Chapter 69

Rada Kuznetsov didn’t grow up wanting to be a stripper. When she was a little girl, she wanted to be a KGB agent like her Grandpa Vil and was crushed to discover that the KGB (the real KGB) had been dissolved along with the Soviet Union the same year she was born.

She had later decided she wanted to be a general in the Russian Army like her other grandfather Aleks Aleksovich and held onto that dream into her middle teens despite the complete lack of precedent for any woman to rise so high. She had reasoned that someone needed to be first, so why not her? When she was ten, she wrote out her plan in her diary. The first step was to improve her accuracy with a rifle. Step two was to join the army as a sniper and in step three she would rise in rank until she was the first Russian general who was also a woman.

Looking back, she could marvel at her own naivete even if the dream hadn’t been naive for the reasons people might think. At ten, she was already a good shot. She spent most weekends and every summer at Grandpa Vil’s dacha where he and Grandpa Aleks would often compete to see who could spoil her the most. Their brand of spoiling included some atypically grandfatherly activities like early-morning runs, deer hunting, hand-to-hand sparring, and long lazy hours of target practice with a Mosin-Nagant infantry rifle, but were accompanied with such genuine affection that Rada never really thought about how strange they were.

It wasn’t until she was fifteen that Rada realized she would never be a general, was unlikely to ever be allowed to become a sniper, and would probably be better off never joining the army at all.

By that age, she had become aware that Grandpa Vil and Grandpa Aleks had not always been friends, but didn’t yet know the depth of their old rivalries. Grandpa Aleks would sometimes make jokes about Vil sending him to Siberia and Vil would sometimes make oblique references about knowing better than to try, but Rada thought they were just jokes, unrelated to actual events in their past.

In late February 2006, the three of them had gotten snowed in at Aleks’s hunting cabin, unable to go home or go hunting. It wasn’t an emergency. Grandpa Aleks had laid in enough provisions to make it through to early summer if they needed to. Instead, it had been a vacation of sorts. Rada’s boundless energy had been redirected from driving her grandfathers crazy to shoveling snow off the walk and drive over and over as it continued to fall. Rada hadn’t minded the labor. Over the past year, she’d gone from awkward and coltish to long and lean, but country living had put real muscle underneath her developing curves. The shoveling was good exercise, but she was aware that it was the epitome of busy work. Each time she shoveled the path from porch to driveway, she would have to shovel back from driveway to porch just to get back to the cabin.

She could remember the hypnotic rhythm of shoveling, the pleasant burn warming her muscles as she worked her way back and forth, and the way her mind floated free while her body went on autopilot. But she could also remember the quick sequence of thoughts that matched speeds with her floating mind and brought her a level of self-awareness she hadn’t explored before. The first thought was a surge of annoyance that her grandfathers had deliberately sent her out here in the cold and blowing to keep her busy and out of their hair like she was some sort of unruly child. It made her want to stomp inside and announce she wasn’t shoveling any more damned snow until it stopped coming down. She even managed to shovel her way halfway back to the cabin before the second thought hit her.

The second thought was shame that she had in fact behaved like an undisciplined and unruly child and forced her grandfathers to come up with a creative way to keep her from driving them insane. On that thought, she slowed her shoveling to give herself time to consider what she should do next. As a good and loyal Russian fifteen year-old, she had no religion and had never been introduced to the notion of penance, but her first thought was to keep shoveling until she was too worn out to cause further consternation. But by the time she’d worked her way back to the house, the idea of spending hours doing pointless work to punish herself struck her as equally childish to the original infraction. Instead, she placed the snow shovel by the door, slipped past her grandfathers to go upstairs, took a hot shower, lay on the bed beneath her black and white poster of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and did something she hadn’t done since she was a very small child. She took a nap.

When she woke again, it was after midnight and freezing cold. She staggered downstairs in the hope of making herself some tea, but heard her grandfathers speaking quietly in the living room and realized they were talking about her.

“If you’re so worried, buy her a motorcycle.” Grandpa Vil sat by the fireplace with a glass in his hand and a half-empty bottle of vodka on the table next to him.

Grandpa Aleks gestured with his own glass. “I’m not sure that’s safer than the buses.”

