Chapter 17: Tracy Rides Again

Chapter Introduction

In London, Tracy falls into the trap set by Petra and her Father; Jennifer and Joe enjoy a chance meeting over lunch; Angela Dawney moves up Scott Anderson’s agenda; and

Jennifer gains a new perspective on some past events.

The Uninvited Guest

We are back in London. Joe has been to University College Hospital again for a review with the surgeons who cared for him after he was assaulted. Of course, it’s good to have their expertise but every examination just means that Joe has to relive his ordeal, all over again. Now, afterwards, we are sitting in a restaurant to enjoy a quiet lunch together.

We do not get out much these days — we can’t afford it anymore — but the surgeons gave Joe an encouraging report and it was a good opportunity for a celebration and for something for Joe and me to do that is just normal, the sort of thing any young couple like us might do.

Joe is reading the menu. I am idly staring across the room. There’s a window looking out onto Dover Street. (1) There’s a familiarity in the silhouette of a woman walking by and then the door of the restaurant opens. One of the waitresses is greeting the newcomer.

“It’s OK,” says a familiar woman’s voice. “I’m meeting friends.”

I know that voice. The waitress stands to one side. I see the woman. It’s Tracy!

She is absolutely the last person I’m expecting to see. I’m seized by conflicting sensations. There’s astonishment: what on earth is she doing here? There’s delight, pleasure at seeing her, seeing her free. But, there’s a sense of foreboding, too, as though her arrival means trouble in some way.

Gaspazha Neena told me Tracy had been released, so why shouldn’t she be here? After all, she has her freedom now. But the question isn’t why she shouldn’t be here; it’s more why is she here?

She looks around the room, seeming to take in every detail of the place in one turn of her head. It’s almost imperious. Her confident look makes me think she can hardly have been touched by her adventures at the Dacha. Well, she was never going to be a submissive and it looks as if the Kustenskies have left her self-confidence and her personality completely un-dented.

She sees me and marches over. At first, there is recognition, then a smile. Then, her face assumes the familiar aggressive-confident expression which made her so wearisome in Russia. Un-invited, she pulls out a chair and sits down with Joe and me.

Joe’s mind has wandered off somewhere else but the abrupt appearance of Tracy at our table jerks him back to reality.

“Hi, Bitch,” she says, smiling.

“Tracy!”

“Yep, that’s me. None of that Pavea crap from you this time, huh?”

“Er, no — well, not now you are out.”

“Out?”

“Well, yes. I mean, you are here, not...”

“ ... back safe and sound in my cell at the Dacha?”

“Well, yes. Look, Joe. This is Tracy Randolf.” It’s bizarre. How am I supposed to cope with this? How do you introduce your husband to a woman you shared imprisonment with? “Tracy and I worked together last year.”

Of course, it’s absurd. Tracy’s face dissolves into helpless laughter. “Worked together? Actually, what she means is (she is speaking to Joe) we slaved together. So you are this bitch’s husband?”

“Excuse me, but I expect you to use Jennifer’s real name.” Joe is instantly on alert and responding to the aura of anarchy that Tracy is projecting. He is leaping to my defence and there is an unmistakably hard edge to his voice.

“Jennifer, huh? Actually, I think she would like you to call her Vyera. Isn’t that right, Bitch?”

“Ma’am,” says Joe, “if you use that word once more I shall ask the staff here to ask you to leave.” Joe’s face and the tone of his voice could not leave any normal person in any doubt that he is completely serious. Either Tracy behaves herself, or Tracy goes, or we go.

“Tracy, do you think you could be a bit more...” I’m scared by her. Scared for Joe, scared by what her appearance means. Even — at a much more trivial level — scared that Joe and I will be the ones asked to leave.

“What?”

“Well, do you have to call me ‘Bitch’ all the time?”

“Nope, I guess not.”

I can sense Joe relax. He goes down from “attack” mode to “defence high alert” mode.

“I just kinda thought it would be fun to remind you of the old times. So: Vyera. Jennifer. Jennifer? Yep. That’s a nice name. Vyera is good, too. They both suit you, do you know that? Does...”

Tracy inclines her head to Joe and continues, “ ... he know what you are and your new name?”

