Hot Siberian (10 page)

The tips of his fingers ran down her inner thigh like some tiny, soft-pawed creature reveling, advancing just a fraction short of the elasticized hem of her cotton panties, pausing as though indecisive about direction, then retreating up and over her knee and on down to the curve of her calf. Again and again. Every so often he removed his touch. Every so often he firmly stroked the finer flesh of her inner thigh. And every so often he burrowed a finger in under the elasticized hem to hide it, perfectly still, in her dark floss.

Take my breath away
.

Take my breath away
.

From behind Ninja gave them each an indifferent stare, blinked as though to dematerialize them, and turned away.

Vivian lowered the raised leg on the pretense of stretching it but really to express her prerogative. She soon arched it up again and Nikolai resumed with little finger nips, which were lovingly chastizing and what she had expected. Helping again, her hand captured his and led it to the mound of her, forced his hand to cup. Her hand pressed upon the back of his, her fingers matched and pressed his instructively. The cotton fabric at her crotch was moist, slicked through. She left his hand on its own to perform its touching tricks, its nibblings, rotations, strokings, and perfectly placed tattooings. She had to force her eyes to remain open. When she glanced at the speedometer she was surprised to see the indicator at eighty.

Exit 27 was the Tiverton turnoff.

Thirteen miles to go.

The arousal point of irreality had been reached, and it was not because the road under them now was much less of a road that Vivian now felt the wheels of the Bentley were gliding along rather than turning and the nighttime Devon countryside seemed to be being pulled past in the opposite direction. Urgency was in her now. And in Nikolai. They sped through the town of Tiverton and seven miles farther on turned with a skid onto a lesser road for the village of Pennymoor. There, at a fork, Archer's Rolls double-honked a good night and went its lonely way. A few minutes later Vivian turned in at her drive, where a familiar forsythia hedge welcomed them with the brush of its branch tips.

A light was on in the attached caretaker's quarters. Tigley, the caretaker, had heard the crunch of the gravel on the drive and was already on his way out. “Evening, miss. Will there be any baggage?”

“No, Tigley, thank you, no baggage.”

“Anything you'll be wanting?” Tigley asked.

Vivian's no came out feeling like a lie. “Good night, Tigley,” she dismissed him politely and entered the house with Nikolai following. No need to turn on a light. They both knew the house well enough. In the entrance hall she told Nikolai, “You go on up.” She went through to the kitchen. Her mouth was extremely dry from so many caught and held breaths. The little light of the stove showed her a bowl of oranges on the kitchen table. She grabbed one up and bit a chunk from the stem end of it. She disposed of that and held the orange to her mouth, squeezed it and sucked juice from it on her way up to the second-floor landing and on to her bedroom. Nikolai had known better than to turn on a light there. She held the orange clamped between her teeth while she undressed, removed her clothes as though they were despicable impairments, toed her shoes off and sent them flying anywhere, dropped her dress into a rumple that circled her bare feet, peeled off and kicked away her panties.

Nikolai, meanwhile, had only removed his sweater. His delay served her, gave her time to convey to him what her preference was this night. She remained standing, waiting beside the bed, and he believed he knew.

He tortured her nicely with dallying, took his time getting out of his clothes, folded them and hung them and even tucked his socks neatly into his loafers, which he paired and placed just so beside a chair. He was excited hard, which, of course, was a very visible contradiction to his unhurried disrobing. For him there was always a degree of self-consciousness, rather than the macho pride that might be imagined, in being hard and fully extended while standing, in having his arousal be so obvious. He assumed there were men who would strut around the room with their hardness sticking out and up, but that was not him. It wasn't a matter of shame for him, merely a feeling of awkwardness, and that would leave him as soon as she came over and pressed herself against it or took it in her hand or into her mouth. But she wouldn't this night. Nikolai hadn't expected her to. He followed his erotic intuition, went to her large bed, and situated himself face up in the middle of it. He lay with his arms angled out from his body, his legs well spread.

She knelt up beside him on the bed. Nikolai could not see her eyes, silhouetted as she was against the ceiling, but he imagined them. She was determining her desire, he thought. Several other similar times she had been unable to put off the utmost sensation of his mouth and had gone right to it. Not tonight.

