Chapter 8

Sweat dripped from my brow into my eyes. It stung a little, but I let it sting. Her wet pussy felt too good to interrupt. That familiar electricity welled up inside me again. She was about to bring me to orgasm again.

“Oh God, I’m going to come,” I moaned.

“Me. Too,” she heaved. The orgasm seized my muscles, then exploded inside me in an intense release. Shortly after, I felt wet ecstasy squeeze Lara. Our seizing muscles caused us to curl around each other in a tight embrace.

Lara relaxed for a moment, calming her deep breathing. A wind came in through the opened windows, carrying the sensual, sticky scent of the sea.

“That happened too fast,” I confessed.

“Indeed. You’re welcome.”

“I thought I was doing you the favor.”

“Yes, but I am returning it. That’s how these things work. Isn’t it beautiful? Now come lay with me.”

I obeyed, crawling onto the couch with her. We held each other, nuzzled in silence for a few moments. I spent the tender moment savoring the scent that came off her hair. Twisted orange peel.

She fell asleep almost immediately, her arms clinging tightly to my body. I stayed awake a little bit longer, thinking a lot about nothing at all. Her steady breathing, her heartbeat, pounded calmly against my skin. I wish I could feel her heartbeat forever. Without condition.

The next morning, I woke and found myself covered in a light duvet. Sunlight beamed in with a golden color, and the breeze brought a damp coolness from the lagoon. Lara was not next to me.

A hangover made my body limp, but more than that, I felt a strange lightness. Everything was tinted in surreal colors. I went out to the garden wrapped in the duvet, discovering Lara sitting on the terrace sipping an espresso. She had my book, Doctor Zhivago cracked open, and seemed engrossed by it. I stood in the doorway enjoying watching her read it for a moment then said, “You can borrow it if you want to keep reading it.”

“Don’t get caught with it.”

She clasped it shut, hugged it and placed it gently on the table, then stood to meet me, draped her arms around my shoulders and said, “How about a café?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind.”

She poured me a cup. The coffee smelled fresh, and strong. I drank it and thought that it was the best espresso I had ever had.

“Mm, this is marvelous,” I remarked.

“Only the best for you.”

She slid a hand onto my thigh, and whispered in my ear, “You were lovely last night.”

“As were you,” I replied awkwardly. She gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“I could have you again right here, after this coffee.”

I laughed. “No rest for the wicked.”

“On that note. I have something I need to speak to you about.”

She lit a cigarette, and nonchalantly blew out a puff of smoke.

“What sort of wicked thing do you need to speak about?”

“Another favor to ask you.”

“Given the favor you’ve asked of me last night, I’m intrigued.”

“Not the same sort of favor, I’m afraid.”

This was it. Fantasy fading into reality. My face darkened. So did hers.

“I see. I was wondering when we would get to this. Ok. What do you want from me?”

She tapped her cigarette into an ashtray, then held it limply with her wrist resting on her knee. She looked out onto the grand canal as she spoke.

“I find it difficult to broach such a subject. I thought I might as well just say it. I hope you don’t mind.”

“There was an inkling of hope in my heart that everything about you being a Russian spy was only my imagination.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

“Nothing really for you to be sorry for. Anyways, what does the Rodina request?”

A slanted, thin smile came to her lips.

“My boss, perhaps you know him — Yuri Andropov — believes your President will launch a nuclear strike within the year. He’s a paranoid psychopath… But admittedly, it is hard to refute his fear without verifiable proof.”

“To be honest… I kind of get where he’s coming from too.”

“Then you must know that it’s a high priority for the KGB to determine whether it’s true or not. Whether a nuclear strike is imminent.”

“I don’t know what I could do for you, Lara, even if I wanted to. I don’t have any information that would be helpful.”

It was sort of a lie. In my job, I had eyes on many diplomatic cables. I even had access to other high-level documents as well as the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities at the embassy. But George told me to be aloof. Play hard to get. Otherwise, she would get suspicious.

“Do you know anyone who might be able to help?”

“Help the global communist revolution? Right.” I crossed my arms and smirked.

“Help prevent a nuclear holocaust.”

Her eyes were steady, staring at me now. Her face somber. A genuine plea.

“Kirby, the Soviet Union is in a crisis. Our economy is in shambles. The Russian people are tired and fearful. Your president sees this, and he may be, let’s say, a little too enthusiastic about delivering us a fatal blow. It’s a terrible scenario for Russia, but not much better for the rest of the world.”

If George hadn’t prepped me for this, I had to admit she would have elicited a great deal of sympathy from me. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Reagan and his saber rattling. Everything she has said so far, George has planned and prepared me for, up to and including the request for a contact at the embassy.

This was the moment. I either tell her about George, or I don’t and walk away. If I said no, Lara would give up on me. She’d walk away. If I gave her George, well, who knows what would happen to her. Knowing the CIA, I feared the worst. But then again, wasn’t she just using me? Time for the fantasy to come to an end. I sighed.

“I know someone that may be able to help you,” I said, setting the trap.

She put a hand on my knee.

“I want to be perfectly clear: I am not asking you to betray your country. I’m asking you to be on the side of peace. The truth is, I love you, Kirby.”

I put my hand atop hers, entwined my fingers into hers and smiled, but said nothing in return. I didn’t have the heart. Instead, a small rage welled up inside me. For the decisions I’ve made. For agreeing to betraying Lara’s trust. Some of that rage was reserved for her, too. Because despite her proclamation of love, I knew that she was using me for another purpose too. Love was expedient for her, as much as it was for me and even if we were two women that have fallen in love with each other, it was not enough to prevent worldly events from taking precedence. A taste of my divorce came up like a little bit of bile.