Joe replies, “Jennifer is Jennifer Karin McEwan. That is the only name she needs, thank you. Jennifer, tell me again, who the hell is this exactly?”

“Call me Pavea,” offers Tracy, and then blithely continues. “Well, her real name nowadays is Vyera Anatolyevna Kuznetsova. That’s right, isn’t it?” She picks up a grissini and snaps it in two. “As for me, nowadays I really prefer Pavea Lebedova (2). Pleased to meet you. You are Joe, huh?”

Seeing Tracy materialize so unexpectedly out of the crowd has disturbed my equilibrium more than I can say. The strangeness of a normal meeting of acquaintances and the reunion of two erstwhile slaves in a West End restaurant seems impossible to reconcile. It takes my mind several seconds to realize what she has actually said. “I’m sorry, Tracy, what was that you said?”

“One day, maybe one day soon, Vyera, your ass is going to be real sorry that you have gotten out of the habit of paying attention. I said that, nowadays, I prefer Pavea Lebedova.”

“But, that’s a Russian name?”

“Hey, you remember something from the Dacha, then?”

“But you were released?”

“Nope, I wasn’t. That’s just what that other bitch, Neena, told you. Another mind-fuck, huh?”

Pavea’s change of outlook clearly has limits. Joe is looking more and more on edge once again. I’m desperate to get some sort of normality back into the conversation but Tracy has not finished. “I really wanted Zapadnaya. You remember. Zapad. West. Neena said it sounded dumb and was too obvious, so she chose Lebedova.”

“I am sorry, Tracy, I can’t just remember what that means.”

“Swan.”

“Swan?”

“Yep. Lebed. Swan. Neena’s little joke. Swans are big and haughty and white. I am red and small and I am supposed to be humble but, let’s be realistic here, I am always going to struggle with that one. I guess it is to remind me where I am supposed to be headed. But, at least they are beautiful.”

“Except that they make a lot of noise and they are usually very aggressive, so maybe it does suit you?” Joe says, almost spitting the words back at Tracy.

Tracy looks sharply at him and then across to me. “Funny, huh? Is he always as sharp as this?”

“Frequently.”

“Well, when you come back, bring him with you. He could lighten things up a bit.”

Her last remark ignites fear inside me, never too far from the surface. Not “if you come back;” she says, “when you come back.” Is this another mind-fuck, from Tracy this time, or a distant early warning of what my future holds? Were those her own, spontaneous words or were they a message given her, for careful delivery to me? I’m frightened that Gaspadeen Kustensky’s men, even now, must be watching us.

“So, what are you doing here?” I ask but, even as I wait for her answer, I start to scan the room to see who else might be here. Watching. Waiting. Poytr? Nicolai? Andreii? Neena? Ready to take me back. I can feel perspiration forming all over me. Actually, I am not perspiring. I am sweating. I can feel a fountain of panic rising inside me. I am going to have to say goodbye to Joe. They are going to take me away again and, now, I no longer want to go.

“I’m pulling chestnuts out of the fire. Yours and Anatoly Sergeyevitch’s, to be more precise.”

“What?”

Tracy — or maybe it’s Pavea — makes to rest her hand on Joe’s hand but he snatches it away so instead she looks him full in the face as she speaks. “Look, I’m real sorry about the way you got beat up.”

He looks sharply back at her. “What do you know about that? How do you know I was beaten up? Was it something to do with what happened to Jenny?” Joe asks.

“No, not really,” replies Tracy. “It’s more to do with what happened to me. You see, my Daddy is pretty big in the oil business and he was really pissed when I went absent without leave and...”

“But Tracy,” I counter, “you were taken, surely?”

“Pavea. I am happy with Pavea. Yep, I surely was, all thanks to Daddy, who was none too good at paying his invoices and, because I was the person who was not doing the paying, people found out about me.”

“Was this Anatoly Sergeyevitch?”

“Him? No, someone else. Anyway, my abduction was supposed to jerk daddy’s checkbook into action, according to Neena. In time, he came across with what was needed. So, it was all fine, wasn’t it? I could go home, couldn’t I? But, no one had asked me. I decided to stay!”

“You did what?”

This I just cannot believe. Tracy Randolf wanted to continue her life as the slave, Pavea? After all the “we Americans always win, just you see” bluster she gave me?

