Angel Eyes (69 page)

The two men made a great show of taking notes, conferring among themselves, quizzing Russell. Mostly, they stared at Tori's legs. Then, apparently frustrated, they went forward to grill the flight crew. Forty minutes later they exited the plane, but not before scowling menacingly at Russell and taking a last, lingering look at Tori's legs.

"Horny devils," Tori said.

Russell, smiling at the scowling angry faces, said, "You'd be horny, too, if you were stuck in the back of beyond with only your Kalishnikov to keep you warm.''

When the Russians were finally gone, Russell relaxed. "There's one thing that still bothers me about this whole affair Bernard's lost himself in. If he isn't part of Hitasura's supercoke scheme-and I'm as convinced as you are that he isn't-then how the devil is he getting the funds to buy these nuclear weapons? You can bet the coalition isn't giving them to him. And I can tell you unequivocally that he isn't using the Mail's money. Even Bernard-if he'd a mind to-couldn't embezzle the amount he'd need without my finding out pretty damn quick."

"That's a good question." Tori considered this. "I hadn't thought of that, but even if I had, I doubt whether Koi or Hitasura would have provided any help on that score. Bernard knew nothing of Hitasura's finances; and, knowing Bernard, you can be damn sure the reverse was true, as well."

Russell looked thoughtful. "You know, I don't believe I'll ever really understand what happened between you and Koi. What kind of bond could there possibly have been between the two of you? Frankly, it scares me to think that you could have related to anything about her."

"Oh, Russ, there was a whole other side of Koi you never saw.''

"Koi was a stone killer."

"So am I."

"She enjoyed torturing Deke."

"There you're wrong," Tori said. "When she tortured Deke, she was torturing herself. She loathed what she did, but she felt she was cursed, that she deserved to be loathed-by everyone. Someone like that is to be pitied, not despised."

"She had to be stopped from repeating what she did to Deke.''

"I stopped her, Russ." Tori's eyes held his as if in an invisible vise. "And that felt good-1 can't tell you how good-because I didn't have to resort to killing her."

He nodded. "I can see that, sure. But-"

"Look, Russ, Koi was driven by demons. Maybe they weren't the exact same demons that drive Bernard, but they're close enough. Do you think Bernard is any less haunted than Koi was? The only difference between them is that Bernard has found a way to live with his demons."

"But don't you see that in time Koi would have become another Fukuda?"

"And what has Bernard Godwin become over time, Russ? Can you answer that with any degree of certainty? No? Then I'll tell you. Bernard is as much a stone killer as Koi was."

"But his motives are so altruistic-"

"That's Mall Central thinking," Tori said. "Motives don't count here-morality does. At least Koi had the courage to face what she had become-"

"And killed herself." He shook his head. "I don't understand a person who prefers death to life."

"Preference has nothing to do with it." Tori's eyes blazed. "Death was an atonement for her sins. For Koi, to die in so honorable a fashion as seppuku was to cleanse her spirit. If I compare her to Bernard, I think she had the right idea.''

Russell rose. "All this talk of death is making me claustrophobic." He went off to the head.

Tori looked out the Perspex window, stared at nothing. "Christ!" she breathed. "How can he be so obtuse when he's also so insightful?"

Then she shook her head, followed him. She wanted him to understand, to at last grasp a concept that was not grounded in logic, mathematics, binary languages.

"Russell."

For an unbearably long moment they stared at each other. Then Russell grabbed her shirtfront, pulled her inside the head, hard against him. "Nothing's going to save you now," he said hoarsely just before his lips came down over hers.

"I don't want to be saved," she moaned into him.

Tori's mouth opened and her tongue twined with his. Her back was arched and her breasts were crushed against him. She felt dizzy and weak, as if she had lost all strength in her upper body. At the same time, her legs felt heavy, as if they were buried in sand. Her thighs were on fire, and she could not seem to catch her breath.

Russell was pulling apart her blouse, his hands running roughly over her breasts. She moaned into his mouth as he found her nipples.

