Sacrifice Read online

  Golovanov was breathing heavily. Already his marshal’s trousers were feeling crowded. He sipped some more vodka and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Inge slowed down now, dancing on the off-beat. Expressionlessly, she slipped off her black satin jacket, and let it slip to the floor. Then she loosened the tie-belt of her skirt, and turned her back on Golovanov as she gradually eased it down over her hips.

  Golovanov stared at her, mesmerized. The muscles in her long back moved, her hips rotated with sensual insistence. She edged the skirt further and further down, baring her wide white bottom, and at last let it drop to the floor. She was now wearing nothing but her black fishnet stockings, and high-heeled shoes. She bent over with her back to Golovanov to untangle her skirt from her heel, and as she did so he glimpsed between her thighs the pouting lips of her vulva.

  She danced with her back to him for a minute or two more, teasing him. Her breasts were so large that he could see the half-moon curve of them on either side of her back. He began to unbutton his shirt in quick, jerky movements, baring a brown, deepset chest, marked by a crucifix of thick white hair.

  ‘Inge,’ he said, thickly.

  She turned around, still dancing, her chin raised aloof, her eyes dispassionate. Her breasts bounced and flowed in time to the music: her nipples had risen, pale and unusually long. She was like a goddess poured out of milk and moonlight, and Golovanov found that again he was holding his breath. Her thighs stirred with each beat from the drums, her hips swayed with that unending erotic demand. Her pubis was shaved bare, except for a small plume of ash-blonde hair that rose just above her clitoris like a white flame. Her lips were neat and tight, but glistened with the first suggestion that she was aroused.

  Singing softly to herself, she came over and unfastened Golovanov’s shoes, then drew off his socks, and at last helped him to lift himself out of his trousers. His body was scarred and chunky, bunches of muscles and tight sinew. From between the hardened curves of his thighs, his erection rose gnarled and crimson, a great Russian tree.

  Inge climbed on to the sofa and stood astride him while he sat there looking up at her. Then, gradually, she lowered her hips until her vulva was only two or three inches away from his face. She opened her legs a little further, and the pink sticky inner labia parted with the faintest of fluid clicks, revealing the dark red moistness within.

  ‘Inge… he said. ‘You know that I can never resist you. You know that I never shall.’

  He reached forward, his tongue protruding, but she swayed back a little so that he missed her. He lunged again, but still she swayed back.

  ‘Will you do anything for me?’ she asked him.

  He stared at her vagina and tensely licked his lips. ‘You know that I will. I’ve already brought you a present… a bracelet from Tbilisi. You know that you can have anything you want. Money, clothes, liquor. I can arrange anything.’

  She leaned forward again, so that she was within reach. Slowly, with infinite relish, his eyes closed, Golovanov began to lap with his tongue at her clitoris, now and again allowing his tongue to run downwards, and slip into the warm sweetness of her vagina. She tasted like shampanskoye.

  Now Inge raised first one leg over the back of the sofa; then the other; sitting astride Golovanov’s face so that his head was forced back on to the grey leather cushion. Her eyes half-closed, crooning quietly to herself, she rotated her hips so that Golovanov’s tongue massaged her all around her vulva. She anointed his face all over, his forehead, his eyelashes, his cheeks, his nose, his mouth; and then at last her breathing began to quicken. Her hips began to shudder; her huge breasts shook. She stayed still for a frozen moment, while her fluids ran down Golovanov’s chin. Then athletically she raised herself up off the back of the sofa, and walked around until she was kneeling in front of the marshal, her expression as erotic and calculating as ever.

  ‘You are a man of great passion, marshal. Now, I would like to return your compliment.’

  Golovanov stared back at her. She clasped his erection in her long-fingered hand, and slowly and tantalizingly stroked it up and down.

  ‘If the devil was ever white, white as an angel, then it must be you,’ breathed Golovanov. He knew he was talking nonsense, too much vodka, but Inge made his brain flare up.

  Slowly, slowly, Inge massaged him. Once she leaned forward on her haunches as if she were going to take him into her mouth, but she drew back again.

  ‘You are afraid to speak to me, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Just in case the house has ears. Just in case I will pass on what you say to the KGB.’