Tracy — or perhaps she really is Pavea, now — continues to sit at our table and sizzle like some sort of nuclear fuel rod. I am so envious of her self confidence and the way she seems to control all those around her. It is as if her emotional gravity is bending us all to her own will, as if she was some sort of emotional gravitational ‘black hole’. The waitress comes and takes our lunch order and disappears. We are not the only table in the room that’s occupied. It is lunch-time after all. Those around us are occupied with their meals and their conversation. None of Pavea’s aggressive rude self assurance seems to have been noticed by others. Part of me is grateful and part of me is fearful and anxious. I have the feeling that nothing is secure right at this moment, as though even the little normality I have achieved in my world could be torn up in an instant.

Pavea is still talking, explaining about how Neena had reacted when she told her she didn’t intend to go back. As I struggle to take in one astonishing revelation after another, I start to look at Pavea more critically. She looks wonderful. Her hair is short but has been styled, not shorn. Her nails have been beautifully shaped and given a gold reflective surface. She is wearing a bright orange loose dress. It is in linen with carefully made box pleats. The sleeves are very short and the arm holes are wide and deep. You can see her skin. It’s clear that she has no bra, but from what I remember, she doesn’t need one anyway. The wide arm openings almost invite the hand of an adventurous partner to reach inside, to fondle her nipples. Around her neck is a thin brown leather band. It’s a collar, of course, but made to be, oh so elegant. At the waist, her dress is gathered in by a wide matching brown leather belt and on her bare feet is a pair of beautiful leather heels. She has a thickish gold ankle bracelet, except I now realize it is not quite a bracelet. Part of me begins to feel jealous of her outfit. I never got to wear beautiful clothes like this and I was more loyal to my Owners than Pavea was, when she was Tracy.

I begin to feel my eyes moisten, but then I stop myself. Surely, I have my freedom which is worth far more than a dress, even a dress like this? (3)

Pavea is speaking again. “After I’d told the Kustenskies that I wanted to stay, it took them a while to process the information and then Neena came looking for me and said they wanted me to ‘phone Daddy from London and explain that I was not coming back. I was a bit curious about the London thing. I mean, why London? But then she told me about what had happened to you (Pavea, or maybe Tracy, points the sharp half of another fractured grissini at Joe) and it began to make a sorta sense. So: I came to London and I called Daddy to explain to him in words of one syllable that I was not coming back. I wasn’t going to work for him anymore. He didn’t want to hear. Of course. He wouldn’t listen to me. I ended up speaking to the FBI who were camping out in Daddy’s office. How stupid is that? You try to talk to your parents and they can’t even cope with that! Anyway, they wanted to be sure I wasn’t under any duress. I guess they have to do that? The only duress was coming from Daddy — like it always had.

“Anyway, the Feds came to London to speak to me. I have just been with them at the Embassy. Daddy isn’t pleased. He’s not used to not getting his own way. I think he is trying to put pressure on anyone else he can find who might know where I am. He must have found out about you, Jenny, and you, Joe. That’s why I have to apologize — for Daddy’s ‘muscle’.”

Throughout her story, Pavea sits completely relaxed. She’s ordered a glass of wine and a salad. She barely notices when they are placed on the table. Joe attacks his pasta. He’s using it as a way of not saying anything, not engaging. I can’t help feeling that it’s Tracy he’d like to be winding up around his fork.

My pizza sits on its plate in front of me. There’s a strong smell of basil. For some stupid reason, my brain connects basil with St Basil and jumps to Saint Basil’s Cathedral and then, Moscow. Inside I sigh at the way my mind so easily runs this way. Sometimes, I can be so stupid! Tracy doesn’t eat anything at first. She has slipped her feet out of her shoes so we can admire her gold toenails. To listen to her matter-of-fact style, you might expect her to be explaining how she masterminded a leveraged buy-out and assumed control of the day-to-day running of the Dacha, not to mention the rest of the entire Kustensky operation.

There are so many questions. I have to ask what’s going on. “Pavea, I still don’t understand. I can see why you are here, but you are also on the loose, spending money, and acting as if you own the place? I mean, now you have delivered your messages, shouldn’t you be ... under restriction? Lock and key?”

