Jake Maroc - Shan Part 39

"It is never explained," Daniella said, thinking now of something Uncle Vadim told her when her mother had died. "That is an impossibility. It is, rather, resolved."

"Resolved?" He said it as if he had never heard of the word before.

"Yes," Daniella said. "In one's own mind. A kind of inner peace. An ending to the hurt."

Maluta closed his eyes for a moment. His lips seemed to move as if he were murmuring a prayer. Or perhaps it was only a momentary trembling. "I see," he said at last. "An inner peace." This last was said in the peculiar tone of voice reserved for uttering such concepts as "A hundred billion rubles," that were both personally un.o.btainable and difficult to grasp. "Then you sleep at night."

"What?"

"Do you sleep at night?" Maluta asked.

"Yes."

"And do you dream?"

"Sometimes."

"Only sometimes," he said wistfully. "I dream all the time." He turned away, put on music. Tchaikovsky. Swan Lake.

Clouds had broken apart and there was moonlight on the Moskva. Daniella could almost imagine the alchemical transformation of animal into human that had so bewitched Tchaikovsky's hunter. They sold their souls to you.

Daniella crossed to the sideboard. The record player, an outdated affair so different from the one Lantin had bought to play his black-market foreign pressings, was crowded along its top with framed photographs of Maluta as a young man, as a boy with his mother and father, with his mother alone, lifted onto her broad shoulder as she laughed into his startled face. Behind them, two rows of well-bound books, foreign editions.

In a sterling-silver frame, a young woman who might have been his sister except for the obvious age of the photograph, looked at the camera, wide-eyed, unafraid, even with a bit of aggression to which Daniella could relate. Beside this studied portrait was a snapshot in a similar silver frame. It was of a dark-haired Georgian beauty with the typically wide, flat-planed face with powerful cheekbones and jawline. Her coal-black eyes dominated an already strong, almost haunting face. Daniella had never seen a picture of Oleg Maluta's wife but she was certain that this was the woman.

"Oreanda," she said, quite without thinking.

Maluta s.n.a.t.c.hed the photograph out of her hand, tilted it away as if even by looking at it she would sully its pristine nature.

"She was quite a handsome woman," Daniella said, wondering how far she could take this.

Maluta grunted. He put the photo face down beside the bar as if it meant nothing to him. "It is late. Time we were saying our good nights." But he did not move and Daniella remained where she was. All she need do was reach out and pick up the snapshot of Oreanda Maluta, burnt to a crisp in a conflagration of mysterious origin that ravaged the first dacha built on this parcel of land.

Daniella saw in her mind the woman's countenance, so full of strength and an almost regal bearing. One saw that rarely in Russian women. She wondered again whether Oreanda was the key to Oleg Maluta.

"I'm not tired," she said. "If you don't mind, I'd prefer to stay here and read for a while."

"Do you wish a book? I have an extensive library of Russian authors."

"I brought my own, thank you," Daniella said. "The Marquis deSade." She put aside her tea. "Do you know his creation, Justine?" She watched his face carefully. This was one of the volumes she had seen on the shelf here. She could hardly believe it was his kind of reading; Crime and Punishment was more his style. Had it been Oreanda's?

Maluta's eyes had narrowed. "What do you know about me?" They have conferred to you on bended knee a "You picked that t.i.tle. I do not believe in coincidence." a all that made them powerful, "Who have you been talking to? There is no one who knows about Oreanda. No one but myself."

"Then that answers the question." Daniella kept her voice light, a small smile on her face. She was on the right path, she saw it in his breathing. "I have spoken to no one about your wife."

"Yet you know!" Grabbing her wrist, as if by this gesture he could wrench the knowledge out of her.

"I know how beautiful Oreanda was. How strong"

"Strong, yes. Strong. So unlike a female personality."

She had only meant her face but had allowed him to finish the thought she had begun. This was turning into a psychological interrogation. It was a matter now of feeding him the right cues, of fanning the fire that had already begun.

"There could never be another woman like her," Daniella said softly. She was very close. They key was to remain near him, proximity equaling intimacy in this equation. "She was special. So special."

"Special." His eyes opened wide. "Oh, yes, she was special. She was a world unto herself. She was like Justine." A fierce, cold light emanating from his face that Daniella struggled to decipher. "Everything changes when I return to Moscow. I can breathe again. After her tears flow, after the moonlight disappears from the Moskva, after the air clears and the rain settles the dust onto the pavement."

She recalled his earlier questions concerning faith, G.o.d. "Your love for her will never die."

