Hot Siberian (56 page)

While she blamed herself for having married Pyotr Borodin, she never blamed Savich for seducing her. Most women would have sidestepped out from under some of the guilt by claiming they'd been taken advantage of, as though their sexuality were a component so vulnerable, so easy to ignite, that a man, especially a man such as Savich, should have mercy on them. Irina was never like that. She was her own person, as responsible for her infidelity as she was her forthrightness. Given the compromise she'd made, and taking into account her very private physical fires, she reasonably anticipated that someday she might have an affair. She just didn't expect it to occur so soon, nor did she expect to be so seriously affected as she was by Savich.

At the time they entered into it Savich was the head of the Department of Commerce with Western Countries, a position of importance within the Soviet command-political apparatus. His official duties required him to be in Leningrad several times each month, and it was during those visits that the affair was nourished. Only their very first lovemaking took place in his suite at the Hotel Astoria. On a summer Sunday afternoon when she was supposed to be out for a walk in the Kirov Central Park of Culture and Rest. Her light pale pink summer dress came off her like a chrysalis, Savich remembered. He'd watched her pair her shoes precisely and place them pointed away on the floor beside the bed, as though she might at any moment change her mind and want to jump into them. She waited until he was in her to let him know that he was only the second man ever to enter her. He liked it that she wasn't nervous, and hadn't afterward asked him to compare her with those who had preceded her. Because it had been such pleasure for them both, that it would happen again was taken for granted. But not at the Astoria. Savich arranged to keep a modest apartment near the Kirov Palace, and it was there that nearly all of their subsequent love-making took place.

He was honest with her, never promised a faithfulness that he knew he couldn't fulfill. Better an omission than a lie. Irina accepted that condition, although she often secretly wished Savich would lie huge, exhilarating lies. Before loving, she'd stare at him in the half-light and try to will lies from his mouth, and afterward, after parting, she was grateful that he hadn't said them. As time went on she came to understand how his honesty in this regard was one of the main things that kept their relationship from being bruised beyond feeling.

Her pregnancy was a crisis.

It changed their affair, let their secret out. At least out as far as Pyotr Borodin.

When Irina first learned that she was pregnant, she wasn't concerned. She had no way of knowing whether the father was Pyotr or Savich, and really it didn't matter. The cold reaction she got from Pyotr when she informed him she was pregnant she attributed to his natural insensitivity and the fact that at the start he'd claimed he wasn't fond of children, not good with them, would prefer they didn't have any. She'd thought that somewhat contradictory, because whenever they had sex he used nothing to prevent making her pregnant, nor did he request her to. During the first three months of her pregnancy Pyotr treated her with a quiet disdain. The only smile from him seemed more a castigating sneer. Irina thought that if her condition was causing so much friction she should get an abortion. She offered to do that, but Pyotr wouldn't hear of it.

He waited until her fifth month, until she was beyond aborting time, to tell her that the year before he had gone to see a urologist at Obukhov Hospital. He'd undergone a fertility test and it was determined that his sperm count was only eight million per square centimeter; a count of sixty to one hundred million was normally needed for conception. Not only that, but of his eight million count, 95 percent were immotile or deformed in some way. This infertility, the urologist said, was most likely the result of his having had the mumps with extremely high fever when he was thirteen. One thing he knew for certain: it was impossible for him to impregnate. So, he demanded, who was the father?

Irina refused to say, for fear that Pyotr would do something crazy. When she asked Savich what she should do he thought it best that she tell Pyotr the truth. She did so reluctantly and found that as much as Pyotr had ranted and threatened he wasn't about to get out of hand. For one thing, he didn't believe he was up to confronting someone as formidable in the Party as Savich, and for another, he didn't want everyone knowing he wasn't man enough to be a father. For face, he took credit for Nikolai's birth and then turned his back on the responsibility of raising the boy. He knew that whenever Irina announced that she was “going for a long walk” she was going to be with Savich. Pyotr particularly took silent exception to the emphasis she often placed on the word “long.” She had a need to pique him and many times when she said that she actually did nothing more than walk.

