The Price of Freedom

The great Moscow circus put on a command performance for the US delegation full of bear tricks, stunning acrobats and trapeze artists, as Soviet officials rolled out the red carpet during these tense Cold War times. Clark, the young ambitious assistant to the undersecretary, pushed his trunk of supplies to the van awaiting his team. He was always required to have support equipment such as devices to sweep private areas for bugs, typewriters to draw up press releases, even recording equipment and cameras to help document these historic meetings. The trunk never left his side and as their motorcade pulled up to their luxurious hotel, Clark breathed a sigh of relief as sometime tomorrow he would finally be back home in the US.

As he organized his stuff alone in his room for the difficult task of cramming two weeks of clothes into suitcases, he heard banging from the equipment trunk. The sound scared him and he was ready to grab a member of the security detail outside when he decided to take a chance and open the case. A figure popped out and Clark wrestled his ex-military frame atop the person who he found burning hot and sweaty to the touch. He had his arms locked around the neck of what to his amazement was a stunning young lady in a lycra bodysuit similar to that of the circus performers. He stopped choking her and watched her try and catch her breath.

"Please don't be alarmed!" she begged in a frightened tone. She was probably in her early 20's and was flexible enough to have stuffed her five foot two inch frame in that tiny metal trunk. She tried to tell me something important but was too winded to talk. "No air...no air in there." She pointed to the trunk.

This was the night Clark met the beautiful Nikita. He remembered seeing her act at the Moscow Circus as the hot spotlights caused her sequined leotard to shimmer to the seductive music of her act. This was Nikita the Escapist, who he remembered was shackled quite convincingly and placed inside a clear and further shackled underwater tank. She would visibly be undertaking the painstaking process of picking the locks in full view, without the ability to get air, as the juggling clowns did their thing on unicycles. Clark didn't stop watching the tank however, as it became clear this was no American type show with trap doors and hidden oxygen. No nets under the high wire, no safety lines for the trapeze and no fake peril for this young magician.

During a show of insane stunts, Nikita must have found his trunk and contorted herself inside while everyone was distracted. "I request asylum," she said. "Good for you," Clark said with a smile, but I'm afraid I'm under strict orders to avoid any controversy or international incident, and that includes helping people escape, so sorry."

Clark walked to the door to hail security when Nikita put her slender self in the way. She noticed he was staring at her body as her wet lycra left nothing to the imagination. He was admiring her sculpted body that was like a superhero's yet petite and feminine. Nikita, instantly self-conscious, reversed her proud, majestic form and hunched over with her arms over her sensitive areas.

"You must help me!" she begged. "There is only suffering for me here and I know the Russian security will not go through the belongings of your delegation. I can come aboard your plane without compromising your mission. You can save me."

"Nikita, I don't think you hear me. I'm not afraid of the Russians, the people I work for, the Americans will fire my ass if they catch me pulling some stunt like this. And they will return you right away if they find out."

"Okay, I understand, they don't have to know. I'll go back into the trunk. We can leave it open a little for air."

"No," Clark answered, "you can't leave that open, it goes into the holding container at the base of the plane. You can't risk it being open, I have to lock it shut. And that's a 22 hour flight."

"I'm trained at holding my breath, but I can't do that."

Clark knew the easy and safe thing was to turn her in, but he couldn't stop thinking with his dick. Nikita was sexy and using her flirty looks to provoke his compassion and he desired to rescue her.

"Hang on. I'm sympathetic, and only if you are really, really sure you want to do this, I can grab an oxygen tank and concentrator from medical and place it in the trunk with you. Nobody will ask questions about it because I grab all sorts of equipment for various dignitaries."

Clark left the room and came back with some supplies. Seeing Nikita waiting for him, sitting on his couch in the hotel bathrobe felt like the proof he needed that he must be doing something right in life.

Clark didn't know how to begin. "Uh, well I did some math and this airflow is going to need to be really low to get this dinky O2 tank to last over twenty hours. You said you are trained at using less oxygen?"

