Bad Russian 05 Page 2

  Now, I know that I was wrong all those years. My destiny is to have the perfect mate, to have children—many children—and to be fulfilled in every way. I was wrong, but I did the right thing. I waited. Now, at last, long after I gave up looking, I have found her. Just by chance one bright morning.

  Chapter Three

  Her

  IN HIS MID-FORTIES, I guess, Mr. Vasilyevich is about my height, around five four. His pinkish eyes peer and gleam. He looks around anxiously as he hurries me down a long corridor. Near the end, he opens a door, looking around again. He grins. “My office.”

  He ushers me into the tall and narrow room and closes the door behind him. The far wall is completely glass. Two panes—one is about waist height and the other stretches to the ceiling. The view is spectacular, across the Moscow skyline and the river.

  The office space is dominated by a massive desk. On the desk is a laptop and a number of large glass paperweights. An executive reclining chair is behind the desk, and in front, on the visitor’s side, is a very plain molded office chair. A couch is crammed along one wall and bookshelves range along another.

  I try to ask him about the view, but he wants to get straight to business. Or that’s how he makes it seem.

  It’s pretty much downhill from there. He seats me on the visitor’s side of his large desk. Fusses behind me with my chair. Pats my shoulders with his hands. I shrug, wriggling uncomfortably.

  He slides into his executive chair, swivels a few times, then leans back.

  “Cooperation. Access. You’re here to provide cooperation and access. It says so right here in your letter of introduction from Mr. Hudsicker.” He grins as he points to the screen of his laptop.

  He stares at me and licks his lips.

  Stunned, I try to act as if he’s making a joke. Or I’m misunderstanding him. I’m sure that he isn’t. And I’m not.

  In my most formal Russian, I start out, “Our firms are going to cooperate on bilateral trade initiatives. Your department is the equivalent of mine, freight forwarding and logistics management. We need to cooperate, and I’m here to help you to access our database and customer records and for reciprocal assistance from your side.”

  I’ve been sent to one of the most exciting and wonderful cities on Earth to do what ought to be the dullest job ever devised. ‘It’s an interfacing operation, Irina,’ Mr. Hudsicker said when he told me, the most junior staff member in the department, to fly from Seattle to Moscow. I would act, ‘as an emissary. Our company’s ambassador.’

  But most of my responsibility is to help Genardy Vasilyevich and his department to use our freight, booking and project management database. ‘Make sure that they’re all fluent and fully experienced with the interface, and that they’re all up to speed with Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access.’ Even at my low level of experience, I know that nobody on the planet knows how to use Microsoft Access.

  “So. Cooperation. Access. You will please cooperate by throat-hugging my cock, and then give me access to your little cunt, which, I have no doubt, is plump, fragrant and juicy ripe.” He grins as he steeples his fingers and presses his lips to the tops of them.

  Mr. Vasilyevich obviously had a very different understanding of my function and of our working relationship.

  His beady eyes gleam at me over his fingers. I take out my phone and tell him, flatly, “I think I will call Mr. Hudsicker right now. I want to check with him that his understanding of my function here is to, how did you put it? ‘throat hug your cock.’ Wait while I call him.”

  He stands. “And when he says that it is indeed your function, will you get on your knees like a good little girl? Will you beg me to let you ripple your neck along the hard length of my throbbing shaft?”

  Did he get this out of a book or something, I wonder? Funny how the mind will try to escape a situation by distracting itself with irrelevant details like that. While I’m fishing out my phone, his thin grin widens, and he shuffles round the desk. I stand. Too quickly. My chair skids and clatters.

  He reaches out.

  “No!” I shout. When I step back, my leg gets caught in the chair. He’s lurching toward me. I stumble, lose my balance, and land on the floor. Anxious to get away from Vasilyevich, I roll and keep rolling until I reach the bookcase. Scrambling to get up, I press back as he advances. His tongue, a wet worm, flicks across his lips.

  I grab a fat computer manual. I hurl it, aiming the spine at him. He raises his arm. I throw a heavy atlas at his side. Then a dictionary. That strikes a glancing blow as it catches on the side of his head.

  Grinning with his hands on his hips, he shakes his head. He has to duck when I lob a brass bookend at him. As it bangs and bumps across the floor, the door flies open.

  Mischa Bronski strides into the room. He stands in front of Vasilyevich, between him and me.

  His voice snaps like a whip. “You will give Ms. Bachunin respect and every courtesy. You will treat her as she deserves to be treated, as an honored guest in our country.”

  “Who the fuck are you? You don’t have any authority here.”