“She’s been riding that bus every week since she was ten and never mentioned any problems to me. Has she said something to you?” Vil asked.

“No, but she’s not ten anymore. She’s fifteen going on twenty-five. Boys must be noticing her. Men...” Aleks said darkly. “Men must be noticing her - a pretty young girl traveling alone each week.”

Vil chuckled. “She doesn’t exactly travel alone. She always has that rifle with her.”

“I also wear the knife you gave me, strapped to my calf.” Rada kissed Grandpa Vil on the cheek. She could have learned more if she’d stayed in the shadows, but she was cold and skulking wasn’t her style. “I know how to use it if I need to.”

Grandpa Vil gave a small start, then smiled at her. “Ah, lapushka. I didn’t hear you get up.”

“If she were an assassin, she could have slit your throat without you noticing,” said Aleks darkly.

“There are worse ways to go than a clean cut and any assassin who would waste a trip through that storm on an old man is wasting his time,” Vil said dismissively. “Grab yourself a glass, Rada. You can only improve the conversation tonight.”

Rada retrieved a glass and came to sit by the fire without a word. She’d sneaked a few sips of vodka before, but this was the first time she’d been offered a proper drink. Vil filled the glass for her a quarter of the way. “This is some storm we’re having, eh?”

Rada echoed something she’d heard from her father. “It should blow itself out soon, I think. The more powerful the storm, the faster it ends.”

“Usually true,” said Grandpa Aleks.

“Of storms, yes. But this storm will leave its mark - trees down, roads closed, power lost.” Vil commented, then added cryptically. “Do you think men are like storms, Rada?”

Rada focused on sipping her vodka without choking and tried to formulate an answer. She’d obviously come into the middle of a conversation between her grandfathers and what she said would be applied to some point or another that Vil or Aleks was trying to make. “I think perhaps powerful men are like powerful storms. Comrade Lenin was the greatest man ever born. He transformed Russia into the great Soviet Union, powerful enough to make the decadent west tremble in fear. Even though he died much too soon, the changes he made are still powerful today.”

“That sounds like what I was taught in school as a boy. Are they still teaching it?” Grandpa Aleks asked.

When Rada nodded, Vil asked, “Do you believe it?”

Rada hadn’t really considered whether or not there was anything to believe. Her teachers taught and she learned. “I don’t know. History is not my best subject.”

“I used to love history,” mused Grandpa Aleks. “Of course, there was much less of it when I was your age.”

“And it was simpler before Putin,” growled Vil.

Aleks shot the former KGB agent a dirty look. “Don’t. Our Rada is a good communist.”

“He won’t care. He will see your jaw, my eyes, good with a rifle and...” Vil made a gun of his two fingers and gestured firing it.

Rada felt a chill. “The president will shoot me?”

“No. By the time you’re ready to join the army, he won’t even be president anymore,” said Grandpa Aleks. “Don’t fill the girl’s head with ideas, Vil.”

“That’s what heads are for,” Vil grumbled, but he changed the subject and didn’t go back to it that night.

The next morning, Rada took target practice off the back porch during a lull in the storm. Grandpa Aleks came out carrying a tray with two cups of tea, gesturing for her to sit in one of the chairs set back far enough from the edge of the porch to be dry. She fired her last shot, checked her rifle over, rested it against the house, and sat down.

“You are shooting at trees, lapushka?” Aleks commented.

“The path to the range is buried and the targets would be invisible in this.” Rada stirred a heaping spoonful of jam into her tea. “It’s been several days since I’ve gone shooting and I thought this might be good practice adjusting for wind, but I can’t see as far as I can shoot today.”

“Maybe tomorrow we can get to the range,” suggested Aleks.

“I don’t know. I don’t think the storm is dying. I think it’s just catching its breath.” Rada looked out into the woods.

Grandpa Aleks sipped his tea thoughtfully. “Rada, have you considered what you might do if you don’t join the army?”

Before last night, the question would have shocked Rada more, but she’d just been considering the same question. Last night, she’d dreamed she was sitting across a big table from President Putin. They were speaking of trivialities, but on the table between them had lay a GSh-18 pistol, gleaming black and full of deadly menace. Her dream-self had wanted to take the gun, but been paralyzed. Just before she’d woken up, the gun had started to turn and she’d realized that, once the barrel was facing her, the president would pick it up and fire. She said quietly, “You told me you have friends in the army who will help me.”

