together as the waiter brings our food – his delicious, mouth-watering meal and my rabbit food. Might as well be kibble for all that I care. One day I will be able to throw this salad at someone and have a real meal. I stab a cucumber and smile in spite of myself.

  After lunch, Jon has me look through his VW for a device of any kind, and there isn’t one. Yet, I drive the car back to my apartment to retrieve a small, long-wave transmitter, a homing device. Dragunov had given me the bug, along with other various implements, to use when the time was right.

  I intended to plant the device on the car. But I need to be there when all this goes down. I need to see that Jon’s all right, to be able to help him if possible. And there’s no way I’m going to be able to convince him that I followed him without a car of my own.

  The only way is to plant the homing device on myself and then stash myself inside the car.

  In the trunk.

  But first I have to talk to Dragunov.

  He’s not in his own apartment, so I wait for him to arrive. I know he’s monitoring me, and for me to drive up to my own apartment, alone in the senator’s car, is bound to attract him. My only hope is that it happens in time, because if I’m gone from the senator’s office too long that will arouse suspicion. And if Jon goes down to that parking structure to find me and his car missing, it’ll raise a lot more than suspicion.

  It’ll raise the body count.

  Finally Dragunov arrives and I begin to set my trap.

  “He’s in league with the mafia,” I tell Dragunov, “there is no doubt. He’s got a secret meeting with them, in fact. If you can surveil the meeting, record it, you’ll have everything you need to make the senator do whatever you wish; you’ll have total control over him.”

  Dragunov nods. “When and where?”

  “Use the homing device,” I say, “it’s already planted in his car. But these men, they may try to kill the senator. If he dies, you’ll
have nothing, the entire mission will be a loss. So collect your secret gunman, the spies you have scurrying around spying on me, and have them ready to take out the senator’s enemies if necessary. We need him alive, is that understood?”

  Dragunov smiles, almost in disbelief. “You’re asking me if I understand. Reconsider your position, Aleksandra. I’m still in charge here.”

  “Then take charge and get it done. And one more thing; you’ll need to make it look like a rival gang, in case there’s any shooting. So bring something along you can leave at the scene.”

  “Like what?” Dragunov asks. “I have no idea what rivals these men may have, or -- ”

  “Do you want Sobchak to hang us both up by our ankles?” My voice snaps with anger and impatience, and I let it. It confuses Dragunov, and that is one of Sobchak’s own strategies of mind control. “You find a way and make it happen. I shouldn’t even have to be explaining these things to you, Dmitry,” I slur his American name, a clear insult.

  And he takes it. He doesn’t have a choice.

  I push past him with, “Now I’ve got to get back to the senator’s office before he realizes I’ve been missing. Don’t screw it up, Dragunov.” I slam the door behind me.

  I stop on the way and have a copy of the car key made, and get back to the office. Everybody’s busy with their phone calls and their typing; nobody seems to notice how long I’ve been gone.

  Until Nathan says, “Where’ve you been?” I turn to see his smiling, chubby face. He adds, “...All my life?”

  I give him a forgiving chuckle to hide my relief and walk toward Jon’s office. I feel Dan’s icy stare clinging to me as I go down the hall, Myron shaking his head in disgust.

  In the office, I set Jon’s keys on the desk. “I ... I won’t ask where you’re going, but... just be careful, okay?”

  Jon looks up from his desk with a warm smile. He says, “Lexy, if I don’t come back -- ”

  “You will,” I insist, “you will come back!”

  “I know, sure I will, but just in case I don’t, don’t come back to this office. Get out of town as quickly as you can.” He stands and steps around the desk to take my hand. “You have enemies here, Lexy. If any of them are working against me, you’ll be the next one to fall.”

  I allow the fear to show on my face, knowing that they all have as much to fear from me as I do from them, maybe much more. But I also know that there may be a lot going on that I don’t know about; machinations that could include Dan, Myron and perhaps others in the office.

  Betrayal is a double-edged sword.

  So it isn’t without some legitimate sense of concern that I step out of the office and down the hall, back among my enemies.

  At about four-thirty, I ask Jon if I can leave early, citing certain women’s issues, and he allows it. There’s nothing more I can do for him.

  As far as he knows.

  I use my new key to pop the trunk and climb in, pulling it closed behind me without clicking it shut. I jam a rolled-up stack of paper into the latch and hold the hood in place.

  I have five hours to spend waiting in the trunk of that little car, but it isn’t more than a few minutes before Jon himself climbs into the driver’s seat, starts the engine and pulls out. I rock and sway in the little trunk, barely enough air to breathe, my stomach already turning with motion sickness.

  I’m grateful for the time when the car is still, parked in front of his townhouse, no doubt. I’m sorely tempted to crack the hood for some fresh air and a peek around, but I know it’s too risky. So I stay in my pitch-black cocoon, lungs straining behind my compressed ribcage. I manage to get some sleep, but wake up once the car jostles round me again. After another brief journey; I know we’re on our way to the meeting.

  We park and are idle for some time before I hear Jon’s car door open and close. He’s sitting in the driver’s seat, I realize, waiting. He’s early, wants to ensure against an ambush. Smart.

