(Music at paragraph 13 is 'Hanging On' by Active Child.)
"We have been able to 'reach an understanding' with him, First Director..."
"And I see you wish to insert one of our 'illegals' too, alongside -" He leant forward and clasped his hands together on top of the desk. "One of our top foreign resident operatives."
"Aah – we have a slight note of caution to express about this one element First Director. It is likely that our own operative is possibly also experiencing some mild form of pathological profile, we think related perhaps, to past, er, synaptic overload..."
"And so then you will have to explain this to the professor beforehand, so that he is not taken by surprise. I have read the operative's personal file extensively. It is interesting."
*
Where Valeria Rakmanina lived was not an overly-tall building, but it did have a heli-pad on its rooftop. They took me to her using a private KA-62 Oboronprom helicopter, a bright shiny crimson thing, with an interior that looked like it was designed by the same people who build Mercedes cars.
It never fails to impress me just how stable the ride is in the cabin of a decent, non-military helicopter when in normal flight, and how precise good landings feel when they are carried out by competent pilots. This helicopter was set down with its characteristic whiny turbine noise echoing very loudly across the street-created concrete canyons in between all of the surrounding other buildings, probably waking up the entire block neighbourhood snowy caped in its otherwise quiet winter darkness of nearly midnight.
I disembarked and immediately had to turn the collar of my overcoat up in what even seemed to me at the time like a very stereotypical move, but it was so cold outside. I could feel the heat from the turbines juxtaposed against the freezing cold air, wind, and swirling breezes of the open outside deep wintery ambience. Luckily it wasn't very far to the small entranceway down into the building. I had been provided with a key, and I unlocked the door and went in.
...Suddenly, everything was different. The air was different. The sound was different. The temperature was different. And the smell was different.
I had walked into a thick but optically crystal-clear elevator tube, with its luxe floor of thick dark navy blue coloured new carpeting and some kind of logo or ensignia embroidered into it in a silver weave.
As the rooftop door closed behind me, a soundproofed type of silence descended all around. The elevator, instead of lowering, began to turn slowly around. And when it did eventually begin to move downwards, it did so in a smooth languid spiralling motion. At first there was a faint hum, followed by the sound of amplified tumbling water, and then a fluoro-coloured light began spearing into the wan glow of the elevator's round glass space.
All around, outside the elevator's glass, in the dark wall, were small tile-sized coral-filled aquariums with little electric blue and canary yellow animated bits and pieces flitting about within.
A series of cold neon light tubes shone, about two feet each in length, placed apart in irregular, non-linear fitments embedded into the circular tunnel wall at intervals between the separated, vertically-descending, glowing aquarium display units.
In Russia, almost everywhere among the super wealthy, there was still this obvious penchant evident for the by-now-everywhere-else nearly passé luminescent vodka bar interior design motifs. I say nearly because I suppose passé is still dependent on the sheer money value being expended - this was right up there at the level of ludicrous extremes, and that certainly made a difference. The light was certainly being bent in rare fashion, here, I thought.
*
She knew I was coming. Obviously for the sake of theatrics she had synchronised some kind of strange music to accompany me down in the elevator as I descended slowly in its turning cylindrical, again crystaline cabinet. It sounded like an awesomely powerful and technically accomplished castrati voice singing, albeit singing some ultra-modern, chill-trance-lounge, professional dj-mixed electronic composition. I had never heard the song before. And it was distinctly unusual.
And actually... there was something disturbing about the particular tune.
But I was truly not prepared for the scene that opened up to me when the elevator stopped descending, and when I oriented myself fowards.
Okay so I was pretty sure I was looking at a real live Gorgon. You know, red snakes in magnificent hair, ultra-beautiful face, flashing grey eyes. The tall sinuous body, the upper arms with those almost masculine guns...
The room was large and this time down here it was all very classically purist in design theme - elongated dimensions in every main element, brushed metal fittings and woollen carpeting and rich, steel-inlayed, highly polished dark wood everywhere. The slightly raised, full-sized chaises were in brush-napped dark blue velour. And there was a single chain-driven counterbalanced, hi-tech weights machine standing right in the middle of the floor. And bent over its leather-padded strut extending out to one side, was a young -, very young man, almost a boy, stripped to the waist, wearing tight black jeans... And with bare feet. A chewy tube neoprene bit and bridle in his mouth and around his head...
His hands were secured in shiny chrome chains to a chrome lug in the floor, neatly installed in the carpeting. And there was a single shiny chrome chain attached to an ankle bracelet and held tightly at the other end to another floor lug.
The woman was clearly sweating profusely, beads dripping down her face from her forehead under the shock of gorgeous hair and shining gold custom real Versace diadem, with its snake designs that made her look really, in the circumstances, like she actually had snakes in her hair. She wore a tiny black soft leather top and tight leather mini skirt, all bearing the superstylized winged-Vee Versace motif, and long-up-to-the-knee and high-heeled patent black leather Versace boots. I knew that her name was supposed to be Valeria, and now I got it: she was Valeria – the only surviving Gorgon according to the myth – and whose name meant, 'The Mighty.' Whether or not it was her real birth name didn't strike me at all as particularly that important to know right now. Right now, she was, The Mighty Gorgon.
And the young man chromium-chained up in there seemed likely to think so too. He was shaking with what appeared for all the world to be pretty much like straight out fear to me...
"It's you, though, he's afraid of." She suddenly said, turning to me, as if reading my mind. "He's an extractee. What we call an extractee... I told him, Ian, that if I don't manage to pump a thousand kay-gee's up on this weights press right now, here, in the next half an hour, a bad man is going to come in and pull his pants down and fuck him in the ass real hard – like happened to him in Virginia." She smiled and repeated sarcastically, "Virgin-ia."