"No, no, no!" He was suddenly wild, his grip on her wrist painful. "Oreanda!" Calling her name. Not in love and remembrance but rather in anger and in fear. "It is she who will never die. Never, never, never!"

"But she is dead, Comrade, Oreanda is nine years dead."

Those eyes fevered even in the brightest light. "Burnt up, black as night. I saw the corpse, even as they pulled it out of the wreckage, the skeletal arm falling away at the socket, the eyeless skull staring up at me, mocking. Was it her? Was it Oreanda?"

"The coroner's office must have checked. There had to be a positive I.D. for the death certificate to be issued. Dental records."

His head bobbed. "Dental records, yes. That was how it was done. It was Oreanda. The coroner had no doubt."

"Then she is dead, Comrade. What"

"No!" Maluta shouted her down. "She is here! I built this for her. She made me build it for her, on the same spot!"

Then Daniella knew, it all fell into place: Maluta's almost schizophrenic behavior, the uncontrollable bouts of rage, the malicious hatred of women, of her, his torturing her, his saying, They sold their souls to you, bowed their heads before you. How wrong she had been!

This was the magic he had conferred upon her: the power that had resided in Oreanda, the power that made him hate her fully as much as he must have loved her; the power that had chained him, Everything changes when I return to Moscow. I can breathe again.

Had he set the fire that had killed her? Had Oleg Maluta murdered his beloved wife? She was determined to find out.

Took his hand, saying, "You're wrong, Oleg," the first time that she had used his given name. "Oreanda is gone, gone, gone." Drew his hand inward to the juncture of her thighs. "This is what remains." Then to the bulge in his groin. "And this." Felt it growing and put her thumb and forefinger around its tip. Twisted her wrist and his hand fell away, freeing her.

Slipped to her knees, deftly undid his trousers. Took him out, slipped her lips over the semihard member. Bathing him in warmth until she felt his own heat rising. Then she began to use her tongue, swiping it along the length, curling it as she went. Fluttering it against the underside of the head until she felt the powerful muscles along the insides of his thighs begin to jump and convulse. Then she stopped.

Stood up in front of him.

"What" he said, almost gasping. "What are you doing?"

"Starting?" she said. "Or stopping?" Her half-open lips were wet, s.h.i.+ny with saliva and his own precoital fluids.

He gave a s.h.i.+ver. Of antic.i.p.ation or of fear?

"Stopping," he said in a shaky voice.

She put the flat of her hand over his heart, could feel the thunder of its beat. "I can't go on," she said. "Oreanda wouldn't like it. You're her husband, her lover. You're hers alone."

He s.h.i.+vered once more, his eyelids fluttering closed. "I can breathe again," he whispered.

"The moonlight on the Moskva," Daniella said in his ear, thenlicked it with the tip of her tongue. All the while the tip of his p.e.n.i.s was grinding into the palm of her hand. Grazed her fingernails at its base.

"I can breathe again," he coughed.

"Oreandaa"

He put his hand on her shoulder, pus.h.i.+ng her down. Daniella had clandestinely unb.u.t.toned the uniform's skirt. Now as she began again to kneel, it slithered off her and she stepped out of it. She was naked beneath.

Oreanda! his mind screamed. She had enslaved him with her s.e.xual demands. Something inside of him had offered her the power and she had swept it from his opened palm. It was cruel and vicious, this cycle of Oleg and Oreanda. The more power he obtained in his professional life, the more he granted her in his private lifeor the more she took from him. He did not know which gave him the most pleasure. The specter of her s.e.x moving him from place to place within the dacha haunted him still. So much so that now he felt his insides melting helplessly in the furnace of Daniella's s.e.xual aggression. He had not felt such pleasure since a Maluta gave a sharp cry, his fingers clutching at her jacket. "Uh, uh, uh," as her hot mouth engulfed him again. All his insults, his sneering at her s.e.x, had masked this hunger. He burned for her, hated her for what Oreanda had done to him. Feared her as well, terrified that the enslavement that had haunted him for nine years would begin anew. Everything changes when I return to Moscow. I can breathe again.

In the end, he wors.h.i.+ped her as he had wors.h.i.+ped Oreanda before her.

Daniella took all of him inside her, opening her throat and relaxing the reflexive impulses. Above her, Maluta gurgled deep in his throat. The tip of his p.e.n.i.s expanded and began to pulse.

Daniella withdrew her heavily sucking mouth and pulled him down until he was lying on the carpet. She knelt over him, holding his quivering member in the palm of her hand.

Her knees were on either side of him. She guided him to her. "This is what you want, don't you?"

He groaned.

"But you've told me that you never want it." She bent over him. "Never ever. So now you can't have it." She pushed his p.e.n.i.s away from between her thighs.