She could not wait, her own hands searching for his belt and fly, frantically pulling down his trousers, feeling him rise deliciously into her hand, cramming him beneath her short skirt, her other hand pulling aside her underclothes, ramming him full length inside her.

They both cried out at the same time, and Russell slammed her repeatedly against the bulkhead. If they were making noise, neither of them cared; if they were to be discovered, it did not matter. They were beyond caring about anything but their joined hot flesh, their liquid union, the mutual fire that threatened to consume them.

Tori felt filled to overflowing. She wrapped her arms around his head, filled the spaces between her fingers with his thick hair.

"Russ, Russ, oh!"

His mouth was at her throat, the sides of her neck, her ears, her jaw. He gathered her hard breasts in his hands, squeezing them as he hammered at her until Tori almost fainted with pleasure.

Her eyes were closed; she rubbed her face against the coarseness of his cheeks, and jolts of electricity penetrated all the way into her lower belly.

She could feel the tension come into him in increments, not the tension of conflict and strife with which she had become all too familiar, but the tiny ribbonings of a luscious tautness in the last few indescribable moments before release, a desire to drown in bliss.

Then he groaned, deep in his throat, a growl, really, drawn out and heartfelt, and she felt him draw in against her so tightly that she could not breathe as he convulsed. This, in turn, set her off, her eyes flying open, her mouth gasping, all thought obliterated.

Then, all too quickly, he was sliding out of her.

"No," she moaned. "Oh, no. Not yet."

But he had dropped to his knees, his mouth found her, burrowing in and up, his tongue like an adder flicking at the core of her, and she almost screamed.

She worked her hips around and around, her hands on either side of his head, lovingly stroking him as she shuddered again and again, her upper torso folded over him, her legs shaking and jerking, her head heavy, spinning in the full flux of desire.

"Oh, God . . ."

Tori collapsed against him, and they tumbled in a heap to the floor. She took him in her hands, whispered, "I want you hard again. Right now."

Russell laughed. "Only one of us is from Krypton, remember? Give me a couple of minutes to recover."

Tori kept her hands on him, moving, and as it turned out, he didn't need a couple of minutes.

When at last they were fully sated, Tori rested her head against his chest. She liked hearing the beating of his heart, running at such a different pace from hers. It was as if, from this one percussion line, she could determine the scope of the music that moved him-what he liked, what he didn't; what made him happy, what made him sad; what comforted him, what frightened him. It was an illusion, she knew-people were far too complex for all their secrets to be revealed in such a way-but it was a lovely illusion, for all that.

"Almost to Moscow," Tori said wryly when they had returned to their seats, "and all we can think about is sex."

"It's a survival instinct," Russell said. "We both know where we're headed, that there's nothing but trouble waiting for us when we land, and yet we're still going. There's a part of us that does what it has to to remind us we're still alive."

"Is that what our making love was to you? A primitive instinct?"

"I see that once again I've said the wrong thing."

"You bet you have!" Tori said, pulling away.

"Calm down," Russell said.

Tori shook away his hold. "Don't tell me what to do!"

"I'm not for Christ's sake telling you what to do."

"Well, how do you expect me to act when we've just made such wonderful love and you tell me that! Didn't it mean anything more to you than some kind of anthropological mating dance?"

"Of course it did!" Russell shouted. "Haven't I already told you I love you? But I haven't heard a word in reply."

In the ringing silence they stared at each other.

"Sometimes I wish I didn't love you," Russell said in a low voice. "We're so different. You're such a mystery to me. You can be quite frightening at times. The things you're capable of... I don't really know what I'm letting myself in for, loving you."

"We never do know," Tori said softly. "Isn't that part of the excitement of love, the not knowing, the future of finding out together?"

"Tori,'' Russell said. "Do you love me?''

"Oh, Russ." She kissed him hard on the lips. When she pulled her head away, she said, "I'm afraid, too."

"Of what?"

''Of losing myself in you.''

"I'm not your father."

She stared at him. "What do you mean?"

''Isn't that what happened to you? You wanted to lose yourself in him, and because you couldn't, you lost yourself in Bernard Godwin?"

"What a horrible thing to say."