With a surprising confident tone, Nikita replied "I'm one of the greatest athletes, performers and stuntwomen in the world. In my country, we are taken from our homes, our families and start training for the circus as children in a highly selective process."

"Very nice. I assume they taught you perfect English so you could tour the world."

"Yes, exactly."

"Well, this might be your greatest feat. Let's have you lay inside the trunk and do a brief test of the oxygen." She took off the robe like the graceful performer she was and elegantly contorted herself inside. The oxygen was turned on, the flow was reduced to the minimum safe levels and the case shut. After a few minutes, there was pounding on the lid. He found her again sweaty, breathing fast with the oxygen off her face.

"Why did you take the oxygen off?"

"I don't know. It didn't feel like it was working and I don't know, I might have panicked and pulled it off. It was too dark to find it again."

Clark looked at the tank meter and an appropriate amount of oxygen had been used. "You panicked? It was working. You do that inflight, that means you die. What happened to your training?"

"I don't know." Nikita looked embarrassed. "When you expect air and get nothing, it's different than being underwater and holding your breath. The lungs burn."

"You know what that means, right?" Clark said. "Maybe you should forget about this and go home."

"No, I'll do anything. I have to get out of Russia. At this point, my custodian has reported me missing. I can't go back."

"Okay Nikita, I have to get some things." Nikita looked at Clark with some recognition of what was about to happen. "Okay, I'm waiting," she replied.

After about two hours, Clark returned with supplies. The sun was starting to rise and they were running out of time before the early flight. "You have to teach me to restrain you inside in such a way that you can't escape. You cannot be allowed to thrash around, knock on the lid or rip off the oxygen mask in panic. The stakes are too high for both of us."

As they looked at each other, Clark conveyed real empathy, which calmed her nerves. "Clark, I'm not too proud to admit that you are right. If anyone can do this, it is me and you must not be shy with what we need to do."

"Oh, I'm not," Clark replied with a smile as she saw the contents of the box he prepared that contained a multitude of restraints he snatched from security.

-------------------------------

"Tighter."

"What!"

"Tighter! Pull it tighter!'

Clark put his back into it as he tightened the zip ties pinning her elbows, arms and wrists together behind her back. The plastic bands were leaving her flesh red where it clamped down yet pale all around. He could see the tension in her muscles.

"You can escape that? We've removed all your bobby pins, files and blades."

"Yes, I'm the greatest escape artist probably in the world. I would get loose for sure. It's almost like a reflex. Let's try to use more zip ties."

Clark had her arms together in many places, duct taped her fingers, zip tied her arms to her back, zip tied her legs together in many places and then her folded knees to her chest. He zip tied her hair into a ponytail and contorted her head back to zip tie her ponytail to her shoulders. He did all this per her instructions leaving no mobility.

Clark looked at her and it was an absolutely wild sight to behold. "Nikita, I'm having second thoughts. When the police find your body, I'm going to be arrested for this and the judge is going to make an example of me. This shit is twisted."

"If you knew the torture I've been through, you would realize that this is nothing. 22 hours is not 22 years. Didn't you see the scars on my wrists, ankles and around my neck from years of practice. They would keep me locked for weeks until I could escape and..."

"Yeah, yeah, I got it." The sob story was killing his weird boner and he interrupted her by duct taping the oxygen mask to her face and around her head using a bathroom showercap to protect her hair. Clark went ahead and duct taped her entire head so all that could be seen was the tube exiting the mask. "Now for the test," he told himself, as he covered the tube with the palm of his hand and held it tight. The helplessly bound daredevil could be heard moaning underneath as he felt her hot breath against his palm. He touched himself, intoxicated by the power he held over her and knowing she could not see what he was doing. This tiny, helpless girl could only be seen rocking a bit but the restraints held firm despite the panic he knew was developing within her oxygen deprived body. He then mercifully removed his hand.