“Yes. Guess so, but then, that’s the difference between you and me. I’m a Consensual Employee now and yes, there are some rather non standard requirements in the contract but you on the other hand were a Non-Consensual Acquisition. You needed restriction until you came to terms with your new situation as they used to tell you and I don’t. Not anymore, anyway.

And I am aiming to get back towards my ‘old situation’. Y’know?”

“I am struggling to keep up with this,” says Joe breaking into the torrent of conversation from Pavea.

Pavea turns towards him. She gives him an uncharacteristic look of understanding. “Sure,” she says. “Let’s rewind. You want biography? That’ll help.” She continues, “So, Jennifer. What do you remember about being young? Parents at home to read you stories? Tuck you into bed at night? Play with you on the floor? Family holidays? Ask you about things at school? Look at the things you had done? Always the same Mommy and Daddy?”

“Well, yes.”

“You, Joe?”

Joe just looks back. He puts his head on one side. It’s something he does when he’s heard, doesn’t really agree, but doesn’t want to say so. It’s a look I’ve seen too many times. It’s started a few rows between us. He’s not going to answer Tracy, because his childhood was not so happy.

Pavea — but this time I am sure it’s Tracy who is talking — continues. “Well, you were lucky. I was brought up by a black lady called Edna who worked for us. I don’t remember my Mommy and Daddy taking much interest in me. Sure, I had plenty of things, but things are not good enough, are they? Children want time and love and attention. I got those from Edna but I always wanted them from Mommy and Daddy — who, of course, were too busy.

“When I got older, I began to realize that, for them, I was really a possession. Part of the collection of things they owned. So, I did all the things a dutiful daughter is supposed to do. I went to college and business school. I dated the right boys. Then, Daddy made it clear that there were things I had to achieve. He’d invested in me. He expected a return on the investment. So, I still felt I was more of an ‘asset’ than a daughter.

“Then I started to get worried about some of the things I was supposed to do with the accounts. I had my instructions, but I wasn’t happy. I used to get frightened by the idea of the IRS busting into the office. Getting indicted. Put on trial. Getting thirty years for fraud. And where would Daddy be then? Covering his ass, that’s where! And Mummy? Oh, I guess she’d be out at some charity function. So you can see, I wasn’t very happy. Then, one day, I woke up in a cell and this girl called Vyera came to see me.”

Pavea pauses. She’s collecting and organizing her memories, working out how the story fits together. “Well, Vyera was very handy to shout at. She just listened patiently. The more I raged, the less good it did, which was exactly the opposite of what I had grown up to expect. The funny thing was that when I was forced to do something and I did it, people seemed pleased with me. Pleased that I had done it, as much as they were pleased with what I had actually done and I sorta began to like that. Being rewarded for being me. That was a new experience.”

Being rewarded for being me? That’s not how I found it. I was always being asked to be someone else and here was Pavea telling me that she was rewarded for being who she was.

“Then one day, Neena turns up and tells me that you had been sent home. And y’know? The last place I wanted was to be sent was back home. To have to face Daddy again.

“Neena had been giving me a mind fuck that I had been sold, but I know about the Market, about buying and selling and Neena knows fuck all. It was obvious. You see, a price has to reflect the value of an asset. When they took me, they took someone with a ton of financial knowledge and no one had asked me a damn thing about it, so that’s how I knew that all her talk about me being sold was so much bull shit.

“So when I had collected my wits, I thought: here’s an opportunity! So I said it straight out. ‘Gaspazha, my real value for any purchaser is my skill as an accountant and my knowledge of the oil and gas business in the US and Europe and the financial position of the Randolf Corporation. Those assets must be reflected in any price you quote. Also, commercial knowledge is perishable. Things change. Companies move on. No one has asked me about any of the really valuable information I bring with me. I am too valuable to waste, having me spend my time cleaning floors! I’m worth money to you. I am worth even more money working for you. You don’t own this operation. Go tell whoever does!’

“Ha! You should have seen Neena’s face! A picture! She couldn’t believe her ears so, to help her, I went right ahead and said it again, but this time I said I wanted to stay to keep out of Daddy’s way, which was one hundred percent true. Anyway, the bitch had to scuttle off on the errand I had given her, to report to Anatoly Sergeyevitch. After that, things changed. I took over your role. I am a bit like Edna. Looking after Dmitry, some of the time. Oh, by the way, I think Alana is pregnant again. She spent most of last week puking up in the john. You know, like they do when they have just got pregnant.” Tracy wrinkles her nose, as if to underline the unpleasantness.

