Destroyer 040 by Dangerous Games

Author:Dangerous Games
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

This was the new Russia. Receding into the mists of history were the bloody millions-dead purges of a Stalin and the

random cruelties of a Khrushchev. The bloodshed aimed at its own people had largely stopped. But the successors of

Stalin and Khrushchev were still paranoidal xenophobes and a call to the Kremlin was still an occasion for sweaty

palms on the part of most Russians.

For one thing never changed, new Russia or old Russia. Some of the people called to the

Kremlin never came back.

But when the call came for Dimitri Sorkofsky, a colonel in the KGB, Russia's secret police, he

merely wondered why it had taken them so long to call.

Sorkofsky was a prideful man, proud of his service record, as he was proud of his two small

daughters, Nina, eleven, and Marta, seven. He had been equally proud of their mother, his

Sorkofsky was a prideful man, proud of his service record, as he was proud of his two small

daughters, Nina, eleven, and Marta, seven. He had been equally proud of their mother, his

beautiful Natasha, until she had died five years earlier at the age of thirty-two.

As he walked through the Moscow streets toward his appointment, Sorkofsky knew he was

going to be given the greatest assignment of his career, and his sole regret was that Natasha was

not there to share it with him.

Natasha had been fifteen years younger than he and she had always been so filled with life

that she had kept him young. He never knew what had made

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her fall in love with an ugly old bear of a man like him, but he was only happy that she had. Happy and proud. He

recalled how his chest puffed with pride anytime he went anywhere with Natasha on his arm, anytime he saw other

men's eyes follow her across a room. And then she was told she had incurable bone cancer.

Still, during those last six months, she had been the strong one and after she had died, he

felt guilty that somehow she had made those six months the happiest of his life when, by all

rights, they should have been the saddest. But she would not hear of sad. She had nothing to

be sad about, she had told Dimitri. She had raised two lovely daughters and had a lovely,

lovely man for a husband.

He paused on the street and rubbed a hand over the lumps that seemed to have piled up to

form his face. How could she have felt that way about him? He touched his eyes with his

hand, found moisture, and wiped it away.

Dimitri Sorkofsky was called "The Rhino." He was six-foot-three and weighed 250

pounds. His Neanderthal brow belied his high intelligence. His hands were like massive paws,

and yet Natasha had often called them the gentlest hands in the world. Her love for him had

found beauty where there was none for others to see.

He had been so proud of her, just as he was proud of his skills, and when he reported to his

superiors in the Kremlin and was told that he would be in

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