The Russian Seduction (19 page)

She’d always known Kostenko had to be more than he claimed, hadn’t she? She’d always suspected the presence of some ulterior motive for all the attention he’d paid her. She’d known before she ever slept with him that she was making a terrible mistake, letting yet another man behind the driver’s wheel of her life. Yet even that hadn’t stopped her.

“They approached me when I lost my command,” he said abruptly, tossing his silver teaspoon on the table with a clatter. “Offered me a chance to prove my loyalty to the Motherland after my father’s so-called crime.”

“And you agreed to do it,” she said numbly. Couldn’t believe he was actually admitting it. This had to be part of his game, didn’t it?

“Not at first.” His mouth tightened in a mirthless smile. “Initially, I declined their ‘invitation.’ Until they promised to use their particular resources to investigate my father’s death, and the sinking of the
V.I. Lenin
.”

Don’t trust a word he says. He’s just confessed to being one of their goons.
Yet she couldn’t drag her eyes away from his inward-looking gaze, and the bleakness she saw there.

“Did they keep their promise?” she probed, when the silence stretched.

“What do you think?” He scowled into his tea. “They said whatever they had to in order to bring me on board. When I realized the truth, I wanted out. But they would never have allowed me to simply quit.”

“My God,” Alexis breathed, sudden insight flashing through her like the northern lights. He was way too smart to get tripped up the way Geoff had told her. “Did you—you
wanted
to be discovered and expelled from Washington, didn’t you? You blew your own cover.”

“It isn’t advisable to discuss the particulars. But your CIA caught me with…what is that charming expression...‘my hand in the cookie jar?’” His lips twisted in a mordant smile. “Due to my diplomatic immunity, of course your government couldn’t arrest me. But they could revoke my visa and expel me from country—a process they lost no time to initiate.”

“So you
were
expelled,” she said flatly.

“Not precisely. I left before your government could formally expel me. Which left my agency to disavow all knowledge of my actions and cut me loose.” He shrugged. “It’s the cost of doing business for an agent, yes? Since my cover was blown, they can never use me again.”

Well, that was convenient. And they’d just let him walk away? She gave him a skeptical look.

“As you can plainly see,” he finished, “I tried to play by their rules. And as usual, I wasn’t rewarded for it.”

As she replayed his words in her mind, she knew he’d confessed to nothing. No specifics on his misdemeanor, no identification of the ‘agency’ for which he’d worked. Was he working to establish plausible deniability, or just practicing the well-known Russian custom of covering his ass?

“Of course, I knew too much for them to let me go completely.” Clearly, he’d followed her thoughts. “And, after my rather spectacular transgression, certainly the navy was not prepared to give me another command. So they assigned me to the M.F.A.”

He uttered the acronym like three foreign words, his nostrils flaring in contempt. His words picked up tempo and spilled into Russian.

“And even that ladies’ tea club barely tolerates me. I am that renegade Ukrainian who lost his command. The traitor’s son. The so-called loose cannon who blasts holes through their precious procedures.”

She couldn’t let him manipulate her again. Couldn’t allow herself to feel compassion for his dilemma. Still, was it any wonder the guy’d become an embittered loner? He’d been one of their most brilliant and talented captains, and however you looked at it, the system had screwed him.

“What about your father?” she asked quietly. “Did they give you nothing to explain his accident?”

“They told me he was a traitor whose shortcomings were best forgotten.” He grimaced, as if the words tasted foul. “So much for the collective wisdom of their so-called intelligence. But I will not accept this! My father lost his life on their goddamn boat, and he deserves more from the Motherland than slander and infamy. Now that I’m back, I’ve taken the matter into my own hands.”

“Oh? And how is that?” she said cautiously.

Knowing she’d already edged past that line in the sand, that their discussion about intelligence and the sinking of a Russian sub was too damn risky.

Victor was scowling out the window, where their reflections floated in amber light against the blackness. He had her where he wanted her—dangerously exposed in a discussion on sensitive matters—if his goal was to compromise her. But she still wanted to hear the rest of it, these rare clues to the man and his enigmatic past.

“I’ve contacted my father’s closest comrade,” he said. “The one man he might possibly have confided in before he put to sea. The man who was once my own mentor. The dean of the naval academy in St. Petersburg, Admiral Pavel Germanovich Grachev.”

“Then I take it he’s agreed to see you?” she guessed. “This is why you’re going to St. Petersburg.”

Though it didn’t explain why he wanted her there.

His distracted gaze sharpened, returned to the present. His ice-blue eyes slid over her in that way he had, caressing and undressing her, one slow inch at a time. Making her palms go damp and her mouth run dry. It was
definitely
getting stuffy in here.

“Why don’t you tell me,” he said softly, without severing that intimate perusal, “why you’re here, alone on a train with me, the man you insist you can’t trust? Have you guessed the reason, Alexis?”

No guesswork needed, captain. It’s because—despite everything about you that makes me wary—I’m fascinated by you. Aching to have you inside me again…and fighting desperately to deny it.

But of course she could never say that, and shouldn’t even think it. Just because he’d given her a plausible and human motive for his espionage work, a motive that stirred her sympathies, didn’t mean she could indulge in this intimate back-channel liaison that her government definitely hadn’t authorized.

She’d stated unequivocally in her contact report that she’d ended it. That she’d been temporarily overcome by the triple whammy of hormones, two years of celibacy, and a few shots of vodka on an empty stomach. That she had no emotional bond whatsoever, no tender feeling for Captain Victor Kostenko.

“No theories to propose?” he asked her. His silken tone told her he knew what she was thinking, knew she was throbbing for his touch. “Very well. I’ll say it for you.”