In the next five years Irina and Savich were with each other less and less frequently. It was a mutual diminishing without any inflictions. The heat of their love gave way to a friendship that was warm. Meanwhile, Savich's career flourished. He was promoted to assistant deputy minister and, after a stint as deputy, was appointed minister. All along he assured Irina that she could rely on his influence, his
blat
. She held him to his word and got Nikolai admitted to those schools that normally were reserved for the offspring of the very privileged. It was only fair, Irina reasoned, for Nikolai was the son of the Minister of Foreign Trade.

Pyotr Borodin resented every advantage Nikolai was given. The most violent argument he and Irina ever had was when Nikolai was accepted by the Institute of Foreign Languages. The more Nikolai attained, the more bitter and malignant was Pyotr's attitude. Savich warned Irina about that. She didn't heed him. Actually, it seemed she enjoyed her clashes with Pyotr, as though they exercised her mettle and gave her the chance to erupt and pay him back in kind for his perpetual rancor.

Savich never accepted it as coincidence that Pyotr had killed Irina and committed suicide less than a month after Nikolai was given the desirable assignment with the trade mission in London. Everyone acquainted with the Borodins knew of their chronic quarreling, but none knew the underlying reason for it. Some said that the Borodins had finally settled their differences in the quintessential Russian way. Without denying to himself the catalytic part he'd played, Savich tended to agree.

That favorite photograph of Irina at age twenty.

Savich, gazing at it now, remembered that he'd come close to leaving it in place when Nikolai had recently come to visit. At the last minute he'd removed it, because the timing wasn't right for such a highly charged revelation. He surely intended to tell Nikolai, but under more favorable circumstances, when he and Nikolai had more mutual equity, a better, stronger personal foundation. Then it would come out. Then it would be easier for them both. That event was now imminent, Savich felt. He'd be taking a huge step toward it when he put his feet down at Heathrow that night. Sunday he'd drive himself to Devon. Perhaps he'd be invited to spend a few days, maybe even a week. He'd take care not to crowd Nikolai and his Vivian. He'd put on old clothes and share chores. He and Nikolai would sit in the village pub and tolerate one another's philosophies. He'd become used to a bed in that house of theirs, and soon possessive of it. Vivian would put cut flowers from her garden on his nightstand and he would lie in the dark, breathe their fragrance, and fall gently to sleep with love in his lungs. He would sit with Nikolai and Vivian for meals and anecdotes. He and Nikolai and Vivian between them with arms around would walk the countryside. He'd feel that kind of being wanted.

Savich's “Russian conversation” was interrupted by the chirping of the telephone, a call on his most private line.

It was Yelena Valkova.

“The most horrible thing has happened,” she said. She was crying. “Feliks …” She broke off, unable to speak.

“What is it? What's happened?”

“Feliks is dead. He poisoned himself.”

“Accidentally?”

“He left a farewell note. Oh, it's so tragic. Poor, poor Feliks. I had no idea he was that depressed.”

“I'm so sorry, Yelena. Is there anything I can do?”

“No,” she sobbed. “There's nothing anyone can do.”

“Perhaps you want me to make the arrangements. I was about to leave for London, but I can change my plans and be in Leningrad within a few hours.”

“I just have to get control of myself,” she sniffled.

“Yes, you must,” Savich told her pointedly.

“It makes me feel better to hear your voice. I know you and Feliks were close, in business and all.”

“Of course.”

“The note Feliks left was so pathetic. His handwriting is so clear and neat. He truly loved me, you know.” She was again choked with emotion.

Savich waited for her to regain composure.

“The police are here,” she said. “They've been very understanding, most helpful. Oh … they're about to take Feliks away. I must go.”

“Please let me know if you need anything.”

“I'll be in touch.”

