Descent from Xanadu (13 page)

He put his arms around her and kissed her mouth. “All I need is any smell of you,” he whispered. She remained silent, unresponsive. He looked down into her eyes. “Is there something wrong, Sofia?”

“Almost four years, Nicolai,” she said. “It doesn’t disappear in a moment.”

His arms dropped to his sides. “You don’t love me? There’s someone else?”

“I just need a little time. I’ve been too long in another world.” She slipped into the dressing gown, evading his question. “My attaché case is open on the desk. Why don’t you look through the reports while I take my bath?”

“I’ve ordered a bottle of champagne,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “I won’t be too long.”

He watched the bathroom door close behind her just as the doorbell rang. The bellboy placed the champagne in the ice bucket on the small table, then left the room. Nicolai looked from the closed bathroom door to the bottle of champagne. Quickly he snipped off the wire and pulled the cork.

Sofia found the warm water silky with the bubbly gel; she lay back luxuriantly in the tub. Perfume vapors rose to her nostrils, she closed her eyes. The water flowed sensuously across her body. Suddenly a cool draft of air broke the spell; she turned her eyes to the door.

Nicolai was standing there, naked before her, the bottle of champagne in one hand, his red-tipped phallus erect in his other hand held rigid and upright against the mat of black hair covering his belly. He walked to the bathtub and pushed his phallus down to her face and poured champagne over it. His voice was harsh and angry. “You loved champagne and you loved my prick. Let’s see if you remember. Now drink both of them!”

“No! No!” she cried out, her hands trying to push his phallus away.

He pulled her face tight against his erection as his orgasm exploded almost instantly. “Bitch! Whore!” he growled.

She was coughing, his semen spilling across her cheeks and dripping down to her chin. He pulled himself from her mouth and stepped into the bathtub with her, then kneeled between her legs, brought her floating to him, her legs embracing his waist until he could shove himself into her. He drove his body into her violently.

Her hands pushed his body from her. “No! Please, no,” she whispered.

“You cock-crazy bitch!” he snarled. “What changed you?”

“Please,” she was crying. “Can’t you feel that I’m pregnant!”

He stared at her. “Pregnant?”

“Yes. Ten weeks.” She looked into his eyes. She felt him shrink inside her.

He was silent for a moment, then pushed her away. He stepped out of the tub, still looking down at her. “You’re not only a bitch whore,” he said contemptuously. “You’re stupid. Who is the father, or don’t you even know?”

“I know,” she said quietly. “Judd Crane.”

He silently looked at her in the tub, then he took a bath towel from the rack and wrapped it around himself. “I’m going to dress,” he said. “I would like to take your attaché case to the office and photocopy its contents. I’ll return everything to you when I pick you up at dinner.”

“As you like,” she replied dully.

“Li Chuan will join us,” he said.

“Yes.”

He closed the bathroom door behind him. Suddenly she felt a weariness seep through her. Slowly, standing in the tub, she let the water empty and turned on the shower, the hot and needling spray washing away his ejaculation from her face.

Her legs seemed to turn to rubber and she reached against the wall to support herself. She turned off the shower and stepped from the tub. She wrapped a bath towel around her and went into the other room.

Nicolai was already gone. She looked at the desk. The attaché case had gone with him. She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, then pulled her purse to herself. She snapped it open and looked down at the vial of cocaine that Judd had given her. Quickly she snorted two toots.

The expected lift never happened. She was too spent, too depressed and weary. She returned the vial to her purse and stretched out on the bed. Her eyes closed, she was soon asleep.

18

A draft of cool air awakened her. She sat in the bed, sticky with perspiration after a deep sleep. The hum of the air conditioner’s motor rattled through the vents. She rose, wrapped a bath towel around herself and closed the window to the terrace. At night, the lights were sparkling along the road that followed the beaches against the bay.

She checked her watch. Eight-thirty. Time for her to dress. Quickly she went into the bathroom and showered again, then got into a light linen suit. The telephone rang just as she completed her makeup.

It was Nicolai. “Awake?” he asked.