“I did, but they are fewer each year and I’m no longer sure they’ll be able to offer you any real help by the time you’re old enough to accept it. I am sorry, lapushka.” Aleks sighed and, for the first time, Rada saw her grandfather as an old man whose best days might be behind him.

Anger welled up in her at the idea she might have built her life around a promise that couldn’t be kept. She hid the tears that threatened to fall by sipping her tea. When she could speak without her voice shaking, she said, “I will find another way to join the struggle. Can you or Grandpa Vil still help with that?”

“The struggle against the West?” Grandpa Aleks asked. When Rada nodded, he looked down, “What are you wearing on your feet?”

Rada looked down. “These are my trainers. If I go out in the snow, I’ll change into boots.”

“You drink Coca Cola?” her grandfather challenged her.

“I prefer Pepsi,” said Rada.

Aleks gave a pained chuckle. “You know we once traded ships for Pepsi? No one would accept Russian money, so we gave them a fleet of submarines and some warships in return for their sugar water.”

“I didn’t know that,” Rada admitted.

“Such shameful incidents don’t make it to history class,” Aleks grumbled. “But that is our real history. McDonald’s and Pepsi, you wear your Nikes to your Young Communists club and the Revolution was cut into pieces and given away to the oligarchs for peanuts. Lapushka, the struggle against the West is over. The West won.”

Angry tears did fall then and she lashed out, “If they won, maybe I should go there, then!”

“That might be for the best, Rada. If that’s what you want, I have friends who can help you,” said Aleks.

Less than a month later, she’d been on a plane to Jayanesia to be trained by Stone-Stryker Concierge Service. What Rada had said in anger got her thinking that maybe she did need to understand how the west worked. At the time, she told herself that she would return home with that knowledge, If the West was the enemy, SSCS was the belly of the beast where an army of (mostly) young (mostly) women catered to the whims of capitalism’s greediest robber barons and Jayanesia was a vassal state beholden to America.

Only it seemed no one had told the Jayanesians about their vassalage and the SSCS trainees were almost uniformly the happiest, sexiest, and most interesting people she’d ever met. Her first month on Jayanesia had been spent in Haven studying for the JEE, the Jayanesia Exam for Enfranchisement. All told, she could have passed the exam after the first day, but she studied like a perfect score was the only acceptable outcome. That still left her plenty of time to swim, run, lie on the beach, and hang out with her fellow trainees. She fell in love for the first, second, and third time in rapid succession.

A year into her training, it was hard to remember what she’d wanted the day she arrived. She’d grown taller, lither, and stronger. Her instructors had encouraged her to work with Gibraltar to maintain her sharpshooting and hand-to-hand combat ability. She’d gotten a seemingly permanent all-over tan. When Grandpa Vil came to visit her, he scarcely recognized her. Rather than Vil being disappointed in her as Rada had feared, he seemed like a man who’d had some great trouble lifted from his shoulders.

Whatever resistance she had left to Grandpa Aleks’s premise that the West had won was washed away over the next few years. Much of her third and fourth year of training had involved listening in on hundreds of service requests chosen to illustrate one or more points of how SSCS provided for their clients. The calls from Russian clients quickly proved a central point of Marxist dogma: People have more in common with members of their own class than with citizens of their own country. Rich Russians were greedy, terrible, clueless and cruel in roughly the same proportions as rich Americans, rich Europeans, and rich Asians. The class war was over and the workers had lost.

Even among the SSCS trainees, Rada developed a reputation for perfectionism and competitive excellence. She threw herself into her studies, her friendships, and her love affairs with seemingly unflagging passion. She was factotum-tracked from early on, studied the clients she might eventually be paired with, and fixed her sights on Jesse Stone. This came to mean learning about the world of sadomasochism and the international network of sex clubs and services that catered to the lifestyle. As Jesse’s factotum, she wouldn’t be allowed to have sex with him, but she could learn to empathize with his needs. By the time she turned twenty, she’d become the pro domme of choice for a number of middle-tier SSCS clients.