  Golovanov said nothing, but frowned at her. She stroked his erection even more slowly.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it is true. I am paid by the KGB to pass on whatever you say. I have a tape-recorder in the bedroom, and I have passed on everything that you have ever said to me when we were making love, every single grunt, every single groan. They probably have a great time, listening to the great Marshal T.K. Golovanov having a finger stuck up his backside!’

  Golovanov remained unmoved, mask-like and calm, his eyes slitted. ‘I suspected that this would be so. I would do the same myself, if I were you. I am not a fool, Inge. You have not surprised me.’

  Inge stopped rubbing him. ‘I have to ask you if there is going to be war,’ she said.

  Golovanov lifted an eyebrow. ‘If you work for the KGB, as you say you do, you know that I cannot possibly tell you any classified military information. I have never done so in the past; I cannot start now.’

  ‘Timofey,’ she whispered, with an urgent expression in her voice that he had never heard before. ‘I work for the KGB and that means I have to keep my ears and my eyes always open. I am like an animal, that always has to protect itself. I know that something is happening. These are not your usual summer manoeuvres. And what are you doing here, back so quickly? When General Yeremenko’s man told me that you were coming back, that confirmed my fears at once.’ She used the Swedish word for fear, nervositet.

  Golovanov took a deep breath. ‘Whatever happens, Inge, you yourself have no need to be alarmed.’

  ‘It’s soon, isn’t it?’ she urged him.

  ‘Inge,’ he protested; both at her persistent questioning, and at the teasing stroking of his penis.

  She let go of him, and sat up on the sofa beside him, and grasped his shoulders. Her nails were like black-painted claws.

  ‘Timofey,’ she said, ‘you are the most influential of all the officers I know, the most important. Please help me.’

  ‘But what do you want? I can’t help you if I don’t know what you want. Listen, my dear, I have always said anything; anything at all.’

  She lowered her head. He found himself looking at her severe blonde parting, her tightly-wound braids, and at the large pale curves of her breasts.

  ‘I want to go to America,’ she said. She looked up at him again, and those grey eyes were so intense. ‘Timofey, I beg you, before the war begins. After that, there will be no chance. I beg you to help me get away.’

  Golovanov looked down at himself. His reddened erection was gradually diminishing. After a while, it fell over sideways and curled up.

  ‘Well,’ he said grumpily. ‘Look what you’ve done now.’

  Five

  The phone rang somewhere on the galaxy of Ursa Major. Light-years away, echoing and far. Charles Krogh turned over in space and time and tried to make himself believe that he hadn’t heard it, that it didn’t exist, that everything was darkness and silence and celestial peace.

  The phone continued to ring. It was getting nearer, too, and louder, travelling through the eons at unimaginable speed. Suddenly it materialized right beside his bed, on his bedside table, and he lashed out at it so that it crashed on to the floor, along with two empty wine-glasses, an ashtray crowded with cigarette-stubs, and a paperback copy of Huysman’s Against Nature – ‘an unbalanced, neurotic woman, who loved to have her nipples macerated in scent.’ He sniffed, roared, shoute
d, and sat up in bed, his face as crumpled as the Danish duvet.

  ‘Agneta! Tager du da aldrig den forbandede telefon?’

  A woman’s voice retorted sharply from the kitchenette, ‘Den kan du selv svare.’

  On the floor, the telephone was saying, tiny and plaintive, ‘Hello? Hello?’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Charles, and buried his face in the pillow.

  ‘Hello?’ said the phone. ‘Mr Charles Krogh?’

  At last, Charles climbed out of bed, treading barefoot through the scattered cigarette-stubs, and picked up the receiver. ‘Do you know what time it is?’ he demanded.

  ‘Ten after ten,’ replied the voice on the other end. A man’s voice, Danish, but a good English-speaker.

  ‘That’s dawn,’ Charles complained. He scratched his shoulder-blades, and then ran his hand through his unkempt grey hair so that it stuck up even more wildly. ‘Jesus, Agneta, what are you doing with that blender? Grinding up the cat?’

  ‘Making you some fresh orange-juice, you ill-tempered bastard,’ Agneta called back.

  ‘Well, stick some schnapps in it,’ Charles shouted. ‘If I can’t be sober; I might as well stay drunk.’