“And dressed,” she answered.

“Good,” he said. “I’ll be over in fifteen minutes.”

“Shall I wait in the room or would you want to meet in the lobby?”

“The room,” he said. “We’re having dinner at a restaurant. We have some time. Li Chuan will meet us there at ten o’clock.”

“Fine,” she said, putting down the telephone.

She looked at herself in the mirror. Makeup was the true miracle. The lines of weariness disappeared. But that was the surface, inside she was still down. Annoyed with herself despite what she saw in the mirror, she picked up her purse.

She opened the inside zippered pocket and took out a silver pillbox and the vial of cocaine. She popped a white and green capsule upper, swallowing it easily without water, then two good snorts of cocaine in each nostril from the small golden spoon that Judd had given her with her initials on the handle.

She felt the rush almost immediately. The combination brought her back to life. She took a deep breath. Now she began to feel more like herself, stronger, and more capable of coping with whatever was going to happen. She returned the vial and pillbox to her purse and turned to the mirror. The face looked even better. The eyes she saw were bright again.

***

Nicolai waited until the bellboy opened the bottle of champagne, filled the two glasses and left, closing the door behind him. He handed a glass to Sofia and held up his own to her. “I apologize,” he said.

She looked at him. “There’s no need to.”

“I was stupid,” he said, “and insensitive. I should have understood how much you’ve undergone, too.”

“That’s unimportant,” she said. “Each of us has our own job to do. That’s what’s important.”

He touched his glass to hers. “For you, Sofia. There’s never been a woman like you for me.”

She sipped at her glass, looking at him over the rim. “Don’t look at me like that, don’t talk to me like that,” she said.

“Damn!” he said. He took a deep breath. “I know I shouldn’t be, but I am. Jealous. Jealous of all the time you’ve been with him and not with me.”

“Nicky,” she said softly. “You shouldn’t feel like that. We were all doing our jobs.”

“Is that really all it was for you?” he asked. “You felt nothing for him?”

“I didn’t say that,” she said. “But you know me better than anyone. At that time I thought I always had to have sex, with or without feeling. Sometimes I thought my body needed it more than food or air. Those years at the Institute where I was so confined, I used my vibrator sometimes three and four times a day. And then when I used it, I always thought of you.”

He sipped at his champagne and laughed. “Remember when we first met? I thought you were a nymphomaniac. You never seemed to stop.”

She didn’t laugh. “When I was young, I too used to think that. It was something I couldn’t face until the doctors explained to me that my sexual nerves are extraordinarily sensitive. True nymphos never have satisfaction and very rarely reach orgasm. So, Nicky, you see I simply don’t qualify. Just talking to you about it, I feel my clitoris twitching and I begin to juice.”

“I want to touch you,” he murmured.

“Don’t, Nicky,” she said. “I’m different. I’m not the girl you knew then. I’ve grown up.”

“No,” he said emphatically. “I still love you. Even more now than then. And you love me, I know that. That man played numbers with your head with his money, his power, his drugs and his life style. Did he ever say once, just once, that he loved you?”

She didn’t answer.

“Did he ever ask you to marry him?”

She shook her head silently.

“He’s using you,” he said. “Just as he uses everyone else for his own gain, his search for eternal power.” He nodded earnestly, looking at her. “He will throw you away as he does a toy that no longer amuses him. Or if you are no longer useful to him.”

“He’s not like that,” she said defensively. “He is considerate and truthful. Even though his truthfulness sometimes seems cruel in its honesty.”

“You think you’re defending him, but in truth you are defending yourself to convince yourself,” Nicolai said. “I’m sure you wouldn’t feel that way if you hadn’t allowed yourself to become pregnant.”

“Maybe,” she said thoughtfully. “But what was it? An experiment, that’s all. I’m not the first scientist to use my own body as a subject. The old lady was concerned that the treatments might make him sterile.”

“So you chose yourself to fuck him to check it out?”

“It was nothing like that. She took sperm from him and placed it into the ovaries of a dozen different women.”

“And they all became pregnant?”

“Not all. Ten of them,” she said.