She began with his leg. Swung a leg over to straddle it without yet touching. After a moment she lowered her self exactly to his skin. She was distended, puffed apart, split and sopping from prolonged arousal. She moved slightly side to side to fit as entirely as possible on him. She rocked back and forth and then ran herself the length of his leg several times, lightly, slickly, never giving up contact, and then his other leg, and then, in the same manner, his arms one after another from his biceps to his fingers.

Nikolai had difficulty keeping his fingers still, they wanted so to grasp, invade, not merely allow. For control he tried to project his imaginary point of view to a reasonable vantage above the bed from where, like a nonparticipant, he might merely observe.

Vivian's first coming was almost immediate. Nikolai knew by the quickening of her stroke on his leg and her crushing press. Her face descended suddenly, as though falling from a great height, upon his, unable to miss his mouth. There was the flavor and burn of the oil from the skin of the orange on her lips. When she was able, when she had convulsed every twinge of sensation from that coming, she knelt again, straddled, and continued.

She was like a cat distributing its pheromones, claiming her territory, which was all of him. The atmosphere of the bedroom became layered with her natural, personal fragrance. Nikolai luxuriated in it, breathed it deep, thought of it as particles of love that would remain in him forever.

Vivian helped herself to her fourth that night with her knees like a vise left and right of his head. What joy to be so used by her, Nikolai thought. What pleasure to comply! He became lost in it, as did she, and for them there was no longer a world or country or house or room. Only the environment of their sensations.

“
Ya tebya lyublyu!
” she gasped. It was the first time she'd said it in Russian. Saying it in Russian felt the same. She'd picked it up from the many times Nikolai had said it to her.

“
Ya tebya lyublyu
.” I love you.

CHAPTER

5

AT THAT INSTANT IN PRAGUE
:

The killer placed his hand on the shoulder of the empty chair. He'd been sitting alone in the Café de l'Europa for almost an hour. He seemed to be waiting for someone, but he was being sure and patient about it. His back was to the entrance, and not once had he turned to look that way.

From his appearance he would most likely be taken for a farmer. Come into the city for a Friday night. He had the chest, shoulders, and neck of a farmer, thick from hauling and heaving. A grower of hops from Duba or Trsice? That would have been a close guess. The identification he was carrying this time, made to look old, gave his address as a rural one in Ustek, which was a town sixty kilometers to the north in the hops-growing region. Consistent with the impression was the way he had decided to dress. In a farmer's Sunday wear, an only suit, not recently bought. A believable jacket that might have fit years ago but was now at least a size tight. The dark gray fabric strained to contain him and bit into his underarms. It wasn't possible for him to have on a holster and gun beneath that jacket. Even the flattest small-caliber automatic would have shown.

The killer was drinking slivovitz and drafts of Prazdroj lager, limiting the potent slivovitz to one regular pour every quarter hour, taking gulps of the excellent lager in the time between. Nothing would be off-register tonight; every edge would be reality, distinct. The lager was for the belly. The slivovitz was for the heart. He'd have the belly for the killing and the necessary condition of heart, hard and pushed. But what for the head? Nothing for the head. Much earlier in his life he had learned that what made the human brain most distinctive was its capacity to reflect upon itself. It could think about what it had thought, what it was thinking, what it might think. Prior to each killing this conjugation of the brain came up. As it did now. He went over it and it went over him. Defiantly, he tried to promise himself that he would piss in the eye of his conscience, blind it before, during, and after.

Not knowing the victim was a help. On the opposite, weightier end of the seesaw was the fact that he, although hired, had the responsibility of choosing the victim. This time, as usual, there were certain stipulations; however, the most important aspect of it was left up to him. He didn't understand how that could be. It had perplexed him from the first, but he'd given up trying to figure it out and knew better than to ask.

He had arrived in Prague Tuesday night and registered at a modest hotel in the Radlice district close by the Konvarka railway station. He wanted to do what he was being well paid to do and get out of Prague as soon as possible. He'd never liked the city. He saw it as grimy, its buildings coated with soot from the burning of so much coal. Carapaces of scaffoldings were everywhere to facilitate the cleaning of the buildings, but, the killer noticed, there were seldom any workers on them. He thought the scaffolds probably only stood for intent.

