“Oh, Pasha, are those poppies? I love fields of poppies.”
To Pasha, Brandy looked like a canary bird, but a very pretty one. Thousands of the tiny, red flowers she was admiring were reflected in her eyes, swarming over the grassland, looking all the more vivid against the backdrop of her blue irises. They were a deeper red than even Brandy’s painted lips.
“You’ve seen poppies before—they grow anywhere.”
“But they’re better here, aren’t they? Poppies of the workers’ paradise,” she chirped, putting her head against Pasha’s massive, rounded shoulder.
“Yes, the workers’ paradise,” he repeated.
Pasha had met Brandy in Rome, where her husband was producing a romantic comedy starring a well-known American actor and an unknown Italian hopeful. For months she offered her crude espionage services to him—talking up politicians at political fundraisers, coming to Pasha with mostly useless bits of jargon that at first he let her blabber to any of his colleagues who would listen. It made him look good that he was able to enlist the enemy, regardless of the caliber of information.
Only weeks after he was transferred to Vienna, Brandy and her husband, Buster, moved there for yet another film. At the time, he thought it was a coincidence.
He was already growing tired of her and planning a graceful exit when she mentioned quite accidentally that her husband had taken to carrying a funny little metal card with the letter “t” engraved on it—“a good luck” symbol, he called it—a prop left over from one of his films. Brandy had followed him to a tiny church near Schweden-platz, where he’d visited a number of times, speaking in hushed tones with a Jesuit there and even donating money. A lot of it. She feared her Jewish husband wanted to convert, but Pasha knew better. In the lining of his suitcase, he carried a similar card, only his was engraved with the Russian word for soul. Its meaning, however, was the same: subversive, spiritualist, and in Pasha’s case, traitor, of course.
From that moment on, Pasha couldn’t let Brandy go as he’d planned. Furthermore, he had to figure out a way to keep her mouth shut and her visibility low until he could extract himself from the relationship without injuring her pride. For that, he appealed to her overly developed sense of drama.
“The Austrian Premier’s wife may have been using the word ‘stockings,’ but my dear, ‘stockings’ is the word Western spies commonly use to mean weapons.”
“Pasha!” Brandy gasped. “I’ve heard so many of the ministers’ wives use the word ‘stockings’ in the ladies’ room.”
Before long, she forgot all about her husband’s “conversion” and spent more and more time going to parties at the homes of government officials. It was to Pasha’s great relief when Buster France went back to Los Angeles, taking his wife with him. Brandy visited as often as she could, but for the most part she was out of his hair. He even missed her now and then, and her company on the Czechoslovakian leg of his trip would be just enough time spent with her.
“Is it anything like Russia here?” Brandy leaned her head back against the cushion and sighed, humming one, long note. “Russia. Even the word is beautiful. When will you take me there?”
Pasha smiled and moved a platinum blonde curl away from Brandy’s eye with his finger. “I think Prague will be better attuned to your interests.”
“Oh, my interests are political!” she insisted. “World events. Buster thinks it’s an obsession, really, but I’m worried that the whole planet’s coming apart. It’s all gotten quite out of hand, don’t you agree?”
Pasha nodded.
“I’ve been a lucky woman all of my life. I know I have, and I intend to pass on some of that luck to the less fortunate. We can all make a difference, Pasha. Here I am. Here you are. We’re making a difference just by talking about it. Not that I’m all talk. I’m action, too. But action begins with talk and talk begins with thought, thought begins with… well, I’m not sure what thought begins with, but it’s important.”
Brandy lifted her hand to her lips and laughed at herself. She had a throaty, sophisticated laugh—practiced and summoned effortlessly.
“In that case, I’ll have to take you to Moscow as soon as possible. Perhaps when my ex-wife takes our daughters to Leningrad.”
Brandy hooked her arm through the crook of his elbow and held his hand, intertwining her fingers with his. Her husband, Buster, never listened to her the way Pasha did.
“How much longer until we get to Praha?” Brandy stretched her arms above her head and pointed her toes, yawning. She hated trains.
“Darling, I told you—at least four more hours, and that’s without delays. We can be grateful we have no more borders to cross.”
“It took so long at the border. Why did it take so long?” Brandy stood up and cracked the window, looking out onto a row of tiny steeples in the distance. The country air didn’t cool the compartment enough or ease her claustrophobia. Unbuttoning her jacket, she fanned her breasts with her lapels, finally getting some relief.
“The Soviet Union takes security very seriously.” Pasha Tarkhan’s last word dropped off as he watched Brandy’s champagne silk camisole ripple like water against her skin as she fanned. It was when she moved like this—unconscious and graceful—that he remembered why she’d attracted him.
Pasha tiptoed his fingers over her collarbone, running them down the middle of her torso and onto her leg until reaching her knee. He slid his hand under the fabric of her skirt and up her slender thigh, kissing down the curve of her ear.
“Pasha, what if one of those men come in? They just barge in whenever they want to—I’ve seen them.”
He suckled her entire ear, slipping his fingers into her panties. “They know who I am and have no reason to bother us.”
Brandy arched her back and ‘mmm’d’ like she did after taking her first spoonful of a chocolate mousse—her favorite dessert. “Are you sure?”
Pasha helped her pull off her camisole and bent his enormous head down towards her breasts, kissing each one like he would the tops of his young daughters’ heads. “Positive.”
She sat up and undid the back of her skirt, then shimmied out of it and kicked it onto the seat opposite them, doing the same with her panties. That left her in only her garter belt, stockings, and yellow patent leather pumps—just how Pasha liked it. He kissed her breasts and belly, then lifted her effortlessly, as if she were merely a glass of champagne, and set her shapely derriere on the window ledge. Brandy loved the strength of his arms, his thrilling combination of brute force and gentility. Pasha slid down until his face was between her thighs, then knelt and let her wrap her legs around his neck.
“Tell me more about what life is going to be like after you conquer the world.”
“Oh, darling,” he said, trailing kisses up her inner thigh. “It’ll be beautiful.”
“Couldn’t we get a better hotel?”
Brandy stood outside the Hotel Yalta and squinted up at the glimmering, concrete monolith. It looked like a vertical ice cube tray and was positioned in stark contrast to the centuries-old buildings that also lined Wenceslas Square.
“My dear, this is the best hotel in Prague.”
Pasha led her inside and was greeted by Veliky, the head of hotel security, who took him in a big bear hug. The two of them went back a long way, having both been stationed in Jerusalem for a brief time at the beginnings of their international careers.
They’d kept up with one another throughout the years, and Pasha had a sneaking suspicion that Veliky was no more a fan of Soviet life than he was. It would account for his less than enthusiastic approach to his work and his move from foreign intelligence to petty hotel spying, which seldom yielded more than an affair between a visiting dignitary and a local shop girl. To his credit, Veliky seemed unembarrassed by his demotion and was in fact thrilled to be back home with a good salary.