War Plan Red by Peter Sasgen

His tongue moistened the tips of her small, pointed breasts. His hips rose and he entered her as she pulled his head back, ran a hand through his hair, and covered his lips with a kiss. Legs stiffened, body arched, he let go at the exquisite moment when her lovely face was blemished by the convulsion of orgasm.
    Her breath had returned to normal. She sat up in bed. Bars of late-afternoon sunlight falling through window blinds marched across her slim thighs and the damp, rumpled sheets. Zakayev, naked, moved about the room fiddling with his things, searching for wrinkles in the Russian naval officer’s uniform he had hung up on the bathroom door. The girl’s eyes roamed over his lean, pale body scarred by Russian bullets and shrapnel. The fresh white bandage over the wound on his arm almost matched the color of his skin.
    “We’ll leave after it’s dark,” Zakayev said. They had let a room in a small, moldering hotel overlooking Murmansk’s busy harbor. It was a place where people didn’t ask questions and avoided eye contact with strangers.
    “You will look handsome in your naval uniform,” she said. “I’ll want to kiss you.”
    “A petty officer first class can’t kiss an admiral,” Zakayev said with mock seriousness.
    They had discussed it so many times and she was eager to play her role. The uniform she would wear—
    navy pants, striped jumper, a traditional Russian Navy flat hat with ribbon device—lay folded neatly on a chair.
    “Ali, sit here.”
    He let her kiss the pit of his neck, his chest and nipples, both hands. Her eyes suddenly welled up. “Ali, there isn’t much time, not even a week, you said.” Her voice quavered, a delicate flutter that he pretended he hadn’t heard.
    He appraised her with cold objectivity. “You said you were not afraid to die.”
    “I’m not. I chose this, so what is going to happen to me doesn’t matter as long as our mission succeeds; but even so, I want to know if you…I want to hear you say…”
    “Don’t…” He got up and turned his back. Yes, he loved her, but could admit it only to himself. If he said the words she wanted to hear, everything would change. “Don’t ask; don’t say any more. We agreed not to. It’s all arranged and nothing can happen to change it. Litvanov and his men are waiting for us.” He faced her. “Now it’s time for you to prepare.”
    She rose silently from the bed and went into the tiny bathroom. A naked bulb hanging from a twisted wire in the ceiling provided weak illumination. For a long time she stood looking at herself in the tarnished flyspecked mirror over the rusty sink. Then she picked up a pair of scissors and began cutting her hair, the long, silky strands falling like black rain.

    Zakayev turned up his coat collar. A sharp wind laced with the stink of dead fish and diesel fuel sent paper and debris corkscrewing down a deserted wind tunnel of a street lined with ship chandleries and warehouses, with old packing cases, cargo pallets, and rubbish of all sorts. The wheels of heavy trucks had carved ruts in the frozen snow, which made footing treacherous. The girl slipped and almost fell but Zakayev caught her arm.
    They turned off the main street into a narrow alley between darkened warehouses that rose on either side like the walls of a canyon. Zakayev found the battered wooden door, which he identified by the heavy iron crossbraces bolted to its face. The door was set into the brick wall of a warehouse over three crumbling concrete steps. He looked down the alley and saw a Guards stake body truck parked where he was told it would be, beside the seawall fronting the harbor.
    Zakayev withdrew the H&K P7 from the pocket of his overcoat and tightened his fingers around the grip, cocking the pistol. He banged on the door and waited. A gust of wind plastered the skirt of his overcoat between his legs.
    Heavy boots tramped over a plank floor. Bolts snapped open and door hinges squealed. A heavyset man in shabby work