Now there was a great problem, and as Ludmilla stared at the blemish beneath her left breast, she demanded of Major Natasha Krushenko what she had been fed the night before.
"Strawberries and fresh cream, Madame."
"And something else. There had to be something else." The voice was heavy with anger, but the face was calm. Grimaces could cause wrinkles.
"There was nothing else, Madame."
"There had to be to explain this blemish."
"The human body produces substances that create blemishes. It will disappear."
"Of course it will disappear. It's not your body."
"Madame, I have many blemishes like that."
"No doubt," said Ludmilla who had not been listening to the answer but was very carefully outlining the blemish with her finger. She did not want to aggravate it more by touching it. She found it quite helpful to ignore the crudities of Major Krushenko. In the center of her entire world, this blemish on her body lounged in grievous and grating insolence. And that Krushenko lout claimed she hadn't even seen it at first. Krushenko was a barbarian.
She applied body cream made from Vitamin E, sardine innards, and bleached beet paste, and said a small prayer that this grief be removed from her life. Then she covered herself in a gauze bathrobe and packed her face with warm mud brought from the Caucusus.
It was in this manner, with her eyes closed, that she met with a marshal of the Soviet Socialist Republics, one of the highest ranked KGB officials in the short history of the Communist state. Field Marshal Gregory Denia who had done something quite awesome in Western Europe, something which she had heard about during the gossip of the KGB community, and something which didn't interest her very much. It had to do with the Americans. But didn't everything? When it wasn't the Chinese or someone?
She did not open her eyes when she heard the clomping footsteps of the marshal in the hallway. Major Krushenko greeted the marshal and added congratulations for recent successes.
She heard him enter the sun room where she rested and plop his body heavily in a chair. She smelled the reek of cigars.
"Hello, Ludmilla," said Marshal Denia.
"Good afternoon, Gregory," said Ludmilla.
"I have come on business, my dear."
"And how is uncle Georgi?"
"Georgi is fine," Denia said.
"And Cousin Vladimir?"
"Vladimir is fine."
"And how are you?"
"I am fine, Ludmilla. We have an emergency and now you can repay to the state all that the state has given you. You can do for Mother Russia what armies cannot do, I believe. I am here to call on you to carry the banners of the heroes of Stalingrad and of your people, who will never again have to see their homes and their families brutalized."
"And how are you?" asked Ludmilla.
She heard a fist pound into the sofa on which she had heard Gregory lower himself. He expressed anger. He expressed hostility. He included a veiled threat and made accusations of a lack of gratitude to the state.
"Gregory, Gregory, of course I wish to help. I work for the same committee as you. Why do you show so much anger? You should be more like your executive officer, what's his name?"
"Vassilivich. General Vassily Vassilivich, dead in the line of duty, who has given his life so you may live here in safety where the capitalists cannot wring your neck."
"Yes, Vassilivich. That was his name. How is he?"
She felt the sudden shock of hands upon her very person. Rough palms rubbing off the soothing mud, thick brutal fingers at her neck. Denia was yelling at her.
"You will listen or I will shove your pretty face in a vat of acid. Damn your relatives. You will listen. My units lie strewn across the face of Europe and I am going to annihilate their killers. And you are going to help me or I will crush you."
Ludrnilla shrieked, then cried, then begged for forgiveness, and vowed she would pay attention. Through her tears she asked to be allowed to get fully dressed. She was not prepared for this, she sobbed. She whimpered as Major Krushenko helped her, with a motherly arm, to one of her powder rooms.
Ludmilla thought she detected a small smile of triumph on Major Krushenko's plain face. Inside the powder room, the whimper disappeared. Ludmilla was crisp in her orders. She wanted a plain print dress without bra, a pair of light linen panties, and American cold cream.
She prepared herself in a record thirty five minutes. She reintroduced tears to her eyes before she returned to the sun room.
Marshal Denia stood by one of the large windows, at a pre-boil, looking at his watch. But when he turned and saw the sweet freshness of Ludmilla's beauty and the rim of tears beneath her eyes, and when he heard her soft voice beg forgiveness, the anger vanished like air from a balloon. He nodded curtly.
She held his hands as he talked. He explained about the country's killer teams, and America's, how, after years of stalking, the heroes of the Soviet Socialist Republics had finally seen an opportunity to rid the continent of these murderers, and had struck back brilliantly and quickly.
Alas, it proved to be a trap by the cunning American mind. With the taste of victory in their mouths, the extended units of the peoples' teams, called Treska, had suffered a vicious onslaught by the capitalists, who were using a deadly team of but two men.
But Mother Russia had not bled for centuries to lower the standards of the people before gangsters. Russia was preparing its counterattack, which would be more victorious because of the greater obstacles to overcome.
The difficulties were, first the locating of so small a unit-two men at the most-second, finding out how they did what they did, what secret powers or tools they had. Once that was known, they could be annihilated, and the rightful dominance over intelligence in Europe would go to the superpower indigenous to Europe.
"Europe for the Europeans," said Ludmilla.
"Yes. Absolutely," said Denia, happy that Ludmilla was now listening. He wanted to kiss her beautiful cheeks, but he restrained himself by remembering all his men who were gone.
"And you want me to find out how they do what they do so we can defend ourselves. I can succeed where muscle cannot."
"Correct," said Marshal Denia, delighted:
"I am honored, gracious marshal." And she leaned over and kissed his rough, pudgy cheek, knowing that the neckline of her dress exposed her perfect breasts. She felt his arm reach around and ducked playfully under it.
"We have work now," she said with her "delightful" smile, a middle-range sort of thing used for refusing sexual overtures or a second slice of cake.
Laughingly she ushered him to the door. There would be problems of course. She did not want to have to fend men off until she reached her target man. That tired her so. When the door was shut behind Marshal Denia, Major Krushenko asked Ludmilla what had transpired. She knew they would be packing.
"Assholes got themselves killed and we have to bail them out," said Ludmilla.
"Oh," said Major Krushenko, with absolutely no surprise.
"Denia is in trouble and we're his long shot," said Ludmilla, who had known and understood KGB policy since childhood. Denia had always had a reputation for overextending himself, and, without that bookish Vassilivich to restrain him, he had undoubtedly gotten some of his people wiped out. Or captured. Or something. She hated the family business. It was so boring.
She repacked her face and re-oiled her body, and so spent the rest of the afternoon pleasantly, remaining gorgeous. The blemish was beginning to recede. She was going to be Delilah to America's Samson, whoever the lucky man was.
In America the President got the first good foreign news since the surrender of the Japanese in World War II. The Russian extermination squads known as Treska seemed to have abandoned aggressive activities in Western Europe. The news came from the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Secretary of State looked on. The President read the message and waited for the doctor to leave the Oval Office before commenting.