The Russian Seduction (30 page)

His arms crossed behind her head, hugging her against him, so she couldn’t read his face.

“I didn’t want you to leave,” he said lightly. But something deeper lurked in his tone.

“You don’t have to tie me up for that, Victor,” she said, past the lump in her throat. “You only need to tell me the truth.”

A current of awareness ran through his body. Now he released her, his eyes probing her features.

“You spoke to Mr. Chase,” he said shrewdly. “Before dinner, yes? And what lovely little secrets did he tell you?”

That you’re an SVR agent and a liar—just like I feared
.
That you’re in bed with the Mafia.

That I can never trust you, so I need to get away from you.

Faced with her silence, his eyes narrowed. “He told you how I made my money, didn’t he. I thought he might.”

“Yeah.” Alexis rolled away from him and sat, dragging the sheets up and hugging her knees. “He told me about your six casinos.”

“In point of fact, I own five of them. And I didn’t acquire them the way you believe.” He pushed upright, raking a hand through his hair. “Alexis, I’m not in the Mafia.”

“No?” Though she tried to control it, hot anger sizzled up. She’d just given herself to him in every way a woman could, and he was still lying to her.

“No.” Impatiently he fumbled for his cigarettes and lighter. “Is there any point in explaining the situation, or has the American jury already reached its verdict?”

“You told me yourself about your ‘few well-timed investments.’” She shot him an appalled glance as he clamped a cigarette between his teeth and lit up. “I do hope you’re not going to smoke in bed, captain.”

He sliced her a speaking look, but thrust up and prowled naked to the window. And wasn’t
that
a prime view—if she’d been in the market for a Mafia kingpin. He cracked open the window, and fine needles of icy cold slashed through the steamy bedroom.

He took a long drag before he spoke, his stern profile stamped against the night.

“When I invested in these casinos, they were a legitimate business,” he muttered, scowling through the smoke. “Moscow in the ’90s was like your Chicago in the so-called Prohibition Era. You know this.”

“Yeah, I know it was violent and corrupt. Just like it is now.”

“Recall also, if you will, that I was often at sea. I needed an investment that would earn sound returns with minimal tending from me.”

“Maybe so.” She eyed him warily. He could still be lying and she’d have no way to tell. Seemed like, with him, she never could.

“And then the
Lenin
sank.” He exhaled a coil of smoke. “Frankly, my business investments were the last item on my mind. In fact, I became aware quite recently that when my ex-wife sold her shares, she sold them to a Mafia boss.”

She wanted to give him a chance to explain it all away. But making it easy would just make her his dupe—and that was too pathetic.

“When you realized you were co-investing with the mob,” she said, with deliberate sarcasm, “why didn’t you sell out?”

“I tried,” he said shortly. “But the Ministry of Internal Affairs was already investigating. I discovered this when an inquiry regarding my activities was launched, and I was called in to the
militsia
for questioning.”

“But they froze the inquiry,” she pointed out.

“Ah, Mr. Chase’s sources are truly impressive. I must remember to compliment him for this.” He frowned into the night. She could almost feel that clever brain working, deciding how much to tell her.

Tell me all of it
, she yearned to say.
Please. It’s the only way.

When, in fact, it was already far too late.

“Ultimately, I cut a deal,” he said abruptly. “It was entirely legal, an arrangement whose details are no longer important. As agreed, the
militsia
halted its investigation. I’m immersed now in the process of liquidating these troublesome investments.”

“That’s very convenient,” she said tightly, determined not to be an easy mark. “So now you’re clean, just like that?”

“Shortly I will be.” He ground out his cigarette and tossed it. Then pivoted to face her, his ice-blue eyes locking on hers. “You don’t believe me.”

“Victor—” Appalled to hear her voice break, she turned her back to him and swung her legs out of bed, reaching for her discarded slip. “I’d like to believe you. But I can’t do that anymore.”

Tears choked her throat, and she fumbled into the slip with shaking hands.

“Christ, Alexis,” he said low, the bed sinking as he climbed in behind her. His warm hands closed around her shoulders, and angrily she shrugged him off.

“It’s not a good idea to touch me right now.”

“Don’t do this.” His body engulfed her, arms folding across her breasts, hugging her hard against him. His words came out muffled in her hair. “Damn it, I know it’s a bloody mess. I know you have every reason in the world not to trust me.”

“You’ve got that right.” She stayed rigid in his arms, desperately shoring up her crumbling defenses. “Victor, this has to stop. It’s making me crazy. I
can’t
keep doing this, over and over….”

“Give me a chance to make it right,” he breathed against her hair, as if he wanted no one else to hear. “One chance, Alexis. I’m asking you to trust me just once more, the way you did on the train, in the forest, when I took care of you. I’m going to make it right.”

Bitterly she wondered how he planned to pull off that little stunt. They still hadn’t touched the photos, and she definitely noticed he wasn’t bringing that up. That meant he was
still
hiding things from her, and probably more than she thought.

“I have to go to work,” she mumbled, fighting to hold back the tears until she made it into the shower.

“It’s 0500 hours,” he pointed out, a trace of amusement lightening his grim tone. “No consulate in the world opens this early, Counselor.”

“I have a ton to do today,” she said firmly. “With only two weeks to go until the presidential visit, we’re all pulling double shifts.”

“I’m asking you for one more hour.” Holding her against him with one strong arm, he smoothed a hand over her tousled hair. “Don’t you want to hear what Pavel Germanovich and I discovered?”