  Agneta came to the door of the bedroom. She was blonde, small, pixie-faced, but the smudges under her eyes betrayed her age and her experience. She was wearing one of Charles’ shirts, a pale green Van Heusen, and nothing else. She said, ‘Talk to them, whoever it is. Who is it?’

  Charles had temporarily forgotten that he was on the phone. He growled, ‘Hello? Yes? I’m supposed to ask who you are. Not that I give a shit.’

  ‘You are Mr Charles Krogh?’

  ‘That’s me,’ replied Charles, less irascibly. Light and order were gradually beginning to penetrate his brain. ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘My name is Christian Skovgaard, Mr Krogh. I have a message for you from Jeppe Rifbjerg. He says he cannot call you direct because of particular circumstances; but that he would like you to meet him at Fiskehusets at twelve.’

  Charles noisily cleared his throat. ‘Did he say what he wanted?’

  ‘He says he will explain everything later.’

  ‘Did he say who’s paying for lunch?’

  Christian Skovgaard, whoever he was, put down the phone. Charles stared at the receiver for a moment, and then tossed it on to the tousled bed. He didn’t want to take any more calls until his head had cleared; particularly any more calls as mysterious as that. He stood up, scratching himself, and shambled through to the kitchen. Agneta was buttering wholemeal bread for him, and arranging slices of smoked ham on it. Charles came around the counter and kissed her noisily on the ear. ‘I don’t deserve you, you know,’ he told her. ‘Where’s that orange-juice?’

  Agneta had poured the orange-juice into a tall stylish glass, and set it on the breakfast counter. Sniffing, Charles opened the large Amana icebox, and took a bottle of schnapps out of the freezer. He poured a large measure of schnapps straight into the orange-juice, and a smaller measure into a shot-glass.

  ‘I didn’t do anything crazy last night, did I?’ he asked Agneta. They had been to a party thrown by Danny Christensen, one of Copenhagen’s most influential gangsters. Christensen’s contraband automobile business – mainly in brand-new luxury Volvos and Saab Turbos, all unregistered – had made him a millionaire at the age of 31. The party had been held on his luxurious private yacht, which had been moored for the occasion in the Christanshavn Canal. Charles remembered drinking much more schnapps than was good for his equilibrium, or his soul, or the future of mankind.

  Agneta said, matter-of-factly, ‘You told the superintendent of police that his wife reminded you of a porcupine. Apart from that, nothing much.’

  ‘Not too bad, then,’ said Charles, hoisting himself up on to a stool. The breakfast-counter was directly below a long skylight, with plants hanging all around; on the walls of the white and oatmeal kitchen there were glazed clay figures of trolls and mermaids. The decor was very plain, clean, and modern. Nobody who walked into this kitchen would have guessed that an untidy and obstreperous middle-aged American lived here. The style was entirely Scandinavian.

  ‘He can’t blame me,’ said Charles, stirring his orange-juice with the handle of his fork.

  ‘Who can’t blame you? And for what?’

  ‘The superintendent of police. For saying that his wife looks like a porcupine. She does. It’s that spiky hair, and that fat little tummy.’

  ‘You should learn to be polite,’ Agneta admonished him.

  Charles nodded; swallowed orange-juice and schnapps; coughed; and then nodded again. ‘You’re right, of course. Even my course director at Langley told me that I should learn to be polite. “Mr Krogh,” he said, “an intelligence agent is not a high-profile character.” I guess, in the end, that’s why they never promoted me; and why they retired me. Imagine that, retired from the CIA. And my father was afraid they’d suck me in for all eternity. Some eternity. Some suck.’

  Agneta sat and watched him eat his breakfast. She liked to watch him eat; he looked vulnerable then, like a small boy. Scruffv-haired, bulbous-nosed, irresistibly ugly. She knew just how much strength he had, though. His character was like flexible steel; often bending, but never breaking. He had worked for the CIA in Denmark for fifteen years before his ‘retirement’, and she knew that he was responsible for catching and killing two Soviet spies who had been infiltrating the Danish military base at Århus, in 1976. There had been an international furore about it: two Russians found on the island of Tunø, with their heads beaten in. One evening, when he was drunk, Charles had said to Agneta, ‘Remember that Tunø business? Well, you want to know what I’m made of? They didn’t cry out, either of them. They just looked at me. Think about it.’