  He pushes Vasilyevich in the chest. Shoves him back against the desk. Then he leans over him, glares in the man’s eye with a look that drains Vasilyevich’s pasty face white.

  “No authority?” Quietly, he says, “Maybe I should get some.” From inside his coat, he draws out a long automatic pistol with an even longer suppressor.

  Vasilyevich blusters. “Wait! No, stop. I–”

  Mischa straightens his arm. He points the gun at the bottom corner of the tall window. With the first shot, a thud shakes the air in the room. There are two more shots in rapid succession. The first spits a spiderweb out of the bottom corner of the upper window. The second hits the same spot and the web etches over the whole window. After the last thump, the whole window bulges and slides away, out of the frame and down, outside the building.

  Cold air chills the room. Panic twists Vasilyevich’s face and his eyes bulge. “No. Wait. You—”

  He tries to wriggle around Mischa.

  Mischa put a hand flat on Vasilyevich’s chest and stops him dead.

  Mischa calmly slips the gun back into the inside of his coat. Vasilyevich looks around. He looks like he’s about to try and run. His face reddens.

  As if he were hefting nothing more than a sack of kitchen garbage, Mischa grips him by the belt and the front of his shirt then carries him to the window. Vasilyevich shouts, and his arms and legs jerk and flail. Mischa hoists him aloft, swings him, parallel to the floor, and holds him, dangling, outside.

  I’m appalled. Frightened. And I try to ignore the low, hard vibrations of thrill.

  Vasilyevich’s screams are lost in the wind and air, and are almost inaudible, muffled by the lower pane of glass. The thumps of his elbows and knees are faint and distant. Outside, on the other side of the glass, Vasilyevich wriggles like a frantic beetle.

  Mischa tells him, “You need to learn to respect women.”

  “All right! Yes!” Vasilyevich’s neck is swollen, and his face is red.

  “Say it.”

  His hand slips on the glass as he scratches for something to cling to. His voice is shrill. “I need to learn to respect women.”

  Mischa doesn’t move. “You don’t say it with much conviction, though. I think you’re just saying it.”

  Vasilyevich pleads, “I really need to change my ways. I have to respect and appreciate women.”

  “Better. I still think you might just be telling me what I want to hear, though.”

  Vasilyevich seems to struggle between wanting to keep still for safety and the urge to scramble for any possible escape. His eyes bulge as he shouts, “Women deserve total respect. From this moment, I will respect all women. Like they were my own mother.”

  “Okay, okay. No need to overdo it. Has vertigo turned you into Pushkin all of a sudden?”

  “What more do you need?”

  “Nothing.” He lifts Vasilyevich a few inches. Then lowers
him back down. “Oh. No, there was one thing.”

  Vasilyevich’s face stretches. “What?”

  “I didn’t like you calling me a gangster.”

  His arms wave. His knees bang against the glass. I can hardly hear him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You’re not a gangster. I was wrong and I apologize. Please let me back in.”

  “Yeah. I’m not really believing you.”

  “You’re not a gangster, you’re not a gangster. There are no gangsters. Only businessmen.”

  Shaking and trembling, Vasilyevich wriggles like a shrimp as Mischa lifts him inside. He smiles. When the man falls onto the rug in his own office, he clings to the floor and his shoulders shake.

  “You’ll need to get that window fixed. It’s cold in here.”

  As he turns to go, his fingers catch my hand. With the lightest touch, he guides me to follow him out of the room. Closes the door behind.

  “Are you okay now, little flower?”

  Shivers run up and down my spine at the warm vibrations of his voice. I nod. “Thank you. Yes. I’m fine.” I’m not. Obviously. I’m standing as still as I can and trying to appear as calm as the glassy top of a lake. Inside I’m shaking like an over-excited tumble drier.

  My first day in a foreign country, I’m standing next to a man, a stranger who’s hotter than a smoking gun. A man who just held someone out of a high window. I didn’t want him to do that. I can’t pretend I was sorry he did it. It’s true that I got some satisfaction from leaving Vasilyevich in a shaking heap on the rug, huddled by what was left of his office window.

  But a man who would do that, a man who takes out a gun as calmly as I would take out my phone, standing next to a man like that washes all kinds of feelings through me. Some of them too strong to even describe.

  My breath catches when he reaches in his coat. He sees it. His eyelids make a sardonic dip as he pulls out a card.

  “How delightfully old-school and formal.”

  “Call me. Anytime. Let me show you Moscow’s hidden delights.”

  I’m breathless, and my lips part as my head tilts back. His index finger pushes up, gently, under my chin. Outrageously, he plucks a kiss from my lips. Unforgivably, I melt into him and I love it.