The man possessed a positive talent for saying or doing the one thing that would keep her around. The U.S. still needed to avert a war with Russia, and the struggling democracy of Ukraine still needed their help to survive. She needed more than last night’s dinner chat to bring to the Ambassador.

Despite the fact that the hard muscled heat of his body was threatening to distract her all over again.

“OK,” she whispered, swiping a hand over her tears. “But I just want to talk.”

“Anything you like.” She felt his tension ease by degrees as he pulled her back into bed, and she let him. He tugged the plush duvet over them, and she burrowed into its cloud-soft depths.

Meanwhile Alexis gathered her reserves and turned her thoughts to political matters. Not easy to do at 5 a.m. when she was exhausted and upset, and planning how to leave the guy she’d fallen in love with.

_____________________________________

“So that’s the story on the
Lenin.
” Wearily Alexis reached for her third cup of coffee. Her eyes flinched away from the holocaust glare of morning sun blazing behind the desk in the Consular General’s elegant office.

ConGen Alison Chang tapped a sharpened pencil against the gleaming mahogany surface. A career Foreign Service Officer who’d earned her Number One slot in the consulate the hard way—by working for it—she was a stylish woman in her fifties whose bobbed silver hair swung against a delicate jaw. Though Alexis had never known her well, the woman seemed to live up to her reputation for being approachable and the consummate professional.

Now, the ConGen’s tilted brown eyes were guarded. “That’s quite a lot to take in, Alexis, much of it on faith. We’re thirteen days and counting until President Cartwright touches down in Moscow. I certainly don’t have to tell you how much is riding on this visit.”

“I know,” Alexis grimaced, but stood her ground. “Our bilateral partnership has gone down the toilet. I know the entire U.S.-Russian relationship, from trade to the war against terror, stands in the balance. And I’ve already sent a secure message to the Defense Attaché, asking him to look into U.S. naval activity in the Black Sea, both before the
Lenin
sank and now. He should have that for us by close-of-business.”

While the ConGen absorbed this, Alexis touched her throbbing temples. After her sleepless night, she’d indulged a five-minute crying fit in the shower before reporting in. Now, in addition to a whopping headache, her lids felt like sandpaper grating against her eyes. But this was no time to wallow in self-indulgence.

“If we’ve been sniffing around the
Lenin’s
final resting place, General Baker will know,” she finished. “And the Ambassador is reviewing my classified report as we speak.”

Chang nodded, still fiddling with her pencil. “Tell me again about the sub’s last transmissions. That was quite a lot to absorb.”

Firmly Alexis suppressed a stab of discomfort—dangerously close to guilt—for betraying Victor’s trust. But that was crazy thinking. He had to know she’d pass it all on to Washington, which was the reason she’d gotten involved with him in the first place, right?

Yeah, right.
She grimaced. If she started lying to herself or anyone else on her side, she’d be in even more trouble. She’d better not let her priorities get mixed up here. Her full loyalty belonged with the country she’d pledged when she joined the Foreign Service, not with the Russian agent she’d been screwing.

“The first transmission,” she said neutrally, “was sent by Taras Kostenko to the nearest Russian surface ship, the
Moskva
, at 0600—when the naval exercise was in full swing. The captain reported a technical problem on board, and asked for permission to surface for repairs.”

“Right.” The older woman nodded. “You said this Ivashov guy denied the request, and the
Lenin
was ordered to continue the exercise.”

Compassion twisted her heart as Alexis pushed back the memory of Victor’s iron control while he gritted out the story. Had to be rough—listening to his father’s final hours, knowing what was coming and helpless to prevent it.

“The second transmission was logged at 0630.” Carefully she stripped the emotion from her voice. “This time, the caller was Mikhail Mishkin, the sub’s executive officer, who seemed to be audibly under stress.”

“Right.” Chang nodded. “This was Ivashov’s
protégé
, the late addition replacing the man who fell under the train. Mishkin was the officer who reported an emergency on board?”

“And the officer who
informed
Fleet Command—without permission—that he was surfacing the ship.” Alexis gripped her coffee mug. “The transmission was cut off, and the sub initiated a rather dramatic ascent. This is where the story gets interesting.”

“According to information from other sources we’ve checked,” the ConGen added, “at 0635 an unknown submarine in the
Lenin
’s vicinity fired a tactical cruise missile armed with conventional explosives. That missile detonated over an isolated compound on the Crimean coast in Ukraine. Thank God it wasn’t armed with a nuclear payload. Our sources weren’t certain whether it might have strayed off target—since it landed almost on top of the Russian naval base at Sevastopol.”

“Victor didn’t mention the missile.” Alexis hesitated. “Although perhaps he couldn’t, to me. But he did report that the sub’s final transmission came at 0640, when she’d nearly reached the surface. This was an unknown speaker, neither Kostenko nor Mishkin, and he was almost incoherent. Kept screaming something about water overwhelming the pumps. His last words, which he screamed twice, were ‘the captain—the captain.’”

Even reporting the story for the third time, a chill crawled over her scalp. “Then several gunshots were fired, which the mike picked up. This means either someone had broken into the gun locker where all sidearms should have been secured, or else someone smuggled at least one firearm aboard. More screaming was recorded, a final shot, then nothing.”

Pensive, Alexis sipped her coffee and grimaced at its bitter bite. The Russians were
so
much better at brewing tea. “Immediately afterward, the
Lenin
started to sink—fast. And apparently she sank all the way to the bottom. That was the boat’s final transmission.”

“Jesus.” Alison Chang shook her head. “It sounds like all hell broke loose on that boat. Attempted mutiny at the very least, as your man noted.”

My man.
Alexis swallowed hard.
Except that he isn’t. And never was.