The young man with the feral eyes squinted into a computer screen. After a minute, he said something into a handheld radio. A door behind the man clicked open and a large, bald guy stepped into the lobby. He instructed Michael to take off his coat and to spread his arms and legs. He ran a wand over Michael’s body, covering every inch in a slow, meticulous fashion. He patted down Michael’s arms, chest, back, crotch, ass, legs and feet, then asked Michael to open his mouth and peered inside. He ran Michael’s coat through a gunpowder sensor. Finally, he stepped back, pointed to the elevator and said, “Four,” in Russian.
Inside the elevator was another young man with cold eyes, dressed in jeans. Michael asked for the fourth floor. The man eyed him and hit the button.
When they reached the floor, the man escorted Michael down an unadorned concrete hallway to a set of double steel doors. He pressed a bell. They both looked up at a security camera above the doors. Soon the doors clicked open. Inside, the man walked Michael down another concrete hall, past closed doors, until they reached the last door on the left. He knocked, then stepped back.
Radimir Trotsky opened the door and shook Michael’s hand. He was a pleasant-looking man with short brown hair, gray eyes and a blue wool sweater. He could have passed for a Midwestern, suburban father. But then, Michael had found benign appearances common to many heartless people.
Trotsky shook his hand, led him into the office and closed the door behind him. To steel his nerves against what he was about to do, Michael reminded himself of the man’s laundry list of crimes. He reminded himself of how much danger this man posed to the United States, should he continue his climb to power.
“Thank you for meeting me,” Michael said in Russian. “I won’t keep you long.”
Michael launched into his spiel about his business of making petroleum products, his exportation of his products, his contacts in the U.S., and how he thought their joining forces with Trotsky would benefit them both. When Trotsky turned his head to get a document off the credenza behind him, Michael leaped forward and over the desk, his body falling easily into a maneuver he’d performed too many times now. He locked Trotsky’s head with one arm, the other one covering his mouth and holding tightly to his chin. The Russian’s arm shot toward an emergency call button, but Michael anticipated the move and pivoted his body away. Michael knew he had to do this fast. The former hockey player was bigger than him, younger than him. If given even a second, Trotsky would gather his wits and make this a real fight, which would no doubt alert the guards. But Michael’s knowledge and experience trumped Trotsky’s brawn.
So Michael stopped reminding himself why this was necessary. He allowed himself no prayer for the soon-to-be-dead, no prayer for forgiveness for himself. He pushed down on Trotsky’s head and, at the same time, wrenched it to the left, then the right, then once back again, snapping the vertebrae, ensuring death.
Trotsky’s body slumped and Michael froze, listening for any sounds from outside. The breaking of a neck was a noisy maneuver, but it was the best alternative under the circumstances. His body was tingling with adrenaline and sick with the knowledge of what he’d done. He listened in fear for the sound of running feet. But Michael heard nothing.
Michael draped Trotsky’s torso over his desk. He took a tiny digital recorder from the lining of the waistband of his pants. It was nearly as thin as a business card and had escaped detection from the guard downstairs, as Michael knew it would. Pulling his sleeve over one hand, he lifted the phone off Trotsky’s desk and dialed the number for the security personnel outside Trotsky’s office.
When he answered, Michael pressed play on the digital recorder. The Trust had been watching and, more importantly, listening to Trotsky for over a year and had been able to splice together words they’d recorded.
Michael averted his eyes from the body, as he heard Trotsky’s voice shoot from the recorder. “He is coming out. And I want to be left alone for an hour.”
The security guard confirmed he understood. Michael slipped the recorder back in his belt, left the office and nodded to the guard on the way out.
Trotsky had been his last job, he reminded himself. It had to be his last, because Michael knew what would happen now. He would return to his hotel, check himself out and head for the airport. He would fly home in a comfortable first-class seat that folded out into a bed, but he wouldn’t sleep. He could never sleep for days after a job like this. During those days, he would remind himself why the Trust existed, why he had done what he had done.
Yet this time, he didn’t dread the next few days like he normally did, because he would insist that this be his final job, and that thought filled up the usually empty well where his optimism was to be stored. But it wasn’t just the thought of his diminishing role in the Trust that was filling the well. There was Kate. Thoughts of Kate. Kate’s quick, deep laugh. Kate’s vulnerability. Kate’s luminous brown eyes that gazed at him with wonder, seeing only the good in him. Kate was like water, clear and cool, rushing into his well. And he couldn’t wait to see her again.
Time to leave Moscow. Time to leave this world. Time for Kate.
Oakbrook, Illinois
“I can’t take it,” I said, holding the phone. “I can’t take this anymore.”
“God, I can’t either,” I heard Michael say. His voice was low and rough, his breathing ragged.
I turned over in my bed and lay on my stomach, still holding the phone. “Jesus, Michael.”
“I know, I know. This is the best sex I’ve had, and I haven’t even touched you yet.”
Since our date two weeks ago, Michael and I had been on the phone every night. We talked about our work, our comings and goings, our marriages, our dreams—those that had failed us and those we still had—but we also talked about how we would kiss each other if we were together; how we would do all sorts of things.
Technically, this was phone sex, a practice that had mystified me before. I mean, what’s the point? I used to think. Why not simply wait for the real deal? I hadn’t realized how much imagination was involved with phone sex. I hadn’t realized how it forced you to talk about precisely how you liked your body to be handled, your thighs to be stroked, your ear to be whispered in. And you learned from the other person what they liked as well.
While at work, as I analyzed the company’s quarterly earnings or talked to the office manager, I could not stop hearing Michael’s voice. I could not stop seeing us in bed together. Because, of all the explicit details we’d discussed, these images were as vivid as if we’d actually made love.
But now it had gone too far. Now I was mad for him.
“I don’t know if I can wait two weeks.” Michael was supposed to return to Chicago in two weeks and we would have our official second date.
“I know. I can’t wait either.”
“I’ll get a flight tomorrow morning,” Michael said.
“Thank God.”
The next night, we had dinner at Merlo, an eclectic Italian place on Maple Avenue. Our conversation never waned, nor did our intense looks across the table. Later, I walked out of the place with Michael’s arm around my back, and I was electric from just that touch.
The Gold Coast was awash with lights, but it was quiet with the post-holiday lull. A light sprinkling of snow covered the sidewalk.
“Careful,” Michael said as we walked down the restaurant’s front steps.
I stopped. Michael, who was one step below me, did the same.
“I’m sick of being careful,” I said. I grabbed his face, his warm, smooth-shaven face, and I kissed him hard. Within seconds, our bodies were pushed against each other, our arms wrapped around each other tight. I could feel my body temperature shooting high until I wanted to tear off my cashmere coat.
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