The next part, he was the most excited about. In her position, her crotch was easily accessible at the bottom despite the strictness of the position. He pulled out his pocket knife and cut a hole where her camel toe was and traced a hole around her wet mound. He carefully removed that thin patch of clothing to reveal the most beautiful, pristine pussy he had ever seen. To his shock, she was still a virgin. She must have thought, feeling the air blowing on her naked pussy that she was about to be raped and he could see her tensing up. He tried to reassure her by rubbing her shoulder, but he knew she would soon find out what he had in mind.

Clark well lubricated a rubbery catheter and moved his hands over her body in search of her urethra. He inadvertently rubbed her clit a few times causing her to jump at any contact. Clark advanced the urinary catheter into her urethra until the connected bag began to fill with her urine. This was a far more elegant and clean solution than the diaper plan, especially given how much hydrating was necessary.

Clark was still able to fit his gear around her, padded her with some additional clothes and pinned her safely in position. He then took a deep breath at the moment of truth, ensured the oxygen was flowing and closed the case. The outside was secured with a metal bar and padlocked. This type of paranoid security would not raise suspicion given the types of measures taken during the trip. He lifted the case onto its wheels and moved out.

---------------------

"Oscar, wait up!" Clark cut in line past the Airforce One's X-ray checkpoint. All cases going into the plane were being imaged for bombs but Clark was well known to everyone and an important chat with the Chief of Staff was not going to be blocked by security.

Clark was able to get himself and the case through the security line while exaggerating his intense exchange with Oscar, who was used to Clark's bravado over all things foreign policy. Once at the stairs of the plane, a baggage handler took the case underneath with the rest of the equipment.

Many times inflight, while Clark reclined in his first class arrangements, sipping on his chardonnay and reading the paper, he thought of Nikita and got hard. She was sexy and he found her confidence and daring to be quite endearing. He also admitted to himself that she was probably experiencing a full on sweaty panic down below his seat in the cargo hold, dehydrated, hungry and gasping for more air. He felt quite a bit guilty. Indeed, she was trying to control her metabolic rate to avoid expending too much energy, but having a hard time given the constant sense of suffocation.

Nikita was starting to hallucinate that every bump of the case was the lid being opened and Clark coming to rescue her. Inside her fevered, tortured head, she was indulging in sexual fantasies of being Clark's sex toy. Though severe restraint was nothing new to this accomplished escape artist, it was never at the hands of a dashing American man, a man who represented freedom, hope and bravery. The Soviet men were not men at all, they were like soul crushed robots of the state. Whenever she had wet dreams, they were always about the muscular, tall, cocky and cool American men she saw on bootleg films or read about in contraband stories. She remembered Clark's fit body pinning her down as she popped out of the case in their first encounter and how his bicep made her neck disappear inside his muscular arm.

Clark covered his raging erection with the supplied blanket and lay his head on a fluffy white pillow in the fully reclined position. He was imagining Nikita's sexy figure, the posture of a model, the grace of a ballerina and the form of an athlete. He remembered the glistening pussy he saw and her gyrations at his touch. He wondered if there was a part of her that thought, even just for a second, that he was about to slide his dick inside her and perhaps even a desire for it. In fact, Nikita was similarly fantasizing about the cold blade of the knife across her pussy as it cut the bottom of her dress out and the feeling of air flowing across her privates, no longer concealed from him. There was indeed a flash of desire for Clark to take her, but she somehow knew that he would never take advantage in that way. She also remembered the feeling of humiliation as he stuck a catheter inside her most sensitive of places. Even that embarrassing vulnerability caused a powerful excitement in her.

Nikita could feel the touchdown of the plane's wheels as it landed in Washington, DC. They both had some feeling of relief. The previously chatty Clark, was now rushing to get his case and run to the car. Using the lid of his trunk for concealment, Clark unlocked the case to look inside. There was a nervousness that was calmed once he saw the concentrator was still giving air and she was moving when stimulated. He quickly freed her hands of the tape and cut some straps from her wrists and ankles for her comfort and raced his car home.

After the 20 minute drive home, he waited until the car was concealed in the rear of his gated property and opened the trunk of his car. He will never forget what he saw inside: Nikita was totally free of the restraints and just working some remaining tape off her face. "I need water," she said pleadingly.