Savich placed the receiver down and shook his head incredulously. He hadn't thought Yelena would do it. She was one of the few women in his life that he'd underestimated. He recalled the embryonic stage of this development. Several months ago when he was alone with Yelena he'd only mentioned that in doing business her husband was often a problem. Apparently that was the sort of remark she'd been hoping to hear, for she latched right on to it, said that as far as she was concerned, Feliks was a stifling, unbearable problem, and that she for one would be far better off if he were to just suddenly evaporate. In fact, she went on, she'd been giving that very possibility a great deal of thought. Did that shock him?

Savich hadn't commented.

She knew exactly how it could happen, she said. Feliks looked to her to keep his ego inflated. It was getting so she felt like a damn psychological pump. It was a sickness with him, she believed, a narcissistic disorder. Why, whenever she withheld her worship he was like a man starved. Sometimes he'd demand she go on for hours praising and admiring him. If she refused he resorted to melodramatic extremes. He often threatened suicide. Three times, merely to cause panic, he'd left suicide notes for her to find. She'd saved those notes, shown them to no one, had them safely hidden away. Because it had occurred to her that they might be useful. Did Savich understand what she was proposing?

He understood well enough. With Feliks out of the way, all the money Valkov had accumulated in the West would be hers. It was mere talk, he decided. Brash she might be, but she didn't have that much nerve. Even when Yelena brought it up again the last time they were in Paris he hadn't believed her.

At that time she'd probably already made up her mind. Valkov always confided in her. No doubt he'd told her of the Borodin situation and all, and she'd seen it as a sign that everything was about to come apart. Yelena wasn't the sort to let her fortune slip through someone else's fingers, which was what she feared might very well happen with Valkov.

Valkov dead, Savich thought. It changed nothing, really. And how easy it was to accept. Fortunately he wasn't going to be called upon to grieve.

He still had three hours until takeoff.

Time seemed to be crawling.

He shouldn't sit, he told himself. He'd be sitting long enough on the flight. He stood and put all his weight on one leg for a short while. Then all on the other. His legs felt strong. Legs were usually the first thing to go, but his felt reasonably young, springy. Health and wealth, he thought, rhymed for a reason.

He used the intercom to tell Mai Lon that he'd have some tea. And, to nibble on, some of those imported shortbread cookies Raspredelitel, the food distributor to the elite, had delivered the other day. On second thought he'd also have a few slices of sterlet on some Carr water biscuits. Had she and Do Kien repacked his luggage?

“Yes sir,” she said. “You are ready to go.”

The tea and nibbles were brought promptly by Mai Lon. In her usual graceful and unintrusive manner she placed the tray down on the table that accommodated Savich's favorite chair. He sat and waited while Mai Lon fussed with the tray, correcting the position of a spoon, moving the teacup a half inch. The shortbread cookies were symmetrically arranged, and the slices of smoked sturgeon were identical. Sometimes Mai Lon's precision tired Savich's patience; however, better precise than sloppy. “I'll do my own pouring,” he told her. “Has it steeped enough?”

“It is steeped.”

Savich was so used to having Mai Lon around that he was hardly conscious that she remained in the room. She went to the window that was allowing stark afternoon light to hit upon the back of his head and shoulders. She adjusted the curtain to defuse the light.

Then from her ample sleeve she drew out a garrote. A simple device, merely a length of fine steel wire attached to wooden grips on both ends. She would do it for the huge amount of money Valkov had promised. There was no reason to doubt that Valkov wouldn't keep his end of the bargain. He'd been making regular generous payments to her and Do Kien for almost two years. They were in his pay much more than they were in Savich's. By tomorrow night she and Do Kien would be in Sri Lanka. People in this hemisphere had no idea what luxuries could be enjoyed by someone rich in Sri Lanka.

Mai Lon had used the garrote during the war in Vietnam. She'd learned by practicing on appropriately shaped squash and melons. Her hands and arms, delicate as they appeared, were quite strong. Actually, it didn't require great strength. Surprise, speed of hand, and sureness were more important. In a swift continuous motion the wire was looped over his head from behind and drawn tight around his throat, the wooden grips were pulled in opposite directions. Mai Lon hung on, maintained her hold, while he grasped vainly at the wire and the rest of him for a short while flopped like a fish.