Chapter 3

I waited at the corner and lit a cigarette. I smoked to give myself time to scan for any last-minute signs of a tail. But mostly, I smoked to postpone the meeting.

Victoria entered my thoughts as I smoked. I tried to shake her image loose, but it wasn’t easy. I couldn’t help but revel in the soothing warmth of her. Her allure extended far beyond her physical beauty; it wasn’t just the warm crinkles around her eyes, her perfect breasts, or the nirvana between her thighs. It was her willingness to share a precious part of herself with me, inviting me into her secret garden and sharing it only with me.

When the cigarette went out, my heart darkened. I couldn’t stall any longer. The purse needed to be handed over. I flicked the cigarette onto the ground and stamped it harshly, trying my best to put it in my mind that Victoria was an awful person – that her secret garden was merely a figment of my desperate imagination.

I walked to the car, opened the passenger door, and slid in.

I could only see his silhouette, but his musky cologne clarified the image of his heavy-browed face that I knew all too well.

“Good evening, my dear Karina.”

“Good evening, Ivan Petrovich.”

He put his hand on my lap, as he always did. I felt his sneering grin and the pleasure in his eyes as they perused my body.

“So, it is done.”

I handed over the purse. An act that felt like a betrayal.

He unzipped the purse, stole the SD card from the camera body within, stuffed it into a pocket crudely, and tossed it back to me.

“Superb execution, Karina,” he drawled. “But you were taking such a long, sweet time. I was beginning to worry that you had been turned ‘rozovaya’ by the senator.”

A swell of irritation warmed my cheeks from his crude use of the word ‘pink’ as the slang for lesbian. I fixed my gaze on a point in the distance, replying curtly, “I’m heading out, Petrovich. Good night.”

I opened the passenger door, but he grabbed my shoulder before I could step out.

“Shut the door,” he ordered.

Slowly and begrudgingly, I shut it.

“I have something to show you. Something you might enjoy.”

There was a proud glint in his black eyes.

He reached into the back seat and produced a DSLR camera attached to a long telephoto lens, making my heart sink into my gut.

“I’ve been a naughty boy,” he sang, jiggling the camera. He flicked it on. The LCD came on, and he tilted the display so I could see what he meant.

I recognized the images immediately as he clicked through them. Several close-ups of me and Victoria kissing passionately against the window. Then of us on the rug of her penthouse. Naked. Fucking. Mouths opened in moans of ecstasy.

He must have positioned himself in the hotel across the street to capture those photos after he dropped me off.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to do this,” I snapped. I should have known he would have. Having a backup plan is vital to effective espionage. Still, it felt like a gross violation of my trust.

Ivan chuckled gleefully, then scowled and snarled at me. “I don’t have to tell you a damn thing, Karinka. I am your boss. You work for me. You tell me things. You do things for me. Don’t you ever forget that!”

Then his scowl softened back into a smile as he flicked his camera off. He set the camera aside, then shuffled in his seat, bringing a hand down to rest at the top of his pants.

“Speaking of which, you affected your boss greatly with your lewd acts, so, Karinka, now there is another thing I need you to do for me.”

I knew what was coming next, but that didn’t stop me from being repulsed.

He unbuckled his belt, then, with a curt zip, his hardened cock sprang out.

An ugly naked thing it was. An unshapely thing with which I was much too familiar. I closed my eyes and fished for an image to bring me solace, as I always did in these moments. The image that came to me immediately was Victoria. The ocean in her eyes. The warmth of her lips.

But the image vanished from my mind as if the shame of my betrayal would ever deign to allow me to consider her my port in the storm.

I opened my eyes and stared at the throbbing aspect of my lot.

Ivan put a hand over my head, pushing it down towards his cock. “Come, Karina. You know what to do.”

That’s when it occurred to me. He was right. I did know what to do. I knew exactly what I must do. In a holster taped beneath his seat was a PSS-2 pistol chambered with an SP-16 7.62mm noiseless round, with six more rounds in the magazine. With the thickened bullet-proof glass, even someone standing next to the driver-side door would not hear the discharge. Nor see the muzzle flash. After Victoria’s colors and warmth filled my world, I could not allow the cold darkness back in.

I’ve killed better men for less.

I zipped his pants shut to give him some dignity in death. I don’t know if I believed in such a code, but I still lived by it. The pistol I left in his right hand. His forehead I left lying atop the steering wheel. The bullet entrance wound was a neat hole beneath his jaw from which blood trickled out and down his neck. There was no exit wound. The bullet remained lodged in his head. The pistol was specially designed to make assassinations clean and quiet. I had to leave my coat in the car, as some of his blood had gotten onto it. It would most certainly become evidence of a homicide. That did not concern me. It would not be easy for the Americans to find me.

I left the car when I was sure there was no one to watch me leave it and discarded the SD cards into the gutter. Initially, I planned to take the metro from Mt. Vernon Square to Union Station, then the first train leaving D.C. But something stopped me. Something that felt like unfinished business. Like a hole in my heart that needed filling; otherwise, that hole would keep growing. Five years earlier, I left a similar hole in my heart to grow. That hole was a woman named Sofiya. And it consumed me. The hole now was Victoria. I needed to see her again, and I had time. Ivan’s body would likely not be found until the morning when the tow truck takes his car. It would take another day for them to sort out the mess and realize what had transpired. They were slow like that.