The first part of her self-directed training that she ever really struggled at was when she was learning to play the submissive. Rada found it very difficult to get into the headspace required to enjoy her role. She found most of the dominants she’d sought out too easy-going or relaxed in real life for her to really believe them as doms no matter how much pain they inflicted. She derailed several sessions by laughing at inappropriate times.

It was only when she met Rogerio and Ona that she found herself able to really submit. Rogerio had been a general in Central America and Ona his factotum. Two years after she retired from the Service, they married. Both now contracted for SSCS - Rogerio as a subject matter expert on Central American and revolutionary politics, Ona as a recruiter. They were both extremely sexually dominant and hadn’t even consented to top her until she was able to convince Kukka, their submissive Third, that she would be properly respectful not only to Rogerio and Ona, but also to Kukka’s position. Rada would be a visitor - Kukka was family.

Rogerio was a born disciplinarian and having been deposed by counterrevolutionaries had done nothing to dull his sense of order. For Rada who had grown up expecting to join the Red Army, his discipline was more than a welcome counterpoint to SSCS’s ruthless succeed-however-you-can meritocracy. It answered a deeply buried craving in Rada. When Rogerio topped Rada, it wasn’t a game. He commanded. She obeyed. If she was perfect and precise in her actions, she wasn’t punished. But she learned new definitions of perfection and precision, standards far more exacting than even what SSCS expected. Every stripe she got, she earned and going home after a session unmarked was a badge of honor.

However successful or unsuccessful their discipline sessions, Rogerio nearly always fucked her afterwards. Each time, he fucked like a man condemned to die by dawn. He was never gentle, but frequently loving.

Ona’s style was based more on submission and humiliation. Ten years of service as a field agent and factotum seemed to have left her with an endless supply of demands for Rada and Kukka to fulfill. It also gave her keen insight into the fears Rada had as a factotum-tracked trainee. She probed each of those fears, found the ones that were justified, honed in on them, and demanded Rada conquer them.

Ona spotted Rada’s pride and arrogance right from the beginning, warned her that she would never be made a senior field agent if she couldn’t bury them deep, and did everything she could to help. But Ona could not humiliate, nor Rogerio beat them out of her. Rada herself could not suppress those two feelings either and it eventually became a perverse source of even greater pride that she could not be broken.

Ona was right, though. When Rada was finally rated for field work with real clients, reports started trickling back: She was arrogant, haughty, too proud. She tried to smother any such expressions under professionalism, outward servility, even humor. Nothing worked.

At twenty-two, Rada pivoted once again. She would never advance beyond her current rank working directly for clients and thus never become a factotum client. After considering an offer from Gibraltar, she’d instead elected to join the Special Requests division at SSCS.

Special Requests did exactly what the name suggested. They rarely interacted directly with clients and never handled anything as simple as acquiring a few hundred tickets to a Broadway show or organizing a party in a hotel. Requests were only special if they required goods that approved vendors couldn’t supply, knowledge for which the Service had no experts, or hands-on service that couldn’t be handled through normal procedures. Sometimes whole weeks went by without a special request. Sometimes, they came in clusters. With her combat skills, grace under extreme pressure, and gift for languages, Rada had gone into many situations over the last two years where the Service simply couldn’t account for all the variables that might be dangerous to her or the client. She was proud that, in all that time, no client had ever been killed or maimed, she’d never suffered worse than a sprained wrist, and she’d only had to pull her gun three times.

Compared to that, New Orleans was practically a holiday. Jacob, her division head, had brought the request to her directly. “This is kind of a weird one.”

Jacob only called a request weird if it required an agent to cross some personal boundary the Service liked to pretend they didn’t ask agents to cross. For a bunch of glorified capitalist running-dog pimps, SSCS could be ridiculously precious on the subject of sex. Rada asked, “What’s the request?”

“There’s a girl down in New Orleans - ran away from home on her eighteenth birthday, got herself a job stripping at a club called the Blue Rose. Nick Coyle wants us to keep an eye on her for an indeterminate amount of time until her sister can ... something. I’ve sent you the file.” Jacob gestured to her iPad. “That part’s not our concern. What we need to do is keep a close eye on her without spooking her. One of the club’s owners is a client and he’s agreed to hire Big Martin as a bouncer, but we’d like someone who can go in closer - as a bartender or waitress or...”