A flash of a fantasy came to me — where I confess everything to her, and she says, “fuck it, let’s run away together.”

It was only a flash of a fantasy. She smiled weakly, observed me curiously, perhaps seeing the wrenching struggle written on my face. She snubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray and kissed me.

The leaves died in autumn, so did the romance. I linked Lara up with George, and after that, I no longer saw her. George instructed me to stop talking to her. I tried calling anyway, but the number didn’t work. I tried her apartment, but she wasn’t there. I should have expected it, but some naïve part of me wanted very much for our romance to persist. Of course, it wouldn’t. It shouldn’t. I was only a means to an end. I knew that, but it still felt like a cruel betrayal. All I really had left as consolation, beside the memories of my short adventure with Lara, was the fact that perhaps I had done something good. Another consolation was the bit of schadenfreude from knowing that Lara thought she could use me so cheaply, but really, I had used her. Admittedly, it wasn’t worth the bitter loneliness.

Setting the meeting had been a rather simple affair. I invited George and Lara to my apartment. We had dinner and talked nothing really about politics. A clinical conversation. A business meeting. There was a careful treading through conversation. Somewhere in the conversation — and I had missed it completely — they arranged another meeting. Anything else that would transpire after that dinner, was not for my eyes or ears. Strangely I felt some visceral jealousy that George was meeting her regularly while I was not. A jealousy that devolved into resentment, then loneliness, then further into bitter anger, the sort of bitter anger that stemmed from an unexpected break up.

So, I continued my normal work at the State Department, as if I had no part to play in some grand espionage scheme, trying my best to let the past be the past, understanding that if there was ever love between me and Lara, there was never a chance for it to rekindle and that there was nothing I could do about it.

One rainy November evening, when the memories of summer had faded, and seemed decades ago, when the chestnut trees were skeletal, and fallen chestnuts covered the main avenue that cut through Prater, and the broad leaves thick and slippery on the pavement, I spotted a bright blue wool coat standing beneath a ghostly lamplight, a familiar figure holding a black umbrella.

I froze like a deer in the headlights. I wasn’t sure what to do. She must have been on the job, maybe waiting for a drop from George. Should I walk by and pretend to not notice her?

She looked up, noticed me, then turned and walked away.

This reaction angered me so much that the urge to chase to confront her sprung up inside me like a powerful coil.

I stepped rapidly after her, closing the distance.

“Hey!” I shouted. Several people turned their heads. I ignored them. My mind boiled over with unreasoning rage. Lara started to walk faster.

“Hey, you,” I shouted louder.

That it was dumb to bring attention to a KGB operative had crossed my mind, but I was too angry and reckless to care. I chased her and yelled after her, and she responded only by speeding up to try to lose me. She didn’t turn her head or acknowledge me in any other way.

She turned right and headed straight to the imposing Ferris wheel, the Reisenrad, that marked the entrance to Prater. She stopped right before it, and I stopped a few paces away, breathing heavily.

I wanted to say something clever and biting to her, something that would let her really feel some of my anger, but I was at a loss for words, so I just stood there, waiting to see what she would do, now that I had her cornered.

The Reisenrad glowed a gloomy, ominous red. It came to a stop and a man stepped out of the operator’s booth. He nodded to Lara and leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. He watched her as if waiting for her to tell him to do something.

Lara finally turned to me. “Come for a ride?”

She beckoned with her hand, folded her umbrella then went into the Ferris wheel cabin that was stopped at the loading platform. I followed hesitantly.

When we were inside the cabin, the rain picked up, pattered noisily against the tin roof. She sat politely, brushed the rain drops off her coat. I sat opposite her. She nodded at the operator, and he walked into the booth and started the wheel. The cabin rose slowly. The misty cityscape came into view. The Danube a sad blue glowing ribbon in the distance, reflecting the moonbeams that came through the clouds. We watched each other in silence until the cabin came to the crest and the wheel stopped. The cabin lurched; I gripped the edge of my seat. Lara placed her handbag beside her. Her revolver might be in there, I realized.

“We don’t have too long. I have to tell you something important, Kirby,” Lara said. I noticed bags under her eyes and her cheeks pale, even in the red light.

“George is not who you think he is.”

I laughed. It came out almost like a gleeful cackle. “Oh yeah? What makes you think that?”

I smirked. I wanted to point and laugh but I restrained myself. I needed to be careful not to reveal anything, particularly since I was now trapped in a cabin suspended high above the ground with a trained KGB agent and her gun. I waited for her response.

“George is selling secrets.”

I rolled my eyes. “Um, yeah. That’s the point, Lara. That’s why I put him in touch with you.”

She shook her head. She came over to sit next to me, placed her handbag on her lap. Though I could feel her anxiousness like electricity in the air, she kept her calm. She tried putting a hand on my thigh. I scooted away from her.

“This will surprise you, Kirby…”

“At this point, I’m used to surprises.”

“He’s selling actual secrets.”

I narrowed my eyes on her.

“Still waiting for the surprise, Lara.”

She leaned against the window frame. Looked down at the people who were dots now below us. She traced a curved line in the condensation on the windowpane.

“He thought I was his contact in the KGB in Vienna.”

“I am. And I’m not. He’s not a dangle, Kirby. He’s a mole. I’m the mole hunter.”

I stared at her. Obvious confusion written on my face.

“George has been a double agent for over a decade. He started passing secrets in Manila. Then in D.C. He tried the same here. He tried with me.”