It had taken him four days to make his choice. He'd spent most of the time in and around the better hotels, their lobbies and bars. The Jalta Hotel on Vaclavske Square had been a source twice before. The arrangement of its lobby was right. It provided him with a sofa chair from which he could hear what went on at both the registration desk and the concierge's counter. There he sat, not really reading the Czech newspaper with such interest nor so intent on composing postcard messages on the reverse side of views of Prague, but listening. Listening for the speaking of French. Merely that. By Thursday he had his prospects. All were undoubtedly visitors from France, as stipulated. Two were women, and if they had been the only two he would have been forced to choose between them. Fortunately among the prospects there were three men. By Friday he had settled on one and decided he would wait another night. Most of the people of Prague escaped from the city on weekends, and that might be to his advantage.

Now, seated at a table in the Café de l'Europa, the killer looked aside to his left, apparently admiring something of the Art Nouveau decor. Then he let his eyes drift to the right, phlegmatically scanning those persons standing at the bar. At just past midpoint he made his eyes almost indiscernibly catch the gaze of the man, the victim, in the navy-blue flannel suit. Simultaneously with that eye-catch his fingers drummed the shoulder of the empty chair.

Less than a minute later the victim, whiskey sour in hand, came to the killer's table. He was sure of the situation, sat as if the chair had been kept empty for him, and started the conversation as though it had been in progress. “I visited Franz Kafka's studio today,” he said in rapid French. “I was the only one there. Why should a genius such as Kafka go so unadmired? It's ridiculous.”

The killer looked puzzled, although he spoke fluent French and had understood every word. With stumbling grammar and an impeding middle European accent he asked in French if the victim spoke Czech.

The victim said he didn't.

The killer did an indifferent shrug and said they could try talking in French, but the other should please speak slowly.

The victim was used to making spontaneous assessments. In fact, they were an important part of his pleasure. He was excited by his quick decision that he was very much attracted to this Czech with the hard, chunky body. He liked the boyish shag of the Czech's light brown hair, the way his nose appeared to have been broken and never properly put straight, probably broken in a village brawl. What luck, the victim thought, that he'd taken the concierge's advice and come here to the Europa rather than to the Three Ostriches as he'd planned. Such sideroad instincts had frequently led him to good things. From the bar he had spotted and considered this Czech right off and concluded there was no chance. That he'd misjudged multiplied the stir in him. He felt his entire sexual apparatus spasm once, as though separately it were signaling its approval. He smiled at the Czech, the insinuating smile that he'd perfected years ago and had rehearsed briefly in his hotel-room mirror when he was getting ready for this night. Within that smile he told the Czech that of course he would speak slowly in French, but they wouldn't have to talk much. Talk was not the essential thing, was it?

The killer nodded and did the sort of responsive smile that he knew was wanted from him, confirming the mutuality.

Now they got to names. The victim said his first was François and his last did not matter.

The killer lied his entire name and extended his hand.

François pretended not to notice. He wanted to put off the pleasure of touching the Czech, and when he did touch him it would certainly not be his hand. He had long ago found that social niceties and drawn-out buildups were diluting. More could be felt from sudden physical candor. François summoned the waiter and asked for the check.

The killer wanted another slivovitz and told the waiter so. While it was being brought, he took in this François seated diagonally opposite and saw again why him rather than one of the others. The man's sexual preference had not entered into it. His homosexuality was obvious in his gestures and walk and speech, but to have chosen him for that reason would have been narrow-minded and unfair, the killer believed. No, the decisive thing, that which had swayed the choice, was the way this François presented himself. His immaculateness. He seemed to be asking to be chosen, standing out. The perfectly pinched Cardin suit, the pointed-toed, lightweight shoes that looked as though they would shriek at a scuff, and, above the fresh white shirt collar, a complexion pampered and lotioned and shaved at least twice a day. Both amusing and annoying to the killer was the possibility that François also shaved his legs, chest, and underarms, and probably tweezered his ass the same as he plucked his brows.