  His voice is low. Confidential. The dark tone stirs me, and I don’t listen to what he says at all. Only to the low, purring power of his voice. “I have business here. Wait for me.”

  Chapter Four

  Her

  BACK IN VASILYEVICH’S OFFICE, I find him slumped on his desk with his head on his folded arms, breathing hard. The breeze from the missing glass pane is a stiff chill. When I shut the door, it becomes less fierce. Vasilyevich doesn’t stir.

  I stride to his desk, lift the heaviest paperweight and bang it on the desktop next to his head.

  “I need a company phone and a password with full access to the company intranet.”

  He groans and his head shakes, pathetically. I bang the paperweight again. “Now, Vasilyevich.”

  If I’m in the building for another half an hour, that man will come back. He will find me. Then he’ll look at me. And I’ll melt. He’ll tell me to do something. And I will do it. Whatever it is. No matter how outrageous. My mind seizes on that. I push the images away. Whatever. He will come here, and I will be his. I know that I shouldn’t. I mustn’t.

  Way down inside, I feel how badly I want it.

  I have to get out of here.

  “Phone, Vasilyevich. Now.”

  Still not lifting his head, he moans, “It takes time. Everything takes—”

  I slam the paperweight down hard, next to his head.

  I don’t shout. Holding back gives my voice a pleasing edge. I lean on the desk and lower my voice. “Do you want me to call my friend back?” He looks up. Finally, I have the reptile’s attention. Before he can speak, I tell him through my teeth, “Phone. Access. Now.”

  He makes a call.

  I can work out of my AppStay apartment for a few days. It’s airy with a nice view. The modern complex is bright and good-looking coffee shops and stores are nearby. More to the point, I have no wish to be anywhere near the reptilian Vasilyevich.

  Later in the week, perhaps Mr. Panty-Melting-Eyes will have forgotten about me. I can’t really believe that he is all that interested. Some men can’t see a woman without having to ‘conquer’ them. I’ve defeated enough of them.

  It’s a shame that all of the men I’ve had to fight off were men I wouldn’t want to touch with a pole. But that’s how it is. I’m petite and bouncy, curvy and outspoken. I know my mind and I’m not afraid to say what I think. And I don’t care what anyone else thinks about it.

  A man told me once that I could be ‘easier to get along with.’ And I said, ‘That would just get me closer to more men like you.’ And he smiled. He actually smiled. When I told him, ‘What you mean about me being, ‘easier to get along with’ is that I would give you what you want,’ he smiled even wider while he nodded like a happy school kid. ‘Exactly.’

  I felt like I’d have needed to paint a sign to get through to him. But he wasn’t worth it. None of them are.

  I want to tell myself that this Mischa Bronski is just the same as all the rest. But I know that he isn’t. He’s a completely different animal. A few moments close to him, I could become a different animal, too.

  I felt it, the hunger inside, when I rode in the elevator with him. I feel it now just thinking about him holding this sniveling little man out of the window. I am shocked at my own reaction. Especially the physical reaction in my core and between my legs.

  When I hear Vasilyevich saying, “It must be soon,” in Russian into the phone, I bang the paperweight in front of his face, hard enough to shake everything on the big desk.

  “Now,” I tell him. And I take out my phone.

  “Now!” he stammers, “Bring one right away!” his voice is getting shrieky and shrill. I take the phone from him.

  In as smooth and calm a voice as I can manage, and in my very best Russian, I ask, “Can you bring a phone up right now, please? Will that be possible?”

  There’s a pause on the other end. Then a young male voice says, “I think I probably can, actually.”

  “Actually, or probably?” I sound something like a stern librarian, but it has the desired effect.

  “Actually. I mean, yes. I actually can.”

  “I look forward to seeing you. With it.”

  “Oh. Oh, yes. I am coming right away.” He sounds like he is, too. I hand the phone back to the reptile and wonder where I found the gall for that. I’ve never played the femme fatale or whatever that stereotype is.

  The effect of Mr. Bronski is rubbing off on me. The urge to get out of there rises like a tremble of panic inside me.

  “Password and credentials for the intranet,” I tell Vasilyevich. As he snaps to open a laptop computer, I realize that, whatever caused it, I am enjoying the effect. I’m not accustomed to wielding power over men. I could certainly get used to it, though.

  Vasilyevich gives me the user credentials for the intranet on a piece of paper. Obviously, he knows less than nothing about security, but I’m not taking time out to school him on that. If his own company doesn’t care, I’ll just make a note to Mr. Hudsicker back at my Seattle office and he can decide what to do with it.