She walked out from the hotel wearing a bikini, covered with a light wrap, and picked up a white towel as she approached Karl, who was already lounging poolside wearing a colorful blue and white patterned swim suit.
Maya tried to smile as she approached, but it probably came off a bit strained. Then she set her towel on the chair next to Karl and took off the wrap, exposing her body to him. She couldn’t tell if she had gotten his attention, since he wore mirrored sun glasses. For all she knew, he was sleeping.
Unsure and unsettled, Maya sat and then stretched out on her back on the white lounge chair. “You’re getting a nice tan,” she said in English.
“I spent some time in the sun in Florida before coming here,” Karl said. “You still have Murmansk skin.” A smirk seeped out the side of his mouth.
“So, you are still a man. You do notice things.”
“I miss nothing, Maya.” Karl glanced about the sparsely populated pool area. “We’re on the move first thing in the morning. Dark thirty.”
“It’s about time. What’s the plan?”
“They think things are shifting a bit in our direction, which is why we’re here in Aruba in the first place.”
Maya lowered her sun glasses as she considered what Karl just said. “They can’t think the ship will come here.”
“No,” Karl said. “Perhaps a little to the south of us.”
She knew exactly what this meant. Venezuela was the only possible location. “Have you heard everything that’s going on there?”
“Not really. Just from my briefings and the sparse news casts. I know that the people are pissed and marching in the streets for change. That’s never a good thing.”
“People have a right to complain,” she said. “My father was killed for speaking out. My mother took me first to Estonia and then to America. My family has suffered.”
Karl seemed like he was about to say something, but he restrained himself. Then, finally, he said, “I didn’t mean to imply that they shouldn’t complain. I just meant that it never seems to end well in repressive countries.”
“I see.” And she could not disagree with him. “What do we do until morning?”
He lifted a glass from the table between their chairs and sucked down the last of the liquid until the ice cubes slapped his lips. “I think I’ll have another rum and coke.”
She joined him with one drink before deciding she needed to get out of the sun or she would end up burned. Maya got up to leave and stopped. “I’m going to the room to shower and then maybe take a nap.”
“I’ll be up soon,” he said.
Maya was hoping he would take the hint and join her in the shower. But she guessed they would need to work on their relationship a little more first.
Wandering into the hotel, she passed a woman with a perfect body in a blue skimpy bikini, her red hair pulled back into a ponytail. The woman’s eyes seemed to scrutinize Maya as she passed and went out to the pool.
It had taken everything in Karl’s power to not react when Maya took the wrap off and exposed her gorgeous body. Sure, he had remembered just how special she was when they made love in Murmansk, but this was different for some reason. Now that body had been on display for other men to see.
As these thoughts lingered in his mind, a perfect body wrapped in a tiny blue bikini strut out and sat down directly across the pool from Karl. Her breasts were perhaps a little out of proportion to her narrow hips, but he wouldn’t hold that against her. No, she was a normal human masquerading as a potential supermodel. Or the other way around.
He tried not to stare but was failing miserably. At least he had the mirrored glasses to cut down on the lechery.
This woman barely sat down before getting up and stepping to the edge of the deep end, adjusting her bikini over her fine-tuned butt, and then diving perfectly into the pool and swimming underwater for half the length of the pool. When she rose to the surface, she pushed some loose hair from her eyes and rolled onto her back, exposing her breasts like a shark on the hunt.
Karl had been so preoccupied watching this woman that he had not noticed a man approach and stand near his chair.
“She’s something to behold,” the older man said.
“What?” Karl asked, glancing at the man now. He was late forties or perhaps fifty, but still in decent shape. His hairy chest had a few touches of gray. Yet, his three-day old beard was raven black.
“My assistant,” the man said. “She is extraordinary.”
Karl caught a slight accent, and he was pretty sure this was Russian. Slavic for sure. They both watched now as the woman got out of the water at the low end and shook her hair off like an animal coming out of a swim in a river. Then she strolled back to her side of the pool and waved at her boss before sitting down again.
“How do you work with someone like that and not tap it?” Karl asked.
“It is hard,” the man said.
“I imagine so. If you have a wife, I would guess she doesn’t like you traveling on vacation with a hottie like that.”
“I’m divorced, and it had nothing to do with this woman,” the man said. “Besides, this woman is all business. You have now seen as much of her as I have.”
Karl picked up his phone as if it buzzed. He cupped his hand as if shielding it from the sun and touched off a couple of buttons before shaking his head and returning the phone to the table next to his empty drink.
“The office?”
“Afraid not. The girlfriend looking for a little afternoon attention.”
“Don’t make her wait. Neglect is why I divorced. Too much travel for business.”
Perfect opening. “What business are you in?”
“Oil. I’m on the ABC islands to work out storage and distribution contracts from our fields in Venezuela to Europe.”
“Interesting,” Karl said. “I’m with an American oil company. We’re looking at getting back into that market. As you can probably guess, they don’t like us much down there. We’re hoping the Dutch will help with our relations.”
The Russian gave Karl a critical glare. “Then we are enemies, I guess.”
“Competitors,” Karl corrected.
“Right. English is not my first language.” Then the man said in Russian, “But I would guess that you already know this fact.”
Karl shrugged and said, “Is that Russian?”
“Yes. Do you speak any languages?”
“I barely understand the people of Louisiana,” Karl joked.
The Russian pointed at Karl. “I have been there. And you are right. They have an interesting accent.”
Picking up his phone, Karl then stood up and reached out his hand. The two men shook hands without exchanging names, or having to lie any more with this conversation. “Good luck,” Karl said and started to walk away.
“Just a minute,” the Russian said. “Would you like to meet us for dinner tonight. I promise we won’t talk too much business.”
Smiling, Karl said, “Sure.”
“The restaurant here is very good. Seven?”
“That works.”
He walked off and went into the lobby area. Before going upstairs, he texted Roddy at the Agency and attached a photo of the Russian he had just encountered. He had a feeling what he would discover, though.
As he walked to the bank of elevators, he considered the timing of his oil company ruse. That morning the Agency had developed a plan for them to go to Venezuela as oil workers for a Houston company.
It didn’t take the Agency long to get back with him. Karl got a text as he was getting off the elevator. The man he had just met was named Sergei Zubov, a high ranking SVR officer. Coming through with the text was a photo of a very attractive red-headed woman, asking if she was with Zubov. If so, she was his partner. A woman named Polina Kotova. Warning. Both were experienced and deadly. Be careful.