Victoria found me at her door like a cat wanting in from the cold.

“Karina, what’s going on? Where’s your coat?”

“I lost it. Can I come in?”

She stepped aside to let me through the half-ajar door; her face knotted in confusion.

I slipped in, shut the door quietly, and stood facing her, inches from her.

In the darkened room, I kissed her and held that kiss long, and she held me, and when I let my kiss go, she gazed lovingly into my eyes and, with her loving gaze, made my heart whole.

“What on earth is going on, Karina?”

“Nothing,” I said, smiling, an immense feeling of freedom washing over me. “I wanted to spend the night with you.”

“I thought we agreed that was a bad idea.”

“It is. But if you’ll have me, I’d like to entertain a bad idea. Just for one night.”

♫ Another day, another dollar, daylight comes, I’m on my way ♫♪

That Wynn Stewart song my grandpa used to sing had been so ingrained in my head that the lyrics had become a sort of mantra of mine. Every day I woke up, I’d hear Papa’s voice, singing to me like he used to when he bounced me on his lap on his favorite porch chair. The words used to remind me of the good ol’ days. Now they were nothing more than words to get me through the day.

I sang those words to myself now, as I do every day, walking up the steps of the senate building and through the marbled halls that echoed with the clop of my heels.

Dave, my Chief of Staff, intercepted me on my way to the office. He handed me notes and ran me through the plan of the day as he matched my pace—prayer breakfast at seven-thirty. An intelligence briefing at nine, followed by a meet and greet with concerned citizens of Montana at ten. After lunch, another senate committee meeting, then a meeting with an ambassador from God knows where. Then dinner, then a segment on Fox News, where I really made the butter. Like most days on the hill, I likely won’t be home until midnight. I don’t usually mind the grueling hours. I was a ranch girl, after all. But lately, the job has started to wear on me. Ever since Karina. Ever since her kiss. Ever since seeing her mesmerizing green eyes. And feeling her skin against mine.

Thinking about Karina made my heart flutter like a schoolgirl in love. Sure, she was an escort. But she was also everything that made me realize I had existed too long in a world I didn’t belong to, and now, she was gone without a trace. For a while, I considered hiring another. But I didn’t have the heart. Who could measure up to Karina?

I went through the arduous motions. Another day, another dollar. Prayer breakfast with the other senators. Intelligence briefing. Coffee with Montanans. Lunch. Committee meeting. Then the meeting with the ambassador. As it turned out, it was the ambassador from Greece on a mission to persuade me to approve the next package of US funding for the Souda Bay Naval Base, which I had long decried publicly as wasteful spending. The truth was that the navy base constituted mere pennies on the dollar, but it served as a rather useful lightning rod for my campaign.

I was polite but as stout as an oak in my stance on the matter (not that I truly gave a shit anymore).

“Thank you, Ambassador, for stopping by. It is always a pleasure. Let’s chat again soon,” I said, standing and offering a hand and a smile.

The ambassador stood, smiled in kind, and clasped his hands over mine after his fruitless effort at persuasion. “The pleasure is mine, senator. You know, you should very much consider visiting Greece someday. You would truly fall in love with the food and, of course, the people there.”

“Of course, Ambassador. It’s at the top of my list. I am desperate to try the, the moo… um…”

“That’s right. The moussaka.”

He smiled tepidly. Then his face turned a shade of red and twisted into an uncomfortable look, making me wonder if I offended him by forgetting the word moussaka. He cleared his throat.

“There is another matter, senator…”

He glanced over his shoulder to ensure his aides and mine were out of earshot before pulling something out of his inner suit pocket—a small, crinkled photograph.

“I was asked to deliver this to you by a… mutual acquaintance, let’s say.”

He handed me the photo.

“I trust you will remain discreet,” he said, then stuck out a nervous hand for a shake.

Unsure of what he meant by that, yet knowing not to prod any further, I shook his hand, and he left hastily.

Only after he was gone did I look at the photograph, letting out a gasp and letting it fall to the floor.

I stared at the photo where it lay. I stared at it like some sort of priceless biblical artifact that had somehow come into my possession.

For months now, I had thought about her constantly. So much so that she had invaded all my daydreams. In them, I saw her where she would have been most happy. In the Greek Isles, like she said she always wanted to be. In that sense, I must have been prophetic.

I picked up the photo again and inspected it; sure enough, the woman in it was exactly the woman who had captured my heart. Her hair had changed – it was brown and came down neatly to her cheeks in a page-boy style, and her eyes were concealed behind dark sunglasses. But without a doubt, it was her. She had that same wonderful smile. My chest filled with the same warmth that had only ever been filled that way that one special night I had with her. Golden sunlight made her face glow, and behind her was an aquamarine sky and an endless sea that made her seem so free.

There was nothing else to the photo. No note on the back. No nothing. Still, the photo told me everything it needed to tell me. It told me that I wanted, more than anything else, to be on an island in Greece called Naxos.

Here are some songs I like:
Heroes – David Bowie
How Glad I Am – Aretha Franklin
Cowboy Take Me Away – The Chicks
You Only Live Twice – Nancy Sinatra
We’re All Alone – Boz Scaggs
Back on the Chain Gang – Pretenders