The time had come to wrap all this up. KGB British desk Moscow immediately sent back a message regarding the American: "Put him down."
He was to be killed, despite all the ranting and raving from that old revolutionary leader Zemyatin, who seemed strangely concerned with the danger of one man. The KGB had more and better killers at its disposal today.
Very shortly, the American nuisance would be removed and the woman would lead them to everything they needed.
Kathy O'Donnell knew nothing of the messages going across the Atlantic or that someone was coming to rescue her. She didn't want to be rescued.
Until this day, she realized, she had not known real happiness. She was in a room whose floors and walls were stone, on a rough bed, with a man who really excited her. How he did it, she was not sure, but she didn't care. The excitement had started during the experiment at Malden and just hadn't stopped. It was wonderful, and she would do practically anything to keep it going.
Even as the rough hands pinched the soft parts of her body and the cruel mouth laughed, she remembered what had happened at the Valden site, where she met this Russian fellow. Perhaps he was the first real man she had ever known.
One of her hired technicians had passed out. The animals were weeping in delicious pain. And she, of course, was coolly pretending that nothing was the matter as the ozone shield began closing itself above the burned field.
There were looks of horror on all the technicians' faces. Some punk rockers with purple hair and yellow-painted faces even threw up. But one man standing nearby was watching her and the animals closely.
He alone showed only mild interest. His face stood out like a white mask in a black night. Here was everyone else squinting, and turning their heads away, and there he stood as though watching a curious animal in a zoo. "Doesn't this bother you?" asked Dr. O'Donnell.
He looked puzzled. "What is to bother?" he responded in a thick Russian accent. He had a face like steel with slits of Slavic eyes. Even through his thick black facial hair, a sure loss for a razor, she could see scars. People had wounded this man. But what, she wondered, had he done to others? He had that sort of face. He was just under six feet tall and carried the massive presence of a tank.
"It doesn't bother you to see animals suffer?"
"People make more noise," he said.
"Really? Have you ever seen one burned like that puppy over there?"
"Yes. I have seen them cloaked in oil and burning. I have seen them with their bellies on the ground and their heads rolling along gangways as their bodies quivered uselessly above. I have seen it all."
There was a bit of confusion. First someone told the man that this was not his post. Then someone else said to leave him alone. They were getting results. Kathy O'Donnell didn't care. She had a question she absolutely had to have answered. Where had he seen them like that? "All over," he answered. And she knew without his saying a word that he had been the one who had done those things. She asked him what he was doing here in Malden. He didn't answer. She asked if he would like to go somewhere with her. She saw his eyes undress her. She knew the answer was yes, even though he said he would have to ask someone. She saw him in a little conference with some men. She didn't care. He might be a policeman. He might be anything. The excitement boiled within her, and she felt that for the first time since childhood she did not have to disguise anything. She did not have to say how sorry she was when someone had an accident. She did not have to cluck her tongue at disaster. She could have what she really enjoyed with this man.
She did not know, of course, that the man was a minor functionary in a larger plan, that he was just there for muscle if it were needed. She did not know that he was being ordered to attend to her, and take her somewhere. She knew that whatever came, she could deal with it. Men were never a problem. Anything involving men was something she could handle, especially this man, and the way his eyes had played first on her breasts and then lowered.
"Come. Let us go," he said when he returned. "We will have romantic date, yes?"
"I think so," she said. And then to the technicians she had hired:
"I'll be back in a while."
And she was off with the Russian. He drove a car rather clumsily, perhaps because his eyes were only occasionally on the road.
"Tell me," she said, "about the first man you ever killed."
Dimitri said it was not a big thing. He said it while churning down a British country road, one of those narrow strips meant for horses or race-car drivers.
"You are doing experiment there, yes?"
"Yes. What was it like? How did it feel to know you had actually killed someone?"
"I felt nothing."
"Was it with a gun?" asked Kathy.
"Yes," said Dimitri.
"A big gun? With a big bullet?" she asked.
"Rifle."
"Far away?"
"No. Close."
"Did you see him bleed?" she asked. Her voice was a soft sexy breath.
"He bled."
"How? Where?"
"In the stomach. Why does beautiful woman like you care about something like that?" Dimitri did not add that he was chosen for his job precisely because these things meant nothing to him. His was not considered an important job. It did not require brains. The men with brains went on to become thinkers behind desks. He was a foot soldier in the intelligence war. With this beautiful American woman he had lucked out. He might even have a chance at the fun of things instead of breaking arms or shooting off heads. He wanted to get her to a bedroom. He wanted to talk of love, and if not of love then at least unclothed bodies. Still he had been ordered to switch plans and escort her to the safe house instead of providing backup muscle, as it was called.
He was told that if he could, he should ask questions about the experiment, but not press the matter. There were others who knew the intelligent questions to ask.
"When the victim bled-was it a lot? Like all over the floor?" asked the woman.
"No. It was outside. He fell down."
"And then?"
"And then he was put down."
"With a bullet?"
"Yes."
"In the head? In the mouth? Did you do it in the mouth?"
"No. The head."
"Would you kill for me?" she asked. He could feel her breath on his ear. He thought that if he were to feel her tongue, he might discharge at the wheel.
"What is crazy question like that?"
"Would you?"
"You are beautiful woman. Why do you ask crazy things? Let us talk about what you do back in Malden."
"I do lots of things. What do you do?"
"I drive," said the man called Dimitri.
All the way into London he could get nothing from her, so he did not press. She wanted to know details of his killings. Since he did not mention names or places, he assumed the details she wanted would be all right. They were not anything another intelligence agency would want to know, nothing to do with where, or why. She wanted the intimate details of groans and sizes of wounds and how long something took. Was it big? Was it small? Was it hard?
In London, he bought tickets to the Tower of London, like any tourist. It was not a tower. It had been a royal castle at one time, and later became the premier prison where the British liked to behead their old enemies of the state, or the crown as they called it.
Dimitri was not privileged to know exactly how his commanders had done this, but they had taken over crucial points in the many battlements and individual towers of the castle. He was to enter by the Lion Tower, cross the soil-filled moat once deep with water from the Thames, pass the Byward Tower and turn left at Traitor's Gate.
At the Bloody Tower he was to wait until he got a signal from a window. It could be a hand. It could be a handkerchief. Then he was to walk toward the large Tudor building called the Queen's House. He entered with other tourists and the woman. But where everyone else followed the Beefeater Guards to the right, he went toward an unmarked door to the left, where there was a descending stone staircase.