  He hadn’t mentioned it again; he may not even have remembered the following morning what he had said. But Agneta knew that he had killed those men, sledgehammered them to death, like culled seals. She also realized that there had probably been many more. In spite of the peace, the war went on, silently, violently, like men struggling in the dark.

  Charles, at 52, had felt too old, too displaced, to return to the United States. Also, he was still bitter about having been taken off the active list so early. He was good, he knew he was. His knowledge of Soviet agents and their techniques was encyclopedic, more comprehensive and more interpretive than any computer’s memory bank. He had known many of them personally, just as they had known him. He used to have lunch once a month with Ivan Yerikalin, the head of the KGB in Copenhagen. They had eaten at the Café Victor on Ny Østergade, indulging themselves at the expense of their opposing countries in caviare and smoked salmon, and all the time probing and prodding each other with provocative questions. Charles missed those lunches. He also missed Yerikalin, who had been recalled to Moscow without warning. Shot, probably.

  After his retirement, Charles had travelled around Scandinavia, but eventually he had returned to Copenhagen, simply because he felt he belonged there. There was something about its steep orange rooftops, its green copper spires, the way it lay stretched out so flat in summer, like a map, with its dark blue canals and interlacing bridges, Langebro and Knippelsbro and Dronning Louises Bro; the way it closed in upon itself in winter, when the skies were black and overwhelming, and furious with snow.

  He had made his home on Larsbjørnstrade, in the Latin Quarter, at the top of a narrow yellow-washed building that smelled of cheese and laundry. From his bedroom window, he had a view of Studiestrade and Vor Frue Kirke, the church of Our Lady. He had gathered around him as friends all those people he had known during his CIA days, gangsters and diplomats and prostitutes and policemen; and after he had lived there for four months, Agneta had moved in with him. Thirty-seven years old, a former nightclub dancer, sex-show artiste, and casual prostitute. Their friendship had grown into a loving and comfortable relationship; plenty of wine, plenty of food, plenty of laughter, sex when they felt like it, and no questions asked about the past, the present, or the f
uture. He never asked Agneta if she loved him: if he did, she might have had to answer. He knew that he loved her. God Almighty, he would have died for her. But what a strange death that would be for his father’s son, the boy who had grown up over a dry-cleaning store in Minneapolis; the lanky youth who had joined the Navy, and eventually found himself seconded to the intelligence services, and then to the CIA.

  He arrived at Fiskehusets ten minutes late. He had showered, and his untidy grey hair was still wet. He wore a grey summer suit and a yellow shirt, and an expensive silk tie that he had bought on a day-trip to Oslo. Fiskehusets was one of the more expensive fish restaurants on Gammel Strand, overlooking the canal; personally, Charles preferred Krogs. But Jeppe was there waiting for him, at one of the tables at the back, talking to the manager, Arne Larssen. Charles shook Arne’s hand, and then Jeppe’s, and said to Arne, ‘What’s good today? The plaice?’

  ‘If Mr Rifbjerg’s paying, the turbot,’ smiled Arne.

  Charles sat down. Jeppe said, ‘You look as if you swam here.’

  ‘Oh.’ Charles raked his wet hair with his fingers. ‘I took a shower. It was either that, or a bath, and I couldn’t stand the idea of immersing myself in hot water.’

  ‘Bad head?’

  ‘I went to Christensen’s birthday party last night. The liquor flowed like liquor.’

  Jeppe beckoned to the waiter, and said, ‘Bring this man a Carlsberg Special Brew, please.’

  ‘Do I look that bad?’ asked Charles.

  Jeppe smiled, and laced his fingers together. Charles recognized that gesture. It meant that Jeppe had something complicated to say; either that or he wanted to ask a favour, or both.

  Jeppe was an agent for the Danish Intelligence Service: thin-faced, blond-moustached, agitated. A brilliant agent – intuitive, but methodical. A man who lived on his nerves but was never nervous. Through a combination of inspired guesses and methodical calculation, he had broken two Soviet spy-cells in Denmark, and had subsequently arrested 15 major dealers who were using Copenhagen as a warehouse for American electronics hardware, which they were intending to sell to the Russians in exchange for gold and drugs.