“And of course, I am a girl with talents and business experience and expertise so they do not have me wasting my time scrubbing floors all day any more. I have prospects. The only problem is Daddy. So here I am, talking to the Feds at the Embassy, telling them that I am just fine with a new job, and I am just fine. And, doing all I can to keep Daddy off my back. If the Feds wrap up my case and stop looking for me, he might stop making your life difficult and then the police will not be asking any more questions. We don’t want The Feds to make too many connections and we definitely don’t want Daddy to realize who I am working for now and make trouble for Anatoly Sergeyevitch’s North American operations.”

I had never thought of Pavea as being anything other than an unwilling abductee. Her account of her history was moving. The rich neglected little girl who wanted approval and attention from her parents, who found it as a slave and then saw “prospects” in her situation. It was so unexpected and yet so typical of the girl who used to spit invective at me and tell me that “We Americans never lose.” Perhaps she was right then and she is right now. Whilst I had pined after the life I had lost, Pavea lay in wait for the opportunity to re-establish herself. I wonder if Anatoly Sergeyevitch realizes what he has in his nest? Slave or not, this girl really could end up running his organization!

“But we want the police to ask questions,” says Joe. “In fact, I want the police to find out exactly what happened to my wife and who is responsible.” Joe folds his arms. It’s been a continuing problem for us. He wants this “solved.” I want it “settled.” He knows that I could tell the police all they want to know but he knows, too, that I won’t. That hasn’t stopped him wanting the police to find out anyway.

“Do you think that is really wise?” replies Pavea. “I mean, apart from making life a little bit more inconvenient for some very powerful people, do you think you are going to get any further forward, Joe? New job? Better prospects? That sort of thing?”

“I think it is about justice. About living in a world where people are more than pawns to be picked up and cast down at the whim of others.” Joe is determined to defend what is right, but I think — I know — that it is also naïve and unrealistic because life in this world is not like a game with rules, even though we try to make it so.

Pavea continues, putting my quiet thoughts into words, “Well, Joe. If you don’t mind me saying, you are not doing too well yourself right now. Your old company has not shown you too much loyalty? Maybe you have got to be more practical, huh? Live in the real world, not the world as you would like it to be?”

Joe just scowls back, wondering how she knows about his problems at work and whether there is anything private in his life anymore.

“So, how did things go at the hospital?” Pavea asks, changing the subject.

“They are pleased with me, if it’s any of your business,” replies Joe, coldly

Pavea glances down. I wonder if she is embarrassed at the possibility — well, the probability — that the assault Joe suffered was because of her? It’s an unusual response, from her. There’s no doubt that Pavea now isn’t what Tracy was then.

“And so we decided on lunch out,” I add, trying to calm troubled waters. “Pavea, is this a chance meeting?”

“Chance? Give me a break, Vyera. Of course not. I am in London to speak to the Feds, like I told you, and we saw you were going to be in the city and I asked if I could touch base.”

“Yes, but how did you know where we would be?”

“For goodness sake, Vyera! Your phones are hacked. I could have told you last week where Joe here was planning to take you after the surgeons had finished with him but, anyway, it was a good choice, Joe. Nice and convenient for the Embassy. Neena told me you would probably go to some Italian restaurant near the hospital...”

“It had bad memories,” interjects Joe.

“Whatever,” continues Tracy, “but I am glad you chose different. The salad was OK, by the way. Maybe, next time I’m in London, I will make us all a reservation somewhere. Leave your laptops on and I’ll get it set up in your diaries.” She smirks as she forks up the last piece of lettuce and an olive.

“The first thing we do after we leave will be to get new mobiles,” replies Joe.

“Oh, please,” counters Pavea, “do you think you can shake us off as easy as that? This girl...” Pavea points her fork at me, to be quite clear who she is talking about, “this girl is owned and she knows it.”

Reflections by Hermes

After we leave the restaurant, Jenny says she wants to walk up Bond Street and look at the shops where all the wealthy people go, the people who get to wear clothes, like Tracy. I can understand “window shopping” and anyway, we can catch the underground from Oxford Circus.