His pause was long enough for Rada to drive a truck through. “Or another stripper?”

Jacob shrugged. “That would be ideal.”

Rada picked up her tablet. “I’ll take it. Is that all the weirdness?”

Jacob gave a perfectly useless stock answer. “We’re trying to account for any other variables.”

After that, Rada had spoken to Nick exactly once where he’d made sure she understood the nature of the request. When she’d suggested she could disappear once Nick was ready to approach Prudence so that she would never know she’d been surveilled, he’d said, “No, I’ll come clean to her as soon as I can. So remember that anything you do, she’s going to know you did on my behalf.”

That was the last time Rada had spoken to Nick. He was presumably getting her daily reports in some form and she hoped they were making a good impression. Nick seemed like the sort who might have a lot of special requests down the road and having one of SSCS’s best clients ask for her by name would put her in line to replace Jacob when he retired.

Everything on this operation had gone more or less smoothly. Rada had gotten the job and taken the stage name Charity to dance with Prudence who was capitalizing on an innocence that was, for the moment, one hundred percent genuine. Prudence had given a few lapdances, but she’d never been kissed until the night Rada accepted her offer to become roommates. There was the small matter that Prudence might have fallen in love with Rada. That could reflect badly on Nick if she took the subterfuge as a betrayal, but Rada was hoping that the fact she’d been her genuine self as much as possible would ameliorate any hard feelings. She couldn’t help if her genuine self was kind of irresistible.

Nick showing up at the club a night early complicated things. There was supposed to be a big meeting tomorrow where Nick and Pru’s sister Sarah would present her with options. Rada’s job was to prepare her for that meeting and get her there. As part of preparation, she would admit to being Rada the field agent. Tonight, she was still Rada the stripper who goes by Charity onstage. She needed to intercept Nick so she could find out what his plans were for tonight and adapt.

Fortunately, Nick was kept in the Owner’s Tier and Rada was able to get into the group that would go up there and entertain him along with Jesse’s fraternity brothers. Rada hadn’t thought much about Jesse in a while. Once she’d realized she would never be a factotum, she’d packed away any thoughts of working for him directly. The woman she’d decided was her primary rival for the job had in fact gotten the role. Rada hoped Penny MacAllister was doing nearly as good a job as Rada herself would have done, but with less attitude.

Of course, “Charity” going up to the Owner’s Tier to entertain meant that Prudence went too, which was less than ideal. Still, Rada was less worried about that than about one or more of the other dancers dragging Nick off before she could talk to him. Luckily, Nick had brought his own drop-dead gorgeous woman with him and didn’t seem inclined to wander off any time soon.

Still, Rada waited on tenterhooks as a half dozen other girls introduced themselves to Nick, but relaxed a little when he spotted her and immediately seemed to recognize both her and Prudence. When she got up front, she introduced herself and added, “Don’t let any of these other girls get you into a private room before I do.” She would undoubtedly get some abuse from the other girls about that later, but she would survive it.

She even managed to not wince when Nick’s girlfriend asked, “Are you called Charity because you give it away for free?” like Rada hadn’t heard it several times a night since she started dancing here.

Usually, Rada answered by saying she could be easy or free, but not both, but she gave Emily her best let’s-go-somewhere-and-fuck look. “For you and your boyfriend, sure.”

Shortly thereafter, Rada led Nick and Emily to a private room, had them sit on the loveseat there, and then, because she knew the value of first impressions, straddled Nick’s lap and stuck her tits in his face before rubbing her head against Emily’s like a cat marking her territory.

“Uh, Rada. That’s not ... necessary. Emily knows why we’re here,” said Nick.

Still, his body had responded and Rada ground against him. “Actually, it is. Those doors don’t lock. We could have company at any time and Prudence doesn’t know anything but my cover story.” She reached past Emily’s head to draw her in close. “Unless this bothers you.”

Emily laughed. “Not at all. I was hoping I’d get to see a lap dance before the night was over.”

