The Russian Seduction (10 page)

“Relax,” he murmured, clearly picking up on her discomfort. “It’s not a crime to possess a pedigree in Russia these days. All I’m saying is that you know how it is to be one of the favored few.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true.” She concentrated on stripping off her fur-lined gloves and folding them in her lap. “Although I like to think I’ve earned at least some of my current advantages.”

“Well, I didn’t inherit my fortune,” he said gruffly. “I earned it from a few well-timed investments in the ‘90s, when our Russian economy was exploding with double-digit growth per annum.”

A few well-timed investments.
Well, that was suitably vague and intriguing. The car alone had to be worth a year’s salary for a junior Foreign Service Officer, even without the custom fit.

As the sports car knifed through traffic like a shark’s fin splitting the water, he shot her an ironic glance. “And now, Counselor, you’re wondering whether to add an association with the Russian Mafia to my list of questionable connections, and making a mental note to update my dossier.”

She shifted again in her seat, telling herself it was absurd to feel guilty. “I’m just trying to do my job, captain.”

“As I did mine,” he mused, gaze fixed on the shifting traffic patterns. “But they took my boat anyway, didn’t they? I was at the pinnacle of my career and my abilities. Fervently devoted to performing my patriotic duty, just as you are today.”

His mouth curled in a humorless smile. “You won’t like to hear it, but we’re similar creatures, you and I.”

She shot him a startled glance, ready to lob that hand-grenade right back at him. Then she took the time to think it over. Too warm in her shearling coat, she shrugged out of it. Catching the movement, the captain reached over and dialed down the car’s thermostat.

If only it were as simple to dial down the heat that simmered between them.

“One day,” he murmured, “when your joints ache in the morning, and you’re staring sixty in the face, when you’ve sacrificed everything for the cold comfort of your career—they’ll snatch it all away from you.”

A muscle flexed in his jaw as he shifted gears. The sports car plunged through the narrowing gap between a guttering microbus and a shiny SUV with opaque windows.

“Then,” he shrugged, “you’ll be shunted off to rot in some backwater post that doesn’t merit half your effort or abilities. Lying awake at night wondering why you made the choices you did. Telling yourself you’d do it all differently, if only you had another chance. And all that bottled-up resentment and regret will gnaw at you like an ulcer.”

“No.” The word slipped out like a hiccup, propelled by her hidden fears, never discussed or acknowledged. He’d targeted her hangups as accurately as his weapons officer must have, under his captain’s unsparing eye, when he fired the sub’s deadly armaments on enemies in the deep.

“It won’t be like that for me,” she said softly, hugging herself as she curled in the seat. “How can it be? After ten years of commitment, ten years of skipped vacations and working through weekends, after learning three new languages and acing the proficiency exam for every one, taking every tradecraft course the Department offers—after all that, very few people would claim my Minister-Counselor’s crown was handed to me on a silver platter. Of course,
you
claimed to think so, the night we met.”

She floundered in a sea of caution, her secrets cumbersome as cement shoes on a swimmer. They were treading around the edge of fears she hugged close, because telling them to someone else could make them real. But he’d already exposed them, hadn’t he, given voice to all her little demons?

A lifetime of repressed frustration reared its ugly head. He’d raised the subject, hadn’t he? Well, let him hear what she had to say. Let
someone
hear her, just this once.

“I wonder if you can understand, captain,” she said harshly, “how it feels to have your wishes and preferences disregarded, simply treated as irrelevant by those around you. To be allowed to accomplish nothing for yourself, to have every important decision made for you by someone else. To be stifled by the blanket of someone else’s expectations and ambitions, so heavy they wake you up sweating at night.”

She sucked in an unsteady breath. “Then to hear your counterparts whispering, no matter your own merits and level of effort, that you’ve earned none of what you have. It makes you try harder to prove you’re worthy. Knowing someone will always doubt your accomplishments due to your gender, your youth, and your father’s name. None of which can be changed.

“One doesn’t even dare to protest.” Her voice sank to a whisper. Maybe she hoped he couldn’t hear her. “Don’t want them to think, you know…poor little rich girl. What does she have to complain about?”

Briefly Alexis closed her eyes, disconcerted by the tide of relief that swept through her. For years she’d been whispering these words to herself. To say them just once to someone else was electrifying. Even though she’d said them to this guy—this Russian, whose methods and motives for getting her into his car were questionable, to say the least.

Well, no use sobbing over spilt latte.
Wasn’t that what her mother would have said, adjusting her oversized sunglasses with one perfectly manicured finger? Then she’d have taken another sip of her double vodka martini and picked up her Vogue, dismissing her daughter’s existence.

Alexis wrapped herself in a cocoon of protective silence. She wasn’t even going to
look
at the guy who’d just been given a peek at her deepest insecurities. Who’d probably been leading her there for his own reasons.

Thank God he didn’t make it worse by pretending to sympathize or making some awkward attempt at reassurance. His voice was purely pragmatic, giving her room to regain her balance.

“Can’t you do something else for a living? Some profession outside diplomacy, where Wayne Castle doesn’t cast his formidable shadow?”

“I majored in journalism at Stanford,” she shrugged, keeping it impersonal this time. She’d allowed this perceptive Russian way too far inside her comfort zone, and it was time to reassert her boundaries. “My father wanted me to go to Georgetown, of course, the way he did. But I interned with the
LA Times
, and loved it.”

“Then your mother passed away.” He matched her matter-of-fact tone, letting her control the dialogue—skilled as an intel agent handling a skittish source. “The official diagnosis was liver failure, which was understood within the family to be linked to alcoholism. It’s all in your dossier.”

