Jeffery Deaver - Ice Cold

Vladlena was beside herself with a rage that struck them all dumb with terror. They’d never seen her like this, and Ludmila feared she might use Inessa’s absence to strike her cocktail party dress from the show entirely.

Ludmila wanted to plead for her dress, but she was afraid if she opened her mouth, she might vomit. She shivered in the air conditioning, and hoped.

To her relief, Vladlena ordered, “Put Alla in it!”

It would be too tight and too long on Alla, but Ludmila hurried to obey.

At the last minute, as Ludmila was about to help Alla change, Inessa dashed in, all smiles, as if nothing were wrong, her cheeks rosy with summer sun.

There was no time for lectures now. They blotted the perspiration from Inessa and slipped her into the dress. Vladlena glowered at the girl, but said nothing.

But on stage, Inessa was the best of them all, walking with an insouciant confidence that none of the other models could match, and Vladlena was mollified.

When the dress rehearsal was over, Vladlena led them in a round of applause. Before they dispersed, she delivered a speech detailing all the many errors that would have to be corrected before the next day, but they knew her well enough to see how pleased she was. Ludmila now realized just how nervous Vladlena had been, that the senior designer had just as much to lose, perhaps even more to lose than Ludmila herself if the show was a failure.

The tension drained from Ludmila. Calm descended on her as she headed backstage, and she allowed herself a smile when the models congratulated her.

In the changing area, Alla asked, “Cut this thread, will you?” The model lifted her hair above her neckline. “It’s been tickling me all morning.”

Ludmila picked up a pair of shears, found the offending loose thread, and snipped it.

“Ah, that’s much better. Thank you,” Alla said.

Ludmila looked for Inessa to help her change. She glimpsed the model still in the dress exiting through a back door. The anger that Ludmila had been too afraid to let herself feel earlier at Inessa’s tardiness welled up. Would the girl never learn? Furious at Inessa’s disregard for her garment, Ludmila followed, a harsh reprimand forming on her tongue.

Behind the stage was a service corridor, its light dim and sickly green. Inessa scurried down it and into the women’s toilet. A man, an American, followed her in.

This was too much! Wearing Ludmila’s creation to some sordid romantic rendezvous!

Ludmila burst in on them.

The man knelt before Inessa, the skirt in his hands. At first Ludmila thought he was lifting it, before she realized he was picking at the fabric. They both were.

The man turned toward her and exclaimed, “Hell.”

“Ludmila, give me a moment’s privacy, please,” Inessa begged. She didn’t giggle.

“What are you doing?” Ludmila choked out. But she knew, even as she asked. She saw it on the man’s fingertip. A dot, a microdot. According to Soviet propaganda, spies used them, American spies. She’d never believed such things existed. But here was the evidence before her eyes.

How long had the microdots been in place? The tiny dots blended with the fabric, indistinguishable from the pattern. She handled the garment daily and even she hadn’t noticed them.

The man stood, uncertainly glancing at Inessa.

In a flash, Ludmila understood. The girl had used Ludmila’s dress, her beautiful creation to smuggle out secrets. With or without her fiancé the physicist’s connivance. The invaluable information wouldn’t be lost or go astray if it was attached to a carefully tended dress. Inessa must be hoping to buy defection to the U.S. with such a delivery. And if the microdots were discovered, Inessa could claim she knew nothing. Inessa would get away with it as she always did. It was Ludmila’s dress. Ludmila would be the one condemned as a traitor and spy, not Inessa.

“In my dress?” Ludmila rushed forward, hearing herself roar, “You used my dress!”

“Your precious dress is fine. It hasn’t been damaged. I was very careful. Go away for a moment,” Inessa said, and pushed her gently back toward the door. “You never saw any of this.”

Ludmila held her ground. “My dress! You filthy little slut!” she shrieked. Her vision clouded, and a scream filled her ears, reverberating on the lavatory tiles. She struck Inessa, punched her, forgetting she still clenched a pair of shears. Rather than a blow, it was a stab.

Too late, Inessa flinched. The blades glanced over her jawbone and tore open the fleshy part of her long neck.

Ludmila pulled out the shears and stabbed again, harder, deeper.

Blood spouted from Inessa’s throat and poured down the front of the dress, drenching it, painting it a bright and terrible red.

The sight stopped Ludmila. “My dress,” she croaked, her voice raw.

Inessa went white and her ankles buckled. Her eyes rolled up into her head, before she crumpled to the ground, the skirt spread around her.

Ludmila couldn’t move, couldn’t take her eyes from the blood seeping across the silk.

The American shoved by her.

People poured in behind her, the KGB, the other models. Vladlena was there, shaking Ludmila, turning her head forcibly to get her to look away, to focus on something other than the lifeless model. “What is the meaning of this? Have you lost your mind?” Vladlena slapped her.

“She was spying. Using my dress…” Ludmila managed, her voice hoarse and painful. Her knees went weak and her whole body began to shudder convulsively.

She hadn’t realized she was sobbing until Vladlena pulled her head down to her shoulder and murmured, “My dear.”

Conversations happened, but Ludmila couldn’t understand the words. Vladlena spoke too, but it was as if Ludmila were far far away. Disjointed phrases were spoken but they had nothing to do with her.

“She must have slipped and fell.”

“Scissors.”

“Dead. She’s dead.”

“A dreadful accident.”

“Traumatic. Too much for her. A breakdown.”

Ludmila wasn’t aware of leaving the Coliseum or returning to the hotel or going to the airport the next morning at dawn with Vladlena in a limousine. Her body felt heavy, her mind dull, her eyes unable to focus. Vaguely, she understood she was to be put on a flight to Moscow.

At the gate, Vladlena held her hands, squeezed them, and kissed her warmly on both cheeks in farewell. “You’ve done the Soviet Union a great service, my dear. You’re a hero of the revolution.” Then, apparently overcome with uncharacteristic emotion, she embraced Ludmila and said in her ear, “You’re fine. There’s nothing to worry about now. In gratitude for your services the Party will reward you well. Your career is made.”

“But my dress,” Ludmila whimpered into the collar of Vladlena’s elegant black suit.

Monterey Bay, California. October 1968.

A thousand feet down. Water pressure: About 435 pounds per square inch.

The creature hung outside the porthole, fragile and crystalline as a chain made from blown glass. Lit only by the gleams of sunlight filtering down from the surface far above, and by the dim glow of the submersible’s running lights. Not bothered at all by the cold, the dark, or the pressure.

Jack Harbison put his face up to the porthole’s three-inch-thick window to get a closer look.

“What do you see?” one of the other two men in the cabin asked.

Harbison didn’t reply, though he could have. He was no scientist, but if you worked as a sub pilot for long enough you couldn’t help but learn something.

He was looking at a giant siphonophore, a whole mess of little individual organisms—each of which had its own job, hunting, digesting, excreting—that had joined together to form one huge animal. Working as a unit to scare away predators that would gobble up any one of them on its own.