“Scooch in and you can do more than just see one. Couple’s dances are fun, but you have to get in real close.” Rada smiled at her.

As Emily snuggled up next to him, Nick said, “As much as I’m enjoying this, I expect you didn’t bring us in here just to give us a couple’s dance, Rada.”

“Charity,” Rada reminded him as she shifted so that one knee pressed up between Emily’s legs and the other between Nick’s.

Nick grunted. “Right ... Charity.”

“I just wanted to know why you were here a day early. There are a lot of plans in motion, but I haven’t set things up yet. I wanted to wait until the last possible moment in case Pru feels like I betrayed her by spying on her.” Rada undulated and brushed the heel of her hand over Emily’s breast, eliciting an intake of breath.

“We’re just here to see the club tonight.” Nick rested a hand on the small of Rada’s back. “Do you think she’ll feel betrayed?”

“Probably not. Pru is a remarkably mellow person, but there may be feelings involved. She’s gotten kind of attached to me,” Rada traced one hand down Emily’s side and one down Nick’s.

Nick winced. “That’s unfortunate.”

“I don’t know, maybe. I’m pretty attached to her too. She’s a really nice girl. Painfully sweet. Painfully earnest. Leads with her heart. Are you going to do all right by her?” Rada wasn’t sure why she asked the last part. Caring about what happened to Prudence after tomorrow wasn’t in her job description and questioning a client’s motives could be bad for her career.

“I’m going to leave everything up to her. She can come to New York and stay with me and my friends, go to Montana with her sister and brother-in-law, stay in New Orleans and keep stripping under her own name, or do something else. Whatever she wants to do, I’ll help her out.” Nick said.

Rada leaned in so close that she could feel Nick’s breath on her lips. “Sweet deal. What do you want from her?”

“It’s a wedding gift to her sister. I don’t want anything from her. I don’t even know her.” Nick answered, then added, “Are you supposed to care? I am the client here.”

Rada pressed her chest against him and leaned in to whisper in his ear. “We don’t always choose what we care about. I just thought that, if you were looking to bring a stripper home and you weren’t picky, I’d be as good a choice as she is.”

Nick laughed, sat back, and looked up at her. “My assistant Tanvi has warned me that sleeping with your SSCS-provided staff is the most expensive way short of marriage to get laid, but that doesn’t keep it from being tempting.”

Rada hadn’t planned to offer herself to Nick or for him to take such an offer seriously, but she had and he seemed to be considering it. Backing out now could only be a disaster and there were worse fates than getting banged by a billionaire and his ridiculously gorgeous girlfriend at a strip club. She twisted, turned, and lay across both Nick and Emily’s laps. “It’s a good thing I’m not an SSCS field agent tonight, then. Tonight is pure Charity.”

Just then, the door opened and Brad Cotton walked in. Brad was a local field agent and had formally complained about Special Requests working in his territory instead of one of the local agents performing surveillance on Prudence. Rada disliked him as much as their professional relationship would allow. Today, he held a cell phone in one hand and a small leather case in the other. He barely spared Rada a glance before clearing his throat. “Nick, sorry to interrupt. I have the cash you requested and, while I was on the way over, your cousin Threnody called and explicitly requested to speak to you directly. She says it’s a matter of some urgency.”

Nick groaned. “Seriously? What does she want?”

“We asked. She wouldn’t say. I can tell her you’re unavailable if you like,” said Brad.

“No.” Nick patted Rada on the stomach, indicating he needed to get up. “It’s probably some kind of ridiculous head-game, but I’ll take it this time. Forward it to me, please.”

Rada shifted to rise, but Emily kept an arm around her waist. Rada met Nick’s girlfriend’s eyes. Emily loosened her grip, but gave a faint shrug suggesting that Rada could stay on her lap if she liked. Rada’s estimation of Emily rose considerably and she stayed where she was.

Rada only heard Nick’s side of the conversation at first and he wasn’t saying much except to express suspicion first, then disbelief, then concern before saying, “I have two SSCS field agents with me here now. Can I put you on speaker so we’re all in the same conversation.” Threnody presumably consented because Nick put his phone in his lap and said, “Tell everyone what you just told me, please.”