  And good for us, I realize, that gives Dragunov and his men time to close in and take position.

  I’m in the trunk during the entire thing. But from what I can make out of the action outside, there is a brief conversation, Jon’s voice almost audible. I’m sure that Dragunov is close by, long-range mics picking up the conversation. I hope that Jon isn’t saying anything too indiscrete.

  No, he’s smarter than that. What’s Dragunov really likely to get out of this? Worry about that later depending on who walks away from this alive.

  If anyone.

  Then I hear the voices get a bit louder. One man shouts. It sounds like Jon, but I can’t be sure. Gunshots ring out, loud and echoing. My body twitches with every shot, knowing an errant bullet could plunge into the car and splatter me all over the inside of the trunk. I also know that Jon is much more likely to be killed than I am. The quick burst of gunfire ends as suddenly as it began. Tires squeal as footsteps pepper the area around the car.

  I push the hood up and peer out of the trunk of the car, to see Jon standing in the center of a parking lot near an old dock warehouse. He holds a gun, and in his shock and confusion, he turns it on me.I raise my hands. “Don’t shoot! It’s just me, it’s Lexy; don’t shoot!”

  He reaches down and pulls me out of the trunk. “Lexy, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’m sorry, I stowed away,” I say, having worked out beforehand what I’m going to say. “I was worried about you, wanted to help.”

  He looks me over; no gun, no rifle, not even a crowbar. “How were you going to help?” Great, he’s angry with me. “Hiding in the trunk is one of the stupidest moves I can think of, short of jumping out of the trunk blasting away with a machine gun and killing everyone including me.”

  I stammer a bit. I haven’t thought of that. I shrug and say, “I thought ... I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

  Sirens were dim in the distance but getting louder fast. “No, you didn’t think, and you could have been killed.” Now he’s worried and angry. Maybe this wasn’t one of my brightest plans, but I am new to the spy business. Who knew that hiding in the trunk could get you shot or yelled at, because he’s definitely yelling at me and I don’t like it.

  “Let’s just get outta here,” he says, climbing into the driver’s seat while I get into the passenger side. He pulls out with a skid and tears away from the scene.

  “What happened?” I ask, concealing my well-educated guess.

  “Don’t know, not sure,” Jon says. “Double-cross; they sand-bagged me, must have known I was playing ‘em for a bunch of suckers. But, you shouldn’t have been here.”

  “And you shot them all?” I ignore the chastisement, and instead concentrate on him and his gun bulge in his jacket.

  “Not a single one,” Jon says. “There were others, hard to say where they were shooting from; experts, for sure, military, maybe.”

  “But, who could have known about this meeting? I’m here, and I didn’t even know where it was going to be.”

  Jon considers as he cranks the wheel, the car swaying around us. “Somebody from my staff, I think; Dan or Myron, maybe both.”

  “Frankly, I don’t trust either one.”

  “This is Washington, Lexy, you really shouldn’t be trusting anybody.”

  My mind lingers on the irony. Does he really not see that I’m a person he certainly can’t trust? Does he suspect me and is playing the long game, waiting for me to screw up? He can’t know about Dragunov, he’d never let me hang around.

  I say, “Could it have been a rival gang? Maybe they followed them to the spot and not you at all.”

  “Maybe,” Jon says, gazing out the window and then up into his rearview mirror. “I did sort of think I was being followed, but... I dunno, maybe you’re right. Time will tell, I guess.”

  I look at him, the gravity of our situation swelling to fill the little car. “How much time?”

  Jon tries to smile, but he can’t fake it. He knows that there may be precious little time left for either of us.


  He says, “Whoever it was, they didn’t want me dead, so that rules out a double-cross from inside the office. But until I find out who did do that shooting, I better stay out of sight; you too, I’m afraid.”

  “Stay... out of sight?”

  “Just for a day or so, until we see what kind of media coverage there is, have Deloris issue a press release if that becomes necessary. We’ll have to play it by ear.” He turns to me with a smile, this one melancholy but legitimate. “Ever been to Connecticut?”

  Chapter Seven: Connecticut

  “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” -- Anaïs Nin

  October 1963

  We drive for two hours to the lovely state of Connecticut, but it is pitch black as we drive through those winding country roads. The beauty of the scenery is lost on us. But we do have time to take in the fullness of the beauty on display within the car. Even hours after being set up for death and barely surviving, by circumstances he can’t fully understand or explain Jon is still considerate, caring, interested. He asks me about my family life, my brothers (Vick and Greg, as I describe my Wisconsin kin). He’s so genuinely interested that I hate lying to him.

  But neither one of us can afford for me to tell him the truth, of course.

  And he has no reason to lie to me. So when the conversation turns to his life’s story, it rings with special poignancy, his innocence lending it a somber quality.

  “She wanted to take me for everything,” he says, “and then just a bit more.”

  “Even after she was cheating on you?” Since, in my country, she’d run the risk life imprisonment for such behavior, it really did strike me as odd and, as it should anybody, unacceptable.

  “That was where she went wrong,” Jon says. He turns, imagining the good times they had, the love they shared when good things went wrong for them both, together, as they so often do. “Anyway,” Jon adds, “it is only love.”