Why are we talking about this?
She couldn’t help wondering. Nothing about her relationship with this man was simple, and she couldn’t afford to pretend otherwise, no matter how he made her feel.

Ahead on the road, blue police lights flashed—one of the ubiquitous Russian motorcades. Governor, minister, Duma member, maybe the president. She watched in amazement as Kostenko tucked his car with its blue plates into the queue and picked up another 30 mph.

“That’s when you returned to Washington, D.C., if I recall the chronology?” he resumed. On the sound system, the
Third Symphony
built toward its final coda.

“I was asked to come home, as I’m certain you must know.” She supposed her personal history wasn’t personal if every working-level grunt at MFA knew it. Still, she wasn’t about to confide that she’d intended to stay home only a few months, to help her father cope. She could hardly have said no—his only child.

“Then you took the Foreign Service exam,” Kostenko noted, “to please your father, one presumes. And you sailed through the tests, both written and oral, with flying colors.”

“I promised myself I’d be out of the government in a year at most…” To her dismay, the familiar lump swelled in her throat
. Then they swore me in, and Dad had tears in his eyes.

“Your knowledge of my dossier is impressive, captain.” She cleared her throat, her voice tight and brittle. “Have I answered all the MFA’s questions?”

She felt him studying her, probably gauging how much to admit, but she kept her face averted. It was better that way, easier to reconstruct the barriers between them. Easier to regain control.

“Those were
my
questions, Alexis,” he said mildly. “When I’m compelled to speak on behalf of the Russian Federation, you can rest assured I leave no room for doubt.”

Unexpectedly, she felt tempted to believe him—and that scared the hell out of her. Whatever he claimed, she wasn’t about to continue this Freudian side trip without an actual shrink and a couch to lie down on. Bad enough that her throat was aching with the pressure of tears she wasn’t about to shed.

Though it was fairly alarming to calculate just how much of her intimate history Victor Kostenko already seemed to know.

Turning away from him, she glanced out the passenger window, noting the onion-domed orthodox churches and stately, tree-lined boulevards that marked the fringes of the sprawling capital.

“I’ve already confessed to poring over your file.” His voice was pitched low—deep and sexy, like she’d enticed him into the admission. “In fact, our analysts think I’m a bit obsessed. It’s all rather superficial data, of course.”

“Oh, good.” She fiddled with a loose thread on her slim-cut wool trousers. “I’d hate to be an open book.”

“It’s all right, Alexis.” Unexpectedly, his hand shifted from the stick to cover hers where it lay on her knee. Despite the rough calluses from his rock-climbing and other harsh pursuits, his grip was warm, gentle when he squeezed.

Alexis stared down at it—his big hand, edged in the crisp white cuff and black wool of his uniform. The stainless-steel flash of a dive watch with a compass, built like a tank on his wrist. She knew the look of money, and that timepiece was easily $6K.

He made way too much money. He worked for the wrong government. He drove way too fast and smoked where he shouldn’t, and he’d probably already lied to her. Any relationship with Victor Kostenko was a train wreck waiting to happen.

But her heart turned over when he held her hand.

She turned her hand up so their palms met—only for a heartbeat.

God, I am in so much trouble. Only known the guy two days, and I’m already tempted to fall for him.

_____________________________________

The captain needed both hands to peel from the highway onto a narrow boulevard, the low-slung vehicle hugging the curb. Alexis seized the moment to clasp her hands in her lap. She couldn’t keep touching him and maintain any semblance of control. And clear thinking was something she desperately needed right now.

Above them reared a concrete phalanx of Brezhnev-era apartments, livened with dingy lights from a smattering of cave-like ethnic restaurants. She noted the Cyrillic lettering on the street signs, memorized the route in case she had to find her own way back on public transport later.

“Where in the world are you taking me, captain?” She camouflaged her nerves behind a blithe tone.

“Where’s your spirit of adventure, Ms. Castle?” he chided. Impersonal as though that flash of connection between them had never happened.

Better get back to business myself.

“My spirit of adventure was one of the first luxuries I sacrificed,” she said wryly, “for that career we were just talking about. By my reckoning, we have just over an hour remaining for our ‘appointment.’ And you haven’t mentioned the situation in Ukraine.”

He shot her a mocking look, barely decreasing speed as the sports car swung onto a dark residential road, tall conifers huddling close to block the light.

“Don’t get excited, Counselor. While I was waiting for you outside that charming Uzbek restaurant, I placed a few calls. We’re borrowing a friend’s
dacha
for our ‘appointment.’”

“Who’s the friend?” A flicker of unease slid across her skin. They’d gone pretty far from the center of town for a discussion that could have been handled right there in the Embassy.

“Just a businessman,” he shrugged. “Since his business has nothing to do with ours, and since I rarely see him, one may be assured that his
dacha
is private.”

Meaning the place shouldn’t be bugged. Unless Kostenko himself was wired. But better not to comment on surveillance matters, since the car itself might not be clean. Depending on how much line his minders allowed their rogue submarine captain before they reeled him in.

She watched the night deepen, the orderly rows of yellow-lit windows gradually walled away behind the impenetrable forest. As they coasted along snugly in the heated car, the thunderous strains of Prokofiev streamed from the speakers.

She jumped when the driver’s window hummed open an inch. The captain propped a cigarette between his lips and lit up, the ember glowing red in the darkness.

“Cold?” he murmured, seeing her shiver.

“I’m fine.” Alexis felt compelled to fill the intimate silence that wrapped around them, to impose additional distance. Inoffensive chit-chat on neutral topics, that was what people did to fill the time with strangers.