As we walk, I find myself watching Jenny. I thought she was beautiful the first time I ever saw her and I think she is even more beautiful now. It’s different, of course; more edgy; but beautiful nevertheless.

I see a person worth fighting for, even though I would not have asked her to go through all the body piercing and tattooing she has had done. She did it because she wanted to and I don’t love her any the less. I catch sight of her face and her body reflected in the shop windows as we pass. I feel my cock stir in response to the way she looks and think how lucky I am. Yes, I love her in every way and I understand now that it is my job to love the girl she is, to love the girl I searched for after she was taken from me. How strange it is that often we appreciate what we have had, only after it has been taken from us! Now she has been restored to me, I am determined to love — or should I also say serve — Jenny as she is and delight in it.

She is very quiet as we walk back. She is often quiet these days. That’s not unusual and it’s hardly surprising. Today, though — this afternoon — she is more quiet than ever. The American girl casts a long shadow, for someone so small and slight.

We pass into Bond Street and walk by the Hermes store. I am looking further along the road and I suddenly realise that Jenny is no longer with me. I turn and look back, over my shoulder. She is gazing into the shop window. I walk back the few steps to join her and follow her gaze.

It’s the dress the American girl was wearing. It stands looking out at us, artfully arranged on a headless mannequin. It is exactly the same dress. Even I can see that. As my eyes examine it, set in the context of the other things in the window, it is obvious that it must be eye-wateringly expensive. Half of me wishes to take Jenny inside and buy it for her and half of her wants to get right away from the place, to separate us from things I cannot possibly buy for her and from the sticky threads of her abductors. I take her hand and gently pull, encouraging her to come with me. She does not hold back and walks on.

I say, “There will be other dresses. Nicer dresses, I promise.”

“It’s not that.”

“What, then?”

“Well, I never got to wear nice things like that.”

“Never?”

“Hardly ever, and even then it was always something modest and practical.”

“A-ha. Are you jealous of her?”

“Pavea?”

“Mmmm.”

“No, not really.”

“Are you OK?”

“No.”

“Oh?”

“I just want to be with you, Joe,” she says.

“That’s nice,” I reply smiling.

“It’s just that ... Well, it’s so hard to separate myself from it all. I should be able to turn my back on them, push them out of my mind. But, I always feel I am tearing myself away from them. And the ‘tearing’ is so painful. There is still part of me, inside, which does not want to make the break.”

There’s a heavy lump of anxiety and disappointment in my stomach as she says this. There is a lot I could say. There are questions I should ask. I don’t, though. I think it best to keep my mouth shut. I do not trust myself to get this sort of conversation right. Instead, I try a different sort of communication: I take her hand and squeeze it. I must have done the right thing because she turns to me and smiles and pulls herself close to me. In that moment, I feel we have got out from under the cloud that the American, Tracy — or whatever her name was — has thrown over us.

We are passing a beautician’s shop — actually, it looks more like a dentist’s — and suddenly Jenny stops.

“Joe,” she says. “I would like my nails done. Done like Pavea.”

“Would gold suit you?”

“I would like silver. Can I get it done?”

“You don’t usually ask that sort of question.”

“But we don’t have much money.”

“No, we don’t. All the more reason to do it!”

“Joe!”

“Come on. You need something to lift your spirits.”

“What about yours?”

“Spirits?”

“Mmmm.”

“Agreed, but there is a catch.”

“Oh?”

“You have to get naked as soon as we get home.”

“What if someone comes?”

“I was hoping we would both come!”

“Joe! You know what I mean! We are living with my parents now!”

“You know I am extra-ordinarily proud of you, Jenny. I would love to show you off in the nip. Anyway, you are Swedish.”

“Huh?”

“Swedish. You know. You Swedes are always going around in the nip.”

She laughs. And I laugh. The cloud really has gone. Thinned and evaporated into the blue sky. Fuck the cost. She is worth whatever it costs. And we will only pass this way once...

Information Exchange

In London, in the office of Edward Black, the permanent liaison officer to CIA t for the British Internal Security Service (MI5) the ‘phone rings. A colleague from the CIA is on the line. It is Clyde Ritchie, Deputy Director for Russian and European Affaires.