“Don’t,” she said sharply. “That topic of discussion is off limits.”

“Let me appeal to the professional diplomat in you. What did you think I was going to say?” His lids dropped as he extracted a cigarette from a crumpled pack in his pocket. Though he knew damn well she hadn’t been thinking about diplomacy.

“You suspect a possible link, yes?” he said calmly. “Between the loss of my father’s boat in Ukraine’s coastal waters and the current blockade of those same waters by Russian naval vessels.”

An electric tingle of intuition jolted through her, actually made her skin crawl like someone had tiptoed over her grave. The minute he said it, voiced the half-sensed connection her mind had been chasing for days, her instincts shouted that he was right.

Two Kostenkos tangled up in this thing, one sub sunk, the other removed from its captain’s command. Russian cruisers and destroyers and even a carrier swarming around the
Lenin’s
grave, plus at least two other subs they knew about.

Her own government rattling the saber pretty damn loud.

While Ukraine alternately denied there was a problem and screamed bloody murder for help.

Don’t jump to conclusions
.
You need facts, hard evidence—not just crazy theories and cold chills—before you bring this to Stu.

“I need a little more to work with, captain,” she said carefully. She wanted her pen, but now was hardly the time to start taking notes. “The
Lenin
sank two years ago. What’s the link between your father’s accident and these alleged naval exercises?”

“The link is both specific and clear.” His eyes hooded as he dug out his silver lighter. “Two years ago, my father was given his orders directly before sailing by Fleet Admiral Igor Yurievich Ivashov. Do you know this name?”

“Know it? He’s just become Chief of the General Staff at the Ministry of Defense,” she pointed out. “My government could hardly avoid noticing your president chose the most hardline, ultra-conservative, least conciliatory senior officer for the post. A guy who yearns openly for a return to the Soviet empire. An invisible man whom your own people speculate is the
de facto
chairman of the SVR—”

She paused, distracted as he propped the cigarette between his lips. “The
provodnitsa
will have your head on a plate, Victor, if you try to smoke in here.”

The lighter poised before his lips, he shot her an upward glance, a dangerous light gleaming in his neon eyes. “Are you always such a good girl, Alexis? Or is this something I bring out in you?”

While she moistened her lips and worked to summon a witty retort, the lighter flared as he lit up.
Don’t lose focus here. Let him tell you his theory.

“But yes,” he told her, exhaling smoke, “that’s Fleet Admiral Ivashov. The same dear comrade who is overseeing the current Ukrainian exercises. Had you noticed?”

“I asked the Defense Attaché to brief me on the admiral, which he did,” she murmured, her thoughts racing. “I noticed that Ivashov gave an interview in
Izvestiya
last week, and he was pretty heavy-handed on Russia’s strategic interest in Ukraine.”

“You’re well informed, able to connect disparate data points to form a sound hypothesis. A commendable analyst—just as your dossier suggests,” he said dryly.

Slanting bars of electric light slid across the cabin, floodlights flashing through the dirty glass as the train clattered past a vacant platform. Already the Moscow suburbs had fallen away. The villages they shuttled past were islands of light against barren concrete, stark against the night-dark taiga.

“It’s my job to be well informed and ‘connect disparate data points,’ as you put it.” She fought not to be pleased by the compliment, by the fact that he and his government respected her skills. Which he should do, as a matter of course, and her personal feelings for the guy had nothing to do with it.

“What else is in this for you, Victor?” she demanded, leaning forward. Propelled by the need to know what made him tick, pure and simple. “You’re half-Ukrainian. Doesn’t it bother you that your own navy is trampling all over Ukraine’s sovereign territory? Don’t you feel some sense of conflict, some sort of divided loyalty?”

This kind of question was dangerous for any Russian to answer, she knew. If he were any other Russian, she wouldn’t even have asked. Wasn’t sure she could justify why she cared, except that knowing his motivation could help her government manipulate him.

“It doesn’t thrill me,” he muttered at last, taking a long pull on his cigarette. “But I’m Russian first and foremost, just as my father was. This has to be clear to you, Alexis.”

In other words, he wasn’t going to betray his country just because he’d slept with her. And she damn well wasn’t going to betray hers.

“It’s clear,” she sighed, knowing she didn’t want to compromise him. “HellVictor, I need my phone! My Ambassador needs to know this stuff.”

“But this call would not be private, no?” He exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Call in to your Ambassador on any line, mention our comrade Ivashov, and the man will hear it within the hour.”

He waited until she nodded, reluctantly acknowledging the truth. Even if she’d had her phone, she couldn’t call this in on a non-secure line. There’d be one in St. Petersburg though, at the U.S. Consulate.

“Good,” Victor said crisply, all business again. “You know that our Ministry of Defense is divided over the question of Ukraine. If a major military power, such as the United States, were hypothetically to express its concern…”

“We’re expressing it,” Alexis said dryly, unlocking her briefcase. “I’m authorized to inform you, captain, that the United States has made a promise of mutual defense to the government of Ukraine. If Russia invades Ukraine, my government will intervene with military force—”

A sharp rapping on the door made her jump to her feet, her heart galloping. God, she half-expected the secret police to come charging in and arrest both of them. They damn well shouldn’t be sitting on this train talking national security.

When the shrill feminine harangue erupted from the corridor, she released a shaky breath. Despite the international crisis looming over them, a smirk slipped past her guard.

“It seems the
provodnitsa
is unhappy with your smoking, captain.”

“Don’t look so delighted, Counselor,” he murmured, amusement softening the harsh line of his mouth as he took another long drag on his cigarette. “You like it when I misbehave.”