Nikita unsteadily was brought to the kitchen where she downed glass after glass of water. She didn't care that the crotch of her outfit was exposed and didn't notice the mansion of a home she was in. She then inhaled food after Clark pointed out the tremors in her hands. He cloaked her with a blanket and soothed her with his arms.

She was starting to become herself again and thanked him for his hospitality and kindness. "How did you escape all those straps," Clark blurted out with uncontrolled astonishment. "I keep telling you, I am the world's greatest. That experience though was as bad as anything I've encountered. I could only breathe when the device wanted me to have air and it was never enough to satisfy me. If my hands were free, I would have released myself and done something disastrous for sure."

Nikita looked around and saw a beautiful home. She soluted the American flag he had mounted on his wall and appeared to tear up a bit. "I am finally free," she said. Clark considered himself a patriot and had his military medals and framed constitution on display and Nikita appeared to be a bigger patriot than him. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..." she quoted the Declaration of Independence from memory as she ran her fingers through the cashmere blanket on his couch.

"You never cease to impress," said Clark followed by an uncomfortable silence as he came to the realization that he was now alone with a beautiful girl. "Well now that you are here, let's call your family."

"Family?"

"Or friends."

"Friends?"

"Or I don't know. What was your plan once you got here?" The conversation fell into another uncomfortable silence. "Do you have money?"

"Look, I don't know what you think it's like behind the iron curtain. Nothing is mine. The only things I have are my determination, my wits and my dreams. I have no family. I was raised like property of the State. An object to be used."

More uncomfortable silence as she realized Clark was preoccupied by the sexual connotations and Nikita was feeling the wetness of her sex in this exposed outfit. "OK, Nikita, let me show you the shower, your room and let me go buy you some clothes. Maybe I can help you out. When I see how much this country means to you, I would be a horrible host to make you feel unwelcome." She smiled ear-to-ear in appreciation and Clark felt like a hero.

-------------------------------

On his way back from the mall, Clark headed to the State Department to see if he could arrange a little surprise for Nikita. He would try to make her asylum request official and see if he could become her knight in shining armor. The offices were busy and even though he was jet lagged, feeling like he should be sleeping, it was just like any morning of a busy work day.

"Sam!"

"Clark, you bastard, you only come to my office when you need something. Sit down you son of a bitch."

"OK, well..."

"Wait, hang on. I have some crazy news for you. Interpol just sent me this." Sam held up a telex with a picture of Nikita and under it was the name "The Red Sparrow" in bold with a number of aliases including the name "Nikita the Escapist." "Get a load of this one." The portfolio included video stills of a shadowy figure breaking into a building. "This is her breaking into a heavily fortified British Safehouse. They say she's the best spy in Russia, can break into anything and perhaps out of anything. Apparently she was in the circus that your delegation was at."

"Oh wow, I remember her. She was an escape artist at the show." Clark did his best to not reveal his detailed knowledge of her, or what he thought he knew. He was secretly feeling panicked that someone like this was now in his home.

"Yeah we intercepted some KGB communications that the Red Sparrow is now somewhere on a mission in the continental United States and CIA is putting their top guys on it. Crazy right? I can't believe someone like this exists. She could probably seduce any dopey bureaucrat into dropping their pants and exposing ALL the state secrets. Right, man, hahahaha."

"Hahahaha," Clark said with a somewhat forced laugh. "She ever kill anybody?"

"The Red Sparrow? I know she's compromised a lot of heavily classified stuff, maybe led to some killings but I don't really know. Someone like that probably could strangle you with your shoelaces as you sleep and not even bat an eye! Hahahaha."

"Hahahah," Clark responded with stiff posture, hiding the terror he felt inside. He took a quick unconscious peak at the sturdy shoelaces of his shoe.

"So what can I do for you?"

"Oh come on Sam, I just wanted to see you dude. It's been like a month."

"You're fucking with me Clark. What do you want?"

"Uh, well...um can you just put in a good word for me with the Vice President. I want to maybe join his team when he runs for President, that's all."