David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

Lena leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs. Her smile broadened as she regarded Fyodor.

“You said — you said you wanted to ask me some questions?”

“Do you make friends?” she asked.

“Not many,” he said. “There are only so many people at City 512, and—”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

Lena stood and reached into a shadow for her cloak. “Better,” she said, throwing it over her shoulders and pulling the clasp tight around her neck, “that I show you.”

Lena took Fyodor to the sky first — and then, from a height where the world curved at the edge — pointed at a line of coast that Fyodor took a moment to recognize:

“Africa,” he said.

“Tunisia,” she replied. “Some of my friends are there now.”

Fyodor followed Lena back down again into the thickening air. They travelled quickly, but the sun was quicker, and its rise had hit the low, ancient buildings of Tunis by the time they’d arrived, making it a golden desert world out of a boy’s adventure novel. Lena led him overtop telephone wires and antennae; past a railway station; over a tall iron fence; and into the diplomatic residence of the Canadian Embassy. They finally stopped in a bedchamber — where a striking dark-haired woman who appeared to be in her early thirties slept alone, beneath a slowly whirling fan.

Lena leaned over and stroked her cheek.

“Fyodor,” she said, “I would like you to meet my dear friend, Mrs. Elizabeth Dunn.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” said Kolyokov.

“Wife,” continued Lena, “to Montgomery Dunn — the Canadian Ambassador to the Republic of Tunisia. She and he have been stationed here for three years now — since the French pulled out, and the ancient lands of Tunisia have become once more ripe for the picking.”

“She is a sleeper?” Fyodor bent over and studied the woman’s face. In waking, the aristocratic lines to her jaw and nose might seem harsher — but now, in the early morning light, Mrs. Dunn’s face held an innocence. She might have been a child.

“Yes,” said Lena. “We’re not making too much use of her these days, unfortunately — we’d hoped that things might have progressed differently when the French handed over power to the locals. But it’s always good to have friends in warm places, hmm?”

Mrs. Dunn’s eyes blinked open.

“Well hello there,” she said — looking straight at Kolyokov.

“Shit!” Kolyokov leapt back. “She can see me! Lena! Get out of here!”

But Lena didn’t answer: and as Kolyokov looked around the room for her, he quickly realized that she was gone.

“Shh, shh,” said Mrs. Dunn as she sat up in bed. She was wearing a light, gauzy nightdress suitable to the tropical climate. In the morning light, it left little to the imagination. But her eyes — her eyes had a perfection, a clarity to them, that was unmistakable.

“Lena?”

Mrs. Dunn cocked her head and smiled. “One and the same,” she said.

“What — what are you doing?”

“The same thing,” she said, “as you have done so many times with your

Leningrad sleepers. I’m dream-walking her.”

Mrs. Dunn ran her hands down her sides, lifted one well-formed leg in front of her. She looked at it appraisingly, turning it slightly to admire the ligature of the calf. “She is still looking after herself, I see.”

“I don’t think,” said Kolyokov as Mrs. Dunn’s hand then crept up under her nightgown and towards her middle, “that you are doing the same things with your sleepers, that I do with mine.”

At that, Mrs. Dunn threw her head back and laughed. “Oh Fyodor,” she said, “you have been missing out — haven’t you? Come on—” Mrs. Dunn extended a hand “—let me introduce you to some of my other friends. This is going to be a wonderful holiday!”

Lena made her sleeper bathe and dress and eat — so it was mid-morning before she ordered a car to take them to Dan Knowling’s apartment in La Goulette .

Knowling was a stringer for the Toronto Telegram, who Lena had placed here at the same time as she had Mrs. Dunn. He was meant to be Mrs. Dunn’s backup, said Lena, in the event that dream-walking proved impossible. “Old fashioned mnemonic programming,” said Lena, “should never be discounted. We can only be so many places at once.”

Lena made Mrs. Dunn knock twice on the door to Knowling’s apartment. Mid-morning was evidently still early for a journalist in Tunisia; Mr. Knowling answered the door in a pair of grimy pajama bottoms, with bleary eyes and a dusting of blond stubble on his chin.

“Um… hello,” he said. “Can I help you, ma’am?”

Lena gave Kolyokov a fast sidelong glance.

“Quickly,” she said. “ Inside .”

“Um, pardon me?” said Knowles.

“What?” said Kolyokov.

“Walk him!” said Lena. “Before he sees too much!”

“Before — ?”

“Before — ?”

“Now!”

At first, controlling Dan Knowling was a bit of trick — like driving an unfamiliar automobile. Kolyokov was used to stout little bureaucrats and underfed military personnel: Knowling was tall and athletic, with an assassin’s reflexes and 20/20 vision. It was the difference between driving a broken-down delivery van and an American sports car.

“You took too long, my sweet,” said Lena as she made Mrs. Dunn step into the apartment and shut the door. “He saw.”

“I’m — sorry,” said Kolyokov, through Mr. Knowling. “You should have warned me.”

“Well, then — consider yourself warned.”

As she spoke, Mrs. Dunn’s hand reached to the drawstrings of Mr. Knowling’s pajama bottoms and pulled them undone. With the other hand, she reached down and took hold of Mr. Knowling. Kolyokov gasped.

“Exquisite, isn’t it?” she said, pulling close so that Mrs. Dunn’s breasts pressed against hard against Mr. Knowling. “All the sensations are there for you to enjoy — but they do not possess you, as they might in ordinary lovemaking. You remain your own, Fyodor.”

Kolyokov didn’t know about that: in both ordinary lovemaking, and this game that Lena had devised with the sleepers, he was a complete virgin until this moment.

Not that he was about to let on about that: he guided Mr. Knowling’s hand to the back of Mrs. Dunn’s thigh, hiking up her skirt and sliding his fingertips down the tops of her panties with what he hoped was the assurance of an experienced lover. Mrs. Dunn let out an appreciative growl as his hand slid further down. Meanwhile, her fingers had wrapped tighter around Mr. Knowling’s member, and she pulled it free of his pants. With flattened palm, she pressed it against the trembling flesh of her stomach.

“The bed,” said Mrs. Dunn.

“Yes,” said Mr. Knowling.

And together, in a slow dance of marionettes, they crossed the tiny flat to the old iron bed, and fell there in a tangle of limbs.

They stayed in bed the day — putting the two sleepers through what must have been an exhausting array of gymnastics for their mutual pleasure. Lena was the more experienced of the two — but Kolyokov made up for his inexperience with enthusiasm, and Lena voiced no complaints.

By late in the afternoon, however, Lena announced that they were finished.

It produced a premonitory pang in Kolyokov: he remembered suddenly how she’d dismissed Vasili so easily, and was filled with an unreasoning fear that she should do the same to him now that she’d taken her pleasure.

“Don’t worry,” said Lena, “we shall meet again. Not here perhaps — but I am not finished with you, young Fyodor. And you — you still have much to learn at my knee.”

“I am glad,” said Fyodor. He nestled Mr. Knowling’s face into the crook of Mrs. Dunn’s shoulder.