Maluta reached up to grab her but Daniella used the edge of her hand to slap him away. "No, no," she said. "Not that way. Not any way."

Perhaps he could have overpowered her, perhaps not. In any case, that was not his desire. "There must be."

Daniella took the tip of him and again brushed it along the silken flesh between her thighs. Immediately, it began to pulse and throb and she released it. She did not touch it, would not allow him to, either.

"What?" It was an almost strangled cry.

"I want it."

"What?"

"Say it," she coaxed. "Say, *I want it.' "

"I want it," Maluta said.

"I want to know that you mean it."

"I do mean it. I want it."

"Here," she said, lifting him up and settling herself down. "It's yours."

He let out a long, ecstatic groan, as she slid all the way down him. She rocked back and forth when only the base of him remained unsheathed, and he gasped, arching his b.u.t.tocks off the carpet.

His p.e.n.i.s began to convulse, shooting heavily deep inside her. At the same time, his hands reached up, cupping her b.r.e.a.s.t.s through the thick cloth of the uniform, pulled her down against him while he emptied himself inside her.

When, sometime later, he slipped out of her, she was still astride him. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were against his chest. His breathing was becoming deep and regular; he was nearing sleep.

She put her fingers around his neck. Put her lips against his ear until she felt him stir. "I should kill you now."

He gave a tiny indrawn breath and she reached down, grabbing his flaccid p.e.n.i.s. Gave it a painful twist.

"That's what Oreanda would want, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"You killed her, Oleg."

"What?"

"That's right. You set the blaze. You were clever, doing it so that there would be no suspicion of arson. But you murdered Oreanda just the same."

"No, no."

"Don't lie to me, Oleg. I know when you're lying."

"I'm not lying now!" he cried. "I had nothing to do with the fire here. Nothing! I swear."

Daniella took her hand away from his p.e.n.i.s but not from around his throat. "I want you to know something, Oleg," she said, putting all the contempt she felt into her voice. "When you were inside me, I felt nothing. And when I had you in my mouth, it was all I could do not to vomit for the thought of it."

"Why do you tell me this?" he said, his face averted from hers.

"Because it's important that you know the truth."

Maluta pushed her off him and, clutching his trousers frenziedly, pulled them up over his nakedness. His face was filled with shame and this gladdened Daniella's heart, Now, she thought, I have gained a measure of power over him. Perhaps at last we face each other as equals.

"We are almost there," Kazamuki said.

Jake, sitting beside her in the Mitsubis.h.i.+ sports car, watched the play of her persimmon-colored kimono as she drove. There was not one spot of blood on the lovingly woven silk.

Mikio lay on the back seat, holding his wounded arm. "It is nothing," he said into the air in the back of the Mitsubis.h.i.+, "The blood has already coagulated. There is almost no pain."

"Please," Kazamuki said softly, as she fired them into a turn. "An oyabun should conserve his energy."

Jake closed his eyes, dizzy with exhaustion. He thought of the scene back at Kiyomizu-dera. Mikio Komoto sat with his white fists still wrapped around the chain of the manrikigusari. The Yakuza who lay sprawled at his feet, his white face at an unnatural angle, had the end of a black anodized steel bolt protruding through the center of his chest. The wicked triple-serrated barbed point had come out the other side. The force of the missile's impact had broken his spine.

Kazamuki had made sure her oyabun's life was not in danger before felling Jake's last adversary.

Waves of vertigo a.s.sailed him as the Mitsubis.h.i.+ hurtled out of Kyoto. Heading northeast, back to Tokyo. Abruptly, he was swept by a blackness that could not be denied. He asked Kazamuki to stop the car and, at the side of the road, he got quickly out and vomited. Without ba-mahk he was just an ordinary man. Wearily, he climbed back into the car. Kazamuki had the goodmanners to be watching her side mirror so as not to be witness to his shame. They continued their high-speed journey.

Psychological fatigue as well as physical fatigue brought about by extreme fear, Mikio Komoto sitting with the manrikigusari wound around the young Yakuza. The wraparound sungla.s.ses shattered, the face, though grotesque in death, apparently recognizable to the oyabun.

"Jake-san," Mikio had said warily, "I am afraid there is some extremely disturbing news. These Yakuza are not part of the Kisan clan." His keen ebon eyes looked up at Jake. "Do you understand what that means? My security is still intact. These men were not after me; they were not part of the Yakuza war at all."

Woodenly, Jake had said, "Who are they?"

"Members of the Moro clan. Have you heard of them, Jake-san?"

Shook his head. "No."