"Perhaps, but it's the truth." Russell held her. "Tori, this is what Bernard saw in you-the Wild Child of Tokyo. Do you think he came upon you by accident, that he hadn't studied you for months? Understanding your particular psychology was how he was able to snare you, keep you loyal to him. This is Bernard's specialty."

Tori sought to digest all this. She watched water droplets streaking the window. It seemed to her as if that horizontal rain represented the strange new world opening to her. "I'm still the Wild Child, Russ," she said. "I don't want to lose her."

Russell stroked her hair. "It seems hard to realize, I know, but you won't lose her, no matter what happens.''

Tori closed her eyes, shuddered. "Is that why it's so hard to pull away?"

"Partly," Russell said. "There's also the fear of there being only you now to rely on."

Tori opened her eyes. "But that's not true, now, is it?" She was crying. "I love you, Russ."

They held each other in silence for some time. At last he stirred and said, "You know, discipline dictates that we turn this plane around right now. Love and fieldwork are deadly companions."

"It's too late for second thoughts," Tori said.

"Is it?"

"Always serious. Always duty first, that's you, Russ."

"Not always," he said, reaching for her. "Not anymore."

The 727 flew on toward Moscow.

*

Captain Nikolev was at Department N headquarters, immersed in the drudgery of paperwork connected with the Bondasenko-Ponomareva stakeout, when the routine report came over the wire. It concerned the American diplomatic mission from Tokyo being held up at Sheremetyevo Airport because of bureaucratic red tape.

He immediately got up from the typewriter. He was thinking of the memo Mars had shown him, and Mars's firm if unstated belief that this ''diplomatic mission'' had more to do with White Star than it did with international diplomacy.

He rang downstairs to the garage for a driver and car, grabbed his hat off the rack, and took the concrete stairs two at a time down to where the black Zil waited.

It was pouring, and traffic was snarled. He instructed his driver to take the Chaika lane out of the city so they could make good time to Sheremetyevo. It was important now that he arrive before someone from the American embassy did to bail the "diplomatic mission" out.

But even with all the cynicism KGB foreknowledge provided, he was unprepared for the two Americans he found enmeshed in the exquisitely inefficient Soviet bureaucratic machine. It was not the big handsome American male with the hard eyes and sharp tongue of a professional-although hardly a professional diplomat-who threw Captain Nikolev, but the stunning, well-built blond with eyes so fantastic that Nikolev had to force himself to look away or forever be mesmerized.

If possible, her tongue was sharper than that of her companion's. She was wearing a short skirt and a sleeveless blouse. Captain Nikolev stared at the definition of the muscles in her arms. He had never before in his life seen a pair of legs like those. His mind was busy, nicking past possibility after possibility. Who was this singular woman?

The two Americans were surrounded by a clot of suspicious, dull-eyed officials. Shaking off his amazement, Captain Nikolev waded into the mess with the assurance and aplomb of a member of an invisible club which operated by an entirely different set of rules from the rest of the local citizens.

He glanced at the diplomatic mission's papers, and though he was convinced that they were forgeries before he even saw them, he could find no hard evidence to back up that suspicion. The papers seemed genuine to him, and he was certain that should he hand them over to the KGB lab, its results would likely not differ from his first visual impression. The lab could do the same with any American-or British, French, Japanese-document one could name, so what was the point in trying to spot a forgery? One had to go by instinct in these matters. Captain Nikolev had learned, not by evidence. Though, of course, one needed to be thorough, experience had taught him that professionals rarely gave you any evidence to work with, so it was useless to waste too much time searching for it.

"Mr. Slade, Miss Nunn," Captain Nikolev said in Russian, as he introduced himself, "do either of you speak Russian?"

"I speak it passably well," Tori said, "though I admit it's been some time since I had cause to use it."

Captain Nikolev smiled, inclined his head. "Your accent is not terrible. Miss Nunn. How is your vocabulary?"

"We'll have to see."

Yes, Nikolev thought. That we will. He closed their documents, handed them back. "Everything seems in order," he said.

"Really?" Tori was surprised. "Then why have we been sitting here wrangling with Immigration for over an hour?"