“You were one of the lucky ones,” he said bitterly.

She was silent.

“What happens now?” he asked.

“Next week will be the tenth week. Each pregnant subject will be aborted.”

“You agreed to that?”

“Yes,” she said.

He stared at her. “Why you? You were one of the doctors. I’m sure they would have had no problem finding another woman. Why did you choose to involve yourself?”

“Because I was curious about my own body, Nicky,” she said. “I have never been pregnant even though I’ve never used any form of contraception. There is something dynamic about him. I wondered—”

“Now, you admit the truth,” he broke in angrily. “You really wanted his baby!”

“Yes,” she said flatly, then looked up at him. “What difference does it make anyway? Next week it will be gone.”

“You’re just as stupid as every other woman,” he said sarcastically. “We have been together for many years, why didn’t you have a child with me?”

She met his eyes and answered him simply. “You never asked me.”

***

The attaché case was open before him. He was turning the pages of her report when she returned to the room. “The old lady is clever,” he said. “Eight years and we still don’t know if we’ve discovered the method she uses in her cloning cellular impregnation.”

“We know the cellular impregnation method. It’s the cloning formula itself, which she always works on alone in her laboratory, that we have not been able to fathom.”

“You ever been with her there?” he asked as idly as he could manage.

“No. And I know of no one who ever has,” she said. “I’m beginning to think she never had a cloning process. She was hoping that Crane with all his facilities and computers would discover it for her.”

He put the papers down and changed the subject abruptly. “Did she tell you that you were going to return to Russia?”

Surprise came into her voice. “No. Why?”

“Because you are supposed to attend Brezhnev.”

“She’s never said a word about it.”

He remained silent for a long moment. “Maybe she thought it better to wait until after your abortion.”

“That’s possible,” she said. “What’s the problem with the Chairman?”

“I only know rumors,” he said. “Cancer, some say; an aneurysm, others say; or cerebral hemorrhages—so far there are only rumors. But I
do
know he moves with difficulty and sometimes he’s very slurry with his words. She’s had four consultations with him during the last year. Then the word came down that you would be assigned to him.”

“But what about the work I’m doing here?”

“It’s a matter of priorities,” he said. “To us, Brezhnev is more important than Crane.”

Sofia nodded thoughtfully. “She’s being very clever, Nicky. I know of at least four of her assistants she could assign to Brezhnev, but by sending me she reduces the chance that I might discover her method.”

“What makes you think you might have a chance?”

“Everything pertinent to Crane himself and his business affairs is fed into Computer Central in California. While I do not expect that her formula has been fed into the computer, everything she needs in the way of supplies and equipment which has been ordered and purchased is automatically recorded by the computer. If we can retrieve that information we might be a good deal closer to uncovering her method.” She shook her head ruefully. “But in order to get that information, we’d have to get the access code to the computer. And the only people that I know who have that are Crane himself, his personal aide, Merlin, and the director of Computer Central.”

Nicolai looked at her. “Perhaps there’s someone else who can get to it,” he offered slowly.

She looked questioningly at him. “I don’t understand.”

“Li Chuan,” he said. “That’s why we’re meeting him here, Sofia. The man says that he has the access code and can make it available to us.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Even if he did have it, I can’t believe he’d be so altruistic as to turn it over to us.”

“Altruism has nothing to do with it,” Nicolai laughed. “Twenty million dollars is more like it.”

19

The soft chime of the private telephone next to his head echoed above the sound of the television program he had been watching. He picked up the receiver. “Crane.”

“Are you awake?” Merlin asked.

“Yes,” Judd said. “I’ve been watching TV.”

“I’d like to come over and see you,” Merlin said.

“Would eight in the morning be okay?”

“Now would be better.”

Judd thought only for a moment. He didn’t have to ask Merlin if it was important. The request was evidence enough of that. “How long before you’ll get here?” he asked.

“I’m in the office in Boca Raton,” Merlin said. “About thirty or forty minutes. There should be no traffic at this hour.”

“Get Fast Eddie to drive you and have him bring a change of clothing for me.”